I couldn't rest.
Not just physically, either. I could lay down, but, as I didn't get tired, it meant little more than shifting my position. But mentally...
Undead couldn't really get bored or sick of something, which usually worked to our advantage, especially during long periods of work or combat. However, it also meant we often fixated on things, even pointless ones. The double-edged sword that was our attention might have been why strigoi and vampires suffered from a compulsion to count grains of sand, dust or rice set at the entrance of a building.
The being that had come to me in my hallucination-waking dream?-had looked like me, sounded like me, talked like me. Or, rather, almost like me. There had been something else behind it, as if I had been looking into a pit while unable to see the bottom, or only seeing the tendril of some deep sea creature.
I hoped it had only been a disguise meant to rankle me, because the alternative was...was...
Why the fucking hell did I keep thinking that maybe I had just imagined the meeting? A small voice in the back of my mind, a metaphorical one rather than my strigoi side, kept whispering that I'd tinkered with my godsight, messing up both my perception and my memory.
My worse half, on the other hand, kept hissing at me not to listen. And, for some reason, I didn't think the bastard was trying to scare me or make me (more) paranoid. For one, why would I choose to sleep instead of staying awake by Mia's side, ensuring she slept well?
For another...well, my instincts disagreed as well. Not the impulses represented by the ebony silhouette in my mind, but rather, what sometimes warned me of danger before my senses noticed it. Usually, it felt like a nudge, or someone poking me. Other times, it felt like a hand brushing against my shoulder.
Now, hands had clamped down on both shoulders, and were shaking me all but physically.
What was the danger? Convincing myself that it had all been a dream? Forgetting? Not doing it?
My instincts were being frustratingly vague. They were kind of like Spider-Man's Spider-Sense, except, rather than being controlled by a thousand different writers who didn't read each other's comics, they seemed to vary from precise to vague as the mood took them. Sometimes, I knew that, say, a hit from behind was imbued with holy power and would kill me if it connected, as well as what it was aimed at. Other times, I received something that was neither an image nor a sound, but resembled both. The warnings from the latter category tended to be frighteningly, mind-bogglingly complicated, such as "duck", "jump", and even "lean to the right".
This was, I decided, a warning from the second category, though more intense than most...actually, any before it. My godsight couldn't tell me more than that, as far as it knew, the meeting had been real, and I had met my future self. But then, it was the reason for this whole internal argument, wasn't it? Or so half of me insisted.
The second assessment-that I had, doubtlessly, met my future self-surprised me. As much as some precognitives liked to insist, there was no such thing as a single future. Every single action and change in an universe, or even the possibility of one, generated a new universe, a new timeline. There were already an infinity of them, and growing by the planck time. How? Well, there are infinities, and infinities. Just look at the one between zero and one.
The point was, you just couldn't point at a future, however plausible or likely it looked, and say 'There! That's what will happen!'. Chance had a thing about screwing up precog, and that was just in the case of mundane humans. Strigoi like me, with our immunity to probability manipulation(including the small degree inherent to precognition, as seeing and knowing 'the' future meant altering it, which made visions and projections involving us inherently unreliable, unless divine power was involved)? Add apparent time travel, and everything just got worse.
I couldn't even peer through time or outside it to find that monkey-suited prick, because either he or whatever I had heard-felt-behind or beneath his voice pushed back against every attempt, making me feel like I was smashing my metaphysical head against a brick wall.
And I wished I could say that bearded fuck was the worst of my worries, but-despite my not small fear of ending up looking like the hate child of a hipster and a gravedigger-I had bigger fish to fry, as did all of us. Not just Mia and I, or even ARC, but the world as a whole, and our the realms close to it, tied to it by chains of aether and fate, where they weren't bound by familiarity and old debts.
In the extremely unlikely event nothing worse reared its ugly head, we had three problems, or maybe a threefold one. I don't know. I'd honestly stopped giving a fuck about any details that wouldn't help with finally finishing this damn-
...Add a fourth problem, and another layer. Or even a fifth, if beard boy decided he had worse ways to get his rocks off than by trolling me and scaring my girlfriend.
But, as for the three big ones...we had to get rid of Chernobog, one way or another. Maybe Laozi could fire up his crucible again and hope the Black God was dumber than Wukong. Maybe Zeus could make another set of the chains he had bound Typhon with. Ordinarily, I'd have contemplated setting Chernobog up for Dharma or FREAKSHOW's Armament to knock down, or the best way to stall him long enough for Breakout to start laying pipe, but...fuckin' dammit. The pantheons needed to clean up their damn mess. Letting Chernobog run around in my body during the Headhunt in the hopes of thinning each other's ranks had been a stupid, risky move. They should've stopped him.
And that went for God, too. I didn't...I didn't love Him less. I never wanted to stop loving Him. But not stopping the Black God had been so, so stupid, at least from my side of the debacle. And, unless He chose to reveal some detail of His plan that made it necessary, my opinion wouldn't change.
Though I'd started biting down on my tongue, a nervous tic since before my undeath, at least when I was thinking, which had evolved into biting through it with my fangs, I didn't taste blood. Only ashes.
Metaphorically, thankfully. But it took little effort to remember how bitterness felt.
Aya hadn't said I couldn't contact her by godsight. That had been how we'd talked last time, after all, and if she didn't like it, I'd spin something about honing my power(it wouldn't even be a complete lie), apologise, and fly to Giza to report in person. With how much faster than light I was now, it a few thousand kilometres would be a joke.
That's what I told myself as I tried to forget that line of thinking about God, and ignore the hollow laughter of my strigoi self as it dragged memories of Chernobog to the forefront of our mindscape.
I thought about the other problems, too, and whether they were even separate.
Nyarlathotep. Not exactly someone we could get rid of, and trying to do so would most likely cause enough of a disturbance to fulfill its his aims anyway. Unless...we had all thought Ygdrassil's destiny was as immutable as its inhabitants', and look at the now. Perhaps more could be changed. Even if destruction was impossible, maybe sealing or criipling wouldn't be.
The women that had maddened the Dagda, or left him open for the Crawling Chaos to do it. They were obviously linked-had to be, didn't they? Or maybe the obviousness was a trap. But the idea of such a coincidence, of an unaligned faction deciding to anger such a powerful god just in time to leave him open to corruption, left a foul taste in my mouth.
Fuck...had the corruption even been temporary? Was the Dagda still a pawn of Nyarlathotep, unbeknownst to everyone else?
Or, I thought, a growl building in my throat, does everyone in charge know and allow it, because it might be convenient, again?
The Dagda going through what I had with Chernobog...shit. I couldn't exactly check on him either, not with the defences around the Otherworld. Casual fargazing wouldn't cut it, and attempts to break through would just attract the wrong sort of attention. The Tuatha de Danann were not fond of foreign spies, especially Christians, and I didn't want the Morrigan on my arse.
Not in that way.
The thought of the cold goddess brought to mind Bianca's sisters. They hadn't done anything in eight years, and, if not for my paranoia, I might have though they were pulling one of those stupid grade school pranks, making me expect something awful when they weren't actually planning anything. Would they be satisfied with that? I had stupidly chopped a tree in half just because I'd been feeling moody, but...they wouldn't do something that would threaten creation in response, right?
Or maybe they hadn't known what their actions would result into...if they'd even been the women responsible.
Then there was my future self(obviously evil; otherwise, why the beard?), and whatever being Keeper meant. I'd go and pester Merlin for answers, since he seemed to think he knew something, or at least had acted like he did. He was free now, so it wasn't like he'd be too busy or bummed to remove. Then there was Vyrt, who creeped the fuck out of me almost as much as my future self.
Maybe I could beat the answers out of both at the same time, after I finished reporting? I needed to get the stuff the Knights had appropriated from ARC, too, unless Aya had sent Shiftskin to get it, like she'd said she might. What's a little diplomatic incident between suspicious rivals?
