Gaius Antonius Omake #77: The Transcendent One
"Why did you betray me, beautiful caves? How could you swallow me up, when I was so close?"
The heat and the sand and the sun answered Gaius' pleading with dispassionate ambiance. Not total silence; the whistling of the wind over the dunes was infrequent, but cut in just often enough to not be ignored. The crunching of the sediment beneath his feet grated on his mind, the constant repetition turning sound into something crueler, some wicked vibration which shook his teeth and jiggled his organs. Indifference, in its own way, was crueler than malice.
After one hundred and fifty years, Gaius began dreaming. Unable to sleep, his mind simply conjured images and sensations of its own volition, providing new stimulus with which to feed his soul. It was a pale shadow of reality, but it would do.
Gaius would go on to live countless lives, great and small, within his own delusions. Sometimes he was a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes something else. Sometimes he was a human, and sometimes an animal. Sometimes he was a god, and sometimes a peasant.
One particular dream lasted multiple years, an age-spanning epic in which he was born prior to the Turtle Child's death, when the Clan's decline was less severe and the people of the Third Sea took the abundance of qi for granted. He lived a life of overflowing greatness, rising through the ranks, vanquishing untold hordes of barbaric enemies and progressing through cultivation as if he were swimming in a gentle oasis. Entering Spirit Severing in just over a single millennium, Gaius took command of the entire Clan, fighting ever-more-intense wars to claw back every scrap of territory he could.
Fighting only for the nation, spitefully clinging to life amidst a world that, perhaps rightfully, hated their existence, Gaius cast aside all notions of personal enlightenment and fulfillment in the name of the greater good, no matter what sorrows came his way. It goes without saying, then, that he died a miserable death - eventually, one of those constant battles took his life, and there was nothing more to be said. Another Spirit Severing successor took his place, and the gears of history turned on, crushing the life of even the greatest legends into dust between the spokes, given enough time.
Shaking off the vision, Gaius felt no particular attachment - a pale figment, nothing more. A virtuous life, a glorious death, there was something a little hollow in it all, some emptiness which made his blood recoil as if from an icy wind.
Another long dream was a far quainter one - he was someone who could be anyone, a man so common, it was like he was minted as one of a set. Some mass produced rabble, fit only to live in the support of his betters and fortunate to live under the reign of relatively benevolent ones. By the passing whim of a Cultivator, he was granted a treasure of relatively unimpressive grade in exchange for a helpful deed. Its energies vitalized his internal organs enough to allow for a degree of cultivation, and without the means to enter his local sect, Gaius took off on his own.
He joined a band of wandering Cultivators, the type of adventuring group which might one day put down roots and become a tiny sect, should they strike a big enough payday. Far from a hero, Gaius was more of a menial laborer, being the weakest of this band for many years, but he was treated well enough. Raiding ancient tombs, solving supernatural problems, selling their services as mercenaries, this group slowly grew in prominence. When they really did formally establish themselves, Gaius' once-meager cultivation had advanced enough to admit him into what could charitably be called an Inner Sect.
He never reached Foundation, or even the Ninth Heavenstage, but the last eighty years of Gaius' life were lived in relative comfort, and he started a large family which he grew to love. That was about it; no more big adventures or terrifying wars. A lucky man for having avoided the immense suffering that plagued so many lives, this unimportant figure passed away peacefully, surrounded by loved ones.
Far from entranced and enlightened by the simple, peaceful life offered by this delusion, Gaius was disgusted. Nothing unseemly had happened, but the very thought of being so ordinary, so
tethered to the faceless masses of the world, made his bile seethe and rise. An irrational reaction, perhaps, but nothing about him could be said to be rational any longer. All such notions had been burnt away, in favor of whatever mechanisms would further his survival.
Yet another notable dream had him as a vengeful brute. A Cultivator of decent talent but no notable renown, Gaius lost everything to a stray Core Formation attack, which blew his ancestral estate to smithereens alongside his family. Enraged, he fell to the Blood Path in search of the strength needed to strike down the one responsible. Thousands fell to his predations, his hunting and feasting growing ever more debauched and desperate as his strength grew.
The stakes got higher, and in the span of two centuries he went from a loose Cultivator, to a mercenary leader, to the Patriarch of a new sect. Somewhere along the way, Gaius began to forget why the blood was spilled in the first place, until the pressures of his position became reason enough to keep it all going. When the Cultivator who killed his family finally fell by his hand, very little joy was felt; just a vague sense of satisfaction. Two years later, a subordinate ate Gaius and took his place as the Patriarch.
Gaius again felt unsatisfied, but for different reasons. Carrying on for its own sake, because you forgot what you were doing it all for; such weak-mindedness was the signature of the Blood Path. Able to ascend through sheer quantity of energy consumed, rather than face a tribulation, they lacked faith in the Dao - they weren't human beings anymore. Over and over, Gaius repeated this fundamental difference to himself; he was not like that foolish warlord, because he carried on for a reason.
Glorious or ordinary, long or short, happy or tragic, every delusion was a fleeting thing at heart; fire the same neuron pathways enough times and in the right order, and a dream is born. No dream can truly enrich a man, or so Gaius came to accept. It was all shallow entertainment, and listless dozing would not bring enlightenment, not as he was now.
He did not stop training, of course, but the dreams soothed his mind, helping him cling to sanity in the doldrum. In this desert-of-nowhere, training and walking were the only physical actions available to Gaius anymore. He trained and walked until his stamina was spent, then sat down to dream as he recovered - such was how he lived.
His clothes were gone, had been gone for longer than he could recall - cruelly, though he needed no food, the sensation of his empty stomach had tormented him with hunger pains, in the early decades. He had stripped all the leather out of his clothes and eaten it by the ten-year mark. After another ten years, he had even chewed the cloth to mush, desiring to at least put something in his mouth to dull the pain of hunger.
Nude, haggard, utterly without stimulation, Gaius wandered the desert without end, praying for salvation.
After three hundred years, there was increasingly little novelty to be had in dreaming. Every thought or image Gaius' brain could fathom had been exhausted, though not nearly all the combinations. Endless pains and pleasures had been simulated, born from every kind of experience he could extrapolate or conceptualize. He was so very bored.
Without thought or contemplation, he began to mark his own flesh, scratching at his skin with long, dirty fingernails until it bled, to induce some kind of signal or activity in his brain. No dream could ever fully live up to reality, and if the desert would not give Gaius earthly pleasures, then perhaps some pain would help. It took the edge off, just a little bit, and "just a little" was all he needed to stay alive. He healed quickly, of course, as was the nature of the Men of Bronze.
It would end one day, thought Gaius, carving furrows into his chest until he grew lightheaded. This convalescence would end, and Gaius would be released into his rightful place in this world, and any thoughts to the contrary were not to be considered.
After four hundred years, Gaius had mastered every technique he knew to the highest possible extent. He had invented many more, through sheer trial and error, though without anything real to practice on, he could only hypothesize their effectiveness. Perhaps he had grown stronger - it felt more like he'd worn holes in his brain and his channels.
