Loki felt a slight incoherence as he awoke.
He nudged the monocle on his right eye out of a habit that was not his before he looked down at his hand and realised it did not belong to him.
The ashen slender fingers coarse with dirt and blood looked foreign, felt foreign and most importantly were foreign.
Memories slowly trickled in as his mind settled in the foreign body he had suddenly occupied.
'Where am I?'
'I'm Voldemort?'
'How does Voldemort have the monocle!?'
'Did I parasitise him in some way?! Or is it a gift from Mother Tree of Desire!?'
'The last thing I remember is remembering something bizarre that gave me confidence about finding Elane after she had gone missing.'
'What was it?'
'...'
Loki scratched the edges of his Body of Heart and mind to remember or even figure out what it exactly was that he had forgotten, but the memory seemed to have been buried rather deep inside.
It would take time given the lack of an Accio spell for memories to be found, so Loki tried to focus on the present to see if he could excavate the memory easier that way, perhaps even using his decryption abilities for it.
'How did I become Voldemort?'
Loki browsed his recently gained memories as he saw something rather confusing and for the lack of a better word absolutely bamboozling in them.
'I'm Gehrman Sparrow? And I work under Mr. Error?'
'Does this even make sense?'
'...Who wrote this twist?'
'So I can't access the Sefirah Castle now…or can I?' Loki wondered softly, his eyes scanning for the connection to the Grey Fog around him.
'It exists…'
'How is it connected to two people at once?'
'Or did the fake Mr. Error get kicked out now that I've returned?'
'Where did the fake even come from? I thought I was the only one who knew about the Error pathway? Another one of Mother Tree of Desire's corrupted demons?'
'Questions…so many questions.'
'Let's think about this logically first.'
'I was racing all the True gods and Outer gods to gain the knowledge to travel back to the past…and then I remembered something that gave me confidence after I won… and then I woke up as Voldemort?'
Loki frowned since he still failed to remember what he had remembered then. It was as if the information was on the tip of his tongue only for it to keep slipping away each time he attempted to reach for it.
Like he was trying to cup water only for it to slip through his fingers.
Loki looked at the grand hall around him.
The human candles seemed grotesque, the piles of screaming and wailing human skulls seemed bizarre and the world seemed all the more confusing for it.
'Where am I right now?'
The answer showed up in his memories as Voldemort whom he seemed to have parasitised when he was Gehrman Sparrow.
'...underneath Hogwarts?'
'Why am I underneath Hogwarts…'
'Why is Voldemort underneath Hogwarts?'
'How is Voldemort underneath Hogwarts?'
'Is this another one of Salazar's hidden secret chambers?'
The answer came up in his new memories once again.
'I see… so Voldemort found this space underneath the castle when Dumbledore died…'
'Wait, Dumbledore died!?'
'When? He seems to still be alive in my memories though given Gehrman Sparrow has divined about him?'
As usual the answer showed up in Voldemort's memories.
'He just suddenly up and died around the same time I vanished from the world after the curse on the Defence Against Dark Arts position latched onto him?'
'I vanished from the world? How?'
'Did the fake Mr. Error do so to try and steal my identity? Was he also the one that killed Dumbledore? Is that why he's still alive since fake Mr. Error parasitised him and turned him into an avatar? How did he do that to a Sequence 1 Author anyway? Was Voldemort's curse so potent?'
'But wouldn't it have been better if he just deeply parasited me and then continued living as me with none the wiser, why go so far as to wipe my identity away from the face of the earth? And then parasitise Dumbledore?'
'Confusing!'
'Everything is so confusing!'
There was a sudden pop in the hall as two people apparated into it, each already kneeling on the floor, afraid to look up.
'Woah…Voldemort's lackeys…death eaters?' Loki thought to himself as he looked at the two kneeling on the floor.
"Speak." Loki commanded simply as he knew nothing about what or how things around here operated since he hadn't had the time to study Voldemort's memories in detail yet.
