Once more, I wandered the grey labyrinth where my soul and mana stone lingered, shadows curling along the endless walls. This time, though, I wasn’t alone. She was already there, waiting in this grey realm, or maybe it was me waiting for myself.
She had changed since last time—grown larger, as if the weight of her existence had finally pressed her out of any human shape. Now she was just a tangled mass of glossy white flesh, streaked with tufts of pale hair and mouths that gaped like old wounds across her body. Her crimson eyes, each one as big as my head, blinked and stared, some half-lidded, most fixed on me in envy as one would look at a dream they could never reach.
Could she really shift her form whenever she wanted? If so, why choose this one? Was it meant to frighten me, or was it just what she had become? I tried not to let any of it show on my face, keeping my gaze low as I spoke, pretending I wasn’t the least bit shaken.
“Now that I know who you are, how should I call you? Or now that I think about it, does it even matter since there is no one else I would call Ruby anyway?”
I could feel her disappointment, even without words; a shadow seemed to ripple through her monstrous shape, as if my indifference had bruised her somehow.
“You can call me whatever you want as long as it isn’t another Ruby or corrupted Ruby.
“Yes, you are right, that would be too lazy. Mmhhhh… How about Rubicante?”
“Like the Demon. Mmhhhhh… It’s fine, I guess, though there's no one here to torture, so I’m not sure if it perfectly fits.”
“Believe me, it suits you.”
Rubicantes many eyes twitched, irritation flickering in their depths, and a hollow, brittle laugh slipped from the nearest mouth, echoing off the endless grey walls like something lost and lonely.
“Ha, Ha. If you came here to insult me, you can fuck right off. It’s not my fault I look like this. The best I can do is imitate a human silhouette. I can’t actually look human or be human.”
“Sorry, I didnt mean it like that.”
Silence settled between us, thick and awkward, pressing down on the air. The only thing I could hear was the soft, restless sound of Rubicante’s tentacles sliding and twisting together, whether intentionally or unconsciously, I couldn’t tell.
“By the way, how did you become corrupted in the first place?”
Rubicante hesitated, her many eyes darting away from mine. A tense silence stretched out before she finally muttered, "...Fine, I'll forget about it. Not like I have any other company. But for every question I answer, you open a memory."
Sigh, Pervert.
I could see greed and desire emanate from her gaze. I felt like a shivering fawn in front of a hungry wolf.
Eventually, I gave her a reluctant, half-hearted nod that I would definitely regret one day, and she brightened up right away, already swaying her massive form happily from one side to the other, eager to answer my question as if nothing had happened.
“As to your question, I got corrupted when I left God’s realm, but unlike you, I was unable to fully seal the corruption that hitched a ride. So over time, my soul corroded more and more until I went insane. If I remember correctly, the old man Wilhelm took me down.”
I’d half expected something like that, but what really surprised me was learning that my father-in-law had once killed a past version of me, after I’d lost myself to madness. It sent a cold shiver down my spine. The thought left me feeling strangely hollow.
“But how were you and I in God’s realm at the same time?”
Rubicante rolled her many eyes.
“Just like I said, it exists outside of time. So the laws of time are a bit funky there. You could theoretically meet anyone who has ever lived or no one, it all depends on who you want to meet.”
“So I could have met my parents even though they still would have been alive?”
From one of Rubicante’s enormous eyes, a single tear welled up and slid slowly down her pale flesh, leaving a glistening trail behind.
“Yes, we could have done that, though both of us chose the other path didnt we?”
Her regret was so thick I could almost feel it pressing against my own heart. I hesitated, lost in the ache of what-ifs. If I’d chosen to see my parents, would everything be different now? Would I still be here, heavy with new life and promises, or would I have let myself drift away to join them in whatever peace God offered? I didn’t know. All I knew was that, somehow, I was happier here. I blinked back the sting of tears and forced myself to keep asking questions, if only to keep from drowning in memories.
“But you and I existing together at the same time, isn’t that some kind of paradox?”
“It is paradoxical but pretty much a non-issue when it comes to the great scheme of things.”
“So nothing’s gonna happen?”
“Nope, nothing, this isn’t Back to the Future. And I’m not even sure I traveled in time.”
“What do you mean, you are my past self? Obviously, you traveled through time.”
“To you it may look like it, but I never had the wish to go back in time. Maybe you were the one who traveled in time. I didnt even know I could for most of it. I just stayed in God’s realm until you showed up. Nothing happens in God’s realm unless you want it to. Well, except for corruption that is.”
With every answer she gave, things seemed to make a little more sense, but there was still a knot of unease twisting inside me.
“There is something I still don’t understand: how did you even get to God’s realm? Shouldn’t that be impossible?”
“For you, yes, but now and again the gods come together and use their divine power to send corruption back to God’s realm so they don’t have to deal with it. That’s what happened to me shortly after I went mad.”
I suppose that was enough about the strange rules of God’s realm for now. My thoughts drifted back to what mattered most, the things that still haunted me, the questions that felt too close to my heart.
“Then I have just two questions left. Why did you help me, and what is the future I avoided?”
Rubicante let out a long, ragged sigh, her tentacles drawing closer to her body as if to shield herself. "You really won’t give up on that. Urgh… I 'helped' you so that I could see him again. Even if I went back in time, I still couldn’t leave God’s realm on my own, and I didnt want to leave with just anyone."
So, in the end, it was Janus she missed with an ache that scorched through everything else. If I were her, would I have chosen differently? The question settled heavy and bittersweet, throbbing deep inside me.
She hesitated, her mouths working silently before she finally continued, her voice subdued. "Though I didn’t do it to help you. I wanted your body, but then you went ahead and just sealed me. And that future you speak of was quite simple: Janus died. He rode to Aldmoor and never returned. I only noticed my feelings for him once he was gone. I got more and more depressed and eventually went mad the coming winter."
She skirted around the worst of it, her words only brushing the edges of pain she didn’t want to name. But I couldn’t let it go. The fear that I might stumble into the same mistakes, just because I didn’t understand, haunted me like a shadow I couldn’t shake.
“How did I avoid that future? And what happened to the twins in your timeline?”
Rubicante’s patience finally frayed, her words clipped and sharp. “I tire of all these questions, and didn’t you have only two questions left? Besides, I think there is something more pressing going on on the outside.”
I was still mulling over her words when, all at once, a sharp, pulling pain seized my lower belly so sudden and fierce it stole my breath away.