The first thing I realized was that I wasn’t unconscious. My mind had gone blank because I’d received an influx of prompts that had errored out my vision and turned it into a display of white noise. I also felt like the chaos that helped make up my body was being ripped from me at the same time. Initially, it had been surprising and painful. Now it felt like the relief one might get after waiting a really long time to use the toilet. Ironically, not something I’d had to do in a long time. In this case, the sensation kept going and going. As my mind asserted itself over the white noise of message prompts and the feeling of being drained as my chaos was removed, red prompts appeared.

WARNING: You have entered Primal Chaos

WARNING: Chaos is not immune to the effects of Primal Chaos

WARNING: Chaos Shield at 100%

WARNING: Chaos Shielding at 99.999%

Then the warnings started ticking down quickly. In a second my Chaos shielding was at 98%, then 97%. I tried to look around quickly and found that I was unable to make out anything. I could feel the Primal Chaos absorbing and changing the chaos that was trying to shield my core self as it was drawn from my body. It was eating it up quickly. The chaos I carried around surrounded me and formed a shell to keep the Primal Chaos from touching. Me. It continued to be eaten by the Primal Chaos outside it. I watched as the Chaos Shield strength counter continued to drop until it hit 1%. The shell popped and my body was enveloped by Primal Chaos. With no way to resist what was going to happen, I dropped all my mental shields, opened my heart to inevitability surrendered myself to my fate

Not that it had happened in a long time, but I should have been terrified. I might have the power of a God, but I knew that one of the few things that could end me was Primal Chaos. I kept my mentality focused on what was happening to me instead of retreating to my Mindspace and noticed multiple presences that made me feel like a fly trapped on sticky paper being looked at by a lot of different beings. I heard, though heard is the wrong word, I felt as if multiple sets of eyes were scrutinizing me while they discussed something. As time went on I was able to just make out what was being said.

“What do we have here?” a voice asked.

“It’s a human, from one of the offshoots,” a feminine voice said.

“And powerful enough to make it here and not be instantly destroyed by the environment?” A second man asked.

“That’s a function of one of his core abilities. How can one lose oneself to the nature of Primal Chaos, when they perfectly remember everything?

“I see. Was this loophole properly analyzed?” A third voice asked.

“It was. The chance that an entity with the ability of Perfect Memory could reach greater Godhood without submitting to the Divine ruleset was measured as a number so low as to be nigh impossible.”

I felt more than heard the sigh that came from more than one of the individuals having the conversation. I still couldn’t see where the voices were coming from.

“This one has been busy it seems,” a new voice said.

The voices faded to a point that I could not hear them until I heard another new voice, “But this one did not accept the path of Divinity. He has done everything we’ve reviewed as a mortal?”

“It would seem we have found an appropriate candidate then?” the second male voice asked.

“It does,” an additional male voice that hadn’t spoken before said.

“Ascension Protocol?” a new feminine voice asked

“Fortune?” the first voice asked.

“After reviewing his accomplishments, I believe that role would best suit his personality.

“Ascension Protocol, Fortune?” the second feminine voice asked.

“Ascension Protocol, Fortune Role, a multitude of voices chorused

“Who will inform him?”

“I will,” a somewhat familiar voice that had remained silent until just now said.

I felt reality shift and I was once again orbiting the Unicorn Singularity though I felt somehow less and more. Immediately I knew that all of the extra chaos I had carried with me was gone. Additionally, I innately knew that my body was once again normal. Well, as normal as I could be. I opened my Personal Information to find the following message.

PERSONAL INFORMATION TAB LOCKED – Review Messages to Unlock this Tab

Making sure that I still had some of my abilities I willed myself to fly around the black hole as I made sure my adaptability was still in place. Then I cast Mage Bolt, then a stream of Mage bolts at the singularity to make sure I could still use magic.

Satisfied, I teleported to my estate on the Lifeboat in the Oort Cloud. As I arrived I called out for Adaline.

“Welcome back Adam,” Thor’s voice called out from the speakers, “Adaline is in New Mexico. She thought it might be better to be somewhere with vast open spaces in case something bad happened.”

“Did anything happen?” I asked.

“She appears to be fine, though she is currently accessing her personal interface and hasn’t moved in 3 hours,” Thor said.