"My Lord, the delegate from Ilvermorny has left the school with the two girls you asked us to keep a watch over! Blood traitor heir Greengrass and the mudblood Granger that hangs around the prophesied boy.", one of the two people kneeling on the floor spoke with clear excitement as if they had just learnt something profound.
'...huh? Hermione and Daphne? Or is it still Astoria since Daphne is a soul? Or did Nicholas and Perenelle already give her a new body?'
'Why did they even go to Ilvermorny anyway?' Loki questioned only to receive an answer in the form of a memory from his time as Gehrman Sparrow.
'I see…so a new member of the Tarot Club requested help to get rid of a plague? Didn't she mention low sequence beyonders though? Isn't Daphne a Demigod already? I remember divinity radiating off her soul when I last saw her in the Abyss.'
'Hmm…I'll have to divine about this…'
'What happened to the Sequence 3 Beyonder Characteristic I had merged with?'
'Huh? Oh…so the fake Mr. Error has it. I see.'
'And he's trying to advance with it?'
'But what about me? Didn't I already complete the advancement ritual back then? How did he separate the characteristics from me and then use it? Why did he even separate it in the first place? Who would want to get weaker to only try and get stronger once again?'
Suddenly a memory appeared in Loki's mind that gave him chills.
'I was doing fake advancement rituals? And the fake Mr. Error has the true Advancement Rituals? How!? Why!? Who changed them? Rowena? But why would she do that?!'
"My Lord?" the lackey asked softly, still keeping his head bowed, causing him to miss his liege's shocked expression.
"Huh?" Loki let out a dumb sound however given Voldemort's lack of nostrils it came out as a rather cold intimidating snort causing the lackey to shiver with fear.
'Oh..these guys are still here. I'll just tell them to leave for now.'
"Leave." Loki simply mumbled before turning around and gazing at the skull on the wall as Voldemort usually did until recently.
There were two pops of apparition and the two lackeys vanished leaving Loki alone in the grand hall once again.
However, Loki remained enamoured by the crystal skull filled with what looked like a thundering cloud inside it.
'Why was Voldemort collecting desires?'
'Ah…I see… a part of his advancement ritual for Sequence 1.'
'He needed to collect desires of despair and distraughtness from a large amount of people… the more distraught they are the more successful the ritual.'
'But whose characteristics would he get to advance to Sequence 1? Shouldn't Farbauti have them all since he is a true god? Perhaps he's missed some over the years he was hidden by Salazar? I still have that promise I made to him…to let him return to the Abyss…'
'But why did Voldemort choose Hogwarts? A place where only the first year kids might cry if they ever see him?'
'Wait… is that why he chose Hogwarts as the ground for his advancement since he wished to kill Harry Potter and collect all the despair from the people in the castle?'
Memories surfaced again and Loki realised something-
'...oh and the rest of the world using specially prepared altars made using human sacrifices to channel all the hatred and despair towards himself.'
'He~ What a sissy. In the end all he amounted to was collecting screams from itsy bitsy children.'
'But how did Gehrman Sparrow parasitise this fool anyway?'
'Hmm..? Oh? Using the Turnsoest Brass Notebook? He used it as a carrier of a worm of time, an item that was supposed to be passed along to Voldemort after Bellatrix Lestrange got it from Snape before parasitising him once he touched it.'
'And he bypassed Voldemort's danger sense by simply using the monocle to cover his fate and hide it with an illusory one so that Voldemort's spiritual intuition wouldn't be triggered? It's the same trick I used to stop Dumbledore and Grindelwald from learning I spoke their names and schemed against them.'
'…so they still went on with the mission I had planned about giving an item to Snape in the Tarot club, although I'd only planned to parasitise a Death Eater and not Voldemort…it worked anyway… nice.'
'Now I just have to parasitise Mother Tree of Desire, and back stab Mother Goddess of Depravity and everyone will be safe forever.'
