Chapter 234: 234. Instigating The Million Year Old Hag
’So, ether was the problem,’ I thought, silently assessing the situation I was in.
Food would soon become an issue. Sustenance was impossible here. I couldn’t exactly forage in a world where the very air distorted reality. Even if there was something resembling food, consuming it risked twisting me into some malformed husk, a grotesque parody of myself. I had no intention of becoming a deformed organism, no matter how desperate I got.
And eating the creatures here? That was laughable, similar to food. Whatever etheric properties pumped through their bodies could easily seep into mine, rewriting me from the inside out. That option was out, too. Better to starve than mutate into something unrecognizable.
"Don’t think too much, you should go back."
The speaker head’s voice cleaved through my thoughts, snapping me back to the moment.
It continued, almost chiding me, "See, there is no civilization in this point of time. So even if you had all the mediums of sustenance, even if food, water, shelter were all within reach—you would still be forced to live all alone... Do you want that?"
I shrugged with a sharp exhale, feigning indifference. "Yeah, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if I had no civilization to rely on. I would gladly be a nomad and explore the regions."
The speaker head tilted, then burst into that uncanny, grating laughter. "Ahahahaha! Great! Such a pity, though. The world hasn’t fully formed yet. You can’t possibly explore anything here. It’s bland, formless, in your terms deformed. I wouldn’t recommend staying here."
I heaved a long, heavy sigh, frustration simmering in my chest. "You’re hellbent on sending me back, aren’t you? Fine. Just do it then. Don’t waste your time—or mine."
For once, it didn’t answer right away. The silence between us stretched, heavy and uneasy, as it simply stared at me with that faceless mesh head. Finally, it spoke, voice resonant and final: "As you wish... Now, I will send you back to your time."
It raised its right arm with mechanical slowness, and before me space itself fractured. The tear looked like reality had been bent and cracked open with bare hands, jagged edges of nothingness peeling apart.
It was almost identical to the one I’d seen at the trench’s floor—except this one was much larger, yawning wide enough to swallow me whole.
"Go in." The speaker head gestured, its movements stiff and deliberate. "You don’t have to do anything. Just go in, and you will be sent back to your time."
I nodded, but something in me resisted the command. The feeling gnawed at my gut—this thing wanted me gone, forcefully at that. It was too insistent, almost desperate to shove me out of here.
Maybe it was hiding something. Maybe my existence here was causing some problems. Maybe it was... annoyed.
But prying into the reasoning of an eldritch being was foolish. Whatever it was hiding, it was leagues beyond my comprehension. I let the thought die there.
Without another word, I stepped forward and let myself be pulled into the Astral Plane.
Once again, I was adrift in that ungraspable dimension, a place where the laws of the cosmos weren’t laws at all but fleeting suggestions. The endless expanse pulsed with alien rhythm, auroran lights flaring in breathtaking displays that twisted through impossible geometries. It was beautiful, in the way a venomous serpent is beautiful right before it sinks its fangs into you.
The liquidity of space itself pressed against me, soothing and calming, but underneath the serenity crawled an unsettling presence, something that made the skin on my arms rise. It was like floating in an endless sea where something vast and ancient swam just beneath the surface, brushing past unseen.
Thankfully, I didn’t linger long. The astral waters tugged at me, then a current stronger than thought itself pulled me down and spat me back out—back into the crushing familiarity of the ocean floor.
Back to where I once was.
I steadied myself. My eyes flicked to the luminous bluish water ahead, glowing faintly in the abyss.
Then I realized—numerous creatures had gathered, silently, almost reverently, to watch me.
They just stared.
The grotesque octopus from before loomed in the corner of my vision, its limbs twitching in a rhythm. A squid, skin a sickly crimson with two vast black eyes like twin voids, drifted closer, its streamlined body flexing in agitation.
Then there was... a stone. Yes, a stone. A jagged fragment of seabed rock, floating weightlessly in the water, its surface glowing with four pairs of bioluminescent eyes. It stared at me as though it had always been alive, as though I had been blind to it until now.
"What a welcome..." I muttered, the words little more than a dry whisper torn from my throat.
Swish—
The water trembled, as though my voice had triggered some unspoken response.
Then it surged.
The luminous bluish tide rose up like a living wall, then collapsed down in a monstrous wave, engulfing me whole.
The next moment I opened my eyes, I was back inside Wannre’s chamber. The air was heavy with that familiar scent of cold incense and aged parchment, though this time the atmosphere felt strangely different.
