as Told by Rush (with Occasional Interruptions by Rachel and Anna)
NOTE: This story features use of font colors as part of the content. To read it as intended, please click here—you will be take off the Athena’s Quill site to a read-only Doc.
“Once upon a time, two gods somehow came into being, a god of order and a god of chaos.” Rush begins.
“How did they know they were of order and chaos respectively? Was it an instinctual thing? Did some greater god declare it?”, asks my best friend Anna. She’s the type of person who seeks out bad movies just to point out the plot holes. It’s actually kind of a fun activity if you go into the experience prepared for it, but I assumed she would have a little more patience for the story that is supposed to explain why we are in this messed up situation. It’s a decent question though, I guess.
“…I do not know, I suppose they decided for themselves. As I mentioned earlier, I do not know the full story here,” says Rush. Rush is a talking book and that’s not even the weirdest thing about him. We only met him recently, but he’s our ally. I think.
Anna nods, satisfied, and motions for Rush to continue.
They were the only gods in the world. Because they had this rare thing in common that nobody else in the universe could possibly understand they became true friends. I do not know what this friendship involved. I do not know if they spent a great deal of time talking, if they took mortal forms and traveled the world, or if they enjoyed reading books together. What I do know is that they were friends and hoped to always stay that way.”
Well it doesn’t take a story analyser to tell that’s going to end badly. Oh well.
“As you have likely guessed, they did not.”
Hurrah. I called it.
“And there is a reason for this. Being gods of chaos and order respectively, they were opposed on a fundamental level. The god of order wished for things to remain consistent; the god of chaos wished for them to change in amusing ways. At first this was fine, they both recognized that if either of them reshaped the world in his own image, all they would end up with was dystopia. Each of them knew that he was not perfect. They were not the type of gods who made worlds, after all, simply the kind that could rule them if they wanted to. They didn’t want to and so they let the world work itself out and focussed on simply living in it. Still, each of them secretly wished to make the world just a bit more like himself.
“One day they got into an argument over what started as a trivial matter, but was about order and chaos in the end. They raised their voices and insulted each other. Later one of them would apologize and they forgot it ever happened. This happened many times but it was always quickly forgotten. Everyone argues. It slowly increased in frequency, so slowly that they did not notice until they spent more time in anger than laughter.
“At some point along that road, they started forgetting to apologize.”
I glance over at Anna, who’s sitting next to me but may as well be inside the story. She’s staring at Rush, fully absorbed in his words. We’ve had our arguments throughout the years, sometimes I feel like we are fundamentally opposed, like I’m some god of recklessness and she’s the god of caution. Still, I can’t imagine actually letting our friendship fall apart over those fights. It must be a problem just for those with the power to let their personality traits influence the world. For once in my life, I don’t mind being powerless.
“The arguments escalated in terms of how serious the topics were. Who was in the right, who was in the wrong, what any of it was about, I do not know. I do not want to know. All I know is that as their arguments rose in importance so did they rise in vitriol. Their insults would bite a bit deeper, to the places only those who know you as well as you know yourself are able to reach. The god of order would wave his arms through the air so fast they moved the clouds. The god of chaos would punch a tree so hard it exploded. Things never came to blows. Each was aware that the only person in the universe who could match him in power was his friend, and so each was too scared to throw the first punch.”
Anna inhales loudly, probably about to tell Rush that punching trees doesn’t make them explode, but gives up when he starts to talk again. It’s not like it’s a very important part of the story anyway.
“Even with the assurance of mutual destruction, they grew paranoid that they would be the one who was struck first. When the god of order stood behind him, the god of chaos glanced over his shoulder. Gods they did not need to sleep, so the god of order stopped sleeping so that his friend could not slay him while he slumbered. That was not enough though, no. To truly stop their fear they had to grow stronger. They had to know they outmatched each other. Privately, they would run off to experiment with powers, to influence the mortals around them, to be prepared for war. It probably won’t happen, the god of chaos reassured himself, but just in case. He knew his friend was doing the same, and so did his friend. They knew each other too well for secrets so big. Neither mentioned it. They each thought that if they did, the war would begin. Their fear didn’t stop the verbal fights though—oh no, fear only fueled their sharp words.”