'...'
'He~'
'Hehe'
'Hehehe~'
'HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEH'
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA~!"
Loki laughed as Voldemort not because he found anything particularly funny, but because he wanted to laugh like a villain while he was pretending to be one.
He simply adjusted his monocle and paused slightly before speaking again.
"Funny…the villain laugh does sound evil."
"Alright… what do I do now?"
"Do I dig deeper into how I arrived here or chase after the fool blasphemy card I'm due?"
"Should I change my pathway?"
"That ought to throw a wrench in the plan of everyone who made this happen, wouldn't it?"
…
Hermione almost immediately tried to use her door ability by twisting her wrist to open a door mid air, however the mystical item on her person failed almost instantly.
A cutely drawn chibi dragonhead human looked at her with a silly expression before asking, "New around here cutie? I haven't seen your kind here in a long time…did you forget that mystical abilities are prohibited here?"
"Prohibited?" Hermione asked, a little afraid.
The dragon headed person nodded, "Of course, the warden is from the Arbiter pathway, he can prohibit anything he wishes…the bastard prohibited us from playing spit catch last week."
"..." Hermione controlled her expression with great care, she didn't want to appear confused or disgusted and so she kept her expression neutral before nodding to the dragon headed human in thanks before turning to Daphne and speaking in whispers.
"Mystical abilities are prohibited here, but how are our glasses working?"
Daphne looked around in slight amazement and fear before speaking her mind, "Probably because the glasses are a high level Beyonder item, from a Sequence greater than the Warden. I can also use my abilities but they are going to be severely weakened."
Hermione nodded, accepting the explanation before looking at Daphne and asking the real question, "What do we do now?"
"...collect information?" Daphne muttered while scanning through the crowd for an opportunity to do so.
Only Hermione paused at the question since she had spotted a roulette table in the distance. She nudged Daphne in the direction too and asked her a question, "You can use your abilities right?"
Daphne nodded, immediately catching a whiff of Hermione's plan but before they could implement it she spoke hastily, "Let's pick our target first. I have a feeling that we won't be able to abuse the loophole to use my ability more than once."
Hermione's eyes widened slightly since that meant that the warden was constantly watching everyone in some way, adapting to their actions and creating more rules and regulations.
"Do you want to only target those playing or also those we can get to play?" Hermione asked softly.
Daphne remained silent for a while before speaking up, "Let's split up. I know those that gamble the best. I'll look into the ones playing to find a suitable target, you go and scour through the rest of them, surely there might be someone who might tell us something more about this place?"
Hermione felt slightly unsure at the thought of having to split up, but she nodded anyway since Daphne had been the one to propose the plan.
They nodded in each other's direction before they split up, with Daphne going towards the roulette table to search for losing whales that might want some luck to turn things around and Hermione going towards the wider crowd, searching for someone here that had been around for a long time and might know the ins and outs of the place, even vague whispers would do in their current scenario.
Hermione scanned the place thoroughly, her eyes marking a few targets she would try until her eyes landed on a small chibi rat-like humanoid creature that had special chains on his wrist that kept him hanging from the roof and tied to the floor. His eyes were bandaged and his mouth stuffed with cloth.
'How did I miss someone who requires special restraints inside the prison?' Hermione noticed quickly and began walking in her target's direction.
As she made her way through Hermione thought up several questions she could ask, ranging from the layout of the place to the general patrol routines of the warden keeping watch over them.
However, the second she entered a short range around the chibi figure drawn in replacement of the original she froze.
The crowd shifted in between, people walked to and fro, but Hermione's eyes remained fixed on the rat that had been blinded.
All because she could feel it. The gentle brushing of the legilimency probe that was trying to scan her mind.
"A Spectator?!" Hermione nearly hissed.
She wanted to turn and walk away immediately but the rat turned directly towards her and spoke into her mind.
