“Hasten yourself, or I'll flatten you. Gods know you deserve it.” Vidarr growled, clutching at the hem of Hastur's robe and forcing his face bodily toward the dull ripple in the air. It was closed, but anyone dumb enough to step inside of that thing would be turned to mincemeat. Inside out and babbling, a very painful way to die, blended together by an astral anomaly.
“I'm trying, curse you!” Hastur howled. He could not die, not by normal means, but he didn't want to take his chances against a fractured rift. It hadn't closed, in all reality. Rather, something on the inside was forcing it shut temporarily, it wouldn't last forever but the energy readings that did manage to come through were foreboding. “I'm working as hard as I can, but that isn't so easy a task when you're constantly grabbing me like this!” He looked back angrily at Octavian and Jartor who stood to the rear. With Alexandros nowhere to be found and out of contact, they'd been forced into action. This was bad, Hastur could care less if every foul wretch in this nation died on the spot, but not within an astral gate It would set back him plans by centuries, if not ruin them entirely – possibly even destroying the planet, that was why the population allowed inside was typically so heavily regulated. But the greed of humans knew no bonds, bribing and conniving their way into a near and present apocalypse without a care in the world.
“I'd hurry if I were you.” Octavian scowled. “Understand that we only allow you your wretched mockery of life because you keep to the plan.” There'd be no assistance from him, but he couldn't say he was surprised. They called Hastur a monster, a cretin, apostate. But these primus' were far beyond cruelty as even the most black hearted of men understood it. They'd burn entire nations to ash, indiscriminately if it was part of their perception of the 'greater good'.
Jartor didn't deign to look at him. These high and mighty fools and their so-called superiority. Staring at the astral rift with hard eyes and not looking away. He looked toward Octavian. “Are you sure you want to go in there? We lose most of our powers when we leave this world.”
“Of course I'm sure.” Octavian spat in annoyance. “You just want me to stay behind so you can claim all the glory for yourself.”
“Yes.” Jartor nodded with a twitching lip. “I could definitely use more glory. After all, I have to maintain my position as the worlds greatest primus.”
“I've got it!” Hastur found the smallest of creases in the force clamping down on the astral gate. To be crude, it was a physical grip. Like... A sphincter. Only one wrinkle within, and it cost him over a thousand haemonculi worth of mana just to open. Nearly a quarter of his stores. He cried out in pain. His soul felt scarred, tearing open the gate by force and angrily glaring at the primus' towering above him.
They had better keep to their end of the bargain. He spat blood, standing shakily with the rough handed assistance of Octavian. Vidarr was already inside, with Jartor following in his wake. There would be reparations for this, but he didn't trust these 'men'. Monsters, more like, after enough time had passed, Hastur had seen the truth. Just like the 'gods' who'd spawned them. Not exactly dragged, but 'guided' through the rift. Octavian needed assurances as well, refusing to end up on the wrong side of things.
As far as human mages go, none he was aware of were even close to Hastur in power. Despite not being a mage particularly gifted in dimensional magic, he had enough power to brute force it, and most of that power had come from Varia. Enabling Hastur to go about the great ordering of things where the chosen could not. Much to the chagrin of the primus' aware of his activities.
Hastur was a scholar at heart, and always had been. 'Battle magic' was so juvenile and lacked in creativity. What they could do, he could do ten times without exhausting himself. He had value, a revolutionary, once in a millennia genius. One who knew better than to try to share his findings unlike the more avaricious members of the magical community.
It was a jungle space. Hot, humid, and moist – was what they'd said. Leaving him wondering how his intel had been so incredibly incorrect. Hastur had studied this city for some time, as he did with all the others. Through the clever placement of his haemonculi he'd seen to the breaking of them. Or rather, he'd helped. Never expected this one in particular to hold out where all the others had failed in their defense. There was something on the other side, a stabilizing agent that had given Aurora enough time to mobilize, rather than unleashing it all at one moment. Even when Hastur utilized his contacts in the churches, and set loose a horde of genetically altered werekin, they'd still ultimately failed. Bad luck, even if he didn't believe in such a thing it was all too coincidental. For three and a half years or so connected to the space...
He'd watched it closely. Three and a half years! Enough time for any living thing in an unstable astral space to die of cancer long before it became a problem. He'd counted on that to finally solve the issue, only to be wrong yet again. A series of miscalculations from a man who was never wrong. It was infuriating.
