My head spun. I had so many questions. Just from the brief conversation, so many queries came to mind that they had to fight to be the first out of my mouth. "Did you kill me to bring me here? Did you blow up my rocket and kill the other astronauts? How did you know I would do what you wanted?"

The First raised her hands in what she must have thought was a placating gesture but looked more as though she was about to pounce on me with claws and teeth. "Peace, Apollo. I will answer your questions, and more besides. A coven of our most powerful seers and sorceresses cast a spell, one ancient and dangerous, that empowered the Queen of Queens."

"The Queen of Queens?" I asked and then realized what she meant. "Oh, what you call the System. It seems pretty powerful already, so what did your ritual do?"

"It narrowed and extended her focus, that she might peer across great distance and briefly touch your world. You must understand, King Apollo. The spells were not of our design. Magic is will made manifest through the power of the Queen of Queens, but the methods are as unique as the effect. These were human spells, but humans are blind to the stars and their reflections."

I tilted my head. "Why does that matter?"

"They would not share with us their secrets, and thus our first attempt at reaching worlds unknown was a failure." The First wrung her hands and made the symbol of the watchful eye against the glowing fabric of the moon. "We did not know how or who the Queen of Queens would dream of because we did not fully understand the spell's function when we were left with no alternative but to seize the knowledge denied us."

"…by force," I finished. In seeing the future, they believe themselves its stewards. I remembered Taquoho saying something similar. The ends would justify the means, to Midnighters. Always. "I bet I know how well the humans took that. But why?"

"Because our world will die without our intervention. You have seen for yourself the changes wrought to our moon. The canyons and deformations, the ruined landscape and the death of its natural life. The Queen of Queen sleeps within, long past when she ought have woken to spread wings and soar the cosmos, growing ever larger all the while. Her dreaming is the font of all cast magic, such is her power. But the poison of the fallen star parasites keep her in fugue, even as they feed on her essence and corrupt its shape. Either she will grow too large and destroy Raphina, or the parasites will drain her and turn their hunger toward Rava. In either event…"

I put my palms to my head. "Wait, hold up, you're telling me the System is some sort of celestial space creaure, that it's in the moon, it's growing large enough to destabilize Raphina, and that despite being omniscient, it's not even awake? How is it doing what it's doing?"

I glanced over at Priestess Cla'thn, who nodded. "If you are infected by poor humors, do you will your body to fight it?" she asked, "Or does the flesh know how best to knit?"

"So the System, this omniscient, mind-reading entity, this mad world's entire framework for skills and logic that overwrites the very laws of physics and speaks in the mind of every individual, and that plucked me from another planet, or maybe even another dimension is… is… what, an auto immune response to a Ravan apocalypse?" I ground my heels into my eyes. "God damn it. I hate how much sense that makes." I held up my hands out, palm up. "Source of all magic. The null devils eat magic, or at the very least disrupt it. So what does this creature do?" I lowered one palm and raised the other. "Its unconscious mind emits some… some sort of a framework. The opposite of magic. Rather than the free-flow of dreams-made-manifest, it's a construct of enforced rules and limitations. Something that, at least in part, gets past the null devil's disruption because it's grounded in rules, and it's bound itself by those rules. Which is why it can't—or won't—talk about certain things." I looked up at the First. "How am I doing so far?"

The giant bug was silent for a moment before answering. "I must admit, you are more receptive to this knowledge than I had expected."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Yeah, well, clearly I've watched too much bad sci-fi."

Sorry I thought you were just a bored IT nerd, System.

<Apology noted.>

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I took a deep breath. "Alright. So where do we go from here?"

The First took another bite of her rancid food. "You continue upon your path. We will aid and protect you, as the life of our Midnight Queen depends upon it, as does every life upon Rava. We must wake the Queen of Queens."

"No pressure or anything," I muttered. "All right. Fundamentally, knowing about all this doesn't change much. My motivations and determination are probably as much why I was plucked as my technical skills and winning personality. The Ravan Apollo program will continue. But things are going to get hairy if we're fighting null devils on another planet. And I'm… relieved, I suppose, to know your own motives. What happens once this creature wakes up?"

