She layed down the world for them as he had showed her once, but this time it was not general things being imparted by him unto her, she was doing the teaching and there were specific things to tell. It had been long since either had something to teach another.
Most of what she had helped Grub with once and taught him again were not words, he'd been a very reactive person once, and like his namesake he'd been like a young bug that just did what survival required. No more or less, though, nobody could argue his sense of timing in locating the best place to live was quite precise.
He'd led them to the only truly fertile grounds there were, even in the time before the city started being built, and the wall he'd put around it kept the truth of their farm hidden from any to sense. None percieved even close to all of it, she knew he hadn't himself, not yet again anyway.
"There's a lot more than meets the eye to a certain place. It's bigger and better on the inside than it looks, but those are the least notable factors, in reality there's not nearly the amount of food you might think by looking in our house outside of it. It's not impossible for things to get here to the house, we've been attacked before.
"Our Sur-Space is different, we can open it wherever we want, so if we ever have to abandon our home we won't hesitate. We never have yet, but I know we may have to soon, you're blaring off energy and people can sense how well off your body is because of it. You never have before, though you're in a position to, even the one big show you just put on may make us a target.
"Others like you have plentiful charges to defend their property, when they go around like you it's fine, only your recent change seems to have made it where you are this noticeably well-fed."
"Me? You, you're doing it even worse!" I said. She looked unsure, defensive, thoughtful, shrugged and then went with counter offensive words and thoughts. A mix of all the emotions she's felt; confusion, apprehension, deflection and reflection all balled up. "People think I'm your wife, but they also think you're a dullard and simple. Since you pretty much worked and ate even here, and you're quiet, few really think of you like an Old God.
"They think of you as brain-damaged, or mind-addled, or gene-diseased. Those are the ones who know you're more than that, they think that something was wrong before you became one even though those who know better have records of normal Gods healing from the unhealable."
"Is it age that separates old from normal? I notice you didn't say younger for them." "Mostly things I know little of, you and I have had few encounters with any. Also, the stories are all so different, mixed up, embellished, even what sense can be made is usually skeptical sense. They have their own terms for things meaningless to me. I know this though.
"Gods are either called Immortals; those live ageless for around seven centuries unless killed, they're not known for combat, but they are good survivors. Too peaceful to be called great ones, though. Otherwise they're Invulnerables; great only at combat, they live assuredly three centuries, but are more terrible survivors than mortals.
"They have nothing to do with each other, one way or another, and both can only procreate others like them with their own type. They can't intermix, not with each other, but they can with mortals. Those offspring are Demi-Gods after their God parents type. Your kind has attributes of both, with neithers faults you're superior to them.
"If you were killed, like an Invulnerable you would heal or be reborn soon. As you pass time it never touches you, like the Immortal you are forever. That second I believe, but the first I don't know to be true. Your invulnerability seems to be working at all times since wounds are lessened for you, that's not typical at all. It's harder to wound any God, but I've never seen or heard about how it works with your type."
I didn't have much to say, I couldn't make sensd of whether or not I'd be seen as lesser or greater, weak or strong, stupid or smart, all I knew was that people thought of me as a type of God and yet also considered me as a lessened one. At least I wasn't being worshipped, but there were bigger questions I'd wanted to ask. Instead I'd trust my true nature had been gentle with all as it had treated Julia.
A breeze picked up outside and dropped off slowly, sounding off by all the nearby branches the gust reached, and just as it neared slowing the first scant and heavy raindrops started from overhead. The sky was clear, still, a heavy rain was over us and coming.
"Let's put this land in the Sur-Space and light out of here." I suggested that with all sincerity to her. "Julia there's people I need to look for, they should be Gods like me too. At least, if what I think may have made us like this is right. I remember training them in obscure knowledge I'd pieced together although, I barely remember what it was.
"I have to find them and I can't leave you, or home. I'll need both to be able to do it, no matter what I wish it's true."
"Well, we can't split it, Sur-Space takes the two who made it to open. I don't want to leave home, but I never imagined we could be like a snail and carry home with us. So, I'm for trying. As far as where your party and wife might be, the City-Capital would be the place to start looking. What do they look like?"
