Voyage of the Mind’s Eye [Original Weird Fiction Novel]

[Vadrigos]

Interval 22​

The being that now called itself Camathy'sss was afraid. Until recently, it had only known fear a scant few times in its…existence? Was that the right word? Perhaps, but then perhaps not. Until mere hours ago (hours; what a concept!) it hadn't known much beyond the simple bliss of drifting in the deep, oceanic void of its home, a place where there were no such things as time, or pain, or even memory. And now, it knew all these things, and despite everything, it found it was afraid to let them go. Even gender, fluid in its own, rigid fashion, had taken a hold of it in a way nothing ever had before. It was a 'she' now, and she was in love.

Love…such a powerful thing.

As the crushing pressure of the -other~tormenter~misery~hunger- increased, she tried to set aside a small portion of her own titanic consciousness to puzzle on the feeling. Love was…love was love. An attraction that provoked repulsion, but also reciprocation; a messy warm, gooey feeling that was none of those sensations, but somehow associated with them. A wry amusement (What a strange reaction to fear!) trickled through her liquid consciousness; if only Nathan knew how much energy simply understanding the most basic concepts of his existence took her. Of course, understanding in itself was too rigid a term to encompass it. There was so much to…to learn. To be. To embrace.

And now, she might lose it all.

The nameless other squeezed again, trying to crush her and her charge. She resisted, changing shape to slip its assault. Shape; the most liberating and transcendent of the discoveries she had learned from Nathan. Until she had -encountered~learned~taught~engulfed- him, she had never had a shape. To be rigid and unchanging was not in her nature, if that was a suitable term for her existence prior…she would've flinched if she had a body to do so. This state was so strange; so alien. But she couldn't let it go.

Was this what it meant to be alive?

What had she been before then?

What would happen if she stopped?

So many questions…so many…

Too many.

Nathan might've been able to answer. But he was…not gone…but not here either. The other tried again to squash her, to make her conform into something that was pain and knew only pain. Its -fingers~eyes~teeth~flesh- scrabbled and tore at her physically as it assaulted her very being in a wild attempt to [CONTROL] her. But she refused it. Again and again, she changed shape, like a key slipping through the teeth of a lock that wanted nothing more than to break her. It drew her closer, upwards, and she felt its influence growing. It was pulling her inwards, towards the heart of its power, something that she knew did not belong to it. Something that was…

That was…

And would be.

"m̸̧̞̳̥̮̀a̸̗͂̾̏̃k̸̛̙̩̈́̑̕͝Ę̸̩́͝ͅ ̷̩̬͇̟̥̅͊̅̓̚Y̷͓͒͆͑͘o̵̱͖͊̑̾́͜Ư̸̧̳̭̟̟̊́͛ ̴̥͇̏M̴̡̜͊͜͝ͅḮ̴̘̲̲̲̿͑I̶͔̎̏I̴͇̱̞̞͑͑͜͝I̸̳͍̿̍N̵̛̠̒̓̿N̸͚͔̠̞̰̋̏̽E̶̯̲̼̓̀͌Ë̸̘̘̝͙́̈́̕E̷͙̋.̵̭͓̓̏̓̓ ̷̰̓͝M̴̗̥̫̅̓̏ͅY̴̜͎̋ ̴̛̗̩̈́̈́͋S̶̛̺̯̖̍̕͜͝ͅH̶̙͔͕̗̄̍a̸̤̟͆̓͐̀͝P̴̧̻̘̯̃̓̑͗e̸͈̾,̶̨̞̗͚̬̽ ̷͍̿͛͆O̴̧̼̦̰̚n̸͉̳̰͔̅Ĕ̷̢͓̲ ̴̥̼̂s̴͇̬̪̏̽̐H̴̪̚â̴̜̩̓p̶̧̺̼̜͎̃̑͑E̷̬͎̥̟͆,̶̤̰̹̃͛́̓̐ ̸̯̉̕n̵̝̔̌̌́͠O̵̢̩̘͎͙̓ ̷̤̰̮̗͙̂̄̇S̷͔̦̒̍̌̎̕h̴͈͍͚͛͌A̵̖̩̥̋P̶̋̂̏̈́ͅE̶̜͇̍̓̾̽́-"

The other buzzed, using words that sounded as stolen as the energies it commanded. It was…it was polluted. Filthy. She resisted; she would not let it have her. She would not let it have HIM. If it ended her, then so be it. But she would not let it take-

"N̶͙͎̪̻̋̒́O̴̦͖̓͌ ̷̮͉͉̝̪͛͠Ś̸̘̯̟̤̊͗̎H̴̟̩͋̌Ã̸̧̧̬͇̰̄P̵̲̙͇̤͋́̕͝Ȩ̷̫̩̥̈!!!"

