Chapter 324: William Ouroboros

“I suppose I deserved that.” Thomas Oh said, holding a cloth to his bleeding nose while Will re-aligned the bones of his left hand.

“Mhmm.” Will agreed.

It had felt appropriate in the moment to punch him with the hand he’d lost because his father couldn’t be bothered to keep an eye on him, but the logistics of dealing damage to a deep Climber with an un-enhanced fist were tricky.

The fact that Thomas had gotten a bloody nose was remarkable.

“I’m twenty.” Will said, focusing on his hand. “You missed my birthday by five years.”

“Or thereabouts.” Loth added.

“I’ve got questions.” Will said.

“I’ve got answers.” Thomas replied.

“Which one of you is the snake?” Wil asked. “You or mom?”

“I’m a first-generation Immortal Serpent.” Thomas said.

“I see, so-“

“…And so is Mary.”

Will’s mind froze at the implication. He’d always assumed that one of his parents was human. If both of his parents were Immortal Serpents, then he would be one too, wouldn’t he? Then why didn’t he have knowledge about his previous lives like Arkesh did, or have the ability to shapeshift?

His limitations had always been distinctly human.

“If mom is one too…then who gave birth to me?”

“That’s a really good question. Idunno for sure.” Thomas said, dabbing the last of the blood from his nose.

“How could you not know!?” Will demanded.

“I’m not sure we actually have time for this little heart-to-heart,” Thomas said, carefully folding up the bloodied handkerchief and tucking it in his pocket. “You’re way behind where you should be, and the Coil has already begun turning.”

“…What?”

Thomas held out his hands, thumb and forefinger apart like a carpenter’s square. From his fingers, a delicate array of miasma formed a thin film in midair between them.

Will took a sketch.

The thin film resolved into an image of Jorn and The Devourer of Knowledge walking through the Burned Stronghold.

Will thought it was a static image at first, but then they started moving. Then they stopped. Then they started moving again. Every couple seconds, they froze in place for seemingly no reason.

“What’s this?”

“This is what’s happening on the Tenth Floor.” Thomas said. “On lower Floors it’s even worse.”

“Yeah, but what is it?” Will demanded.

“Put simply? The Tower is falling apart.” Thomas said. “The Tower is a virtual space, and that includes spacetime inside it. An analogy: The lower floors are at the very edge of the biggest flywheel you could possibly imagine, so they’re experiencing the most force tearing them away. When the Tower begins to crumble, it will start from the bottom.”

“You have to go up and fix things immediately. If you don’t, the Tower finally collapses, those inside become hypothetical and the Ring becomes flooded with Miasma, and everyone inside dies.”

“That’s fine.” Will said.

“Eh?” Thomas grunted, stunned.

“Humanity had to die sometime.” Will said. “And if you don’t answer every question I have, that’s what’ll happen.”

Besides, why do you, an Immortal Serpent, care what happens to humanity?

“His girlfriend just broke up with him,” Loth supplied.

“Ah.” Thomas said.

“I’m not being stubborn because my girlfriend broke up with me!” Will said. “I’m doing it because this is a stupid holding pattern that’s been going on for millenia, and if I go now, I’m just gonna die, and we’re just gonna to be having this conversation again in a thousand years!”

Thomas gave Will a long, appraising look.

“You’ve learned a lot while I wasn’t watching.”

“Yeah. What’s the relay?”

Thomas’s expression twitched as he waged an internal struggle. A moment later, he seemed to come to a conclusion.

“The Tower was never meant to have more than ten Floors.” Thomas Oh said. “You’d think ten thousand years would be long enough to come up with a solution. The people who made The Tower did.

Naturally The Tower was built robust with redundancy in mind, so it was able to stretch to fifty Floors easily enough, but when it got to fifty Floors, it started becoming unstable.

“So, me and Reese and a few other immortals built a relay. It extended the depth of The Tower by another fifty Floors by folding it in on itself.”

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“Why does it need me?” Will asked.

“Dunno.”

“You built it, didn’t you?” Will demanded.

“I’m not an engineer. Reese is.” Thomas said, waving him off. “My best guess is that you’re some kind of reference point in spacetime that allows the Relay to calibrate.”

“If you’re not my parents…If I’m not an Immortal Serpent, then what the Abyss am I?” Will asked.

“I don’t know for sure, but if I had to guess…an echo, of an echo, of a favorable first impression…of a god.” Thomas said, ticking them off on his fingers as he spoke.

“…What?”

“Outside the Tower the miasma is so thick you can taste it in the air, and breathing becomes optional. Thoughts intermingle with reality with dreamers floating by like snowflakes, shaping the world as they pass by, it’s lovely…and horrifying.”

Will took that in.

“My creator, Ouroboros, once told me many, many years ago, that a brave young human named William Oh made a favorable impression on him, and introduced him to his wife, Holdna.”

Will’s brows rose.

“When a god like Ouroboros thinks about something, that thought becomes reality. When Ouroboros has a favorable impression of you, that too becomes reality.”

“Ever since, every Coil Mary and I have been tasked with climbing all the way to the top of the tower where the miasma is far too thick to humans to breathe.

“At the same place every time, there is a single human baby, born from Ouroboros thinking a specific human was cool. A chubby, screaming infant, completely unaffected by the miasma that warps flesh and stone alike.”

“Mary and I take you down to the bottom Floor, raise you, and then fake our deaths when you’re old enough to take care of yourself. The only reason I’m here right now is because you’re lollygagging and the entire Tower could collapse because of it.”

“A hundred thousand years have gone by?” Will asked.

“Yes.”

“And I’m in the same place every time?” Will asked.

“Yes?” Thomas said, not quite following.

