In the end, I went with the best way of telling my story to this strange person from a whole different universe. Specifically, with Cassiel’s permission, I possessed them in order to push as much of my life story as I could manage into their head. It was a pretty tall order. This wasn’t something that could be summarized in a nice little pamphlet or even a single book. I was pretty sure it would take at least a few hundred thousand words to get even a fair handle on my life.

  Part of me kept screaming that this was stupid, a bad idea that was going to end up completely ruining things. But if this Cassiel was really from not just another reality but also from a time in that reality that was so similar to my own, then this wouldn't be spoiling nearly as much as it would have otherwise. They were already keeping plenty of secrets from the rest of the actual Seosten, that much was clear. There was also the fact that I had never heard of them in the future. I was pretty sure at this point that that meant they weren't around anymore then. And honestly, I was starting to think the reason was this rift. What if they actually ended up being sent home through that rift somehow? It was sort of at least kinda vaguely possible, wasn't it?

  In any case, I had to make a decision, and this was the best one I could think of. Maybe it would go wrong. Maybe trusting Cassiel was a terrible idea and I was going to end up regretting it more than I could ever guess. Or maybe I would regret everything if I didn't share my story with them. There was no way to know ahead of time. I just had to take a shot and hope it was right.

  So, I took over a minute to push everything relevant about my life and what was happening into their mind. Which kind of helped showing just how ridiculous my story was. It should have taken seconds to give them just a basic summary like that, but there was so much to push into their mind that it took so much longer. I wasn’t even giving them every single detail, just enough to get the general idea of who I was, where and when I’d come from, and what I was trying to do.

  Once that was done, as we’d agreed ahead of time, I took over Cassiel’s body and started walking again, through this absurdly large forest. They were going to need time to process all that, but we also couldn’t just sit around forever. So I was going to make them walk and keep searching for as long as it took until my new companion here sorted out all that information.

  They had also given me permission to look through their memories so I would have a better idea who they were and where they came from. Though they did make me promise that I wouldn’t do anything to those memories. That was an obvious sore spot for them, and it really wasn’t hard to see how much they were extending themself by giving me permission to do something like that. I didn’t even need to see any of the memories to understand there was something there. Cassiel had had a bad experience in the past, something to do with their memories being tampered with. And now they were actually giving me permission to go in there and… yeah, no wonder they seemed to practically tremble when they had voiced that permission and asked me to be careful.

  Either way, I didn't want to go too deep into those memories. Not only because it would be distracting when I was trying to focus on searching this forest (one of us had to stay on task, even if I did still have ghosts helping out), but it also felt like a violation somehow. Even with their permission, even though I was sharing so much of my own story with them, I just didn’t think I should be delving too far into those memories. They were already nervous about that whole thing, so I was going to be careful and just skim the very basic ideas while walking along.

  Even then, those basic ideas were a real doozy. Cassiel’s original human name was Cassidy. They came from a world where there were superheroes, like a comic book. Their family was some sort of super Mafia group that controlled various heroes, villains and parts of the government in their home city of Detroit. After getting their own powers, which had to do with projecting paint from their hands that could create different effects depending on what color it was, Cassidy had worked with their own little team to try to help people while finding out more about their family’s gang or group or whatever. Then they had gained a new set of powers. Except something went wrong. They were supposed to be getting new powers, but they ended up in Tartarus instead.

  Wait a minute, hold up, go back. Powers. How did they gain powers again? I’d kind of skimmed a little too much over that part in my efforts to not delve too deeply and to just get the very basics. But something about it made me feel like I needed to actually double-check the details.

  Oh. Oh. An orb. They got their powers from a small glowing orb that appeared in front of them. When someone touched it, they were sent to a familiar gray void, a place I’d heard plenty about. Tartarus. They were sent to Tartarus, heard a voice, saw pictures in the gray fog around them that were pulled from their own memories, then they were sent back out into their world with a random superpower of some sort. That was what had happened to Cassiel, or Cassidy as they had been back then. They had just found out about their criminal Mafia family and were running for their life, only to find an orb, touch it, and end up with powers so they could help people.

  Yeah, there was more to all that. I knew there was. But I was skimming it, because the main point wasn’t what was going on with Cassiel themself. No, the main point was the orb, and what they heard when they touched it. They heard a woman’s voice say, ‘Summus Proelium.’ The same name as the project that had created the Olympians. And that voice--oh. It was Sariel.

