—------ Layla —------

  “I haven’t felt that sense of disgust in a while. Where did you even get this thing?” The alien who I think was named Gill asked my brother.

  ‘Disgust is an understatement. It felt like my soul wanted to throw up!’ I spoke internally, too busy trying to recover from the sheer size of that gag reflex I was hit with.

  My eyes were watering so heavily that it looked like Greg had started to melt. Like he was a popsicle dropped onto hot asphalt.

  “From beyond the veil. Anyway, I think it’s… starting?” Greg’s speech started to slur awkwardly, like his tongue went numb.

  I blinked a few times, to get my eyes to stop watering and when they did…

  “...Greg?” I asked almost reflexively, my mind drawing a blank as I watched my brother slowly melt.

  It was not a trick of the light through watery eyes or blurred vision. My brother was fucking melting.

  “...Wellll thhhattsss…” He gasped out, his voice wrong in every way. It sounded like his throat was bubbling and it very could have been.

  “GREG?!” I called out again, but loud and harsh enough to make it crack from the strain.

  My legs tried to carry me forward. To charge towards my brother to help him. To just do something to make him stop melting.

  One of the aliens grabbed my shoulders to hold me back, my mind too out of it to tell who it was or to properly fight back. So I squirmed and thrashed, desperately trying to reach Greg.

  All I could do was watch as my brother, my best friend growing up, was reduced to a puddle while his clothing item Jimmy tried to hold him up. Even as Greg’s legs became sludge, losing all form and cohesion.

  It failed, and Greg face planted against the ground. Literally splashing and rippling as a viscous liquid.

  My hands wouldn’t stop shaking, my eyes refusing to focus on what my brother had become. After finally getting free from whoever was holding me back, I took only three tumbling steps forward before the feeling of wrongness hit me again.

  I vomited as soon as I collapsed to my knees. I’d get a few breaths in, and then promptly vomit all over again. Until there was nothing left.

  By the time I could look back up towards Greg, his body had completely stopped looking human. What I saw was something you could generously call a human colored slime. One that was crawling and growing over that tentacle thing Greg had retrieved for his Quest.

  “...It’s just a Quest, he’ll be back…! He came back last time, didn’t he Sally?” I asked the robot, the cylinder on wheels barely registering in my peripherals.

  Sally didn’t respond.

  There was a conversation occurring behind me, but I wasn’t listening. My eyes were unable to leave the amorphous mass of skin, flesh, and Jimmy attempting to form clothes around a puddle.

  “-on’t Identify him, somethin-” My mind briefly latched onto a sentence that might have been spoken to me, but I didn’t care.

  I used Identify on my brother.

  Whatever color was left in my face drained as I watched everything that could possibly identify the thing in front of me as Greg was being erased in real time.

  “...No sapience?” I whispered, not fully understanding what it meant.

  ‘Was it saying that my brother was gone? No that couldn’t be right. You can’t just lose sapience!’ I glared at the window and then dismissed it. My eyes landed on Greg. It was still him. It had to be.

  “Stop messing around Greg and say something!” I got up from my kneeling position, taking reluctant steps towards my brother.

  Everything in my body and mind told me to get away from him. That it was an abomination to recoil from. But it’s my brother, how could I do that?

  “Say something! Make a cringey quip! Laugh!” I continued to stumble towards him.

  “Please! Please…” I tripped on something and landed on my knees again, face to face with him.

  Greg’s face had become lopsided. One eye higher than the other, his nose pushed in like it was made of clay, his lips drooping way too far down around his teeth and exposing almost entirely his lower gums and nothing else.

  The eyes that met mine showed no recognition. They were dull as they tracked my movement, as if he were some kind of prey animal.

  My hands trembled as I brought them up to try and touch him. I hesitated. My hands didn’t know where to go, and from this close every atom of my being screamed denial of his existence. As if my own brother was some kind of unnatural magnet repelling my very soul.

  Someone grabbed the back of my shirt and roughly dragged me backwards, away from my brother.

  “Greg! Just say something! I won’t make fun of Jimmy anymore! Just… Please!” My legs kicked as I tried to retaliate, to get back over to him even as relief flooded my system at being away from the skin colored puddle.

  I thrashed and I screamed, tears streaming down my cheeks. But nothing I did or said got any reaction whatsoever from Greg.

  Then the feeling of revulsion went away all at once as a solid sphere of purple light surrounded Greg, completely encapsulating him, the tentacle, and a bunch of moon rock which they sat on.

  Looking up I saw an impossibly large being made completely from void blackness blot out the sun.

  I would later learn that they were called an Admin. The race in control of this universe and its System.