He no longer trained, save for when the boredom pressed too heavily on his mind, as there was simply no further improvement to be gained through rote repetition - at least, not in the techniques he already knew. Instead, he experimented; wildly moving his qi about this way and that, in manners he imagined prehistoric Cultivators must have done before the invention of writing. Rhythm, intensity, concentration, alignment, casting speed, it was entirely random, endless possibilities brought forth in a sort of brute force codebreaking.
Sometimes, perhaps one in tens of thousands of attempts, the arbitrary combinations yielded something useful, something which could, after a period of refinement, be called a "new technique". Usually, Gaius simply blew his qi out in useless sparks, or injured himself. All outcomes were equally welcome; it was the uncertainty which mattered. Every scrap of new stimulation was to be harvested, so that he might cling to life a little bit longer. Any useful technique born from this chaos, he trained for endless, countless hours, gaining a fleeting semblance of meaning from his continued self-improvement.
When Gaius did not experiment, he went back to dreaming, or even experimented and dreamed at the same time, pouring random concoctions of his own qi into his brain or soul to induce new sensations. Never enough to destroy either, of course, in case of a volatile reaction. The fact that doing such a thing would be an act of utmost simplicity was a thought The Seeker did his best to seal away.
Scylla was still alive, stubbornly, through it all. At some point in all this stillness, Gaius had put together that her signal was not static, or at least, not entirely. It was just very, very slow. Had she been slowed down, or he sped up? Was there a difference, physically or philosophically speaking? There was no way to tell how great the difference in time was, but the fact that time was moving in relation to himself provided another ray of hope, to which he viciously clung like a jealous lover.
After five hundred years, Gaius still did not wish for death.
He had contemplated suicide many times, more than he could count, but each time the same conclusion had arrived:
'I want to stay'. The thought of something new,
anything new, made The Seeker choose life, even though he had no way of knowing when it would all end.
He was old. So very old. His filthy hair dragged across the ground behind him, leaving grooved in the sand as if a comb had been run through it. His beard swayed with every step, brushing against his chest and his knees. Physically, Gaius was every bit the same beneath all this hair, if about as haggard as he could possibly get, but his mind and soul felt ancient and decrepit. It was as if he were all dried up, ready to turn to dust at any moment, and yet his sense of self remained. Somehow, his ego was alive.
Suddenly, a change. Unfathomable to his mind by this point, a real, physical change made itself known to The Seeker.
It was felt before it was seen, a vibration in the sand. In a small area before his eyes, it rippled in steady waves, the tightly-packed grains disincorporating from one another and flowing like water before Gaius. He stopped his zombie-like tread, staring uncomprehendingly at the sight. A new dream, then - very well, he would bear witness to some new delusion today.
From the ripples came bone - a skeletal hand, pristine and white despite being buried, stretched out from the sand, fist clenched. Little by little, nerves, veins and arteries knit themselves into being from nothing, a gruesome yet entrancing sight. Taut, springy tendons and vivid red sinew followed, glistening with life. Deposits of fat came after that, the deep yellow contrasting the red and white. Finally, skin, weather-beaten and sun-kissed, wrapped itself about the limb layer by layer.
Gaius wordlessly stared, transfixed, as the fingers opened, revealing a white-red light, which floated up to eye level. No, not just a light, there was some kind of shape here. Was that a written character?
攀
There was something there, wasn't it? Surely it was just another dream but… what if?
The character floated there, unmoving, before Gaius' eyes, which he struggled to adjust. How long had it been, since he had read anything? He could scarcely remember some characters. In hallucinations, when he read, the words simply made themselves known to him, as such things do in dreams.
攀
What did it mean? This character, it meant something, it was a message! Language meant communication, it meant civilization, so what did it mean!?
He clutched the little red light in his hands, not too tight or too loose, as if he were holding a kitten, and sunk to his knees. It could not be said how long he stared uncomprehendingly into his hands, his sense of time having long since been obliterated by the void of sand and light. Perhaps he had always been looking, since the beginning of time.
攀
"C…climb?"
The voice which emerged from his dried-up throat surprised even him. How long had he gone without speaking, to sound this way? To his addled brain, this character was like a nest of centipedes writhing and crawling over one another, chaotic and barely comprehensible. Gaius cleared his throat.
"Climb? S… Scramble? No…"
Gaius' heartbeat grew faster and faster, like a ritual drum signaling armageddon. His blood, no longer the mere heart-blood of a human, roiled, churned and expanded. From every pore, it emerged - red mist, like the mist which bound his dagger, back in the Waking Age. It swirled, kicking up the sand and alighting Gaius' thoughts. His awareness expanded in an instant, larger and sharper than ever before. The correct word escaped his lips, no louder than a whisper.
"Ascend?"
For just a moment, the roiling mist wrapping around The Seeker's body seemed almost loving, like the embrace of a mother or a lover. Perhaps something, somewhere, was grateful and proud of Gaius, for having endured with mind and soul intact.
As abruptly as he had arrived a whole age prior, Gaius left the desert, though the desert would never leave him.
—-
Buried beneath the beautiful spires of the Palace of Frozen Memories, workers bustled this way and that, preparing for the next stage of yet another experiment. The day had come for the Wall Breaking Miracle to open, after an entire week of continuous activity. Medical equipment of all kinds had been stocked up nearby to treat any of the myriad side-effects that might avail the patient.
Before the steel doors, Shi Jiang watched closely, alongside Chen Jinhua and a motley gathering of other figures. Several physicians stood at the ready, as did several Arraysmiths and even a pair of Soul Artists - such was the authority invested in the Time Shatter Sect's mightiest Foundation Expert, and such were the resources afforded to his monumental investigation. Garbed in thick, unflattering gray clothes warded in all sorts of anti-curse protections, the group stood in silence as the humming of mechanisms began to die down.
"All arrays are powering down!" A worker reported. "Ten minutes until complete deactivation!"
"Bit quick to ease him out that fast, isn't it?" Shi Jiang asked, glancing down at the woman by his side.
"There's not much we can do to shut down the forced cycling peacefully." She explained succinctly. "That particular array operates entirely in binary - 'half' a cycling rhythm can be a dangerous thing, after all. Ten minutes to thin out the qi, followed by a shutdown of the cycling."
"And then we go in." Shi Jiang noted quietly, dreading what might be on the other side of that door. Depending on what he saw, he could find either a major breakthrough on his research, a totally useless corpse, or some strange combination of the two. After all, spiritual autopsy was still of some use, though a live specimen could much more easily answer questions.
"Come on, princeling, pull through for me."
—-
It was instantaneous, more or less. At no point in the transition did notice some moment where an immediate change or transportation overtook him; he merely walked out of the cloud of bloody mist to find himself in an unfamiliar locale. An aisle, perhaps, or maybe a feasting hall - too wide, in any case, to not be something important.
"We have waited. So long, we have waited." An unfamiliar voice purred joyfully, just as Gaius was disgorged. It came, seemingly, from everywhere and nowhere, piercing through the delirium which shrouded his brain.