  Wait, I knew this. I knew all about this. Grandfather had told us about it before. God, it felt like that had been centuries ago (well, definitely centuries--millennia even--in the future). I knew what this was. He’d told us about all this back then, I’d just put it out of my mind for a long time.

  It was all about the orb that Sariel made, the spell to reopen the way to Tartarus for her people, the thing that had helped lead to this truce we were living in now. Err, the truce we were living in back in the future, that was. Sariel had created a spell, an enchanted glowing orb thing, that was meant to reopen the way to Tartarus so the Seosten could start empowering their people again.

  I wasn’t sure what was actually going on with that or if they had started making new Tartarus-gifted yet (or if they had listened to the warnings about that we had sent to them as soon as we found out about the Whispers working for the intelligent evil universe), but that orb had ended up becoming sapient after passing through Tartarus. It hadn’t stayed in Tartarus, it had gone beyond that and used Tartarus’s own power to create more worlds like this one. It created a bunch of copies of this Earth in these different universes, and changed various details about them as it went, because it was trying to find Sariel. It was trying to find its mother and didn’t understand that it couldn’t just create a copy of the Earth and find her like that, because it couldn’t copy anything except humans. It couldn’t actually create Seosten or any other species. No matter how many different copies of Earth it made, it could never find Sariel there. That was--yeah, it was sad. The orb was like a toddler with god-like power. It wanted to find its mother, its creator, and… and… wow. Remembering all that, and actually seeing the orb in Cassiel’s memories, just reinforced how sad all that really was. This orb was so powerful, a sapient magic spell, and it just wanted its mother.

  Of course, Sariel had wanted to go find this orb as soon as she found out about it. But Grandfather convinced her that it would be a bad idea. Apparently the orb was so powerful that it was actually spread across the entire timeline at once, on multiple worlds. If it found out Sariel was there, it would instantly go to her. Which sounded fine, except that meant that every version of itself across every world on every timeline would go to her. Every version of itself would time travel to get to her at the same moment, because it didn’t know any better. It was a kid, and it was scared and alone. So it--they would all go to her at once and the resulting explosion would utterly annihilate every world it had created. It--yeah, it wouldn’t be pretty. Which was why Sariel had agreed to take things slowly and be careful about all that. I didn’t know what was going on with that either or what they had been doing to work on safely reuniting the orb with its mother, but at the very least, it hadn’t actually happened by the time I had come back into the past with Ehn.

  So Cassiel was from one of those worlds. They had touched the orb a second time, which was supposed to give them new powers or change the ones they had. Instead, they had found themself not just taken to Tartarus for a brief time, but somehow left there, after something went wrong.

  That was kind of an understatement. One of those horrifying, world-destroying monsters had shown up inside that small Tartarus space where Cassiel had been. Then it seemed like the orb had… sort of sent them through time to another part of Tartarus to get them away from the thing. It sent them to Sariel, its own mother, when she and Lucifer had been saving Chayyiel while the littlest Olympian was trapped in that place. That--that had to mean the orb could have gone to Sariel itself in that moment, right? Instead, it chose to send Cassiel, clearly to save her life. It gave up its chance to get to its mother and instead sent Cassiel because they were in danger.

  There was a lot to unpack there, a lot of things to think through. But we really didn’t have time for it. The most relevant thing was that Cassiel here was from one of those old worlds. They had obviously been sent to Sariel so she could get them away from Tartarus and the monsters inside. I wasn't sure exactly why the orb couldn't have just sent them back to their own world, but maybe that wouldn't have worked. Instead, they were sent to the past, right to where Sariel and Lucifer could help them. The time travel would have been impressive enough on its own, but the orb had also transformed them from a human (an orb-world human, which I was pretty sure was different than a human from this universe) to a Seosten. Cassiel was physically a Seosten. They could possess people, they had extended life, they were basically genetically a real Seosten in every way.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  It was going to take the rest of the Flique and I some time to really let that sink in. Time we didn't have right now, so I did my best to set it aside. The others could think about it and let me know when and if they came to any real conclusions. For the moment, we had to get out of this forest and find the others. Not to mention that rift. I needed to find and go through that thing.

  Eventually, I felt Cassiel’s consciousness start to assert itself as they came out of the lingering daze that my giant pile of information had left them in. As soon as it was clear that they were ready to control themself again, I promptly stepped out of them, quickly turning to be ready to reach out and catch them if they stumbled. “You okay? I know that was kind of a lot to take in.”

