Elysium's Multiverse

Chapter 139

Chapter 139

Riven yawned on the bed, still unable to take his mask or Gluttony-modified Chalgathi items off much to his irritation, while replaying the recorded scenes over and over again. “What a two timing cock sucking mother fucker.”

Azmoth grunted his acknowledgement from inside the small hotel room, barely small enough to even fit at all while hunched, and the sound of giggling in the shower nearby caused Riven’s eye to twitch. Somehow the water was still running here, and Riven was really fucking pissed that he wasn’t able to enjoy a hot shower right about now because he was stuck in this evil contraption encasing his body.

He glanced over to where Fay peaked out, long white hair dripping wet, to wink his way while wringing water with her hands onto the floor. “Stop getting so worked up about some human spreading lies. They’re rather good at that kind of thing, and you’re an easy target. How about you relieve some of that pent up stress and come join me, hmmm?”

The sky-blue woman stepped out of the bathroom, spreading out her wings and raising her chin and crossing one leg in front of the other while putting her bare body on full display for the first time since Riven had contracted her. Riven had done a pretty good job at ignoring her teasing up until now, but he nearly died of a nose bleed and coughed back a quick retort. Despite all the previous banter, she really was incredibly pretty.

Azmoth’s head turned, a growl echoing through the room as the hellscape brutalisk pointed two clawed left hands at the dripping wet succubus with intent. “I will catapult evil succubus out window if tempt Riven. Riven not simp, I smash succubus if try!”

“Oh come on!” Fay said with a brilliantly white smile, bouncing on the tiptoes of her feet on purpose while smirking Riven’s way while she - for the first time ever - had Riven’s undivided attention due to the shock-and-awe tactic she’d just pulled. “Don’t be such a buzzkill Azmoth, it’s not like he can even take the suit off anyways - I’m just teasing!”

Azmoth thought about it for a moment, cocked his head, and settled back down with a nod. “That true.”

“What a walking talking chastity belt…” Fay rolled her eyes while muttering, checking for Athela and seeing she still wasn’t back - only to put on a seductive grin and waltz over to Riven on the bed. Casually swinging her bare legs over the motionless vampiric warlock who continued to stare with his hands behind his head and notification screens buzzing in front of him - she swiped a hand through the cortex prompts to dismiss them.

“Hmmm…” Fay muttered with a chuckle, aggressively pinning Riven’s left hand when he reached up to push her off. Her smile grew, and she pushed her face closer to his and flexed her toned abdomen while clenching his hand in excitement. “I’d been under the impression that you may not like girls… but I see now that isn’t the case…”

Hand trailing down to where she was straddling him, she came to a stop just below his stomach to a growing bulge. Her smile faded, her eyes softened, and she took on a serious look to retract her hand. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for getting my brother out of there. It means a lot to me, what you did, and most warlocks wouldn’t ever even consider it unless it benefited them. When we get back to Brightsville, I’d really like you to meet him… So again, thank you.”

Riven, who still wore the porcelain mask that hid all his expressions, was suddenly very thankful for the item that hid the complex series of emotions crossing over his features. “You’re welcome Fay. Though I have to admit, you’re a bit mean doing this to me.”

Fay’s smile returned and the succubus let out a singsong laugh, caressing his chin with one hand before sliding off and laying down in the crook of his arm with folded wings. “It’s rather fun, knowing you can’t do anything about it. However I don’t believe you even would if you could. Would you, Mr. Chastity? You’re too righteous to use your demons like that aren’t you - Mr. Highschool Hero? God forbid you take a willing servant because of that power dynamic you keep talking about!”

Her narrowed black eyes looked up teasingly, pushing her soft chest into his side, and one hand settled on his rib cage to play with the carnivorous teeth that randomly shifted with occasional low hissing sounds.

He paused in his response, thinking it over, and didn’t reply for almost twenty seconds. “I don’t really know anymore. Maybe I would do it.”

Fay’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, and genuine shock was evident underneath her small black horns when her mouth started to drop.