But all he could do now is stare at the sky with the others. All around them was barren and icy. No trees to be seen. The only features were the craggy walls of the valley, a wide swathe of men frozen in place, and the magnificent castle towering over them. Thousands of men and women. Snow crunched as they made their way through the forest of bodies frozen in varying states of panic and terror. Some were on their knees, weapons discarded. But after coming closer, they weren't frozen in ice. They were just... Still. The pink of their skin still visible, as warm as any other person. A hair could be raised and it would hang in the air, motionless.
“Do you know what this is?” Octavian asked Hastur, who could only shake his head. This was... To kill was rather easy. Humans weren't exactly the hardiest lifeforms around, all told. But to go beyond that, to put them a living thing in true stasis – separated from space and time though still physically present... It was the most powerful form of magic. Bursting into flame should not be a source of fear, Hastur thought. It was a quick death, relatively. This, however, was not. Eventually, with the frozen atmosphere... It was hard to say what would happen. A void hung over the world and there was no conduction. Hastur could feel himself getting hotter by the second despite the cold air around him. His breath did not fog, and the place was so empty. Ignoring the basic laws of thermodynamics. The air existed, it wasn't a vacuum, but it was unwilling to accept the temperature that should be radiating off their bodies.
“Get out.” Someone said. Perhaps the only truly living thing in the place. It was a whisper of a voice, totally bereft of emotion.
“Show yourself!” Octavian shouted.
“A man...” The voice whispered. “A man. I was once a man. A long, long time ago. Eons, and before that I was something else. Before this... This eternity. This existence. To exist and to think and to feel is to be damned. His crime. His only crime, and it was so great to damn him like any other. Who are you to invade the sanctity of my stillness?”
Jartor and Vidarr paused, both frowning. The former stood and stared into the sky, searching for its source, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. A fifty kilometer radius of... Not of death. Death was a state of life. This was, quite literally, nothing. A yawning void, everything that was technically alive was frozen and completely still, warm, yet Hastur wouldn't be surprised if even their atoms were motionless – not a lack of energy frozen in the state they had existed in before this had happened. Vidarr was more active than the others, hammers clutched in his hands and combing through the assembled army to find the one who had spoken. He had to be in there somewhere.
As for Octavian... “I am primus Octavian, emperor of Varia! That is who invades!” He roared, loud and arrogant. “I will not repeat myself again! Show yourself!”
Hastur shivered, inching away from the primus. To profane the gods of their world was one thing – they could not tread upon it to enact vengeance directly. Gods could not 'smite', or at least he didn't think they possessed the ability. If they could, he'd almost assuredly be dead for his use of so many forbidden magics. There were rules to their world that simply did not exist in an astral space. And there were... Beings, here. Perhaps not 'gods', or what they termed as such, but beings of no lesser power. Hastur hated these places, his life's work was to see them closed and sealed forever.
“You name yourself a herald. Little ant. You are no herald. Not one of them stands on your tiny, insignificant world. So lost in your arrogance that you think you can go strutting about with no consequence. I am tired. Leave me, and my sanctum.” The voice was loud and quiet at the same time like a powerful thunderstorm just beyond the horizon. Very audible but not quite there, duality in the noise of it. But still, they could feel it. The electric tang on the air, the only thing they could taste. All dull and lifeless as if all meaning had been torn from reality and the very dao itself had fled the place.
“I told you to leave.” They weren't in the field any longer. They were in a box. The borders of the world were all black and full of stars. A cubic, contained place. A world within a world, with only the white tile shone to a mirrors sheen composing the floor. Hastur wasn't sure what would happen if they reached out into that abyss, but he was absolutely certain it wouldn't be good. Sitting cross legged and strumming at a three stringed instrument was the white haired young man that Hastur very much remembered.
Years had passed in this astral space, but he still looked the same. Only... More beautiful somehow, radiant and angelic. That was the way with special existences, though. “You should not be here. But maybe it's good that you are. I can hold this for... Nine or ten more days, at best.” His eyes were squeezed shut in deep concentration. Mouth not moving, the voice came from somewhere else. Only then did Hastur realize that they were... Inside of his soul? Not likely, but between layers. Some powerful anchoring magic had dragged them here to prevent them from disturbing the peace of the wintry wasteland that had once been verdant jungle. “Take the others back through the portal. Do not bring more here. I will continue fighting them, but I cannot move, see, taste, speak, or even hear. Everything is just noise. Noise with no meaning, nothing has meaning. My mind cannot keep this act up for much longer, but you should be able to carry the army from this place – it is very important that you do so.”
