Chapter Twenty-Four: The Last Final Roundup of the Rabid Rambling Machine

Somewhere within Castle Shieltas, moments after Duvon's death, Rhuan grabbed at his head and went to his knees at the sudden surge of new memories. His head absolutely swimming, Rhuan groaned and wavered, almost falling forward. Suzy, having picked up some skirmish going on nearby, put away her tools and went to her office to check on what had just happened. She ran into Rhuan on the way there.

"Oh, Rhuan, I picked up a battle somewhere outside..." Rhuan shuddered, taking several deep breaths, and tried to focus, bringing some order to his mind and the new memories still flooding him. "Are you okay?" Suzy asked. "What happened? You weren't out there were you?"

Rhuan gave a jerky shake of his head, looking as though he might be sick, he in fact thought he might be sick. "Chaos.. They're here, attacking, killed me." he managed, not making much sense.

Suzy blinked at him, went into her office and replayed the scenerio. Rhuan didn't try to follow her, as of yet unable to get off his knees or keep from wavering, now holding his head in his hands. She quickly put two and two together and rushed back to him and said, "Rhuan.. Rhuan!"

Rhuan let his hands fall and slowly looked up her her hazily, giving slight twitches. She put a hand on his shoulder and knelt down beside him. He gave a convulsive jerk and fell into her, trembling arms and hands clinging to her. She put her arms around him and cradled him. After several long, strenuous moments, the last of the memories seeped in and fell into place, his mind stilling and becoming calm, likewise, his body easing and his trembling slowly subsiding. Suzy held him close, comfortingly.

"Suzy..." Rhuan breathed quietly.

"I'm here for you. It's alright."

"They hurt me..." he murmured quietly. "God but they hurt me..." he whispered. "I... I remember everything," he said slowly, pulling back to look at Suzy

"What happened?"

Rhuan's eyes flash, and he gives a short nod "I'll show you. I'll spare you the pain.. The feelings.. You'll just see images." She gave a nod. Rhuan brushed lightly against her mind, establishing a contact, sending through her mind's eye Duvon's discussion with Aviel, then the scene on the ship, then the ethereal with Kirlin, then Duvon's cleansing, his return to Torn Elkandu and what happened from there to the moment he died. Suzy stared silently as she received the images. "There's more.. Years and years more.. But.."

"That was Riven," Suzy murmured, identifying the drow who had ripped his soul out.

Rhuan emitted a soft growl. Suzy hugged him. Rhuan blinked and returned the hug softly, holding her for a short moment. She stroked his hair lightly. "I can't stand idly by now," he said, lifting his head to look Suzy in the eyes. "This can't be allowed to continue."

Suzy looked down and gave a short nod. Rhuan looked at her for a moment then brushed her cheek with the tips of his fingers before lightly nudging under her jaw, to get her to look into his eyes silently.

"I know now, the truth of what Chaos is.. There were some questions before, but not now," he said quietly.

Suzy nodded slightly. Rhuan grimaced for a moment, looking down for a short time before his eyes flicked back up to hers. She looked at him silently.

"Please Suzy, I'll help any way I can, but we must make this place safe from Chaos."

"Alright."

"We know how to identify the Chaos aura... it should not be difficult to attune the wards to that. And I think it's time to open the wards.. Allow anyone in not chaos, but hold those who are out."

"I think I can manage that," Suzy said.

"Maybe I, er.. Duvon would still be alive."

She proceeded to go to the control room to make the adjustments. Rhuan followed behind her, somewhat slower though, calling upon his newfound anger, hate and rage to assist him, ascending into his avatarian black quicksilver demon form. She got in and proceeded to adjust the wards. Rhuan moved to a window and gazes out at the sky, giving his wings and tail a twitch.

"Hmm, this should do it," Suzy commented as she worked.

"I wonder what Keolah and Hawthorne are up to?" Rhuan asked before glancing back to Suzy. "Good.. Then that's the first thing done. Next, we need to remove Chaos and it's presence from this world."

"Can probably check up on them from my office."

Rhuan nodded to that, "I think I'll do that.. I need to think of a way to deal with chaos, given the condition of the veil." Rhuan mused to himself, turning to head to Suzy's office. "When magic is unreliable.. When the threat is great.. What do you do?" he asked aloud. "Find loop-holes.. Items of great power.. Perhaps something that can enhance a mages natural ability regardless of the veil.. Nuke them all, perhaps.. No.." Rhuan shook his head and glanced at the computer, saying, "Computer, locate Hawthorne and Keolah, display."

The computer obediently displayed their current locations on two screens. Keolah was on board a large spaceship talking to someone. Hawthorne was currently somewhere on Lezaria slaughtering people.

