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Ragnarök; Revelation
“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
—Socrates, I think. Maybe. Don’t quote me on that.
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The Apocalypse came much like a trio of men dropped a large pane of glass: loud, far too close for comfort, undeniable to all in earshot. And everyone was in earshot when the very sky fractured into jagged lines and fell unto the earth in shards.
Emmet drank his coffee.
His family were far and away and he knew he’d never reach them. Divorce, he found, was much like the Berlin Wall: Mom and Dad split East and West as one does a pie instead of the children that they were. He was glad, for the first time in the last decade, that Jackie and Mike exclusively took their school vacations with Mom.
That smarted little when hell broke loose all around him.
Emmet drank his coffee as, from the black revealed by the sundering of the sky, monsters fell. They were myriad and patchwork, from the myths greco-roman, judeo-christian, islamic-abrahamic and from myths that Emmet either did not recognize or were not from this world.
“The mirrors eat people!” Yowled a man with the look of an itinerant, scratchy beard and all—either homeless or an artist. Maybe both. Probably both. “Stay away from the mirrors!”
“Mirrors don’t eat people.” Emmet said under his breath. “Then again, the sky doesn’t break like glass and monsters don’t fall from it like rain.”
Emmet drank his coffee. A shard of the sky fell by his left foot, rocking like a coin that had just lost its spin. Lower back crying out in pain, he reached down to pick up a piece of the sky.
It was heavy, about the length of a 13/16 wrench, clear-blue with a tiny fluff of cloud inside. A bit like looking into some VR thingy, Emmet observed as he moved it around to peer within. The edges were jagged as he expected, and so, in an act of morbid curiosity just before death, Emmet cut his palm with a piece of the sky.
It was best said he tried. The shard fell right into the meat of his hand like a fish back into water. Emmet expected it to scrape bone but he only felt a weight in his heart.
There, he knew without knowing, lay a piece of the sky.
Emmet had no more time to prod at the weight in his heart: a monster, some misshapen thing straight out of Tolkien, tackled him to the ground. Greyish-green, its skin was lumpy and its teeth sharp.
Emmet, a little in shock from the world falling apart at the seams, pushed his forearm into the demon’s mouth. Better he lose his right than his head. His left came down on its head with all the desperation of life-and-death.
It was easy to drink coffee as the sky fell. Easy to forget about trying to find a safe place when monsters chased other people. But when a demon came at you, snarling and slobbering, you sobered up real quick that it might be the time to pull your gut in and buckle-up.
On the second punch, the weight in Emmet’s chest flared and his fist was no longer made of human flesh; metal, heavy as the ball-and-chain on Second Street three blocks out, now substituted muscle and bone.
The punch cracked the demon's skull, flinging it to the side like the crumbling pieces of a derelict building—ball-and-chain, indeed. Emmet, fool he was, did not run, instead amazing at the skin of his left forearm and hand: the sheen of steel was unmistakable and so was the fact that he could not open his fist. It seemed that whatever ability that skyshard gave him, it froze his flesh into the form that it was at the time of activation. Whether temporary or permanent, Emmet did not know.
Staggering to his feet, Emmet looked at the severely-dazed demon with something approaching malice. He limped to it, lower back sobbing, and kneeled real close.
His steel fist came up and down again until only mincemeat on a bone plate was left. Satisfied with his efforts as a chef, Emmet lifted himself back up again and looked around: monsters ran everywhere and at everyone, most like the fanged demon that had tackled him.
“What a day to be alive.” He said under his breath at the chaos all around. “What a day.”
The sound of breaking glass yanked his head back to the demon he had just killed; there, from its chest, a shard of sky fell. Not the sky, his sky. Instead, the sky of some hell or another: red and carmine as cinnabon with sulfurous-yellow clouds made into crying-grinning faces.
Emmet took the shard and ran towards the safest place he knew. The screams and broken bodies would haunt him when the adrenaline wore off, he knew, too.
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Reaching the access tunnel to the hydroelectric, Emmet reflected on his run on the way there. It hadn’t been long, the coffee shop having been chosen due to its proximity to his place of work. Ten minutes at most and not that many monsters—there were no holes in the sky near the dam, concentrated in the city proper.