The door swung open, and Athela barged in from the night with a cackling laugh while in her spider form. She wiggled her two front arachnid feet in front of her, bags of groceries in either foot, and screeched out her victory. “I AM THE ONE! THE BRINGER OF ALCOHOL, THE TYRANT OF THE CHICAGO GROCERY STORES, THE STOMPER OF BABIES! I-”

She quickly shut up when she saw Fay laying there on the bed next to Riven, and she dropped the grocery bags with a thud. “You’re in MY SPOT BITCH!”

With a screeching lunge, she transformed into her humanoid arshakai form mid air and landed on top of Fay before roughly and playfully flinging her off the bed. “BEGONE!”

Fay crashed against the wall and scowled, rubbing the back of her head with visible irritation and extended fangs that she rarely put on display. Her shoulders heaved in scarcely seen rage, and her right eyebrow twitched. “You can have the OTHER side Athela, I was there FIRST!”

The succubus launched herself back, putting all of her meager strength into a full-facial slap that cracked across Athela’s cheek with a surprised yelp from the arachnid woman. “Don’t be such a JERK!”

The audible slap was so loud that it caused a brief moment of silence, with Fay breathing heavily and glaring at Athela with almost murderous intent to the surprise of everyone.

Athela was stunned, realizing how obviously pissed Fay was - and not in a funny or teasing way either. Athela’s own face dropped seconds later, and she met the gaze of her friend with a stern coldness while rising up off the bed to square off with the other woman. “Oh? Does the pretty little succubus want to play dirty? Are you mad because of my interference with your little schoolgirl crush? Maybe you should rethink your place in all this, and I'd be happy to give you a tiny reminder about the hierarchy here.”

Athela’s claws extended in a threatening flash and her six bladed arachnid limbs ripped out of her back, only for Fay to hiss with unholy curses rippling across her hands in a ready gesture to cast spells. The succubus extended her wings in challenge, and Azmoth looked on with startled curiosity - stepping over and reaching a hand out to pull them apart from one another before any serious damage was done.

But Riven intervened first with a contractual command.

“Stop it immediately. Both of you.”

Both women turned heads to stare at Riven, who was swinging his feet around and getting off the bed.

He cracked his neck, stretched, and pointed to a corner of the room devoid of anything but a small wastebasket. “Athela, you’re in spider-princess time out.”

“WAHT!?” Athela gasped, utterly appalled at the idea - and obviously irritated at the fact that he was taking Fay’s side. “You can’t be serious, AND SPIDER-PRINCESS TIME OUT IS NOT A THING!”

“It is tonight, and you’’ll sit in that corner until I say so while you figure out how to be nicer to Fay.” Riven stated flatly, then turned to the beaming succubus who looked like she’d just won a jackpot lottery. He then pointed to the bathroom where the shower was still running. “And you, you’re in time out as well. Sit in that room and think about how much you overreacted to Athela’s shenanigans until I come get you.”

Fay’s beaming smile dropped like a cinderblock, and the succubus’ bare shoulders immediately slumped. “But she-!”

“Not a word.” Riven cut her off with a wave of his hand, looking back and forth between the two demonic women with an eventual shake of his head and not wanting to show any favoritism. “Azmoth is the only one here not behaving like a child, so he and I are going to go enjoy all this alcohol Athela stole by ourselves for the next little while until I feel like you’ve both had sufficient time to grow up. Got it?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Fay sputtered something unintelligible, then glared angrily over at Athela who was making a face at the succubus while sticking out her black tongue.

“You just earned yourself another hour after Fay gets out.” Riven stated, pointing a finger at Athela only for the arshakai demoness to fiercely scowl and humph with folded arms. “Meanwhile, I’ll continue to monitor the cortex forums for any sign of the impending attacks. I’m sure they’ll happen sooner or later, but that may be hours, days, or even weeks out. Who knows. If you both want to be useful while in time out, you can do the same. Come on Azmoth, let’s go to the roof. The stars tonight look rather nice.”

