“Could that even happen?”
Retvik paced up and down the room, not in his calm, controlled self, but in a much more panicked state. Behind him, three unnaturally tall and skinny Ethran-types sat on a tattered brown sofa. One of them was Tenuk, the fellow Dessaron he had worked alongside for the last nearly thirteen years now. The other two looked very similar to Tenuk, just in different colour schemes. White and ice blue, and green and red compared to Tenuk’s navy blue and silver.
All three Retha raised a hand to speak, but Tenuk and his green counterpart backed down.
“Yes, but not by a current-stage Deitic body, and certainly not by a single.”
Retvik gave the three of them a glare. He was a general of the Stratos, of course he was a smart Retha, but that sentence made no sense to him. He glanced at Tenuk, hoping he’d help.
“What my brother is saying is that this wasn’t caused by Kronospasts, Toanex, Allagon or Anexartatiai. Over time, the power of Deitics fade as we multiply, fight each other and make other Deitic races extinct. Of course it’s highly possible that such an ancient Deitic has survived and messed with our collection of parallels in order to mess with us.”
“That still makes no sense!” Retvik roared. “And what in the Light do you mean by brother? You never told me you had brothers!”
Tenuk smiled. “To be fair, neither did you.”
“My brother is an uncaring bastard who ceased all contact with me until recently!” Retvik needed to sit down. “And that has nothing to do with this conversation!”
“Actually, it does…” the green one piped up. “With these parallels all merging, there are bound to be at least a good 20% of them where your higher ranking brother does keep in touch with you. In about 70% of all parallel universes, you are a Godkiller and in half of them you regain your brother’s respect. It is all about probabilities there. What Kohra and Tenuk are both not telling you is that you are one of the very few mortal beings not heavily affected by what is going on?”
Kohra nodded and continued. “Well said, Levik. Because of our Deitic nature, Tenuk, myself and Levik all have a 32% chance of becoming one of the Dessaron, the final 4% could be almost anyone. Being Deitics also means that we can see these things happening and are considerably less affected by it. That is why the three of us are here. For your two friends, it becomes a lot more complicated. There are five main plausible scenarios for your little friend Arkay, and as many as thirty for Elksia.”
Retvik took a moment to sit down and take all of this in. The whole idea of universes merging was unfathomable to him. Eventually, he thought of something to say. “A 70% chance of me being a Dessaron seems rather unrealistic, considering how there are infinite parallel universes.”
The three Retha all shook their heads. Tenuk decided to explain. “Yes, there are infinite parallel universes, but the only ones currently merging are those within a certain scope, fulfilling a certain criteria. What that criteria is, we are unsure, but it is definitely no more than 100 parallels affected in this horrible mess.”
“How do you know?”
“Any more and all the parallels would collapse on one another, form a singularity and create a completely new universe via a big bang, creating a new set of parallels. Very possibly in a different shape and with different base numbers.”
Whatever Tenuk just said went straight over Retvik’s head, apart from the word collapse, which he assumed to be bad. Tenuk wasn’t normally like this. Heck, Retvik wasn’t normally like this. He was supposed to be smarter than this, not some drooling lunatic, even when faced with three Deitics. Maybe this loss of intelligence was something worth bri-
“Unfortunately for you, Retvik, many of your own parallels are not exactly, um, smart. Actually it turns out that a lot of parallel Retviks are all brawn no brains, rather than a nice combination of the two. Merge it all together, you get a dumb vok. That is why you feel stupid.”
“Gee, thank you, Tenuk…” Retvik pouted. “Is there anything I or anyone else can do about this?” He silently congratulated himself on asking a sensible and useful question, but his joy quickly turned to disappointment and panic once more. The three Krono-Retha shook their heads simultaneously.
“This is a Deitic matter, it can only be sorted out by Deitics!” Levik exclaimed.
“Worse,” Kohra continued, “Your Godkilling powers have been split over many, even if you could bring together a coherent team, in your current state you cannot actually harm Deitics without the… proper equipment.”
Retvik’s face dropped further. “You mean I am completely helpless?”
“For now, yes.”
Tenuk, Kohra and Levik watched as Retvik sulked off to look glumly out of the window.
“He’ll be okay, right?” Kohra whispered.
“I hope so…” Tenuk sighed, before getting up to comfort his friend. “I really hope so…”