Mia was showering, which, ordinarily, would've been nice to think about, if dustracting, as well as an incentive to take a shower myself, but I had other things on my mind. Reem probably wouldn't have wanted her to hear our discussion, so my girlfriend had decided against heating up her body to vapourise anything that needed to be, and taken a slower alternative, in order to both relax and give me the space I needed.
Bless you, love.
The aether, an endless expanse of shining light blue tinged with green, filled my sight as I truly opened my eyes. Here, time and distance meant nothing, and while the aether didn't exist inside our universe, it could easily carry messages around it.
My godsight was stopped cold by Crypt headquarters' protections, then I felt something sit up and take notice, like an animal shifting in its sleep as something entered its lair.
I recognised Aya's power as she observed my attempts at entering. In Mimir's eyes, HQ looked like a flawless white-grey pyramid, with no stone blocks or spaces between them visible. Beneath it, an identical, upside-down pyramid reached under the sand, equally impenetrable to my perception.
Then, the Crypt head spoke a handful of words that rattled my fangs, and unseen guardians pooled back, as did the metaphorical facade of the pyramid. I could now see inside.
I spotted Aya with ease, her astral self shining so, so much brighter than so many billion others put together. There were only a few dozen that matched or surpassed it, and none in HQ, but they were different enough that I could distinguish and focus on the mummy with no problem.
The mummy was seated at the centre of the pyramid, which wasn't always true in reality. The underground complex didn't have a centre all the time, even when it wasn't changing shape. In this realm of symbols, however, such details were irrelevant. Aya was the Crypt division's Head, and its heart too. Hence, everything else was built around her.
She wasn't alone. I had expected Shiftskin, given their apparent relationship, upon noticing the second presence. Then, his absolute, awful enormity crashed into and through the walls of my mind. I didn't know if he had hidden from me, or if I had been unable to perceive all of him at once; and, at the moment, I couldn't spare any thought about that.
I caught a glimpse of an old man, bent-backed and narrow eyed, slouching over a lectern-
A dog-faced baboon, standing on the edge of a boat sailing the first waters, as it had always done and always would-
A man with the head of an ibis, gambling with the moon to stretch time and grow the calendar, and-
[ ]
Thoth's fingers burned against my forehead, like a hot knife lancing through diseased flesh to excise a tumour.
The god favoured me with a many-faced smile. My sight, which could only slip by his aura of power to observe the surroundings if I concentrated, showed me his body, incarnation or projection was actually small, shorter than Aya despite squatting on some stool or perch. Even so, I got the impression of him looking down at the mummy, at least physically. Around him, past and distance seemed to stop making sense.
'David Silva,' Thoth spoke each syllable in a clipped voice, as if he wanted to remember how they sounded. 'I have been waiting to meet you for so, so long.'
Me, or Mimir's eyes-?
'Yes.' Thoth scratched his beak-muzzle?-with a human finger. 'I would have no reason to interact with you otherwise, see? Us gods are terribly wary of others poaching our worshippers at the best of times, and that applies to me, too, my special relationship with Yahweh aside.'
I wondered if it was "special" in the sense of the UK-USA alliance, or if Thoth was being sarcastic, but I couldn't tell. His tone was mild, what little I could see of his body language through the haze of power was relaxed, and he hid his thoughts well.
'I'm glad to see you're better, David,' Aya said, in a tone that suggested she expected me to wonder about what she was referring to, even if I didn't figure it out. 'And, while I am pleased you are training your abilities, please do not expect to only rely on them from now on. I still await your report in person.'
'Why?' I frowned. 'Can't you tell it's really me who's speaking to you, ma'am?'
'I can,' she replied. 'Can you tell if you're really speaking to Aya Reem?'
***
Andrei was on the ghost as soon as he finished speaking, closing five metres in half as many microseconds to close his hands around his father's throat, claws digging into the ectoplasm.
He can be hurt, the were thought with a kind of strange clarity. He is dead, but he can be hurt. I can finally see him and touch him and hurt him.
KILL KILL KILL, was the closest approximation of what his beast's 'thoughts' would have sounded like, if spoken by a human.
He sympathised with it, for once. Usually, the dumb animal just acted like it's natural counterpart, and had most of the same desires. Lazing around. Eating. Fighting and killing other males-rivals. It could not perceive them as anything else. Fucking females.
The last two were particularly annoying when living in society, because a were's beast didn't make any distinction between humans, other supernaturals and mundane animals, which meant Andrei was as likely to get randomly mad at and want to murder a newborn because he happened to be male as he was to get aroused by some brown bear sow.
And that was ridiculous. Now, however...now, his beast wasn't pushing him towards something that would've been immoral even if it hadn't been illegal. For decades, his human side had been responsible for that. Andrei decided to savour this moment of inner harmony, because he knew it wasn't going to last.
Misha didn't thrash or struggle, like a new ghost in the grip of memory would have. How long had it been since his undeath? Maybe Andrei would let him talk enough to share it. Might be interesting, if only as a curiosity.
The were could tell the ghost was still hurt, though. Intangibility was useless against supernaturals, and ghosts could still feel pain if enough of their ectoplasm was damaged. Andrei would've cracked a phantom pain joke if he hadn't been trying to crack his father's skull instead. A hollow imitation of flesh, and there'd be no corpse left, but...oh, well. No time to be picky. He was honestly grateful for getting to do this at all.
'Lht goh,' Misha managed to gurgle. 'Lht goh, yuh-'
Andrei indulged him, letting go-a little. Just enough to lessen the pressure, to let the ghost focus. Misha couldn't choke, but he could get locked up due to pain. Andrei didn't want that yet. Maybe his father would have something funny to croak, before the end.
'-fuckin' mongrel,' the ghost finished, glaring at his son with empty sockets.
Andrei smiled sarcastically in response, showing his fangs. 'Never seen anything like this wherever you've crawled from?'
'We have beasts,' Misha spat, hands wrapped halfway around the were's wrists. 'I know what you can look like.'
Andrei's smile went from fake to nonexistent. 'Don't. Don't you dare go there.' Why not, though? part of him thought. Let him talk. It'll make things easier after his final death. Entering? Hate speech? We were just defending ourselves.
'That's why I'm here,' Misha said, his voice, already low and rough, becoming harsher, colder, and...was that exhaustion Andrei heard?
The werebear bristled. What was the bastard tired of? Being manhandled? Learning actions had consequences? Still clinging onto the world for far longer than he had any right to?
...He'd go to David after this. Apologise again. He fucking hated opening up, almost as much as admitting when he was wrong. Altogether? Made him feel almost as shitty as the reason for his mood did.
But he was sure there was a quick and dirty way to cheer himself up...
'Why?' Andrei searched the ghost's face for signs that he was preparing to bullshit him. A little harder than usual, with the lack of eyes, but the creases in the ectoplasmic skin, in the brow and around the sockets, were more than enough.
'Shouldn't you be asking "how"?' Misha's voice was drily amused, as was his expression, before growing more focused. 'I heard I had a kid. I'd honestly thought the bitch had died...only learned she'd not just survived, but gotten pregnant, after I bit the dust. I wanted...wanted to see how you'd ended up, I guess.'
Curiosity? That was it? He-
No, no, Andrei reminded himself, trying to clear the redness that had appeared at the edges of his vision. This was good. If the fucker had walked right into his claws of his own volition, all the better. Would make for a funny story.
The were had never honestly hoped for closure during his life, maybe not even after life. Andrei knew he was bound for the aether, but his father...the mages he had paid to look into anything related to his past hadn't been able to come up with anything consistent. Sometimes, Misha was stuck in the Hell Christians feared, other times in the depths of the aether, tormented by the manifestation of everything he had ever feared and loathed, like the other godless, unclaimed wicked, so they'd both suffer and be stopped from returning to the living world. Save for a few infamous dead passed between underworlds to truly suffer, whatever prevented dead agnostics and atheists from being consumed or exploited by those that roamed the realm of magic also made the darkest thoughts of the vilest among them come alive.
