The trek up to the highest point in the city was silent. Felix barely noticed the landscape as he climbed up the small hill overlooking the horizon. Not like there was a horizon to begin with, anyway. The entire city was all that was left of the planet. Or rather, the entire universe.
Darkness stretched beyond the clouds, leaving nary a hint of light in its infinite void. The only source of light was from the city itself, which had somehow maintained the pink glow of a setting sun, as though frozen in time. Like a minimalist painting, this city was the only thing splashed on existence's uncaring canvas.
"There." Felix pointed at the light pink cloud in front of him.
Now that he was closer to it, this 'cloud' did not look so wispy anymore. The skull shape appeared to be a lot more solid, almost as though it was carved out of marble instead. A wide gap stood between the cloud and the cliff's edge.
"Mind giving me a lift?" Titus said. "I can't fly."
Felix's psychic senses flashed. If he was sensing it correctly, the air in front of him was solid.
"No, I don't think that's necessary."
He took a step out hesitantly, preparing to telekinetically catch himself in case his senses had somehow been fooled. He let himself fall forward.
And his foot hit solid ground.
The man strolled towards the cloud, casually walking over a two-kilometre drop to the oblivious city below. His companions followed suit and crossed the invisible pathway as well. Felix took one last glance at the beautiful city as he felt the familiar throbbing in his soul again.
This is it.
"Whoever, or whatever lies beyond this cloud is bound to be powerful, so let's stick together, alright?" he said, glancing at his comrades nervously. They responded with a silent nod, except for Marcia who was still staring blankly into space.
Poor girl, she still hasn't gotten over it, huh?
Cooling magic washed over him as he stepped into the cloud.
~ ~ ~
So much for sticking together...
The moment he stepped into the cloud, Felix found himself in the middle of a haunted house all alone. He didn't even get a chance to remind his companions to stay close. Felix sighed internally, before composing himself. At least whoever snatched him here wasn't some melodramatic villain who enjoyed wasting his time.
Floorboards creaked beneath his feet as Felix took a step forward. A faint light flickered from the side of his eye, making shadows flash around him. He ignored them. If anything tried a sneak attack, his telekinetic senses would have warned him anyway.
It took Felix a while to realise he was standing in his own house, although everything seemed to have aged for hundreds of years. Wood rotted, metal stained, and walls peeled off everywhere he walked. Everywhere— Except for the front door which remained unblemished.
The man reached for the doorknob hesitantly. Surely, leaving this place couldn't be so easy, could it?
"I wouldn't, if I were you."
Felix froze, his hand millimetres away from the door handle. A corporeal figure had literally materialised out of thin air and was walking down the stairs. He turned around slowly. The psychic signature was uncannily familiar.
"Not unless you want to be trapped in another domain, boy." Pale yellow light illuminated the figure's face as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
"Well... met," Felix started. "Do I know you?"
"What a curious question." The hooded woman moved towards him without a sound. Felix shot a glance to her feet, confirming that she was indeed hovering slightly above the floor.
"I am you."
She removed her hood, revealing the face of a woman who looked no older than fifty. Curly brown hair draped her shoulder without a hint of grey amongst them. Felix pursed his lips, watching her carefully.
"Oh, don't look at me like that." The woman chuckled lightly, before prancing away to pick up a spoon. "I'm just as confused as you, can't you tell?"
Felix kept his eyes from glowing. The lady before him had a mind, that was for sure. But her mental defences were so impossibly thick that he wouldn't be able to touch her brain even if he made physical contact. Just who— No— What was she?
"You put up a mind block." The woman let go of the spoon, letting it hang in the air in front of his face. "How curious. I've never been unable to read someone's mind before. Interesting, my telepathy wasn't this advanced at your age."
Felix hid his confusion. I didn't put up any mind block...
"I've been observing you ever since you entered my world. I hope you found my parents as lovely as your own," she continued. "Felix Pagonis... Such a pretty name. How ironic to find that your parents named you 'lucky' as well."
"What did you do with my friends?" Felix asked hostilely.
"Nothing. I only brought you here because I wanted to speak with you alone."
He released a small breath of relief.
"But they had better get out of that place quickly if they want to keep their sanity," the woman continued. "After all, the remnant psychic energy there has already taken a form of its own."
Felix flinched but shook his head slightly. Focus, Felix. They can take care of themselves. I need to get what I came here for.
"I need your help—" he began.
"I know what you want." The woman stared at him intensely. "But this is my house, so you'll follow my rules. Go on, show me the first trick we've learnt."
Felix's gaze shifted to the stationary spoon in the air as the memories of when his powers first manifested came flooding back to him. He gave her a small smile.
The head of the spoon twisted and bent on itself, hanging limply from its handle.
"Fausta Pagonis, you will be a god among mortals. Don't let life tell you any different," the woman mumbled, almost to herself only. "That's what Father told me when my power manifested."
She laughed softly, shaking her head as she turned away.
"A god... I don't think he truly understood the meaning of that word," Fausta lamented. "Do gods weep? Do they feel pain? Do they feel... loss?"
Felix looked around again, realisation dawning on him.
"You did this, didn't you?" he asked. "The cataclysms, this golden world, the collapse of everything... It was you?"
"I never wanted this to happen... I just wanted my family back. Was that too much for a woman to ask for?"
"I know how you feel—"
"Of course you do. So tell me something, my twin from another world." Fausta turned back to Felix. "Do you regret it?"
"Never." Felix's mouth spat out the word as if it were mere muscle memory.
