Lord of Entertainment

Chapter 530: Hunting Evil Counterpart

(3rd Person POV)

The tens of thousands of worlds that had answered to Solarus answered to Arthur now, and he went to see them himself.

He split off Shadow Clone Jutsu by the hundred and scattered them across the empire he'd swallowed, one clone to a world, and everywhere they touched down they carried the same thing: the Scripture of Dionysus, the faith of the Lord of Entertainment, laid into worlds that had known nothing but the sun's cold hand for as long as their histories ran.

The scripture was not all he brought. Technology went out alongside it, the tools and comforts of the mortal world he'd left behind, and in world after world the standard of living climbed so fast it looked less like progress than a miracle.

The Divine World kept a measure for such things. They called it the Benevolence Ranking.

Before Arthur took him, Solarus had sat near the very top of it — third, for all that he was a cold god to the mortals who prayed his name. Only two stood above him: the God of Craftsman and the Moon Goddess. Neither was stronger than Solarus, particularly. They were simply warmer to the ones beneath them, and the myriad worlds in their keeping lived good lives for it.

It hadn't saved them. They had been Solarus's partners, two of the Three Known Gods, and Arthur had gone to each of them in turn and taken their thrones the same as he'd taken the sun god's. They had begged. It changed nothing.

So the ranking read differently now. First on the Benevolence Ranking, seated above every benevolent god the Divine World had ever counted, was Arthur Pendragon.

---

The seat of that new empire had a new name.

What had been Solarus's palace was the Dionysus Palace now, gutted and rebuilt from the inside out until nothing about it recalled the god who'd raised it. Glass and clean steel, open floors, the whole shape of it lifted straight from Hellfire HQ back in the mortal world, close enough that a god walking its halls might have taken it for a very tall office building, if not for the weight of the power humming under the floors.

At the heart of it stood a long round table, and at the head of the table sat Arthur, Firfel at his side. Queen of the Dionysus Empire now, in title as well as in fact.

The rest of the seats were far from empty. Keanu and Kaiser. Mephista, Queen of the Nether Realm, restored and watching everything with slow, ancient patience. Scarlet and Mithrael, angels who had worn Solarus's colors once and wore no one's now but Arthur's. And scattered among the deities and the old powers, plain mortals — Vivienne, George, Apollonia, Sylwen — sitting at a table that governed tens of thousands of worlds as though they'd been asked over for dinner. Past them the palace ran thick with Hellfire's own, the whole company picked up and set down here in the Divine World to do the single thing it had always done: carry entertainment out to every world that would have it.

Vivienne turned to Firfel, chin propped on her hand. "It's been a month since you sat us all down and told us he's a deity. That he'd gone and swapped out every god back home for just him at the top, Lord of Entertainment." She cut a glance down the table. "And that you're one now too, Firfel. So." Her eyes came back to Arthur. "When do I get to be a deity, Arthur?"

"Yeah!" George brought a fist down on the table, beard bristling. "Sign me up. Lord of Dwarves and Mountains — that's got a ring to it."

On either side of them Apollonia and Sylwen sat up straighter, plainly warming to the idea for themselves.

Arthur watched the four of them and said nothing, quietly enjoying it.

Mithrael was not enjoying it. "You believe godhood is a thing one simply decides to have," the angel said, cool and flat. "That deities are born squalling like mortals, and you might put your name down for the next one that comes along. The delusion is a wonder."

"Why not?" George turned on him, untroubled. "My friend Arthur managed it."

Mithrael only snorted. Across the table, Scarlet hid a smile behind her fingers.

Kaiser leaned in, relishing the whole thing. "Vertically challenged friend. Divinity is not something you come by asking nicely, you understand."

"It takes an Authority," Keanu said, level, in the tone of a man explaining something to people he happens to be fond of. "And it takes worshippers. Between the two of you, I count neither."

George and Vivienne deflated in the same breath.

Then Vivienne's head came up again. "Hold on. Firfel started out mortal, didn't she? And she made it across."

"Yeah..." Apollonia said slowly. "Brother told me he only married her so she could become one..."

Sylwen's eyes went bright. "Wait. So if we marry a deity, we get to be one too?"

George was already up out of his chair, scanning the more divine end of the table with plain intent.

Kaiser opened his mouth. Shut it again. Down the whole length of the table, no one had anything ready.

"Listen." Keanu pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose. "It is not that simple. Arthur and Firfel are a rare case. No — not even rare. Nobody has done it. Not once, in the entire history of anything. Marry a mortal and make a goddess of her? It does not work the way you've all decided it works."

George refused it outright, and argued the point for a good while, and it wore down in the end to the thing that was actually frightening him. "So that's it, then? We stay mortal, we die, end of story? And what happens to the rest of us? My friend Arthur gets to live forever with his wife, and we just—" He stopped, jaw clenched.

Arthur lifted a hand, and the table quieted under it. "Calm down. All of you." His voice stayed easy. "George. Everyone. I'm not going to let you perish. I already have a way to hold your souls, even once your bodies wear out."

Vivienne's shoulders crept toward her ears. "Wear out?"

"Don't fix on that part." He said it gently. "Your soul stays here, in the Divine World, in my kingdom. And once I've worked out how to make you eternal in truth, none of you gets left behind. You have my word."

