“Got it in one,” Amin Thett said as he leaned forward, one elbow going to his knee so he could use the palm of that hand to prop up his chin. “Huh. You’re not who I expected.”

  Letting the words linger in the air, Hiral cleared his eyes—and those of his friends—with a runic cocktail of Restoration, Decrease, and even a hint of Separation. Just like that, the searing afterimage was gone from his vision, and the full image of the Progenitor in front of him became clear.

  His sensory domain had told him what to expect, but there was just something else about seeing it in front of him. Amin Thett had to be somewhere between twelve and fifteen feet tall, if he were standing up, based on how tall he was sitting. His face was almost perfect by normal standards, with the only thing out of place being the way his mouth went all the way back to his ears. Now, with it closed, it was barely more than a line from the corners of his lips that gave away the truth of the larger mouth.

  If Hiral hadn’t seen it from a Pilgrim before, he may not even have noticed it here.

  Aside from the mouth, Amin Thett’s horns—one each emerging from his temples--ran back along his skull, before curving around for the golden crystal spiraling around and out to extend about a foot directly in front of his eyes. Just like my Crown of Amin Thett. His hair was jet black, compared to his alabaster white skin—just a single line of it running along the top of his head between the horns—and he looked to be wearing a long vest, open in the front. Also black, the garment spread around him on the stone floor, meaning it would have to be almost ankle-length if he were standing. Loose-fitting, matching black pants covered his legs, but he didn’t have any shoes or shirt besides those articles of clothing.

  Like every other Kindred or Pilgrim Hiral had met, Amin Thett’s body was muscular, but not in a Shaper-kind-of-way. He was wiry, with his fingers and toes each ending in nails that looked closer to claws. Not that his physical presence was the intimidating factor. No, compared to the depth of the energy contained in the Progenitor’s body, his physical power almost seemed laughable.

  But, as Hiral stood there in front of a legendary entity he’d never expected to meet—Amin Thett was supposed to be dead, after all—he found himself standing straighter. The brief surprise of what had happened with his sword, and the emergence of the Progenitor had faded. Mind clear again, Hiral wasn’t afraid of this being in front of them.

  He could feel it—he was sure—if this came to blows, Amin Thett wasn’t going to wipe the floor with them.

  “Oh, good, good,” Amin Thett said, pointing one of the hands he wasn’t leaning on at Hiral. “That’s the kind of look I want to see. Then again, you wouldn’t be here if all you could do was cower.”

  “Speaking of here,” Hiral said. “How are you in front of us?”

  “And what did you mean we weren’t who you expected?” Yanily added.

  Instead of answering, Amin Thett tilted his head back, like he was looking up at something through the roof of the temple. Beyond him, out the door, the storm stood frozen, as if time had stopped when the greatsword had exploded. By the sensation running through Hiral’s time runes, that was exactly what had happened. While he could probably break the effect, there wasn’t any need to. More, if he did, Amin Thett would vanish. Even the few seconds he’d spent in front of the Progenitor told him it was clear what he was looking at was nothing more than an echo. A lingering thread of consciousness—like what Tomorrow had left in the cradle—that Amin Thett had stored away in his greatsword.

  “Which question should I answer first?” Amin Thett asked himself, fingers tapping against the jaw resting on his palm. “Let’s start with how am I here? Really, do I even need to answer that one? You should be able to figure it out.”

  “You hid an echo of yourself within the sealed Greatsword of Amin Thett…” Hiral started. “No, that’s not right. You were the chains. And each of the seals breaking was a requirement for this version of you to awaken. Crossing through the Black Gate was the last of the list, and so here you are.”

  “Exactly!” Amin Thett said with a snap of his fingers, and pointed at Hiral again. “See, you didn’t even need to ask the question.”

  “Amin Thett, my friend, is that really you?” a quiet voice asked, like Li’l Ur couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “You know it’s not,” Amin Thett said, some of that bluster from his conversation with Hiral and Yanily gone. “Just like that’s not really you. At least it looks like you found a slightly more permanent way to stick around. This,” he gestured at his seated body, “will barely last a few more minutes.

  “It’s worth it to get to see you one more time. I’m sorry my death was so hard on you.”

  Li’l Ur floated off Seena’s shoulder, growing to the same full-size he’d displayed during the battle with the Prince of the Swamp, to float next to Hiral. “You sacrificed yourself for us,” the lich said, blue eyes glowing. “And we never even got to say thank you.”

  “Is that the whole reason you did what you did after? Creating the undead and trying to bring me back? To offer up a quick thank you?” Amin Thett chuckled.