***

Riven sat beside his large, armored minion while running over all the numerous topics in the cortex forums. There were hundreds of forums present in Chicago, most of them talking about recent events concerning him - but there were many others talking about forming groups to go monster hunting to cull the local threats. There were topics on bartering, trading, crafting using the new system-related Pillars, discussion groups on theories concerning how different pillars worked, and it very quickly became apparent that there was a strong orientation towards the Machine Pillar all across the city here. There were certainly mixes between the other pillars too though, with discussion groups on literally every single pillar available - including his own Unholy Foundational Pillar, but that was by far the smallest group of people here when compared to the others.

• The Unholy Foundation Pillar, with the major sub-pillars of Blood, Shadow, Death, Infernal, Depravity, and Chaos.
• The Holy Foundation Pillar, with the major sub-pillars of Light, Heaven, Grace, Moon, Sun, and Judgement.
• The Fae Foundation Pillar, with the major sub-pillars of Volcano, Storm, Ocean, Glacial, Swamp, and Forest.
• The Archaic Foundation Pillar, with the major sub-pillars of Arcane, Void, Metal, Illusion, Alteration, and Time.
• The Harmony Foundation Pillar, with the major sub-pillars of Body, Mind, Primal, Chi, Karma, and Zodiac.
• The Machine Foundation Pillar, with the major sub-pillars of Hacking, Armaments, Integration, Mecha, Interweb, and Sci-Tech.

Literally every single pillar and all their subpillars were represented in the forums though.

There were groups of civilians who hadn’t picked classes yet trying to figure out how to best approach their choices and routes to acquiring different classes, as well as groups talking about ways to expand Pillar orientations to better fit the molds they wanted to buy into. There were groups of varying classes here too with experimental builds already being copied or expanded upon by up-and-coming people who were showing incredible enthusiasm for the magic and mystery these system-classes held potential for. There were discussion groups on whether or not physical, magical, or miracle based classes were best - specialist sub-forums for groups of individuals with the same classes, and he even found a group for warlocks which piqued his interest immensely. However all of the warlocks here were far below his own level, and not even one of them had been granted more than their very first demon due to a lack of demons wanting to bind with them - which was kind of hilarious to Riven and made him feel good about himself. Some of the warlocks here were even having trouble binding a single minion.

Regardless, most of the classers here were oriented to the Machine Foundation Pillar, which is what the Earth-made military had apparently adopted for its main branch. There’d been an army reserve base here, as well as an airforce base, and there were talks about modifying fighter jets through ‘Engineers’ - which were essentially the equivalent of mages, but for the Machine Foundational Pillar and all its subpillars. It was quite fascinating to read about, and Riven often found himself over the past two days getting lost in magical theories that made his own will to explore magic come to light.

He’d always thought magic was pretty neat, who wouldn’t? But it’d also been a tool for him to survive. Here, with these discussion groups, it had re-ignited a spark of wonder about what the future held for him. Magic was… fascinating, intriguing, awe inspiring, and he found himself getting almost giddy while talking under an alias to other online theorists about how the pillars worked. He often was the one giving them insights because he was a lot more advanced than any of the others, but with dozens of other people picking his brain - it was rather stimulating for the mind.

“Man… This would have been a much nicer place to start out in.” Riven muttered, pulling out a wine bottle from one of the bags Athela had brought and pulling it to his chest. The teeth of the great maw casually popped the cork off, and little slithering wisps of darkness encircled the handle before starting to drink.

Riven watched under the starry sky, sitting there on the rooftop overlooking the city, rather amused that the gluttonous amulet was so careful to not spill any of the alcohol at all. It also reacted to his own thoughts, allowing him to almost communicate with the Chalgathi artifacts silently, in a way he hadn’t experienced before other than with his staff.

Feeling a very slight buzz come on, he put the bottle back down to the side and glanced over at Azmoth who was playing with a rubix cube barely big enough for the demon not to smash to pieces using his large claws. “Not feeling it?”

“Alcohol not work on Azmoth, just taste gross.” Azmoth stated with a shrug, noting how Riven was motioning towards one of the vodka bottles that’d been drained. “Disgusting.”