Maybe it was simply the aether's nature? It did react to the minds of those who entered it, after all, and there was something hilarious about the idea of Misha torturing himself forever.
That led to the question the ghost had posed. How had he escaped both the nightmares and the aether without anyone noticing?
Maybe he'd let him talk enough to spill something other than the facsimile of his guts.
'Better than you,' Andrei smiled sarcastically. Garrison captain, dragged down by rioting locals. That had been back when the USSR had openly occupied Eastern Europe. And, while such events had been common, and most of the Soviet supernaturals had survived, Misha had been merely human.
But humanity...had inhumanity to spare.
Misha stiffened. 'Let me go. I'll kill y-' The sentence was cut short as the ghost's head was twisted backwards, a sharp gasp of pain being muffled by the neck snapping. His head blurred and shifted, so that he was staring at his son again, in moments. The window had shattered at the sound, shards falling to crack even further, or being quickly buried under the snow brought in by the howling wind.
'If I don't let you go?' Andrei asked. 'Or after I do?'
'Let me go, crow,' Misha demanded, hands clenching around Andrei's wrists, the were's tightening around his father's neck in response. Only one of them whimpered in pain, though. 'I'll kill-'
Andrei thoughtfully chewed on his father's jaw, fangs crunching the teeth and pushing the dust into the pulped, ectoplasmic flesh, making a dripping mess. He made sure to look into the ghost's sockets as he swallowed. 'With what? The silver you don't have on you? Don't try to fool my nose. You know that's what's needed to kill freaks like me-or that's what you'd have said, before you became one yourself.'
Misha deflated, almost literally, his form following his mood. 'What do you want?' he asked in a small voice, struggles stopping.
What did he want? He...
He wanted to hurt him. He wanted to hurt him more than he could bear, without the old rapist losing his mind. He wanted to learn about his mother, that wandering peddlar who'd had the misfortune of looking the wrong way and being an easy target. No one he had convinced, bribed or threatened into looking had been able to tell Andrei who had given birth to him. The details were always, always painfully sparse.
'My mother,' Andrei said, lifting his father up so that they were at eye level. 'What was her name?'
Misha said something, but Andrei didn't hear. Maybe he'd mouthed the word? Either way, he understood. He must have understood-he could already feel decades of tension, of pain, flowing out of...
Oh, Andrei thought, looking down. That's my blood.
'Let's ask her together,' Misha said softly, pushing the knife deeper into his son's heart.
***
{ }, [*****]
There was, Nightraiser reflected, a certain beauty in Darkness.
In its simplicity. Its purity. It didn't contain or hide evil, or anything else, unlike the shadows and gloom that imitated it across Earth and beyond. It knew, felt and desired nothing.
Nightraiser envied it, as much as they felt the lure of nihilism, despite the fact they were closer to the Darkness than anyone save its parent and spawn. Or maybe because of that? Those who did not know the Darkness did not know how jealous they should be of it.
Sometimes, Nightraiser wondered for what unfathomable reason the Unnamed Darkness had chosen to empower them, or if it had even had one. They also wondered about their new name. What did raising the night mean, anyway? It brought to mind the "hellraiser' concept", but, as much as the idea of being a vandal made them laugh, they had a feeling it was more to it than that.
They did not know why the name was so firmly set, burned, into their mind. As it had been since the Darkness had opened its Eye, choosing them as it.
Nightraiser's power was not mere existence erasure, metaphysical destruction or conceptual unmaking. When they chose to forget something, the concept did not simply cease in the present. It ceased across every moment and layer of reality and beyond, the Archetype itself removed by the forgetfulness that hovered at the edges of the Dream. For what was removed from Nightraiser's mind disappeared from the Daemon Sultan's, as well.
There were, of course, layers to this ability. Had there been none, someone would have tried to futilely put Nightraiser down for the sake of creation, for the greater good, rather than the pettier, more selfish usual reasons.
For example, when Nightraiser closed their eyes and erased everything in their line of sight, the concepts of "ground", "sky" and "reality" didn't disappear. That would have been...messy.
Instead, like a lantern or gun covered by a veil, fractions of the power could be exposed as needed, allowing more and more Nothing to flow into Everything. There were, however, things that couldn't simply be erased once, and thus put down. These, Nightraiser had to place in a loop of constant destruction. The distance between them and a silver dagger could be erased in case a were had to be killed rather than put in a time out, for example, but not all problems required such solutions.
Which was all the better, in their opinion. Take Voidmaws. They often had to be destroyed to preserve existence, but getting rid of all of them at once, permanently, would have been wasteful. They were, compared to Archetypes, harmless, not to mention adorable.
In the expanse of their patron, Nightraiser appeared as an oval slit in the deepest of black. Infinitely smaller and less powerful, brown as rust, or old blood, they looked like an eye set in the centre of an amorphous, titanic being, no matter how they were viewed.
And now, the Eye turned.
Travelling from dimensioned space to the Outer Void was no simple matter. The multiverse was contained by a dimensionless void, like a drawing on paper, which was dwarfed and surrounded by an infinitely larger one. The Ultimate Gate was preceded by an endless chain of such vacua, and proceeded by an even larger one. And, despite Archetypes and their avatars moving across the Dream with such ease they almost never stopped to think about it, the journey was neither short nor free of danger.
Hypnos had once nearly come undone upon transcending everything between the multiverse and the Outer Void, then gazing upon the Archetypes.
Clearly, no one had told the newcomer any of that.
It had the aspect of a mirror, and the Dream shook at its approach. This was not of itself. It was an incongruence. It had to be removed. This was why Nightraiser existed, or rather did not.
A similar event had happened, timeless eternities ago, but Ischyros hadn't disturbed the Unmoved Mover halfway as much. Less because it had the mentality of an overly-excitable puppy, and more because it was native to the ur-realm of the Dreamer, of which only its Black Throne could be glimpsed from within its sleep at the centre of nuclear chaos.
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As the Mirror approached and passed through the Ultimate Gate, then entered the Outer Void, plowing through swarms of Voidmaws and destroying them, Nightraiser stowed a weary sigh. The All-In-One let everyone in, they swore...usually, the problems solved themselves, but this was clearly not one of those cases, and it was tasteless to make them clean up after its entertainment.
Not that Nightraiser could refuse.
The intruder proclaimed its desire to turn the Dream into its palace of mirrors, and even offered Nightraiser a position as its cleaner, to remove things it deemed eyesores. They were so touched by the generosity, their mouth opened by itself.
'Really?' Nightraiser smiled. 'Sounds tacky. Like living in a pile of bodies.'
It sneered, clearly snubbed by their lack of appreciation for its taste, and began reflecting itself. One became two, became four, became eight, became sixteen, until Nightraiser was staring at an infinity of Mirrored, each as spotless as the original had been after ignoring the Voidmaws' power, let alone their destructive presence.
Then, they turned their power upon themselves once more, and their might doubled, then quadrupled. Nightraiser, who had been left behind by each Mirrored after the first handful of boosts, stared at them, unimpressed.
Then, the Darkness took notice, and the Mirrored had never been.
When Nightraiser let go of their patron's power, returning to their baseline, their sigh was both regretful and relieved. It had been pleasant, like returning to the surface after holding one's breath under mud. Even relaxing. But Nightraiser could not afford to be distracted. The Darkness needed a champion to direct and channel it.
The illusion of appearance shifted to an idealised, dimensionless version of their tridimensional form. Darkness washed over dark skin as they basked in the shadows, a mane of ebony joining with the featureless expanse around them. Trails of nothingness flowed from deep, lidless eyes, forming patches of darkness over their chest and crotch. Nightraiser was not prudish, and the Darkness could not care about nudity less if it tried, but their gender was a mystery, even to themselves. Erased, like whatever childhood memories had been deemed unnecessary upon empowerment.