“...Tyr?” Jartor stepped forward, shouldering past Octavian to address his son directly. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing. I am nothing, everything is nothing. I'd wager that I sound quite mad to you, but suffice it to say that I am in the process of casting a spell. They don't want me to cast it, and we're stuck in a tug of war of sorts that I will most assuredly lose. It's a god, thousands of them, they are screaming at me but they make no sound, just the opening of eyes and mouths.”
“A spell?” Jartor frowned. “What kind of spell is this?”
“Fractal magic...” Octavian's eyes were slits, leaning forward and plucking at the walls of the space with a finger. Just a probe, he'd never day lay a hand on that stuff. This was not of the boys doing, it was something that was aiding him, but the magic was incredible. World magic, like that of the ancient shapers. Using sound to commute it's truest nature was quite bizarre, but it was also creative. It was magic so old and advanced that it was entirely beyond Octavian's ability to understand it. Runic magic was the standard for everything. Fractal magic was natural magic, 'true' magic if one believed it had primordial form. Fractal magic was responsible for the creation of monsters and manifesting dungeons. It wasn't forbidden, per se, but neither was there a law warning people off the idea of destroying the moon. Both tasks were simply impossible so there was no need for it.
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Yet here it was, fractal magic in action. Leaving Octavian as convinced as ever that Tyr really was the primus of magic, and that's why his existence was outside the ordering. Maybe... A isolated subspace that had anchored time to a point where it was barely moving. And the fuel was emotion, by the looks of it. Not exactly unheard of when it came to magic, but not normally recommended either. Magic predicated on emotion was inherently dangerous at the best of times. As likely to kill a mage as do what it asked him to. No living man could control their emotions to that degree, not even a primus. They felt emotion far more keenly than their lesser kin did, and the backlash could be calamitous.
It was a song on this western lute. The shamisen, he'd heard it called. A hard, slow, methodical strumming. A song so sad that it somehow surpassed that single emotion altogether to revert and become nothing again. Audible despair to a point where the concept of 'despair' ceased to have any meaning. Apotheosis, but of the emotional spectrum rather than the elemental – though the two were practically the same in any event.
“I couldn't give two rats and an ass about some magic.” Vidarr spat. “Little brother, are you okay?”
“Two rats and an ass?” Octavian said, frowning, turning to Jartor. “Is this a northern saying?” Jartor shrugged, quietly observing the place. Staring through the window into the wider cosmos to see what his son had wrought and finding himself unable to understand. And that frustrated him more than he was willing to admit, like an old man grown weak in the inverse of his growing child.
“I am fine.” Tyr replied, his voice bouncing around the space. Not a voice, more like he'd modulated the playing of his instrument to sound exactly as he did. “But my focus is finite, I cannot do this forever. Please leave.” Behind them the black reaches of space split as if they were solid, opening a door through which they could see the castle. Octavian nodded in contentment, almost relief. Tyr was simply a component or battery for this magic, not the caster. He must've been using some device, but did not possess apocalypse level magic. Which, as one might assume, was very good.
“And what will become of you?” Jartor asked, refusing to so much as look toward that newly opened aperture. “After we leave.”
“I will die.” Tyr replied calmly. “Physically, at least. My soul and consciousness will be bound here for all eternity. With the others. That tower at the center of the valley is a lot like an ark installation. Except it's been planted here for reasons of containment rather than travel. Think of it like a massive dimensional anchor, the proverbial rudder of this ship. One that failed in its task because too many people entered this place after the sabotage. Too many ripples. There are sharks in the water and they smell the blood, too many to stop. My only fix was absorbing all of the meaning from this place. Not just emotion, but everything that means anything – taking away. However, I can release people piecemeal, I think. If I am careful.”
“I will not leave you in here.” Jartor exhaled, the bridge of his nose twitching slightly. His eyes were disturbed, well aware of what Tyr was talking about even if he didn't understand the fine mechanics of the magic. “Not to such a grim fate. Was that you?” He asked. “That voice we heard entering this place?”
