Every being that can conceive of its own end will wonder at some point what it is like to not exist. Naturally, none of them can imagine it, because it is nothing, something far more and far less than just the absence of something. To escape this inconvenient idea, many will believe that they will never, can never, end. This is strange, since they were once nothing, but disbelieve that they could be nothing again.
Such a paradoxical belief is likely rooted from the inability to be aware of not being, of existence without rules to make up an existence. If they never experience or comprehend such a thing, how can they believe in it. In the end, it is so much easier to believe in more of what you know, even when it goes against all logic. However, once you are aware of not existing, once you are a non-existence beyond any logic that could make you real, you can never disbelieve the truth again.
It started as a dream. Not my dream, but a dream of me. In the place were I truly existed, the one that does not exist at all, I saw the shape of me in the dream. And, as I saw it, I was it. Stepping through the gate of madness that contained a shadow of me, I became the me in the dream. And, with another step, I was beyond the dream and in the existence that contained it.
I blinked, mentally if not physically, as I came into existence standing in an ornate towering cathedral. If I had to liken it to something from modern day Earth, which I in no way did, I would have said it reminded me of some of the more classical Catholic churches. It wasn’t that the iconography was remotely similar, no crosses or depictions of a man being crucified on them in sight. What it did share was the grandiose stone architecture, ornately carved ceilings arching up to a dome depicting odd amalgamations of humanoids and far stranger creatures doing nothing I could really put my finger on. In fact, it mostly looked like they were just lounging around in odd positions for no clear reason. Yep, it was definitely something religious.
Glancing back down from the decorations, I took stock of myself before paying any mind to the overdressed figures around me or the wizened old man that looked like he was about to start talking at me. A quick examination of my newfound body on the plank scale revealed it to be human. That wasn’t to say it was exactly the same as other species I had found in other realities that generally met the idea of human.
As usual, I found very slight differences that stopped the microbiology from matching perfectly to any other variants. That was to be expected, since, even if there was an influence from beyond causing the similarities, the disorder inherent in existence would prevent perfect copies. Still, this was a human for all practical purposes, including the brain structure that I was hijacking.
I continued to ignore the old man that had started talking, likely realizing that I wasn’t just in shock, but just plain ignoring him. I wasn’t missing much, since I didn’t recognize a word he was saying. It was intriguing that he seemed to assume I would know his language, making me wonder what exactly they had been trying to do. Based on how they were acting, inviting me into their reality was probably not it.
Putting off the locals for later, I studied the brain I was using. It was odd, not because it was flawed or abnormal, exactly. Instead, it was perfectly functional, but completely empty. It had all the instincts of a healthy adult and even the muscle memory required to function at what was generally above average for a human being. However, it had no personality or memories. If I were to fully integrate with this blank mass of neurons, I was quite confident it would eagerly accept whatever mind I gave it.
Normally, if I was taking over an existing body, I would either have to erase whatever was already their and add my own mind or, preferably, just remain one step removed and puppet the body like an avatar. The second option let me just put the person to sleep and use their flesh without using the brain itself. That way, when I moved to a new body, usually of my own creation, I could wake them up without having to reconstruct a functionally dead brain.
That was what I was used to, but this brain wasn’t a person in the first place. It was already blank, ready to either be filled or left to drool in peace. Without the elasticity of a developing mind, I really doubted it even had the capacity to ever develop even the most simplistic of awareness. Honestly, I wasn’t even confident it could become self aware on its own, at least not without help. It certainly wasn’t at the moment.
Looking over to the man growing increasingly frustrated at my lack if response, I spread out my influence and took a quick look at his insides. I still had relatively little influence in this reality, but it was more than enough for just looking, especially when he was within spitting distance. In fact, the spit landing on my face from his enraged state proved that my guessed measurement was accurate.