“Does anything change about the place you find me? Plants, trees, buildings?”

“…No, I guess it doesn’t.” Thomas said. “It’s always exactly the same.”

It kinda sounds like it’s the same ‘me’ every time, as if time is frozen at the top of the Tower, but if that were the case, then he would run into himself, unless there’s something very strange going on.

Is Ouroboros splitting the same instant into a hundred copies…or am I totally off-base?

“So what you’re saying is: There’s a superposition of Will as a baby at the top of The Tower, manifested by the admiration of a god, and anyone who reaches that isolated moment in spacetime can have one?” Loth asked, her tail twitching excitedly behind her. “There truly is a priceless treasure at the top of The Tower.”

“Umm…I guess?” Thomas said, scratching his head.

“Excellent.” Loth said, steepling her fingers.

“Hey! No cradle-robbing me as a baby.” Will said, pointing at Loth.

“Foo.”

“So what are you gonna do now?” Thomas Oh asked, crossing his arms. “You’re already so far off the rails, I don’t even know if you’ll be able to make it to the Fiftieth Floor.”

“What do you mean?” Will asked.

“When you’re William Oh, you usually have a party of teammates who lift you up on their shoulders and make you into a legend. A prophet, a princess, a fighter, a wizard, et. cetera. Only the goofy inhuman sidekick seems to be here. You’re meaner, tougher, and more solitary than the usual William Oh.”

Loth bristled a bit at the ‘goofy inhuman sidekick’ statement.

“Loth is a princess and a wizard.” Will clarified.

“That is true.” Loth replied, preening.

“If I didn’t know better, I would say you’re Ezykial the serpent, but you don’t have a snake and you’re too clever by far.”

“I left my snake at home.” Will said.

“And if you were Castavelle the Paragon, you would’ve found some kind of exploit in The System and taken advantage of it mercilessly to make yourself unstoppable. You would’ve also had a gaggle of young women fawning over you.”

“They decided they didn’t want that to be their purpose in life.” Will responded, only slightly jealous of the alternate version of himself.

“What I’m saying is, you’re a mess. All the different personalities that are supposed be separate have blended together. It’s a sign that The Tower is beginning to break down. There are a hundred Floors now, and the immortals need to make another relay while you go up and fix the first one, or we are all dead.”

‘All’ did include a lot of people that Will liked.

“…What are the Key Sites for?”

“They are pumps that move miasma up and out of The Tower. They need to stay clear to keep The Tower functioning properly.”

That was pretty much what Will had put together himself. that left one big question.

“So then…who created The Tower?” Will asked.

“People. Just people.” Thomas said.

“Not the gods?” Will asked. Loth was on the edge of her piece of rubble, watching Thomas intently.

“The Tower…was always meant as a last-gasp middle finger to the gods. Some of them found it amusing, so they stuck around, picked favorites, and bet on the outcomes like gamblers around a horse track.”

“And you’re one of the caretakers of the horse track?” Will asked.

“That’s…fairly accurate.” Thomas said, nodding.

That explains why he wants to keep humanity alive.

“And me?” Will asked.

“One of the finest horses.”

“That’s it. I’m tearing it all down,” Will said, standing, guts burning with indignation.

His gaze landed on Loth’s curious expression before he scanned their surroundings, watching hundreds of kobolds scrape together shelter out of the ruins of the ancient civilization that had come and gone fifteen thousand years ago.

Everyone was just doing everything they could to survive. It didn’t matter to them they were living inside a carefully curated glass bottle. They were just trying to live their lives.

I do know a lot of people just trying to live their lives.

“…Damn it.” Will said, collapsing back down.

“So you’ll do it?” Thomas asked.

“Yeah. I’m not that petty.” Will said, body breaking out in a cold sweat as he did his best not to think about what he was agreeing to.

You’re agreeing to go up to the fiftieth Floor and feed yourself into some kind of Will-grinder so the rest of the world can keep on limping along another thousand years.

Thanks, brain.

Suddenly there was a black hand over his own.

“I’ll come with you.” Loth said, staring directly into his eyes.

“But it’s a one-way trip.” Will said.

“I don’t think your ‘father’ knows everything there is to know.” Loth said. “There are Deep Climbers that go past the fiftieth Floor all the time.”

“Those are all non-humans.” Thomas said.

Loth fixed Will’s father with her gaze and wordlessly motioned between the two of them.

“Right. Neither of you are human.” Thomas said.

“You see?” Loth asked.

“Yeah, he’s not that smart is he?” Will asked.

“Ouch.” Thomas said, prompting a chuckle from Will as his thoughts turned inward.

I am the manifestation of the idea of ‘a cool guy named William Oh’ Ouroboros met once?That’s a bit far-fetched.

Thomas might be ancient beyond words, but it didn’t necessarily mean that what he thought was the truth was the truth.

He could be just as mistaken as anyone else.

The only thing they knew for a fact was that Thomas Oh got a miasma-immune baby from the top of the Tower every thousand years, and it seemed to be the same one each time.

The only way to know for sure is to go there and see it for myself.

Strangely enough, knowing that Thomas was fallible and that Loth was coming with him, did wonders to put him at ease. The gradually tightening muscles in his legs and neck slowly loosened as Will set aside the fear of death.

“By the way, what does the ‘Oh’ stand for?” Will asked.

“Ouroboros.” Thomas Oh said.

“I KNEW IT!” Will shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at his father.

Thomas chuckled and stood as the fire began dying down. “Alright kids, just stopped by to say hi. I’m heading down to the bottom of the tower. I need to find Reese to help me build another relay before reality falls apart. Is there anyone or anything you’d like for me to send up to you on my way?”

Will and Loth shared a glance.

“We’ll make you a list, so hold on.”