The pain had remained. The fear, too, faded echoes of it. Someone must have thought them needed.
Nightraiser's avatars, like the Archetypes', imitated their true form. As such, they were now all reclining on whatever surfaces were available, or nothing, if none were, resulting in a rather amusing incident in the thirty-first dimension.
There was beauty in the Void, too, if one could bear to see it and know where to look. Plato would have wept at the sight of this Realm of Ideas, maybe even out of vindication.
Archetypes were not lonely things. As far-flung and diverse as anything could be, they shared two traits: they stood close together, and were all facets of Maybe.
The Darkness and the Mist. Unnamed, Nameless. As above, not so below, no matter which seemed to underpin or loom over all creation at a given moment. Nyog-Sothep and Nightraiser's patron were only equal in terms of power and mindlessness, but in terms of nature? Endless oblivion and limitless potential could not have been more opposed, but their interplay created things that filled them, and even surpassed them. As Ymir had formed from blaze clashing across frost halfway across Ginnungagap, and Pangu had cracked open the World Egg from the inside, One from None, so did the Archetypes rise from the meeting of Everything and Nothing.
Even the All-In-One, the Ultimate Archetype...the last, unbound sweep, outreaching fancy and mathematics alike, transcending contradiction and duality...even it had been born from the Nameless Mist, though such details were meaningless. The parent could not care, and the child-who contained and dwarfed all Archetypes, including the Mist and Darkness, to the same extent they dwarfed humans-did not. The Dream itself, perhaps the Mind of the Dreamer, it was only bound by how it chose to amuse and perpetuate itself.
The latter had become, as of late (as the linears said) a rather pressing concern. Still, Yog-Sothoth, according to the fools who survived searching it for knowledge was supremely confident that it would continue.
And when it said 'it', it referred to itself. Everything, and Nothing, too.
As for the lesser Archetypes...some imagined a sort of line, they supposed. With the Archetypes standing side by side unto infinity, those similar close together. Other imagined them standing in groups, or tiers, like in a stadium's seats, surrounded by an endless blackness.
The Outer Void could certainly be viewed like that, if one squinted hard enough. Minds could force the strangest things into familar frames and shapes, even if they broke in the attempt.
In Nightraiser's eyes, though...well. They were-had once been-human. But, though the affectations of humanity remained, what their mind had evolved into was capable of recognising paradoxes that would have driven any lesser psyche mad.
Take the human Archetype. It contained the Archetypes of workers, warriors, men, women, children...they live among plant and animal Archetypes, made up of all the species that are part of those kingdoms. Pull back further, and they could be seen walking Earth's Archetype, which orbits the sun's...
There was overlap, though, and contradiction. The gunslinger Archetype, for example, contained far more than human firearms users. Was it, then, not a part of mankind's Archetype in its entirely?
What about Earth's? Was it part of a planet Archetype, like the sun's was part of a stellar one? Were they fractions of the idea of celestial bodies, then of location, then of space?
Nightraiser saw and knew. They understood this, though they could not explain it to a human, even if the attempt didn't unravel reality. The only thing they could say was that...
'It's beautiful.' Gears shifted and wheels spun, rusty iron and rotten wood falling apart almost as fast as they were replaced by strong, new materials, which quickly met the same fate, caught in an eternal remaking.
In such devices was the embodiment of creation's new form covered. Cogs ground against each other, sparks flying, as he turned to them. 'Don't you agree, rugrat?'
'Fix,' Nightraiser lifted the arm they had slung over their eyes to give their friend a shrewd look. 'You didn't come to us to talk about the view.'
Fixer shrugged, flopping down onto the Darkness, and producing a translucent, rodlike device. Then, a thin, shining string shot down into the ebony expanse, the glint of the hook at its tip disappearing. 'Guilty as charged, sprog. Doesn't make it untrue, though.'
'I suppose it doesn't.' Hopefully, he wouldn't take it as an excuse to ramble. More than usual. Nightraiser's expression softened, eyes creasing. 'Ami's been hounding you?'
Fixer hunched forward, shoulders squared, looking almost as despondent as he sounded when he answered. 'Boss lady ain't who I want riding me, but what can ya do?'
'We're in the same boat, Ned.' They shifted to sit on the Darkness, next to Fixer, and folded their hands in their lap.
He huffed. 'Yours is way worse, if you don't mind my saying. No one wants to be ridden by John.'
'And when have we ever gotten what we wanted?'
'Fair 'nuff.' Fixer slouched even further, giving the fishing rod a small shake. 'Don't make it suck less.'
Nightraiser leaned their head on his shoulder. 'If Amara can't convince you to stop,' they began softly. 'Maybe I can make you stop pushing your luck.'
'Dunno what ya mean.'
'You sound like you used to,' they jabbed. 'Back in Dunwich. Don't try to lie.'
'Pfft.'
'Articulate,' Nightraiser said archly, before poking Fixer in the belly, above the navel. 'Do you know what'll happen if you step in now?'
'Yeah, yeah, 'course I know already.' His face soured as he tried to perceive the depths of the Darkness, infinitely deeper and wider than his perception. 'Don't mean I have to like it, though.'
'No one said you have to like it.' Images of cultists in black robes, their heads crowned with antlers of midnight, flashed across the Darkness in an endless chain of still frames. 'But I remember an old man prattling about how people need to stand on their own two feet, or they'll never achieve anything worthwhile.'
'Sounds like a preachy twit.'
' "We can't hold their hands forever, savvy? Like parents doing their kids' homework. Yeah, it looks better than it would if they did it alone...but anyone looking at the results can see who did the work, and all their pals will laugh at 'em".'
'Awright, awright, jeez. Don't quote me back at myself, I know how annoying I sound.'
Nightraiser did not move their head, even as Fixer shifted awkwardly. 'I mean it, Ned. Let them handle this, or I'll forget you.'
'... Fine.'
They smiled up at their scowl, pushing themselves away. 'You know what a Nightmare that'd be. I love you too much to let you suffer like you would bringing eternal oblivion to preserve a short peace.'
'Never knew ya had a problem with that.'
'Oh, Darkness is an old friend,' they admitted. Their first one. 'But, much like pleasure, one must know its opposite to appreciate it.'
***
FREAKSHOW Base One, Washington DC, USA
Armament's hands were in his cargo pants' pockets as he walked down the hall.
He was moving slowly, jackboots rising and falling once every two heartbeats, humming tunelessly. He had almost as little talent at this as he had at whistling, without using his powers, but that didn't stop him. Besides, the louder and more obnoxious, the more chances those two would have to notice his approach and shape up.
America'a foreign policy in microcosm, Hans thought to himself, nodding approvingly at the unintentional parallels. Still, not being sure how to put it, he took his time.
Breakout had her needs. She could've removed them, but there were some things she held onto, and he wasn't one to judge, even if the thought of her and Jim together made him boggle. Anyone could play grab-ass, far as he was concerned, long as no one was hurt without consent.
Just sex, man. Those two couldn't stand each other less, he thought, running a hand over his head, tracing the tattoos. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex...frontal cortex...amygdala...nucleus accumbens.
Hans had scolded several psychologists for claiming he couldn't draw abilities from the tats. He had been sure they'd been trying to lower his confidence, and they'd called him paranoid in turn, but Hans didn't give a shit. They'd obviously been conspiring against him.
Besides, belief built facts, and all that jazz. Right?
Hans had grown up in the ass-end of Texas, taking potshots at vermin, then supernatural crooks, once he'd gotten his badge. Then he'd found the Weapon, and his mind had expanded, but...fuck. He hadn't joined FREAKSHOW to be an errand boy or a messenger, dammit! He'd wanted to blow shit up and get into cool fights-legally! Not be a couple counselor...
Wait, wait, hell naw. What was he thinking? Clara and Jim, a couple? Maybe a couple people...