We were about to find out, or at least, a familiar energy was approaching via shadow movement. "Hold that thought." I half exclaimed and half mused to her, very involved and scrutinizing in the energies form. Julia stared where I did recognizing that in another fraction of a second there would be someone standing against the wall of our front door.
"Great-goodness. You wake up and the devil of the world drops by, Grub!" Julia complained, beating me up with her eyes and maybe even imagining doing the same with her hands. She was not the only tense woman in the room, when she did. It still took me some seconds to realize that tension. I had no connection to it directly, though I sensed it, my own mood was soothed.
"Hey red-headed bitty? Why're you still around Jack." A woman asked Julia, questioning her statement and suggesting her question. The way she said it the latter half was devoid of the former halves emotion, in other words the flattest possible accusation. Its implication was simple, not just that she shouldn't be around me, but her emotional connection was undesired.
"Me? You may come off as hot pussy but you're no honey pie to be sweet over any man."
All sound seemed to go silent and every anxious motion between the two stopped abruptly. Both were true, but, perspective was clouding my senses and I wasn't even involved directly with this all yet. What was her name, and why, why did there seem to be a storm brewing when things always wanted to look the most calm? When things were quiet there was always shoves to move and make noise that were inexplicable.
"Not in the house. Take it outside." I said, boldly, but sensitive towards each.
"Fuck off Jack."
"I'll handle her, Grub, just relax and watch."
"No, I'm trying to remember her name. I've got to ask her something important."
"You forgot my name, in your stupor? Fine, it's Catherine and yes I'm your woman and here to claim what's mine by right."
"You can't deserve him that way, I'll die before I see that happen. Leave now, or you could very well be the one who doesn't walk away instead."
Most of the metal door and surrounding frame and wall went right out. Like it was a thin aluminum foil instead of a thick steel alloy, it peeled out with a sound like a huge metal gates opening and causing an avalanche in the process. Metal rang out and vibrated with a sharp ring just a moment after a dull gonging.
When metal had started singing out in a high pitch, that was it giving way out, and the sound of the marble exteriors crumbling ahead of it had made it feel like the whole wall on that side of the house was going to go with it.
Despite being pressed back with no opportunity to rise to Julias challenge, Catherine back-pedaled with a low stance and conceded to give many blows in place of any powerful one, those seemed to amount to nothing while Julia repeatedly purchased heavy and centered hits on Catherine. It looked like Julia was winning, but she wasn't, Catherine was unmarked. Julia was bleeding quick, and a lot.
I knew I'd stopped them when they seemed to decide to. I knew that was not just possible but what I'd done by willing it. "Where is my wife, Catherine." I said in the same tone she'd used, devoid, empty and full at once. Not a question at all, it was a demand, the type when you make you get your answer even without words as a response. I didn't need to look at her long to know everything at a glance.
I could get my answers too fast, too clearly, yet there was no perspective. Catherines perspective was hers, consciousness you could not share directly like subconsciousness, even if you rooted around in a persons depth forever with all they knew you'd never be able to directly touch consciousnesses.
Our depths were always brushing others depths, depths were the more obvious things that were less distinguishable all at once, you might see anything deep and realize quickly it will take time to broach enough of it for a general idea. But that was backwards of reality and depths implications.
No different than getting the big picture, but worrying over small details you wished to latch onto, a persons subconscious was all the things you knew and sensed without needing time or conscious to need to try and know at all.
The conscious mind was your awareness, any way you shared that it was indirect, and even using telepathy to share subconscious knowledge did not mean you got those specifics. It was direct perspective to sense, its opposite was indirect perspective, the subconscious was perspective that grew wider and deeper. Conscious became narrower, and shallower. It learned to see what it looked for.
Kate was dead. There was nothing else that possibly could have taken every bit of the wind from her sails, and even having blood struck from her lip by Julia suddenly put off guard by my words did not phase Catherine. I knew, it wasn't in me to deny truth, and truth was all I wished to know so it was the clearest thing to see even when I wished it wasn't then.
I didn't need memories to know what made me different all of a sudden. What thing or things about me had made me become what I had? There was no memories to know this by, no background to hold up to scrutiny and check it against. I realized it anyway. My whole life I'd been doing just one thing right besides searching for and keeping love.
