Monarch of Profound Toxin

"This is that world you always go to during your trances?" Andihar asked, looking around in disbelief.

Both he and Gul became instantly wary when, for the first time since their sudden arrival, they noticed that there were Profound Toxic beasts stealthily watching them from the outskirts of the clearing. And once they noticed the first of them, it became clear that there were hundreds—no, thousands of pairs of eyes staring, all glowing a dim blue against the shade of the vegetation.

"Pretty much, yeah. When I first came here, I was dropped into an area of Toxin that wasn't quite as… pleasant to be in. Or, actually, I say dropped, but what actually happened was that I basically woke up in a rotten, old coffin submerged half-way in a disgusting, muddy swamp. An overall one-star experience," Eik said.

Ignoring most of that tangent, Andihar took a few steps toward a cluster of eyes. They scattered but all reappeared somewhere else. "So, all of these things watching us are not hostile?"

"Not unless I tell them to be, no," Eik said with a shake of his head. Gul shot him a nervous glance. Eik caught it and snickered. "And I'm not going to. I promise."

Gul raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Then… what the hell did you bring us here for, if not to torment us?"

"Torment you?" Eik gasped, taken aback completely by the totally unexpected question. "What could possibly make you think that? Why, I would never—!"

Gul narrowed his eyes as ire got a firm hold of him. "You little shit! Why, I oughta—!"

"Hey, hey, hold on a minute, Gul," Andihar broke in and put a soothing hand on his friend's tense shoulder. "You have to calm down a little, all right? I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding. Eik, he's referring to the many Death Star detonations you set off back there," the elf clarified helpfully. "I realize that you protected us and that you might not have seen it in the same way because you're so powerful now but to us, it was like being a moment away from death."

"No, no, I get that," Eik said, absentmindedly digging around in his ear with a finger.

Andihar's eyebrows rounded as they arched. He stared silently, trying to comprehend what he had just heard. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Isn't that what you people from the Alliance always preach?" Eik asked with a grin. "The best way to grow stronger is to go through a few hardships here and there, no? A challenge here and a trial there. If you think about it properly, all I'm really doing here is helping the both of you to grow stronger, wouldn't you say?" His huge smile was beaming.

As he stared silently, Andihar's face was devoid of all expression except for a visible tension in his jaw which tightened to a breaking point. "You little shit! I'm gonna kill you! I'll rip your head o—"

"Anyway," Eik interrupted and started walking in a seemingly random direction, taking a mental note of this cozy, little clearing. "There was another reason why I brought you here beside the favor I did to help you grow stronger."

"What?" Gul grumbled.

"I wanted to see if I could."

"Fucker," Andihar hissed.

"And," Eik said with a chuckle. "I wanted to show you this place."

Andihar snorted and followed Eik into the trees, Gul making up the tail of their little procession. "I'll be honest, I wasn't quite sure if it was even a real place. You've told me a lot about it but it seemed likely that it was just some kind of quasi-world manifested inside your spirit, somehow."

Eik glanced back at him. "Then I will be honest as well. I thought the same thing until pretty recently. Since the first time I came here as an unwilling, ignorant… F-ranker, I think I was, I've died in here several times."

"You've died here?"

"Yep. Pretty horribly too. You know, one time I was chased by one of those blue bastards that are watching us from the shadows. I fell into a lake, got chased to the bottom in utter terror, and was bitten to pieces before dying. It was fuckin' awful."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound like the most enjoyable of experiences."

Eik sniffed. "It wasn't. Anyway, that's why, when I woke up from that trance, still very much alive, I was pretty convinced that it wasn't real. I once got smacked in the face and woke up with a bleeding nose, but I suspected that it might just be a kind of physical manifestation of what I had experienced inside my head."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"But this—the fact that Gul and I were able to follow you in here—proves once and for all that it is indeed reality."

"I suppose so, yeah." Eik maintained a brisk walking pace and shrugged his shoulders.

"You only suppose so? Why?"

"Well, while it is certainly true that the two of you were able to come here with no issue once I possessed the necessary ability to invite you in, but I'm still not convinced that this is a "real" world in the sense you're thinking," Eik said, doing air quotes for emphasis.

"What do you think it is, then?"

"I don't particularly think anything, but I'm just saying that it could be a possibility."

"What is?"

Eik upturned his palms. "That all this, however real it may seem to be, might still be housed within my soul, or at least inside the spiritual whatever-it-may-be place that I share with Profound Toxin."

"Like a dimensional space?" Gul asked.

Eik snapped his fingers. "Yes! Exactly like that!"