Staggering like a baby taking its first steps, Gaius felt an unfamiliar cold floor beneath his bare, calloused feet. Smooth, pristine marble, dyed in all manner of colors, spread out endlessly beneath him, forming a mural of awe-inspiring complexity. Off to either side, great walls rose high into the sky, thousands of feet up, beautiful artwork carved into every inch, until it became overwhelming to the senses. Upon the ceiling was yet more art, meaning there was no direction one could look without seeing something beautiful.
And standing in front of each wall, one every six feet, were demons, arrayed in perfect formation.
Chaotic in form, flesh and fur and steel and gold all knitted together this way and that, they draped their frightful forms in tasteful finery. To understand them was futility itself; their bodies had no common element, save for the oppressive feeling of strength. One had no visible body, only an endless cascading kaleidoscope of claw-tipped, membranous wings. Another was almost entirely red and silver steel, broken up at the hinges with flesh which bulged out like bubbling candle wax. Yet another a scaly thing shaped like an ape and covered in barbs, and bore a single eye upon an otherwise featureless head.
Swallowing down his confusion and anxiety, Gaius began to make his way down the hall. Whoever was speaking, they had to be skilled, because he still couldn't tell where they were.
"Your time has come to take the stage, O mighty King. We see you have arrived in your most splendid finery."
As Gaius walked, the demons cast their gaze downward, kneeling (or sprawling, or melting, or splaying) as he passed, two at a time. His feet found comfort and warmth as his skin met the soft fibers of a fine carpet. Rolled out for what seemed like miles, the amber-colored upholstery kindly drew a path for The Seeker, leading to a massive, imposing gate. With growing purpose, Gaius walked, casting off the fog of ages bit by bit and regaining the arrogant stride of a proper King.
Above the gate was a great archway, upon which sat nine sconces, of which only two burned, casting a flickering blood-red light upon the colossal door. As Gaius approached yet further, the gate came further into focus, revealing itself to not be two austere slabs, but an unfathomable mass of interlocking mechanisms, brass circles ready to push and pull and rotate with seemingly no pattern. With one shaking hand, he reached out, fingers brushing up against a cold brass disc, polished so finely as to perfectly reflect his visage, disheveled but undiminished.
At The Seeker's unspoken command, these arcane mechanisms began to move, churning and chittering within as they bade the sea of sharp little parts to part, just a little bit at the base, creating an opening just wide enough for one man to pass through comfortably. The eeriest part was the sheer quietness of the movement; a steady, harmonious whirr as every part worked perfectly, not a single groan or squeak to be heard. Two steps, and Gaius was halfway through the opening… and then, for reasons he couldn't quite name, he paused and looked back.
That moment, caught between two breaths, felt endless. A deep chill pierced through Gaius as the demons, who kneeled before, now stood and stared as one, eyes(and lack of eyes) affixed on him. They watched and waited, countless unfathomable consciousnesses judging his every thought and motion. It was in that momentary hesitation that the voice from before, still with no clear origin, spoke up.
"Best not to stop, Your Majesty. You would not want to make a bad impression on your subjects, yes?"
"...yes, indeed." Gaius muttered, turning away from the great hall and traversing through the gates without another glance back.
A dark, cold night greeted him, a single small balcony being the only thing of human construction to greet him. Beneath, the sea roared and crashed. Ever shifting and foaming, the blue waves seemed almost black with no sun to illuminate them. Never in his life had Gaius seen such deep water - he didn't even know how it felt, to see water and not know where the bottom lay.
He stepped farther out, and the gates began to groan shut behind him. Shouting over the din, the voice again called out to Gaius. "We shall give you some privacy now, my lord. Please, converse with yourself to your liking." Before any response could be spoken, the gates shut, leaving him well and truly alone again.
Gaius knew, from books and artwork and jade recordings, what seas and oceans looked like, but what he had not understood was what they
sounded like. The wind spurred the waves into choppy movement, producing a constant low roar, made loud through the sheer mass of the water. In such quantities, it no longer felt like a mere liquid substance, so much as one great rippling membrane, aching to swallow up whatever drew too near. So great was the scale that it seemed to call out to Gaius, begging him to let himself be crushed. As if coaxed onward by magnetic force, his feet carried him to the balcony's edge, until his toes hang over the water.
The death drive, present in all living creatures, is speculated by some to be nature's means of reducing the fear of death. This small urge to die, overpowered by the much stronger urge to live, allows us to disregard our own safety in times of crisis, rather than being ruled entirely by self-preservation. Whatever the reason for its existence, that black, seductive warmth is known to give rise to some of the deepest, most macabre ecstasy imaginable. The urge to be destroyed, to return to one's constituent soul-stuff and biomass, lurks in the deepest, quietest parts of us, waiting for our guard to drop.
When Gaius looked into the ocean, Thanatos sang to him, serenaded him with beautiful, bell-like notes. Death hooked its legs around his waist and planted soft, intimate kisses upon his mouth. Never before had The Seeker beheld a void such as this, not even in the most barren parts of the desert. It was beautiful, in its own way. Was this Heaven's clarion call, begging him to begin the ordeal and let himself be annihilated?
Gaius' face split open in a delirious grin. And people said Heaven was evil! The way he saw it, such sweetness, such a lustful, rapturous invitation could only come from a place of deep love. A love for humanity's ambition, for the succulent taste of the death drive, for the deep yearning within every person who ever lived that told them to evolve at any cost.
As the wind began to pick up further and the sea began to circle and swirl, The Seeker was grateful. Grateful to be born into the Golden Devil Clan, the greatest civilization to ever walk the Turtle World. Grateful to be born into a time of suffering and strife, where men were made great and the gameboard of history was flipped over. Grateful to be so loved by the Fates, that they would throw a heroic life to him. The sea swirled with greater and greater intensity, until it formed into a massive whirlpool which grew and deepened with every passing second.
"You want to eat me alive. You want to digest me, for being so troublesome." Gaius whispered, tears rolling down his face from the overwhelming emotion. "You can't do it - I'm a toxic little kidney stone, all you can do is writhe and scream and piss me out!" He lifted one foot, laughing joyously as he savored the moment of irreversible change, imprinting every little detail into his memory. "There is nothing, absolutely nothing, I cannot do."
And then he fell, for to be human is to fall. Giving himself wholly to his destiny, Gaius tipped forward, feet slipping from the precipice and sending his body tumbling into the vortex.
——
The first reaction of all involved was sheer, overwhelming disgust. The smell, like every terrible substance rolled into one, rushed out the door and invaded the cringing minds and bodies of every single person in the next room. A few people vomited on the spot, and others found themselves utterly stunned, overpowered by animal instinct and sheer philosophical dread.
It covered the floor, the walls, even parts of the ceiling. Thick, black impurities, gallons upon gallons, encrusted every surface, building up in thick layers on the floor. Thick drops of the fluid, viscous like mud, fell from the ceiling a few at a time, drumming a slow rhythm. Cultivators one and all, the three people in the doorway, hesitated to take even one step inside. They all knew what this was.
