Universe's End

Chapter 253: Anticlimactic Goodbye

“Hey, Roxy, I-” Rory stopped midsentence, having locked onto Roxy and teleported beside her, having tracked her to the forge.

Roxy was there as expected, it was the two teenagers staring at him with wide eyes he hadn’t accounted for, the untiered lack of any aura whatsoever making them an invisible blip to him.

“Dad,” Roxy sighed. “I was in the middle of lessons.”

“Already?” Rory asked.

“It has been a few days,” Roxy sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Is there something you need?”

“Well, I was preparing to leave and was coming to say my goodbye,” Rory answered, something tickling his brain as he spoke.

Wait…. Did I ever even give Irene what I meant to?

The entire reason he’d gone to see Irene was to pass off the young pair’s blade they’d entered into the Ukareist festival, but on hindsight, he’d entirely forgotten.

Well, this works too.

Materializing within his hand, the gravite blade appeared. Taking a step toward the pair, Rory handed the blade over.

“I did mention I was only going to hold onto this for a few days.”

“T-thank you,” the two of them bowed their heads vigorously as Rory grinned.

“Of course, I keep to my word, and so I decided to hand-deliver it.”

A lie, but hey, when life gives you lemons and all that.

Rory noticed Roxy roll her eyes, his daughter clearly aware how untrue that was, but if it made a good impression on the kids, Rory saw no harm.

“Well then, I guess I will be off now. I’ll be back… oh, a few years probably.”

“Yeah, yeah, go have fun,” Roxy sighed, shooing him away as if he were leaving for nothing more than a weekend trip.

“Take care of Ehkorrus while I’m gone,” Rory said before winking at the two teenagers. “We’ve got some bright talent after all.”

And then he once more flickered away, this time appearing within the Null Window Station.

I still think renaming it a bus stop would have been funny, but ehh, you win some, you lose some.

Without even bothering to be cleared by the man working the front gate, Rory passed through before making his way through the window and appearing on the third floor of the Maw, inside a crook of Cruor-Shu. Not even bothering to move from his spot, Rory waited, tapping his foot until a large snake head rounded a branch and slithered into the recess.

“Took you long enough,” Rory said.

“I was napping

. You should be glad that I even sensed you.”“As if napping were enough to shut down your senses,” Rory snorted. “You ready?”

“I do not exactly have things to pack.”

“Well then, no time in delaying. Lets go meet up with Zoey.”

Activating the platform, Rory reappeared within the Null Station, the actual teleportation hub, just with a large serpent accompanying him.

You know, if she keeps growing, we might have trouble stuffing her in here… Problems to consider at a later date.

Unlike in the past when he’d randomly teleported to the Reverse Mountains so many decades ago, the location they were going to now already had the ‘coordinates’ locked into the Null Window, something that hadn’t actually been his doing; he’d only refined the additional features. It was essentially an information-storage crystal, taking the concept of an inventory and altering it to work only with information itself. The original version had been using a regular gem crafted gem, but they burnt out quite quickly, and with people traveling to and from the Reverse Mountains in much greater numbers now, that meant that regular gems didn’t last very long.

Their current destination had only been traveled to twice, so it was still listed as an ‘unstable’ connection. It was technically a part of their network, but the Z.O.E.Y device that Rory had Zoey bring along had only been a prototype. The problem fundamentally was that without something like a genuine Null Window, a tunnel had to be actively bored open through space-time and the ‘void’ itself. The Reverse Mountains had an entire teleportation chamber dedicated to the cause, but it still wasn’t a ‘cheap’ process.

Whatever, it should be fine.

“You ready?” Rory asked Eia.

“Yes.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Say no more,” Rory said before locking the coordinates in and stepping into the Null Window, Eia following a moment behind. He didn’t have precise coordinates, given he’d never been there himself, but with the region coordinates, they at least weren’t about to end up in a random location.

Protected by the void diamond vambrace, their trip was rather uneventful, if not longer than any one before, spanning nearly fifteen seconds straight before they reappeared.

“Whoa,” Rory said as he looked about.

At an initial glance, they were somewhere with a small resemblance to the Reverse Mountains, floating in the sky. The big difference was that, with the reverse mountains, the entire region was like a volcanic hellzone hanging upside down in the sky, closer to floating islands with entire mountain ranges and forests upon them.

This area was right-side-up, even if they were still on floating landmasses. Unlike the Reverse Mountains, the floating landmasses were considerably smaller but far more numerous, like an asteroid field suspended in the sky, except that the asteroids were lush jungle biomes as well.

The other oddity was that the jungle was also blanketed in snow, despite relatively warm weather. Towering palm trees and tonka bean trees stood out, with the biggest oddity about them being they were green, a color Rory had almost forgotten that trees could be.

That and the red clay spikes that randomly stabbed out from the sides of them.

“Not in Kansas anymore,” Rory sighed, before frowning.

Though I guess I haven’t been in Kansas in a long time. In fact, I’ve never even visited Kansas. Anyway, digressing.

“Do you sense that?” Eia asked, her tongue flicking outward.