“I've no idea what that thing is.” Tyr answered. “But it is terrifying, so I'd refrain from communicating with it at all. It came here when I started playing. He thanked me for bringing quiet to the astral and I haven't heard from him since. I doubt it is an enemy, since it arrived the other beings beyond the mist haven't come closer. And he makes no move toward us either. Remaining stationary for the six days I've been at this.”
“Six days.” Jartor repeatedly, frowning even harder.
“It is very pleasant.” Tyr replied. “If I could feel pleasantness, it's difficult to describe. Complete sensory deprivation, I have no interest in leaving. I will continue to be, my actions are not my own and another hand guides me – but I know that this is necessary, though I have no compulsion to do anything in particular. I will not leave, I will not stay, I will simply be. There is no beginning, and therefore no end. It should have been like this always. No creation, no destruction, nothing. No beginning.”
“Yeah.” Vidarr coughed. “This really doesn't make any sense whatsoever.”
First there was the problem that he was doing something, he had a compulsion to have the people removed which meant he had a will. How could the embodiment of 'nothingness' exist? How could it know that there was a need to do anything?
“I would also protest to his remaining here.” Hastur added. “We've no idea if these foreign installations are even friendly, and most assume they are not. Ultimately, this could all be a trap, I do not like the looks of this magic. And--”
“Who is that?” Tyr asked. He had nothing within him but cold logic, that was all he was left with – stripped of the rest and left bare. With the help of the administrator, he was able to remain in that state for the time being. Empty of anything but the barest sense of consciousness... Everything else was in a perpetual state of nothing. Not entropy, not a lack of existence, it was a contradictory state at which matter, space, time... No dimension could exist in this eternal quiet. Not control of time, but rather the threads that define things and actions were completely still, all meaning stolen from them, something far above the construct of hours and minutes. He didn't hate it. More at peace than he'd ever been, with all of his biological wants and needs thrown to the wind. “I can feel Vidarr, Octavian, and Jartor. There is a fourth with you, his light is so weak and fragile that I can barely feel him. A man?”
With respect to his obvious level of intellect as a near ancient man, Vidarr was the only one who did not understand that answering that question might not be the best idea. “Hastur Casterling.” He growled, spitting on the floor. The saliva itself disappearing through the tile as if it did not exist at all, to parts unknown.
Tyr's eyes shot white open. All light, radiant azure orbs with no pupil or sclera.
“Don't do it! Stop please!” Another voice sounded out, shaking the cage they stood in, a female voice this time. Tinny and eerily cheerful considering it's cry. Hastur felt a chill run down his back. He wasn't scared of much, but this terrified him. He had haemonculi inside the space, and could not use them due to the magical interference. If he died here, he might very well die permanently. Unwilling to test the theory that his projected mana body would fall apart beyond the rift.
And now, he was looking into the face of a god, whatever power lay in that light behind Tyr's eyes. Like the ocean seen through a pinhole in paper. An iceberg. There was such a vast power beneath the surface as to boggle to mind. Something that could shatter the world he'd been born on with no effort whatsoever, infinite might so visceral that it wouldn't do any such thing because the concept of caring to do so was alien to the idea of doing anything at all.
“You.” Tyr said. “Hastur Casterling. Do you remember the promise that I made you?”
“You will not harm him, boy.” Jartor said flatly. Projecting all of his authority into his voice, but it didn't cow his son in the slightest. Tyr had always been proud and upright of back, always refusing to kneel, but he'd flinch. He didn't even look at his father this time.
“All of you put together, even if Ragnar was here, could not stop me.” Tyr replied impassively. “Not here in this place. Bring Ragnar, bring Alexandros. All that will occur is a repeat of last time, only with more players. It's happening right now, I see the ties that bind and binds that tie. I have seen your deaths, your births, the individual components of all that makes you. I see everything, my eyes are opened wide and I am the master of my strings. Holder of keys, balancer of scales, I am the shaper and fate is my mistress.”
“...” Hastur squinted back at the bow, eyes still aglow and frozen in that position of staring at them all. Wondering what the hell he was talking about.
Vidarr barked into laughter. A rather inappropriate expression of joy given the context. “Ha! A good fight, to first blood! No serious injury!” He stepped forward, joyfully spinning his hammer, before Octavian reentered the space and stopped him with an arm.
“This is hardly the time.” He hissed.
Jartor had had enough. There was a limit to his patience, striding forward and before anyone could stop him, he dropped a hammer fisted blow onto Tyr's head. Flattening his son into the paved stones. Not enough to kill him, it was just physical force. Enough to render him helpless and toss him over his shoulder, returning him to their world. Their kind, those of the primus, were not meant to be in places like this.
