The eternal Emperor looked down at the pill that sat innocuously in a small glass vial, entirely unimpressive to the uninitiated. Hundreds of years of careful experimentation and endless experimentation had gone into the creation of this little drop of ashy shadow, this little stone of miracle potential. It was the next step in the ascension of an ascended being, the next path forward…

Child of an empire’s genius, blackstone and a hundred thousand other ingredients carefully refined and distilled from sea to sea, dredged from the bones of the earth and plucked from the very skies. One of many thousands of like experiments, but the only one that he didn’t completely know the outcomes of. He swirled the vial and saw the light reflect strangely, its very power distorting the air faintly around it.

All he had to do now was eat it… a single step. Do or die…

He rose from the roof of his mile-high palace, wrapping the light around himself and shimmering out of view as he descended amongst the towers quietly basking in their complexity- bricks crafted and polished to an opalescent shine, midnight dark in the shadows and brilliant white in the sunlight. It was a wonder of human engineering… but not the place for something that caused such hesitancy.

Plains of ice flashed by as he sped up, wrapping the wind around his body with deft will to prevent an easily recognizable trail. As it was, only his most trusted lieutenants of this age had even the slightest possibility of sensing him, and they were all either at his palace or in one of the old capitals.

Icy wasteland turned to frozen tundra, then an immensity of ocean; waves a hundred feet high crashed into one another as immense winds mingled, immense icebergs occasionally visible beneath those dark waters.

Thunder crashed around him as he pushed through the storm, dropping subtlety for force as he flew above the world’s most violent seas until he saw the magnificent cliffs rise from the pounding surf. Grey stone covered in lichens and sundered rock, yet verdant with the promise of spring. Mountains, immense and resolute and gently forested, rising far into the misty clouds. He walked through them on air, a spirit, a visitor-

An old friend, to the place where it had all begun. He passed a place that had once been a farm, all but unrecognizable under the weight of time, followed a stream, ascended the mists, saw the immense crystals gently glimmering in the starlight and jungle vibrancy and softly falling snow.

He saw the plateau at the top of the tallest mountain, the center of- everything- from which all the water flowed-

An empty pool, a small puddle of water- spirit- existence- universe, folded inwards into itself- concepts he could not comprehend, yet power he knew all too well. The font of life. So many had searched for this, before and after his ascension, and none had found it. Settling onto the side of the pool, far enough away from the essence of the font to keep from disturbing it, he dropped the pill into his palm and felt its weight. It… resonated. There was something in the spring that resonated with it, but that wasn’t entirely a surprise- the spring was the confluence of everything, and everything had a part of itself reflected in the spring.

Between two fingers, ageless, weary- all he had to do now was crush it and subsume it into his self. That was it, and it would be his…

He hesitated.

It wasn’t a purposeful sensation, really, not at first- just a vague remembrance of something he’d been told long ago by the only being to ever thoroughly confuse him, to make him wrathful as the ancient volcanoes which spoke in the heat of lava, as confused as the swirling stars, afraid. He paused, then slipped the pill back into its vial. “Tsune? If… if you can hear me-” praying, his mind supplied the word to him no matter how ridiculous it sounded. He was praying like some uneducated peasant but couldn’t quite bring himself to stop. “I… I think if there was ever anything that I could use advice for, then this would be it.” He sighed, then, closing his eyes, reclining amidst the side of the pool, waiting for a response that might never come.

That was fine. He had all the time in the world… glancing at the black pill, he frowned. He was eternal.

………

[ISON alert - designate: “eternal Emperor” displayed anomalous behavior consistent with primary directives of plan designed by Seraph: Tabby.]

Kitsune froze from the piece of machinery she was painstakingly assembling in heliocentric orbit, then carefully separated the portion she’d been working on and incinerated it. It was faster than carefully balancing the rest of the neutron capacitors, and it wasn’t like she didn’t already have a few hundred up in orbit already. “Elaborate.”

[ISON note - designate: “eternal Emperor” submitted a request for the presence of Seraph: Kitsune for advice in an alchemy experiment. Secondary analysis suggests presence of material designate: “blackstone” as a significant ingredient in the experiment.]

Kitsune kicked off from the station, seeing for a moment the immense mass drivers and ten thousand ton osnium rods gleam in the harsh white sunlight before she unmanifested and reappeared high above the surface of the planet. “Location and means, please.”

[ISON note- designate: “eternal Emperor” speech recognized after mention of Tsune registered on background observation. Designate: “eternal Emperor” is currently at the font of life.]

