Darkness. Darkness absolute. Light itself was as entrapped as she was…both pulled and tugged. Nothing could be seen; nothing could be heard; yet nevertheless, she could still…feel it…she could still tell. Reality…itself was unraveling in this darkness.

Space and time were utterly twisted and warped, despoiled and flipped onto their heads. She was no longer being pulled in any space, towards any point…as much as she was being pulled forward in time…towards an inevitable future: the heart of this dark star.

She stopped struggling; she stopped ‘breathing’; she simply remained there…static and frozen…as she was being pulled forward in time…as it all passed her by on by. To struggle, to move, to do anything…would only serve to speed up the flow towards that inevitability which laid in her future. All directions, all paths…all converged upon that single point…or rather experience in time.

Indeed, there was no escape, not without inverting time.

Infinities passed and flowed…the crushing squeeze intensifying so and so; yet…wait…she began to realize…this was not…how any of this truly worked in…reality after crossing that certain point of inescape. So much empty space around despite its size…she had yet to reach the heart nor had she been squeezed into a quantum slurpy. Never mind that it was clearly rotating so…

Regardless, she was still intact; she was still alive.

Everything felt so real, indistinguishable from reality…yet…right…right…none of this was real; this was all simply absurd nonsense. This was not real; none of this was real.

Abruptly, she found herself flipping around as her eyes faced down…seeing…something began to emerge in the nothingness. A ring? A point? Or…? Yet then, in less than even an instant, from this nothingness, from this point, so suddenly came…everything.

Flash. Time began, flowing forward as everything began to expand and inflate…heat, radiation, and energy…intense yet she remained unaffected. Things formed and perished, new things took place only to meet the same fate, as it all expanded and inflated…veins and pockets collecting in the nothingness, binding together…only for the distance to drift apart and expand away.

Born to die, withering and decaying…drifting and inflating…until only darkness was left…periodically interrupted by flashes of evaporation…after the last of which…only nothingness was left.

Nothingness. Eternal nothingness. Darkness. Eternal darkness. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. Such remained for eternities beyond eternities. Yet suddenly…something…unraveling on a scale of time impossible to comprehend; changes, fluctuations…a spark before, in an instant, everything came inflating once again…and not just one. Many ‘sparks’, many…different everythings, spontaneously born from the nothingness itself.

Abruptly, she found herself moving and moving, lancing faster and faster…faster than light itself…as the clock in equal abruption found itself flipped upside down as everything flowed backwards in time. Lancing faster and faster, blue-shifted beyond even blue-shifted, through an endless sea of darkness and existence…before she suddenly came lancing by…a sun; she, in a moment’s flash, found herself pausing static in space, in frozen free-fall around a certain place.

Her eyes stared…she could move around freely…somehow. She looked around, glaring up yet behind…seeing a familiar…atmosphered moon. She was back here, in this place, yet…she looked down below yet in front…it was so…alien. Thick and puffy, even more so than the moon tied to it; no surface could be seen whatsoever.

Abruptly yet again, she found herself being pulled into it as she fell straight down…in defiance to natural expectations. Burning and heating, she fell through the dense thundery clouds; pressures increased as she felt ever-more crushed by the density of the air around, before she came tumbling down as if she were a falling star, impacting into straight the ground…only to be left perfectly intact.

She stood herself up…despite the absolute crushing pressure.

Scorched, inhospitable, and beyond toxic; to breathe the air would melt and rip the very throat and lungs. Lightening flared as acidic rain cried down from the putrid sky above, carried by the cutting wind, as it melted and burned at her skin and attire…yet nothing happened.

Without a moment’s pause, suddenly time began to move and flow…faster and faster; so fast she could not even process what was even happening around her.

Rocks, comets, and things came lancing down from the sky up high in sudden fury…strange lights and beaming rays and so many things…before in a blink of an eye… a coastline afar and a clear blueing sky; then in another blink came greenery, grass, and life all around…then people, more things, buildings, events, and history…before all so spontaneously…she was staring right at her apartment building…despite not having moved at all.

She was always right in front of it, just at different points in time.