Or at least, he thought he did. Tyr certainly moved, crumpled, but then his form blurred and he returned to his position seated on the floor as if nothing had happened. He sighed, the light in his eyes burning even brighter than before. “I am nothing, and nothing is everything. I am not here, I am everywhere, I am nowhere. I see through infinite eyes in a cosmos blinded by the curse of sentience.”
“Then where are you?” Jartor growled, but at the end of his exclamation of displeasure there was only an old mans exhaustion plain in his tone. “Enough with the games and riddles, boy.”
“I am nowhere. Everywhere. I am nothing. My physical body resides outside. I am not me, not your son, not Tyr. I am nothing. Without meaning to define us, I am beyond these concepts.” Tyr said in an emotionless voice. Not voice, but voices, and dozens of them. “I'd say I'm everything, too. I am everything here, but not elsewhere. Because beyond here is there, and beyond there is void. There is nothing in the void, so nothing is everything. And if we look at it all in scope, everything is nothing. Or will be, eventually, and that which will be already is and already has been.”
“...This is ridiculous.” Jartor growled, frowning, growing evermore frustrated with this bizarre situation. “You speak in riddles again.”
“He's paraphrasing a component of the theory of relativity.” Hastur said. Taking a position of caution just behind Vidarr. It was true that he was afraid to die, but he was also a scholar and an academic. Whatever was happening, it was beyond his knowledge, and therefore he wanted to observe it. To know all about the fabric that composed their reality. “In a babbling, incoherent way, I think. Young Tyr, perhaps we can let bygones be bygones. I'm quite interested in--”
With a popping of the air, Hastur was turned to tiny specks of light. Particles of the matter that composed his body spread out in a nebulous ring where he'd previously stood. Two pearls of light hovering in the air. The marble sized, violet ball of mana, and the sliver of spira – so small it barely existed.
“Haemonculi, hominid. Biological, mana borne facsimile of lesser nim.”
Octavian pursed his lips, staring at the swirling particulate in the air, that which had composed the body of a man. A 'fake' man, perhaps, but biologically identical to a real one. He'd never seen a mana core before. They didn't actually exist in the physical sense. You couldn't 'break' it with force, only with other magic or magic reactive substances like deuritium. Seeing it in person was fascinating, but terrifying as well. “Good gods.” Octavian backed away from the rotating dust. Inside, there was a man. The soul of one. Hastur's projected soul was bottled and compressed, screaming in agony.
“You humans are all so damn loud all of the time, and you wonder why they're waking up?” Tyr showed the first sign of emotion by scowling. Not a moment later, and Hastur returned to his place at their side, frantically patting his body to make sure it was still there. Breaking out into sweat and shaking nervously. He had never felt anything even remotely similar to that feeling. Like he was an ant being observed through a magnifying glass. Only allowed to live because no matter what he did, he'd be no threat to the being doing the observing.
“Dematerialization?” Octavian asked, curious. “How did that feel?” Hastur didn't answer, his eyes were flitting about frantically in a bid to find an escape route that didn't exist.
“Not so.” Tyr replied. “We separated the various compounds that make up his physical form. He still existed as matter. It's always interesting to see the various species and how they've evolved. Or in his case, devolve. Interesting, but sad. It astonishes all of us that this being can project mana of his own will, novel, inconsequential, nothing.”
“You are not Tyr.” Jartor glared at the thing masquerading as his son. This wasn't a god, but it was composed almost entirely of that divine energy that sat outside mana and spira. They called it divine mana, but it wasn't magical energy. It didn't feel like it, and it certainly wasn't spira. He'd never spoken to a god aware of what they were, but he'd felt them. Their presence always at his back, on his native world.
“I said as much, I am nothing. He is inside of us, I am merely using his soul as a conduit to communicate more easily with you. You have spoken to six of us since coming here, but all this conversation is now unnecessary. Unfortunately, seeing the tiny primitive has sparked the displeasure of the child, and he is waking up. So loud. So emotional. In any case, his magic had a positive effect and bought you time. The rest will be up to you, nephilim.” Tyr said. “We've been given an adequate amount of power to stabilize the bridge, but it's up to you to destroy the foreign anchor. I'd say 'good luck', but there is no such thing. There is nothing at all.”