"Ah…a member of the Door pathway…how rare in these parts…and one that knows my branch of occlumency? Even rarer…tell me… are you from a planet called Earth?"
Hermione froze.
Her occlumency shields rose up with full force as she turned her mind into a steel trap in hopes that nothing could get in.
However, it seemed like she had underestimated the rat.
"Hmm…? That was a poor response, you protected your mind from the external while forgetting about the internal… the sea of subconscious…"
"Get out!" Hermione shouted inside her mind but the rat simply shook his head in real life. "You're loud… I heard a saying on your planet before, empty vessels make the most noise… and it seems to be right… not only do you not know how to protect yourself properly, you even ask your enemy to leave when you're unprotected."
Hermione quickly did the first thing that came to mind.
She stepped back and dropped out of the supposed range the rat had control over.
Only-
"Haha, how funny. You think I have a range? Why do you think you walked in my direction?"
With both her earlier options failing, Hermione did the next best thing she could think of.
She shouted the Honorific Name of Mr. Error in her mind without regret.
"The Error that does not belong to this era."
"The Mysteriou-"
Herminoe's mind froze.
'Huh? What was I doing?'
"You were calling for a True God like he was your friend, young girl… you seem to have a lot of connections in high places… "
Hermione shivered.
"You said Error, so you're calling the true god of the Error pathway then? He has been dead for a long time has he not or at least near dead because of corruption? At least he was dead when I visited the planet. He only made a bargain with me to create a virtual persona and write a book on occlumency before he fell asleep once again."
Hermione shivered once again.
"Has he woken up then? If he has I'd also like his help, go ahead little one, continue your prayer."
Hermione felt heavier, like a bag of stones sinking to the bottom of a lake.
Her eyes flickered towards Daphne in hopes that she would come rescue her from this nightmare but no response returned, as if Hermione had turned invisible to the world.
There was no hope of rescue and no one to help her break free.
In the end, after a few seconds all she was left with was a forceful burning desire to follow her captor.
However Hermione, ever the clever witch, twisted her methods at the last second.
She was still going to contact Mr. Error, just a little differently than usual.
She conjured the symbol for the error pathway inside her mindscape.
Exactly as it appeared on the door when Mr. Error helped facilitate their requests.
And at the same time she spoke in her mind,
"The Error that does not belong to this era."
"The Mysterious Ruler above the Grey Fog."
"The one who walks the veiled path lost to history."
And be it because the rat didn't object to her warning the True God or if she had really tricked the rat because of its restraints, the simple trick went through.
Only Daphne on the side gave Hermione a soft glance before continuing back in her mission to find the whale that was losing the most and could give them some information.
…
Loki patiently continued digging through his memories, seeing exactly what the faker had planned for Gehrman Sparrow to do by parasitising Voldemort before he nudged the monocle on his right eye and shifted his attention to it.
"How is the monocle present on me though? Shouldn't the fake Mr. Error have recovered it after I parasitised Voldemort?"
Loki quietly plucked the monocle off of his eye and began to examine it carefully.
To his surprise there were several runes on the monocle.
Loki looked at the runs and quickly concluded that it was an item tied to his soul. Or rather the soul of Gehrman Sparrow until he had reincarnated in this body.
However Loki felt a keen sense of error from the monocle, not as its unique authority but in its position. It almost felt to Loki like the monocle was flickering rapidly in position between him and some place else.
'The Fake Mr. Error has it too then? At least he did in Gehrman Sparrow's memories…'
'Why did I reincarnate so suddenly though?'
'I feel like I'll know the second I remember what I'm forgetting.'
'But what is it that I'm forgetting?'
Loki switched into his island of consciousness and began examining the place for any hints of his forgotten memory that had left him feeling puzzled and unfulfilled for so long.
To his surprise there was a second large spherical hole in his island much like the time after his fight against Mother Goddess of Depravity.
"So someone stole my memories again?"
"Who? And why?"
"Fake Mr. Error?"