Her existence abruptly ceased as she became what felt like an immaterial stream…as suddenly flashing into vision…her former associate. Fast. So fast…she was watching and trailing as her former associate’s life streamed and flowed.

Struggling. So much pain…so much dread…yet perseverance. So many choices had to be made; so many choices had been made…so many things her former associate had to sacrifice and come to terms with. Abandoned and lost…left wandering astray…entrapped in this prison of life and air…initially with others holding out…only to wither until only one was left…deserting not by choice, but simple abandonment.

Life played its course in fast display, the deserter buried and destroyed her things…keeping only a few; she struggled to learn this place from scratch, learning every lesson the hard way…failing and failing…reduced to nothing…only to move on, going somewhere else…to that certain place where all who were lost and had fallen astray tended to flock to…and became something new…something familiar, but different.

Learning, adapting, changing, staggering, falling, relapsing, steps forward, steps backward, adventuring, married, family, drama, problems, time passed and flowed, until…many of value were old and withering…besides she herself; left alone, yet again. Family…taking on a life of its own, beyond her. Once again, forced to become something new. Reduced to nothing…she became…something…only to be reduced to nothing once again…only to become something new yet again.

Nothing, therefore everything…anything…something. Ah…of course…

Yet swiftly, everything dissolved as that dark abyss of nothingness returned; that feeling of being pulled resumed as the foreigner was funneled deeper and deeper, faster and faster, stretched and contorted, before it suddenly appeared in an instant flash of infinity. Tunneling into her mind and essence…memories, images, endless reminders across time and history, so much information flowed and invaded…yet nothing was remembered, nothing was retained, besides their effects and influences.

So overwhelming was all of this, her mind felt as though it was going to collapse…no…she was collapsing. She was being crushed and squeezed into quantum pulp, merging…becoming one and single with that beating single heart.

Suddenly: flash. Breathing…she could breathe again. Seeing…she could see again.

The foreigner jolted straight up and flung out of her bed, falling onto the ground; her gold-corrupted ignited eyes ‘flickered’…as they returned to cyanic normalcy. Breathing…she was breathing out so many heavy breaths and pants. Sweating…she was sweating so much of her rather faint sparkly sweat.

She took in every breath in detail, feeling the wooden ground, feeling her skin and face, hearing all the sounds around, taking in the real reality around her. Her mind throbbed in a way even worse than before; her essence felt raped and violated in absolute.

But…back…she was back. She sat herself up…as her nerves calmed and cooled, leaning her back against her bed.

Now…that…was a familiar…horrifying mind-violating experience.

An illusion; a facade; a total invasion and take-over of her sensory processing and experiences to conjure and project an entire imaginative reality…such was just one of its ‘specialties’: to play and tamper with one’s very grasp on reality; to play and tamper with the information processing of any intelligence system—may it be biological, synthetic, exotic, it did not matter: all were equally…contaminable. Though, such was only the tip of what made this abomination so dangerous…and the fact that it itself was ignorant of the full scope of its own capabilities…made it all the more worse.

However, it was not something to usually…directly involve itself or affect things…besides to cloud, to obscure, and to keep hidden. If it was doing…this to her such could only mean…well…far too many possibilities.

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Though…no doubt to her…this little stunt of its…was a firm reminder of the game it was so playing with her…reminding her...of just whose web she was so trapped within. Truly…she had been so firmly reminded…right…reminded…she was…reminded…

Thoughts and realizations began to flood into her mind; though, she was left only…calm.

Her former associate…that reconnaissance Blue-Coat…had struggled very similarly as the foreigner herself was presently. Though, her former associate had not the luxury of having her own former associate; every lesson, every fact…learned had come from bitter trial-and-error, all the while forced to come to terms…with the reality of the circumstances…abandoned and trapped…having not the choice but to change and adapt.

Even though her former associate had eventually come to terms with it all…and no longer had the desire to return to the rest…despite that certain urge and itch never truly leaving…such ‘desertion’, to forgo what she had been…to become something new and alien…none of that had been a choice.

But…the foreigner…she herself had been thrown into this place for an entirely different reason as part of a completely different…failed operation. Indeed, for as similar as the foreigner and her former associate were, for as much as they were…two cogs of the same machination, they were fundamentally different cogs belonging to two entirely different and rather…rivaling…organs.