His arm, then a lump melded intractably into a steel fist, had flashed; not with light but weight; the same that dwelled in Emmet’s chest after having absorbed the skyshard. Metal retreated from his forearm down, disappearing into his fingertips and leaving only Emmet’s skin. So it’s temporary—whether consciously controllable or whatever else, I’ve yet to know.
What Emmet did know was that the weight in his heart felt lesser—lighter.
He opened the door with his admin key and locked it shut after he entered. There was a room a couple ways further down the tunnel that’d do good as shelter; far away from the broken sky and with a couple feet of concrete between him and the escaped figments of Tolkien’s imagination. Emmet had never guessed today he’d be running from folklore-made-real.
The tunnel was damp and the steel rusted—shoddy work when alloys and paints especially made for the task existed; bossman pocketing the extra, as always. Emmet opened the maintenance door and breathed-in the slight mold.
“Home sweet home.” He mocked with a grin nonetheless.
A job like his paying what it did left no room for an actual room; rent was too high, and it was either a roof over his head or a meal. Emmet chose the meal and found the room himself. Bossman never got off his haunches and inspections were rare. Emmet had the place all to his lonesome.
“First thing’s first: the mirror.”
Emmet, pinch-purse that he was, did not break the thing. He instead laid it facing the wall. Following the ramblings of madmen brokered a look into one’s own sanity a bit, but Emmet decided it was better safe than eaten by a mirror.
With that sorted he sat on the creaky folding chair by the desk, finally caving to the demands of his back. He opened a right hand to show two skyshards; the last and newest one was much like the first and oldest: a reflection of what should have just been gas and pollution. He’d found it on the ground with a smattering of powder, probably also made when the sky broke—that, he had put into his jeans’ left pocket.
If turning the mirror around was far too close to insane for his comfort, what Emmet was planning on doing next broke that fine line.
Fear of what the skyshards were doing to him was little—ember-like. Burning, fiery curiosity at what more they could do and what powers they might grant him made Emmet stab a skyshard straight into his heart.
It was a normal one, from the big blue up above and nary a cloud.
The skyshard settled, maybe quicker than before. A new weight lay in his chest and Emmet called upon it—where the first shard made the entirety of a section of his body into metal, this one chose only his tendons. They were like steel wires now, tense and pliable things.
With the inspiration of a madman, Emmet called on the first shard in conjunction with the second. Steel bled from his finger-tips down, coating only until his wrist—not a conscious choice, that. The weight of the skyshard in his heart was weaker than before and it meant a weaker effect, in turn.
Emmet reached down, uncaring of his crying back, to grab a crumble of concrete. In the palm of his steelclad hand, he crushed stone into dust and let it fall through the cracks.
The grin stretched him from ear to ear—he took the next shard from his desk and slammed it into his sternum. It was the piece of some hell’s sky, carmine as cinnabon.
Black came over him and he knew no more.
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Emmet awoke in the darkness between worlds, fractures in the void revealing images of cities all over earth besieged by a falling sky and a rain of monsters and skyshards.
He did not so much as float as he felt firmly locked in place—not claustrophobically so; it was the restriction of a healthy mind to not hurt itself, to not use too much force, he knew, implicitly.
Emmet looked across the black to see himself looking back, a transparent-but-distorting barrier in between both. Emmet’s eyes met Emmet’s and he knew now that he looked at a reflection. The Reflection flew on fractal wings, a seraphim of broken glass.
[Hello, Emmet. It’s me—you.] Spoke the Reflection directly into his mind, voice scraping and resonant and not of this world.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Emmet blinked. He’d seen the sky rain down in shards of glass but this? This was just as uncanny as waking up next to a lover and not recognizing them any longer—love not so much as gone as misplaced in the ideal rather than the person that they were.
“Are you God?” Emmet found himself asking, mouth already open without thinking.
[I am not God so much as the Devil come to bargain. You may call me Temme.]
Emmet had died and this was his brain’s last hurrah at making sense of the coming Big Sleep. That made much more sense than whatever was happening at the moment.
The Reflection continued, uncaring of Emmet’s dull shock.
[First and foremost, know that I am a farvashi—a guardian over the soul, a messenger between the gods and this lowly world, and I rather prefer my coffee black.]
