Chapter 66
Adjoined as One
Asher stared in silence, his mind swirling in a cacophony of thoughts.
This was all beyond him, he realized. He was just a tiny little thing, an ordinary human, a pithy intruder into a story of cosmic implications. The word ‘Godhood’ echoed out like thunder, shaking him to his very core.
It was easy, within this world, to toss out labels of deities left, right, and center. After all, it seemed that every single new entity he met was stronger and grander than the last. He hated it, abhorred it, defied it until his blood boiled that he was so partly insignificant... but time and again, he found himself accursed with more and more knowledge.
And here he yet stood, all but shriveled up, having just learned there was such thing as a God in this world. Not everyone was besotted with the same magic, and not everyone was endowed with strength. Some creatures, alien to life and death, stood above and beyond, luminous eyes observing the depressing world below. And he was being asked to do something by one such creature.
What did it mean to ascend to Godhood? Asher couldn't even begin to fathom. To him, even the concept of just dragging him here, into this world, alongside thousands of other people, was godlike. Creating this 'game' within the world, assorting everything within the focus of things they understood, and temporarily giving them the ability to wield magic as though they always could... all of that was godlike. No, perhaps even more than that.
And yet, the creature standing in front of him referred to the very beings who’d done all that as ‘children’. And that was all before assuming the mantle of Godhood. If the man was not a God yet...
“It is not something your mind can comprehend,” the man, seemingly well aware of Asher’s conundrum, spoke. “Don’t misunderstand, however. It is not because you are somehow lesser, or that deeply insignificant. It is just that you are at the beginning of your journey.”
“At... the beginning?”
"Everything begins with the wilted mote of a thought," the man said as the world around began to spin--it terraformed into an apocalyptic scene where meteors rained from the sky and where the tsunamis hundreds of feet tall crashed against the barren shores. "We did not come unto this world with the ability to mold to our desires. We, too, were once but tiny, invisible specs. And those specs became living, breathing creatures. And then animals. And with time, the first thought was born," the world spun with the crescendo of words, inking every stage of evolution. "Even when we became attuned to Mana, we were children. We stumbled through the dark, crawling on our knees until we could do anything.
“Gods, here, are not eons old, and certainly not older than this world. Rather, they are young. Very young, comparatively speaking. They all came from the roots of nothing, struggling to ascend the steep, tall steps of Godhood. Just like you are now. Taking first steps on a journey that would go on forever.”
“Right,” Asher chuckled. “I’m sure an ordinary human can become a God. And would be accepted by others.”
“You shall understand, one day,” the man said, smiling faintly as the world reverted back to the side of the turbid cliff. “Until that day, however, I must beg of you an accord.” colors blurred for a moment and, a brief flash of light later, the man divested into two once more. The young woman stood by his side, unblemished once more, beautiful beyond make. “Could you home her as your thought-kin?”
“Uh--what?” Asher exclaimed in confusion.
"I shall sever myself of her," the man said. "Divest that last vestige binding me to the mortal coil. But if I do so... her soul will drift endlessly, forever caught at the precipice of life and death. She would not die, the voice of Death disallowing; and she would not live. She'd become an invisible mist, cast adrift among the stars."
"... as far as the afterlife goes, drifting among the stars doesn't sound too bad." Asher said.
“It is awfully lonely there, however,” the man said. “A voiceless soul desultory in the silent void until the end of Light. In you, at least, she would have a home. An anchor.”
"--wouldn't Death or whatever just pass on the curse on me, too, in that case?" Asher asked. The truth was that it was pointless--in the end if the man wanted to do it, there was nary a thing Asher could do to resist.
“No,” the man said. “You wouldn’t be the armor to shield her from pain.”
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
“So she would suffer?”
“No.”
“Wow. Talk about fucking convoluted.”
“She would simply be a voice in your mind,” he said. “And your eyes would be her eyes. Your ears would be her ears. Your world would be her world.”
“You do realize how terrifying that actually sounds, right? I mean, just my voice in my head was nearly enough to drive me mad, and now you’re suggesting I get another one--that of a woman who, mind you, doesn’t look remotely happy. Did you seal her lips or something?”
“...”
“Wow. You actually did. Yeah. I’m pretty sure if I ‘take her in’, she’d spend her life screaming into my brain until she becomes like an inch in the depths of my skull that will force me to take a hammer to it just so I can scratch it. Or, you know, take a fork through my eyeballs and go that way.”