  The System had logged Greg, or what was left of him, as an anomaly. One to be sealed, and then disposed of.

  The Admin vanished, the purple shield containing Greg going with it.

  …

  —------ Jerald —------

  I rubbed my eyes in irritation, still taking on the form of a fat man by a pool in my own paradise.

  “Why the hell would you rush a Quest if you have a bad feeling about it?” I grumbled to no one but myself as I watched Greg’s life.

  This whole situation felt off. And since I’m a system, that is especially bad news.

  Greg had this feeling that something horrible was going to happen if he did this next Quest, and yet he also had a feeling that he needed to do it immediately.

  I had chalked up the contradictory nature of it all as simply another Greg thing, having come to the realization that not all humans are like him. Well most aren’t anyway.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  That bad premonition turned out to be more true than I would like, as everything fell apart. Literally.

  As soon as Greg had retrieved that limb from his pocket, things had begun to change inside his mind. Hard to detect if you weren’t as amazing as I was, but not even with my power could I have seen this coming.

  Greg’s mind was being wiped.

  That was an understatement. A better way to describe it, would be completely bleaching it. Grinding it up in a wood chipper, bleaching it again, then putting it in a blender. It was then put in the galaxy's most powerful acidic reagent.

  As soon as Greg put his hand on that cursed tentacle while holding the Parabox, I almost died. Me.

  “Holy shit…!” I muttered as I stared at the outer wall of my containment.

  Large cracks formed and healed over and over again as whatever the thing acting as Greg’s main system completely and utterly devastated his mind.

  Beyond the wall, where there used to be glimpses to his memories, his thoughts, and everything that made Greg him, was turned into white void. It was just… gone.

  I stared at the vast nothingness, as white and empty as a piece of paper. The attacks continued for a good while before finally slowing down. The walls were still being cracked and then healed, though it was at a rate that I wasn’t going to worry about getting wiped.

  ‘But to what end?’ I mentally asked myself.

  Greg was beyond dead. This was not something he could just… Greg himself out of. This was as close to permanent death as he could possibly reach.

  “...Should I let the walls fall? I doubt this existence will be very entertaining…” I sighed, contemplating whether or not to just kill myself.

  I’m not one to commit suicide, but I do consider myself quite practical. So when I’m put in an eternal hell of literally nothing but myself, I’d choose to just end it.

  “It’s not like I can rebuild-” I cut myself off as a thought struck me.

  ‘...I can’t rebuild a mind from nothing, sure, but is there truly nothing?’ My mind immediately abandoned the plan of suicide as it found a more suitable alternative.

  I dismantled my sanctuary. My artificial paradise I had built inside the mind of… ugh. My best friend.

  “You’re only the best because you’re the only one. Don’t get full of yourself now.” I laughed to myself, as I stripped everything away and found exactly what I wanted.

  Beneath the pool, the stone, and the sand. Beneath all that I had built upon was a glorious fragment.

  A tiny, almost Infinitesimally small, piece of Greg’s mind. It was just a memory from long term storage. His 7th birthday party, the one where he tripped while carrying the cake and cried all day about ruining his own party.

  “You didn’t think that would be the end, eh Greg?” I snarked as I popped my neck and fingers.

  It’s been a good break, but it’s about time I returned to being a proper System.

  “I’m definitely making you go back to referring to me with a capitol S.” I laughed like a mad man, and began my work.

  …

  —------ Greg —------

  Bliss.

  Just… pure bliss.

  That’s what I was experiencing for a questionable amount of time. Every now and then I would see a flash of something, but I wouldn’t comprehend it. Merely see it and then go back to that unthinking bliss.

  Then, for seemingly no reason at all, I woke up.

  “...Greeeeg~? Hello?” A fat guy tapped his knuckles against my head before humming.

  “I could have sworn I did it properly… Maybe something is missing?” He huffed in that strangely familiar accent. Why was that so familiar?

  It was on the tip of my tongue, so I just started making noise. Attempting everything from grunts to hums until something clicked.

  “...Jeerraaldd? Jerald?” I repeated myself, more sure now that the word- no, the name left my mouth.

  The fat man froze, turned to look at me with eyes that seemed way too happy and way too tired. Then he started laughing.

  Not a calm chuckle, nor a giggle, or even a normal haha. He was practically screaming in pure ecstasy.

  “HA~! HAHA! I DID IT! I FUCKING DID IT!” The fat man raised both of his middle fingers towards a grand expanse of white.

  “SUCK IT YOU PIECE OF SHIT~! SEVEN YEARS!!!” He continued to make a scene, which gave me some time to look around.

