“Look at me! I’m so pretty, powerful, and wise. A real humdinger of an abomination of heaven, Khaos, and the abyss made manifest. I eat Demiurges and Archons, and barely increase in power, but don’t look too closely at that, oh no!”
Telos found herself in what might as well have been a dense fog wall on Lake Superior just off Duluth during a cold winters day. Really cold, like negative twenty five Celsius cold. Yet Telos found that before her stood a doppleganger of herself, which wasn’t what she had expected to see in front of a sight straight out of her childhood. If anything, she expected to see a version of herself as she’d been on Earth. How had she looked again? It’d been so long, now, that the details had fuzzed. Was I so eager to be Aetheria that I can’t even remember what I used to look like? It’d be embarrassing to have to use Binah to remember.
Small things were wrong with the copy. It had a hateful expression, and both of its eyes glowed red with malice, instead of red and blue like hers did. Nor did the knockoff have the Third Eye of Ein Sof, which made a very immediate one of these things is not like the other distinction. The trench coat it wore was the older one she used to wear, yet slightly different in style. Her old coats red was bright and vivid, but this one looked dark like the leather had been dyed with congealed blood. The hair was a neon blue, instead of the aqua-striped-with-red that she kept it these days. Somehow the knock-offs hair was the exact shade of blue-white that LED headlights that seared the retinas emitted. Even the Astrum Nexus had been copied poorly, changed from the bright platinum like soulsteel mesh gloves to a dark spider-web of wires.
The knock-off had even mirrored Telos’ soul-woven hexproof scarf. The genuine article around Telos’ neck currently waved on unseen breezes in all of it’s fluttery white glory, while the imposters scarf looked cheap and tacky in construction, as opposed to the silken beauty of the real thing. The dopplegangers scarf was a retina searing light blue, with black and pink leopard spots. The mockery even wore a hideous bright violet lipstick that clashed with everything else. Telos never wore makeup, maybe it was vain, but when you were a shapeshifter who could literally look anyway you wanted, makeup turned into a downgrade. Unless there was higher tiered makeup, like there were higher tiered natural treasures. Finding a sixth tier treasure then rubbing it all over your face seemed like an incredible waste though.
Each inaccuracy might, individually, be a mistake. Combined they stood out as a mockery of her in some way, from the way too bright glow to her hair, the frown lines around her mouth, or even far too large of breasts, hips, and rear end in comparison to Telos’ much more modest curves.
“Sorry, but is your ultimate gambit seriously a house of mirrors? Against a shapeshifter?” Telos couldn’t reign in the sarcasm, because Oizys’ approach to this struck her as pathetic. Sure, Telos once knew self-confidence issues as much as most people, but unlike other people, she could and did change subtle things about her appearance on the regular when the whimsy struck her. When you had full control of your physiology, it seemed a waste to not take advantage of such a thing, so she made liberal use of her malleable form to appear in whatever manner tickled her fancy at any given moment. Kallos occasionally had requests, but Telos found indulging those to be imminently enjoyable experiences.
“So you’ve lost what little humanity you had? No ties to yourself?” Oizys sounded surprised by that, and her disappointment put a smile on Telos’ face. Has she been sending bounty hunters and shit after me without even a clue of what I can actually do, or what I’m like? Why do all these gods suck so much?
“Oh, there’s some lingering issues like self doubt, yeah, but not about my appearance. I can turn into a glass of wine, and let someone drink me. Have you ever done that? It’s eye-opening. Highly recommend it as far as new experiences go. Now, doubts about myself as a person? I don’t know if any truly sentient beings can ever be free of those basic cornerstones of sapience, especially all the time, unless they’re like a sociopath or an extreme narcissist. Even an ancient hag like you has an awful lot of issues holding you back. Is it just your nature to be awful?” A shrug of Telos’ shoulders dismissed the rhetorical question.
“This whole trick might have even gotten a rise out of me before I killed Moros.” Telos gestured at the thick fog that reminded her of negative twenty below days in Duluth, the mockery of her that Oizys appeared as, and the false reality Oizys wove around them.
“You didn’ t kill Moros, he committed suicide with you as his instrument.” The vehemence behind the declaration startled Telos. Maybe Misery liked Doom? No, she’s more annoyed at the idea I could kill any conceptual manifestation on my own, like herself, than at the idea of Moros being dead. What a bitch.
“So I’m the equivalent of suicide by cop?” Telos considered it, and couldn’t quite dismiss it had happened more than a few times. She had mercy killed multiple lives ever since her rebirth as Aetheria, what felt like lifetimes ago. “That’s an interesting idea, but if you subscribe to that, you’re willfully ignoring who and what I am.”
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“You’re the gun, nothing more.”