All of my life I'd been awakening my suconscious, lulling to sleep my conscious mind, and between those two the true mind and true heart of mine had done exemplary in putting myself in position. Full control and surrender are two in one contention, one balance, but there are very real mechanisms involved that make the mind become different in those two extremes.
On the one hand, someone completely in control can't surrender to the things they control any longer, and on the other someone entirely in surrender can't control the things they surrender to. People can't occupy those positions, not fully, middle ground and balance is a thing wherever you find yourself anywhere. Concessions are a mix of these, a perfect example, like a fulcrum of balance of the contentions.
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A concession was serene, both sides showed courage and grace and wisdom, all at once. Control and surrender together, both sides agreeing to disagree, it was a reverence of forgiveness and choice and acceptance.
I could not concede Kate. I would not concede Kate, and I should not have needed to. She was supposed to be the one I had no doubt made it, but, that had undoubtedly blown back in everyones face when she wouldn't let herself be put on a shelf. In other words my wife was dead because she was the same way. The things she'd concede were always right, never wrong.
She'd died because others had tried to hold her up, they'd saw her as a hero, they'd made her a hero in their eyes, she'd have been one knowing they needed that, and it had cost both of us everything good. Everything was gone, there was nothing left but a shell I did not want, except now I couldn't even let myself go back into the darkness. Whatever I'd done to my mind was permanent.
Trying to raise my conscious mind up from my subconscious felt just like trying to move the stars I could not see for they were on the other side of the planet, everything was wrong with that. The space and time and gravity were all wrong, and I don't just mean the planets. The opposite, however, was not as fruitless. If my conscious was movable once and now immovable, like the heavens where all was in its place and season and state, the other was like the world.
My subconscious was all that was a part of me, something there had been only surrender to before, something I was beginning to have control over instead as my conscious control diverted unto it. I didn't seem to have much time left to alter it, so I acted as impulsive and recklessly as I ever had with no considerations. Always trust a proper fool to know when to jump ship, fools know surrender and control are two sides of the same.
Never wait for the wise to say otherwise, the truly wise would be on board with the fool quickly before the vessel being pirated was scuttled and sunk to the drink, they'd go down just the same the more wise for it only as the truth became clear too late. A fool laughs then not at the misfortune of the wise, not because they think themself greater, but because the wise were and died thinking it.
They were greater. The damnable thing about it is they are dead, and the fool doesn't know why, but they know. The wise are conscious. The fool isn't really that self-conscious sinces they're the subconscious fellow, the one who survives when wiser than him readily perish for meaningless ideals.
If they could see the wisdom, they wouldn't seem to be a fool cackling madly just to be alive to the pirates. If the pirates weren't wise to people acting this way sometimes, they'd let their minds fool themselves into entertaining another perspective and glimpsing his madness.
The weak, stupid, idiotic survived while the strong, intelligent, idealistic died. Even things that have always gone forwards can suddenly and swiftly go backwards, pull your mind off its feet besides your body, and dump the world you thought you knew on its head. The wise swim until they sink and drown with the ship, the fool sails off into the sunset the dreamer they are, ever alive.
Bold as a fool I cast love aside. What I'd had was too much to handle feeling, the last thing I needed was more love, and so I erected a barrier to keep it from going out or in any longer. I didn't want my feelings to change ever again, I wouldn't and couldn't concede that. There were no memories of her consciously to corrupt, just senses too deep not to be real, senses attached to a face I would know only if I saw it.
For the shortest time as I did it the world seemed worse, there was so little of its light in this world anyway and there was only plenty close by. Immediately all pain went away, and the sense my head cleared was real, but that was only because where my head was positioned and where my heart had been were not alligned. They had never been further apart.
That's where they'd stay.
"Take me to the capital." It felt like eternity had come and gone in a moment, except it had been about ten minutes, my perspective of time had been so heavy inside myself it just dilated the time outside of me more than was explicate while I'd grieved. A flash of all that had happened caught up with me when I brought those back to balance on myself.
Weightless inside, everything out of you looks so still, like you're the only thing that exists.
Perhaps that was why we needed the subconscious to awaken while our conscious mind slept, so that the weight of consciousness could unburden itself in the weightlessness of the subconscious, and like a light sinking into dark, dreams were where our minds always felt clearer and lighter after we awoke back again.