  Cassiel, for their part, made a weak little coughing sound and shook their head. “Are you sure you don't have some sort of understatement superpower in there with all the others?” They gave me a considering look and whistled softly. “I really thought I went through a lot, but you just… damn. You kinda make me look like I’ve just been sitting around doing nothing my entire life.”

  A slightly embarrassed blush touched my face as I shook my head. “Don't sell yourself short. You were pretty busy even before you ended up getting sent over here and transformed. I--my family is complicated enough, I don’t know what I’d do if they were some sort of Mafia Empire. Or even more dangerous than that. A Supervillain Mafia Empire who controlled the government. That’s just--eesh. Then you got sent here, transformed into a whole new species, and had to spend the past like… what, fifty years or so living as a Seosten on the Olympus?” I thought about how that had to feel, being a human thrust into something like that. Even if they were already involved in larger than life things with the whole superhero bit, it was still a lot. Fifty years as a Seosten, their age forever frozen as a teenager. “You’ve had plenty of your own shit to deal with. You--you’re pretty cool. And your life’s definitely just as completely absurd as mine.”

  It was their turn to blush, glancing away before murmuring, “And then I find out I’m running around with Zed and Lexi’s interdimensional sister.”

  “What?” I asked blankly, confused by that.

  Turning back to me, Cassiel blinked. “What, you didn’t… I mean when I saw your parents it was--oh you really skimmed things, didn’t you?” Quickly, she told me what she meant. Apparently back in her own world, she had met my parents, both of them. Dad was still a reporter and Mom was a cop, in Los Angeles. They visited Detroit, and brought their kids with them, a couple teenagers. A girl named Lexi, as in Alexandra, a name I remembered Dad mentioning at one point as belonging to some old childhood friend of his. And a boy named Zed, as in Zedekiah. As in Zedekiah Pericles. As in… oh. Oh.

  Okay I had a lot of questions. Like, my parents existed in that other world? And they had different kids? And… and… but my mother remembered the name Zedekiah, but he was from much earlier in the world’s history and Heretics didn’t exist, but Mom was born like a hundred years earlier, but… but…

  The orb did it, that was the only explanation. It was a flimsy one, and sounded a lot like saying a wizard did it, but in this case it was absolutely true. And in any case, I really couldn’t focus on that too much. I couldn’t let myself get distracted. Even if what I desperately wanted to do was go to this other world and talk to everyone I could get my hands on. God, I wanted to find out if they smelled the same as we did, if they thought the same way we did, how they thought about… everything. I wanted data, damn it. I wanted to find out what differences there were between our humans and their humans. I wanted to talk to them about the history of their world and pick through all the details. I wanted to tell them about this Earth, and tell the people on this Earth about that other one--those other ones. I wanted to share everything I could just to see what everyone thought about it, and what sort of different ideas their humans could come up with when they learned about ours, and vice versa. I wanted to find out if the Bystander Effect would do anything to them or not. I really wanted to know that last part. I wanted… I wanted… Urgh, I wanted to think about all that some more. But I couldn’t, not right now.

  While I was pushing those impulses down, Cassiel took a deep breath. “You really can’t let the other Olympians know anything about this. I mean, not just my thing, but yours. You can’t let them know about the future, about how much they’re all going to change. I almost want to ask you to try to get into my memories and erase it, which really says something. But then again, that might not even be necessary.” Their gaze moved back to me, expression unreadable. “I’m either gone or… well, gone in a different way in the future you come from. No one ever mentioned me, you never saw me until today, never even heard of me. I really doubt that’s because I just happened to be on another mission for the past couple years, from your point of view.”

  Yeah, I’d thought of that too, even if I hadn’t been sure how to bring it up. “Maybe this rift is how you get home?” I offered weakly, unsure if that was even possible. The rift wasn’t supposed to lead to that universe or anything. But maybe it had some sort of effect along those lines? Maybe it would send Cassiel back to their own world just because that was where they really belonged.

  But do they still belong there? Story brought up a bit tentatively. They were only sixteen when they left that world. Not only were they physically transformed into a Seosten, but they’ve lived in this universe for fifty years. That’s over three times as long as they lived in that other universe as a human. I just-- seriously, who’s to say where they truly belong right now, after all that?