Emmet blinked, wishing he had some black coffee himself so that he could spit it out. He’d not done that when the sky broke, but right now, he felt, was as good a time as any—an angel, conforming to an abstract of the biblical, talmudic, quranic and zoroastrian, spoke to him.
They cleared his throat across the glass barrier, clearly switching tracks to something more serious—the habit was stolen from Emmet’s own psychosocial repertoire; reflection, indeed.
[Three shards of heaven; three fragments of divinity. Three, you’ll find soon enough, is the common denominator.]
The barrier between normal Emmet and Faustian Emmet—Temme, they had called themself—cracked. Three Emmets now looked back from beyond the barrier, divided by distorted faults in the glass. His mind flinched at the sight, the cracking of space nonsensical so much that a little bit of himself hurt in turn.
[Judgement has come.] Said the Reflection made into three, three tongues moving inside three mouths. [You are not special so much as all others are. Find the shards of heaven, mend a mirror back whole, and become a god among mere men.]
In the chest of each Emmet beyond the barrier, a single shard glowed—from left to right: red like the blood in his veins, green as sun shining through a sycamore tree, and violet. Not many things were violet.
[All men are born equal under the eye of the Crucible, Emmet. Be careful that you do not die equal to so many that have already perished. Hasn’t been more than half an hour since the sky broke and fell like rain, and already ten million souls are shattered and stitched into unholy mirrors in the belly of beasts thought not real.]
The barrier between Emmet and the Reflection cracked again, leaving him by his lonesome and three shards affixed in the black—the chests they once lay in, gone. Scratches in the barrier made letters and said: ‘To return, walk into a mirror.’
The barrier became down and Emmet fell into it, arms braced against his face.
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Emmet blinked and found himself back again in the maintenance room of the hydroelectric, cold sweat on his brow and breath shallow. He lowered his arms from his face and his eyes darted to the object, laid-against-and-facing, the wall.
‘To return, walk into a mirror.’ Echoed around in his skull.
Still disbelieving and with a fear of late-onset schizophrenia, Emmet turned the mirror around; it looked as it always should. Except the three glowing shards in Emmet’s chest. Those were not there before.
Overlaid atop one another, Emmet could still parse them as if they were on a perpendicular plane of glass—a breaking of reality if there ever was one, but at this point, Emmet accepted it for what it was and moved on.
He reached into the mirror and fell back into the darkness between worlds once again.
This time, at least, there was no Reflection, no Temme—either that, or they simply did not want to chit-chat. Mute, triplet copies of Emmet with a single shard in each of their hearts looked from beyond the barrier.
Script made through scratches in the glass—micro-fractures really—spread over each of the Emmets, identifying parts of him like a book on anatomy.
The difference lay in that this had not much to do with tissues and organs, but instead metaphysical constructs and abstractions.
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Ontological Mirror
Clarity: [Opaque] - Mending: [3/27]
Body - Ethos
Prime Shard: [Ferroclad]
Branch Shard: [Locked]
Conflux Shard: [Null]
Mind - Logos
Prime Shard: [Interstitial Steel]
Branch Shard: [Locked]
Conflux Shard: [Null]
Spirit - Pathos
Prime Shard: [Labyrinthine]
Branch Shard: [Locked]
Conflux Shard: [Null]
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Is that… No, it can’t be.
Emmet looked at text that looked very much like a looter-shooter, RPG perk-screen. The Apocalypse had come and brought with it perk-meus ala The Heroes of the Hinterlands 2.
Disbelief came and went, this new absurdity accepted into Emmet’s life like an unwanted puppy. He didn’t want this, but playing with the hand he was dealt had been a habit all but etched into his soul; Emmet focused on the [Ferroclad] shard and script scratched itself into being. All told, it was very intuitive.
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Skyshard: [Ferroclad]
Clarity: [Opaque] - Fundament: [Mercury] - Ether: [Upfront]
‘For iron by itself can draw a man to use it.’
Skyshard: [Interstitial Steel]
Clarity: [Opaque] - Fundament: [Salt] - Ether: [Allocation]
‘Invisible threads are the strongest ties.’
