Kahli no longer had her body. Was she pure awareness? No, not exactly... she seemed to be something else entirely. Interstingly enough, she seemed to understand what she was.
She was, as Kahli understood it, a bug. A word often used in Nomachiato for a small, erratic creature - but she wasn't a creature. She was a degraded feature, a corruption, and a seam where things ought to be seamless. She was a failure in the systemic integrity of some form of semi-reality that she was currently experiencing.
It was not that she was technically something wrong as much as she was something that had come about within the existential fabric of the where that she was in an unintentional manner. That is to say that she was created with anti-intention, what Kahli presently was was a thing that was made manifest by lack of awareness and understanding. She was something created by a gap.
So, where was she?
Kahli the Bug did not know where she was. She knew a few things, though.
She knew what kind of a bug she was, first of all. She was a minor bug, the kind of bug that most entities would never notice - which, of course, explained so much of why she was where she was. That is to say, why she was able to exist as a bug at all. Large bugs never made it into manifest reality - Kahli knew that much intrinsically.
What she was, in essence, was a misplaced glint of light. A tiny little glint of light that was just a hair off from the refraction of where it ought to be. That is to say, she was just a bit off. Every once and a while, she would shine a slightly different hue than the rest of the light surrounding her, as well.
Kahli, thankfully, had access to more than just her knowledge as Kahli the Bug. She knew what Kahli the Tauman did, too, and so with that knowledge she was quickly able to recognize that she was in a room.
It was a large room. Thronging, even. And it was filled with gold. Teeming, even. But the gold here served a necessity, it served a purpose. It was a part of something larger. It was conducting something - it was carrying energy within itself, the gold was. Kahli the Bug was certain of this because she was a bug that existed to shine light on a speck of one of those charged particles of gold.
The gold that Kahli the Bug was a speck of misplaced light on was right above another piece of gold. This piece of gold was shaped like a chair. Now, something to note from what Kahli could see was that there was and were rows, and rows, of pieces of gold and similarly apparently gilded chairs. It seemed, at first glance - or at only glance, as each moment seemed somehow static instead of fractal to Kahli at this time - that the gold and chairs were infinite, or otherwise that Kahli the Bug was in some sort of bizarre hall of mirrors situation where she was looking at endless reflections of herself. However, which of the two of these equally as likely scenarios was not immediately clear to her. The only real thing Kahli would've had to go off of in the moment was whether she could perceive herself on any of the other gold specks of light that she saw, but the truth of it was that Kahli the Bug was far, far too small for even herself to perceive.
And then, in all this apparently endless and beginningless sea of unknowing, everything suddenly changed and became clear.
Kahli was in no hall of mirrors - each of these chairs was, to some degree, unique. Unless, of course, each mirror in the hall was running on some strange delay, some sort of astral latency, wherein moments later what she beheld from the perspective of the chari she was above would indeed play out as a bit of an echo in each reflection. Of course, there was no sign of this secondary scenario being the true case, so Kahli was in no way inclined to believe it or put much stock in such an idea, regardless of the fact that it danced around like tantalizing ribbons in the summer sky of her mind.
But, back to the event. The event was inaugurated by the Door.
The door was two doors - split down the middle by an odd, zigzagging shape that seemed more as if the doors had cracked than they had opened indeed. The first thing through these doors were strange, yellow streamers, lithe, weary things slithering around like serpents through the air, and with each movement they traced, they seemed to displace the air around them, and leave in their wake a faint sea of golden glittering that sparkled like the cosmos Kahli had beheld before she passed the Threshold and entered this strange place.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Then, in She walked.
Kahli the Bug, was indifferent. She was a cold, miscalculated, mistake.
Kahli the Tauman however, who was very much alive and aware inside that Bug in that moment even though indeed she was uable to speak, unable to move, unable to in any way express herself or act at all except in the status of an unknown, observational force - was screaming in reverence.
