After A Billion-Year Torture, I Returned As A Transcendent Player

Chapter 81: Finn

The fish looked at Aidan, and Aidan looked at the fish, and the auroras kept quietly ending the world around them both.

[You dare arrive here.] The voice that touched his mind was bright and clear and strangely young, like a bell that had only just learned it could ring. [The others who arrived, I destroyed. They crawled and flew and burrowed toward my pond with their greedy hearts out. So I rained on them until they stopped.]

The fish did a small, proud loop in the water.

[I am very good at raining destruction.]

’It talks like a child.’ Aidan studied the blue flames curling off its scales, and the dead, ruined world stretching out below the beautiful lights. ’A child with the output of a natural disaster.’

"I noticed," he said aloud, nodding at the shattered horizon. "Nice work. Very thorough."

[Thank you.] The fish preened, fins flaring. [Wait. No. You are also an invader. Why am I accepting your compliment?]

"Because it was sincere."

[...That is a good reason.] It swam a slow, troubled circle. [You are strange. The others screamed and grabbed. You sit there and say true things. What do you want, strange one?]

"Honestly? My talent dragged me here. I’m a summoner." Aidan settled cross-legged on the empty air of the vision, making himself comfortable. "It shows me beings worth meeting. Today it showed me you."

[A summoner.] The fish considered this with great seriousness. [You collect powerful friends.]

"That’s a nicer way of putting it than most people manage, yeah."

[Am I powerful enough to be collected?]

"You destroyed an entire world’s worth of invaders by existing aggressively. You’re overqualified."

The fish did three delighted loops, flames flaring bright enough to paint a fresh aurora overhead, and somewhere below, a mountain range quietly collapsed under the resulting light-fall.

[Oops,] the fish said, without any remorse whatsoever.

Aidan laughed, honest and surprised. "Dayum."

"Alright, before anything else. What’s your name?"

The fish stopped swimming entirely.

[...Name?]

"The word people call you. The thing that’s yours." Aidan tilted his head. "Mine’s Aidan."

[Aidan.] The fish tried the word slowly, tasting each sound. [Aidan. That is yours. The word that means you.] A long pause, and then, smaller: [I do not have one. I was born, and I guarded, and I rained. Nobody was left alive long enough to call me anything.]

Something in Aidan’s chest tightened a little at that, familiar in a way he didn’t examine too closely.

"Then I’ll give you one, if you want it."

The fish shot up to the pond’s surface so fast the water didn’t even ripple. [YES. Give me the word that means me.]

Aidan looked at it properly. At the blue fire that burned underwater without steam, the scales that turned light into catastrophe, the whole ridiculous, magnificent, lonely creature of it.

"Finn," he said.

[...Finn.] The fish went very still. [Finn. Finn. FINN.] Each repetition got louder in his mind, brighter, until the word rang like a struck chime. [It is small, and it is mine. I am Finn. Aidan, I am FINN.]

"Yeah, buddy." Aidan grinned. "You are."

Finn celebrated by leaving the pond entirely.

The fish jumped, and simply didn’t come back down, swimming up into the open sky wrapped in a flowing ribbon of ethereal water that followed it like a loyal river, blue flames and liquid light spiraling around each other as it looped through the air above the mountain.

[LOOK. Aidan, LOOK. The sky is also water if you insist hard enough.]

"That’s genuinely how you’re doing that? Insisting?"

[Insisting very hard,] Finn confirmed solemnly.

As it swam its loops overhead, the talent’s vision unfolded the rest of what Finn was, and Aidan read the sheet with slowly rising eyebrows.

[Lazurith Pyrekoi]

[Rank: Divine | Final Stage]

—Attributes—

[Attack = Divine-10]

[Speed = Divine-10]

[Defense = Divine-10]

[Health = Divine-10]

[Control = Divine-10]

—Talents—

Myriad Axiomatic Scales (X) Lapisblaze Domain (SSS)

’Final Stage Divine-rank. Every stat at the ceiling. An X-rank talent on top of it.’ Aidan let out a low whistle. ’My summoning talent doesn’t do things by halves, does it?’