My scan revealed that, beyond being more physically degenerated than my abnormally healthy body, he was biologically the same. The only significant difference was his brain, which was lighting up with all the activity I would expect from his aggravated state. Well, that indicated that my new brain was the oddity. It was still a sample set of one, but my guess was he was an example of a normal brain. It certainly looked like the ones I was used to, discounting minor biological differences that had little effect on overall function.
I frowned, wiping spittle off of my face. Actually, upon closer examination, their was something strange and some of the things I first thought were just random changes to design. Looking closely at the signals moving through his brain, I noticed sections that were… absent. No, that wasn’t a good description. They weren’t absent, they were invisible.
I was looking at chains of information that moved through the neurons and into or out of something that I couldn’t detect. It wasn’t a physical space that was missing, but instead that certain signals would appear from nowhere or seemingly get sent to nowhere. This wasn’t a new sight for me, and I was pretty confident I new what was causing it.
Expanding the range of my influence to look for unknown nonphysical matter or energy, I quickly lucked upon my objective. In a normally non-traversable dimension that I would usually ignore, I found an energy construct that was partially overlapping with his brain and managing to communicate with it.
I was startled as the construct came into my awareness, not because of the one in his brain, but because there was a very similar one overlapping my new brain. Curious at this discovery, I examined the construct, trying to discern what it was supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, the more I examined the structure jacked into my grey matter, the less I liked what I was looking at. There was only one word for this thing, mind control.
The junctions between the structure and my body’s neurology were present at nearly every pathway, giving a degree of access to every function of the organ that frankly added up to complete control. The construct could start or stop any signal, redirecting any action to whatever result it wanted. In all honesty, it was overkill. This didn’t just control higher reasoning or memory, the things that were usually all you needed for effective mind control. No, this was everything.
If I was this brain, I would essentially be a non-entity, all the actual decisions made by the extra-dimensional construct that was the gatekeeper of every neural signal. That wasn’t really a problem for me, since I was an external entity manipulating this bodies nervous system. Even if I slaved the brain-structure to myself, changes to it would just mess with my control, not effect my mind in any way. Still, this was a rather unpromising discovery. After all, realities with wide spread mind control were usually unpleasant in general, even when you are immune.
I swayed out of the way of the gnarled walking stick that had clearly been intended to nock me over the head. It hadn’t been swung with enough force to qualify as an attack. Instead, I think he was just moving onto low grade violence to show is anger at my refusal to acknowledge his existence. The other moderately less wizened figures around the massive ritual circle I had appeared in where starting to shuffle uncomfortably, seeming worried about this turn of events but not willing to draw the attention of the clearly violent old man by speaking up.
My study of the mind controller’s current activity quickly revealed that it was, in addition to monitoring my entire brain and most of my body, also trying to feed something into my optic nerve, altering what I was seeing. I hadn’t noticed, since the change was past the point I had jacked myself into. But, upon some slight adjustment, an overlay of what look distinctly like popup windows filled my previously clear vision.
I frowned at the completely alien language written in the air before me, I tried to use my breadth of experience to identify any sort of patterns that could begin the process of decoding this language. Unfortunately, no matter how many times I had done this, I was going to need some form of context before I could start extrapolating the language.
What I could guess without understanding the language, assuming large red text and flashing boxes still meant the same things they did to most humans capable of making them, was that I was looking at a lot of warning messages. What I was being warned of was a mystery, although I could certainly make guesses. After all, I was pretty confident my presence here wasn’t anyone’s intended result.
While I was failing to be warned, the old man had turned to an only slightly younger woman behind and to the left of him, giving what might have been orders, although the tone was my only clue. I ignored her equally unintelligible response as I continued to study the structure linked to my brain.
It wasn’t actually doing much else to my brain, seeming to only be interested in observation and giving the warning messages. That might have been because it realized their wasn’t anything to interfere with, but I had no way to really say.
As I wove my influence through the invasive construct, I came across something intriguing. Leading off of the main structure, there was a sort of link communicating with something at the other end. A quick check of the aggravated old man showed that he appeared to lack such a link, his structure being completely self contained.