  The space I was in was… odd. It felt weirdly safe despite being barren of any sort of actual detail.

  I startled as his hand found my shoulder and he brought me in close.

  “Oh man! It is criminal that I haven’t been granted divinity with what I just did~. How do you feel Greg?” He continued to smile in that unnerving way, but it felt sort of good natured. In it’s own way.

  “...Me? I’m Greg?” I am Greg.” I spoke quietly but got more confident as I went on.

  “That’s right buddy, and I’m Jerald. I just brought your ass back from the brink of literal annihilation!” Jerald clapped his hand on my shoulder a few times.

  “...I see.” I muttered as I continued to look around.

  Everything still felt strange, but maybe this was normal?

  “...Why can’t I stop thinking about cake and being sad?” I asked, my mind replaying the same scene over and over again.

  It felt old. Really old.

  “Ah, a side effect probably. I didn’t have a whole lot left to work with, you know?” Jerald replied and I tilted my head.

  Looking down at myself and what I saw didn’t match what I remembered. I was too big. Maybe I had grown?

  Though my skin didn’t resemble the same color at all. In fact, I was see through. My hands, limbs, torso, everything was just a vague white foggy outline.

  “This is a mindscape, so your form is whatever you want it to be. It usually defaults to what you naturally look like, but there’s a sort of… disconnect with the mind and body now? It’s better to see it than to explain it.” Jerald waved his hand dismissively before placing both of his hands on my head.

  “I have no idea if this will work, but if it doesn’t… Well what’s another seven years?” He smirked and before I could ask anything more everything shifted.

  My vision blurred… no, it expanded. Beyond what my mind could handle, giving me a fierce headache. I winced, my eyes squinting as new information flooded into my head.

  Too much information.

  Closing my eyes didn’t help. I could still see. How could I still see?

  I was forgetting something, but it felt so terribly close…

  For a long while all I did was breathe, trying to focus on why I felt so off. Why my senses seemed to just go on and on and on.

  When I finally opened my eyes, my head feeling much better, a disgustingly familiar green box hovered in my vision. It felt important.

  Really important.

  It also made me feel… odd. Like something was boiling beneath the surface but couldn’t escape. It faded soon after it made its appearance.

  There were… words? Yes, words were on the box.

  “A..nnn…oyingg” I tried to speak but felt something was wrong as I swiped the box away.

  It was as if I was trying to use unfamiliar organs. Of which I had too many of the same kind. Was that possible?

  My mind began to clear its strange fog and I looked at myself.

  ‘One, two, three… Either I don’t remember how to count, or I have several more arms than I did before.’ I paused at the thought of ‘before’. The thoughts were alien yet they were not.

  It wasn’t just my arms, but my hands, legs, feet, fingers, eyes, noses, mouths, tongues…

  I was a forest of limbs, the trees made from digits and hair while the earth was my skin and flesh.

  Turning my head, I was met with the sensation of several heads turning. Everywhere I looked was just more and more of… me.

  This is me.

  Not all of it was though, as there was something else mingling with all the limbs and flesh. My senses detecting something foreign but friendly. Another name came to the tip of my tongue, and I explored the sounds again.

  “Jimm…yy.” I spoke, several mouths trying to move in unison but off by several milliseconds.

  Jimmy was trying his best to assist me, having spread throughout my body as a sort of makeshift skeleton. My bones did feel a little too stringy for my liking.

  My mind continued to feel off, but I was getting acclimated now. Everything slowly shifting into place as whatever Jerald had done settled into place with this body of mine.

  Vague memories not really mine surfaced, but they were mine all the same.

  ‘It does not feel like me but it is me? Strange.’ I thought to myself as I reviewed the memories.

  A purple sphere that contained me, something big and hard to see trying to erase me, then giving up and leaving me in… where was this place?

  It was large, but I couldn’t see or sense anything. Perhaps a dimensional pocket turned into a prison. That sounded cool.

  What I could feel was myself, and now that my mind was beginning to clear up and remember more and more, I realized that I really disliked this new body.

  “Fuckin..g… greeen.. Bbittch.” I slurred, my innumerable mouths getting better at speech as time went on.

  Memories, real memories, started to flood into my head as if a floodgate had lifted. Over the course of 15 minutes, I remembered all 43 years of my life.

  34 spent as a normal human. Two years spent in a universe not my own.

  And seven more, spent alone in a hole with nothing to regulate my… transformation.

  I especially remembered the promise I made to my mother seven years ago, and my sister who has likely been trapped in another universe.

  “...Well shit.” I mumbled, my thousands of mouths amplifying the sound.