Numbness. The numbness was odd. There were so many ranges of emotion I should have felt, yet, somehow, they all felt muted. Silent. The desire to curse was thrown away by the realization that cursing would not change the problem. Raging and ranting would only waste valuable time that could be used searching for a solution.
The situation is not hopeless, Janus. If you are not strong enough to destroy the beings, there is a second option. The Anathema of the End: Omega. It is Alamir’s kill-switch. Omega cannot be bargained with. Omega cannot be reasoned with. Its sole purpose is indiscriminate destruction. It will destroy all nightmares and eliminate Alamir from existence.
If it comes to it, you must destroy Alamir to save Earth.
“Oh of course, let’s just give a big middle-finger to the millions or billions of lives here just to save that other place, now don’t we?” I snorted.
So, my choices were:
A – Kill god-killers.
B – Destroy the world and die.
C – Lose all my memories.
“What an excellent array of options,” I muttered softly underneath my breath. Of the three, only option A seemed remotely viable, making it less of an option and more as the only choice. There was no way this was not intentional. The other two options included either the death or termination of me, and considering Oblivion knew how much I disliked threats to my own existence, there was no way he expected me to choose to lose my memories, or to destroy the world.
Hence, he was setting me up to pick option A.
“How long do I have for this?”
There was nothing left on the message that read apologies. No indication of a time-limit. That did not comfort me.
[You have (4) Messages From Admin: Oblivion]
I opened the next message without hesitation.
Message: [A Possible Third Alternative]
Janus, it has come to my attention that the choices I have offered you are not at all favorable. In that manner, there is a possible third alternative. The threat of Mutually Assured Destruction has kept bay people in your world from engaging in hostilities for years, and it may do the same here.
The Nightwitch that named you, Zlosta Janje, is the Avatar of Omega. Should you recruit her to your side and use her as a bargaining chip, you may be able to convince the beings to cease their assault on Earth. However, they will most likely not listen to such alone. You will need a sizeable force of powerful individuals under your command as a show of strength.
If you can gather an army and have beside you the Avatar of Omega – you may be able to stop the forces invading Earth without bloodshed.
However, Janus, I cannot be sure how effective this strategy will be. There is a chance it will fail or a chance that it will lead to unexpected consequences. Regardless, I recommend you attempt this strategy, if only because in the advent of its failure, you will have an army to support you in battle, and have the option to unleash Omega as a last resort.
He was watching me.
My body trembled. “You… bastard.”
He had been watching me. All along, from the beginning, he had been watching me. There was no way he did could have known that Zlosta was the one who named me unless he had been watching me.
“More than that…”
What were the odds? The odds of reincarnating in a place where I would just happen to meet and be named by a person who would be the Avatar of the being I needed to destroy the world? What were the odds, of having being named by the person who was the Avatar of one who could destroy the world?
“He said he did not choose what I would be reborn as, but he never said anything about where I’d be reborn.”
There was more to the story I was not getting, but if there was anything I knew, it was that Oblivion could not be trusted. So far, the being claimed that it had no reason to lie, yet, it also had no reason to tell the truth, and thus, no reason to lie by omission.
Is he even really dead?
My skepticism rose. All of this was too much. Too convenient. It felt as if Oblivion was trying to steer me down the path of a heroic martyr. Giving me a task as absurd and challenging as saving the world and having me make a decision as tough and challenging as choosing whether to lose my memories or lose my life –
“I need more information.”
There was too little data to work with to draw any conclusions. I needed to work my way up to a position in which I would have as much information as I could gather about Alamir, and decide for myself, whether or not Oblivion’s task was as true as he claimed, or if it was all an elaborate ruse. I needed to learn more about Omega, learn more about that being that killed me, Apophis, and find out what Alamir’s stance on gods and divine beings were.
Considering Oblivion’s lack of omnipotence and omniscience, he was akin to a Greek Deity than he was to a capital ‘G’ god. Greek Deities could be outwitted by humans and were often flawed, imperfect beings. If that was the case, the task of killing the beings who (allegedly) killed him would not be as insurmountable as I originally feared. Difficult, certainly, but not impossible.
“But where do I start?”
Information. Where would I go about acquiring it? A library would be a fantastic choice, other than attaining information from reputable knowledgeable individuals. Yet, that came with its own risk of misinformation or incomplete information or skewed information that was biased in one way or another. Then there was the sensitive nature of this information that I was acquiring, which made things more complicated.
Could Zlosta assist me? Zlosta, the beautiful, insane, highly possessive Zlosta.