"Who even is this fake Mr. Error?"
And for the first time Loki hit a wall with his memories when nothing came up about fake Mr. Error apart from the fact that he was currently his master.
'Could the Fake Mr. Error be myself from the future who travelled to the past?'
'But why do I exist then?'
'Shouldn't I be the fake Mr. Error if that was the case?'
'Perhaps he was a different Mr. Error who was inside my Beyonder Characteristics? The previous Mr. Error who wants to reincarnate using me? Is it possible that he stole my corruption that came from using the wrong advancement rituals so that could replace me when the time came without letting me ever catch onto the fact that such a thing was happening?'
'...it's just speculation for the moment but let's run with it a little.'
'So if this fake Mr. Error was the previous Mr. Error then there should've been someone who knew him right? Wouldn't there be such a person? The founders perhaps? Or someone before them? The Goddess of Fortune?'
Just as Loki was about to delve deeper into his memories he heard a few whispers in his ear.
They surprised him for a second as he assumed he was going mad from using all those wrong advancement rituals until now when he realised that it was someone praying to him.
"Should I answer?"
"No, that would make the faker suspicious. I have to pretend to be Gehrman Sparrow until I get direct access to him. Then I'm pretty sure I can beat him up since I have a Sequence 2 angel parasitised and he's only a Sequence 4 like me."
Except just as the prayer died down, Loki felt another instinctive connection to the prayer even as it was already accepted.
Loki's mind instantly decrypted the phenomenon as he noticed that it was someone praying to him while their prayer had already been accepted. And since that wasn't possible, it was likely someone using the Error pathway symbol to connect with him directly.
'Can I accept this?' Loki wondered for only a moment before accepting the connection since he realised that as long as the second connection hadn't been accepted it was invisible to the fake Mr. Error for some reason.
Only what he saw surprised him greatly.
'Hermione? In her mindscape? And who's that rat?'
The rat looked at some place else in the sky and began speaking randomly.
"It's been a long time since I've seen you Mr. Error. How have you been?"
There was a short silence before a different voice, one familiar to Loki, spoke directly to Hermione. "What do you need?"
Hermione trembled in her mindscape as she wondered if Mr. Error had gotten her warning or if she had led him into further trouble.
And when Mr. Error didn't even acknowledge the rat like being in her mindscape she felt afraid of a creeping possibility.
'Did Mr. Error fail to notice him? Is 'He' not strong enough yet?!' Hermione wondered but not wanting to anger 'Him' she answered 'His' question.
"As you know Mr. Error, the current plague is being caused by Primordial Chaos. As long as we get rid of it we can get rid of the corruption being spread by it. So I wanted to help your blessed who asked for our help in ridding the world of the plague by assassinating the Primordial Chaos."
Loki watched as the rat's eyes widened in surprise and shock at being missed, but he had bigger things to currently deal with.
Almost as soon as Hermione had mentioned the words Primordial Chaos his mind decrypted a million things at once!
'Primordial Chaos?'
'The one inside Mother Goddess of Depravity!?'
'Why would it be outside anywhere in the world!?'
'Wouldn't it only be born when the next universe was forming or taking birth and this one was ending!?'
'Someone hurt Mother Goddess of Depravity!?'
'Did that fight I was in with Mother Goddess of Depravity hurt her enough to make this happen? Force his birth early!?'
Loki frowned.
'How did I do that though?'
'The only way to hurt the Primordial Creator would be to hurt Mother Goddess of Depravity directly…'
'Or…hurt the Mirrored Original Creator and used the similarity to hurt the Primordial Chaos inside Mother Goddess of Depravity!'
'But to hurt the Mirrored Original Creator Cheek would have to combine with the Red Priest Pathway…has she already combined with it?'
'No that can't have been the case. If she were she wouldn't have responded to me when I asked her for help through Fleur…'
'She wouldn't have taken the risk of me using her to attack the Primordial Chaos if she awakened the will of the Mirrored Original Creator within her.'
