The endless plains of the gray world, Vanitas, grew green. Its skies turned blue. The Clouds were changed to white cotton balls instead of steel wool.
In this world, instead of mountains, the skyline was dotted with massive trees.
Trees with hundred-mile long trunks and thousand-mile high branches. In the upper-most canopy of the sky drifted floating isles. The world of gray and nothing, had now become a world of dreams.
The shades, the creatures that roamed it and called it home, no longer came in variations that could be easily counted.
Instead they wandered about in increasingly perfected and varied forms with the only true divides between them, being between those whose forms were somewhat stabilised and who had kin who looked like them, the Numbered.
And those who forms were still fluid and were still steeped in the amorphous nothingness, the Unnumbered.
Then finally there were those who had transcended both boundaries. The Great Shades known as the Named. Granted titles by their creator and contractor, who ruled this realm, and whose being made up its firmament and material structure.
His ever expanding power linked with the growth of the tiny pocket reality in a endless feedback reaction. His power growing as the world grew, the world growing as his power grew.
The expansion continuing till the point that the little world had become less of a pocket reality and more of a parallel world in its own right.
*****
For an entire age Vanitas had had three lights in the sky. The first was its sun. The second was its moon. The third, was never really talked about, but none of the beings who dwelt in this world seemed to find its presence strange.
It was as if it had always been there, yet now that it was falling, no one seemed to be worried, or even littlest bit concerned.
As if to say that if it was natural for it hang in the gray world’s sky, it was also natural for it, to come down.
The light descended and world around it seemed to simultaneously flourish and be devastated by its presence. The ground eroding away, crumbling, as if it were all a drawing and the light was the eraser of an artist’s pencil.
The areas nearby growing more verdant, and more lively with a few of the unnumbered shades drawing near, their forms mutating, their flesh glowing, steaming like freshly baked clay.
Their looks similar to ascended versions of the beings that they had once been. A good number of them being either very monstrous or very humanoid.
The smarter and luckier amongst them, skittering back as new born numbered. The less lucky ones getting pulled into the light and devoured.
The light began to dwindle and as it dwindled it too began to take a form. First there was blood, glowing and gray and resplendent. Then there were bones, harder and more absolute then the laws of gravity or space or energy.
Then there was muscle, each strand strong enough to tear apart a planet. Then came flesh, soft and pliant but firm enough to stand against the assaults of time and entropy. And lastly came the eyes.
Glowing green galaxies, miniaturized, though they still rotated as they once they did while they’d hung up in the heaven.
Pools of light, filled with the dissolved essence of the cosmos. Each eye socket held a billion stars, around which a trillion worlds both large and small had once rotated.
*****
It was all a cycle, from nothingness, to something-ness, to beinghood, to personhood, and back to nothingness. This was the secret of cosmic evolution and infinite power.
An endless cycle of the pronoun game, going from what, to who, to where, to why and back again. Over and over. Till one either transcended the boundaries of both rational and irrational existence and the plains within them, or ceased to exist.
“Nh….That’s was actually a bit scary...let’s maybe not tell the girls about this, me.” said Billy. Muttering to himself.
Disincarnation was infinitely close to dying and while he wouldn’t and to some extent “couldn’t” stay dead, he’d nearly grown too exhausted half-way through.
The particle and waves of his dis-embodied being, nearly growing inert and letting themselves get washed away in the chaotic, yet calming, waves of the quantum sea.
The whole process of pulling himself back together took close to three million years in the distorted time of the deep regions of Vanitas.
Had he let himself be washed away, and become ‘one with universe’ in such a manner he likely wouldn’t have returned till both his world and the world outside had faded away.
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“Nh..Yes...Let’s keep this to ourselves, if possible.” he said.
*****
With a thought Billy imagined a door for himself and it popped up into being in the next half second. He willed the door open and it opened. Then he stepped through and there was silence.
A Silence that was quickly broken by the clicks of a camera.
Billy found himself in the den of his house, surrounded by his two closest friends in the world and his two students, and Angelo, who’d been staying over before Billy had gone into his closed door cultivation.
Making himself at home there, as some manner of minor revenge. A ‘very’ minor revenge since by now the house had grown to the point where it could comfortably be home to the denizens of any of the major cities or kingdoms of Monde.
Boasting literally hundreds of thousands of rooms that went without use, save for the times a Named shade wandered into one and claimed the space as its own.
The only one’s whose presence Billy couldn’t explain was Matthew, and Cindi’s. Considering that he’d been busy pulling himself back together subatomic particle, by subatomic particle, it was understandable, that he didn’t know.
After all, even they hadn’t guessed that the new manor Matthew had bought for himself and his fiance would be swallowed up by a god-monster that happened to be hiding beneath the continental shelf.
Though they might have guessed that Elena would catch word of it, and invite them over, to stay with them while they commissioned a new manor’s construction.
Honestly as has been mentioned previously the house was almost obnoxiously huge by now and there were plenty of rooms. So it wasn’t like it was a problem for them to have a guest or three.
“....Welcome back.” said Edna. Her brow furrowing a little while she smiled.
“Nh...Thanks.”
“You’re n-,...naked.” said Alessa. Her golden brown skin, turning bright pink, as she turned away, seemingly found something interesting the ceiling to look at.
Matthew and Cindy laughed uncomfortably, and Tamra smirked. Her eyes hidden behind the dark curtain, though Billy had an alarming sense that they and the majority of the eyes in the room were focused on him.
He was slow to understand, his cognitive function was much improved in this new incarnation of his person, but again, having thoughts that flowed in excess of the speed of light didn’t mean becoming smarter.
He frowned as he stared at the room that was staring at him. Then he looked down at himself and frowned a little harder, the frown finally breaking with it him.
“Oh right….humans wear clothing.”
It was a thing that he would have been embarrassed about if he wasn’t still so very out of sorts. In any case it was any easy fix. He was just about to snap his fingers and magic some clothes onto his naked frame when Elena stopped him.
“Wait!”
He waited, and found himself swept off his feet.
“This just saves me time.”
*****
Billy was swept of his feet and Elena gallantly carried him out to their bedroom, Edna blinked as she stared at the empty space where he’d been standing.
Then she shook her head and walked out of the room, not sure whether to be amused or bemused, though her feet took her towards the bedroom all the same.
She noticed that Billy’s shadow was following him again, well following her at the moment. But she didn’t say anything.
“Still the same Billy after all...hmph.” mumbled Edna. Her look was a relieved one, though her tone was scolding. She pushed the bedroom door open and then paused, turning around.
“....After you.” said Edna, to Tamra. Startling the girl, who blushed upon being caught.
“Um...er…I-, !?!!?”
Edna raised a hand to cut off whatever weak-sauce explanation the girl was going to try and make up.
“If you’re going to be lurking around the door all night, anyway, you might as well just come inside.”
The girl seemed to hesitate, then she nodded a bit of sharp light appearing in her eyes as she slipped inside the room, with Edna following after her.