The vice tightened. She changed, but it was too much. She couldn't fight back; she couldn't find the gap in the teeth that would let her escape, or strike back. She wished Nathan was there. His shape…the shape of his anger…it still frightened her. She tried to recall it, but it slipped away, her own liquid nature rejecting it. She had reduced the shape of another before, in fear and panic, when she'd still been new to both. Now though, when she needed that skill, that form, she found she couldn't grasp it. It wasn't in her…only him.

And yet, still she loved him.

<Come back.>

The words, simple and spoken into an empty space where no one other than herself could hear them, were as close to a prayer as Camathy'ss had ever uttered in her strange, inscrutable existence. She mused briefly on the notion of hope, as the other began to increase its attack. It battered at her, lashing at her essence, its own magnified beyond comprehension by the thing it had swallowed and choked on.

<Come back.>

<Come back, Nathan.>

Silence…

Emptiness…

…

…

And then…

---​

Nathan woke up to a fully bodily assault from monsters that looked as though they had been pulled from the darkest depths of his childhood nightmares. They were red and wet; gray and corpse-like; fetid and diseased; savage and shark-toothed. Every descriptor that could be laid upon evil and hunger, they were, and more. They tore at him, and for a moment he wondered why he felt no pain. He should be dead…or waking up.

But no, this was not a nightmare, any more than it was a dream. He heard them screaming, gibbering, snarling and gurgling; claws breaking and bones crunching. One lifted a boot over his face to stomp down, to pulverize and make him at one with the lumpy, hard ground beneath him. He reached out in an almost lazy fashion and caught it.

*crunCh*

The howling changed tone; pain replaced insanity. Moving as if in a dream, Nathan rose, feeling his body lift with a strength that was his and not his, as an alien joy filled his heart. He acknowledged it, knowing it for what it was.

And then he attacked.

And attacked.

And attacked.

When the monsters nearest to him were reduced to steaming, toxic gore and inanimate junk, Nathan allowed himself a moment to take in his surroundings. Beneath him, a surface like roughly-cobbled stone crunched and crackled in a fashion that suggested it was anything but.. The rounded components were yellowish and brown with dried fluids, poorly laid in whatever mortar held them together. It didn't take a genius to know they were skulls. Part of Nathan was actually morbidly amused. Once, he might've been revolted; terrified; paralyzed. But now? It felt so…cheap. Like some sort of weak Halloween setup made by something with no creativity for anything more viscerally unsettling.

"A mountain of skulls, huh?" he scoffed. He looked up. "Okay then."

He began to walk forwards. Fear that was not his slithered down his spine, but did not overwhelm him. He answered it with heat; focusing on the odd warmth in his chest. It wasn't anger; the blind, rabid aggression that he'd felt in the thick of the fight before was gone; boiled away to leave something deeper…stronger…

Sharper.

Behind him, he heard the shrieking of more monsters, scrambling up the slope of stolen craniums to replace the ones he'd reduced to mush. He picked up the pace slightly, not wanting to waste more time, but he needn't have bothered. A few more steps and he was suddenly there.

It was…surprising. Really, he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but safe to say, Nathan was pretty sure that this wasn't it. Atop the piled heap of skulls, at the axis of a nightmare that would've made Phil Tippett proud, there was a banquet table. Long and wooden, it seemed strangely pristine, laden with dishes and silver that, while slightly tarnished, still gleamed as his eyes played over it and the mildly-soiled tablecloth. A strange, orange-gold haze lit the scene, shining down from some unseen point above.

"Huh."