The foreigner was a Violet-Coat, not a Blue-Coat. Violets such as her…could not simply desert or even pretend to do such a thing…while trapped in the middle of their operation zone. Her designated operations tended to involve objectives that…stalked and followed…no matter the path taken. There was no escape from her objectives, especially not in places such as here. Thus…even if she were deserting…such a thing…was impossible…

Purpose…objectives…mission…right…she had her purpose, she always…had her objective and mission…and duty…and purpose and…right.

The operation may have failed…miserably, they should have had never even bothered coming here to begin with…or at least not with such faulty intelligence and shit pre-deployment surveying…pfft. But she was here; certainly, stranded and trapped in this…web, left to become some narrativized plaything; certainly, most likely presumed dead and thus abandoned…again…unlikely to return any time soon; but she was still here.

She had survived; she was still alive; therefore, the operation continued…even in failure, with her alone. Indeed…so as long as she was trapped in its web…in its playground…her overall objectives remained the same…her mission…and purpose…they all remained…the same; always had and always would.

Truly…truly…it was all so obvious…so stupidly obvious. So much so that…all of her mind’s…well…everything…seemed so stupid and absurd and nonsensical. After all, of course, such was the case! That was literally the standard operational…ugh! Truly! She just had to be reminded of the absolute obvious.

The foreigner sighed, realizing just how stupid her mind really was…sometimes.

She stood herself up, adjusting her position as she laid herself back down onto the bed…her now cyanic ignited eyes…staring up at the ceiling still. Indeed…she had been, in the most thorough way possible, reminded of the importance of her…being here, trapped in this web…and what the point of it was.

Observation, documentation, recordation, analysis; always watching…indifferently; hardly ever interfering; that was the usual; that was the standard behavior, in spite of everything it was.

Yet, time. Time erodes and decays everything it so touches. All things are destined to wither and decay along time’s everlasting march.

The foreigner was never naive to the fact that time’s decay was…and had long been…eating at her mind and essence. She was…after all…far past her expiration time; even for the standards of those like her, exceptionally long-lived. Yet, for as much as time was eating at her…it was absolutely eating at it. Accumulating errors, faults, and contradictions leading to desynchronizing divergences and deviations…all of which could so easily and…at random…spiral into a destabilizing cascade.

Paradoxing, fragmentation, simple madness…any and all such cascades, in some form or another, were an inevitability. It could take days, months, years, decades…even centuries and millennia…but all converge upon that single inevitable point in the future: it will cascade. And when that happens…to say ‘bad’, to say ‘problem’, to say ‘horror’, to say any such words could not possibly capture the full scale and gravity of the consequences…out of which…there were far too many possibilities.

Yet she and those like her…along with this ‘Remnant’ they so served…had settled for a word: Calamity. Indeed…for such was what it was, or at least…a ‘fragment’ or ‘copy’ of: that greatest Calamity…of an era long predating her own.

In this race towards madness, she needed to ensure that she was the one who came out…dead last—never mind alive. She was…the only one in this entire place, seemingly, who was even remotely qualified to handle it and them. Such was, after all, her job…her duty…her purpose…to stare into the face of that naked singularity and contain its absurdity.

Granted…she was alone—ish. Even in spite of her own specializations, she on her own…was insufficient to truly deal with this…abomination. But such a reality was not going to stop her from making an attempt. Even if she were to perish, so as long as she died trying in service to that goal…to that directive…then she could end her service with some…semblance of ‘fulfilled duty’. That was how she had to end it.

Indeed…the stakes did not just appertain to it itself…but also the others…of whom it could easily lose control should it begin to critically desynchronize even if not cascading, some of whom…being far more problematic than others…one or two in particular being very much so, especially in a place like here. She had to be there when such things…inevitably happen.

Thus…in the meantime, she had to continue this course…to keep blending in and parroting away; she had to stay alive and survive…and she was going to survive. Her former associate had instilled into her many…tactics and means to play…yet…she realized…indeed…such was…not really her way of playing these sorts of games.