As he saw the stretch of wall that wasn't, he stopped his humming and raised his voice. "I'm comin', so you'd better not be!"
Subtle. Classy. Way more useful than knocking. Hans allowed himself a high five.
Hands still in pockets, he raised a boot and kicked the not-wall in.
Well. Not exactly. But Hans wasn't the best when it came to describing fancy details. It was, he suspected, something he'd inherited from his pa, one of those eleven something thousand ethnic Germans detained during World War Two. Poor bastard had been released quickly, then had an accident on the way out. Fuckin' hilarious. 'Course, Hans was far sharper than his pops had been before the mess, not that he'd ever lorded it over him. In the few moments his old man had been able to step up from sittin' 'round the house like a vegetable, he'd been real sensitive.
As such, Hans wouldn't have described the space as a multi-layered patch of artificial reality. Almost nothing could pass it without the approval of those behind it, bot without getting stripped down to quantum foam and getting scattered across an infinity of universes.
That was why Hans had been sent. He could just get through, proof to esoteric crap due to the Idea he was one with, without having to wait for a green light from the love birds. Most other folk wouldn't have been able to pass, and would've probably wasted time negotiating their way in. Those who could bypass it, like Clyde, Randy, the weres and vamps, would've likely gotten a cold welcome. Hans, however, had the dubious luck of being seen as a little brother by Clara (he was only a couple years younger, geeze) and didn't take any bull from the posturing douche she'd chosen to fool around with this time.
Playin' messenger still sucked like a cheap hooker, but, eh.
"Oi. Rise and shine, me darlings." Hans put his hands behind his back as he strode through the patch of nonexistence that had never been a wall. The room's thick yamadium walls were cracked, a sight that made Hans nod slightly to himself. Breakout was still a screamer. He wondered if Jim's ears had bled like his had three or four romps ago.
Clara flipped him off, pulling on her uniform shirt without looking at either of the men. Hans looked past her, face set in an expectant expression. Nothing he hadn't seen. Still wire the flag...as did Jim Bat.
The vamp was still shirtless, and met his stare with one of his own, crossing his arms. The Confederate flag was a startling splash of color on his pale shoulder, but, thankfully, a reminder as opposed to a representation of beliefs he still held. Jim had been a grunt during the Civil War, and he still had grunt written over his mug. He'd been in it for the money and to avoid peer pressure, not the politics.
The chick who finished getting dressed next to him kinda embodied that fact.
"Piss off," Jim rasped, crimson eyes trying to spear through Hans' soul. "You couldn't have convinced my sire to agree to shit, either, so don't lecture."
"Yeah, I read the reports. This ain't about Primus."
"No? Then run along. We're supposed to be relaxing-"
"Not anymore," Armament cut him off at the same time Breakout said 'Let 'im talk, jackass'.
The woman straightened the wrinkles over the red-and-white-striped pentagrams on her shoulders, then walked over to Hans. "I knew diplomacy wouldn't do shit-much easier to just have one of our vamps drink up-but I humored Mary. Girl's way too optimistic for a politician..." Breakout shook her head, twirling the pipe that appeared in her hands like a baton. "Jim's second dad is currently tearing up some unfortunate realities, fighting one of the few assholes worse than 'im. Y'all are welcome."
"Thanks?" Armament asked more than said. "I guess."
Breakout gave him an apologetic smile, before her balaclava appeared over her face. "I know why you're here, kid. And I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but I ain't goin'."
Hans stiffened, out of reflex rather than surprise. Breakout's power sometimes made her act in mysterious ways, though they, thankfully, benefitted the States most of the time. "You're refusing a mission?"
"Yep. Call it a medical emergency: I'm allergic to everything going tits up if I get involved."
"Disappointing," Jim said before Clara answered, pulling on his shirt. "But we'll survive."
Clara rolled her eyes, elbowing Hans. "That's the second time he said that today, ya know? First time was after he proposed, if you can believe it."
Hans' eyes went from Breakout to Jim, who met his stare with one of his own, arms crossed. FREAKSHOW officially frowned upon fraternization as much as any alphabet soup agency. Unofficially, people were still people. The fact the US weren't defended by ice-cold, emotionless drones was a state secret, of course. Still...Hans knew there was no sentiment in this. FREAKSHOW's top five agents were too valuable to allow any awkwardness between them to impact their performance.
Clara saw them as friends, jokes about benefits aside, and Hans tried not to think about it, but sometimes, it still felt weird. Darren and Randy had an easier time compartmentalizing stuff like this, but Hans lacked the former's brick-level emotional range and the latter's endless capacity to be higher than the sun. As for how Jim Bat handled it, frankly, he gave as much of a fuck as he did about Clara's flings with other agents, American or foreign.
But c'mon..."Proposal, man?"
Jim's face didn't change, though his beard twitched a bit. "I can't promise I'll change. But who knows?"
"Ah, quit yer bitchin'!" Clara waved him off, then turned back to Hans. "Back in his day, people fell in love at first sight and got married quickly all the time. But supernatural supremacists leave me dry, so what can you do?" She tapped her pipe into one hand. "Listen. I already know who the Global Gathering will stuff into this clown car." She held up a hand, raising a finger for each name. "The Karma Delivered have agreed to send Dharma-he's fired up after the Faerie clusterfuck, says it's unfair he got tied up the way he did. He's got a new power now, to prevent being trapped like that again."
Hans ignored the pun. Raj was always good to have on your side, unless he got into one of his weirder moods, which this apparently had a chance of being. 'Unfair', when used by Dharma, had nothing to do with complaining, and everything to do with the system of cosmic justice he followed. Hans hoped he'd be manageable.
"China and Russia are sending Myriad and Tunguska, respectively." Heavy hitters. Unlimited fusions, endless applications of destruction...and Clara still refused to use their agencies' names. Still saw them as government goon squads. Armament hoped her power prevented her from getting rose-colored glasses when it came to FREAKSHOW, but he wasn't sure of its exact limits.
"The Hidden Eye's sending Kriegblitz. Girl's been runnin' her sweet ass off all over Dresden. Wants a longer race track, I guess. Watch out for her." But with infinite movement and reaction speed, what could keep her attention?
"The Circle Bizarre wanted to send Brazillion, but he's getting reprimanded. Might have asked for it. Didn't focus too much on that. Anyway...they're sending Rei Enxame instead."
Hans couldn't stop himself from cringing. "And he's bringing his swarm, too, isn't he?"
"You bet. If you keep him happy, he might not try to add to it, though." Clara let her hand fall back by her side. "And we're sending you and Jim. Thank me later. Try not to act too unsurprised at the next two meetings. People'll get pissy if they learn I spoiled you." She lowered her voice. "Be careful. I'm gonna walk my beat."
***
Mother Wound's Scorn grunted silently as he climbed out of the neutron star, pushing aside chunks that weighed sextillions of tons with each of his four arms. Starquakes packed enough power to destroy rocku planets millions upon millions of times over, but the amount of force applied to his relatively small frame was merely irritating. He was tougher than most rocky planets, besides, and could regenerate where they did not.
The conditions inside the shaking star had been uncomfortable, but hardly deadly. Scorn had hoped jumping into cosmic disasters would trigger his Vyzhaldi power boosts, but after the first thousand clashing moons and planets, he'd realised headbutting them to debris after jumping between them wasn't doing anything. Black holes had followed, but he was nearly five hundred times faster than light, and could enter and exit at his leisure, at least the shallow areas. But...
He still couldn't enter white holes. Would a hypernova or gamma ray burst kill him, if he was caught in one?
This neutron star, writhing in the grip of a starquake, had been a compromise. Scorn wanted to make himself stronger, not an example of how painful unintended suicide could be. He supposed the Vyzhaldi disregard for death was also absent in him.
Looking down at the shaking star, Scorn clicked his mandibles in frustration. Reaching into the subspace pocket that always followed him, he grasped the slimy body of his Prime Responder, the pulled the creature out of the fake reality.