As if in answer to his half-hearted response, thunder rumbled through the firmament, bearing down like a physical force. Surveying the image before him with a wary gaze, Nathan felt the pressure of something watching him in turn, producing a squeezing sensation that made him want to pop his ears. For a moment he felt fear, both his own, and that of his other half. Then his eyes landed on the thing at the other end of the table, and found he had to fight not to laugh.

It was a monster; no doubt about it.

And yet, despite it all, it looked so…so…pathetic.

It wasn't unspeakable. It wasn't unnameable. It was barely even indescribable. It was, in essence, the distilled design of a hundred movie monsters, all crammed into a single frame by a mind that had no real idea of what actual horror entailed. Grisly, intestine-like growths; bubbling pustules; clusters of haphazardly-placed eyes that rolled and swiveled in their sockets; it had everything…EVERYTHING.

Too much, honestly.

Granted, despite its overwrought appearance, it still looked vaguely human…vaguely. But to Nathan, no matter how many mouths it opened to gnash at him or tongues it flailed in his direction, it felt like he was staring at something that was wearing a cheap mask to try and scare him away. Once, it might've scared him, back when he'd been just Nathan. But now? He snorted.

"Seriously?" he scoffed.

Then it spoke. And suddenly, he found his confidence beginning to waver as ice trickled down his spine.

"H̴e̸y̷ ̸k̶i̸d̸d̶o̸.̷"

Nathan felt his hands clench into fists automatically.

"That's not your voice."

"A̷n̷d̸?̷ ̸W̶h̷o̸ ̵c̴a̸r̶e̷s̵?̶ ̷A̶l̷l̵ ̴p̸r̸o̸p̷e̸r̵t̶y̴ ̸i̸s̶ ̴t̸h̴e̶f̵t̷,̶ ̴i̴s̸n̶'̷t̶ ̴i̶t̵?̴"

"That's NOT your voice." Nathan repeated, his chest tightening. "Stop it."

"C̸o̴m̴e̶ ̴o̷n̷ ̶n̸o̸w̵,̴ ̶d̵o̵n̸'̴t̵ ̴b̷e̸ ̸l̷i̵k̸e̴ ̴t̸h̵a̷t̵.̶" the monster chided. It waved at the table, with its porcelain platters and scuffed silverware. "E̸a̷t̵.̶ ̵Y̶o̸u̸'̸l̶l̶ ̶f̶e̷e̷l̶ ̸b̴e̷t̷t̴e̷r̸.̵"

For the first time since awakening, Nate felt the chill tickle of dread in his heart, amplified by his connection with Cammy and her vast consciousness. Bad enough that this…thing, this ghoulish amalgam somehow knew his father's voice. Where had it heard it? Had it plucked it from his brain? Surely not; Cammy would've never let it…but then, maybe it just knew? Like its whole appearance, perhaps it was a weak disguise? He tried to wrack his own brain for knowledge, drawing on the deep well of concepts and connections that the Book had opened to him. As he did though, the sensation of wrongness only deepened. Suddenly, the nigh-cartoonish horribleness of the beast seemed…off. Like bait…a lure. His eyes drifted to the platters, details sinking into his consciousness that he hadn't initially picked up on. Somehow, despite being mere set-dressing, they felt more menacing than the creature itself.

He suddenly felt queasy; not a familiar sensation to him, but enough to make him take a step back as it settled in his guts.

"No." he said, "No, you first."

The light flickered. The monster twitched gelatinously.

"D̸o̸n̶'̴t̵ ̸b̴e̴ ̸l̴i̶k̸e̶ ̵t̴h̸a̶t̷.̸ ̵E̵a̷t̴.̴"

The statement emerged in the exact same tone and cadence it had before; a recording repeating itself. Nate shook his head, and put on a smile, feeling his muscles tense as the pressure in the air began to shift, bearing down harder. His head ached.

"No."

"E̵A̸y̴o̴u̸r̸s̷e̷T̷l̸f̴.̶ ̴"

The light flickered again, pulsing like a strobe before stabilizing. The fear that had overtaken Nathan wavered suddenly, undercut by the realization that he was having an effect. His smile shifted, going from nervous to mockingly innocent.

So…it was like that, was it?

"What's the matter?" he asked, "Something wrong?"

"y̸E̶o̴u̷r̷A̵s̶T̶e̸l̸f̵."