The form was unmistakable. The three brilliant heads. The exquisite eyelashes. The long, spiky legs walking in a perfect, proud stride towards that golden chair, that golden throne. And, last, but certainly not least - never least - were those pincers. Blessed be they, and there they were. They were even more perfect in person than all the mighty statues and stained glass and oil paintings of Theseosus could've ever depicted. Kahli, in this moment, was never more proud to call herself a follower of this great, heavenly being.
However, even with her seemingly emotionless, insectoid facade - built that way, the words of Thesosus followers everywhere said, in order to keep from displaying to awful power of the full intensity of her emotions - Theseosus was, from Kahli the Bug's perspective at the very least, seemingly in quite a bad mood. That being said, it was terribly difficult for Kahli to objectively observe this situation, because every ounce of her taumanity, every bit of her mind and her soul was screaming within itself to get down on her knees, to jump up in the air, to spin aroud in circles and to sing her beloved songs with unparalleled glee.
And then, in walked another figure. A smaller, perky little creature somewhat similar to Theseosus, but instead of her royal purple hue, it was a bit of a lime green, and seemed to be anxiously chipper.
And then, Kahli heard their voices. She would've been in tears, if she could've been - of course, Kahli the Bug did not hold within her existence such wild capabilities.
"So, we've got a number of areas that need to be addressed today," replied the little one following Theseosus.
"Ugh. When don't we?" Theseosus leaned on the golden throne and sighed. Even her sigh, raspy as it was, was enchanting to Kahli. "Seriously, when? I feel like every time I come in here with you it's immediately 'look at this', or 'we've got a problem', or 'why haven't you cleared out these bugs that make the light display incorrectly'?"
Kahli suddenly felt noticed. She was, at once, terrified and anointed. She felt honored that her deity recognized her in some way in this moment, while at the very same time felt incredibly nonplussed about the fact that her unexpected visit with Theseosus could intentionally get cut short.
"Yes, well, Theseosus, you've got to understand - you've got a mighty large number of folks expecting these things to be handled. It's degrading user experience. It's degrading people's lives. It needs to be done."
"I'm sure it does," she said with a sigh. "But I must warn you, there are so many things that I must address. There are at times many things larger and more complex than simple missteps in the system design. Why, technically I am here to keep people from getting to far, not to give the whole place a facelift. Yet I always seem to find myself here, at this chair, ready to do what you're wanting from me. And, honestly, it's exhausting. Sure, I could wave a pincer and clear out many things. But, Plathuunx, have you realized that waving my pincers over and over and over again is no way to exist? It is no way to serve the greater universal plan. There are larger tasks that I am undertaking that require much more engagement of my faculties. If my pincer is sore because I waved away something tiny, to the point that I fail at something enormous, it will be as if I never did anything at all. And I don't want to do nothing. I just don't want to do everything."
Kahli the Bug was... a little confused by this conversation, to say the least. It didn't necessarily seem like the kind of talk someone had with the SMAB, the Supreme Mother of All Beings. Then again, it was often said that the many machinations of Theseosus were impossible to compartmentalize, impossible to break down to the level of a tauman. And if that were the case, how could Kahli truly understand any of it from the perspective of a bug?
This was one of the last thoughts she ruminated on before everything changed. But it wasn't the last. The last, was more of an observation.
The doors, the other doors... There were other doors, doors to each throne... The other doors cracked open, and somethings started stepping through them.
Kahli couldn't process anything before her vision was a blur, and then a kaleidoscope, and then a fractal. She felt herdself getting pulling in all directions like noodles of taffy. And then, she blinked.
She was standing next to the obelisk. The obelisk?! She looked down at it. It had ceased to glow at all.
And then, she gasped as Froufrou squelched a stinky, stinky squelch of absolute fear and terror.
The obelisk trembled and shook and it shot right down into the ground like a bullet. The ground closed up like a sewn shut wound in a split second and the entire room started to rumble and quake, Debris tumbled from the ceiling.
"Froufrou! Froufrou, what happened?" cried Kahli.
"FINALLY! I AM FREE!" boomed a deep, horrible voice from some terrible unseen depths. A huge chunk of the ceiling cracked and split open and thousands of little spiders and bats crawled and flew out in a terrifying flurry.
Kahli felt her hearts beating. All of them.