His soul throbbed again. This woman before him was in possession of The Winter Solstice, no doubt about that. But unlike with most people, he couldn't simply take it by force. The psychic energy emanating from her entire body was nearly immeasurable. Even if he held nothing back, her power would still eclipse his own easily.
"Don't lie to yourself," Fausta smirked. "You came all this way, hopping through three worlds in search of the Solstices just to fix your world. You're here for The Winter Solstice, aren't you?"
"You have it," Felix stated plainly; it didn't take any telepathy to figure that out. "I need it. Not for myself, but for my sister's world."
"Do you, now?"
"If I'm guessing correctly, you used The Winter Solstice to open a portal for whatever reason and resulted in the collapse of your own universe. Opening an unstable portal causes reality to crack, and my sister accidentally opened one in her universe. Her world is destabilising as we speak. Look, I'm sorry you made a mistake. But perhaps you can help us fix ours."
Fausta stared at him, almost with a morbid curiosity. The smile on her face grew wider and wider until it twisted into some kind of haunted Chesire cat grin. Felix blinked, and she vanished before his eyes.
"A mistake?" the psychic woman purred from behind him. "I made all the mistakes, my dear multiverse traveller. But you're correct, on most accounts. Clever boy, I was never that bright myself when I was your age. I only wished I was. Would you like to know how all this happened?"
"I think I have an inkling."
"So did I, when I found that relic. A god's artefact, lost through shattered worlds, in the palm of my hand," Fausta said. "I had more than an inkling, in fact. I knew what to do."
"You tried to bring everyone back."
"Wouldn't you too? It's funny, really. So many universes, yet our stories always turn out more or less the same. We become orphans, and then we lose our family. We try to get them back, and we lose someone else we love. But here's where things deviate."
Fausta summoned a worn book from the air. Felix's soul resonated in recognition.
"You gave up. All of you gave up. But I didn't." The woman's voice was rising quickly. "I tried again. I studied more. I travelled in search of a solution. I visited countless worlds in my astral form. Ten years, twenty years, a hundred years... Five hundred years."
By the gods...
"None of you found a solution. Some of you simply went on with your lives. Most of you died in some war of sorts. One of you found a telepathic protégé, only to lose her as well. Another even got banished to another world and died there. But the gods finally deigned to grant me respite after five hundred fucking years of my wretched existence. I came across the Winter Solstice. Janus' artefact. My salvation."
"Not much of a salvation, is it?" Felix gestured at the worn-down house. "It's not worth it. And neither is your obsession."
"Shut up. You know nothing of my struggle," Fausta hissed. "Turns out the gods weren't finished toying with my life. Instead of making a portal to the afterlife, I shattered the pillars holding my world together instead. Reality began collapsing after my failed attempt to reverse everything that was wrong with my world."
Felix flinched as she lunged forward without warning.
"But I am in control!" she shouted. "As the world broke down around me, I finally saw the light. Why seek help when you can shape the world to your will?"
"You have Omnikinesis?" Felix asked. "You're a reality warper?"
"Make no mistake, young man. This is the height of your powers. To bring everything to your heel with a mere thought; to speak light into existence with a single word," Fausta replied smugly. "I have become a god, and I used my power to halt the collapse of my universe; to halt the flow of life itself. As long as I still live, so will everyone else. Again and again, they may fall. But they will always rise, never to experience physical death ever again."
Felix pursed his lips, recalling the Unendings' self-resurrection.
"No one will know death or suffering any longer," the woman continued. "I sustained the living with my will and resurrected the dead with my power. All of existence bows to my will."
"Impossible. The dead cannot be resurrected without the corruption of its flesh."
"You're absolutely right, which is why I sundered them. I separated memories from their corrupted bodies and constructed a golden world for beloved memories to take form. As for their bodies, I eventually figured out how to use the Winter Solstice to put everyone's souls back into them. They immediately turned into those monstrosities, of course. But there's nothing I cannot control, so I gouged out a part of my power to regulate them."
Felix stepped forward aggressively. "Where are the Unendings?"
"Ah, that's such a cute name," Fausta chuckled after a short pause. "I sent these... 'Unendings' through portals created by The Winter Solstice to collect souls and sustain their own life force. My power is finally waning after so many years. I cannot do this forever, after all. This is the only way they'll live on, even after my death."
"You killed my world just to keep your dead alive?" Felix yelled. "You selfish murderer!"
"I'll kill all the worlds if I have to," Fausta growled. "You lack the will to stop me, and you're undeserving of Janus' artefact. But in my hands, these books will create a never-ending stream of gates through which souls can be taken from the multiverse."
"No. You have to stop letting the past chain you."
"You are unworthy, Felix Pagonis." The woman began to hover in the air. "Who are you to lecture me? Who are you to move on?!"
An overwhelming force ripped through Felix's bones without warning as he felt his body crash through the house door. He halted himself quickly and looked around. A barren, red landscape had replaced the decaying house surrounding him.
Fausta was covered completely in a pink glow now, and was floating a few metres in the air like some kind of angel.
"Welcome to my domain." Fausta's voice boomed through the empty fabric of space. "I found this husk of a world in my travels and claimed it as my own."
"The house door was a waypoint?" Felix mused out loud.
"That much is obvious enough, foolish boy. You disgust me. You're nothing but a lesser version of me." The woman raised her hands and burst into the sky. "You want my book? Prove to me that you deserve it."
Felix's eyes flared with power.106Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlZFrPtzYWq
and then Add to home screen.