But… so much? That was impossible; truly impossible. Impurity of this magnitude couldn't persist inside a living human body. They would become a ghost, or a demon, or something even worse. Shi Jiang's confidence, normally so steadfast, crumbled apart at the harrowing vista. He had prepared himself for quite a few things, but not to confront such a blatant violation of nature. Swallowing hard and holding his breath, he approached the harness.
Fang Tai was entirely limp, held in the vague semblance of a meditative position by the harness, which itself had sustained damage from no doubt intense struggling. His back was a mess, the whole lower back practically one big dark bruise, the entry wounds from the acupuncture needles aggravated by the same quaking and thrashing. His hair, previously a sleek, dark black, had gone gray, was splayed about so ferociously that it seemed to defy physics.
Most jarring of all, though, were the eyes - or lack thereof. How it could have happened, Shi Jiang couldn't say, but Fang Tai's eyes had either burst or fallen out, and a mix of blood and impurity dripped from the empty sockets in a thin, steady stream.
All in all, this was the very picture of unhealth. A body in terrible disarray after a titanic ordeal. Which made it all the more shocking that the man still lived. Shallow, wheezing breaths whistled in and out of Fang Tai's mouth, still in a cycling rhythm, and in contrast to his physical state, his soul was vibrant, powerful and pure, a sign of the Twelfth Heavenstage. Despite this unprecedented, unexpected development, Fang Tai had actually lived.
Stirring slowly, the newborn man opened his mouth wider as if to speak, only for yet more black goop to surge from his mouth, lungs and stomach. He wretched and sputtered, spraying out smaller and smaller amounts of filth, until finally he could breathe more easily.
Raising his head, Fang Tai tried fruitlessly to look about with his empty eyes. "It's not there. Not there yet…" he mumbled, words slurred by a mouth full of sharp gravel, half his teeth shattered from clenching his jaw so hard.
"Don't just stand there, get him out of there!" Chen Jinhua commanded, snapping the team out of their stunned silence. Swiftly, the technicians hurried to unstrap Fang Tai, undoing the multi-layered locks which held his body fast, and he slumped into their arms the moment they were done.
All the while, he hardly reacted, still focused on trying to form coherent words. Much of it was mumbling, or strings of syllables with no clear meaning, but eventually, he managed another sentence. "I saw it, just a little bit, but it slipped past me…"
Shi Jiang's gaze grew much harder at this, approaching Fang Tai and cradling his face with both hands, holding the other man's head up and trying to keep him awake. "Saw what, Fang Tai? What did you see, something… from Gaius? Some revelation as the curse was lifted? I have to know!"
Fang Tai shook his head, back to mumbling. "No, no, no, I can't, I can't fit it together. The fate of humankind, it's pointed somewhere, it's not just random, there's something being built." He shook his head harder, splattering the gray robes of those around him with flecks of black. "It… I couldn't see it! Just the shadows, there's no depth, so I couldn't see it clearly!"
"But what
could you see, damnit!?" Shi Jiang shouted, seizing the battered body of his test subject by the shoulders and shaking him. His usual calculating look was gone, replaced by a frantic gleam at the prospect of finally getting some real answers. "That Devil put something in you, something from himself. What was Gaius Antonius telling you?"
Rather than coax him to become more pliant, this treatment served only to upset Fang Tai, sending his thoughts and words into a frenzy. "It's coming. It's coming! IT'S COMING!" Fang Tai grew more frantic, strength returning to his battered body. With a surge of effort, he broke free from the technician holding him up and stumbled a few steps, before falling to his knees in a splash of concentrated filth. He screamed from a ragged throat which had done much screaming already, electric sparks beginning to crackle on his skin. "ARMAGEDDON FALLS FROM THE SKY! NOW AND FOREVERMORE, THREE EYES PRESIDE OVER THE ECHOES OF SIN!"
The former scion collapsed into a coughing fit, flecks of blood scattering overtop the black beneath his head before mixing in. Shi Jiang subtly gestured in Fang Tai's direction, prompting two assistants to haul him to his feet and another to produce a sealed vial filled with a sedative agent. Struggling against the men holding him, Fang Tai cast his empty gaze about, searching, in some way, for a source of stability in the bedlam.
Unsealing the vial, the assistant stuck the opening right under Fang Tai's nose, prompting him to slump over, unconscious, giving Shi Jiang another good look at him. There was something wild about his bearing, something ancient, inherited from the primordial man before humans invented language. He couldn't shake the feeling that this man had, in some fashion, attained something forbidden in the wake of his ordeal.
"Don't just stand there, get a stretcher!" Jinhua commanded, sending the assistant scurrying like worker ants do her will. "Nothing's ever stable with this project, is it? Not once has an experiment gone entirely as expected."
—-
The first thing Gaius noticed as he fell was the strangeness of the air; the wind whipping his face carried the sharp taste of unrefined salt, lashing his tongue and stinging his eyes. The bite was similar to rock salt, but not entirely the same, perhaps some different chemical makeup, which struck Gaius as odd - he had never seen a body of natural saltwater, so from where was this sensation being pulled? From this minor clue, it was clear that this was more than just another dream.
The world soon vanished, replaced with a seemingly endless tunnel of water. No matter how long Gaius fell, he couldn't see any end to it, be it water or land. The spraying seafoam churned up by the vortex drenched him over time, washing the sand from his body and his hair, peeling off centuries-old layers of grime as if preparing him for a ceremony.
The dark, liquid walls took on a more firm, unyielding sort of mass, becoming something else entirely. As Gaius plummeted further down this impossible chasm, sharp spurs of bone, jutting from the walls like swords, became more and more common a sight. Where once was a vortex now was an endless throat, like some unfathomable evil worm, pulsating and oozing as if to welcome The Seeker.
Now, would could this mean? A dark, bloody, difficult path? Gaius snarled derisively; he'd survived those centuries alone, he understood such dangers well enough. And what was this, some little spook, conjured up to shake his resolve?
Pathetic.
As if in response to Gaius' arrogance, the world responded to cut down his pride; up from the darkness, they flew. Three rigid-winged machines, painted in gold and brass and bearing all manner of strange ornamentation. Propelled by cylindrical ports on their rears, they cut through the air like daggers, graceful as a dancer. The front of each vehicle curved and tapered down to a dull point, like some long-beaked tropical bird, and each bore a sculpted face near the tip.
The sound of their propulsion was like nothing Gaius had heard before, a whining which tore through the air and made their passage sound like some inhuman scream. Moving as one, they set themselves in place an equal distance from Gaius and each other, falling at the same speed as him while maintaining this formation - an incredible display of precision.
It hurt. No great agony, just a constant stinging, as the air grew more rancid, more thick with the smell of blood and taste of iron. It seemed to lash him, whipping at his exposed skin and bringing the hyper-reality of his tribulation more into focus. Gaius would scoff, if he were of the right mind to - visions, great falls, advanced machines - what did any of this have to do with ascension? What this just what he saw, as lightning assailed his body?