The Prime Responders were a curious aspect of the Honoured Kratocracy. Some claimed they had been engineered into being, others that they were defective Vyzhaldi larvae, even more flawed, and thus abhorrent, than him. But they detected any change in the cosmos, however fast, whether acausal or retroactive, and placed the information in the Kratocrats' minds. Which indicated a link between them, given Vyzhaldi were usually invisible to telepathy.
The Prime Responder was a grey being, with sickly red eyes and a circular mouth full of razor-sharp, triangular teeth. Its segmented, wormlike body fit within Scorn's palm-except for its brain. Several times its size, it protruded out of its head, a pulsing, throbbing sphere of grey matter dripping thick, pinkish fluid.
Prime Responders were often placed in subspace pockets, which they could communicate through, time and space being no obstacle to the things, but Scorn preferred to look the creature in the eye when he spoke to it.
'Home,' he mouthed. 'Changes? Hunters?'
No new hunters on his trails. When he learned about the changes, though, Scorn cursed his Mother and all his kin, then reached into subspace again.
He'd never learned the full extent of what the Ideal Mirror could reflect. Loathed using it to compensate for his weakness, even to save his life. How joyous, he thought sarcastically, to find out its full potential like this.
***
Wings on his Words watched with interest as the Terran biped-Adam-paced around the inside of the transparent dome.
This was an untapped world, a-in Vyzhaldi parlance-bauble, kept unaltered for Kratocrats to come and fly over or swim through its liquid nitrogen seas. The dome was usually used for sparring, so Vyzhaldi could fight without obliterating the planet through shockwaves, due to its metaglass absorbing and storing energy.
Adam had been, still was, curious about their society. Unsure what he actually wanted, he had expressed a desire to create, though, from how fervently he'd spoken, it might've been closer to a need. So, Wings had brought him here, expecting him to start shaping the seas into solid or gas, but the undead had claimed he could and would do more. Manipulating matter, he had said, was easy. Not wanting a planet to be destroyed because he'd brought an unruly guest into the Kratocracy, Wings had ushered him into the dome, trusting its ability to resist whatever the Terran had in mind. Mother Wound would return home to either a very interesting or a reassuringly stable Kratocracy; either way, nothing and no one would have to be replaced. Hopefully.
'So,' Adam began, continuing to pace. 'Your civilisation is dominated by three...schools of thought, which started as philosophies, but evolved into what few of your people want to admit are political parties.'
'A caustic way of putting it, but, in short, yes.' Wings had gotten his name because he was a fast talker in love with his own voice, or so his Kin said. Vyzhaldi names that referenced anything other than violence or physical prowess were usually intended as mockery, and not always to make the mocked rise above and meet any challenge or derision. 'The Schools began as ways to occupy one's time, but that was billions of years ago, after the War of Unity, but before Mother Wound became...' A living ancestor-god, rather than a mere venerated elder. 'Distant. We expected her to lead us forever as she saw fit, for she is our progenitor and the strongest of us besides, but she keeps her own counsel nowadays.'
No Vyzhaldi remembered what had driven their Mother to silence, and she never told it through her interpreters, leaving them with theories.
Adam hummed as he considered the words. 'Your people are long-lived and deliberate when it comes to decisions, are they not? That is to say, many times older than my creator's ancestors, but extremely similar to how you started as. The thought of human anything persisting for billions of years is...' He broke off, laughing. 'Almost said unnatural...I should stay away from hypocrisy.'
'A healthy mindset,' Wings replied, his escort, Kin of Brood and Wound, friends and other Builders, hanging back, watching them interact.
Adam nodded with a dry grin. 'Indeed. Perhaps you could adopt it yourself.'
Wings had a feeling he knew what was coming, but he thought to make sure. 'Explain.'
'Your Schools are defined by what you do in your Kratocracy and to your neighbours, yes?'
'That is correct.'
'So, Builders maintain architecture and machinery, which is purely recreational, since your people lack physiological needs and can achieve almost any task through physical effort. Outside your society, they build relations with others, trade, uplift weaker species. The Balancers are something between constables and confessors, maintaining both political and mental peace between Kratocrats and other civilisations. And the Breakers destroy undesirable things, which many of them consider weaker beings to be.' Adam cupped his chin. 'Very neat. Very clear. Not much room for thought, but...'
'You parrot what I told you like a hatchling, then mock us. Remember we are your hosts.' To Wings' slight surprise, Adam had the grace to look abashed. 'You must remember: we are not like the humans whose remains make you up, or even like you. We Vyzhaldi live to fight. It brings us greater pleasure than mating and feasting and art, or all three together. It is how we are wired. And if we can heal from almost anything only to emerge more durable-and grow in power and speed during fights as well-then, isn't it natural that we would become warlike? Nowhere else will you find better mercenaries.' Wings sat down, letting nitrogen wash over his shell, his wings, covering the purple chitin in a colourless sheen. 'Of course we define ourselves by the way we take action. Do your people not?'
'I don't know if they do anymore,' Adam admitted. 'I've been gone for centuries, and I haven't observed Earth.'
'We are familiar with fast-paced species. Surely they can't have changed too much.' Wings held up a finger. 'The Breakers might look like cruel, moronic brutes to you, and most of them are, but they are not completely stupid. It is exceedingly easy to obtain their services with just the promise of a good fight, as opposed to favours or resources, yes...but they are the bleeding edge of the Kratocracy. Vyzhaldi like them spearheaded our expansion, and, though their School has lost popularity in recent millennia, they still remain a well of strength and enthusiasm for our society.' And if the dangerous idiots kept dying in droves, all the better.
'Maybe, if we have time, I will tell you the the story of the Kindred Three, Mother Wound's first children.' Wings' pheromones filled the surroundings as he nostalgically thought about his hatchling's tales. 'They were the ones who took charge when our lady retreated into herself, only letting her old fury show to moderate the worst disputes, and removed inner threats to the Kratocracy.' Some Balancers claimed this was proof of Mother Wound being a member of their School, but that was ridiculous presumption, and she never humoured them.
Adam was silent for a while, then squatted down. 'Do you know why I called you a hypocrite?' he eventually asked.
'Because I am a Builder, but let our defective kin be dispatched? Not all of us protect the weak. Some simply raise things to outlast them,' Wings said, though he knew it was a poor excuse. He wasn't an architect. 'I wish we could stop that, but Mother doesn't listen.'
'And what have you done to change her mind? Didn't you say she set this unofficial law herself?' Adam asked after his treacherous thought was given voice.
'We...' Wings rose to his feet. 'Have something in the works.'
Adam turned to him, then smiled slightly. 'Well,' the undead also rose. 'I, for one, am finished.'
And the world around him snapped to life. Constructs, trillions and trillions, made of the toxic atmosphere, of the cold seas, of space itself, all animated by Adam's strange power. Even the dome warped and shifted to become a gigantic humanoid that would have towered over Mother Wound the same way she towered over baseline Vyzhaldi. One of them, something that reminded Wings of a Xalkhian and which could only be seen by how reality bent around it, dashed at Wings, covering dozens of metres faster than he could perceive and punching him to finger-sized pieces. All but one piece became a crimson Woundkin, while Wings himself healed back to his full size in a tenth of a picosecond. He caught the construct's next punch with ease and no damage, despite it being thrice as strong and fast as the previous one, and began pushing it down.
Then Adam pushed more power into it, and his arm began cracking.
'Come on!' the undead laughed as his creations jumped at the Vyzhaldi, tearing them apart, then being reduced to droplets, gust of air and ripples in space in turn. 'You were just talking about how much you love violence-I'm trying to follow my hosts' traditions!' He held up a hand, hiding his grin. 'Consider this an apology for earlier.'