Partially curious, but mostly confident that I had found my would be puppet master, I sent my influence into the link. My unworldly control flowed through the structure, following it across the dimension it inhabited until I reached something on the other end. The structure I entered was both similar and design to the ones I had already observed and vastly larger.
Putting my body and its increasingly loud surroundings in the back of my mind, I focused in on the boarder I had discovered between this larger structure and the mind I had found beyond it. My influence rushed into the undefended mind, finding my access directly into whatever was serving as its brain a free pass into its being.
I stepped across the threshold between the mind and the absence from which I had come, finding myself in an off white void. My awareness landed on the figure of a woman slowly scanning her empty surroundings. She was what I was confident would be considered the perfect example of the feminine ideal, specifically the subset of such an ideal that was closer to a powerful warrior that a fair maiden, body toned with muscles accenting an innate figure that showed ideal genetics and nutrition.
She wore what could be called light armor, most of her covered by layered padding with finely crafted plates covering her chest, back and parts of her legs and arms. All in all, it came across as something a higher ranked and fully equipped soldier would wear, prior to the industrial revolution and the reformatting of what constituted war. It wasn’t an ornament or the full plate of a knight. No, this was the armor of a soldier, if a very well equipped one.
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Watching her slowly turn as she searched for anything in this place of nothing, I decided that I should probably manifest a form for her to focus on. I could just be a disembodied voice or other phenomena, but something told me I would do better if I showed a semblance of a physical form.
“Hello Mania.” I greeted her as I became a rough copy of my new physical body behind her. She spun towards me, remaining in a stance primed for whatever action she needed, wether attack or escape. No, I didn’t know her name was Mania until after I said it. Nor, for that matter, did I know her language. Instead, I simply manifested the words for the idea of hello and her name. Since this place was, in a sense, composed from her mind, the correct words for my meaning had come into existence, her knowledge filling in the details I hadn’t provided. It was a convenient trick, both to let us communicate now and let me learn the language from what was said here.
Her eyes narrowed as they found me where there previously was nothing. “Who are you? How dare you bring me here?” Rather than frightened, the only thing in her voice was demand and outrage. It was impressive, since I was confident she lacked the ability to hide her true emotions or thoughts in this place. Impressive… but not truly admirable. I doubted that she had any reason to feel confident in this situation, which meant her lack of worry was simply arrogance and possibly stupidity.
I gave her my best benevolent smile. “I have quite a few names, none of which are likely known here. You may call me The Slayer Of Death.” The idea that represented that name was actually significantly more complicated than The Slayer Of Death, but her language simplified it into something that could be conveyed in less time than this reality had before it crumbled into the beyond.
She simply glared at me. “You are the summon my priests are complaining about, the one that is addled in the head.” I gave her a blank look.
“Do they not realize I don’t speak their language?” It was a serious question, since I was genuinely curious how such a problem hadn’t been expected when summoning something alien to existence, but she just scoffed as if the idea was ridiculous.
“The soul I made for you has every language in the world built into it. You should speak and understand every civilized creature. How do you think you are speaking perfect Celestial right now?” The smugness in her voice was overwhelming, in complete disregard of her being utterly wrong. Oh, she was probably right about that mind slaving structure, which she seemed to be calling a soul, having the ability to provide whatever languages she put in it. However, it was completely failing to do that for my non-physical mind.
She had moved out of her readied stance and was now trying to loom over me. It wasn’t going that well since, partially do to my body being a male and partially because I had deliberately manifested taller than I was in the flesh, I was a head taller than her. “It seems that another god has interfered with your summoning, resulting in your spirit being sent to me.” She blatantly lied.
Even without the ability to see the true meaning behind her words, it was obvious that she had no fucking idea what was happening, where she was or why I was here with her.