From the bizarre craft, barrages of metal tubes were launched, projectile weapons operating off some unfathomable mechanism. From each tube, a dozen smaller bolts were launched, issued forth from within and blasting in all directions. Propelled by mundane flames and accelerated further by some unseen mechanism, they swerved to avoid each other and turned to fall upon Gaius like a swarm of insects. Explosive shockwaves blossomed against his shield, propelling him into the wall of the fleshy tunnel.
At the moment of impact, though, Gaius caught a glimpse of something far more frightening than any unknown machine: a human face, leering with empty eyesockets. Half-embedded into the wall was some half-digested corpse, turned mostly to mush which matched the color of its surroundings. But before anything else could be discerned, the gruesome sight was far above him, and the flying ships once more assailed him. More blasting followed, light and sound overwhelming him, clouding his thoughts and threatening his inner certainty.
It wasn't just the one, Gaius realized with escalating horror. Bodies were embedded into the walls, clustered in greater numbers the farther down he fell. Many were human, but some took on other shapes; beasts, demons, and stranger things besides. Each and every one, pulverized by the consequences of ambition. Hands, claws, mandibles, branches, tentacles, and all other manner of appendages stretched out, upwards and outwards, they reached for their dreams, only to be swallowed by the chasm of flesh.
This was a throat. The throat of some infinite monster, consuming the thoughts and desires of those foolish beings that gave themselves over to passion, rather than accept the chains of reason. Gaius flung himself to the side, narrowly avoiding another blazing bolt, which struck a half-digested wolf. The beast burst into flecks of blood, which drenched Gaius' face, and he realized the true horror of this situation.
Unable to see, he was struck by another barrage, slamming him into the wall hard enough to shatter a rotten carcass and rubbing the congealed flesh all over him. He rebounded, only to strike the opposite wall, showering himself in more gore, and was hammered by several more shots, blowing the surrounding bodies apart. Thick, cold blood and chunks of assorted meat pelted The Seeker's body and held fast, weighing him down. He seemed to be falling slower now, or perhaps not at all. Or, more accurately, there was no 'falling' in this place, where up or down led to nowhere but more of the same.
What's more, it spoke to him. With the impact of every missile, the roar of the explosion vibrated the thick layers of red and brown and black, producing something melodious and terrible.
"I won't let you take it, a soulless man like you couldn't appreciate it anyway!"
"My world… my beautiful world, shattered! Give it back, you bastards!"
"Why are you doing this? Is it just for yourself?"
"What gives you more right to exist than me!?"
Was this the price of ambition? A vortex of passion, swallowing up minds and souls and leaving only chaos behind? The regretful screams of the damned grew louder and louder with every impact, complaining of their woes, of their wasted years, of the things they had done and the humanity they had thrown away. Gaius had wallowed in solitude and misery for five hundred years, released only by the mercy of the Cloud Cave, which had in some fashion decided that that was enough time. Was that truly the worst it could get? Would greater suffering fall upon him, upon his loved ones, as punishment for such an uncompromising way of life? Was he merely burning himself away, for the sake of pride?
He was afraid, he realized with a ragged gasp. How long had it been, since fear had last paralyzed him? Perhaps naively, Gaius had believed himself free of such animal impulses after so many years of building his resolve. But it was true: he was not mentally invincible, such a thing was impossible. Five hundred years of imprisonment had resurrected the fear which Gaius Antonius had killed, made it stronger than ever before and sent it back at him again in his most critical moment.
He ached. Deep inside, deeper than his ribs, deeper than his guts, something trembled. That beautiful thing, nurtured for so long, had never felt so weak and vulnerable. Any moment now, it would crack and Gaius would die, blown apart by his own stubbornness, for the bullheaded pride of thinking himself strong. Of thinking himself as beyond consequences, as worthy of whatever he set his sights on just because he
wanted it.
Another barrage of missiles struck Gaius, slamming him into the wall hard enough to dislodge a large chunk of a body. The bony hand of some long-dead, hateful wretch clenched around his throat, and half a torso stuck fast to his back. A toothless mouth screamed and sobbed in his ear, even as he thrashed violently, fruitlessly trying to free himself.
Gaius knew for a fact that his shields had not broken. These flying machines were toying with him, exerting enough force to only break some of the multiple fields he was keeping up at a time, knocking him around without hurting him. Yet no matter what he did, the gore seemed through, clinging fast to his body, soaking into his hair, dripping into his eyes, his nose, his mouth. The pungent, foul stench of rot overpowered him until it was all he could feel or perceive.
"The burning… the burning…"
"How long have I been deceived? Traitors, all of you!"
"I won't die a nobody, I can't, I won't accept it!"
"GET OFF ME!" Gaius screamed, overwhelmed with disgust. "HOW DARE YOU WEIGH ME DOWN! I'M NOT LIKE YOU! I'M NOT LIKE YOOOUUUU!"
—-
In the desert, in the mountains, in the plains, it arose. From all the cracks and crevices of the earth, bloody mist boiled forth, staining the air with crimson. Without end, it billowed higher and higher, up into the sky, filling it with greater and greater concentrations. People out under the open sky began to look, some dropping whatever they held. The sight was entrancing, the blue sky taking on a violet hue in the middle of the day, red clouds obscuring the sun.
Furious lightning struck against the mist, driving it back again and again, but the stain on the sky spread faster than it could be erased. Slowly, images began forming within the clouds, half-obscured, hazy enough to perhaps be dismissed as imagination or delirium.
Somewhere in Great Mountain Bell territory, a man threw tinder onto a fire, prompting the flames to flare up and the heat to rise, bringing a cauldron of soup to a boil. His wife, on her knees in the soft grass, stirred the soup, diligently watching their family's dinner. The mountain man, smiling joyfully, knelt down and placed one brawny, calloused hand on his wife's waist, kissing her on the cheek. "How much longer until it's ready?" He asked quietly.
"Another fifteen minutes, I'd say. Could you go get the boys now?" The woman answered, patting the back of her husband's hand. But the man did not answer, transfixed as his gaze was on that baleful sky.
Without saying a word, without even paying attention, the mountain man put a hand on his wife's head and dunked it into the cauldron. The woman's frantic thrashing, the intense burning in his own hand, none of it registered, and he held firm until her body stopped moving, and then another minute after that to be sure.
The mountain man stood, the world before him rendered hazy by bloodlust, and stumbled into the woods, where the sounds of branches shaking as his two sons picked fruit could be heard. He cupped his hands around his mouth, dispassionately noting the lack of skin on one of them, and shouted.
"Boys, supper's ready!"
——
On the other side of the mountains, Shi Jiang, Chen Jinhua, and four assistants carrying Fang Tai on a stretcher between them, all came to a halt as the ground began to quake.
A rumbling of unknown origin shook the room for a few seconds, sending a few small chips of stone falling from the ceiling before the quake died down. Most of them realized immediately the small difference between what just happened and an ordinary earthquake. That was not the sort of shaking that occurred naturally from within the earth, but a rumbling produced by an explosive release of power aboveground.
"Was that an Elder?" One assistant asked, clearly perturbed.
"An Elder, exerting that much power so close to the Palace? Are we under attack?" Said another, raising her voice above the background radiation of the growing mutters throughout the room.
