Appropriately named, I thought I would end the little arc I started. Originally I had intended to leave the end to the reader's imagination, but alas, creativity spike induced by energy drinks strikes again. You can read the previous parts over here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=160347.0Rage...
The Sanctuary of Nilharas, where my Liege resided, was like the sheet of rubber around a ball. An entire world, dedicated only, and for the sole purpose, of training Knights to serve the master at the one central Castle which now lay in ruin. Countless more Sanctuaries existed in parallel to Nilharas, where other Planars reside and train their Knights. ASVS was special-- one of the scant few of the Stellar Class Planars who had enough power to end the entire metaphysical space of the world as we know it.
My rage burns...
ASVS usually had the form of a sphere- a ball with crackling energy sheathing it, unapproachable. It is more apt to call him an... 'It', but due to my closeness with the entity I always had the impression of a male within that orb, not to mention the fatherly figured he was to me for over a hundred years. But on this day, he had a strangely humanoid form- with eight arms, and barbed razor sharp wire enveloping his form- with spikes protruding from the most random of places. I say humanoid, because his lower body was more like that of a lion. Or maybe it was a bear, I am not entirely sure. Golden blood poured from where I impaled him with his own spear, through the chest, and nailed to his obsidian throne.
My rage overflows...
I was mad with hatred. If I thought I was mad before, it must have been only in jest because right now I was completely off the wall. I was not even seeing red. At the cusp of realizing my goals, things went hazy, and then completely dark. I was beside myself, if 'beside myself' meant 'blindfolded and under kilometers of ocean'. I had no sensation, no audio or visual interpretation- All I had was rage. Rage and hatred.
I try to pull myself back by remembering how I got here. Ironically, my 'remembering' begins by remembering what I had forgotten. Mia. Even at the thought of her, I can feel my pilotless body caving in ASVS' skull with my mailed gauntlet for the dozenth time. That bastard just won't die from physical damage.
Where was I? Ahh, yes. Mia. I faintly hear ASVS grunt again, but cannot be sure if it's just me wanting to believe that actually happened, or that I am on the right track of being in control of myself once more. ASVS had manipulated me into killing her. So I have decided to be the truth, at least. Maybe it wasn't his direct action that caused it, but indirectly he did. It was his shard that fell onto the Town where Mia and I had lived. It was his Flames that took my life. And it was his Ring that made me hallucinate into seeing Mia as my enemy. But a hundred years later, and heartless, the sorrow and pity over the situation has burned out in my veins. Fizzled away-- become inert. Now I only feel a faint pang of pain: like my heart was squeezing and throbbing even though I didn't have one.
Shortly after, I set my sights on Nilharas. I came like the furious flames of an inferno. Swept away the weakling trainees in an instant, all eighteen of them-- who now lay as piles of black and grey ashes, beneath the wall of the Fortress that was the Central Sanctum. Within awaited me my brothers. The three of the originals-- those who took the Ring at the same time as I-- and four others, who came shortly after them. At first I thought the originals might take my side, but they didn't. I thought we had something in common, but in the end, dying-- figuratively and literally-- was the only thing we had in common. They got the 'literally' part of that deal.
When it finally came to just me and ASVS, I really could not tell you much about what happened there. He is a Stellar Class Planar after all. When I faced him, his power created holes in the entire metaphysical plane of existence. Just by existing, even in the Sanctuary, outside the boundaries of the Prime Plane, he created holes-- conduits-- of the Shadow through at least twelve other planes that I know of, forever tainting them with Shadow. For example, for this reason alone, Water no longer lets light pass through, and Flames instead of creating illumination, now create shadows.
When I released my power, I obliterated the entire distinction between the planes. I burned every bridge, and every sign post, and made them all into a soup. I destroyed the Prime Plane-- though it had been lifeless already. ASVS was taken aback at first, but then howled in his crystalline and monotone voice, and charged me. We must've fought for days. The entire Sanctuary was no longer recognizable-- even though it was more like a dream world. A created space. Disinterested in the state of the Planes and unaffected by them. It was created in an image of something, not it's material. To be precise, all of Nilharas was made of Nihil, the material of nothingness, and umbra, the material of shadow.
The Sanctuary used to be a flat plain, extended for hundreds of thousands of kilometers-- yes, it was larger than the Prime Plane, and teeming with life from all sorts of creatures that we hunted for food, sport and training. There exist creatures here as powerful as Knights, and some even beyond that-- Behemoths we call them-- made entirely of ASVS' dreams and desires. Their power ephemeral, yet real in this world. All annihilated from the heat and blastwave of the first exchange between me and ASVS.