“Below?” Rory asked, raising an eyebrow. “Yeah.”

They were standing upon a smallish asteroid, bushy plants sprouting at random, but over a mile below, covering a forest floor that looked much like the forest covering the larger mountain-asteroids. Rory could feel them.

Tier eights, and a lot of them.

“I can see why Zoey’s people made their homes up in these floating areas,” Rory chuckled.

“Would you like to pay them a visit?”

“No, I think we locate Zoey’s settlement first.”

“Any ideas of where to go?”

Rory glanced around, hand over his eyes, searching, before pointing.

“There.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, that’s easy. I just looked for wherever looked like the last place anyone who isn’t an adrenaline junkie might go.”

The dynamic duo of human, proto-human, and snake had what was, for the most part, a rather relaxing few days as they gradually climbed their way higher and higher into the sky, moving from sky-bound asteroid to sky-bound asteroid. Unlike the reverse mountains, where one could conveniently move about by hopping in a terawa flow, with the floating asteroids, it was nothing more than good old-fashioned climbing, jumping, and leaps of faith. Which might have been more exciting, had they not had the attributes of a tier eight.

Few, if any, monsters bothered them during their travels. Most of the monsters within the floating jungle asteroids and mountains were tier seven or under. They actively made it a point of scrambling the moment they felt the aura of not one, but two tier eights.

The other reason their journey even took as many days as it did was Rory. It was the first time in a long time that he’d traveled to a new area that wasn’t inside of a delve or trial, a genuine, real-deal, actual physical location. Which meant lots, and lots, of stopping to examine plants and monsters and really anything he could get his hands on.

Something which Eia was rather unfond of, her tail thrashing about impatiently as Rory stuck his face into the mouth of a carnivorous tier four pitcher plant, entirely unfazed as it attempted to gnaw down on him and its acid dripped onto his skin, little more than tingles that stung the tiniest bit.

Ooo, I bet this could make great hot sauce. Greg would love it.

Then there was the ‘fruit,’ or at least it looked like a fruit, that was the size of a small car and oozing light blue and dark purple nectar. Attempting to harvest it the first time, the entire thing literally exploded, launching him back a good dozen feet, unharmed but extremely surprised. Finding another one, Rory had spent nearly three hours figuring out how to properly harvest it, only to still have it explode in front of him. He’d finally learned how to harvest it when he’d hid himself and waited in secret, watching as a lumbering snail of all things sprayed a liquid over the exploding fruit, rendering it inert.

As a silent thank you, he’d let that particular snail monster go on its merry way, but the next one he gleefully robbed, killing the oversized snail and taking the fruit.

On and on that went on, until a full thirteen days later, Eia was nearly dragging Rory along as they climbed up the side of one particularly large landmass, quite a few auras arrayed and waiting, with one in particular standing out.

Making it over the edge, Rory was met with Zoey staring at him, hands on her hips, and a smile on her face.

“Took you long enough,”

“I got distracted,” Rory admitted.

“Distracted is too casual a word to describe it,” Eia transmitted, several of the figures standing beside and behind Zoey flinching as if surprised to hear her speak.

“Well, welcome to mi casa,” Zoey said, arms spread out. “Or sorta. In truth, it had changed a lot since I’d left so long ago, but that’s not really the point.”

A man to her left stepped forward, bowing low at the waist.

“We greet the esteemed Architect and thank you for joining with the one true Vanguard.”

“My pleasure,” Rory said, making a point of making a good first impression. “And you are…?”

“LaRoy of the Lowoski family, and current leader of the Air Riders.”

“Air Riders?” Rory asked, curious.

“Oh, you’ll find out shortly,” Zoey winked. “So, did I miss anything since I left?”

“A big festival,” Rory said with a shrug.

“Oh dang, were there lots of booze?”

“Yeah,” Rory answered.

“Damn,” Zoey sighed. “Well, it is what it is. Anyway, you want the grand tour?”

“Sure?” Rory said with a shrug.

“Alright, but oh, before that, I guess the rest of the kids want to introduce themselves as well.”

‘Kids’ was a bit of a misnomer, given that only adults had come to greet him, but then pretty much everyone was a kid to himself or Zoey.

“LeRissa, of the Sorolla family, and current leader of the Expeditioners,” a woman said as she stepped forward, wearing a mix of a robe-top, athletic-style shorts, and a sash around the shorts that reminded Rory of the material used for flamenco dancers' dresses. Notably, there was a sash around the neck with three color slashes across it, which several members of the meeting delegation wore, each with a different number of slashes.

Interesting.

“LiJuanto, of the Grazia family,” another man introduced themselves, this one wearing what looked like cave diving attire. “Current leader of the Burrow.”

Interesting, interesting, interesting. Who wants to put money on what each of these three groups represents or does?

“A pleasure to meet all of you,” Rory said.

“Anyway, let’s not shake hands all day,” Zoey grumbled, seemingly impatient. “C’mon, let's go explore a bit.”

Smiling, Rory nodded.

“Lead the way.”