////

I put the paradox-idol’s ultimate fate up to a vote—had to keep up the velvet-glove’s appearance and all.

Four votes went towards Eli, Three towards Bao and the last two went to Mike.

With a crackle of esoteric electricity, I brought out the paradox-idol from my ontology. It was absence given form, shadow given depth. I handed it to Elizabeth with a forewarning.

“It’ll only start when you’re receptive to the idol. Be prepared for an acid trip.” I turned towards the others. “Take a step back or ten. You won’t want to be struck by the spatial-temporal friction—hurts like a motherfucker.”

////

When Maria handed me the idol, there was no immediate reaction.

With a steeling breath, I let the proverbial floodgates open as I held the suggestion of a silhouette in my hands.

Black-alabster lightning struck; the idol dissolved into me.

The edges of my soul were shorn away into tattered remnants and then reknit into a foreign shape. Where the first hubris took my tongue, this one chose my trachea. I felt the mycelium of [Antediluvia] fester in my throat, mutating normal flesh into homogenous imitation matter. The roots wiggled like filaments of asbestos, worming its way into me, body and soul.

Unfortunately, I did not lose my consciousness during the process. I was kept on my feet through self-imposed tonic immobility. The implicit knowledge of the idol was etched into my mind such that I knew of the morphological changes even without a mirror being put in front of me.

An adam’s apple had metastasized in my thyroid with a line going down from lips all the way to the crux of where my collar bones intersected with my sternum. Iridescent-purple filaments marked my neck, expanding outwards in a fungal tapestry not unlike a peacock’s regal tail. The end result was a hypnotic king cobra’s hood, covert pseudo-feathers fanning out to accentuate my face. The base plumage was soft to the touch while the tertrices were sharp as razors.

I could hear the ticks and clicks of biomechanical clockwork in my throat.

////

Entity: [Omniglot//Automata]

Sphera: [Golgotha], [Luna], [Hypnagogia]

Para-class: [Yellow-Aphelion]

Reliquary: [Zarathustra], [Silenus]

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Esoterica: [Silenus]

Ignosis: [The esoterica of {Silenus} derives from the sphera of {Hypnagogia} and {Antedilluvia}; establishes a commissural tract in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of exaltation and the platonic ideals of authority and idolatry.]

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Hubris: [Abgrund]

Ignosis: [The hubris of {Abgrund} derives from the sphera of {Luna} and {Lethea}; establishes an antipodal ligature in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of empathy to the platonic ideals of subjection and iconoclasty.]

////

The paradox-idol was a force-amplifier.

When I fanned out the imposing pseudo-feathers that caressed my neckline, my voice was potentiated by a factor of ten. Each word became divine mandate, usurping reality to my own image, my own design. The power was tyrannical in nature and utterly intoxicating.

I could make stone crumble to dust, set flame to water, make air as solid as titanium. The limits began where my imagination ended. Everything and anything was at the tip of my non-existent tongue.

So, when I caught sight of my brother’s murderer, I saw red and spoke a single command that consensus reality could not help but listen to and obey.

“[Die.]”

Just as I saw the breath leave from the traitor’s lungs, Maria swiped at the air between us, catching something that could not be caught in the palm of her skinless hand. Her fist was tight and unrelenting, holding hostage my command.

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I would have thought she’d speak in that threatening affect, that unvoice which ripped words out from your mind to make you understand. But no, she spoke like a normal human being if one that was very much not impressed.

“I do not know whether I was too hasty with my threat or that I had not gone far enough.”

Even though I had none, I felt like I had swallowed my own tongue. She held my voice in her shaking fist with all the implied threat of a cat: ‘try and take it back.’ My esoterica was wholly neutered for so long as it remained in her grasp.

“I wonder whether you cannot understand the concept of a lose-lose situation or that you desperately wish to remain blissfully ignorant.”

She let go of my tongue but it still felt like she held me in her thrall.

“I was wrong in jumping so quickly to judge and threaten you. You grieve the loss of your brother.”

Each consecutive sentence was a slap to the face, throwing me around as if I was a child in a riptide. Maria leaped from ideas like a grasshopper, uncaring if a thought was finished and simply moving on to what she saw as the next logical conclusion.

“I had hoped that the promise of violence would curtail actual violence.”

I began to understand her only when I realized she was being direct and did not care for beating around the bush.

“Mutually assured destruction is much like its acronym—madness.”

She fell into a cross-legged lotus position and gestured to the ground around her.

“Sit and let us speak. That goes for the rest of you.”

////

When most of the group sat down around me in a loose circle, I spoke out.

“Why did you wish to kill Noah?”

The question seemed unnecessary and rhetorical if going by Eli’s expression but it was better to have all our baggage laid out before we could actually sort through it.

“Because he killed Johnny.”

I did not answer immediately, instead posing her another question:

“How many angels have you slain, Eli?”

That caught her in the back foot but she answered all the same.

“I don’t know—maybe more than a hundred but less than a thousand?”

Pause.

“They were once people, each and every one of them, Eli. That does not make you into a murderer for continuing to live.”

She recoiled as if slapped.

“Johnny was beyond saving. He wasn’t violent then—most vestiges aren’t. Without his idol, you would have died. Noah did not take what was left of Johnny’s life lightly.”

Credit where credit’s due: Eli did not retort childishly. Her silence was that of someone that had gone through too much in too little time. The silence of the others was born of discomfort and no small amount of weariness as well.

“You weren’t fully at fault when you attacked Noah either, Eli.”

Those words jerked her head up violently. The corners of her mouth crinkled in disgust as a snarl contorted the skin atop her nose—I knew that the emotion wasn’t directed to anyone but herself. Before she could begin a tirade of self-loathing, I interrupted her preemptively.

“You were under the influence of what amounts to 80-proof distilled spirits.”

I ripped open a ragged tear in the fabric of reality with my fingertips—universal-background-radiation stared back at us from beyond the threshold; the nothingness between worlds.

“Power corrupts because it amplifies, not because it is inherently immoral. Everything good, everything bad—potentiated to a factor of ten. A mistake done by the old-world oligarchs does not near the minimum of catastrophe capable by those who possess power akin to gods.”

Black-alabaster lightning reknit space-time’s skin black together but there was a distortion-scar left behind. Light bent around it like an optical illusion, like the corona of a singularity—stretch-marks on the fabric of reality.

The silence stretched out into muteness.

I did not stare at Eli for her to nod in confirmation because I now knew better.

A velvet-covered iron fist breaks bone no different than a naked one.

One by one we laid down until conversation began between the petri-dish clicks that had formed through happenstance. It wasn’t as stilted as it could have been, at least—we’d just gone through multiple live-and-death battles, the experience enough to break even the thickest ice.

“You were a business major, Bao?” Mike said, his lips moving on autopilot while he stared at the bleeding sky with all the vigor of a soldier having been through a deathmarch. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for the type. You feel more like a poli-sci.”

Even though his physical endurance was superhuman, his mental ability to process and cope needed downtime.

I suppose that applied to all of us.

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