***
She was like the softest rose among thorns, and Constantin was drawn to her like a moth through a flame. The only beautiful thing in this place of ugliness-or, at least, that was what the place wanted him to believe.
He had his love for his Father and son, kept it in mind, held it close to his heart. Love returned, gladly, and kept no matter the circumstances.
But hadn't she died, inasmuch as an angel could? Constantin had seen her ripped apart before his eyes, had felt the light in her eyes, that made up her being, fade.
Or had that been a trick? A test of faith, so God could see how strong his heart was?
No, Constantin told himself. Even if it had been a lie, even if she had returned to Heaven, laughing at his gullibility and foolishness before he had even learned her name, he would...would...
He would not rage against the Lord. Constantin knew where that path led, and what it was paved with. His first and last love was lost, one way or another.
His angel seemed to slouch forward at this thought, wings slumping. Had he upset her?
Constantin walked closer, his hand going to his chest, tearing through his surplice and the vines that had gotten stuck in it. His hand bled, shattered thorns grinding through his bones, mixing with the marrow. But he still grasped his cross. Strange. His angel's presence had never driven him to need such comfort, before. But now, he felt his heart rise at the touch of his Father's unseen hand.
'My love,' his angel said in a voice like a church bell, which then became as light as a silver chime. 'My husband.'
…No. This was cruelty. He knew it wasn't true. The more he wanted it, the more he knew...
She was holding their child. Why had he not noticed the bundle in her arms? Ah...right. Long day at church. He really needed to pray more, if the Lord decided to refuse him strength. Returning tired to his family was a disservice to both Him and them. It was a...
'I have a son,' Constantin said, holding his cross tight. It had begun thrashing like a serpent, and for some reason, the movement chilled him to the bone. 'But no wife. I have never been married, and will never be.'
In the real world, Constantin's cross-a large one, depicting Christ crowned with thorns-had begun not only thrashing, as its spiritual mirror was here, but running like wax. It scorched Constantin, making his burning surplice fuse with his blistered, scorched skin, but he never let go. The priest knew that would be the end of him.
***
With unseeing eyes, Constantin found his way through his house, looking until he found the tools he needed. Then, he went outside, the door opening for him without being touched. His verger cried in relief when she saw him, but he didn't hear her. He could not, any more than she could approach or aid him, for a gap had opened between them, like the yawning abyss between those who rested in the bosom of Abraham and those who languished in darkness, awaiting the Last Judgement.
Constantin's dogs began barking madly upon seeing their master's disheveled state, but he couldn't hear them, either. When he sat down, back against the side of the house, closing his eyes as his beard smoke, they began howling, pawing at the ground, biting at their leashes and chains.
Good dogs, he had always known. But he had to do this alone.
He couldn't allow his focus to waver, not now. Constantin had three nails in his left hand. Two went through Jesus' wrists, the third through his ankles. The golden figurine (gold? When had he ever worn gold, rather than copper, bronze or iron?) screamed like a dying infant, unseeing eyes bursting as pus began running down its face like blood streamed from its stigmata.
He couldn't stop here. With the hammer in his right hand, Constantin beat each nail deep within his chest. They had been the longest he had. He hoped one would pierce his heart. He needed...by God, he needed the blood...to soothe...the burns...
***
His angel turned, and she was the most hideous thing he had ever seen since the end of David's human life.
Aside from the lowest ranks, no angel looked like anything a human might find physically beautiful, but that was because they were too different from normal people. But she...she looked horrible.
It wasn't just the patchy, pale skin, hanging loose in some places and straining against bloated flesh in others. It wasn't just the immense, pockmarked nose, so long it almost covered the thin, gaping mouth filled with crooked, rotten fangs. It wasn't even the assortment of wounds that demon had dealt her before her...disappearance.
It was the eyes. There was a wicked glee in them, visible despite the cataracts. This was no joy at seeing them, or even the bliss all angels felt due to their bond with God. She knew seeing her hurt him, and revelled in that.
And the child.
'Our son,' she insisted, walking towards him, holding the bundle of white wrappings out. There was nothing that marked her as a woman, besides the voice, its musicality making her ugliness all the viler. Angels were genderless, spiritual beings, but even they took on certain traits when wearing physical forms. She had no breasts, no...
Constantin had stopped weeping black blood when he had first glimpsed her, something that had gladdened his soul, making him think, for an instant, that maybe his angels had indeed returned, to stay. Now, as he looked down and saw the infant's face, his tears returned, thin and crimson.
The boy was just as monstrous as his mother. The mouth was too large for the head, the nose too small, almost lost between eyes far, far too old for a newborn. His gums were free of teeth, but something crawled underneath them, making them bulge, blood white as milk-or was that pus?-running into the child's mouth. But, where he should have choked, by all rights, he instead laughed.
The boy's head was bald, save for a few grey whisps of hair, but, as the wrappings began to fell away, in a manner that reminded Constantin of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon rather than a child being revealed, he saw, first, a beard, brown and bristling, reaching down to the groin.
The child-thing had no navel, Constantin saw. No belly button, because why would a being that had not been born need one?
And between its legs...it was not just a hermaphrodite. Something shapeless squirmed between its human genitals, both male and female, like the things under its gums, but far bigger. Constantin did not know what it was. He only knew that it wanted out.
'Our Nephilim,' the woman whispered cheerfully, crooning over the thing in her arms, even as her spawn gripped her chest, beginning to twist and tear, chunks of flesh disappearing through its skin. It grew with each one, until it was too large to hold, larger than its mother. It never stopped looking like a child, though. 'Born of your faith, and my love.'
Constantin looked away as the thing's shadow fell over him. It tried to touch him, reaching out for the man it thought of as its father, but white fire burst into existence, scorching its skin and revealing the formless, maggot-like tumours intertwined with its hollow flesh.
His Lord was with him, and His message was clear: this was what his foolish, youthful zeal would have led to, if he had tried to force his angel to remain on Earth and love him.
It was fine. It was...nothing. He had his son, and his Father, even here. He would not give in to the lie, and let this thing take him.
'You think God does not know this?' her tone was pitying as she climbed atop the head of her beastly child. 'Does not want this? Does He not know and love all?'
As she spoke, the earth and sky fell away, revealing what Constantin had expected since the beginning-and worse.
Everyone he had ever failed in his life, thousands upon thousands of battered, crushed and burned corpses. Mages, weres, vampires...strigoi. All of them, bearing the marks of the death he had brought, made even more wretched by the same evil that had twisted the image of his angel. Mismatched limbs, grins so wide skin tore under endlessly-crying eyes, hunched backs. And they all spoke and screamed and laughed and jeered, mocked him for failing to deliver salvation in the harshest voice he had ever been chastised by: his own.
Some of the monsters were still alive, mockeries of Suzana and Angus, of Rebeca...they all squirmed at his feet like a tide of worms, trying to drag him down, ripping chunks out of his legs' flesh and bones. They weren't trying to hurt him. Not just that. They wanted him to kneel.
Above, a shattered mirror of Heaven shone. Angels, as vengeful as monstrous as any sinner's nightmare, amalgamations of feathers, eyes and tendrils, like abominable, giant worms. And, in the centre of it all, an old man of a throne of marble.
He was the only thing in this carnival of horror that looked remotely human. But his beard, his mouth, his eyes...they were the same as the freakish child's, except white as snow.
'Constantin,' he said, extending a hand. 'Come to me. Let the pain end. You love your neighbour as you love thyself, and I know you would not le yourself suffer senselessly.'
Constantin almost replied, then felt two slim arms wrap around him from behind. He recognised the smell, the voice, so full of kindness and love, and failing to hide the growing despair underneath.
'Hey, daddy?' David asked. 'Think they'll buy a story about this, if I write it?'
***
The meeting began, expectedly, with a disaster. Unexpectedly, none of the participants were responsible.
Reality tore, not just here and now, but in every place and moment that corresponded to this in an infinity of universes, despite the different layouts and timelines, or lack thereof, and monsters began climbing through.