'So this happened some time in history?'
'...in the third epoch when the final battle happened and Mr. Error repelled the Outer gods then through his own sacrifice!?'
'If that was me, and I could be corruption free, did I risk corruption from the Primordial Chaos just to hurt 'Him' and send back or repel Mother Goddess of Depravity and the other Outer Gods!?'
A long forgotten memory stirred within Loki at that moment.
He felt a seal unlock and a barrier break within himself as something reminded him of a past he had recently forgotten.
'I remember….'
'That battle with Mother Goddess of Depravity over the Chaos Sea…it was a battle between a King of King of Angels and 'Her'.'
'Someone possessed me just as I was about to die and turned the situation around!'
'Who was it!?'
'Myself from the past!?'
'Myself from the future!?'
'How?'
'Why?'
The conversation in the prayer continued with the rat trying to take the lead, "You can't see me?"
However Mr. Error ignored him again, as if he didn't exist at all and spoke to Hermione again, "Do you require help?"
Hermione not knowing if Mr. Error truly couldn't see the rat being or if he was ignoring him on purpose nodded fearfully, hoping to send some message to 'Him'. "Yes, Mr. Error, I currently need help. A seemingly high sequence beyonder of the Spectator pathway has invaded my mind, I can't fight him off!"
There was a short silence before Mr. Error spoke the words Hermione was dreading to hear, "You're alone… are you sure you are not losing control because of having been separated from your beyonder characteristics?"
Hearing that Hermione was in danger, Loki snapped out of his thoughts and quickly read her mind. That was where he learned two key pieces of information, firstly that Dumbledore was only a Virtual persona presumably of the ratman in Hermione's mindscape and secondly she and Daphne had no means to defend themselves inside the prison they were in. The prison for the Primordial Chaos.
Hermione, still shocked, couldn't speak.
And that was when the rat man took over, "If you can't see me, you must not be real… but the little girl who's your follower can see me… How curious… even after that pact I made with the real Mr. Error… are you special in some way, little girl?"
Hermione snapped out of her shock as she spoke quickly in a panic, "Mr. Error please send someone to help us!"
There was silence again before the fake Mr. Error spoke once again, "Alright, I will."
The prayer ended there with the fake Mr. Error cutting it off, as did Loki's connection to it, forcing him to return to the real world.
Right at that moment, a crimson light glared upon Loki's eyes and dragged him into the Sefirah Castle.
Loki looked on at the head of the table where he used to sit only to find a new Mr. Error sitting there. His face was covered by the grey fog so Loki couldn't tell his features apart but he just knew instinctively that the person there was using his old body.
Almost immediately Loki felt the strong urge to attack the fake Mr. Error and reclaim his rightful throne but Loki clamped down on such thoughts by simply stealing his desires that were excessively strong given his new host.
'Now is not the right time.'
'I must make sure that I have the upper hand and that means that I must first recollect my stolen memories before making a drastic move.'
'But why did I steal my memories?'
'...unless I'm not the same Mr. Error as the one in the past but an Avatar meant to be reincarnated into?'
Loki bowed as per the customs in Gehrman Sparrow's memories before speaking, "Yes, my lord?"
"I need you to go help one current member of the Tarot Club and one potential member of the Tarot club."
"Yes, my Lord. As you wish. Where should I go?"
There was a soft silence before the fake Mr. Error spoke again, "I'll send you to the right location. You only need to prepare."
Loki bowed as the connection was cut once again and he returned to the real world.
He quickly grabbed the Turnsoest Brass Book and the skull filled with desires that Voldemort was enamoured with before praying to the fake Mr. Error once again to tell him he was ready.
As he did so a sharp gleam showed up in his eyes.
'If the Primordial Chaos can corrupt my original self…'
'Can I ascend to the status of the Original Creator to forcibly overtake my Original Self while merging?
…