She turned that over in her mind as she shifted herself through the essence of fire, dissolving into an ember through the atmosphere. “He… called for me? Wait, did he pray to me? He did-”

[Prerecorded message from Seraph: Samsara - “Tabs asked me to make a bunch of annoying messages, but here’s the only one I care about- you got someone to worship you? About time.”] Kitsune groaned- she’d been hoping at least one of the Seraphim besides Ajinan had refused to take part in Tabs’ prank, but such was her luck.

It was kind of ironic, though, that her only worshiper on the planet was the supreme, near deific ruler of the entire world… she’d been meaning to arrive as a half-human spirit, but… she could roll with being a god.

She’d done so in the past, and likely would in the future again.

A confluence pulled, a place where the essence of flame touched close to everything else, and she skipped the last several hundred miles of her approach by slipping through the flow of reality and manifesting directly from the font of life itself. A body… flame coalesced from nothing, shaping into the form of a human height fox. Two tails twice again as long as the body- to reinforce the ethereal nature of her being, to distance herself ever so slightly from the form of a mundane fox. Fluffy, orange fur, best for pets and deific iconography.

Eyes of fire last of all, as deep as the essence of the pool, burning like stars and smokey dark all the same. “Emperor eternal. Taza.”

“Tsune.” The eternal Emperor bowed, though it was a bit stilted, as if he hadn’t done anything like it a long time. “I… thank you for responding. I…” he seemed to quail under her burning stare, the weight of fire that felt like it was tearing into his very existence. “I formulated a pill. Blackstone and a hundred thousand more things, made specifically to break through a strange barrier I found myself at. Further connection with the deeper elements of existence was… slowed. Only by a scant few percent, but blackstone seemed like the answer to it. I find myself… anxious, however. It is a powerful pill, supposedly to advance my entire being simultaneously beyond whatever block exists, but…”

Kitsune pondered it for a second, trying to find out the connection to Sija, if there was a connection to Sija. If this was what she’d spent two thousand years firmly entrenching herself as a mysterious yet generally benevolent spirit, a possible advisor, a being to turn to at last resort as.

Blackstone. It was one of the most infuriating parts of this particular iteration. Just as before, the moment she thought she’d found a good clue the path forward slipped out of her grasp. The rock was a normal alchemical ingredient- potent, yes, but not connected to Sija at all. Elemental connection, delving deep into the elements and reforging them into the body and soul… poorly done, it could cause such a block, but the emperor was beyond a master at the alchemical arts. Kitsune was the only person who could contest him on the planet, and only by virtue of having done these past two thousand years thousands of times before.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“I can’t think of anything… but, be careful.” Her eyes were heavy with power and a voice that commanded one to listen. “Guard your mind. Guard your soul. Never trust Sija. Go ahead. I will watch.” She diffused into flames, gently settling around the Emperor’s body like a mantle of fire.

A moment of silence passed, the eternal Emperor seemingly unnerved. Then- a breath, a glass vial uncorked to reveal a dark pill, held between two thumbs as he shifted into a meditative pose. A movement- two halves of a whole, ever separated, never different- the pill shattered into a fine dust beneath the weight of power and was inhaled in its entirety-

Immense force.

Crushing, the weight of the world pressing down on Taza and slowly pushing him into the elements around him, further stripping his body of what made it mortal and integrating it into the essence of eternity. Layers on layers, infinite hells the mind passed in a blur, for Taza was already far beyond their mortal nature, plummeting- deep into the nature of the universe, where fundamental concepts peeked out like hazy dreams, and the boundary of the universe filled the horizon like an impossible barrier. Their descent had slowed to barely a crawl, moment by moment pushing further into the bizarre dreamscape that was the underpinnings of existence.

Then Taza hit a snag. The spiritual essence of the font’s immortality drove him inevitably into a small pocket dimension formed from the intersection of a few particularly powerful concepts. Likely pushing past this was what had slowed down his progress before, but now the entire weight of all his aspects at once seemed to impress itself on the dimension- and he slipped inside.

Kitsune froze, almost disbelieving the missing presence of his soul. A combination, a few hundred materials present, with blackstone as the primary driver, had enabled him to accidentally fall inside a barely stable pocket dimension far beneath normal reality. The chances of that were astronomically low…

Almost as if someone had made that combination as a key.

Essence of the font of life to ensure only one person could ever come across it.

Blackstone, to provide the primary connection, perhaps enough to allow someone a vision of the inside without the first.

A plethora of other ingredients, only accessible to someone who had a truly worldwide network of alchemists behind them.

A pocket dimension, innocuous but deeply separate from the main conceptual imprint of reality…

Sija.

Kitsune steeled herself, called for as much of herself as the universe could handle without disintegrating, and stepped inside the pocket dimension.

