Chapter — Collection Due
Quadrillions of years later, the waiting ended.
The Unlit Archive was full.
That alone would have been enough to frighten anyone who remembered what it used to be.
The stolen room was gone.
The unreliable lamp was gone.
Even the planet on which Veydras and Noctis had founded the Shadow Syndicate had been gone for longer than most gods had been alive.
In its place stood something accumulated across ages.
Soldiers.
Anomalies.
Defectors.
Entities whose species no longer existed.
Several gods.
At the center of them stood the two men who had started it.
Veydras Miekō looked almost insultingly unchanged.
Noctis Arquen did not.
The Lord of Recompense stood beside him.
Across Noctis's body, thin golden markings shifted like numbers being continually recalculated. They weren't decoration. Every movement, injury, expenditure and consequence around him was something he could assign value to.
Quadrillions of years ago, Noctis could redirect a payment.
Now he could negotiate the price.
Above them, the Apocryphon opened.
A projection appeared.
ARCHAVERSE 27
Then another designation.
KARMA
Nobody spoke.
They all knew why they were there.
Veydras looked across the assembled Shadow Syndicate.
"We leave today."
Nobody cheered.
Veydras preferred that.
Anyone excited to fight Karma had misunderstood the assignment.
Noctis stepped forward.
"Before anyone develops courage, I'll correct something."
Several people looked toward him.
Noctis continued, "We are not stronger than Karma."
Silence.
Ilyon Vareth, God of Misalignment, stood among the forward group. He folded his arms.
One Syndicate commander asked, "Then why are we attacking him?"
Noctis looked at him.
"Because fortunately, strength isn't the only thing required to kill someone."
Veydras activated the projection.
Karma's image appeared.
Around it formed a red shell.
CHAOTIC ESCUTCHEON
Veydras pointed toward it.
"This is the problem."
Ilyon frowned. "His defense?"
"No."
Veydras enlarged the model.
"The Escutcheon doesn't block attacks."
Noctis continued the explanation.
"It persuades reality that allowing the threat to reach Karma is dangerous."
The projection changed.
An attack approached Karma.
Space shifted.
Its trajectory altered.
The attack missed.
Another appeared.
Probability changed.
It failed.
A third simply ceased being relevant to its target.
Noctis looked around the chamber.
"You're not fighting a shield. You're fighting reality's preference that Karma remain unharmed."
One of the gods asked, "Can it be overwhelmed?"
Veydras replied, "Eventually."
"By us?"
"No."
The god went quiet.
Ilyon studied the projection.
"Misalign the defense."
Veydras shook his head.
"It'll correct."
"Move Karma."
"It'll correct."
"Separate him from the Escutcheon?"
This time Veydras didn't answer immediately.
Ilyon noticed.
Then he looked at Veydras's hands.
"Oh."
Everyone else followed his gaze.
Veydras raised one hand.
A tiny section of the projection destabilized.
Not the image.
The idea represented by it.
For a moment, the relationship between Karma and the Escutcheon became unstable.
Then Veydras stopped.
Noctis spoke quietly.
"That's why he's leading the strike."
The room became considerably more attentive.
Veydras could destabilize matter.
Energy.
Space.
With enough effort, boundaries.
Relationships.
Even concepts.
It was the same reason Kaosu's clone had discovered, much too late, that being conceptual rather than physical was not particularly useful against him.
Veydras looked around the chamber.
"I may be the only person here capable of reliably touching him."
A commander asked, "May?"
Veydras looked at him.
"Would you prefer I lie before we fight the God of Chaos?"
The commander decided he would not.
The plan appeared.
PHASE ONE: ISOLATION
Ilyon stepped forward.
His job was simple in wording and appalling in execution.
Misalign Karma's relationship with his surroundings.
Not enough to move him.
Enough to make correction fractionally imperfect.
A coordinate wrong by one trillionth.
A consequence arriving slightly outside its intended causal position.
A divine nervous system discovering that reality had developed a tremor.
PHASE TWO: SATURATION
The Syndicate would attack simultaneously.
Not to injure Karma.
To occupy the Escutcheon.
Make reality correct thousands of threats.
Then millions.
Force Karma's defense to continuously choose.
Noctis looked around.
"You are purchasing Veydras an opening."
Someone asked, "With what?"
Noctis smiled faintly.
"Mostly yourselves."
Nobody laughed.
Noctis nodded approvingly.
"Good. You understand."