The corner of my lip quirked up. “Oh, so you are a god than?” I did my best to say it with a straight face. The idea of her calling herself a god was just so… absurd. I had seen things I would consider gods, beings of unimaginable power that held sway over entire realities. Such entities had minds and machinations both great and terrible that the more limited creatures of their realities could not even hope to understand.
I didn’t know what sort of functional power she held over the world around her, but I was currently permeating her mind and it left a lot to be desired. Sure, it was more heavily built than what I would think of as a normal human mind, having a lot more resources to rely on, but it was basically the same thing in base design. It had the shape of a narrow thinker with petty desires and little thoughts put towards the greater world around them.
Undeterred by… literally every aspect of her situation, she puffed up even farther. “I am Mania, goddess of the holy dead and gatekeeper of the heavens, she who guides the way for the righteous to the next world and bars the undeserving from treading upon the celestial realm.” Her extensive declaration of her identity was met with my less than impressed expression, although I wasn’t sure she noticed.
“Okay… so I take it you are they one who invited me in, or at least your followers did?” Deciding that addressing her delusions of self grandeur was not the priority, I moved onto the more pressing question.
She did her best to look down her nose at me, something made less than impressive by our relative heights. The end result was more me looking up her admittedly perfectly formed nostrils. Still, not the best view I had ever had. “Yes, you are my chosen champion, called from your world to stop…” She was cut off as I finally lost it and started laughing.
My outburst startled her, causing a less than godly yelp as I doubled over with mirth. “You… You want to… a human? You were fishing in the beyond? For a human?” I continued to laugh as her face turned red with rage, something less a product of any biology and more a result of the mental nature of this space.
“How dare you? I’ll burn that insolent tongue from your skull!” My laughter only increased as she vainly thrust her hand forwards to no effect. The expression on her face was glorious as she realized that, whatever it was she thought she could do, she had no power in this place.
Regaining my self control, I straightened, taking a moment to adjust the tie of my unnaturally black suit back to its perfect symmetry. “Yes, yes. You are going to smite me real good and all that, except you can’t. Can you?” My laughter had died down, but my amused grim remained. “In fact, you might notice that not much in the way of… well, anything worth mentioning will work here.” I rolled my head from side to side, feeling the pleasant sensation of stretching after having laughed my ass off.
“Who… who are you?” This time it was there. The dread of a trapped animal that finally knew about the predator approaching.
“I already told you that, Mania, goddess of the holy dead.” I approached, stopping much closer to her face than she clearly wanted. She tried to step back, but the rules in this place had little interest in distance, so she found her self just as close to me as she was before.
“I am The Slayer Of Death, among other names.” This time, I could tell that she actually internalized how strange my name was, and the way my suit was more akin to a piece cut out from the void between the stars than any mortal cloth. As I gazed into her eyes, my own seemed a little to dark, the pupils seeming to swim with formless things that had no ability to fit into any reality, their nightmarish beings beyond the allowance of even the most alien of existences.
“Now, I have tolerated your less than becoming behavior, so I would be interested in a few answers from you.” I smiled serenely, causing a shiver from the supposed goddess. “You said I was invited in, or summoned as you put it, to be a champion for you. If I understand correctly, you expected to draw in a human from another reality, which is entirely achievable. However, why would you have to… summon one from another reality when you have humans here?” It was something I was frankly not getting about this whole thing.
Sure, you could search the beyond for a specific being that once existed in another reality. You could even put in precautions that would make some results a lot more likely. However, methods for doing so normally involved leveraging other products of the beyond, and they were rarely easy. Even if they could search for something with specific qualities of a human, it still had the risk of getting something like me. I would qualify for whatever human qualities they specified because I could exhibit all human qualities if I wished. However, that wasn’t to say I was a human being.