Her former associate had played things…the way that she had thought was best; the way that had been…best for her…and her limitations, advantages, and disadvantages. Unlike the foreigner, her former associate had no arcanity at all…and especially not one as bizarre as hers, thus limiting her options.

Indeed…the foreigner had survived being trapped and left stranded in even worse nightmares…by playing things her own way…by playing her own games. Though…she did not want to…forsake everything that her former associate had instilled into her. After all, she was still being hunted by those…right…

She began to cogitate, a new stream of thoughts taking hold.

Those unknowns…the ones who had ambushed her and the rest…they did not register as calamitous aligned…thus…no indication of any association…never mind their weapons and tactics seemed so…archaic compared to…

So…what were they? Indirect proxies, perhaps? Such would make sense…actually…even if such would be rather uncharacteristic of it…or actually…no wait…it really wouldn’t be all that…uncharacteristic…of it…

Regardless, she had yet to even encounter those unknowns once ever since then…even though it had been spectating and trailing her…and thus knew where she was. No doubt, this entire ordeal was just one big play and show to it…preferring to observe its own toys play around with the little buzzing fly trapped in its web. Thus, it probably had minimal control over these…apparent proxies or whatevers, or maybe one of its own was pulling their strings.

Likewise, judging from both those two recent…happenings and its persistent spectating of her…she long knew that it had taken an…interest in her specifically and uniquely…because of course it did.

Ugh, truly…the irony of her even being here…her very presence could only act to speed up the inevitable convergence. Curiosity, interest, and growing meddling desire…such were the first dominos to fall in a cascade.

Though…‘here’…she began to cogitate…this place, this entrapping web…despite the time she had spent here…she hardly knew anything about where she even was…at all. Basic factoids, certainly, but not…what it really was. It was certainly rather protective…and not just because its others were here…no…hmm…

Those spellcards…she recalled…and their peculiarly encrypted spell-codes…indeed…security, protective in so many ways over such miniscule things…

Ugh, truly…for as much as she knew, she knew far too little.

Its behavior, those unknowns, the way this had all been playing out, those spellcards…and never mind the apparent existence of other non-calamitous essence entities and presences…such as the one she had witnessed in that crystalline colossus’s ‘trap-den’; all of these…among so many other such things…did not fit the picture constructed…as neatly as she wanted them to.

Indeed…deep down within…throughout her time being trapped here…she had a growing inferential feeling that something…about all of this…about this entire place…was off—and not in a way it was expected to be. For as much as she had her presumptive conclusions and guessing deductions, none of them…seemed truly…convincing to her; something was missing from this picture, but she did not know what.

The foreigner exhaled in an almost heh; truly…she was still so very blind to so much; truly, she had been doing nothing but wasting her eternal time with nothing to show. But…there was no rush—not yet at least. She still had the time…she always had the time, even if it seemed as though…she never had enough.

Clarity…even though she was blind…she had clarity, for now she had a new, albeit vague, goal: information. She needed to figure out…what was missing from this picture and what…was not adding up to her.

Thus…that was all she needed to do: continue course, collect relevant information, and navigate through this game…this abomination was so clearly playing with her, and stay alive long enough to be able to handle it…preferably before the inevitable cascade.

The foreigner sighed; « Faen…honçe ludom de te pléyafo…nec méhi ulla çhoix est » thus she finally announced flatly to the ceiling above; fine, she will play its game…not as though she had any choice.

Words having been said, decisions having been made, her eyes…once again…began to slowly but surely close, as her mind retreated back to slumber’s obscurity with newfound determination, albeit even if…somewhat weak.

The rotting shadow deep within…for now…halted its campaign, clawing its way back behind its quarantined den; though, she knew…it will be back, it was inevitable that her mind will unravel again; though, likewise…she knew…she will rebound again. A cycle seemingly on repeat over and over…until time’s end.

Thus, as simple as that: you are reset and with even a little newfound motivation

Good to operate for another…however long until the next inevitable crash

Nevertheless, I see you are agreeing to my dance

In which case, I will gladly take your hand

Though… on second thought, perhaps I should ready myself beforehand