Skyshard: [Labyrinthine]
Clarity: [Bleary] - Fundament: [Sulphur] - Ether: [Debt]
‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’
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Maybe not so intuitive. Emmet had no reference for ‘fundament’, ‘clarity’, ‘ether’. And weren’t those quotes ripped straight out of the collective subconscious? The first came from the Iliad or some other greco-roman yarn, seemingly. The second was from Nietchze and obscure at that—not even a fun one like ‘he who fights with monsters’. The last one was recognizable from the Divine Comedy—14th century fanfiction, essentially.
At the thought, of the obtuseness and ignorance of it all, Emmet’s third and last shard gained a terrible weight. Hanging heavy in his heart like grief and withdrawal, the [Labyrinthine] skyshard made its power known: more script scratched itself onto the barrier. Unlike the static lines of before, these shook as if not quite there.
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Skyshard: [Ferroclad]
Clarity: [Opaque] - Fundament: [Mercury] - Ether: [Upfront]
‘For iron by itself can draw a man to use it.’
Portfolio: [Taken from a skyshard attuned to the reflections of the world ‘7763T-Class B// Earth’, [Ferroclad] endows the sharded with the ability to morph their body into ferrum. The extent of the transformation is based on ether burn and sublimates commensurate with the amount of ether the skyshard is fed.]
Skyshard: [Interstitial Steel]
Clarity: [Opaque] - Fundament: [Salt] - Ether: [Allocation]
‘Invisible threads are the strongest ties.’
Portfolio: [Taken from a skyshard attuned to the reflections of the world ‘7763T-Class B// Earth’, [Interstitial Steel] endows the sharded with the ability to materialize ether into steel. The point of origination is the locus of the body while range is dependent on ether burn. Sublimates commensurate with the amount of ether the skyshard is fed.]
Skyshard: [Labyrinthine]
Clarity: [Bleary] - Fundament: [Sulfur] - Ether: [Debt]
‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’
Portfolio: [Taken from a skyshard attuned to the reflections of the worlds ‘9666D-Class A// Igithil’ and ‘7763T-Class B// Earth’, [Labyrinthine] endows the sharded with the ability to interpret liminal constructs. Accuracy of precognition is commensurate with the clarity rank of the construct interpreted. Sublimation is not in effect; ether burn is exponential.]
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Emmet was filled with as many questions as before, if not more. Seeing that [Labyrinthine] was a wiki for a game that meant life-and-death, he held onto the skyshard much like a drowning man held the first branch he got ahold of.
He drew on the skyshard once more, implicitly knowing that he should lace the draw with the word he wanted a query of. Emmet went through all the important ones such as skyshard, ether, clarity, and fundament, more information scratching itself before the barrier.
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[Skyshard]: stable congregations of ether, skyshards endow the sharded with abilities according to their portfolio and are attuned to the reflections taken from worlds initiated into the Crucible. Skyshards are slotted into the cracks of an entity’s ontological mirror; known in the reflection of world ‘7763T-Class B// Earth’ as the soul. Mending an ontological mirror back whole is the purpose of the Crucible.
[Ether]: the formless clay of the gods, ether cannot do much on its own. Filtered through a skyshard, it can bring about miracles and myths. Ether burn is how quickly ether is expended through a skyshard; sublimation is the rate at which an ether construct returns to liminal space. Ether burn is categorized as [Upfront]; where the sharded burns a given amount of ether, [Allocation]; where the sharded burns a set amount of ether, and [Debt]; where the sharded may expend ether and in return accrue an ether debt—a sustained affliction that eats away at one’s ether until the debt is paid in full.
[Clarity]: the measurement of a skyshard or any other ether construct as by its ability to affect change in the world; they are, as follows: [Opaque], [Bleary], [Translucid]. The higher the clarity, the higher the shard is to divinity—an entity possessing of a ontological mirror which is whole.
[Fundament]: the infinity of ether is much like all infinite things: inconceivable in a finite world. Fundaments filter the impossible into manageable elements and base principles; they are, in no particular order: [Salt]; the fundament of solidity and remnance, [Mercury]; the fundament of fluidity and change, [Sulfur]; the fundament of combustion and sublimation.
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A dead-beat dad gaining on his fifties whose only accolade was a PhD in philosophy was useless in many things and unwanted in many more. Obscure minutiae and other big words were right up Emmet’s alley, if he said so himself.
It’d be weird if it came from someone else, he observed, drolly.
With enough info to get a start on this strange new world, Emmet fell into the barrier. He did not brace himself this time.