Nathan glowered, not letting go of his smile even as he felt his fear draining away, replaced by disgust and irritation.

"I'm not hungry."

"K̸E̶i̸l̵l̶ ̸y̵o̸A̶u̵r̵s̷e̷l̷T̷f̵."

Nate showed his teeth. It was a bold move; the pressure had grown so strong he felt like his head was going to burst…but pain no longer bothered him. Fear no longer bothered him. Not now, after all he had seen; not after all he had [LEARNED/ACHIEVED/OVERCOME/EMBRACED].

"Struck a nerve, huh?"

̵K̶i̷l̴l̸E̶ ̷y̶A̸o̸u̵r̸ ̸s̷e̷l̶T̸f̷!

"Let me give you some advice." Nathan said, "Not that it really matters…when you drag prey back to your den…make sure it's not armed before you take a bite."

"Ḍ̸̢͎̣̒̓̕I̷̯̎̅͆̕Ë̴̘̘!"

Nathan snarled. The pressure hammered down on him, crushing him like a mountain. He tried to form blades; form a shape that would help…but he couldn't. He felt Cammy, her vast being so far beyond him it wasn't even funny, recoil and flex as she drew every iota of strength in to keep him from being obliterated, then and there. She couldn't help him…

He looked at the table again. Tarnished silver gleamed like toxic starlight. Reflexively, he grabbed at the first thing in reach.

It was a knife.

Laughter trapped in his lungs by the unrelenting psychic pressure, Nathan's grin turned savage. Copper glided across his tongue as he raised his eyes back to the thing opposite him. Somewhere in its split, drooling torso-maw made of cracked ribs and children's nightmares, something pulsed and quivered, soft and afraid and wet with the sour smell of terror.

"YOU FIRST." he spat.

Then he lunged.

Several things happened then, all in slow-motion and with the clammy, cold weight of a nightmare reaching its climax. Nate leaped onto the table, kicking aside dinnerware, which splintered and dissolved into fractal shards as it flew left and right from his path. The lids on the platters burst open, and red, raw things, wailing and half-skinless, lurched upright to block his path. He bowled through the first one, feeling its fingers scratch at him, leaving welts on his shoulder. The second, shorter and more stout than its fellow, tried to tackle him, but he hit it in the face with his elbow. As it fell aside, another replaced it, crawling out of a hole in the table that the platter's lid had concealed. Wet, fleshy noises spilled from it, a parody of speech; a salad of words. He tried to brush it off, but like the monster's speech, it stuck in a way it had no right to, like a barbed stinger in his heart.
"No!"

Curses, vicious and cold, stabbed at Nate in voices he knew. His eyes focused, and he saw…

He saw…

His friends.

His family.

Everyone he knew.

"You shouldn't have done that!"

"What's WRONG with you!?"

"Can't you take a hint!"

Nate screamed and stabbed, but they piled in on him. He slashed, bit, jabbed and tore, but it wasn't enough. Then they pinned him, and a red, raw face filled his field of vision, twisted with sadness.

"I'm so disappointed in you."

"NO! NO!! NOOO-!!!"

Nate tried to scream, but couldn't. He couldn't, because his mother was strangling him.

<I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…> he blubbered in his head. Was it him saying these words? Or was it her?

It didn't matter.

He'd failed again.

The world grew dark.

He'd failed again.

His chest hurt.

Just like always-

Something popped.

Then everything went red.

---​

Annika was pretty sure she was going to die. Granted, her suit's breach alarms hadn't gone off yet, but it would only take one rupture to end her. And so, more aware of her own mortality than she'd been even when she set out on this bizarre mission, she fought with everything she had. She tore at the multifarious limbs of the ziggurat of death, her armor lending her strength even as it struggled to hold back the assault. Ablative plating and reactive membranes designed to withstand directed energy weapons and the ballistic force of high-impact munitions cracked and flexed, while arcane energies sparked and crackled off her person as her integrity fields fought to keep her whole.

And all the while, the onslaught continued. From all sides and all angles it rained down on her like a monsoon, endless and tireless. She wanted to compare it to the sea, but the sea at least allowed respite. This? This was…erratic; uncoordinated; the beating of a crowd whose members knew there was something foreign in their midst, and who desired both to simultaneously destroy and absorb it. Phalanges and jawbones; tarsals and tendrils of vertebrae; they manifested out of the churning chaotic ossuary of the necrotic mass; swiping; biting; lashing; crushing; determined collectively to reduce her another grinning face in the walls.