  Shaking off my suggestion with a look that made it clear they really weren’t sure how they felt about the possibility, my new companion made a noise of uncertainty deep in their throat. “Either way, you can’t tell the others anything about this. You can’t let them find out even the slightest detail. It could--you know, really screw things up. You can’t tell them anything about who you are or what’s really going on. Not even about that… Ehn guy and how he screwed up. If they find out he’s not really a prisoner in Gehenna, even though one of our own Archangels is supposed to be his warden? It could screw up everything. They can’t know what caused this, or anything like that.”

  “I know,” I murmured softly, focusing for a moment on seeing through various ghosts as they continued searching in vain to find anything other than more and more forest. It was weird, the way the trees seemed to go on forever. Maybe that was another effect of the whole spatial anomaly thing? Maybe it was taking a small area of trees and making it seem much larger. Either way, this was getting so old at this point. I wanted to get out of this forest so I could go through the rift, be done with this, and go home, damn it. I wanted to go home.

  No sooner had I let that thought enter my mind, then things changed. I felt a strange quivering sort of sensation pass through the air, followed by a sharp queasiness in my stomach. It was sort of like the feeling that came when going through the drop on a rollercoaster. Or just falling in general. It made me stagger a little, my hand going out to catch myself against a tree.

  But Cassiel was affected even more. They groaned and collapsed, literally throwing up in the dirt before falling onto their side.

  It passed almost as soon as it had started. Well, the physical sensation did, anyway. But we weren't standing in the forest anymore. Instead, we were actually in front of a gas station. Yeah, a modern day gas station. Err, maybe not from my own present day. This gas station looked like it was from the 1950s.

  And it wasn't like we had simply been transported through time and space either. That wouldn’t explain the old cobblestone road under our feet. Or the fact that, as I looked over my shoulder, I could see some sort of peasant hut straight out of the dark ages, with a mud and thatch roof and all that. Next to that was an overturned jetliner airplane, which was sitting in partway inside of a saloon from the old west.

  Oh yeah, and next door to this gas station was an old cave with a fire pit and what looked like furs and leathers drying in front of it.

  And so on and so on it went. Everywhere we looked, as I helped Cassiel back to their feet, was a different piece of historical architecture. It was like this rift had suddenly twisted space and time completely and now we were standing in the middle of all of that.

  Was this happening at the other rifts? I felt like I should have been warned that this was going to be a thing. Unfortunately, I didn't exactly have the ability to complain about it. We were just going to have to figure out what to do about it.

  Grimacing, Cassiel put a hand on their stomach and looked around. “Okay, remember how I said we really can't let the others find out what's going to happen in the future? I feel like this might make that a little more difficult. If they see anything they shouldn't, things could get really awkward.”

  My head bobbed immediately. “We need to get to that rift. I have to find the thing and go through it.” Even as I said that, I couldn't help but worry about my parents. Where the hell were they? Did it matter if I couldn't find them before going through the rift? I was pretty sure they didn't have to be there, but still. I didn't want to deal with that until I knew they were safe. And yet, what if I had to? What if it was the only way to stop these Seosten from learning too much?

  Debating that in my head, I was startled as Cassiel suddenly grabbed my wrist and pulled me. “Oh shit, I know that sound, come on!”

  They were right, I belatedly realized. I had been distracted with my own thoughts, but there really was a sound. Specifically, it was a high-pitched whining noise that sort of sounded like a motorcycle revving if it was somehow being affected by helium like a human voice.

  We ran straight at the gas station, but before we got there, Cassiel slapped a hand against my shoulders and put red paint on me. Then they shot paint at the roof ahead of us and suddenly we were launched that way.

  Even as we flew at the roof, I produced my staff, putting an arm around the other figure before using it to blast us all the way over the building.

  We came down on the other side, and I saw a dirt path leading to some sort of old mansion from the Victorian era. More importantly, there was a huge fifteen foot tall and thirty foot long cylindrical structure in front of it. It looked sort of like the turbine from a jet. But it was clearly from a spaceship, and it was the source of the noise.

  Manakel, the current, living version of him, was right there in front of the thing along with several other Seosten. When he saw us, his hand beckoned quickly. “Both of you, help with this! If we don't fix this engine, it's going to explode and several hundred kilometers around this area are going to immediately cease to exist.”

  Oh… that would probably hurt my chances of getting to that rift, huh?

  Joke Tags: People Who Don’t Read Summus Proelium Are Probably Going "Wait WHAT?" To A Lot Of This