A problem that doesn't make sense is not a problem; it is the precipice of a discovery.
A discovery is a chasm, where once you have fallen in it may be impossible to climb back out.
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It was not for the first time that Mazorah bent the fourth finger on his right hand, completing the rune in his mind to indicate the gathering of power should begin. It was not, in fact, the hundredth, the thousandth, or even the ten thousandth time he had done so. However, today at dawn, his first attempt of the new day, was different. Mazorah's sleep-deprived brain took a few extra moments to catch up to reality, finally noticing the change a full two seconds after it had occurred. He had made a connection somehow. His mind expanded, allowing him to sense something he could only describe as 'essence'. It flowed through him, circulating through the veins in his body and keeping him alive. A constant thrumming kept things moving at all times. And within the thrumming was a deeper sound, like the tide of the great seas coming and going. A tide of essence, undulating through everything for as far a Mazorah could comprehend.
Mazorah was unsure what to do next. His experiments up until this point had been unsuccessful. The other members of his long-lived race had long left him to his 'madness'. "It isn't madness if you're right, is it," Mazorah wondered aloud, "or, perhaps it still is, depending on who you ask." He held his hand up, watching the flow of essence beneath his skin. Perhaps watching was the wrong word, but he felt that he could see it there. It was like waving his hand in front of his face in pitch black darkness; he still felt like he could see his hand moving there. He wondered if he should relax his hand and un-bend his fourth finger, but worried that perhaps it would end the sensation and he would never be able to get it back.
After a few moments of consideration, Mazorah relaxed his hand. "It is likely this will be reproducible if it is not a hallucination due to my lack of sleep," he rationalized out loud. "This is not due to fear of the unknown, but due to prudence. If I have truly discovered a method for convergence, caution is absolutely necessary." Mazorah felt better after explaining his actions to his nonexistent audience, but he soon realized a problem. He could still sense the flow of the essence. In fact, he could more than sense it; he could sense that it was flowing towards him. Into him. It had only been a few moments, but Mazorah realized the crux of the issue: he had never devised a way to stop the gathering of power. As he'd never succeeded in proving the existence of the underlying essence of creation, he'd never thought of the consequences of a sudden groundbreaking success. "Stop!" He commanded. Nothing happened. Mazorah bent his fourth finger again, trying to form different runes he'd been devising during his attempts. Nothing. He modified runes, tried different fingers. The essence kept flowing.
It was as though he were sitting in a lake that was slowly draining with no way of stopping it. Except that hypothetical lake was slowly draining into him. Mazorah knew that there was only a tiny amount of essence circulating through his body and that gathering a little more shouldn't cause him harm, but this wasn't a little more... This was a lot more. In fact, Mazorah realized that it was more than he could comprehend. Even the essence on the horizon of his perception seemed to be slowly moving towards him. In fact, he could see tiny clear lines of it flowing towards him now in waves, "wait, clear? I can see clear things now?" Mazorah's mind raced. He tried dozens of things to no avail. He was beginning to panic. Suddenly he heard a popping sound in his ears, then everything went white.
...
Mazorah awoke at night, squashed into the ground as though he'd gained more weight. He tried to stand and realized he'd grown larger. Significantly larger. He was unable to lift himself fully, and his headache was incredibly insistent. He stared at the stars and moons above him, blinking rapidly and attempting to calm the pain in his obviously forsaken skull. Realizing he still hadn't figured out a way to cease gathering essence, Mazorah tried devising a rune to expel it. In his mind he created a symbol of power that looped around itself yet was connected to a greater symbol which would allow him to eject some power. Absently he noticed that even through the headache he was able to clearly develop runes... It was as though his understanding of the essence was increasing the more he gathered it.