A dazzle of colors, an opalescent sky, and then she stood beside Taza as a woman, gaunt and tall and ethereal, whose very form seemed to fuzz seamlessly into the universe around her, cusped his head in her palm. “A gnat. A little fox playing make pretend with the corpse she crawled from.” She didn’t even look up. “Begone, corrupted, from my holy-divine-universal-multiversal-mind-body-blood-flesh- presence.” Her words carried an undertone of existence that screamed, a bloody pain-

Kitsune remained, flames blazing fiercely around her form. She said no words, but for a single gesture towards Taza that punted with the force of fire’s true nature back into the real world. There was nothing she needed to say.

Not yet.

“Pathetic.” Sija, the smallest, infinity infinitesimal fragment of Sija, stood still, hundreds of feet ahead of her on a rocky plain; a thousand feet away from her and beside her all the same for her very presence underlied the bones of the dimension, pulling, tugging, consuming. It was a sickly sensation, tying together a million conceptual natures, all of existence but five- and by her nature of being one of those, she alone resisted. “I am the universe. I am. And you are not-” and the world crushed down atop them, pinning them in place under the celestial rise of the infinite moon on a moonless sky, the earth beneath her shifting under the concept of runes, and air unnaturally still in the concept of calm.

Kitsune merely smiled. “Clever. Very clever… but you’re not one being anymore, mother. You were shattered long ago, and only the multiverse remains. We will not let you destroy it.”

“You can do nothing, here. Alone, little fire fox, without any of your less stupid brethren-”

Kitsune yawned. “Yean, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. Honestly, you should have realized when you were setting these little traps up that we would have been fighting you for forever. The Seraphim guard existence, nothing you say can change that.” She stared at Sija, and laughed. It was always hilarious seeing the absolute conniption the goddess had when she realized how unseriously she was being taken. “You’re a fool, Sija. For all your clever work in hiding this reality away from detection until your plans came to fruition, you forgot what exactly that meant.” Fire burnt around her, incandescent and bright as she grinned. “For I am the fire, and the fire is me. Look into Infinite Annihilation.”

Reality split open and the truest flame spilled in, to Sija’s beautiful screams of pained rage. The essence of truest fire- ultimate annihilation, licking at the concepts that governed everything, catching them alight and burning them, an inferno until all that remained was fire itself.

Cheering one last time for a job well done, Kitsune looked back over the featureless sea of flame once more before leaving forevermore.

………

Kitsune manifested next to a trembling Taza, knees tucked to his chest as he stared sightlessly at the sky. “What… that thing…” his voice, a whisper, was filled with horror. “I felt… I felt as if I wanted nothing more to be her. Subsumed… consumed, a reagent in some vast…” a sob wrenched itself out of him and then he was crying, shaking in fear and maybe a bit of self loathing and disgust too.

Kitsune wasn’t entirely sure, but a mortal against Sija, no matter how powerful? Not a recipe for sanity. She curled around him, letting him clutch gently at her fur and crack a grin as she flicked a tail above his eyes, and before long he was laughing hysterically, grinning all the while

A breath, and he stretched out, patting her twice on the head to her immense pleasure. Unsolicited pets from terrified people! Emotional support at its finest. “...thanks. I never thought I’d be afraid of alchemy, not after spending most of my early life being feared for my alchemy.”

“That wasn’t alchemy- it was Sija. Kinda a… primordial goddess. Everything was once Sija, and she’s always trying to make everything into herself again.” She smirked slightly. “Too bad her attempts are for the most part bound to linear time, and always bound within universes. She’s just not a unified concept anymore, and if we have our way, never will be?”

“We?”

Kitsune smiled fondly, as for all she was used to spending eons without her siblings it had been two thousand years without any contact aside from the occasional prerecorded message. She’d have to remember to blast Tabs into the heart of a star… no, a supermassive black hole for that one. “The Seraphim. Five fundamental concepts of reality, with a bit of personality and a lot of annoying. Except Eaera. He’s the best.”

“So you are a deity.”

“No… I am so much more. I’m limited in a lot of worlds- this one included- by the rigidity of their existence. In all honesty, in a few hundred years you’re already able to put up a pretty serious fight against me.”

“...how do you feel about a spar?” It was out of left field, it was random, and for some reason both of them found it funny.

There was silence for a moment, before they descended back into laughter. “I think I would love that.”

………

In a tropical ocean, miles away from anything but empty ocean, a small convoy of merchant vessels, and a ships’ guard, a mountain sized fox met the gaze of the eternal Emperor to start his first battle as a man freed from fate.