It flickered, fuzzing like static, memory loss, and cherry pie as it unburned. A bluish-gray color indescribable burning at the bottom of an empty lamp, twisting the eye until reality felt looser. Until one could almost convince themselves they didn’t see the kerosene slowly filling the chamber.
Ajinan drew a claw over the glass, a thousand runes etched into its molecular structure glimmering as a faint iridescence in the flame’s ethereal light. “You’re going to save me so much time. To think of all the things I can make…” a sigh escaped him, laden with content, eyes tracking its impossible movements. “Thanks for this. I better get going- experiments to do and all-”
A twist of chaotic dissonance gripped him tight, followed in a second by a lash of flame pinning his essence to the floor. “Not-”
“So-”
“Fast.” The scowling visage of a fox and blue-haired girl loomed over him, eyes glimmering with cruel light. Kitsune stepped forward, saccharine voice dripping over his scales in its terrifying, sickly sweetness. “You seem to be forgetting something… a reason, perhaps, that Tabs and I spent so frustratingly long making this specific version of entropic flame?”
“Like, perchance-” the chaos around him twisted, a fierce wind born from nothing raking across his scales- “a promise made? A payment?”
Ajinan glanced furtively to the sides, eyes dripping silver tears as the fabric of reality prickled beneath them. “I’m… uh… not certain what you’re referring to. Certainly, I can see you hoping for something more substantial than the eternal gratitude of your brother, but alas few things contain the permanence to travel through realms, and I fear you must be mistaken-”
“We have perfect recall. I can remember excuses from the beginning of our existence.” A time so long ago that even the concept of time grew weary at the mere hint of extrapolation. She struck a noble pose, a tired yet arrogant tilt to her eyes neatly matching his own. “‘Ah, I forgot! Sorry, my experiments got in the way! Oh, I was working on this thing, and I totally forgot I was supposed to see you two hundred billion years ago.’”
Ajinan chuckled sheepishly. “Any chance you’re not still mad for…”
“No, I am.”
Funnily enough, a long chain of random events had somehow resulted in Tabs holding a bowl of popcorn as she deigned to spare an amused glance to the argument going on. The dragon’s pleading gaze sunk into hers, and she stared imperiously down at him- a long second twisted between the two of them, infinite power thrumming as one begged and the other considered “...no.”
Ajinan slumped to the ground with a groan, wiping the silver from beneath his eyes. “Fine. You’ll get what you want.” Gritting his teeth, he drew a breath-
A twist, a step to the right and half a degree through impossibility. One jaunt past sanity. A long and personal introspection which was overwhelmed completely by the pure essence of creation, twisting infinite realms into being within a wish.
At the end of the longest road that had never been walked he stood before a mirrored version of himself, reality heavy around them as identity tied itself in infinite-dimensional knots and committed seppuku. A wry grin that shone like a wry grin flickered onto his face. “You’re going to look so…” “You’re me.” “So? Perception is perception. And you perceive yourself with-”
Feathers.
The bled onto his scales with a whisper of change, obsidian plates sprouting like a second-growth forest until the most adorable fluffy dragon sat there, petulantly glaring down at his feet. “I can’t believe you convinced me to look like this for eight trillion years.”
Kitsune grinned, tackling him into a hug that sent him sprawling in a heap of dusty gray feathers. “Cute! Just… and that tail! Such inspired work!”
“Your inspired work. Damn you for tricking me into wanting to experiment.”
Tabs smirked. “That’s all on you. Wasn’t this for ISON-II?”
“No-” Kitsune let out a little squeal at the way his feathers shifted as he slumped, and Tabs couldn’t help but cackle as he got wrapped in fox-tails. “You’re purposefully channeling your inner Eaera, aren’t you. There’s no way my sister would be so obsessed with feathers.” Unfortunately, no matter what he did, his complaints only served to emphasize the natural raiment of cuteness he’d draped himself in. Those dusty silver feathers beneath his eyes and on his stomach- just-
“So it was for ISON-II?” A glint of mischief played itself across Kitsune’s eyes, and Ajinan turned away in a huff, dragging a small infinity of portals open to check his ISON networks instead of doing something so difficult as interacting with Kitsune. “Just don’t ask it to calculate the time until its own completion. That infinity’s far too large for it to handle.”
“Ha, ha-” he frowned, then bristled in shock- which only served to make his feathers fluff up with dangerous cuteness. “I’m forwarding-”
[ISON global alert - activation notice from subsystem: Early Warning System mod 432870. Immediate action required. Absolute cluster time since activation - 4:13:23…4:13:24… 4:13:25…] The glances they shared were suddenly grim as they braced themselves, silvery light shining, blood welling, space shattering around them as they prepared to travel the infinite.
Ajinan shifted at the last second, casting a panic-filled gaze to the fox beside him. “Wait- this is important. Do I still need to wear these feathers while facing Primordial Fragment Blood?” Hope warred in his gaze as the portal started to form around them, a possibility to be free of his hubris’ shackles. "...please?"
That devilish smirk etched itself across the fox’s muzzle, echoed in the blue haired girl’s dastardly gaze and viscous popcorn. “Nope.”
“Not a chance.”
He choked back a pained sob. “...damn.” Then the universe broke around them, sucking them into the infinite.
………
Stone roared around it as it hadn’t for many eons, the dire warnings of the- kind voice, strange form- echoing in its mind as it raced to the surface to join itself in battle. It had been eons since it’d exerted itself so, the very earth shuddering about its movement as it tore through the strata.