Mazorah took his first and second finger and put their tips together, then stuck his other fingers straight out together. With his enlarged hand it almost looked like a small finger blade with a strange loop at the end. That in mind, Mazorah made a small slashing motion through the air with his arm. A deafening boom sounded as Mazorah's arm ripped earth, sky, and beyond from existence. A black void was all that remained in the swath of area where Mazorah had slashed. Mazorah realized he had underestimated the extent of the situation. Staring at the sky, he could see that the moon now had a gash through it; an open wound on reality that was a void for as far as he could see. Even the stars that had been there were gone. With a whooshing feeling, Mazorah felt the essence he had expelled come flooding back with exponentially more energy than it had left with. He spit out a few words that he couldn't hear (due to the aforementioned deafening boom), but despite the lack of hearing he was quite sure he'd let out a few particularly nasty expletives. As he felt the impact of the essence crushing him, Mazorah saw that even the dirt and plants nearby were being attracted to him. He once again lost consciousness as something slammed his face into the ground from behind.
...
Mazorah woke in darkness and pain. He could no longer move or even breathe as he was crushed by the universe around him. Before being submerged by the force, he had curled up to protect his head. Perhaps this was the reason he was still himself. However, he suspected even this would not be for much longer. In fact, he hoped that was the case. Even without a functioning body the essence he constantly absorbed continued augmenting him and sustaining him, which created a vicious cycle where a wave of essence led to consumption, followed by the pain of the physical universe crushing into him, followed by hunger, and then another wave of essence would arrive to start the cycle again. Inside the ocean of pain, Mazorah waited for the end.
Yet, the end seemed unwilling to come. In fact, as his sensation of pain dulled and the power flowed through him, Mazorah realized with horror that the end might not come. He considered this, and as the pain faded further into the recesses of his mind he could tell that the energy he was gathering would simply continue gathering to the point of a massive explosion. He suspected that even this wouldn't be the end, as the power would explode out and then again try to return to him. Mazorah determined he must find a way to break the cycle, and in order to do that he would need to destroy himself and sever the connection he had with the power. If it would let him. Upon further reflection, he doubted it would let him.
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In lieu of the peaceful surrender death could have provided, Mazorah sought an alternative. He began crafting a rune to represent himself, one that he would attempt to transfer 'himself' to. Once he filled the rune with essence, perhaps it would be able to house his consciousness and allow him to escape the never-ending consumption of essence.
Time passed. Perhaps days, months, maybe years. There was no meaning to time where he existed. It was like sitting at a beach and watching the waves come in one after another, from all directions. Only the next wave existed, followed by the next. He could look into the ocean and see the vast incredible waves of essence coming from a distance and could perceive no end to them. Ah, he'd forgotten the rune again. He should keep working on that. Mazorah drew it once again in his mind, a loop in the middle of an infinity symbol. He'd finally come to the conclusion that he needed something simple after his many failures, but ideally wanted the essence to exist separately from himself. In his concept, the power would travel in an infinite loop, and he would contain himself with the loop inside of the infinity symbol. As long as his loop was too small to fall out, he would be tied together with the essence and also separate.
As Mazorah funneled the essence into the infinity symbol, it quickly became full. Mazorah puzzled over this for some time and eventually used the essence to reinforce the symbol so he could shove more in. It appeared possible to condense the essence, but he was unsure how far he could take that concept. For now it held. Mazorah took the shards of essence that he understood to be 'him' and put them into the loop, putting things into the loop as rings. He took abstract concepts from himself as shards that he thought of as personality, identity, memories, experiences, beliefs, hopes, dreams, emotions and finally thoughts. With the last shard, he disappeared.
...
How long had it been awake? Unable to recall anything, it was suddenly conscious. It had been there, observing the flow of power into it for as long as it could remember. Sometimes it would play with the language it had created to shape the power, at other times it would simply remain still. To be fair, it was always 'still'; there was nothing to move aside from the power. It vaguely sensed that it should be able to do more things, but that would be extremely tedious. It considered, and after some time gave up. Later, as it observed itself, it could feel the infinite nature of essence looping around forever. Always moving, always consuming more, and yet somewhere in the middle seemed to be a point of interest. Now that it had noticed the difference, it prodded at it. There were rings of essence around a loop that was separated from it and yet not. Perhaps it could try and pull those rings into itself? It tried once, and pulled a ring. Eventually it pulled hard enough and the ring shattered. Unperturbed, it tried again. Another failure. There were fewer rings now, but still many. It tried again and again, attempting different methods until there were not many left.