"But we're in here right now," Andihar pointed out.

"Yeah, I know that."

"People—or any living creature, for that matter—are capable of entering a dimensional space. It's been experimented with extensively. I'm sure you've done the same yourself. It simply doesn't work like that. We are categorically rejected at every attempt"

Eik turned both thumbs inward in a gesture at himself. "Hello? X-ranker slash Worldbreaker here? You think these damned chump rules for noobs apply to moi?"

Andihar frowned and looked at him with unmitigated bewilderment. "I… Wha— Noob? What does… half of what you just said mean?"

"What I'm saying is that it might be something special. Aren't things like my permanent booster pills or even my own son examples of rules, otherwise thought to be ironclad, broken by yours truly?"

"Okay, no, I get that," Andihar said, massaging the bridge of his nose as he tried to wrap his head around this conversation. "but there must be something that makes you think this isn't just a distant world that you happen to have special access to through your link with Profound Toxin. Something besides your apparent survived deaths, I mean."

"You don't think that's strange enough to warrant some doubts already?"

"Of course it is, but think about it. Considering how weak you were back then and how great the power of a Worldbreaker can potentially be, it's entirely plausible that you were simply saved on the brink of death here in this world that is so deeply connected to you and simply sent back to Earth, all healed up, with the exception of a bleeding nose."

A contemplative look came over Eik's face as he scratched his chin in thought. "Okay, I'll give you that. As a matter of fact, I could probably do exactly that for any living thing A-rank or below with my current power, so yes, it's plausible that it was done to me."

"So?"

"But there is something else that makes me think this is not a real world floating around somewhere in the Unified Mass."

"Which is?" Andihar asked.

Without letting go of Andihar's gaze, Eik pointed up into the sky. Both the elf and the tattooed clan leader followed his finger. With a barely noticeable movement, Eik brought his thumb and index finger together and flicked them apart as if he was zooming in on a touch screen.

Abruptly, the cloud cover, which had covered the sky completely like a thick, sheep wool rug, was flung apart by an invisible force and a blinding glow forced Andihar and Gul to look away.

"Is-Is that…?" Gul stammered once they were able to look up again.

"Profound Toxin?" Eik asked. "Yes, it is indeed. And check it out," he said and brought both hands together only to fling them apart too.

From horizon to horizon, the sky split, driving all clouds completely away and leaving the heavens bare to shine their azure goodness down upon Toxin. Then the blue sea, too, split, revealing more and more and more of the deadly liquid deeper within, endlessly.

"And is… Is that…?"

"Everywhere, all around the world in just as great abundance? Yes, indeed," Eik confirmed with a nod. "You are in a world completely surrounded by an atmospheric layer of more pure Profound Toxin than there is water in the oceans on my home planet of Earth. Does it make sense that something like that is floating around out there?"

Andihar and Gul shared glances. Eventually Andihar just sighed. "I don't know anymore, Eik. A few years ago, I would most certainly have objected to the very consideration of something like that, but now… Well, as you have just said yourself, the feats of creation you have proven possible alone have rather changed my perspective on what can be done and what cannot. At this point, if you have come to me and told me that your toxic world here was undoubtedly a physical world in the Unified Mass, I would probably default to a position of belief."

"Good point," Eik conceded. "I guess there's nothing to do but ask an authority on the matter."

"An authority?" Gul asked. "Who?"

Eik's grin widened as Spaghetti Jones' massive head plunged down through the surface of the endless ocean of Profound Toxin, the spray soaking all three of them from head to toe before the reverse gravity could pull the cascade of liquid back up. "Who do you think?"

Gul rolled his eyes when the titanic serpent lowered its head in a gesture inviting them to hop on board. "Not this crap again…"

***

"Hey, anybody home in there?" Eik shouted, tapping his hands on the edge of the hole in the ground that Profound Toxin used as its hideout here on Toxin. Cast in the deep shadow of the massive mountain, no response came from the bottom of the hole with the exception of the echo of Eik's own voice. "Yo! Blue bastard! Are you down there?"

No response.

A hand slapped him on the shoulder. He ignored it while he listened for an answer from the hole. "That's strange. I could swear that little guy had stowed itself away down there for sure."

"Hey, Eik." Two more slaps on his shoulder drew his attention.

"What?"

"Uuh, what's that?" Andihar asked and pointed a little ways away.

Eik followed his finger. The frown was near instant.

Walls of wood supported a thatched roof. Glass of solid, transparent crystal made for slightly tinted windows. It was rather quaint.

On a small, grassy hill, just outside of the range of the shadow of the mountain, stood a little house.

"What the fuck is that?"