I don’t know what time period this story is happening in, but this bit leads me to assume it was before decent therapy existed. Either that or the gods just immediately discounted it as a possibility. Is there therapy for friends? Like couples therapy, but platonic? There’s family therapy, so I assume so? Whatever.
“One sleepless night, the god of order got tired of this eternal arms race and decided to draft a foolproof set of rules to get rid of the arguments once and for all. The more he considered it, though, the more he understood that his friend could turn any situation into an argument. This, in a way, made things simpler. He only needed one rule to avoid all fighting. The rule was as follows, inscribed in blue ink on a fancy piece of paper: The god of order and the god of chaos must make every effort to stay away from each other. In the event that they end up in the same location, both of them will leave said location.
The next day he found his friend and gave him a kind smile. He said he had something he wanted to discuss with him. He confirmed that he would do everything in his power to make it a peaceful conversation. He showed his friend the paper and explained how following this rule would make it so they never fought again. He explained, with a calm expression and a smooth voice, how it would ensure they could never cause the other pain again. How they affected not only themselves with their fights, but all those trees they exploded. The animals who lived in those trees. Even the humans that liked to chop the trees dow—”
“Rush, this story doesn’t make any sense. You don’t know anything about how their friendship began, but every minute detail on how it ended? Are you telling the truth here?”
Anna’s voice brings me back to reality.
If any of this is even real.
“I mean, we don’t even know what these gods look like, or what their names are, or when this is happening, for that matter! They have voices and expressions, so do they look like humans?!”
Before our storytelling book can respond she bends down, picks him up, and holds him right in front of her face.
“I have just been informed of a murder, shot down a slide so fast my landing was painful, and barely survived an encounter with a giant spider. I am paranoid at the best of times and right now I am running on adrenaline and sugar. I am pretty close to snapping. I’m really surprised I’m doing this well, to be honest. I am aware of this paranoia so I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt when you say you are as clueless as we are about some aspects of the story. However, I am going to hope for your sake that your story starts making some more sense and soon. “
All is quiet for a moment, in the fake field, underneath the fake sky.
“That’s all I have to say, really. You can keep going now,” Anna clarifies.
“…Do you think you could perhaps set me down first?”
“Huh? Oh, sure.” She sets him down.
“Well, er, my source for this story did not wish to linger on the past. I think he found it… painful to reminisce. I do think they were, at least, humanoid. You need fists to punch after all. That isn’t to say they had to be, though. The god of chaos did not take this ending well. He raved and raged and pleaded and begged. None of it worked; the god of order was resolute in his decision. He walked away from the god of chaos, the god of chaos followed. Eventually, he had no choice but to simply teleport right out of the god of chaos’s grasp. Knowing that the god of chaos would waste no time searching the whole earth for him, he went somewhere that was not on earth. He ripped through reality itself and made himself a pocket dimension where he would never be found. These gods may not have created the universe but they could destroy it, and while they most likely had a rule against doing so, they had never really expended much thought on whether or not making pocket dimensions was allowed. The god of chaos had not even known what a pocket dimension was. I do not know what time period this occurred within, but I think it safe to say it was before science fiction.
“The god of chaos wasted no time searching for him. Since he knew that even when he found him, the god of order would simply teleport away again, he changed into the form of a fox, his favorite animal. He scoured all of the god of order’s favorite places. They were mostly courthouses and other places relating to the law. As you can imagine, most courthouses have rules against animals inside buildings. Because they tried to make him leave and because he was already having the worst day of his entire ancient life, when the god of chaos finished searching each place he destroyed it and all of the people in it. At first he just did it for fun, but later he realized that if his favorite places were destroyed, the god of order might come by to visit them. So he continued his destruction. He flooded the places with water, spiders, and voids. He came up with a lot of creative ways to kill people. He did that for what is a very long time, even for a god.”
“When was this happening, ancient times?” asks Anna. Aha, so I’m not the only one wondering about the timeline. “Because I never heard anything about a fox ransacking a bunch of courthouses. There would have been records of that nowadays, right? Was it just all taken as a conspiracy theory?”
“That is an excellent question, Anna. It was not quite happening in ancient times, I think this bit was around the 1820s. Rest assured, you will get the answer why you have never heard of this before later in the story. Now, I am going to continue. I would ask you to please try to keep the interruptions to a minimum. This will be a long enough story as it is.”