"Even then," Keanu said, careful now. "A soul kept in your kingdom because it follows you is still a soul that frays. Ten thousand years, and it goes out like any other. Unless the kingdom itself is truly Eternal — unless you and every citizen in it stand outside dying altogether — then all you've bought them is a longer wait for the same ending."

Arthur smiled at that. "I told you about the system a month ago. And what it's for. Didn't I?"

The table went still.

Because that was the shape of it. Once Arthur claimed the One True Throne — the seat that governed every reality, every Authority there had ever been — he would stop being a thing the universe knew how to end. Eternal wouldn't be a promise then. It would be a fact he owned.

The amazement moved around the table one face at a time.

"That's incredible, boss!" Klein came half out of his seat. "Can you make us eternal too? Us, I mean?"

"Yes." Arthur's smile widened by a degree. "That was always the plan. You, and the whole of Hellfire. I intend to keep every last one of you working for me forever, turning out things worth watching across world after world after world."

Klein sat back down. By rights he should have been overjoyed. Instead a small chill ran through him. "...Can I go back to being mortal?"

The table broke into laughter around him.

They were still laughing when the panel lit in Arthur's vision, seen by no one else.

[Master. I have finished analyzing the multiverse in full and located your counterpart. I will deliver the exact reality and timeline he occupies. He attempted to conceal himself — we found him regardless.]

"Perfect," Arthur murmured.

Firfel felt him rise before she saw it. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong." He was already turning the coordinates over, fixing them in his mind. "I've just found the hole the rat's been hiding in."

She caught his meaning at once. Whatever went across her face, she folded it away. "Come back to me, my king."

He bent and kissed her on the mouth. "I'll come back, my queen."

---

Far down the branching of the timelines, in a place the ship's charts would never reach, a mortal world was ending.

The apocalypse lay over all of it. The streets had gone to ruin and the dead walked them in numbers, and here and there, sharp against the grey of everything, the living: a knot of people run down and scattered over nothing more than a scavenged armful of supplies.

Arthur Morningstar looked down on it and felt nothing worth the name.

"This is getting boring," he said, to no one at all. "I rewrote this world's narrative to run like The Walking Dead. Everyone who dies gets back up. And even so — look at them. Two billion, still clinging on. The dead outnumber the living everywhere the eye lands, and it's still not the picture I wanted."

He folded his arms and studied the panel hanging in front of him. "Do I change it again? Anyone who feels true terror seizes up where they stand and turns with the rest?" He held the thought a moment, then let it fall. "No. No, that isn't it either."

He let out a slow breath. "I need more out of this. More worlds, fed the same thing."

Below him the chase went on, the living and the things that had been living, and every frame of it was being carefully filmed. A crew of ghosts drifted through the ruin with their lenses trained down on the suffering, missing nothing.

One of them, a ghost named Diddy, couldn't hold it in any longer. "Does none of you feel that? A week ago this world was full. People, cities, all of it. Now it's this. And here we are, floating around recording them die like it's a nature program."

"Shut it, Diddy." Daddy didn't lift his eye from the lens. "The one who arranged all this is the boss himself. You complain where he can hear you, you stop existing. Simple as that."

"Y-yeah," Puffy managed, barely over a whisper. "He's — he's really scary."

"We're not even alive to lose!" Diddy hissed. "We're ghosts already, what's he going to—"

"Just shut up!" the rest of them rounded on him as one.

Diddy sank back with a sigh and let the thought finish where only he could hear it. 'Who would ever have believed it. The Arthur I knew, kind as anything, turned into this. This isn't the demon I remember—'

The demon was standing right in front of him.

"Gah—!" Diddy recoiled. "B-boss— what are you doing over here?!"

The rest of the crew went rigid, every one of them certain Arthur had caught the thought whole. They peeled away from Diddy without a sound, and he hung there alone and cold under it.

Arthur looked the lot of them over, and — to their bafflement — he smiled. "Diddy. Daddy. Puffy. Puff Daddy. Diddy Oil bringing up the rear. So this is what you all look like in this timeline."

The ghosts stared. This was wrong. The Arthur they served would have unmade any spirit that so much as muttered at him. This one was smiling.

"Looks like my counterpart's been working you to death." The corner of his mouth twitched. "Bit late for that, mind, seeing as you're already dead."

That finished them off entirely. The Arthur they knew had forgotten how to make a joke lifetimes ago.

Then a voice tore across the ruin, raw with fury. "It can't be. YOU!"

The ghosts spun toward it — and there stood another Arthur. This one they knew. This one down to the marrow.

"You're—" Diddy got it out first. "You're not our Arthur? Who are you, then?"

"An impostor?!" another of them blurted.

Arthur only chuckled. He set a hand on Diddy's head and ruffled it, light as anything. "Easy. I'm Arthur. Just not the one you've had the bad luck of working under."

His counterpart watched the whole exchange with his teeth bared. "You bastard. You actually ran me down. All the way out here." Something flickered under the fury, surprise he couldn't quite bury. "Fine. Then I'll just fold myself into the next timeline along—"

He reached for the Authority of «Transmigration», already casting his soul out toward some other Arthur down some other branch, ready to leave this body cold and slip away between the worlds.

"Oh, no you don't."

Before the working could take, Arthur was simply there in front of him — and his hand closed around the counterpart's soul.