Now the Sanctuary is a ragged place, filled with chasms, mountains, and the ground is black from being scorched about a hundred thousand times. Every swing of my sword, or ASVS' spear, created heat blasts so powerful, it turned stone to vapor. There were times when ASVS would dodge my slashes, and the mountains and ground would get cloven in two, like a hot knife passing through cheese. And when our weapons met in their dance of death, the sound would crack the stone, and the shockwave would turn them into a fine grain one might confuse for flour.
The beams, balls and waves of energy we threw at each other would create holes in the Sanctuary, and strike other adjacent planes- or simply create holes in the True Shadow itself, visible on the Prime Plane as holes in the Firmament. Since myself and ASVS were both Agents of Shadow, our true power lay in creating invisible mass-- artificial gravity. This caused the 'thin sheet of rubber around a ball' I likened the Sanctuary earlier to, to look more like the crown upon a King's head. And these fields were so powerful, it drew Planes to crash into each other-- well, whatever was left of the Planes.
To put it succinctly, the first hour of our battle ended the entire universe. Anything that could be called 'living' was ended, no matter where it was-- either by the destruction of the distinction between planes, or the direct consequences of our battle. And we had fought for over
one hundred days, before he finally lost steam, and I struck the killing blows.
You might remember me mention that ASVS was one of the few Stellar class Planars in existence. Of course, the others did not let this go by without interfering or doing something about it. The other three I know of are Light, Energy and Entropy. Of course, they protected their Realms at first, and set out to restore the bridges I had burned between the Planes, and eventually came to spectate the fight. They did not interfere directly, and neither did ASVS ever call out for help. My guess is that to them, this is another event of Ascension. Whoever wins the battle, gets the title of 'Planar'. A title I will refuse, just before I kill them too.
"Are you happy now, my child?" I hear the words trickle into my conscience. I feel like my eyes open after a long time, and I see ASVS before me. Still impaled to his throne by his very own spear. Golden blood pours from his torso-- there's a sea of golden blood around us by now. I stopped counting, but I have been 'killing' him for at least a week now. He was immortal after all.
I hold his spear with my left hand, and I twist it, intent on giving him a lifetime supply of torture, even though I don't know if ASVS can truly experience pain.
He spits out more golden blood at my provocations, but then smiles. "You have bested me, your own father and creator. Was I truly such a worthless Liege, as to deserve this? Have I not given you all you could wish for?" He asked, but the words fell like dead men around me. Meaningless.
"Is it your Heart? I could rebind it. Is it your Soul? I could mend it. No? Is it the Girl then? I could revive it."
His skull gives under my fist like it was a gel. It was definitely made of bone, but completely meaningless against the strength that could lift this entire Inner Sanctum, and throw it into an adjacent plane. Us Knights, and the Planars, had a Protecta-- a sheet of energy around them that protected them from damage. Once depleted, our bodies were as weak as anything else made from flesh and bone. It is easy to get conceited with power and forget this important point.
"She is not an it, ASVS. Neither is this about any of that. It is simple vengeance, my Creator. Hatred, nothing else." I replied to him.
"So, just business? I could've altered your mind a million times by now, to make you forget your hatred, to make you forget your vengeance. So what does that say of your conviction? Does my murder have any point, if it's execution could be interrupted by me simply making you forget your hate?" He asked me and I paused.
For a long time I wondered about his words. A long time being a relative measurement of time. For me, time flew in the nanoseconds. For ASVS probably as well. In the Sanctuary time flowed even slower. Come to think of it, the Prime Plane was probably destroyed in less than half a second. Whatever remained of it anyway.
"Then why did you not do so, ASVS? Are you afraid of testing my conviction?" I asked mockingly but he shook his head.
"You are so beautiful. If I did that, I would destroy that fierce look in your eyes. That trembling grip of your sword tells me a story I have never encountered before: Of seas rising and clouds diving. The stars shining, and the times ending. Of songs being sung in the language of Light, as the grass turns to crystal. The color of your hate is richer than life itself. Yet it ends lives, instead of create them. With the power to Create, you Destroy. Still not realizing the ultimate betrayal you committed, against your own Soul."
I tilted my head. "What do you mean? I betrayed no one but you, and you are not my Soul."