The First gave a very human, very massive shrug with several sets of shoulders. "Likely she will leave us to soar among the stars, taking both magic and skills with her. We cannot yet see what form her absence takes. Such things are beyond ripples clouded by uncertainty and myriad paths."

I still had more questions, but this was already a lot to process. Neither the priestess or the First made objection to my bowing out to return to the antechamber. This creature that created the System in its sleep must be a creature of unimaginable power. A living stellar core's worth of energy, able to disperse that energy not through heat or light or other electromagnetic waves, but in ways that defied all logic and flew in the face of all understood physics. And it was apparently up to me to help it. Had been up to me since the day I landed on Rava with its computer-like menus in front of my face and its voice in my head. And once it woke up and left, and it took its framework with it, what would I be? A human trapped in the body of a goblin at the head of primitive savages? No longer a goblin king? That was, after all, a job role bestowed by the System.

Once it woke up, could this celestial creature send Ringo and I home? And what was Ringo doing here, anyway?

I shook my head. Everything just led to more questions, more uncertainty. But at least the Midnighters weren't trying to wipe out the tribe.

Back in the light of the day, I held up a hand to the sky while my eyes adjusted. The eclipse wasn't quite overhead, but it was getting close.

So, some sort of psychic celestial space creature powerful enough to warp reality to its whims. This universe sure was strange. But heck, in its infinite vastness, how improbable was it that such a creature came to be in one small corner of it? I had assumed that if this wasn't a simulation that it was some sort of parallel reality. But was it? Could System really pull me through dimensions, or had it simply reached across space and seen me leaving Earth on a rocket about to explode and plucked me from the moment of my death? When I looked up at the sky each evening, was Sol one of the stars I saw? Was I even in the same galaxy?

System

<Awaiting query.>

Can you at least tell me if that ritual saved me from my death or caused it?

There was a pause before System's reply appeared.

<Unable to return requested information.>

Is Earth up there somewhere?

<Unable to return requested information.>

If we succeed, and we wake you up, could you send me home?

<Keep advancing, Chris.>

I honestly didn't know if I ought be thanking the Midnighters or cursing their names. But there was little to be done about it. I was here, now. I was at the head of an army of crafty, industrious creatures with a manic passion for gadgets and going places they ought not go. This world, this crazy beautiful world full of wild creatures and bound by strange physics was facing its great filter event. I had the technology they needed to get through it. Now I had allies rallied to the cause: the various forest goblin tribes working together, the orcs, the Ifrit, and the Midnighters who had at least as much skin in the game as I did—and were the only ones who knew the true stakes and probably the only ones who knew System's true nature.

Now that the javeline had been dealt with, the elves had been pushed away, the Dawn's Light had been satisfied, and the Ifrit bottle had been uncorked, we had only Habberport to worry about. But humans were slow, and they had jungles and mountains and monsters to get through before they could truly reach us with anything save those dragons on the barges. With most of the immediate threats to the tribe quelled, we could really buckle down and get the rocketry program burning. By the time we had to worry about them, we'd be in the space age.

Speaking of immediate threats, the eclipse was getting awful close.

I spotted the elite captain that had accompanied Cla'thn patrolling the edge of the camp and trotted over. "Hey Captain. Do you want some of my goblins down here at the palisades? This place is about to be lizard central."

The captain tapped the butt of his spear against the ground. "No lizards. All gone."

"I know it seems like that, but they come pretty regularly, every day. They have for months."

"No more. We follow to nest. No more nest. No more lizards."

I tilted my head. "Seriously? They weren't that big a deal. Hell, they've basically been a free food source that threw itself at us and kept Canaveral self-sufficient. We probably could have taken out the nest at any time, but there wasn't really any need."

"Was threat. Now no threat. Protect Apollo Program. Safe," said the captain, making the circular sign with two of his four hands. "So say First. Ad Luna."

"I guess," I said. I looked out past the southern barricade. Something about that didn't sit right. We didn't need the lizards anymore, not really. Not with such bountiful hunting in the plains and our wranglers managing herds of livestock. But the lizards weren't the night haunts. They didn't need to be completely wiped out for the tribe to survive.

The Midnighters must not have seen it that way.

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