“Unto life cometh Death,” the man said as the winds suddenly picked up and Asher felt his heart and soul stir in unison. “By the tears of bereaved, know thy Light.” a trace of dancing light emerged from the depths of the phantomed skies. “Whomst thou freed from their bonds? Whomst thou taken in spirited grace?” the trace of dancing light in the sky grew until it became a thin yet tout thread and it began to descend toward the cliff. “Be not quiet in the deathless night; quaint and aghast; in thine arms let her rest.”
"..." The thread fell like a cleaving blade between the two--colors and shapes burst and blurred in a crescendo of destruction and creation, swirls of energy tangling and dancing like threads of biogenesis. In them, Asher saw everything--the beginning and the end and the heralding between all coalescing, becoming one. And he saw them untangle and tear at the seams, and he saw them explode into innumerable things.
The fabric of everything spun about like the spiderwebs, reality twisting and contorting and burgeoning into an unnatural bloom.
All swelled and aggrandized into the scope beyond comprehension; within that mildew etching of creation, reality abounded, dimensions serpentine quelled the undulating voices.
Asher was lost.
He was voiceless.
Mindless.
Thoughtless.
Breathless.
He felt pulled into the vapors of creation, destroyed from within and without until he was a fleeting yearning, the last, pulsating desire of his entire self. And it drifted aimlessly through the vastly nothing, silence the shower of damnation.
And he felt himself stretched and yawed toward all and nothing, tossed and hurled until he had been everywhere and nowhere.
There was light all around--beautiful and warm, it embraced him like a pair of mother’s arms. They held him tenderly and he felt safe within their grasp for the first time in decades. He closed his eyes and let himself yearn, let himself desire, let himself greed for the finality of peace. A lifetime of paranoia, a lifetime of fears, a lifetime of terrors and horrors all faded... and he was at peace.
When he opened his eyes, the man was gone. The lights were gone. The cosmic crescendo was gone. The universe’s symphony had ended. There was no warmth any longer, just lingering cold and the biting winds blowing past him.
Opposite of him, a young woman stood, her snow-white hair fluttering in the wind. Her face was bared to him, the pair of impossibly constructed eyes staring back unblinking, the silence between them like a falling anvil.
“... can you talk now?” Asher asked, breaking it.
“I can.” the woman replied, her voice a melody. It was dangerous... yet not, at the same time. Though Asher could make neither the head nor the tail of what he had experienced just a few moments before, he felt that it had helped him quell his heart--he no longer felt cosmically compelled by her visage, and though he was still short of breath... it was bearable.
“Where is he? Your dad, I mean?” Asher asked.
“Everywhere,” she replied.
“...”
“...”
“You ain’t much of a--”
“Find the Crucible’s Bell,” she interrupted.
“... uh, what?”
“Once rung,” she continued. “It disenchants the mortal shells, undoing what was cast into the immemorial.”
“In other words...?”
“It will kill me.”
“Oh.”
“Once and for all.”
“Right. And I’m guessing I won’t find it just down the street, huh?”
“It is the Emporium’s most hallowed treasure,” she said.
“Wow.”
“I will help you until then,” she said. “But only if you promise me that you will at least try.”
“... do you really want to die that much?” Asher asked.
“I already am dead," she said. "Or do you consider this a life worth living? A divested attachment of someone too cowardly to let go of his sins so much that he would imprison me inside the mind of a human. All because he could not let go. I am not living... I am simply alive."
“Right. Yeah. Uh, I--I can try. But you said it yourself. I’m just a human. I’m as far away from being able to--”
“I know. Chances are, you will die.”
“Encouraging. And, uh, what will happen to you?”
"... I'll be brought back here," she said. "My soul forever chained to this hell. He made this choice for both of us. So, struggle to free yourself from me, lest my rot infect your soul too."
Before Asher could say another word, she disappeared and the world began to crumble like the edge of a cliff, rocks stumbling. Within moments, the darkness was compressed into the mote of light and he found himself back in the cabin, as though none of it happened at all. But... he knew that it did.
In the depths of his mind, he felt her. She was silent, wholly disengaged--as though in a coma--but she was there. A part of him. Two minds in one shell, adjoined against their will, bound for life neither wanted. In a strange, macabre way... he saw himself a little in her.
After all, even she, someone born into seemingly perfect circumstances, was so young bereft of joy and light... and when another in such a life would have simply died, their mistake a lesson to future generations, she was forced to live and endure in the rot, a compressed yearning of someone else entirely. Had he fully let go of her, she would have died. And yet... he couldn't. Because of his greed, she suffered still, caged in the prison she could neither escape nor die within.
Only, now that prison was him. And there was a way to die... even if distant and incomprehensibly impossible. But Asher understood the stupidity of hope--the ultimate denial of reality. He’d lived it, after all. In some ways, he was still living it... just as she was. In deep, eroding silence besotted with lies.