Kahli stepped forward into the alluring, eerie glow of the haunting blue obelisk. It stood there, aberrating strange kaliedoscopes of light all across her face and across the deep, otherwise dark chamber of the center of the ruins. What was it?
She wasn't certain, but what Kahli did notice was that familiar fuzzy feeling, almost like she was starting to dissasociate. It was like everything was slightly losing its color, the only color was that beautiful blue... beautiful, or was it dreadful? Kahli couldn't be rightly certain, she wasn't sure, and she wasn't aware either. It seemed to be something ethereal that was pulling her forward there, some sort of strange fingering, hooked thing that hoisted her consciousness forth.
Froufrou squelched with anxiousness. She was still deep within Kahli's handbag, and could therefore not see the strange light show playing out across Kahli's perception. However, what she could do, was feel something - something more than usual. See, since obtaining [Seismic Sense] thanks to Kahli's sharing all their [skills], Froufrou had developed a bit of a phantom big left foot. Of course, to her, it seemed more of a phantom big left tentacle, but really it was the same sort of thing. Regardless, what was happening was that Froufrou was sensing vibrations. Vibrations from Nomachiato itself, vibrations in the air... it was the kind of thing that didn't necessarily behoove itself to words, but it was basically like feeling a bunch of noodles made out of light beams wrap around her like little eels, and then the eels turned out to be leeches, and then whe she tried to tear out all the leeches millions more popped up in all sorts of colors that didn't even exist. It was a haunting thing to percieve, and it made Froufrou feel extremely weary of proceeding any further at this point.
Froufrou could tell her squelch had snapped Kahli out of the haze for second. The obelisk seemed to be doing something sinister, or at least, something that seemed sinister to Froufrou. She was never more grateful for her general putresence than in this moment. However, it only lasted but half a moment - hell, it was a moment's moment.
"I know, Froufrou, but look at it! Isn't it... beautiful? Somehow?" Kahli started to try and examine where all this light from the obelisk was coming from. Was it reflecting light, or was it generating light? She couldn't really tell. It seemed to be both, and neither. As she tried to examine the obelisk, it became all too clear to Kahli that she almost... couldn't. That is to say, it was as if her eyes were truly unable to percieve anything when she looked at it. Sure, sure, if she looked at it in her periphery, the obelisk was surely there, but at the same time, it was almost like it wasn't when she turned to look straight on at it. Like it defied observation itself, as impossible as that was. Kahli knew that if she had the chance to talk to a light elemental, they'd probably have a good explanation for things such as this - however, for her right now, it seemed an utter mystery, and indeed quite tantalizing.
However, that was not all that had arrested Kahli in such a state as she beheld the obelisk - no, no, not at all. See, the real interesting thing was starting to happen in her mind. And it was happening, much like when she leveled up, at a rapidly slowing speed so that, soon enough, Kahli's own mind seemed to experience a bit of an imaginative event horizon wherein she started experiencing less and less of reality and more and more of some strange, hpynagogic dream state within her consciousness that arrested and altered her current mental state so that it was like Kahli had, suddenly, ceased to be where she was.
At first, she was but a ball of pure awareness, swirling around in some sort of a crazy, hazy storm of whirling and swirling clouds and beams of light - balls of light, orbs of light, marbles glowing with all the heady power of some sort of amazing supernova. However, what really touched Kahli's mind in all of this was that it truly seemed to be some sort of cosmic intelligence. That is to say, these impossible clouds that she was beholding, that her awareness was presetly swimming in as if she'd been dipped deep into an ocean, seemed to have some sort of an anima. They were clouds with mind, or a theory of the mind, or a theory of a thought that eventually cascaded into a mind. Regardless, they seemed to be observing Kahli just as much as she was observing them. She felt like but one, small, floating point in an endless tsunamic miasma of incomprehensible nothingness. For a second, she stared at one cloud, and could've sworn she'd seen a mask made of living wood - however, in but a glimpse, it changed into a sinister weasel, and soon after that, it was but nothing. Nothing at all. Kahli was looking at nothing.
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And nothing was looking at her.
