"Why can't I push this thing back!?"

"There is no divinity over there, it is the death of all immortals."

Carl sighed, then before anything else could be said or done, ran in and punched the figure with his soul-form, before slamming the doors shut behind him.

'Klaire and Kyubi are gonna kill me for this one...' Carl looked around, the glowing entity he had punched reforming, caught his attention and Carl was still nervous about the gate being present. '...Hurry up and drop the gate, Nergal.'

"That is not how one typically greets the one who brought them into the world." The voice was feminine, familiar and Carl immediately knew where from.

"You deserve a lot more than that you scum. The things I know you did earn you your place here and I'm sure I'll find plenty more." Carl spat the words through gritted teeth as he saw several other glowing phantoms approach and prepared to defend the gate.

"You idiot, they aren't trying to cross, neither was I. In or out, no one has truly crossed until they pass the final threshold, I only wanted to get close enough to get a look at you and then you charged in and punched me so you could close it."

"Yeah and if it weren't for how sad my family is gonna be, I'd have died happy doing it... Fuck! Everything you do, you just fuck things up even more. You immortals had every choice and power you could have ever wanted and all you needed to do was nothing, how do you mess that up? It's easy, you just don't, you could of taken a nap, anything!"

"Thank heavens you have the gift of hindsight."

"Thank you for having the decency to die. Existence was better off without you and thanks for owning that."

"You're being a brat."

"Says the woman who created me, just to clean up her mess."

"Except I didn't create you..." Ishtar looked around and held up a hand to signal the other phantoms to stop. "...Technically, you created all of us. I just brought you into the world."

Carl stopped as Ishtar's words slashed his sails wide-open and let the wind out of them. Things slowly clicked into place that he wished didn't fit, but at the same time it made too many things make sense.

"I'm the law of Divinity, aren't I?"

"Well, you may have been ten thousand years premature, but at least your brain wasn't completely undeveloped.

You were right on all counts. All we had to do was nothing, I'm scum, everything. What I regret most however, is bringing you into the world instead of stopping Margo."

"You had no chance of stopping him, I think my sweet little boy is helping him. Tiamutael, is in so much trouble in the future, overwhelming my senses like that to stop me recognising him."

"Your boy?"

"You might know him as that one, not sure why he's doing it, but whatever's going on it's clear he isn't twisted like the others." The mention of that one made Ishtar tremble, Carl was of course unaware of the fact that he was also responsible for ending the first war, but Ishtar assumed the contrary.

"If that one is your son, what of her the girl? A fox spirit that calls him brother and the sister she mentioned?"

"I can't see the future, but as things stand, I would have to assume Kitsunoko and Raziel. I fully expect them to be on their way here together. I don't want to know what those three will be like when they're grown, they're so close now, it would break my heart to find out if they were at odds in the future."

"If you had been so hands on with us, we wouldn't have gotten to this point."

"You're right, I'm sorry I trusted you not to massacre each other and interfere with other species so unnecessarily. Why did you do that by the way, was it ego?"

"Why we did the things we did, doesn't really matter and I'm not sure any of us could tell you accurately anyway, now use recollect-"

"Absolutely not." Carl's refusal to use recollection, went against everything Ishtar had tried to achieve, Those two simple words, in her eyes, made everything meaningless.

"What do you mean "absolutely not"? I didn't do all the things I did so you could back out and not put everything right."

"No, you did it all to clean your conscience, Well, you succeeded, you're the hero who destroyed the one responsible for everything. Whatever I was, I'm Carl now, the law of Divinity doesn't exist anymore.

I'll see the game through to the end, be a husband to Klaire and Kyubi and a dad to my children.

Then you can do what you need to do and be whatever Sis wants you to be."

"Sis? Wait, you mean..." A light that had been missing from Ishtar's eyes finally returned. "...She survived!? How, when you got here without a system, I assumed the implementation failed."

"It didn't, I only just burned it away, Nergal's warning about what would happen if you crossed convinced me to try becoming a devoted conduit again. Well, I guess I should say, tap into my power again."

It was then Ishtar proved herself worthy of the title "Mother" in Carl's eyes. She threw herself at him, wailing as much as any banshee. "How is she doing? Is she okay? Any side effects? When Margo came to kill me before you were both ready, it was all I could do to hold them off, then Mobius got past me and I feared the worst."

"Of course we're fine, my boy was one of the ones named a villain, he couldn't let his dad die. He aske..." Carl suddenly got very angry, realising that Ishtar was clinging to him, made him feel sick and he pushed her away. "...Why didn't you ask the other laws for help? They would have in a second."

"Talk to them how? All I had to work with-"

"Was a lot more than I have these past eight years, entities with the level of power that laws possess are omnipresent, you could have just spoken to them. How did you not realise that? You know of devoted conduits, did they ever go and meet with a law to become one?"

"Easy for you to say, you're the original law."

"No, I'm Carl. I knew absolutely nothing about the laws until Grandma Lillim told me about them at mine and Klaire's star celebration."

"Nothing? That's not possible, I left my contained mind form on Earth to continue as the hub of my sub-system in case you survived whatever Mobius had done. It would have weakened when I died, but not that much."

"Well, it happened. I was found at the site of a realm gate incursion after Mobius threw me through time. My Mum Alisha found me, raised me as her son, dealing with me screaming us awake whenever creatures came looking for me.

Then Mum Leanna took me in and helped me endure eight years of silent treatment from my system because Sis was too immature to properly calculate things, even all my stats were unsolved equations.

I didn't know anything about pluses or stars, immortals, or aura or anything. Not until I was taught by Lillim, Kyubi, Tiamat, Bahamut and as much as I hate to admit it, Nergal."

"But how? The moment you arrived on Earth, you should have synced with my mind-form..." Ishtar pinched her chin in thought. "...Wait. Does the name Gilgamesh mean anything to you?"

"Yeah, he tried cursing me to death a week ago, give or take. What's he got to do with it?"

"Damn it, Nergal. I thought you'd have killed him by now."

"He couldn't, to stop the bloodshed en masse, immortals and humans signed a peace treaty and since Gilgamesh is the shadow ruler of humanity..."

"Regardless, his existence is why it has remained hidden in my workshop on Earth. If I am unable to leave this place, go to the dungeon of King Solomon, my workshop is beneath it."

"I think I would rather just kill Gilgamesh to be perfectly honest. For starters, no idea who, or where, that is. Next, I owe him big time for protecting the one who masterminded the massacre of the fox spirits, making Kyubi have to bury them all one by one is unforgivable."

"What?" The light faded from Ishtar's eyes again. "What do you mean her people were massacred, that should have been impossible, I gave Tsukuyomi a prototype of the Paradox field generator."

"It doesn't mean anything to a human variant who isn't immortal."

"Why did she even care? She should have been completely disillusioned with her kind and where was Illerion through it all? She was contracted to stay silent, but not away from her."

"No idea, they stopped talking due to a mutual misunderstanding of their relationship. Can I ask you one thing? had I been a part of your plan back then?"

"No, I was still fumbling for a plan, it wasn't until incursion day you approached me and gave me an ultimatum. "Make me human, or I'll kill you all". You were unhappy about your human creations being culled like an accident, a sentiment I could understand."

Carl put his face in his hands, relief making him feel faint. "Thank you, I don't think I could have ever looked her in the eyes if I was responsible for it."

"Hmm. It seems you have some latent memories shining through regardless, you told me as a law you didn't have emotions, but maybe those latent memories are effecting the ones you have now.

You mentioned you observed me in your search to find one who might have talent enough to create an entirely human body, one durable enough to house one of your power if things ever reached this stage."

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