  “Would it be so wrong if I said that was true?”

  “Landbreaker and your wife might have something to say about that.”

  “Ex-wife,” Li’l Ur said.

  “You really think so?” Amin Thett asked. “Since you were brought back like this—like I remember you, even if you have a few less of the fleshy bits—have you gone to find her? To let her know the real you is back?”

  “This is hardly the real me,” Li’l Ur said. “I am not the man she fell in love with all those millennia ago.”

  “You might be closer to it than you think,” Amin Thett said. “And, my friend, if you want to thank me, do it by living the life you want to. With the people you want to. Stop hiding behind excuses—or in the lab, you were terrible about that when you were feeling shy—and go find that woman.”

  “Are you sure she would want me to? She sealed me in my urn for a good reason.”

  Amin Thett actually rolled his eyes. “Ur’Thul the Unthinking, that’s what they should’ve called you. If she never wanted to see you again, she would’ve killed you, not sealed you. There was a hope there you would have some time to reflect on your actions, and emerge the man she married.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Li’l Ur crossed his arms. “I’m not so easy to kill…”

  Amin Thett gave him such a flat look, the legendary lich wilted. “We both know if she wanted you dead—really dead—you would be. She was always one of our strongest. And a warrior with nearly no peer. No, sealing you was far more difficult for her than killing you would’ve been.”

  “Ur,” Seena said, stepping up beside the lich and putting a hand on his arm. “When we get back, if you want to go find her, we can do that.”

  “Mistress, your battle against the Enemy…” Li’l Ur said.

  “We can kill plenty of squids on the way,” Yanily said.

  “You would come too… uh… speared one?”

  “We all would,” Hiral said. “You’re part of the party. That means you’re basically family.”

  “Thank you,” Li’l Ur said slowly. “Let me… consider it. I had written off ever seeing her again, and to be so suddenly introduced to the possibility of…”

  “Being as long-winded as usual,” Amin Thett interrupted. “Ur’Thul, it’s good to see you. I’ve missed you too, even though I’ve gotten to watch your antics through this boy’s sword, but I need to speak with them before my time runs out.

  “If you all haven’t figured it out yet, things here are not what you expected them to be. Or, maybe I should say, things back on Genesis aren’t what you expected them to be.”

  “Who’s being long-winded now?” Li’l Ur asked, though his lizard-skull head seemed to be smiling, despite the clear lack of lips.

  “And you still haven’t answered my question,” Yanily said. “What do you mean we aren’t who you expected?”

  “That question is an excellent segue back to the main topic at hand,” Amin Thett said, but he looked at Hiral, not at Yanily. “When I died—when I killed myself—my goal had been to protect Genesis and its unique nature from the Raze. The runic energy I used, the energy that consumed me in the process, was meant to be a bridge, connecting one cycle of the world to the next. To simultaneously give the Raze no reason to be there, and to salvage something during the reset process.

  “The strides we’d made on that world, the races we created, and the sheer amount of creativity we all experienced was far too valuable to be lost.”

  “Were they really more valuable than your life?” Li’l Ur asked.

  “I believed them to be,” Amin Thett said. “The things the rest of you would be able to do with just a bit more time, only my imagination could tell me the wonders you all would create. Selfishly, I wanted to see those wonders, so I sealed a small part of myself within my sword. To ensure I wouldn’t awaken too early, I set—as this one has said—requirements to undo the seal.

  “A certain, basic mastery over the runes, and the full set of my gathered regalia, as some of the simpler things. From there, though, the bearer of my weapon would also need to reach a certain threshold of power—S-Rank, as you’re calling it—and step foot beyond the Black Gate.

  “More than anything, I had a theory about Genesis.” Amin Thett shook his head. “That’s not right. It wasn’t a theory, it was… a fear. As I grappled with the runic energy struggling to get free of Genesis, and as I wrangled it to be used as I directed, a part of my consciousness slipped through the Black Gates with a portion of the leaking energy.

  “What I felt on the other side, it almost shocked me enough to fail the working I’d been preparing. But, either way, I’d gone too far. I would either fail and it killed me, or I’d succeed and it killed me. So, even with a seed of doubt planted in my mind, I vowed to complete my work.”

  “And put part of yourself in the sword at the same time,” Hiral said.

  “It took such a fraction of my power,” Amin Thett said with a nod. “And I had to know. Was it all worth it? Well, that, and something else.” His attention bored into Hiral again. “You were that something else.”

  “Me?” Hiral said.

  “Your little PIMP friend likely wondered the same thing,” Amin Thett said, looking at the small construct standing behind the rest of the party. “It named it Project Emperor, after all.”