"Get the patient into a room and treat him, I'll see what's going on up there." Shi Jiang ordered, stripping off the drab outer robes to reveal his usual ensemble beneath. "Spare no expense."
"As you command." Jinhua replied with a slight tilt of her head. The barest admission of submission, appropriate for an equal, working under his orders in this operation alone.
The Attendant parted ways from the group, rushing down the hall at a brisk pace just short of a run, his larger earrings bouncing a bit with it stride. The others continued on their way, doing their best to not shake Fang Tai too much despite the sporadic shaking of the earth itself around them.
Unnoticed by all in the commotion, Fang Tai stirred ever so slightly, voice too low to be heard over the shaking. "It's already beginning. The mist will wither their minds, over and over again…"
—-
Locked away in the bowels of regret like a pill too large and bitter to swallow, something that was once a man shivered and quaked. The moaning of ambitious beings, in this world and all others, ceaselessly echoed until it became a pounding drone, beating like fists and hammers against the wavering figments of his will.
"Where did I lose my way? I only wanted what was best for everyone!"
"I will have my kingdom, Even if it's empty!"
"It sleeps in dark water, beast of regret, beast of shame, beast of lies. You did this. You did this."
Deep beneath layer after layer of gore, Gaius could hardly breathe anymore. That this would only get worse, he was well aware; if he couldn't find a way out, he would be drowned by this wretched mass. But how was he supposed to get out at all? He supposed he wasn't intended to; that it was an execution, not a test. Still…
Light and fire erupted on the other side of the Aegis, washing over The Seeker without harming him but driving the dead into a frenzy. They cringed away, driven further out of their restless slumber with each attack. Wait.
Cringed away?
Oh, of course. How dumb could he get? The answer had been in front of him the whole time, he'd just been too afraid to see it. Yes, he was afraid, wracked with hesitation, impure detritus brought about from five centuries of isolation and torment. Such things were fleeting, if one had the strength and courage to press forward.
He sneered at the incessant sounds all around him, and began to strip away his Aegis. Sheet after sheet of golden light dissipated, until Gaius was utterly exposed to the predations of the enigmatic machines. "Quit your stupid yapping. What am I so afraid of, anyway?"
It was the simplest thing in the world, to open himself up. What kind of King wouldn't even let himself be hurt in the name of his ambition? That was the first and truest test of greatness, the willingness to put ideals over self, and it was one he had passed many times before.
Bracing himself for the pain, Gaius laughed and spread his arms wide as the flying constructs trained their weapons on him once more. His face, unrecognizable through pounds of ichor, shifted into an expression of equal parts glee and determination. "I accept your scorn, all of it! I shall not wash my hands of my hubris, but embrace it! Let Heaven strike me down, for my arrogance!"
The missiles fired, and all went white. The screaming and pleading of the damned multiplied tenfold, echoing on the inside of his skull. A burning pain washed over Gaius, followed quickly by a disconcerting numbness, as the blood was charred away along with much of his own skin. Of course it hurt, but it was the sort of pain civilized people learned to appreciate, the sort of purging sensation brought on by vomiting, or removing splinters and shrapnel, or resetting a broken bone. It was liberating, in the sort of way nothing had been in so very, very long.
This crude baptism of fire fulfilled its purpose adequately, once more clearing up Gaius' head. How refreshing, this eye-opening pain! Like a shot of adrenaline, it was, bringing new life and energy to an exhausted man! He laughed once more, tears streaming down his face as the hurdle was cleared. Five centuries of isolation, as punishment for his overreaching, had clouded Gaius' thoughts and dulled the blade of his certainty, but it had not broken. That newfound hesitation and fear, born of fresh trauma, was out of his system, and he was once more invincible.
The burning pain stopped, after a while, though once again time seemed entirely arbitrary. Perhaps it was after those machines fired the last of their payload, or perhaps it was just when his mind was fully purified once more. They dipped their noses up and, finally, left Gaius be, flying up and leaving him to fall further. Gaius wanted to badly to laugh, to cry, to relax, but something told him that it wasn't quite over yet.
The endless fall… ended. At the bottom of the drop was a stone floor, circular, plain and polished down to perfection, yet far more eerie in atmosphere than any strange vista Gaius had thus far seen. Lit sparsely with only a few False Sun Crystals and bits of bioluminescent moss, the chamber granted only the bare minimum of visibility he needed, and not one bit more.
"A dark little room? That's the last stop?" Gaius scoffed, arrogant in the face of the almighty as was his right. "Fine, I'll conquer that too!"
The change in atmosphere was unmistakable. The chaotic, unfiltered cruelty of the passage from before was quickly replaced with a foreboding feeling of cold hatred. Despite himself, he shivered for a moment under the disdainful weight of infinity.
His feet touched down, so lightly it was as if he had fallen only a few feet, and someone else rose up to meet him, emerging from the earth just a few feet away. It was a little boy, tall for his age but clearly too young to cultivate and with a chubby face that did not match his long limbs. Looking up into Gaius' eyes, one icy blue gaze affixed itself upon another.
Eventually, inevitably, after a silence that felt eternal but was probably no more than ten seconds, someone spoke.
"I don't like those eyes." Said Gaius, squashing the urge to shrink back from the piercing gaze.
"Why? You see it in the mirror every day." The boy replied coldly, nonplussed, before tilting his head in thought. "Or maybe you don't see them anymore - maybe you see something else. Is that why?"
"My eyes never looked like that." Gaius insisted. He had to be right, didn't he? So helplessly kind, yet so unassailably self-assured. It was the most condescending pair of eyes Gaius had ever seen. He'd never been so cruelly gentle, had he?
"Yes they did. A charismatic man like you would have more followers, more lovers, if you didn't repulse most people."
Gaius' eyes narrowed in scrutiny. "I've never repulsed anyone I didn't want to - people like me."
The boy's face grew even more smug, his grin more sadistic. "Is that really what you think? Everyone can tell how afraid you are. Of yourself and of them. It's disgusting."
Infuriating; that was the only word for it. A child like him, acting as if he knew anything, made Gaius want to see red and lay into him. To send the little twerp scurrying away with tear-filled eyes. And yet.
And yet.
"Why did you even come here? Do you think it'll be worth it in the end? Do you want to believe Liu Fei had a good reason to have his family killed?" The boy pointed up, where that putrid tunnel squirmed and pulsated above them. "Climb back out, if you know what's good for you."
"I came here because it's the destiny I wrote for myself." Gaius shot back with a glare. "It doesn't matter if the answer is good, I just want closure. With the power of a King, I can do that."
"You've been wrong from the start." The boy said, taking a few steps forward and tilting his head slightly as if studying the man before him. "Casting out your fear again won't bring you success, because what you want is impossible."
Gaius tried to speak, only to begin coughing, his voice overworked after not speaking verbally in so long. "What the hell do you mean?" Gaius asked after he recovered. "Liu Fei is alive, I can feel it. I'll get my answers, and then my life will finally begin."
"What life?" The boy shot back, spreading his arms wide. "Look around you; this is your life. You are this cave: cold, dark, full of things that bite and claw and lash out because they can. You aren't human anymore."