I checked my internal clock, which I still had access to, and sure enough, it looked like 3 hours had passed since I’d destroyed Anthrax. I accessed Thor’s data via a quantum link, which I surprisingly still had, and reviewed Adaline. She appeared to be fine as she sat there with glazed eyes that were darting to and fro, “I wonder what she’s reading?” I mumbled.

“For 34 minutes before going into the state you see here in, she froze,” Thor said, “When she finally moved again, she smiled, and then her eyes glazed over and you see her as she has been since then.”

“Well. she looks fine. I have to open my message prompts how. I’m going to sit down and take a break while I do. Please let Adaline know where I am when she comes to. I’m sure she’ll let us know what happened to her then.”

“Understood,” Thor said.

I sat down in my recliner and started going through my messages where I’d left off

WARNING: Chaos Shielding at 1.001%

WARNING: Chaos Shield has failed.

WARNING: You are in a region of Primal Chaos

WARNING: You have exited the region of Primal Chaos.

WARNING: You have entered the region of the Arcanus Numina

The following changes are being made to you by the Arcanus Numina

Soul Type: ERROR has been replaced with Ascendant: Arcanus Numen of Fortune

Soul Projection Level has been set to “+”

Soul Rank Disparity has been set to “+”

Soul Abilities have been reconfigured to Arcanus Numen Abilities.

Soul Ability “Perfect Memory” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Perfect Memory.” No change to description or benefits.

Soul Ability “Pansophical” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Boundless.” “Boundless” – All skills are known to you and are performed at Legendary competence.

Soul Ability “Permanent Addition” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Eternal.” “Eternal” - All Arcanus Numen are Eternal. As the Arcanus Numen of Fortune should you allow yourself to be destroyed you will reincarnate out of the Region of Primal Chaos.

Soul Abilities “Chaos Forged,” “Chaos Tempered” and “Chaos Incarnate” have combined and evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Chaos Personified.” “Chaos Personified” – In the scope of EVERYTHING, you are the epitome of Chaos. As such Chaos of any type, including Primal Chaos affects you, or others, as you wish it to. As the Arcanus Numen of Fortune, your will with Chaos of any type may only be undone by the Arcanus Numen of The Tower, or Order. Only the Arcanus Numen of Fortune may have this Ability.

Soul Ability “Adaptable” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Adaptable.” “Adaptable” - Your body adapts to any environment. From absolute zero to the gravity well of a singularity your body can and will adapt to all environmental conditions. This includes the ability to survive in those environments. Example: the ability to breathe underwater if necessary.

Soul Ability “Willed-Movement” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Willed-Movement.” “Willed-Movement” – You may move as desired through any environment or condition. This is a function of both the Arcanus Numen Abilities “Adaptable” and “Chaos Personified.”

Soul ability “Resistant” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Resistant.” “Resistant” - You are 100% resistant to all Normal Magic and natural manifestations of those magics. Additionally, you are 100% resistant to all magic utilizing Primal Chaos. All attacks against you imbued with Order create explosions of annihilation in a radius equal to the damage done for the amount of damage done. For Example, if a Sword imbued with Order were to hit you for 8 points of damage. An explosion would radiate out from that contact point to a radius of eight feet doing 8 points of damage. Attacks imbued with Primal Order are 100 times more devastating. From the example above, the 8 points of damage would create an explosion that would radiate out 800 feet doing 800 points of damage to everything in its radius. You may choose to soak damage from such attacks as you wish. Every 100 points of Ordered damage soaked in this way reduce your integrity by 1%. Each point of Primal Order damage soaked in this way reduces your integrity by 1%. When you reach 0% your body will need to reconstitute in the Region of Primal Chaos.

WARNING: Attacks with your Chaos Blade are considered attacks with a weapon imbued with Chaos and will have much the same effect against creatures of order.

Soul ability “Convergence” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Vertex.” “Vertex” – Your very nature draws the magic you need for any spell through yourself. You may extend this area of effect as far as you’d like. NOTE: The Arcanus Numen of The Tower has historically set this ability to a maximum of a one-mile radius.

Soul ability “Spellweaver” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Spellweaver.” No change to the description.

Soul ability “Soul Storage” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Arcanus Numen Storage.” “Arcanus Numen Storage” – As the Arcanus Numen of Fortune your complete control of chaos allows you to store anything of any size within your area of direct effect. What this means is that you create a subdimension out of the chaos that usually takes on the identity of Nothing on the Outside and anything you desire on the inside.