  “The PIMP trying to turn me into the next Emperor?” Hiral said.

  “Not… precisely,” the PIMP construct said. “There was also the possibility—given the unique nature of Genesis and its connection to the external universe and timeline—that you would not become the next Emperor, but the Emperor.”

  “I created Kindred on Genesis,” Amin Thett said. “I also created humans—along with the others—with the potential to become Kindred.”

  “You did what?!” Li’l Ur asked, shock making him practically shout the question.

  “A little background coding,” Amin Thett said with a wave of one of his free hands. “They also have the potential to become any number of other things through advancement. It’s one of the reasons your undead-process worked so well. Or, didn’t you notice it?”

  “I… uh…” Li’l Ur mumbled, his head ducking down and to the side in thought.

  “What are you saying?” Laseen said. “You thought the boy here was going to become you?”

  “Not just become me,” Amin Thett said. “I wondered if whoever met my strict requirements was me? Time was convoluted on Genesis, and if we could create the races that we were born from, would it be so surprising if my origin began after I died?”

  “Wait, are you saying you don’t remember your birth? Er, your childhood?” Hiral said.

  “I remember nothing before my ascent to true power,” Amin Thett said. “You call me a Progenitor because I am one of the ones who created your race, and the others on Genesis. Out in my universe, though, people would call me a god. Or a devil, in some circles. Maybe a demon lord.” The seated giant gave a dismissive wave of a hand. “None of those labels matters. What does, is those of us at this level, we don’t remember what we were before.

  “Were we mortals? Were we humans? Where do we come from? I don’t have an answer to those things about myself. My earliest memory is awakening as a god.”

  “Mine as well,” Li’l Ur said.

  “You’re a god?” Yanily asked, then leaned over to Seeyela. “Should I be impressed by that? They’re all acting like it’s a big thing.”

  Seeyela just shrugged. “It sounds like maybe a big deal? It also sounds like something that can die.”

  “I was a god of a sort,” Li’l Ur said. “Not of the religious, worshipped variety, but of the level of power. Most of us were, with only a few being what you might call divine.”

  “Oddly enough, the divine variety usually remembered their origins,” Amin Thett said. “And they tended to be real jerks about it.”

  “Endless bullying,” Li’l Ur agreed. “It’s not to say all who reached our level experienced the same loss of memory, but, oddly enough, those of us who spent the longest on Genesis did.”

  “A coincidence?” Amin Thett suggested. “I don’t know, but I wanted to. Putting a sliver of myself in the sword was one chance for me to find out.”

  “I’m not you,” Hiral said.

  “Clearly,” Amin Thett agreed. “And I’m honestly not sure if I’m disappointed or happy about that. I am, however, now sure why that’s true.”

  “And why is that?” Hiral asked, something in his stomach doing a small flip at the change in tone of Amin Thett’s voice. At the look on his face. Whatever he’d figured out, he didn’t really like it.

  “Because my plan to ride the sword outside the Black Gate succeeded. Out here, I can feel the truth of things, even weak as I am in this form. I understand now.”

  “What truth?” Seena said. “What do you understand.”

  “Why Genesis and normal time seem to interact so oddly, even accounting for the Black Gates and their ability to exist in all times at once,” Amin Thett said.

  “The Black Gates do that?” Hiral asked quietly, but the Progenitor in front of him was still going.

  “I understand the cycles—the resets—and how the runes have been contained. I see why things never really changed outside of a few outliers, and how it seemed like we created the races we were later born from.”

  Seemed like, he said. Is that not true?

  “I now know the real reason the Enemy are on Genesis—why they seemed to come and go at the beginning—and why we had such bouts of inspiration. Like we could imagine anything, nearly out of thin air, and the world itself would help bring it to fruition. Like it was scripted to happen.”

  Hiral blinked at the words. No, it couldn’t be…

  “It explains why nearly impossible things could be done with interspatial magic,” Amin Thett continued. “And why the obstacles we ran into were always a challenge, but something we could overcome and grow from. It even explains why we had a kind of time limit for being on Genesis.”

  “What are you saying?” Laseen said, none of her standard cackle anywhere to be heard.

  “Why do you think the Black Gate looks like a black dungeon portal?” Amin Thett asked them all. But, before any of them could respond, he answered his own question. “Because Genesis is a dungeon.”

  Everybody just sort of looked at each other at the statement. None of them had a response to it, except for a certain spearman. Even as Hiral and the others tried to wrap their heads around what it all could mean, Yanily asked a question.

  “Are we NPCs?”

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