It would be shorter if Rush started using contractions. What period of time did he come that made him talk like that? It makes for elegance and eloquence, but not efficacy.
“The god of order did not come down to visit a destroyed favorite place. He was not paying much attention to what was happening on earth at all. He was too busy shaping his dimension. An entire dimension seemed like a lot to make at once, so he had decided to focus on one building in the middle of a void. It was a very sensible building. It had four walls, a ceiling, and a roof. In some places there were columns, which he liked. He had plenty of rooms, doors, and hallways. He didn’t make any windows because all there was to look out at was the void. Still, he knew there was something he needed to add. Until he could figure out what it was,he spent his days pacing the hallways and trying to figure it out.
“On earth the god of—”
“Can we just call him the fox? We all know that’s who he is and it’ll make this about a million years faster.” My voice feels odd in my throat, like someone else is talking.
We are trapped in what is probably a pocket dimension with a god who has spent what is a very long time even for a god coming up with interesting ways of killing people. Who knows, maybe he’s waiting in the furniture store.
Nothing? No witty response? Are you okay? Are we having a mental breakdown? This is bad, like, really bad.
I know that. The annoying piece of me I’ve delegated to having negative thoughts so that I don’t have to, sounds more concerned than mocking or annoyed. That means I must be doing really badly in the emotional department. …I just can’t quite seem to care.
“Well that somewhat ruins a theme about names, identity, and how what name we consider ourselves to belong to can be influenced by and influence who we become as people and the actions we then are capable of ta-you know what? Sure. That’s perfectly fine. Now where was I?”
“On earth. With the fox.” Anna says hungrily. Not literal hunger, just the type of hunger I hear whenever I interrupt her reading and she wants to get back to her book as fast as possible. Hungry for knowledge, hungry for the end of the story.
“Right. Well, the fox stayed on earth and got lonelier still. He got so desperate for company that he started talking to the judges and juries and lawyers and all the other humans that he found in the courthouses before he killed them.
At first it went like this:The fox said hello. The person screamed about how foxes aren’t supposed to talk. The fox got annoyed by the concept of ‘supposed to’ and started to argue. The person realized that this was really happening and was filled with childlike wonder and a renewed sense of love for the world. They stopped arguing and had pleasant conversations and became friends. The friend promised to help the fox search for his other friend. The fox let slip a bit of information about what he had been doing to people and courthouses. The person screamed. The fox said something about how the people would have died eventually anyway. The person said something about how they wouldn’t have been painfully murdered. The fox said he didn’t want to argue with his friend and how he didn’t have to do it anymore and how it probably was the wrong thing to do, but how he was having a really bad time emotionally as he had no friends, and would his friend please forgive him.
If the friend was smart they would pretend to forgive him. They would then be whisked away from their old life and spend the rest of their days on one big road trip, searching for the fox’s friend. They would live in fear every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year of every decade of their lives. Then they would die and the fox would cry and go back to destroying people and courthouses so painfully the courthouses in question screamed.
If the friend was dumb and said they would never forgive him, or stood there horrified and froze, or tried to flee, or tried to fight, they would be given a more painful death than strangers because he felt betrayed. Once, someone made the mistake of mentioning how what he was doing was against the law. We don’t need to get into the details of how painful her death was.”
“I’m thirsty,” I say, the second I figure it out. I am. Really thirsty, actually. That’s why my throat feels so weird. I haven’t drunk anything since the last time I drowned and I think that was sea water so it probably made things worse. I know I forget to drink water a lot in regular life and in the midst of all this stuff I haven’t noticed how long it’s been. Anna must not have, either.
“Oh, of course! I forgot that humans need to drink water. It has been quite a while since I was one. I’ll go get you some from Derrick. I’ll be back in a jiff!”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean the fox just murdered someone around here, he could still be around, we have no weapons you are our only form of pro—”
Rush disappears.
Anna squeezes her eyes shut, seizes her sweatshirt strings, and takes a few deep breaths.
“It’s okay, the fox has the same amount of power as a god who can make a pocket dimension. There is no way our weird teleporting book could protect us from something like that. Them being gone is totally irrelevant.”