Time, gravity, and space don't exist in dreams the right way. If they did our mind would process the things that happened and have an even more marked effect on us as we awoke. Except, that was just one more rule about to be broken, since for me I would be in the world both at once as if both waking and dreaming.
Once I'd known there was this omniscience I could distantly sense all within loosely at once, a thing that had spread around a thousand miles. Gaining sense from it was difficult and overwhelming, with little that translated directly but plentiful impressions attatched. I'd thought of it as a dark domain, but it was the better of its contention.
Minor omniscience was no longer the case.
I could sense all around me in a linear mile every direction, all at once, like a barrier-of-brightness antithetical to the dark-domain I'd known as long term learning at its limit later on. It was all the consciousness of other consciousnesses. Intuition of intuitions which I'd considered central mind reading, no longer the case.
'Wasn't this? This wasn't?' No, consciousness of consciousness was like wielding telepathy as sword and shield. Imbalanced, contentious. It wasn't telepathy at all, this was empathy, telepathy had little inherent emotional movement but was too deep not to react to. This didn't directly or indirectly move you. You could move it, with the right source of move.
A touch, a word, a gesture, a tone, you could move empathy knowing it's motivations and manners. If emotions were the mechanisms it functioned by, motivations and manners were the tools for tinkering with it to any extreme. Being all-aware of them was like seeing a puzzle you could reshape, since you saw the pieces that were out of order to your standard.
I'd never considered telepathy and my dark-domain as one thing, they were not before, but empathy and my bright-barrier were one thing that came from two corrupting. All of me was lessened but these were the most obvious impacts. I didn't remember getting to the capital or ever being teleported by Catherine. I didn't feel like I was suddenly there, it felt more like there suddenly was upon me.
"Good placing and timing." I said and paid compliments to Catherine. She smiled, Julia frowned. "You don't smile, and you don't frown. How could you let her die, dumbass? Julia don't be upset because I complimented her." Both shared twin similar thoughts; 'How did I know what they felt before they were aware of it, and how did they hear me so clearly when it happened too fast?'
I ignored that and started pulling the moon towards myself. Merely looking at the moon high overhead from the capitals square was enough, and it readily obeyed to divert from its position and time. For the first twelve minutes the two concerned theirself with speaking to me, diverting my attention, finally calming me down.
Mostly we spoke about Kate while I spoke with them, but I kept at my intention, and the minute after that the first cries began. It was less than a few moments later when the two with me noticed what others had, and Catherine fell on her ass looking up at it with wide eyes and no desire to stand.
"What's happening? How can an illusion be so- power-." She started, trailed off before her pupils maxed outward, and then wiped heavy tear trails from her eyes. "We have to go now, as far away as we can as fast as possible, teleport us to the other side of the world!" Julia threatened, pulling Catherine up and jerking her back-and-forth and sideways to-and-fro.
It took a few moments of that for her to clear up fast when the sound started. Very quiet, eerily pervasive, eery as hell and I expected the phenomenon. Lucky for them, most were already too destabilized to pay it much mind or realize what it was at first, but that wasn't the case for us standing here. Certainly not for me watching, no longer orchestrating.
Gravity would finish the job.
Would have before the atmospheric entry upon gravitational captures first pull, except to maximize break up more speed entering the atmosphere high up was crucial, otherwise the moon could not scatter over us and build up more thermal energy from increased surface areas being exposed to more friction on more sides.
Of course bringing her down low and slow would be more bang for my buck, except I didn't want this world to explode and go out in a bang, this world that took Kate from me took her slowly and it would die the sane way. It was going to burn out like she had waiting for me.
"It'd just delay it. You can't teleport and get away from that, even on the other side of the planet we'll be feel and hear it long before it hits. Does that sound like escape?" "Do. It. ANYWAY!" Julia demanded and clutched Catherines face directly against her own. "Fine. Jack, c'mon, we need to leave. We'll buy ourselves a few hours at best."
"I'm not leaving. I'm gonna sit right here and watch my work unfold, until this world burns out or I do I'm not moving. Take her into our Sur-space Julia, you two won't survive unless you do."