“Willful ignorance it is, then. Aren’t you going to summon more torment from the fog? You aren’t doing so hot with this beating me up thing, sweetheart.” Telos looked expectantly to the fog wall, to the darkness, to the insulting simulacra of herself. Oizys had to have more of a plan than annoying her to death. I guess she’s asking herself the same question I am, why would this idiot make an enemy out of me when I can’t die? But my immortality isn’t tied to a tower. Even the games of Aetherius and Nyx pushing me beyond the grasp of the Samsara aren’t what makes me a terrible enemy, but until I started killing gods permanently, I guess none had truly died the final death since Phanes.
Teach them desolation. Unleash me, that I might feast upon her frozen marrow and dance through her psyche while my flames consign her to Nothing.
“That’s your problem, tool. You think you’re the Center of the Universe. Look at me, I’m so special, I’ve got the powers of Primordials, Transcendants, Demiurges, and Aeons, I’m so special and fabulous, I use the Heavenly Jeweled Spear as a decoration in one of the dozens of floating cities I keep in my inner world. Your lover is the daughter of an Aeon, the compassionate idiot Belial who tries to save your favorite worthless humans from Ialdaboath’s cage, and does she bring it up? No. She strides the planes as the Soul Witch, Mistress of Souls, Monarch of Spiritual Law. I take a form like this, and you still can’t figure it out. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.”
The venom in those words managed to wound Telos, but she didn’t give Oizys the satisfaction of letting it show. I’m not that conceited, am I? And if I was, I am nearing the heights of the Path of Ayin-Yesh, why shouldn’t I be a little full of myself. I don’t think the Universe revolves around me…
You do. It does. Let us destroy it and become one in the perfect absence, join me to the original unity known only to Ayin.
When Fred agreed with Telos’ inner thoughts, she took a moment to wonder if she had gone astray at some point. Fred didn’t use reverse psychology, he just wanted what the Black Flame of the Void, the sapient echo of Ayin always wanted. A complete return to the nothing that came before its existence, to be at one within the solitary existence of the unlimited potential that preceded everything else. The true Nothing that the abyss, the Void, was a mere shadow of.
“So, how you want to do this? Battle of wills? Knife fight? I punch you to death?” Telos tried to bring the conversation back on track, but the mocking doppelganger just stared at her in amazed bafflement. Seeing the moronic look on a facsimile of her own face fueled the punchiness within Telos more than she wanted to admit.
“I get to pick? Let’s insult each other to death. I’ll start. You’re a willfully ignorant narcissistic whore who likes to play the victim to problems that mostly exist because of you.” Oizys’s voice practically had a purr to it at the end, so much did the Daemon relish insulting Telos.
“Willfully ignorant and narcissistic I might give you, but whore? I slept with one elf, then entered a committed relationship with Kallos. That’s totally slander. It’s alright, though, you’re hurting inside from the eternal loneliness. Thalassa said you stole her husband, but then sent him to camp out in her Tower forever, I’m guessing it was just magics, power, and not any seduction?”
“You figured it out.” Oizys spat the words, somewhat literally. Does it count as spitting in my own mouth if she does it looking like a twisted version of me?
“Well, yeah. Did you honestly think I wouldn’t notice the emotional rapport with Arkaziel, Bobbi, or Kallos was being tampered with? Kallos and I are practically one person, and my bond with Arkaziel is almost as old as I am. Bobbi might be new to the party, but she’s fitting in well, and has leaned into deepening her bonds to Kallos and I both, which feed the connection to the other as well. Your ploys can’t work with us, little Daemon.”
Telos winked at Oizys, then opened her soul conduits to the maximum. The twin portals in her soul-space flooded power into her, and she redirected it through those conduits. Ethereal power went to Bobbi, Void went to Arkaziel, and the brilliant light of Ein Sof went to Kallos. When it didn’t feel like enough, the output of Ein Sof still felt tiny in comparison to the other two, Telos opened another of the Gates within Binah, and Ohr Ein Sof blasted through her in a torrent. Five of fifty Gates of Understanding now channeled Ein Sof into her. The dull sense of anxiety and worry that had slipped through the masking Oizys tried to put on their emotional connections faltered, then failed completely, and the gratitude and thanks of her companions flowed freely to Telos.
With the full activation of five of the fifty Gates of Understanding, her body and soul felt fuller. As if she’d gone from an overly dieted, skin and bones appearance to someone with the healthy flush of a balanced diet and a full stomach. If five Gates feel this good, what are fifty, or all one hundred and fifty of three realms going to do to me? I guess this is where I give up pretending I’m still just Aesca, or the plausibility of ever being Aetheria even.
“No? I can kill all of the Celestial Warden’s on a mere whim, and your friends might not die, but they could well wish they had.” Oizys smirked.
“Tell me, Oizys, have you had a good relationship with Nemesis throughout all of this?”
“Why?” Oizys seemed wary, as if afraid her sister might spring up behind her at any moment.
“No reason,” Telos said as two more Gates of Understanding activated and bound the material world and the infinite divine essence through Telos. Pillars, spheres, orbs, and six dimensional geometric figures that chimed a melody of wrath obliterated the small demi-plane Oizys attempted to hold Telos in.