On this attempt, instead of attempting to take a ring, it gave a ring essence. This appeared to be marginally successful, as the ring glowed and did not shatter. In fact, the tactic appeared to have worked considerably well. Perhaps the loop and rings were meant to be separate from the body of power, to allow a vessel that was not bound by the consumption of essence? This seemed likely. It empowered another shard and considered the new information. He was Mazorah, whatever that meant. Mazorah studied the loop and discovered that there were four rings on it. Two of them had been empowered, and two had not. He empowered the two remaining rings and was satisfied that he'd accomplished something in the infinite nothingness he experienced as his reality. Mazorah observed the flow of power for an indefinite amount of time, wondering where it came from and why it came in waves instead of as a stream.
And then, at some point, the waves ceased. The essence still flowed around in waves inside the infinite loop, but nothing new entered. Mazorah tried infusing a few different runes with essence, but was unable to find any trace of anything outside of his experience of reality. Everything was void and darkness, aside from his loop.
Eventually he gave up.
Then, in the nothingness, he felt a thrum. A beat, a constant, never-ending pulse that seemed to undercurrent the waves inside of his essence. Mazorah considered the thrum and became absorbed in it. He determined that during the gaps between, he could exert some kind of influence. He took that influence and attempted to use it to widen the gaps. Suddenly, with a ripping feeling, Mazorah experienced an incredible thing: light. He flew through a black nothingness, but in the distance in all directions he could see points of light. Observing behind himself revealed only a slightly darker rip, a void even darker than the nothingness he flew through now. Time passed, but it was not as meaningless as before. Mazorah flew past many points of light and even through a few. Massive balls of plasma with cores of incredibly dense materials meant nothing to him, as he was composed entirely of an endless amount of essence. But they were interesting to look at.
Mazorah observed that this place had its own thrum, slightly different from his own. He could also sense that certain massive rocks orbiting the balls of light contained greater concentrations of essence than others. Eventually Mazorah devised a method to observe the rocks one at a time, which greatly aided his ability to entertain himself. Some of the rocks had creatures on them, but most were entirely devoid of life. Then he noticed a massive rock in the distance. It was like a flat wall, spanning the entire length of the universe. On the surface of that rock were many forms of life, many of which had formed entire civilizations. There were parts of that plane covered in ice, parts in water, parts in mountains, and parts in valleys. Mazorah could not even observe the entire thing because of its size and scope. Gradually, Mazorah realized that he was being attracted towards that massive rock. The trajectory of his flight would eventually reach there, after all, since it appeared to span to the edge of the universe.
As he got closer and closer to the place, he observed the creatures on it. A particular one resonated with him, a bi-pedal with soft skin and vessels which contained minor amounts of essence, pumped around its body by a central object that connected to all the vessels. Mazorah observed that creature for some time, until eventually it ceased its circulation of essence and faded back into the earth it lived upon. He found another one, and another, and they all followed the same trajectory. Mazorah was saddened each time one stopped circulating, since it would take him some time to find a new one to observe.
...
Eventually, Mazorah neared the wall at the edge of the universe. Even in his incorporeal form of existence, he could feel the resistance of the giant mass of land, as though it wanted to expel him or burn him before he could reach it. Mazorah created a rock around himself with essence, which shielded him from the effects. Eventually he felt himself stop. Upon observation, the land around where he had landed had been torn apart and he had created a large tear across it. Oops?
Mazorah was able to observe the bi-pedal creatures he liked far better now. In fact, he could even make out their language through the vibrations they made. Slowly, over a couple of lifetimes he became able to understand them instinctively. Upon studying one, he realized that they had something he lacked; the ability to recall their experiences. This allowed them to build upon their knowledge and enact long-term strategies for things as simple as gathering the food and water that sustained them. Mazorah began building himself a body, mimicking their internal organs and the general structure of their bodies. When it came to the complex organ in their heads, Mazorah took extra time, attaching his essence rings to certain parts of it. As he tied one ring after another to the body he finally considered the last ring. He believed that upon putting this last ring on the body his consciousness would enter it. And then he did it.