NOTE concerning Arcanus Numen Ability Arcanus Numen Storage: Arcanus Numina do not have access to these areas under your direct control. Therefore the rules we place everywhere else do not apply to those regions you create. I, the Arcanus Numen of Judgement, suggest that you limit this evolved ability to what it evolved from, a storage ability. The Last Arcanus Numen of Fortune did not do so and had an unfortunate accident of his own making, hence the reason for your Ascension.

Soul Ability “Affluent” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Affluent” – No change to description.

Soul Ability “Prophet” has evolved to Arcanus Numen Ability “Arcanus Numen.” “Arcanus Numen” – Those with this ability no longer track their attributes or levels. Instead a simple “+” replaces all values. This indicates that your values are higher than anything without that symbol. Each Arcanus Numen has absolute authority in their Arcanus Numen. See your specific Arcanus Numen for clarification. Arcanus Numen are beholden to no one and are the supreme authority in their Arcanus Numen.

I opened my Personal Information which was now unlocked. I found that all of my information had been reduced to the attribute or designation and a “+” symbol. So I could do anything I wanted now?

“Yes,” a voice I knew said from beside me.

I looked up to find Ptah standing beside me.

“Ptah, what the hell!” I said

“Please, we both know you felt the telltale signs of an incoming teleportation before I arrived,” Ptah said

“Yeah, I did,” I said. “First, it’s good to see you, Second, which one of these Arcanum Numen are you?” I asked

“I am The Tower,” he said.

“My opposite? Then why help me all this time?” I asked.

“But did I help you?” Ptah asked.

I thought back to everything that had happened.

“That one time something stopped that God from smiting me?” I asked.

“Not me. One of us, but not me. Others have been watching you as well. I’ve been paying particular attention because we had to be sure Chaos was actually submitting to your will. When we realized it was acting synergistically to your desires, we took a harder look.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because your predecessor made an error, Fortune decided it was time for him to move on”

“What happened to him, I thought we always came back?”

“Let me start by saying that you have been elevated to the position of Arcanus Numen of Fortune by a majority vote of the other 19 Arcanus Numina. Mortals on the Ascendant Protocol progression track or the Divine Progression track are chosen when a vacancy becomes available. One of the things the 20 of us do is ensure that the Totum remains stable.”

“Totum? Do you mean Everything?” I asked recognizing the word as the Latin word for everything.

“You have come to know about Universe, parallel universes, and dimensions? Those reside within a cosmos, which resides within a Realm that consists of one or more cosmos and layers. In fact, your daughter is in another Realm altogether. Those Realms exist within a sea of Primal, or Primordial, Chaos. The twenty Arcanus Numen that have arisen control ideas or concepts. Though control is a misnomer. We oversee, mediate extremes and work together to make sure everything continues working.

“Why?”

“You should know better than most, what have you been doing ever since you found that ring in New Mexico?”

“Moving from one insane circumstance to the next,” I said.

“Yes, but why?” he asked.

“Because I was lucky enough to be able to?”

“Is anyone truly that lucky?”

“I have been,” I said.

“Let me ask it this way, If I am here to make sure order is maintained, how likely do you think it is that I have been allowed to reach a state like yours was before you recombined all the shadows?”

“Not likely, if the order was my ball of wax I’d be all kinds of upset.”

“Exactly!”

“So why did you allow it?”

“I didn’t. Your predecessor did.”

“Wait, is that why I received that warning about my storage ability?”

“You never disappoint Adam. That is exactly why that warning was added. Your predecessor created a Realm inside one of those spaces. To be honest, we have no idea how what happened, did, but somehow that Realm was ejected into the Totum and he was destroyed. Which shouldn’t be possible as one of the things that happens to the Arcanus Numen of Fortune is that if they’re destroyed they are reconstituted in the Realm of Primal Chaos.

“Do all of you, I mean us, reconstitute there?” I asked.

“No, each of us reconstitutes from the Numen we watch over,” Ptah said.

“So what now?”

“Now, you help us try to fix the corruption your predecessor created when this happened. As an added benefit, fixing that corruption will allow you to reach your daughter again.”

“If I’m in the Totum, why can’t I go to her now?”

“You could?” Ptah said. “That would be very bad though.”

“Bad, How?” I asked.

“When the accident happened, that’s how we refer to what happened. When the accident happened the connections between realms were severed. The realm your daughter ended up in was one of the very first realms. It was also the Realm Bri evolved from, though the Accident severed her connection to it as well.