Their centres of mass were amorphous, sometimes cylindrical, sometimes conical when they didn't take on impossible shapes, round squares and thirteen-cornered spheres. All colours and none raced across the surface of their forms, and limbs rose and dangled from their cores, tendrils that ended in grasping hands and square feet, gasping mouths and microscopic needle teeth. They moved with no regard to time and space, and everything was static in their infinitely quick perception. Wherever they emerged, a galaxy, or an area the size of one, was transformed by their presence into the same chaos they were made of, reality simply ending.
Then, they were pushed back.
The Xhalkians were masters of time and space, thus of themselves, and all they contained. In all but their native universe, the incorporeal aliens reached out, turning unreality into reality. Time flooded into timeless chaos and space appeared to give it bounds. The invaders screamed at the pushback, and each cry shook an universe with the power to warp it into a reflection of their home. With a ponderous, infinitely-fast thought, the Xhalkhians silenced the un-sounds, and turned the eldritch beings into inert matter, harmless lumps of soil, drops of water, puffs of hydrogen or flashes of light. There had been nothing to convert, and yet...
The Vyzhaldi were, naturally, less subtle. They simply squared up with the beings, powering through strikes and slashes that would have destroyed realities, which began too feeble to harm them after healing, grabbing them where there was nothing to grip, and began ripping them apart, leaving the ideas of wounds that no amount of healing or reality warping would heal. A group of invaders pooled their rage and power, feeding on each other, and unleashed a beam of swirling madness at Mother Wound. A trillion trillion universes would have been reduced to less than nothing, but the First Vyzhaldi strode through the attack like an elephant through a patch of reeds, utterly unharmed. A swipe of her arm sent the eldritch gathering flying out of the universe, then the multiverse's fourth layer and beyond. They did not stop until a Voidmaw spotted them, and were soon devoured by a monster greater than them.
The Multitude of Minds' representative bent forward, acknowledging the esoteric assault, then dismissing it as blunt and weak besides. The invaders roared at the derision, and quadrillions of quadrillions of beings across reality fell down, organs bursting and minds shattered, or bent out of shape, beyond catatonia and insanity. A telepathic pulse silenced the monsters, and telekinesis followed, crumpling them into a twitching ball. The alien's mind then flashed across the universe, reverting the mental damage and beginning to mend bodies.
The Argument Engine laughed in featureless faces as toothed, clawed limbs smashed fruitlessly against it and Gerald. The mage's first thought upon seeing the breaches in reality had been to declare the invaders could not destroy his universe just because they were thoughtless when exercising their strength, which any of the trillions of strikes dealt up to this point would have. 'You lot can't exist here! Only we've seen you, and even then, we perceive you differently! What can you dickbags base your existence on, huh? Seems unlikely to me in the first place!'
And, though they had no history, for they were outside time, the greater part of them ceased, disappearing out of both reality and unreality, having never been. Gerald silently thanked his colleague. "You cannot enter our reality." He said, pushing the ones making their way in back inside their realm.
There was an infinity of them, in an endless, timeless realm. The Shaper immediately saw how they could be harnessed.
With the same thirst for knowledge and-it would not be wrong to say-power as the first humans who had set out to set, the Shaper sent a yoctomachine into the Unrealm.
There was no matter here. No energy. No distance, no duration or separation of events, for they were not caused by others, nor did they cause others. It all existed at once, in an impossible, eternal jumble that made the Shaper wonder if they were, in any matter, related to the Sleeper.
The Unbeings took notice of this intrusion immediately. They were all simultaneously smaller than a quark and bigger than any galaxy, lighter than a feather and heavier than all the matter in existence together. They poured their power and false minds into unmaking the yoctomachine, making it something like them, and failed.
They had tried to attack the Shaper, break its control over its creations. That could not be done by such overgrown pests. It controlled every citizen, construct and machine of the Collective at once, yes...but that was not its full, constantly-growing capacity. Not even close. And, though an infinity of minds, each able to dominate and make a puppet out of all mundane beings in the Shaper's universe, tried its might against its, they failed.
Behind the yoctomachine, the gap widened as Mocker stepped into the Unrealm, protected by its Warscale. At the Shaper's suggestion, it unleashed all manner of destruction upon the Unbeings, to test them. Octillion-degree plasma beams that would have split galaxies in half, naked singularities shaped into projectiles by gravity fields (thunderbolt action rifles, Mocker thought, would be a fitting name for the weapons. It referenced human astronomy and military history at the same time), conversion beams, neutron stars moving at lightspeed. None of them had any effect on the Unbeings.
Good, the Shaper told itself with glee. Sturdy.
Then, it activated its quantum entanglers, and threw them at the eldritch creatures like chains. Their powers would be useless against them, especially here, in their realm, but the Shaper would find use for them later. Instead, it activated the yoctomachine's rationalisers, and the Unrealm fell apart, unable to survive in the field of enforced logic projected from the devices. The Unbeings rampaged in the nothingness their home had become, now an utter void, as opposed to something devoid of logic, and the Shaper almost chuckled, despite itself. Such power-hungry vermin, able to casually doom countless lives to an eternity of unreason, and yet so easily offended...
Subspace projectors flared to life, enclosing each Unbeing into an universe-sized pocket of artificial reality. Had they been mere imitaions of the cosmos, the creatures' destructive presence would have unmade them in an instant, let alone their power. As it was, reality created and enforced by the Collective's science easily kept them contained, ready to be studied or harvested. They wouldn't even have to enlarge the Collecitve's pocket reality, unless they decided to let out all Unbeings at once. And even then, the reptilians' home could alter and adjust itself.
Making the Unscarred's face smile, the Shaper turned to the Xhalkian representative. Quantum entangled with the Unbeings' infinite, transcendental speed, its yoctomachines instantly filled the multiverse's fourth layer. Still only one in each reality, but that was just the beginning. They even began climbing up and down through the dimensions, ignoring the barriers that made lower realms fictional in the eyes of higher ones' inhabitants due to the Unbeings' timeless, eldritch nature. Soon, the multiverse entire spun in the eye of the Shaper's mind.
And beyond...
'You have infinite resources now,' the Xhalkhian said in a weary tone. 'Infinite worlds to dissect and study, all because the brazen risk you took paid out-you couldn't have known the extent of what you leapt into. Do you still want more?'
The Unscarred's smile wilted. 'We are not cruel. We do not want to crush and plunder. Just protect, as we have done on Earth for eons. You are one with creation-surely you can tell?'
In response, the Xhalkhian dropped its defensive posture, and gestured at the Unscarred. The Shaper understood, and sent a quantum link towards the-
Space. Time. Order. Balance. Cosmos. Tellurian.
Not a species-not anymore. Not masters of spacetime, but its limbs and minds, its essence. Even in the infinite voids where all they ruled over were dreams and fables, and the Ultimate Void that enclosed them all, the Idea of Ordered Reality stood, undaunted and mighty-
'We see...' the Shaper said, stunned, unsure if it understood, too. "We..." it shook of its daze. 'Will discuss this later, if it pleases you. Now...back to business.' It allowed a shadow of its smile to return as it looked at the telepathic alien. 'We have your lost explorer. As you understand, it was warped by chronokinetic means, but we restored its body and mind to its former state. I am sure you will be happy to reunite, and discuss what followed your aethernautical experiment-with the rest of us, perhaps?'
As it spoke, the Shaper reached into another subspace pocket, feeling Grey One tiredly but expectantly stiff in response. It opened the space, briefly reminded of those whimsical lagomorph tricks human stage magicians often played, and grasped the telepath in the Unscarred's hand.
The albino held its fist before it, then opened it, bowing.
Silence. It was the telepath who spoke first, body shining with confusion and the beginning of anger.
'Zhayvin Shaper...' it thought, bending towards the giant reptilian's empty hand. 'Surely this is a joke?'