"Computer, can you identify if they are Chaos or not?"

"Affirmative. Match positive. Hawthorne is a follower of Khorne. Keolah is a follower of Chaos Undivided."

Rhuan was silent for several long moments, his lips twisting into something of a silent snarl. Rhuan punched the intercom button and repeated those words over it in a hiss. Momentarily, Suzy came to the office. Rhuan was standing motionless, but for an angry flicking of his tail, glaring at the screens displaying Hawthorne and Keolah.

Suzy said, "Not entirely unexpected, though. What are we going to do?"

"Hawthorne? No.. Maybe not." He shook his head. "But Keolah.. That is something very new."

"Is it?" Suzy said. Rhuan gave a nod. "Unless she knows something we don't," Suzy commented.

Rhuan avoided looking at Suzy as he gave his answer, "I don't know about you, but me.. I'm going to treat them the same as any other Chaos follower." The deathly chill his voice carried doesn't sound very promising.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to Lezaria, Suzy.." He said over his shoulder. "I'm going to do whatever I have to to ensure she doesn't kill anymore innocent people."

Suzy sighed. "Do what you must, then."

Rhuan gave a slight nod, seeming sad. "I pray it isn't much." One his way out, Rhuan grabbed his sword, enchanted or not, and recalled to the Nexus long enough to make the jump to Lezaria, sparing himself all the power he could. Hawthorne was attacking some people in Scalyr who had dared stand against them. Rhuan headed that way as fast as he could. She noticed him slightly as he approached, but ddin't stop or slow in her slaughter. Giving a sigh as he advanced, Rhuan tried to overwhelm her with his mind, take control.

Thus follows a lengthy, confusing, and overly angsty encounter which does not make much sense anyway that involves Rhuan praying for the assistance of the old gods which have, for some reason known only to them, actually started paying some attention again lately and so Sarhabinse made it so that Khorne shut the fuck up for half an hour so that Hawthorne did not kill Rhuan, even though she probably should have anyway because he was kind of asking for it since he couldn't actually kill her because he loved her, isn't that sweet? So yeah, these old gods are apparently paying attention again, I suppose it must have something to do with the fact that Shazmar isn't technically around anymore since he's been reborn as Kanraku and isn't giving any further indications of godhood anymore and they actually first disappeared around the point where Shazmar vanished and got himself reborn as Valerezal, Keolah and Vakis's son, and proceeded to muddle things up from there and interfere with plenty of things he really wasn't supposed to be screwing around with. This was widely regarded as a bad move and has seriously annoyed quite a large number of people over the years, and hence most people aren't particualrly sad about him not being around doing godly things anymore, and most people don't even realize that Kanraku even exists, nor would they have any inkling of the fact that he is really Shazmar's rebirth sans memory anyway since he is such an innocent, good-hearted person who would never intentionally harm anyone unless they were being a complete and utter asshole and going around murdering everyone in sight randomly and doing otherwise evil and non-nice things to people.

So after talking to Hawthorne and coming to no real resolution, Rhuan then went and found Aviel and after chatting with her he ended up forgiving her for her actions that ultimately resulted in the horrible death of his prebirth because she sent memories of the events into his mind in which she was feeling heartbroken and feeling like he would never forgive her for what she had had to do, although it isn't really certain at this point in time whether or not she was actually feeling those feelings or is just faking it to further manipulate him. Thus followed after this they had a good deal of kinky sex and then went their own separate ways, and Aviel went off to continue to try to find the Glass Crown of Sorcery which she claimed that if she found it she would place it upon Rhuan's head and allow him to rule the universe, like anyone actually believes that load of baloney anyway, except Rhuan who is a gullible git who for some reason keeps believing everything Aviel says to him, hence she's probably a better manipulator than I probably am giving her credit for. Or maybe there's the offchance that she's actually telling the truth for once and is actually doing this out of a pure and innocent love for Rhuan. Okay, maybe not, that was a pretty long stretch anyway. Yeah.

Right, yeah. After meeting with Aviel, he went and talked to Keolah at some point or another, who had apparently not actually realized that Duvon had been Rhuan's rebirth, thus proving that she either really was not paying attention and just never considered it, or that their soul aura patterns weren't similar enough even for a good Seeker giving a casual glance without any real reason to think they were the same person to identify right off the bat. Keolah is perfectly happy with the Word Bearers and believes she has finally found her true calling and is for some reason aspiring after Sindri's old position, and considering that she's probably the most powerful true Omnimancer of all the Elkandu, well... There's definitely plenty of other Omnimancers, to be sure, but most of them are much better in certain talents and have completely neglected otherse to the point where you really could not actually call them an Omnimancer. Keolah, however, is fully capable of using every talent to near-equal levels, with the sole exception of Seeking, which is her inborn talent anyway, and Creation, which isn't really so much a talent as a Crux that is necessary for nearly every talent to some extent or another, which is possibly one of the real reasons why she's such a good Omnimancer and can do nearly everything pretty well, since it all involves Creation to some extent or another, except the stuff that doesn't, like Destruction and Alteration.