He smiled again. "No, I am not your Soul. But she is." He flicked his hand, and there she was. As if she always stood there. Mia. My love. Made of shadow and nothingness, real, yet not. Tears wet my cheeks, as I watched her stand there awkwardly. True to life- even her breathing. I knew she was real, even though just an image and memory that was picked out of my headmeat.
I steeled myself. "I did not betray her. The gradient between good and evil disappeared a long time ago, ASVS. I thus committed no evil- I only acted to the nature of the world. To show kindness would have been the ultimate evil."
But he shook his head again. "Yes, there is no Evil in this world anymore, child, but you still betrayed her."
I twisted the spear once more, but his smile never faded. "Enlighten me then."
"Look at you." He said as the world became a blackness. It was just myself, ASVS and Mia, who now stood with her mouth opened agape at the shock of what was happening. She was, in every sense of the word, resurrected. But it was not real.
Yet the world ASVS showed me was also real. It was beyond the Planes itself. A place of threads and futures, the fundamental logics upon which the world operated. I started to realize, the damage we had done to what we could see and feel in the planes-- had not even been a scratch upon this place.
And in this place, ASVS pulled me by the threads that emerged from me, and we tangled upon a spiral-- a spiral of Winters and torment.
"You are a destroyer who wields the power to create. For your own selfish desires, you destroyed the world she lived in, instead of remaking it-- resurrecting it. Though you can still do this, what meaning is there, when you have erased everything about the Prime Plane, that made Mia herself, and had anything of hers upon it? Instead of worshiping the ground she walked on, and the air she breathed in and expelled through laughter-- you desecrated it. You desolated the trees that became of her breath, and stilled the flames that nurtured her love. You have destroyed every bond to her, almost as if you came here to kill her, and not me. -- Thus, I find you beautiful. Savage and relentless. Like a great tide, come to wash away it all. The perfect engine of destruction."
I find myself back in the throne room, ASVS still impaled, and Mia in tears at hearing the words from the Planar. Yet, I could not deny them. They were the truth. My mind had become an arsenal as well, so I could not even allow myself to drop my guard and try to say something to Mia. It's not a matter of not allowing myself, it simply never crossed my mind. I looked to her, but she shied away from my gaze like it was poisonous- wading through the golden blood as she stepped backwards, then she looked at me with pleading eyes and they said: Tell me this is not the truth.
Even if I had a way to lie to her, what was the point? She was not the real one. She was not the original- Mia was dead. I killed her. This was not an impostor, but my Soul had known the torment of losing her, and that was real- thus, Mia was lost.
Yet when I saw her take the short blade, and stab herself, I could not deny that my Soul did not go through the same ordeal once again. Back then, I had the fortune of watching the scene play out so quickly, she faded away before I could even say I was sorry. Now time flowed so slowly, it seemed like she was fading for hours-- maybe even days. And with each moment, I felt myself grow colder and colder.
Even so, once again, I could see forgiveness in her eyes. I could almost read her mind. She believed in reincarnation- her eyes, showing affection and forgiveness, also showed regret and repent. She was sorry that she was not born in a different time, where we could live happily together. Like it was somehow all her fault.
I was wrong. That was the real Mia. And when she faded again, I realized everything. A great epiphany came over me, yet I could not describe what it was. The sense of knowing, and the actual understanding was there-- yet it was not of one simple thing. It was of everything. A true enlightenment.
After the enlightenment came true despair.
I was broken-- I knew that. I was broken from the very beginning. I began as a ruffian and a bully, ascended into a murderer, and now completed my role as a destroyer. I was like the single broken gear in an entire mechanism, that brought the work of art down to it's knees.
It was not about fury or rage anymore. I simply wanted things to end. So I did.
I looked to ASVS, and he realized instantly what was about to happen. So did the other three Planars, but it did not matter. I channeled the entire plane of shadow through me to unleash a final blast of energy, and vaporized all of them-- permanently.
So I became the last living being in all of.. well, existence. One single soul, in nothingness itself. As the centuries passed on, even Eclipse drifted away, somewhere in the nothingness, never having spoken a word. My Heart itself probably realized how pointless this all was. We never should have existed. Not me, not Eclipse, even this world was entirely pointless. Mia was perhaps the only thing that had any meaning. And I took it away. Twice.
I could create her once more. I could create the world once more. But why? What was the point?
What was it that ASVS called me?
Ah...
That's right...
Beautiful.
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Topic: Story Time: The End (Read 945 times)