Who dares be here? thought Kahli to herself. Which, was pretty confusing. She thought to herself? But yes, it was herself. And it was her own voice. It made... absolutely no sense.
It makes perfect sense, if you're paying attention, actually, me, Kahli replied to herself in a scolding tone. You see, there are may dimensions to the concept of self. There is your present concept of self, which is currently beholding me. There is the self that is past, your self at the far end of time, as well as your future self. There is your higher self, which is honestly probably what you might ought to consider yourself right now, seeing as you probably feel quite drugged up. At the same time, there is something more base, more grounded than all of those other versions of yourself. Some call this the equivalent, the closest thing to a true self that could ever be achieved. And that, Kahli - that is I. I am you, and you are me, but we are not eachother. I am but the base, I am the bottom, I am the lowest of all the lows. I am your lower self, Kahli. Yes, your lower self. I am the truth. And I can't believe what you're doing here. You're not asking me about secrets of the universe, if anything, you're just here beholding me in awe. And hey, that's understandable - I'm an awesome being to behold, and I do mean awesome in its literal, true meaning. Almost, you might say, I am awesome in awesome's lower meaning. I am lower awesome - or, say, the lowest awesome. I am the lowest of lows. All those clouds you saw? Those are the highest high - well, the highest high that can be observed. However, the funny thing about the highest high is that the highest high is everyone, and everything. It's not just you. Whereas me, here, right now? I'm just you, and nothing else - nothing else at all. That's the real truth, here, Kahli.
Kahli didn't like the tone she was taking with herself. But, like, why are you so on my case? If you're me, why don't you look like me? You essentially look like a bunch of faded out, near-black mental hallucinations that mainly look like spirals and forbidden geometry. How are you me? Wouldn't you look like me?
Look closer at said spirals, Kahli. Look closer at these 'hallucinations', if that is really what you truly consider them to be, and I will reveal my true self to you - or, should I say, you will reveal your true self... to yourself! Yes, Kahli... BEHOLD!
Kahli did her best to behold, but see, the thing is, she was just pure awareness. She didn't really have any eyes with which to behold anything, everything she was witnessing was just mental constructs. Inexplicably, this fact seemed to quickly evaporate within Kahli's current consciousness any claim to factual accuracy that her 'lower self' claimed to have a hold over. With that, even when Kahli did try to focus and behold anything, it quickly changed shape. It really, if anything, just looked like a bunch of fractals to her. Kahli quickly relayed this information to her lower self.
What? What do you mean, me? Do I fail to understand the deep, concrete, lower truth of it all? The lowest truth? The truth that we are all, in the end and in the beginning of it all, but an endless and beginningless fractal, constantly morphing and changing like the mindless machinations of the winds of time itself, immaterial though they may be?
Kahli suddenly snapped out of it. This is... this is a bunch of, um, a bunch of malarkey! She prided herself in the fact that she didn't slip up and swear, it had been quite difficult indeed. This is ridiculous. I'm not a fractal! I'm me! If anything, I'm a four dimensional being that looks kind of wormlike, starting with myself as an infant and ending with myself as... well, as whatever age I end up dying at. And that looks nothing like any of this... defecation that you're showing to me. I am, simply and surely, Kahli. I have a face, I have a name, I have memories, I have wants, I have needs, I have desires-
I am beyond those things! responded her voice.
Well then you're not me, me! Kahli told herself.
And with that, the illusion was shattered.
With a terrible echoing of shattered glass and the popping of some sort of untold amount of pressure, Kahli finally felt like her awareness exploded into... somewhere else entirely.
She was sitting on a rock. A cold, blue rock, in a small, boxy room that seemed to be covered wall to wall with shifting, mutating patterns - most of which looked like a combiation of squares and triangles eating eachother. And she was in her body, at least for the most part. She had no legs, she had a trailing length that smoothed out from her torso and ended in a small point. And, after that small point, was her big left foot covered in living wood. It was... an interesting sight. It was what she would've imagined her spirit would've looked like. But this felt... different than that. This was no land of the dead.
She wasn't sure she was in any land, at all.