Then Rhuan went back over to Shieltas again where Suzcecoz was putting on the finishing touches onto her ship. She brought the computer online and after a lengthy discussion and prodding a random name generator for a while, they ended up deciding to christen it the Eyes of Truth. Then they flew off for some warp testing and went off to the world of Wilderplane, where Rhuan whined about the Chaos Gods a bit more and went off on how he would never worship them because they were assholes that didn't actually care about their followers, and although he was probably right he's really just being stubborn and it's not like he had anything in particular against their methods considering all the crap he's done in the past, and Keolah was fairly accurate in calling him a hypocrite and even he could not deny that. Suzy, however, suggested that he go look for Clizhennozuri, and thus he looked up in the ship's computer banks information about the old gods again and learned about their legends and myths, so he went down to Wilderplane into the wilderness around Iridala Creek in hopes of running into the powerful nymph goddess Clizhennozuri who was said in myth and legend to have been found in open wilderness near freeflowing running water.

Clizhennozuri appeared before him and proceeded to speak in a heavy elvish accent that she has for some odd reason which I think is just to make her sound cool and not for any real reason, and she rambled off in a bunch of vague riddles at Rhuan which didn't really say anything in particular except to confuse him and make him really think about what he was doing, perhaps she was indirectly calling him an idiot for all this, but he ended up feeling enlightened from the conversation and went back up to the ship and ranted out at Suzcecoz that he had found her and knew now what he had to do and proceeded to plead for Suzy to join him and gave her a guilt trip until she finally agreed to do it even though she really would rather have gone back to Chaos and hung out with Keolah some more since that was really what she had had in mind when she named the ship that in the first place, but she really could not deny Rhuan because she's a hopeless sodding romantic and especially not after he gave her a bunch of nice sex.

However, little did anyone know, but Mika had actually just put the Glass Crown of Sorcery in his pocket to prevent anyone from getting a hold of it, especially not Rhuan or Aviel, nope, he wasn't about to let those fucked up nutcases get their little hands on that powerful magical artifact, even though they would really really love to and spent a really excessive amount of time fruitlessly looking for it all over the place. They were quite powerful enough without it and really did not need it to do what they were doing and screw things up, although them searching for it so much did keep them a bit out of trouble for a while. But no, Mika didn't keep it to use it himself, just to hold onto it and keep it tucked neatly away in the recesses of his bag of holding to prevent the screwballs from getting it and using it and further messing up the universe like people had this strange habit of doing, considering the fact that this was the second time in under half a millennium that they had somehow managed to destroy the universe, even though it wasn't really entirely their fault as the Nameless Ones probably could take most of the blame, although it was entirely Rhuan's fault that the Nameless Ones got out to do that crap in the first place, because he was an arrogant moron who thought he could kill a god and got played for shit and let them out and believed Dirania like a gullible fool.

Meanwhile, somewhere else entirely, Emily looked up at the pointless text wall. "Looks like the author ran out of motivation to finish this novel and just started rambling."

"You mean the rest of this wasn't rambling as it was?" Kalli said.

"I mean, that was worse than usual," Emily said.

"Right," Kalli said. "Okay, so what was the point to all of this again, anyway?"

"We saved the universe," Emily said.

"Stuff happened that didn't make sense," Kalli said.

Aviel appeared out of nowhere and said, "You guys aren't supposed to be breaking the fourth wall, you know."

"Who cares anymore?" Kalli said.

"I'm out of popcorn," Theodore said.

"I just want to know how this all ended," Kalli said.

"Why don't we just pretend that none of this even happened?" Aviel said.

"Sounds good to me," Emily said. "Especially chapter 15."

"But how does it end?" Kalli insisted.

"It ends with everyone involved getting bored and wandering off," Emily says.

"And I'm going back in time three million years," Aviel said. "I hear Til'raine is nice. Maybe then I can make a universe that makes more sense. Oh, and I'm going to get Rhuan killed again, too."

Meanwhile, somewhere else entirely, Lexen was sitting in the Chelseer manor on Lezaria, getting thoroughly drunk and trying to forget that the universe existed for a little while.