"I indulge in the inhuman like all great men do." Gaius scoffed, doing his best to brush off the accusations, even as they cut him to the bone. "I go beyond my limits because my goal requires it, that's all there is to it. When Liu Fei answers my questions, my task will be over."
"Over? What a joke." The boy laughed, pointing a damning finger right at Gaius. "You don't get to start it all over just because you call it that. Everything you've done, everything you
are, will remain."
Gaius groaned in frustration, leaning forward to get a closer look at the twerp. "Why are you even here? What's the point of putting you, of all things, in my way?"
It really was annoying. That face, at once all too familiar and a hazy recollection, was the last thing Gaius wished to see right now, at a moment of irreversible change. Perhaps that was the point - a message, an accusation that though he wished to change, he hadn't actually changed at all. That he didn't
deserve to ascend, that he was immature and ignorant.
What a load of bullshit. Kings don't need permission.
Gaius sighed and made to walk past the boy, no longer wanting to see that face. "I'm going to finally live life as a normal person again, and I'm not going to let you stop me here."
"You'll never be normal, that's not possible for you!" The boy shouted, raising his hand and toppling Gaius onto his back with a dismissive one-handed shove. "If you wanted to start a normal life, you should have moved on, instead you've lost your mind! A beast like you can only descend further!"
Gaius wanted to fight back somehow, but he couldn't even move. The boy's very words attacked him, sapping all the power in his limbs and casting his very self into a chaotic haze. A sickening wrenching began to take hold of him threatening to wring him out like a dishrag, obliterating him beyond any hope of reincarnation.
How irritating, truly; far from a triumphant coronation, this was nothing but humiliating drudgery. Had he really been so badly unprepared for a tribulation, despite all his certainty and fortitude? The eerie pressure attacked ceaselessly and mercilessly, as if gravity itself were starting to turn against him.
He couldn't say it. How could he say it, after all this time? How could he spit on all those graves by admitting the truth he had silently held for so long? He really was a fake; Gaius had never been as pure in thought and conviction as he claimed to be, so how could he be worthy of Kingship?
Right now, Gaius just wanted to go to sleep, because he had never felt so tired. As if his bones were made of lead, his body held fast to the ground no matter how his mind protested. The boy gave his adult self a regretful look, sorrowful even, before reaching behind his back and drawing a dagger from his waistband. Not any dagger either, but the very same Celestial bronze Gaius had brought into the Cave, its every facet etched into his mind after so many years.
From the smooth stone, chains of black metal wriggled forth, wrapping around each of his limbs to hold him down. Dimly, some part of Gaius observed that the chains were not restraining him, but had appeared in response to his restraint. He didn't feel any different now that he was bound, the binding merely served to justify why he could not move. This wasn't real, not quite, it all represented something.
Skinny brown legs straddled the Devil's waist, and the soft hand of one who had never gone to war grabbed a fistful of his hair, wrenching his head back and baring his throat. The boy said nothing, because there was nothing left to say. He raised the beautiful blade, ready to plunge it down and end The Seeker's life. It was only fitting, that an unworthy King be put down by a dagger in the dark.
But then, Kings weren't elected, were they? It didn't really matter if they were worthy, did it? It's simple: either you rule, or you don't. If the chains weren't real, if none of it was real, then the only thing holding him down was his own weakness. He could stand, he could do anything, if only he drew forth enough Will. And to do that, to dig out every last bit of desire from every corner and crack of his being, he had to remove one final millstone.
Gaius turned his head, spat out a globule of blood and sighed; it was the long, weary breath of an old man who knew he had much farther still to go. He could speak the words; nothing was holding them in, not really. It was as simple as anything else: just a choice. It was as easy as breathing, if he had the Will. "You're right, kid. About one thing, at least."
The boy smirked, his hand stilling, and something in Gaius' body began to quake as once more, his Dao teetered on the brink of collapse, threatening to take his mind and soul with it. "Of course I'm right, these are all things you already knew. But what, in particular, are you admitting?" In that instant, as the dagger hung above his throat, Thanatos once more caressed him tenderly, beckoning him toward sweet, peaceful obliteration.
Gaius smiled peacefully, and with his voice, stabbed Thanatos in the heart. "I don't want to be normal."
The Seeker sat up and pitched forward in one motion, throwing the boy off and sending the dagger clattering across the floor. He rose to a knee, then his feet, stumbling forward as if wildly drunk. The child's expression shifted from one of confidence to one of fear, and he scrambled backward, away from the grasping hands of The Seeker.
"The truth is, it hasn't been about my father for a long, long time."
"Don't touch me, you degenerate!" The boy cried out, picking up a rock and throwing it at Gaius' head. He simply let it strike him, drawing a few drops of blood before it began to seal up. "Crazy is crazy, no matter why you do it; you're unfit for society!"
Stalking forward so single-mindedly, Gaius looked like nothing less than a monster, some mythical adversary drawn forth from the earth for no other reason than to bring ruin. All inhibitions fell away, as did all thoughts of the future. Here, at the end, the only thing that mattered was the strength of will, pitted against divine punishment, and in the end, the divine was falling short.
"This is my nature. Living on the edge of ruin, wagering my soul against the screaming oblivion, just because I can!"
With a titanic wrenching of space, the edges of the world cracked, blinding white radiance spilling forth from the unknowable expanse beyond. Gaius' skin grew hot, scorched by proximity to overwhelming destruction, but he felt no fear at all - such things could not harm him. Hair writhing like the serpentine tendrils of Medusa, he stalked the heckler, the little nay-sayer, with purposeful steps.
"Living more vibrantly, more fiercely, more boldly than all other men!"
"You're an abomination!" The child screamed, shrill voice piercing through the mist and tears running down his cheeks. "Terrified of your own vulnerability! You're not above other men, you're throwing away your humanity because you don't have the strength to be a man at all!" Something about watching that dumb kid, that little bastard who didn't know anything at all, crumble before him was satisfying in a shameful way. Perhaps this was what it meant to surpass one's limitations.
Gaius laughed dementedly, letting the protests wash over his soul like pure, clear water. Why had he ever treated such criticism as an existential threat? Feeble words like that couldn't disturb him, not unless he let them. Darting forward, his hand lashed out, snatching the little boy up by the throat and hoisting him aloft.
"Vulnerability? I don't have any! The only one who can break me… is
me!" He shook the child this way and that as he spoke, tormenting the rebel who dared speak out against his determination. "The capacity for Kingship, the stuff of heroes, I always had it, I was born for it, I just needed a spark! Liu Fei was an excuse!
You were an excuse!"
It really was true. People lost their loved ones all the time, people were tormented by impossible tasks, by unsolvable mysteries, all the time. That alone could not produce The Seeker. That Dao, so long given form but not truly manifested, squirmed in delight beneath his skin, ready to finally be born. It had always been with Gaius, in some protoform, some pre-meaning.