They both argued, but in another minute the shrill sound was a scream, and some part of it came with an even more terrifying noise that made my skin crawl. When you carry your voice up and down the pitches, there is a sort of feel for where your voice is pitched as you do it, you can feel where it is rising and falling besides the full spectrum of it when you do.
I could feel the moon was halfway by then, halfway down, it's sound growing greater in bass and lesser in pitch all at once. The weight of it over our heads made itself known, not just in these sounds being detectable to us now, some part of me strongly recommended against the course of events feeling that weight coming close.
That feeling of a ball coming your way thrown off angle or meant to hit you, those short moments where you start posturing to dodge instinctively, the sense like a tree was coming down right over your head. Only, this would dwarf any mountain, this tree none would dodge even somewhat short term.
They argued, but Catherine won the arguement by leaps and bounds, all she had to point out to Julia who wanted to wait for me was that I was lost to this madness either way. She added I was more insane than Marguete had ever been, before the two left, and I'd not known why any longer but I was just glad to have cast love aside.
I'd never felt better, and since I had only just realized Kate was dead, things were looking up like never before.
There wasn't a piece larger than an average hand by the time the first pieces started striking, all the extra heat and motion ahead of the rest were an odd counter balance to witness, the rising extreme heat trying to slow the mass above with the masses themselves creating more heat due to friction.
The barrier the lower masses formed under the higher acting as a force air resisted, but even while breaking the air ahead of the larger pieces the ones above them were catching right back up to all that heat below. Once the first impacts started, the sound energies involved sonically resonating with the frequency of the moons elements created a harmonic repurcussion.
In short, the sounds of carbon, iron, silicon, etcetera being destroyed ahead of others like them, it had a marked enhance destructive force on the elements coming in from behind. Like the sound of their fate was being called back to the elements behind, and knowing this fate to be true, the masses started destabilizing even faster.
Hand sizes pieces came first, super heated and dense materials, but the lighter elements came down like ashes and cinders. They were the sign that while the worst seemed to be over, the air and atmosphere and outer atmospheric canopy would not be the same again any time soon. Too much dust, heat, electricity in the air, besides all manner of toxic elements.
As it had neared the halfway point, it had begun to glow and conduct lightning from around its mass like a star of white light, nothing above the surface of the ground this side of the planet had escaped some amount of shock and burn. There hadn't been much that hadn't liquified or turned into a plasma, and that was true for the moon after the halfway point too, though after of the earth too.
The increased vapor in the low atmosphere had rapidly cooled a lot if those first large pieces, hence why they held together, yet even that act of rapid cooling had only fed to escalate destructions behind.
Yet, all was not as I had reasoned it should be, a rain of fire and brimstone was not as indicative of titanic earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and general storms as I imagined. There were some of course, few and mighty, still only beginning mere moments after the last of the moon sat as once alien gases now in the atmosphere.
Instead it was like a million localized forces were competing, superheated and speeded masses, and every manner of energy all balancing out. The world burned, but just the surface, and although even the dust was hot enough to set fire to the air around it where it went I was underwhelmed.
Even though the mile around me was untouched throughout, and even though I was on a mile wide pillar of earth around a thousand mile gap, the damage outside seemed minimal for all that happened. I mean, the moon had only just rained down on the planet, but after a different kind of moon landing you'd really expect more destruction.
Other than those thousand-and-one miles, no major surface changes were apparent, not peeking back into omniscience what I could. In my domain all empathy was as mine, so I was aware as more people entered it, I even knew when and where they came from. Even those using quantum teleportation in light bodies, I'd sense where and when they'd come as well.
I didn't recognize any of them, and nobody could recognize some of them after they chose to pester me. No espers abilities worked any longer, no magic or even etheric potential remained, their offensive uses had all been stripped somehow. The only benefit was I wasn't offended by any either, none worked even a little against me. It meant I could only use my body as a weapon.
That wasn't as easy as it likes to sound but boy was it enjoyable, not as much as forcing the moon to sunder and burn the world, but what is? I was coming down from an ultimate high, I didn't even have to throw what I did in anyones face, they knew from a glance who had wrought this on the world. Each damned and cursed me, but, each felt more like a blessing in disguise.
I wanted their hate. It felt good, and it was barely early evening so far, though it looked darker than any night ever had.