My tone of voice is probably not as soothing as it should be, but I can’t quite manage anything better.
“Thanks, Rachel, that really doesn’t make me feel worse.”
The book doesn’t just teleport, they can also control your body if they want to. They could kill you just as easily as the fox!
Uh-huh.
“Are you doing okay?” asks Anna.
“Meh. I found a corpse, so that was… something. Really, my biggest problem is that you don’t count my ju-jitsu skills as a form of protection.”
“Pfft. You took two classes and then quit. I’m not sure that’s quite good enough for god fighting.”
“Ha! You’re just a pessimist.”
“…Do you want a hug?”
“I’m okay.”
“You sure? Because you sound like you’ve just been through a waffle maker.”
“Even if I did need a hug I have racoon blood on my hands. That’s not great for hugging.”
“I need a hug more than I need to not be covered in racoon blood. I bet you need it too.”
“…Okay.”
We hug, tight and long and desperate. As all good things are prone to doing, it ends. We don’t say anything else. We just sit down in the field and wait for Rush to come back with water and the end of the story.
Rush and their tray appear unceremoniously before us.
“I am truly sorry for making you wait so long, my dea— Rachel and Anna. Derrick thought you ought to be given food along with water and it took a while to make. He always wants to make sure it’s good enough. I promise it will be worth the wait, though! The glasses are tall, the water is iced, and they come along with those curly straws they usually only give to children for some unreasonable reason. Fortunately, I managed to convince Derrick to make an exception for… adolescents? Young adults? I am sorry, I rarely see humans so it can be hard to tell.”
I ignore Rush’s monologue and stretch to reach the glass with the pink straw. Anna takes the one with the blue straw. I ignore the straw and just guzzle straight from the glass. The feeling of water hitting my dry throat is painful, but I drink until there is nothing left. It’s a good kind of pain. Only then do I turn my attention to the food.
There are two ceramic plates on the tray and on each sits a sandwich. I peel up the top slice of wheat bread on one of the plates to see what’s inside. I’m not going to survive a giant spider only to die of anaphylactic shock. Luckily, the inside has only mayonnaise, mustard, cheese, avocado, lettuce, and sliced cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and pickle. Nothing that I will die from eating, or even get a rash. Perfect. I put the sandwich in my mouth. The sandwich is stuffed to the brim and it isn’t even cut in half. There is no polite way of eating it, so I don’t bother.
Anna and I eat our delicious vegetarian sandwiches and there is no sound other than our chewing. When we are done I lick my fingers. Anna wipes hers on the helpfully included paper napkins. Rush stares at us with a mixture of envy and mourning. I guess magic books with only hyper-realistic eyes not only don’t need to eat but can’t eat. Sad.
“Would you like to hear the rest of the story now?” Their voice is patient.
I glance over at Anna and she nods.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” I say.
“Well, in order to tell it I have to explain something about power. You can gain and lose all sorts of power, physical power, mental power, emotional power, social power. Normally, if you get lucky, killing someone might gain you a little social power. People become more scared of you, if you killed someone important you might somehow get a bit of political power. Still, those are all sort of indirect consequences. It isn’t like, say, sprinting, where you rip your muscles apart, they grow back, and voila, parts of you have gotten a tiny bit stronger. However, the fox was a god, so things worked a bit differently. When a god focuses all their attention on doing one goal they eventually get more power just by doing it. This doesn’t work with more abstract goals like living life to the fullest, or building a friendship. It only has an effect when you have a specific plan. I know, the fact that creatures with so much strength can get more of it so easily seems a bit unfair, but it is true. As such, each time the fox killed a person or destroyed a courthouse he grew in raw power, power that would help him do everything else. He didn’t notice at first, and when he did he didn’t understand what was happening.
“Meanwhile the god of order also got stronger, but in a different way. Wandering through his almost perfect pocket dimension he was getting bored. He had made a rule that he could not leave until it was truly perfect, and boring was the opposite of perfect. He had never made a pocket dimension before and was completely in the dark with regards to how it worked, and so he decided to experiment with these new abilities. Soon realized he didn’t just have to create something from nothing. He could also break the barrier between his dimension and the universe he had fled from and take things. The places he ripped the barrier immediately closed once he stopped holding it open, so nothing could get through it that he didn’t want getting through it. This gave him many questions. How big could these things be? How small? How many could he take at once? He knew that distance was not an issue, through his peep hole into reality he could see anything he wanted to see. It turned out he could take as many objects, big or small, at once as he wanted. He didn’t, of course. He took nothing that belonged to anyone else. That would be stealing and stealing was against the rules pretty much everywhere.