Even if I assumed they didn’t realize how idiotically reckless this was, which based on what I saw seemed pretty likely, it still begged the question of how inviting in a human from another reality could possibly be easier than walking out onto the street and grabbing the first person you see. It wasn’t like their was some innate advantage to having some random person from outside reality. If anything, it was a huge disadvantage. Someone from another reality would be completely ignorant to this world’s culture and common sense.
Hell, you couldn’t even argue that they would be easier to control, since they would have far more preconceived believes than most of the impressionable people you could likely grab off the streets. Even if that was the reason, this soul she was talking about would completely control them regardless of their wishes.
Mania wilted before my gaze, the combination of finally noticing that I wasn’t what she had meant to summon and of her complete helplessness having drastically shifted her attitude. “It’s… it’s because they don’t have souls.” I tilted my head, curious at that response.
“By soul, you mean the extra-dimensional construct that you tried to jack into my brain.” She blinked, possibly at my way of describing the thing, but nodded.
“Everyone in the world is born with a soul, one even we cannot alter or remove. However, summoned don’t have any and the world doesn’t give them one. So, we, the gods, use summons to make champions with souls of our design.” I frowned, considering her explanation.
That actually did explain the odd choice of getting champions from the beyond. If something was automatically making every living creature here immune to mind control, being able to functionally get slaves from outside their reality was a logical, if immoral and hugely dangerous, solution.
I finally nodded, knowing from the meaning in her words that she was telling the truth. “I see, so you are enslaving human like creatures you pull from the beyond to do… whatever it is you want. That is simultaneously a clever work around and unbelievably, down right mind numbingly, stupid.” At my comment about the wisdom of her actions, a remnant of her previous pride returned.
“How? We have found the secrets of creating perfect tools for use on the mortal plane.” I just sighed at the way she was once again ignoring the obvious implications of what was happening right now.
“Allow me to explain this in a way that… is a little more relatable.” I offered, avoiding a direct insult to her intelligence. “Imagine that what you gods have been doing is like fishing. You found that you couldn’t get the sort of fish you liked from the safe lakes and rivers inland, so you built a boat and you sailed it out onto the open ocean.” As I spoke, the not quite grey world around us faded into a clear blue sky over an expanse of waves gently rolling off to the horizon.
“Now that you were fishing in salt water, you could finally get the fish you wanted.” We now stood on the deck of a small sail boat, waves lapping gently against the sides as we rocked with the ocean. “You had found exactly what you wanted, surely patting yourself on the back for what was, I will admit, a clever way around your problem.” As I spoke, I strolled over to the side, looking down into the water.
“However, you didn’t understand what the ocean really is.” Likely curious to know what I was looking at, Mania cautiously joined me at the edge, looking down into the depths. “You see, the ocean is nothing like the rivers or even lakes you fished in.” The water seemed to darken as clouds formed above.
“The ocean is deep beyond your understanding, reaching down far below the tiny creatures you desired.” The rocking under our feet gradually diminished as the waves died down. “You knew nothing of the depths below you, simply content to cast your nets upon their surface.” The water below us has become calm, only gentle ripples moving across its darkening depths. “However, the abyss below you did not need you to look into it in order to look back.”
The placid water erupted upwards as inky black tendrils reared from below, towering over our little vessel. Mania fell back from the edge, just in time for the black tentacles that crashed down to miss her. I personally doubted it was a coordinated dodge, since the water displaced by their arrival had clearly all but blinded her.
Regardless, the dodge wasn’t much help, since the boat itself was smashed, breaking into front and back halves that rapidly started sinking. I watched from my new spot standing on the water as Mania disappeared below, only to struggle to the surface a moment later, resurfacing with a frantic splutter to expel inhaled ocean.
I strolled over to where she scrambled to remain above water, stopping a few feet away. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no position to complain about the products of your recklessness, considering I am the end result.” I smiled benevolently down at the god. “Still, it might have been better to be content with the land.”
Inky tentacles rose up around Mania, wrapping her in an instant. She vanished below the dark water, the disruption gradually calming until their was no sign that anything had ever been there.