Riven spluttered a laugh, resting on his elbows and kicking his feet out. “Well I suppose it isn’t for everyone.”

“Did you try again?”

“Try what?”

“Upload images to forum.”

The vampire sighed, then pulled up his notifications again. “Yeah, but maybe I’m missing something. Let me try again.”

[Welcome to the Panu Cortex!

Here you will find forum categories and branching categories that you can scroll through subjects, post your own topics, acquire or share video feeds, create enemies or alliances in, and even bargain for goods here like a marketplace. Be warned that each of these have strict sets of rules, and you will receive a notification if your content is prohibited as it is denied entry. Most prohibited material from being made public involves key events in the world of Panu or even in your local area, secrets of Panu that the Elysium Administrator wishes to be found rather than publicly exploited, information released too early regarding worlds outside of Panu, and spam content. Video feeds can only be uploaded by request. You must ask the administrator directly for uploading content, and may or may not get your request recognized. Sometimes the administrator may also post video content even without an express request. In order to request video uploading, just mentally think of the time and place you want to upload and wait for a response.

Please note that restrained or imprisoned personnel may not access the forums of Panu’s cortex. Forums extend to only to places you have visited and guilds you have joined before with the exceptions of the main page discussion board and the world quest message boards- both of which are world-spanning and more heavily moderated. No forums outside key areas visited and guilds can exist other than Global Forums.

Feel free to select from one of the already categorized subjects, or you may use the search function for more in depth selections of guild forums. Your options are as follows:

• Main Page & Announcements (Global)
• Power Ladders, Guild & Individual (Global)
• World Quests & World Quest Ladders (Global)
• Brightsville
• Deepnest
• Chicago

NOTE: Continental differences along Panu have been detected in optional selections. To acquire access to continent-wide forums or map-sharing specs, please visit more locations along the continents you have traveled between.]

Riven frowned, already knowing this probably wouldn’t work due to earlier failures, but hey - maybe persistence was key.

[You have failed to post in Brightsville’s forums. You may view these forums, but are too far away to add any content yourself.]

[You have failed to post in Deepnest’s forums. You may view these forums, but are too far away to add any content yourself.]

Riven’s grimace grew harder, seeing a couple topics on Allie’s war, the integration of more elvish slaves, the acquisition of a new elvish town, talks on the purging of the prison back in Brightsville with public beheadings of the inmates there, and large rewards being posted for any information on Riven’s location. A public notice had been set up with details on how he’d disappeared, with massive sums of Elysium coins concerning clues that led to his finding.

Allie must be pretty worried because he hadn’t used the guild hall’s teleport home option after being swept away. He wanted to reach out and let her know he was ok, but that wasn’t really a thing that was available to him. He had to wonder just what she thought, and wondered whether or not she’d banished the Blood Moon Requiem from their planet after this other mishap that’d happened on their turf for the 2nd time. No doubt she had serious suspicions about them, but at the same time that could also mean she would keep them around to try and peel whatever information she could off of the people who’d been there when his Chalgathi artifacts had mutated.

He went back to Chicago’s forums next, and again tried to upload footage from his own memories. He concentrated hard on recent events, trying to display the thoughts and images flashing through his mind, only to scowl in irritation at the next pop up concerning his attempt.

[Your request for uploading video content has been denied. Reasons for denial: Lack of control over this area. Conflict of interest with parties holding control of this area. Lack of defined footage.

For higher success rates concerning uploading video content, please review the following: Gain control over this area. Destroy conflicting interests holding sway over this area. Attempt to ask the administrator directly for pre-approval of an event, or approval to record an event prior to event happening, providing defined footage and less strain on the Administrator’s systems.]

Riven’s glare circled back to one of the forum topics with news networks blasting him as the villain who’d killed Senator James. Knocking his knuckles against the side of his porcelain mask and adjusting his hood, he continued to stare out across Chicago towards the downtown area where city lights illuminated the tall, steel buildings across the backdrop of the ocean and night sky.

“This is bullshit.”