She wasn’t sitting on her round table like before, presiding like some smug queen of... of?... Yeah! Of oldness. She was instead bundled up in an enormous cocoon of blankets atop her comically oversized bed.
Her head poked out of the thick quilt, hair in slight disarray, and she stared at me with an almost lazy but questioning gaze. "Hey."
It was a single syllable.
I blinked once and replied in kind, "Hey," deliberately mimicking her exact tone and cadence.
The chamber fell silent, and the silence dragged. She didn’t move, didn’t blink, just stared. For several minutes we sat there, locked in some absurd staring contest, until she finally, reluctantly, pushed herself free from her fortress of blankets.
She floated forward, robe trailing like spilled ink through the still air, until she hovered right before me.
Her expression hardened. "What did you find in that Astral Plane?" she asked bluntly, voice cutting through the silence.
I tilted my head. Not shocked, but amused. A cheeky grin crept across my lips. "Wow. Very blunt. Straight to business, huh? Shouldn’t you ask about my health first? Or at least offer me some water, maybe a fruit basket? Don’t you have basic courtesy? Even after being a million-year-old hag, you’re lacking the most fundamental manners. Tsk, tsk."
Swish—
Her patience snapped. A vein bulged on her pale forehead, and in a blur her arm shot out, iron-tight fingers closing around my throat. My back slammed against the chamber wall with a dull thud, the stone trembling at the impact.
Her grip tightened, nails biting faintly into my skin. "You sure sound different," she hissed, her face so close I could see the faint cracks in her irises where starlight seemed to leak through. "You’re speaking with confidence that wasn’t there before. Are you sure you are the same person who left here?"
Even with my windpipe being squeezed, I couldn’t resist. I smirked, my voice strained but still deliberately taunting. "I’m the same person. The difference is... the things I saw, the people I met there—" I leaned closer, forcing the words out with spite, "—they gave me this newfound confidence. To them, you’re nothing but a worm crawling in borrowed light. So tell me... why should I lower myself to you?"
For a heartbeat, the chamber froze. Then—
"Ahahahahahahahahahaha!"
Her laughter ripped out like broken bells, echoing unnaturally off the chamber walls. "Very well," she said at last, eyes glittering. "So your little adventure bore fruit. Good... good. But let’s test that arrogance. Do you really think your friends, your so-called friends from the Astral Plane, would help you here?"
I shook my head slowly, despite her hand still wrapped around my throat. "No. To be fair—no. They wouldn’t. Do you know why?"
Her eyes narrowed.
"Because they aren’t my friends." My lips curled. "They’re beings bound by their own self-imposed rules. They couldn’t kill me there, not directly. But make no mistake—every single one of them wanted me erased. They desired my end more than anything. If not for their blasted principles, I would have been nothing but dust scattered in the void."
Her grip faltered, confusion flashing in her gaze. "What do you mean? Explain yourself clearly. Don’t you dare play riddles with me."
I tilted my head against her palm, smile widening, savoring her irritation. "It’s simple. I’ve seen things a mortal shouldn’t have. I walked where no human foot was meant to tread. They couldn’t allow me to glimpse further, not yet. So, they sent me back before I could peel away another layer of their precious, blasphemous truth."
Wannre’s eyes flickered with a strange light then, a glint of hunger she couldn’t hide. Her grip around my neck loosened ever so slightly, not from mercy, but because my words had hooked her deeper than I expected.
I leaned in, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "And here’s the thing. If you kill me here, if you snap my neck now, you’ll never have the chance to learn what I’ve seen. The fragments of creation itself. The first failures, when existence was raw, imperfect and unrefined."
The venom in my words slithered like serpents into her ears. I could see the change ripple across her face, the storm of desire and calculation twisting her expression.
’So, she does care,’ I thought, satisfaction thrumming in my chest. ’The knowledge, the forgotten history, the truths buried in the first dawn of creation. That’s what she wants. That’s why she tossed me into the fracture in the first place. I wasn’t a challenger—I was bait. A disposable probe to check for her own further visit.’
And if my hypothesis was correct, then the choice she gave me before, the three trenches, had been nothing but a carefully crafted illusion. Whichever path I chose, whichever trench I leapt into, she would have dragged me to the same destination: the fracture, the wound in reality she dared not enter herself.
She never gave me a choice. She only gave me the illusion of one.