“What is Bri? Is she one of us?” I asked.

“There is a long answer to that and you will become privy to it at some point but for now I’ll just say that Bri served two purposes in the past. The first ended when the accident happened. She connected the various realms in a spiderweb of connections that spanned more space than all the realms combined. The second purpose she served was to act as a testing site for the various manifestations and combinations of the numina and various magical spheres that do not have an Arcanus Numina to watch over them.

“That’s a lot to take in,” I said. Then why the number 20 was significant came to me and I declared, “The Major Arcana of a Tarot Deck. Do Tarot Decks describe the Arcanus Numina?” I asked.

“You’re mind put all that together for you? You really don’t forget anything do you?” Ptah asked.

“I really don’t,” I said agreeing.

“Yes, the Tarot Major Arcana describe the 20 Arcanus Numina. They are:

The High Priestess, Holy

The Fool, Air

The Magician, Weakness

Wheel of Fortune, Chaos

The Empress, Water

The Moon, Shadow

The Hanged Man, Hate

The Chariot, Earth

The Hierophant, Shunned

The Lovers, Love

The Emperor, Adored

The Tower, Order

The World, Lawlessness

The Sun, Light

Temperance, Fire

The Hermit, Mercy

Strength, Strength

Judgment, Judgement

The Star, Life

Death, Death

Justice, Justice

The Devil, Unholy”

“Some of those cards don’t seem to match their Arcanus Numina while others’ names match perfectly?” I asked.

“Over the eons, the concept has remained the same though the image that represents it has changed,” Ptah said.

“Will I get to meet the others?” I asked.

“Perhaps, but if everything is working as it should, normally we do not interact.

“I just noticed, Gravity, Time, and Space aren’t represented.”

“They have never had an Arcanus Numina though if one needs one, most of us agree it should be time.”

“ I can see that.”

Ptah looked at me and then said, “My time working with you to get you ready is almost up. I have one more thing to share with you. We are not divines. We are not limited in what we can do for a single purpose. If we are doing everything right we should never have to speak to each other. Most often we will interact with our direct opposite or those that serve them. In the coming days as we work to fix the issues that still exist we will all interact at some level. This will be an exception to the norm. We have a little time though so check on your family and friends and Bri. When you are done, call out for me.”

“One second, you never explained why tracking down my daughter was a bad thing.”

Ptah thought about it for a moment then said, “I never did, did I?

“Nope.”

“Okay, Computer science man, I’ll put it in terms you’ll be able to get through I’m declaring from the beginning this is an oversimplified metaphor. Before the Accident the Totum could be seen as a giant mainframe, all parts connected and working in harmony. After the accident areas were isolated to prevent the changes that were leaking out through the connection points. Individuals such as your daughter could pass through the barrier because she did not disrupt the barrier as she interacted with it. If any of us were to try to enter these sealed-off Realms, the disruption of our passing would cause the changes that were released to infect that realm.

“Like a computer virus?” I asked.

Exactly like a computer virus. The contamination would invade and change the realm, most likely making it like yours. Our coming together to discuss you was the first time we have done so in a very long time and was accomplished by proxy. Some of us are trapped in other Realms afraid that to leave them for fear that we would doom the Realm we are leaving. I am lucky enough to be the only Arcanus Numen that can maintain the order of any barrier I cross. You on the other hand would destroy the barrier just by getting too close to it. The only barrier that is not true for is the barrier for this Realm so going after your daughter would be a very bad idea. Even your ability to craft and shape chaos to suit your will would break down the barriers because they would be from a power created by the modified operating system. We must work to fix this Realm before we can reconnect with the others

“Understood, and Ptah, thanks for looking out for me, even though you didn’t do anything,” I said with a grin.

“My pleasure, talk to you soon,” he said as he vanished.

I thought about everything he’d just told me, then checked on Adaline. She was still going through her prompts, “Thor?”

“Yes, Adam?”

“Let Adaline know I’m going to check in with the Labyrinth then I’ll be back.”

“Understood”

As soon as I heard his confirmation I teleported directly into Al’s entrance chamber just to make sure I could, then I used the Travel Node there to hop to the first Travel Node in the Labyrinth. As I appeared I noticed monsters searching the area, but none seemed to notice me.

“Bri,” I said out loud, “Portal please, We need to talk.”