“While doing this he realized what was wrong with his building. Nothing. His building was just how he liked it, but it was just that, a building, an empty shell. His favorite courthouses would be nothing without the objects within them. He started thinking of all the things he wanted. Chairs, desks, podiums, carpets, statues, paintings, books. However, getting them would be more difficult. All of these objects were made by people, and just taking them would be stealing. He knew of some places to buy them, he could create money and send it to the stores in exchange for the objects, but no. That would be counterfeiting and that was illegal. Eventually he gave up on that and simply made his things himself.
“On earth the fox grew bored. He knew that no mortal friendship could last as long or reach as deep as his friendship with the god of order had. He stopped thinking of the mortals he talked to as friends, and more as pets, or perhaps toys, who he took with him as he did whatever he wanted including murder. He played with them, stretching them to each breaking point. How much weight could they lift? How many equations could they solve? How much misery could they take? And when they could take no more? What would happen next? He played these games, and others like them, for a long time. He grew oh-so bored. He began to realize that his plan to draw out his friend would not work. He began to wonder if his friend could be found at all. He began to wonder if a god could die. The idea was so absurd he laughed. He raged at the ridiculousness of it all. He cried. He wanted more than anything to see his friend again.
“The god of order made a great many things. He made furniture of all shapes and sizes and the softest rugs that ever were. But by the time he got started on the statues he realized he was doing something wrong. Simply making them, fully formed from nothingness, was wrong. It was lazy. He may as well have stolen them. If he was going to make things then he should do it with his own body. The last things he made from nothingness were his tools and materials. From that point on he worked. He taught himself how to sculpt, how to carve, how to paint, how to write the finest books in all the world, if they had been in the world. But no matter what he did it was still not perfect. It was still missing something.
“One day the fox had ruined all of his friend’s favorite courthouses. He wanted to see his friend so badly that he focussed all the power he had gained through wicked deeds on being where his friend was. It should not have worked. He had no clue what he was doing. He screamed and clawed and bit at the air for the crime of not giving him his friend. The air ripped in two. He screamed into the rupture. It was a tear just big enough for a fox to fit through. He needed his friend to be on the other side. He leaped into the hole and it closed behind him.
“On the other side he stood in a room. It was small and had no furniture. The floor was made of wood. The walls were unpainted and so was the door. One lightbulb hung from the middle of the ceiling. Under the lightbulb the god of order stood holding two buckets of paint. He looked exactly the same as when they had last spoken. His hair might have been a bit tangled. His muscles may have been a bit bigger. His hands may have been a bit more calloused. But mostly, he was the same. While the fox had been searching and murdering his friend had been painting rooms and not thinking about him at all.
“The god of order stared at the fox. He was shocked that it was there. He had taken no fox, nor had he made one. He had not made a rule against it but it seemed odd to take a living thing with him. He swore the being had not even been there a moment before. For some reason staring at it made him shiver. It blinked at him and he started to cry. He set his buckets on the floor.
“‘Hello there, my vulpine friend. I am the god of order. This is my home, I am sure you also have a home. On the planet earth, correct?’ He said it in the voice of a benevolent king who had not spoken in a very long time.
The fox was too busy staring at his friend, breathing him in, to respond.
“‘Well of course you cannot tell me. You are an animal after all. It has been a long time since I have had company, animal or otherwise. You know, if you would like to stay with me, I am planning on making an excellent garden. We may be in a building, but I am sure I can make a sky.’
“The fox approached his friend, claws clicking on the floor boards. He bumped up against his leg. He let the sound of his voice fill his pointy ears.
“‘Shall I take that as a yes?’
“The fox stared up at him with shining yellow eyes.
“‘…No. No, it would be wrong. I do not know what foxes eat, or anything else about them for that matter. You belong with other foxes. In a forest perhaps. Living in a… nest? See, I do not even know that much.’
