The Watcher II
Gor'achen
The Aether
Unknown
Wrapping myself in a shield of Dark Od, I step through the gate, and a veritable sea of the Dark surrounds me. A cloud of the Dark billows around me, and my awareness barely manages to perceive anything eight or nine meters away. The Od exists between Life and Death, and the Dark Od originates from Death itself. There not much of an atmosphere in this place, but as the Dark Od begins to consume the Dark, there is still enough atmosphere to carry the hissing noise from the clash of opposing Powers. As more of my shield is depleted, I draw more of the Dark Of from Core Realm and reinforce it. More and more of the Dark flows toward me, but despite its ability to obfuscate and corrupt, the density of the Dark is far, far from high enough to overwhelm my ability to maintain my shield of Dark Od.
As the Dark begins in my immediate vicinity begins to thin, I sense another web of Power. Carried by my web of Od, my awareness spreads out around me, and I gain an image of the nature of the place where I am. Other than the web of Power, it appears to be a completely empty, globular pocket Realm, with a diameter of less than five hundred meters.
Striking from within the Dark, dozens of threads of Trinity drive toward me like spears, but as I pulse my shield of Dark Od outward for an instant, their attacks are blunted and deflected. The threads draw back, then hundreds more join them in an all-out assault on my defenses. Due to its lesser nature as a purely Elemental Power, Trinity is not more effective against the Od than the Dark, a Primal Power, but the swarm of attacks forces me to waste Power blocking them. Along with the continuing presence of the Dark, which while undirected takes Power to destroy, the hidden Mind seems to be trying to wear me down in a battle of attrition.
If the hidden Mind wants to compete in a contest over the volume of Power we can draw upon, I will bet on myself. With my Core Realm directly connected to the Od, I have virtually unlimited supply of Power. My only limit is how much I can control at one time, and so fare, I am not close to that limit. I am in no danger, but as the unending assault continues, I can only hide within my shield and search for the attacking Mind. Hiding behind my defenses does not sit well with me. Within the depths of my Soul, I feel my ever-present rage building and rising to the surface, but the stronger my rage, the more Power I can control, and the more the Dark Od responds to me.
The threads of Trinity come at me from all directions and dozens of vectors. Considering the strength of each thread, I could more easily believe dozens of Minds were attacking me at once, than a single Mind controls all the threads.
Grabbing hold or my rage, I form two thick tentacles of Dark Od and infuse them with it. The tentacles become like a new set of appendages. With no idea of where the Mind is hiding, I lash out with my tentacles, seemingly at random, but I follow a pattern. As one tentacle intercepts a series of the Trinity threads, the other lashes through the area that seems most likely to be their source. As both tentacles keep intercepting the threads, I choose the tentacle to attacks with at random. Since the web of Power is immobile, my tentacles steadily tear it to shreds.
As my tentacles of Dark Od destroy more of the clouds of the Dark, it stops closing in around my shield of Dark Od. It withdraws a bit, leaving a globe about a dozen meters around me completely empty. Instead, it forms thicker shoals with thinner channels between them, making it harder to identify the origin points for the threads of Trinity. The Dark is not just an ambient Power in this pocket Realm; something is actively controlling it. After dozens attempts, I feel a faint trace of Trinity that is not part of the nearly obliterated web of Power or the attacking threads, but as I try to latch onto the Mind, it fades away.
It does not matter that the Mind has escaped. Through the Power it leaked, I felt its presence; I sensed its nature. The Mind is not a part of a complete being There was no hint of a Soul connect to it. I think it inhabits or once inhabited some form of Body, but if it did, the Body was not a natural, living one.
"You're not a living being. What are you? A construct? Multiple Constructs?" The Eidos is not the same as the Soma, the physical world. It operates on different rules. I do not do not project my thoughts, but my "words" are still as much ideas or thoughts as speech. The Eidos does not have a proper atmosphere, or any other medium, to carry sounds, but since it still contains the Idea of sound, I can speak.
The only response to my questions are more attacking threads of Trinity. The number and density of the threads increases, and the number of origin points increases. Individually, the threads pose no danger, but their sheer volume wears down my shield of Dark Od at a faster pace. However this pocket Realm has limited space. One of my tentacles slices through the middle of a Mind. The Mind bursts into fragments of Trinity, but not before I get a clear sense of its nature.
"You're a program! Multiple copies of a single program!"
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The program does not acknowledge or deny its nature. It does not respond in any manner other than to double down on its assault. From the increase in the number of attacking Trinity threads, several Dozen more copies of the program have entered the pocket Realm, but there is no indication of how the Mind copies area drawing the high volume of Trinity necessary to fuel the barrage of attacks. The origin points for the attacks begin to move more rapidly around the pocket Realm in what appear to be random patterns.