[You are reading me,] Finn observed, drifting down to hover in front of his face, ethereal water dripping upward off its fins. [What do my words say?]

"Myriad Axiomatic Scales. X-rank." Aidan felt the shape of it through the vision, and it was staggering. Every scale on Finn’s body was a written law, a small axiom of reality, light into disaster, heat into cold, force into stillness, each scale holding one rule and the whole body holding thousands. "Your scales rewrite the rules of whatever touches their light."

[Yes. The rules are pretty. I wear them.]

"And Lapisblaze Domain." A territory of blue fire and living water, unfolded at will, inside which Finn’s axioms applied to everything and Finn itself was very close to unkillable. "Your home field, wherever you decide home is."

[Home is where my pond is,] Finn agreed, then paused, fins drooping slightly. [My pond is here. And here is...]

It didn’t finish the sentence, and it didn’t need to.

Below the beautiful auroras, the world it had been born to guard was a graveyard, and both of them had been politely not mentioning it for the whole conversation.

That was when the third voice arrived.

It didn’t announce itself the way Finn’s did, bright and ringing. It rose up out of everything at once, the mountain, the dead horizon, the sky itself, old past any measuring and tired in a way that made even Aidan’s billion years sit up and pay attention.

[Little flame,] the will of the world said, and the whole vision leaned in around the warmth of it. [Is that a name you’re wearing?]

[Mystery Voice! You are here.] Finn spun to face everywhere at once. [I am Finn! The strange one gave me the word that means me!]

[Finn.] The ancient voice turned the name over the way hands turn something precious. [It suits you, small one.] Then it settled its attention on Aidan, and he felt himself weighed, gently and completely, in the space of a single breath.

[Summoner. You arrived at the right time, and I am grateful for it.]

"Grateful?" Aidan glanced at the ruined world below. "I mostly just showed up."

[You showed up now.] Something in the voice loosened, a burden shifting after a very long time held. [This dimension has been dead for an age. I have been holding its bones together long past my strength, for one reason alone. I did not want the little one to die with it.]

Finn went very quiet in the air.

[It was born of my last strength to guard what was already lost. It rained on invaders and called it purpose, and it never once knew it was guarding a grave.] The voice softened. [It deserves waters that are not a tomb. Take it with you, summoner. Let it see the world out there. All the worlds out there.]

[Mystery voice.] Finn said, small. [If I go...]

[I will finally rest, little flame. That is not a sad thing. I have watched you swim for an age. Now I would like to close my eyes knowing you are still swimming somewhere.]

The mountain trembled, gently, and cracks of soft golden light began spreading through the sky at the vision’s edges, the dimension’s long-held bones finally, gratefully, letting go.

Aidan stood and bowed to everything at once, low and unhurried, the way he’d learned respect was owed in places older than himself.

"I’ll take care of the little menace," he said. "You have my word."

[I know,] the will said, and he could hear the smile in it. [You give things their names. That is not a small kind of care.]

The world came apart in gold.

Finn shot to Aidan’s side as the summoning contract flared to life between them, ethereal water wrapping them both, and the last thing Aidan felt of that dying dimension was its ancient will letting out one long, contented breath, and going still.

[Summoning successful.]

[Exotic Summon acquired: Finn, the Lazurith Pyrekoi.]

Aidan opened his eyes on the quiet valley floor of his own Legendary-rank dimension, and a fish wreathed in blue flame and flowing water was already doing excited loops around his head.

[Aidan. AIDAN. Is this the world out there? It is very green. Where is your pond? I have many questions.]

’Another Final Stage Divine-rank for the family.’ Aidan watched Finn chase its own aurora light across the valley, and couldn’t stop the grin spreading across his face. ’Arthur’s going to lose his entire mind.’