“The fox whined and it was not a very fox-like sound.
“‘No. No, you do not belong here.’
“‘YOU DO NOT BELONG HERE! YOU BELONG ON EARTH WITH ME!’ said the fox.
“There was a moment where neither of them spoke.
“‘You are not a fox, you are the god of chaos.’
“‘You left me! For a time I thought you were dead!’
“‘I am sorry you thought that. It must have been difficult. Now, please, leave.’
“‘NO! I hate you! I am going to kill you!’ the fox leaped at his friend. He bit into his neck, he tasted his blood.
“The god of order looked at the fox. Slowly, he grabbed hold of him and removed my from his neck. Blood fell to the floorboards. ‘I have to clean that up now.’ he said, calmly. He hesitated, before dropping the fox to the ground.
“‘I destroyed all your favorite places. I killed people. I kidnapped others. I broke so many of your precious rules. How are you going to clean that up, huh?’
“The god of order thought for a moment.
“‘You are not my friend. Not anymore. You are something else. Something that has to be caged for the betterment of the world.’
“‘Oh please, if you were ever my friend you wouldn’t have left. After I kill you, I think I’ll wreak more havoc all over the earth.’
“The god of order ignored him. Unlike the fox he did know what I told you about power. He had spent a very long time focussing on the goal of perfecting his building. He had a great deal of strength. He would use this strength to perform three great feats. Here is the first one. He reached first through time and undid his friend’s and his very existence on earth. He made it so they had never come into being. So they had never talked or argued with each other there. So that they had never waved their hands through the air or exploded any trees. So the fox had never destroyed a courthouse or killed a person. So that as far as the people of earth could tell they had never existed. So that only they remembered the truth. Now, for the second feat. He sealed off his door to earth so they could reach it again. The third will come later, but for now know that doing these things permanently weakened him.
“He explained to the fox what he had done.
“‘First you want me to leave, now you won’t let me?’
“‘Yes. I will not let you break any more rules, or anything else I love for that matter.’
“‘I hope you don’t love your bones.’
“They fought. They punched and kicked. Scratched and bit. They turned into different animals. They chased and were chased. They went through all the different rooms, crushed statues in their hurry, and tried to shove each other off the roof. They did things to each other that would have killed anyone else. They became so miserable that at multiple points one of them would try with all their might to escape back to earth. It never worked, they always came back with a renewed hunger for victory. And all the while they talked. They talked about what they had done since they had parted. About who they had become. They rehashed old arguments and traded new insults. They got to know each other all over again.
“One day the fox realized that just because nothing could leave that didn’t mean nothing could enter. He switched back to his original form, the one the god of order had first seen him in. The god of order was confused. They stopped fighting for a moment, covered in sweat, blood, and tears.
“He panted out a question to the god of order, ‘Can you take things from the universe? If so, how?’
“‘Why do you ask?’, drool ran down the god of order’s face, getting in his wounds. He wiped them away, the saliva and the injuries. He left no scars, his skin seemed even healthier than it had been before.
“‘I want to give you a present. An apology gift. This whole fight was stupid. I managed to see you again. That is all I have been wanting for ages and I got it. After that you undid every horrible thing I have ever done and every awful fight we have ever had. Is this not the perfect time for a fresh start? The best way to do that I would wager is a present, there is no time like it.’ He gave his most radiant smile.
“The god of order placed his hand on the fox’s face and wiped away bruises under his eyes he hadn’t even noticed before. ‘No, you are lying. You are doing this to hurt me just as you do everything else. I will not tell you.’, he gave him an expression of pity and something else he couldn’t understand.
“That was all the fox wanted though, to know it was possible. They kept fighting, and all the while he thought about how to bring things into this place. The endless fight was getting boring. He created and destroyed things. He changed the pocket dimension and the god of order brought it back to how it was before. They said the same things over and over again. Some days would pass with no violence at all and they stayed in separate rooms and others there was only violence. It wasn’t as if there was much else to do, the fox could make things, but he didn’t enjoy it. He read each of the god of order’s books, even the ones he hated. He stared at the paintings. He flooded the whole place with water full of spiders one day, not even as some sort of fighting move, just for a bit of fun. He needed something new to make life interesting again.