Would it be its assault or, their assault? Are multiple copies of a single program one entity or multiple entities? Since it has no Soul, can a program be called an entity? I suppose it is technically an entity. My question should really be, is it a being or not a being? Does it matter? It is corrupted by both Order and the Dark. I am going to erase it from existence.
Pulling Judgment from the dimension warping axe cover strapped to my back, I feed it what knowledge I have about the program Mind with a thread of my Od, and the axe begins to draw on the Od itself.
While a thick layer of interwoven black and silver Power builds up on one bit of Judgment, I circulate a thicker flow of Od, both Dark and Light, through my Body, Mind, and Soul. The attacking threads of Trinity seem to slow down by a third, and I use my tentacles of Dark Od only to keep track of the origin points for the threads. The seemingly random movements are not quite so random. Each origin point, presumably an individual Mind copy, is following a specific pattern in its movements, but each one is different from all the others. Letting my shield of Dark Od continue to absorb the attacks, I identify and track the movement pattern of a number of the Minds.
When seven of the origin points converge on a small area of the Realm, I swing Judgment. The bead of interwoven Light and Dark Od flashes outward at the speed of my thoughts, and six of the seven Mind copies cease to exist. Looking like a black and silver crescent moon, the arc of the Od slams into the Realm Boundary and tears through it. For an instant, a dark space and a smooth, stone wall is visible through through the tear, but it closes up almost instantly.
As the tears seals, the attacking threads of Trinity immediately disappear, and I lose all track of the Mind copies. Without any good way to find the them, I sweep my tentacles of Dark Od through shoals of the Dark, breaking them up and consuming them. I only manage to destroy a few then the Realm changes. Coming from multiple places, ripples of Power pass through the pocket Realm, and the nature of the Realm seems to shift.
I find myself standing in a tarred parking lot. I n a V formation, o ne limousine flanked by four SUVs. all painted an alpine white color, sit farther out in the parking lot, with their front ends facin toward me. A group of women stands in front of the cars, and a man, Tyrend, on a leash, with shackles on his wrists and ankles, lays on the ground. His black and blue, bloodied face is swollen almost beyond recognition, and his back, from his shoulders to mid-thigh is nothing but raw bloody meat.
The woman holding the leash is a whore that he used to fuck in Gor'achen. She used to be a fat sausage of a woman, but now, she is skinny and looks pretty good.
Elan'fer'sha and Angelique stand on the roof behind me.
No! Dacbold is on Taereun. Elan and Angelique are both long dead. Lavinia the leader of the women is long dead; I killed her myself. Tyrend and his fat sausage whore are probably long dead. Everyone here but Dacbold should be long dead.
I sweep my awareness through the area, and everything feels real, but the humans, Dacbold, and Elan feel hollow. They have no Souls, and their Minds are like caricatures of the being I knew. This is not real! It may not be an illusion, but it is still not real.
I turn to look at Elan. Even if she is not real, she looks exactly as I remember her. Tied up in a ponytail at the top of her head, the silver hair is so long, it reaches her ankles. She has an ethereal beauty that does not fit a human. After Boran removed the Umbral channels that had been tattooed on her, her honey-amber eyes and pale pink nipples were the only hint of real color to her. Like the real Elan, this imitation looks like like a spirit or ghost among the living.
I do not what this artificial Mind is ore how it know about Elan or the fight with the cunts that served the Celestial Court, but it has no right to play with Elan's image. As I stare at the fake Elan, in the depths of my Soul, black rage builds. I do not try to hold it back, and responding to my rage, the Dark Od pours out from my Core Realm. I let it explode.
Carried by my rage, a globe of Dark Od explodes outward. It rips my shield of Dark Od from me, carrying the power along with it.
"RARRRRR!"
"AAAAOOOOOO!
As I roar in rage, Judgment howls along with me and pours its own Dark Od into the expanding globe of Power. The globe turns into a raging storm of Dark Od. As the storm consumes the clouds of the Dark, the remnants of the web of Power are shredded. Dozens of the Mind copies are destroyed, but for every one that is destroyed, another escapes. They fade through the Realm boundaries, disappearing form my awareness.
As the storm of Power fades, hundreds of tears in the Realm boundaries start to close, but the process is slow. This pocket Realm has nearly been destroyed, and its nature becomes visible. While it is more or less an Amalgamate Realm, it is contained withing a framework of Order. Looking at the pattern of the Order Framework, I do not think this was Realm was created to be a trap. I am not sure what its original purpose might have been, but I would guess that it was an experiment of some sort.