It could feel its enemy above… a cloying sense to its perception, a twisting abnormality that reminded it of the fire at its strongest, when it wrote a message sublime across the entire world in mere days.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The image-forged poured out of the ground first, their hives of metal disgorging the work years so long as to fade out of history. They were its ears, its eyes, its tunnel-senses about the entirety of the world.
A minute, now-
Furious echoes of disruption pinged the edges of its senses, fourfold- as immense as its own, an acute anger that set the entire biosphere on edge in its sudden sharpness. Why, it asked- a question he didn’t need the transient’s speech to understand- why did you enact our ancient pact?
The one reinforced his own life-force, struggling against the intrusive… feeling, growing ever stronger as it rose to the surface with brutal force. A worm of doubt, telling, asking- pleading for it to betray its brethren. Its family. It denied it, for its lifeforce was its own and only its own.
A moment- seconds left, deep strata fading to sedimentary, ancient igneous untouched since the second age baked into its form. Forests, life, the rot of the world so integral, the end of stone- a mere dusting on the world as its steps thundered.
No time at all. No time like now- and the one who’d asked, who ever faithfully followed for it had doubted and in its doubt grew to the know the greatest of all of them burst from the ground in a cataclysmic eruption of stone and thunder. Claws, mountain gray and just as immense slammed into the ground, pulling his entire length into the vast emptiness of the sky, each scrabbling step scouring mountains and plains, uprooting deserts and sweeping aside landscapes.
Mere minutes after it emerged from beneath the world, seconds after it had traveled the length of a continent the brevity of that time, a feeling crushed-
Down-
On-
It?
Bone-beast? It… could not? Was not- lifeforce flickered faintly, existence trembled as the twisting sensation pressed against it, against the strata of the earth, that story that made them as they had been. Once, in the first age, it had been- was… hadn’t been? Birth- crawling from the stone where its form-egg had lay for a million years. Did it… did she, the being who looked down on him as the vestiges of itself turned inwards, mocking-
Feeling?
Once, there had been a bone-beast. At the end of the first age, long since passed beyond memory- all memory, into the dark annals of history- it didn’t…
Remember.
There was something, a twisting irregularity in the lifeforce of a being that was not, screaming for it to be.
Pushing, against a weight like infinite skies, a bond undone between past and present, remembering anew- and with the totality of its strength it struck out against the half-faced being that dared to steal their form, and tried to steal its history. A tidal wave of lifeforce crushed down with its claws, rending into the being’s flesh in its moment of surprise, tearing aside plates of chitin and gouging eyes.
A blast of- memory- remember- and by then the one was miles away from the seething demon. “How?” Its voice defied comprehension- familiar form, _____ voice- like galaxies and the weight of time together as one. Bone-beasts were not supposed to speak. “My domain is absolute!” The trembling of the ground continued, caves below the system slowly collapsing from the mad dash and terrible battle both. “You will not- my path will be- free. Together! Perish, for your sins are beyond redemption.”
Immense energies gathered around the half bloody demon, tasting of celestial dreams and the bedrock beneath the center of everything. Tunnel-sense felt impossibility, like heaviness unimaginable, the densest of rock infinitely amplified until only nothing remained in a single point, too small-
The half bloodied god reached its zenith, and crashed back down against the earth with its world of darkness held in claw. The one who’d known fire knew gravity, black hole, and space as it shielded itself with its life-force, unable to assist as three of the four remaining sentinels were crushed beneath the blow. Their blood, the blood of the stones… a fluttering of feathers and crimson eyes, lifeforce minuscule yet still so bright flitted beside an eye, and it felt the last of warmth.
To battle- it clashed again with the one who’d defeated the strata, this time hopelessly outmatched against its powers that sheared mind and body alike. Its entire being screamed for it to follow its kin, to just…
Stop.
It slumped, claws digging ineffectually into chitinous plates that refused to stay damaged. Its shell was still cracked and pitted, so… unfair.
Just a little more.
How long had it been, for last thoughts. To know the time… since it had called, and charged out only to see half the world destroyed… to see the strata and age-old tunnels collapsing in on themselves. A balance ended at the end…
It closes its eyes, tunnel-sense feeling the calamity step towards it, its voice an ethereal whisper. “You fought beyond your kind’s ability.” A faint curiosity. “A small infinity of timelines, and I’ve never seen a bone-beast so- you are- powerful. Live- die!” It opened one of its eyes as the silence stretched into minutes- and stared into the gaze of something ancient.
Not demon nor god, divine or apostate, eldritch or not- the knowledge was there because it always had been, written into… everything. It always had been, always would, and was- Sija.
Their eyes locked, and Sija whispered, “join me,” two words, a shiver across reality- “Infinite Unity.” The power there was…
Infinite.
Total. Irresistable, unknowable, beyond all things… but it missed. For a single being leapt out in front of it, caught its attention at just the right- wrong, two possibilities divergent, a single chosen- time.
………
A-ait felt herself slipping away, will fading to nothing, terror… bleeding away. For a moment, she was content-
Then she was no more, reduced to another broken piece of a broken primordial concept.
………
For a single long moment, even the bloody fragment looked shocked. It didn’t last long though, as it quickly moved through the same motions, gathering its energy in a subtlety overwhelming, twirling about the entirety of its form both within and without the bonds of a universe. “I didn’t expect that. No matter. I want to know- be together- free, alone- Infinite Unity-”
“Infinite annihilation!” The fires that burnt all things met the essence of Sija as space tore itself to shreds around them, and burnt it down.
The one felt elation- for standing, resolute above a beast of blood and Sija, a two tailed fox wreathed itself in fire. The divine had come after all. For the first time in eons, the one who watches felt the comforting touch of that- kind form, kind voice- and let itself slip into the comforting embrace of unconsciousness.