“When he did figure it out the first thing he took was a human. He didn’t care what the human was like, just that it was one. A whole shiny new person to do whatever he wanted with! Unfortunately for him the god of order was with him when he did it. He decided to perform his third great feat. The god of order said that this was kidnapping and illegal and created a glowing light blue swirling portal that he shoved the human into.
“‘This exit is permanent, anything can go out through it except gods. Any mortal that goes through it will appear wherever they were before you kidnapped them. Anything you drag in I will just shove out. There is no way you are committing any more murder on my watch!’
“I am afraid though, that the ugly truth was he could not. He was sick and tired of all the fighting. He had been the one running away from their skirmishes first all the time. Making a permanent portal was very taxing. Making sure it only let people out and not in again was an added level of difficulty. He struggled to keep his voice steady.
“The fox could tell all of this too. He knew that if he attacked right then he could kill the god of order once and for all. There would be no more annoying lectures. No more law for law’s sake. No more restraints on his freedom. Within the bounds of the pocket dimension at least, he could do whatever he wanted.
“But he couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t.
“Instead he screamed and started changing the fabric of the dimension’s reality. He shifted rooms, fused objects, and made monsters. It was a hurricane of chaos and he was its eye. The god of order could do nothing to stop it. He made entirely new areas, odd areas, nonsensical areas, deadly areas. The building was now far bigger on the inside. The god of order didn’t really know what was happening, only that he was filled with the godly equivalent of adrenaline. The true extent of his exhaustion had not yet hit him, and that when it did he would be completely vulnerable. He ran away into the pure confusion of the changing building, as far away from the fox as he could go before collapsing. When he woke the fox stood above him.
“‘Rise and shine sleepyhead! I’m kidding, if you tried that you might die. I don’t know what you were thinking, wasting all that power on that portal. Not that it matters, I’ve hid it where nobody will ever find it, including you! And I have taken in a great deal of humans. There are a lot of them, I don’t think we would have had the space to fit them all if I hadn’t done all that renovation! Anywho, I think it is quite apparent I have won our little kerfuffle once and for all. Would you like to beg for your life? Your guess is as good as mine whether it’ll work, but I do have a soft spot for boot licking! May as well give it a try, right?’
“The god of order glared up at him.
“‘I’ll take that as you being too weak to speak. Since you’re so pitiful, I’ll let you live. Today. If you ever even approach me or any of my humans again you will never be able to speak again. I guess you could think of it as a law and a punishment for breaking it, since you love rules more than you do your own best friend. Speaking of, I’m off to torment my new ones. Toodaloo!’ and he disappeared.
“The god of order lay there for a very long time. Healing and gathering his strength. This gave him plenty of time to plan. He could not let the fox get away with this great evil, but he did not know where his portal was and he could not survive making a new one. He wasn’t even certain how the fox had managed to move it. Obviously he had to find the portal and help the humans to it, but that would take time, time humans only had so much of to live. In the meantime he would have to figure out some other way to help them. He wanted to help them survive and even thrive in this dimension, but if the fox caught him approaching a human he would be killed. It wasn’t as if the fox would simply be hunting them for sport, he didn’t need the pure power to go up against him. He just needed to help the humans through all the incredibly hostile architecture the fox had added to his building. For that he needed literally anyone who was not him but would listen to him. He needed his own mortal.
“When he was rested enough to live through it, he broke the barrier between reality and his dimension for just long enough to catch a human. He explained to them the situation in its entirety and told them their noble purpose. What choice did they have but to accept it? The god of order gave them new powers, a new name, and a new form to help them survive. That was the day I got hired.
“I spent a long time in the library, occasionally the god of order would summon me to his side to give me instructions on how to help a human. Sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I failed. At the end of the day though, neither my victories nor my defeats really meant anything. We did not know where the exit was. Now though? Now we have a lead! It isn’t a certain thing and we may very well die trying to reach it, but I could possibly lead you to the portal! If I manage that I may help others too, like Derrick! I will admit, I lied to you about some things, and I hid some things. It was all purely to keep you from panicking, but I recognize now that it was the wrong thing to do. I will try to avoid it in the future. Now that I am finished apologizing, with regards to the story, where am I? Ah, yes. Theeee end. Questions?”
Art by Chiakiro on Deviantart