Wrenching The Seeker's fingers open just a tiny bit with all his strength, the boy struggled to speak, face turning red and voice squeezing out in tiny, strained breaths. "After… the… truth… there will… be…"
Out of patience and determined to finish this ordeal, Gaius put some effort into his grip, cutting off the boy's words. In this unreal space of will and thought, such metaphysical constructs had no power without spiritual weaknesses to exploit. "There is no 'after'. There is no one task. I scream in defiance against the void because it's fun."
With each word Gaius spoke, the cracks grew longer and wider, and light brighter, the heat more intense. His muscles spasmed under an endless cacophony of electric signals, and his soul screamed a warning, faced with overwhelming danger. That ruinous transformation was right there, inches away, at the command of its summoner. What for some seemed like a death sentence, appeared to the utterly certain conviction of Gaius Antonius as no threat at all. Not a test, but a coronation.
In the seat of ultimate power, cresting over the hill of adversity, Gaius spoke the words he had known for a very long time, but had never given form.
"I don't need you anymore." He declared, hand clenching tighter around the little boy's neck. Such fear, such weakness. He didn't know this child, couldn't relate to a single thought in his head. His grip grew colder and steadier, until it was more like a noose than a human hand. The boy punched Gaius' hand, clawed and scratched his fingers, tried to kick his head. Such stubbornness.
He needed to be crueler. He needed to rip away this burden with more strength, more conviction. Gaius' look shifted from determination to outright contempt. "Your little dreams can go and rot." He snarled, as a sharp, intense pain bloomed in his forehead. Cracking, splitting, writhing, growing, a symphony of tiny agonies in perfect sync. His vision shifted and expanded, as his field of vision widened, peripheral vision extending farther upward and objects in his view growing clearer and sharper than ever.
Three baleful eyes gazed into two human ones, and let go.
"I did it for me."
A snap and a crunch, and the child's body hung limply. Those innocent, ambitious eyes saw nothing at all, and it struck Gaius how very light his body was. He dropped that useless thing and it fell gracelessly, limbs sprawled about this way and that, prompting yet more cracking.
Whatever sort of realm held Gaius, it could no longer support itself, and the wrath of heaven, that which had not already been expended attacking within the vision, surged all around, waiting for this bubble to pop. With one last deafening thunderclap, the figment collapsed entirely, shards of unreality dissolving away and leaving only white-hot power.
In this liminal space, the crude bluntness of physical elements was an entirely unneeded middle-step. Anger itself assaulted Gaius' very self, bearing down upon him from all directions and searing him down to ash. He let it burn him, setting his skin and hair alight and delighting in the intoxicating pain of rebirth. It didn't hurt that much, not anymore. Never before had Gaius been so strong.
Amidst the streaming star-rivers and spacetime eddies of the cosmos, Gaius boiled alive under the weight of divine hatred. He smiled graciously, gratefully accepting all that came, for he knew he had greatness enough to take it. The bubbling humors of Gaius' body were rendered unto steam, such was the energy imparted unto his cells. Skin and fat melted away, flesh seared and unraveled, and his very proteins denatured, until even Gaius' bones liquefied from the inside out. All of this, he took without complaint.
It wasn't that scary, not anymore. Before Gaius' eyes, that distant pillar arrived at last, filling his view entirely as he was reborn.
Towering. Titanic. Colossal. Such words mean things, in theory, but before
this, they meant nothing. The closest parallel Gaius could draw was, perhaps, to Turtlebone Mountain, or the vision of the vast, endless ocean from earlier in the tribulation. To measure it on sight alone was impossible, it was the sort of thing the human brain could not easily grasp.
It was a mound. Rather than elegant function or intelligent design, this pillar held up Gaius' self through sheer mass, an immovable pile of stone and gravel and scrap metal with no real shape at all. Gaius felt offended, for a moment, at his Pillar's ugliness, before the true nature of the thing became clear.
Deep within, there was a glow. A gorgeous prismatic panoply of glittering lights. The way it shined was the most beautiful sight Gaius had ever laid eyes upon, and in that moment he beheld his true Pillar. The Dao of The Seeker, utterly perfect, lay further from him still, buried beneath this crude matter, but even standing in the dim traces of light which escaped its confinement filled him with a strength and satisfaction he had ever known before.
Every destroyed cell was recast, purified in renewed Bronze, not crude metal but the stuff of civilization itself, the physical essence of a King. Suffused with Dao, Gaius' Bronze became aspiration itself, ambition woven with flesh, until the Gaius Antonius of before seemed like fiction, like hearsay by comparison. Those imperfect, vaporized fluids, shed like the waste they were, congealed back together into mist, growing thicker and denser. A placental barrier of Gaius' own creation, it shrouded him in layer after layer, diminishing the harshness of the cruel Heavenly light.
Such metamorphosis was exhausting. Unable to resist his instincts, Gaius quickly fell into a deep and peaceful slumber, the vision of his salvation fading away as a dark and gentle kindness ushered him into comfort.
—-
Stone. Not sand.
Gaius' eyes opened to reveal an unfamiliar ceiling, albeit not an unfamiliar
kind of ceiling; wet, rough-hewn rock, menacing him with tooth-like stalagmites and dotted with False Sun Crystals that brought a degree of visibility to the chamber. What struck Gaius more than anything was how small the room really was; it couldn't have been more than fifty feet from the entrance to the exit, and most of that was seemingly to make room for the large, deep pool of freshwater in which a very large fish now listlessly swam about.
Beneath him was a simple raised slab, fashioned in the rough shape of a bed or couch - had he been sleeping here, that whole time? With slow, deliberate movements, Gaius bade his groggy self to sit up, only to fall sideways and topple onto the cold ground, head spinning from the attempt at movement.
Scylla was shouting something at him, leaping out of the water to fly about her partner. She frantically fussed over him - though the fish was clearly angry with him, she couldn't bring herself to express such feelings in the wake of his, well,
waking. Just how long had he been asleep in reality? Not centuries like the imprisonment, surely?
Her words didn't even reach his mind, overstimulated as it was. Collapsing to his knees, the King drank of the water. Not the briny stuff of the sea, but real, cool springwater - it didn't bother him one bit that it was dirty. After the cruel deprivation of the desert and the pain of rebirth, that drink of water was the most wonderful taste of his life.
----
After quite a bit of time working through this thing at an agonizingly slow pace, I think I've finally got it into a presentable state. I'm praying with all my might that I didn't miss something or leave in some major error.
I needed to get the imagery absolutely perfect before I was satisfied with the tribulation chapter, and thus it took so long that Gaius' fate for the turn was actually finished before this was. Oh well - it'll bolster his next one. I knew from the start that I wanted Gaius walking through a disturbing, ornate throneroom, then jumping into the sea, and that I wanted him to be confronted by his child self. Everything else came afterward, but I've hopefully done a good job making it flow together while still feeling like disorienting dream logic.
I wanted to put in more songs, turn the entire thing into one big rock opera, but I worried that too many of them would wear out the novelty, so I kept only the three most important ones. Each of them carries a lot of thematic meaning, but don't get too tinfoil hatted over individual lyrics - it's more about general vibe, and in some cases the lyrics fit ironically rather than in a straightforward fashion.