PHASE THREE: SEVERANCE
Veydras.
He would destabilize Karma's connection to the Red Continuum.
Not destroy it.
They needed it intact.
Not destabilize Karma completely.
They needed him alive long enough to extract it.
A precise wound against something that wasn't physical.
Then came the worst part.
PHASE FOUR: COLLECTION
Noctis looked toward Karma's projection.
His golden markings brightened.
This was where quadrillions of years had changed him.
Noctis no longer needed to merely move consequences from one object to another.
He could manipulate recompense itself.
Damage had cost.
Power had cost.
Survival had cost.
Even avoiding a consequence created an unpaid balance.
And Noctis had learned that unpaid balances could be made vicious.
One commander asked, "What exactly are you going to do?"
Noctis raised his hand.
A blade appeared.
He ran it through his palm.
Several soldiers reacted.
Noctis didn't.
There was no wound.
A golden number appeared above his hand.
PAYMENT DEFERRED
Noctis explained, "The injury still exists."
He closed his hand.
"I simply disagree with when I should pay it."
The number disappeared.
"Or how."
The blade suddenly cracked.
Then the table beneath it split.
Then a distant wall developed a thin fracture.
The original wound had been divided across multiple payments.
Noctis continued.
"I can alter the exchange rate between cause and consequence. I can redistribute payment. Defer it. Compound it."
The golden markings across his body accelerated.
"And after a very unreasonable amount of practice..."
Noctis looked at Karma.
"I can collect."
The projection changed.
Every hypothetical attack Karma avoided appeared around him as a golden entry.
Every correction.
Every deflection.
Every expenditure.
Every consequence reality prevented from reaching him.
DEBT
Noctis smiled.
"Karma's greatest advantage is that reality pays his bills."
Veydras understood where he was going.
"So make him reimburse it."
Noctis looked at him.
"With interest."
Ilyon stared at the projection.
"For how long can you maintain that?"
Noctis answered, "Outside my Domain?"
He considered it.
"Not long enough."
The room went silent.
Nobody asked the obvious second question.
Noctis answered it anyway.
"Inside it?"
Golden lines spread beneath his feet.
For the briefest instant, something formed around his body.
Tiny.
Barely a few centimeters beyond his skin.
Then everyone in the chamber felt it.
Every consequence directed toward Noctis suddenly seemed impossibly far from completion.
Not stopped.
Not blocked.
Scheduled.
For later.
And later.
And later.
Approaching a date reality could never quite reach.
Then the sensation vanished.
Noctis adjusted his sleeve.
"Long enough."
Veydras looked at him.
"You've improved."
Noctis stared.
"It's been quadrillions of years."
"Still."
"I would hope so."
The Apocryphon interrupted them.
Every slab turned red.
TARGET MOVEMENT DETECTED
Karma had changed location.
The Archive immediately began resolving coordinates.
Archaverse.
Multiverse.
Universe.
Region.
Ilyon looked at Veydras.
"This is it."
Veydras stared at Karma's location.
He remembered Mira.
Discordia.
The centuries of peace.
The appointment.
The worlds afterward.
The first room.
The stolen map.
Noctis complaining about the lamp.
Quadrillions of years reduced themselves to one coordinate.
Veydras stood.
The entire Shadow Syndicate followed.
Noctis looked around at them.
"One final clarification."
Everyone waited.
"If the plan fails, retreat."
Veydras glanced at him.
Noctis continued, "If retreat fails, survive."
One of the younger commanders asked, "And if survival fails?"
Noctis considered the question.
"Then Veydras was right about existence and you may complain to him afterward."
Veydras looked at him.
"Finished?"
"Yes."
Space began destabilizing around Veydras.
The wall in front of him lost the stability of its location.
Distance followed.
Then the distinction between here and there began to collapse.
A passage opened.
Red light poured through.
On the other side—
Chaos.
Pure enough that several Syndicate instruments immediately failed.
The Red Continuum was close.
And somewhere beyond it was the man they had spent quadrillions of years preparing to fight.
Noctis stepped beside Veydras.
The Lord of Recompense looked through the opening.
"Do you think the plan will work?"
Veydras answered immediately.
"No."
Noctis smiled.
"Good."
Veydras looked at him.
Noctis's golden markings ignited.
"I was worried you'd become optimistic again."
Veydras stepped through.
The Shadow Syndicate followed.
And after quadrillions of years—
Karma's bill came due.