Lazy Salvation

"Can we not go? Please?"

"But Sera, that's my uncle! I have to meet him."

"But you'll die."

"Nah, he just caught me off guard last time. It doesn't count."

Seraphine had finally experienced what it was like to be on the other side of the coin. Watching him die was something she would have been perfectly content to never experience again, and she did not particularly want a repeat.

Unfortunately for her, Ashen's mind was occupied with a fact it kept returning to with increasing delight.

'My uncle is alive in this era. And he has the nerve to get mad when I called him a relic. That smug bastard. Heh. Just wait until I'm back home and can rub this in his face...'

Under Ashen's enthusiastic encouragement, which mostly consisted of him already walking toward the gate with the certainty that she would follow, they found themselves in the Esperran continent for the second time.

Getting in was, unsurprisingly, considerably easier than the first attempt. Seraphine couldn't muster any satisfaction about that.

He led her to a deserted clearing, and she watched with growing horror as a massive magic circle materialized on his palm, already drawing mana at a scale that pressed against the air in the immediate vicinity.

Then a voice arrived before the spell could.

"Ayo! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" A figure dropped from somewhere above, landing on a nearby rock. "Youth these days, haah. My poor heart honestly cannot handle this."

Ashen felt his mana connection sever cleanly.

He saw the finger pointing his way and felt the familiar dread of inevitable death

In retaliation, he raised his hands…

"Wait! wait! I come in peace. I'm a harmless tourist! For real!"

'...What?'

***

"I still can't believe this worked again."

Seraphine had both palms pressed over her face, trying to find some framework in which the current situation made sense.

Dorian had not only stopped but had brought them to his 'hideout'. He had even served tea.

"Sera, why are you so surprised?" Ashen turned the cup in his hands. "Peaceful options work sometimes. I don't see the problem."

'All the vampires you enthusiastically tortured would probably have a lot of thoughts about that statement.'

"Yeah, lady." Dorian topped off his own cup with ease. "It doesn't always have to be hot-blooded. Talking like refined gentlemen… that's what separates us from brutes. Learn from your husband here."

Seraphine looked at him with a fully flat expression.

'That is absolutely not what you said the last time around.'

"Sorry, uncle, my wife gets overly enthusiastic sometimes. I just find it endearing."

"No worries. Spirited young ladies! nothing wrong with that. They calm down when they grow up."

"Hmm. True, true."

Thwap.

"Men."

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Dorian took a longer sip, watching them both over the rim of his cup with unhurried attention.

"Even as tourists," he said, "you surely have something in mind. Or are you just here for the unknown?"

"Oh, there's something." Ashen set his cup down. "You know how I'm the vampire Lord, right?"

"Sure."

"Well. I recently discovered that someone is after my life, and possibly my whole race." He turned the cup slowly on the table. "So I was looking for answers about who they might be, on the side."

Dorian's brow furrowed. "Hmm… That's bad."

"You have an idea of who it might be?"

"I do."

He set his cup down as well, "You're also a survivor of that time, so you've known the Era of Terror firsthand."

Ashen held very still. 'I know nothing of that, my dear uncle…'

Outwardly, though, he nodded with equal seriousness. "Yes."

Dorian exhaled slowly. "Then you know what it cost to still be here." He looked out the window briefly, at nothing in particular. "A lot of us would rather not remember. Some can't help it."

A bird crossed the window frame and vanished.

"To answer your question… if there's something capable of threatening your race right now, there's only one organization it could be." He refilled his cup without looking at it. "The Final Custodian Order."

"Tell me about them."

"They've existed since the Reign of Terror." He said the name with slight bitterness. "You probably don't know them under that name… it was different back then. Back when the Local Gods' madness was threatening to wipe every mortal race off this planet."

He paused.

"Many did get wiped out. As we have witnessed."

"Yes." Ashen kept his voice even.

"The ones who survived… us, your kind, the demihumans, had no choice but to discard our differences and band together. Something none of us would have done willingly under any other circumstances." Dorian let a short, humorless sound. "Your people were in an uncomfortable position. Above mortals and below gods. Neither side particularly wanted you."

"That sounds about right," Ashen said.

"That is when the Final Order came to be. It was a group that gathered the best of each mortal race for the sole goal of survival."

Seraphine had gone quiet beside him, but all her attention was on the conversation.

"You know how the three-way war ended," Dorian continued. "No one won, really. Most of our gods went extinct. The human race was balanced on the edge for a long time. If not for what the system sacrificed, we would have become playthings." He turned the cup on the table. "A lot changed after that."

"The Final Order's remaining members had inherited the thinking of our gods. The ruthlessness of it, as well as the certainty of it. When those original members died, their descendants inherited the same warped conviction. Last I knew, they had renamed themselves the Final Custodian Order and were consumed by a plan to create their own god. A mortal-made one. Something to stand against the alien Outers when they eventually come back."

"And they will come back," he added, quietly.

Ashen remained silent and waited for him to continue.

"Here's the thing," he said. "Despite their madness, they are one of the few who still work toward this planet's survival. Their goal isn't wrong, but everything else about them is."

He leaned back.

"If they decide a race is detrimental to their plan, they eliminate it. If they decide a race is consuming resources without contributing, they eliminate it. If they want something you have, they take it and call it stewardship." His face turned gloomy. "Always the righteous justification. Always hiding behind the cause."

Then he shot Ashen a glance of pity.

"Didn't you Primordials have something called Origin Blood?"

Ashen met his eyes.

"We do…."

"That would surely contribute to the birth of their 'god'. I'd bet on it." He shook his head. "Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, wasn't the Heart of the Time God still in their possession the last time I had any information?"

He went quiet for a moment.

"Fuck."

"..."

"Well. It's none of my business anymore." He stood, collecting the cups with practicality. "But for what it's worth, Primordial… watch yourself. Some of their members had capabilities I don't feel like thinking about."

He looked at Ashen once more.

"And stop acting like that era is history. Neither of us gets to do that yet."

***

They walked back through the countryside in a direction that wasn't quite toward anything specific. The late-afternoon light fell gently across the open ground.

After a while, Seraphine asked, "Are you going to keep trying? After hearing all of that?"

Ashen shrugged. "That's not even a question."

He glanced at her, and his expression receded from the jolly facade it had been wearing all day.

"There is no future in this world, or any world, where I leave without you. No timeline where I abandon you." He held her gaze for a moment. "And if there ever was… you can be at ease that it wasn't me."

He reached over and patted her head once, lightly.

"Besides, they targeted the primordial's mind. The plan was to drive him into apathy through endless loss, wait until nothing was left, and then take what they wanted from a shell." He turned forward again, walking at the same unhurried pace. "Sadly for them, they don't know that someone else is in this body. Someone who had already lived through apathy… already fallen into its clutches, and climbed back out."

"My dear Sera... I am someone who had been forged for exactly this kind of thing."

Step-

"Will endures. Will adapts. Will overcomes."

Seraphine saw it again, after countless loops... the bright gold in his eyes. It was a shine that surfaced only when he was truly pushed beyond his limits.

He looked sideways at her again, the lighter note returning.

"So really, all they did was give me a very long vacation and a spell collection."

Seraphine looked at him for a long moment.

Then she shook her head and kept following.