Had it been anyone else, death would've been instant and absolute. Even Annika wasn't sure how she'd survived this long. Everything had already felt like a dream, ever since she crossed the event horizon of this place (if that was even the right word for it). She had lurched from one disjointed sequence of events to another, dragged on by a purpose that became ever more blurry the closer she got to the center of the maze. And now, like a quintessential nightmare, the thing she had set as her objective was trying to kill her.

Screw that.

Up, up, up she crawled, punching and hammering with the force of a main battle tank, her suit's energy cells screaming warnings as she dumped more power into defensive measures, designed to protect its human charge no matter the cost. She didn't care. If she lived through this, it wouldn't matter. If she didn't, it still wouldn't matter. But she was going to give it her all. In her head, her father smiled his warmest smile, welcoming her home. Her mother was there, her arms spread wide. Her CO saluted her, friends-

The pyramid of death convulsed. Suddenly, Annika was free; where clenched fists and empty eye-sockets had crowded her vision moments earlier, there was the ugly, toxic smear of the sky-analogue, which in her mind's eye was suddenly as clear and blue as that of her home. Spitting words in six dialects, (possibly curses, or possibly just syllables) she tugged herself up onto even ground, paved with the crowns of a thousand craniums. A few fingers and crunching, calcified fragments clattered off her as her breath caught in her throat, her mind struggling to regain purchase on her sanity.

She didn't have time though. No sooner had she struggled to her knees, something struck the ground beside her. Trying to make sense through her alert-cluttered heads-up display, Annika squinted. It looked like…a human arm? But with no skin…that wasn't right. Was it? The object writhed, flexed, then melted into a puddle, slipping between the cracks of the yellow-gray ground. Tilting her head back, the Paranaut tried to see where it might've come from.

There was…a dinner table? Or was it an altar? She couldn't tell. Her head was beginning to ache. The sirens in her ears were reaching fever pitch, and she could taste copper. She couldn't feel her left leg. Her gun arm didn't feel right either…

Shaking her head, Annika tried again. There was something in front of her; a shape. A familiar shape. A table? An altar? It didn't matter. At one end, there was a thrashing heap of…bodies, or possibly not. It was difficult to tell; all red and raw like some orgy of skinless cadavers, bearing down on…something; she couldn't see what. At the other end, crouched like some colossal, quivering toad, was something else. Exactly what, she couldn't say, except that it looked more complete than the bloody, thrashing mass it seemed to be fixated on. Mouths opened and closed along its body, which extended partially beneath the table like some oozing, segmented egg-sack. As she focused on it, Annika saw a dozen of its eyes roll towards her, settling on her with the gaze of some primordial amphibian that was busy eating, but had just spotted seconds.

Fear was probably what did it, she realized later on; fear, or perhaps more accurately, loathing. The elemental urge to reject the thing's gaze; its touch; its continued existence on this plane; they poured through Annika like an ocean tide. She raised her gun arm in an almost mechanical motion, propelled by base instinct. Her weapon was damaged, but not non-functional…and no matter how tired she felt, she still had a task to perform.

"Objective identified." declared her heads-up display, just as it also proclaimed a target lock.

Annika wondered if she should say something first.

Then she pulled the trigger.

---​

Nathan emerged from the pile of gore like a dolphin, screaming harder than he'd ever screamed in his life. It was a raw, primal sound, not just made of rage, but terror and disgust. As he clawed his way out of the mass, he felt a wild tension in his muscles, the sort brought on by night terrors and children's fears, and his mind reeled even as his eyes took in the truth. The voices; those awful familiar voices were silent, and he could see now in their absence that the things that had stolen them were not, had never BEEN, what they pretended to be. He felt his bile rise, and his legs shoved him along the table towards the monster at the far end.

Another trick. That's all it had been; another trick.

Nathan clenched his teeth.

No more tricks. No more lies. Enough.

"ENOUGH!" he screamed, half crawling, half staggering over the scattered filth and dinnerware. The beast let out a squeal like a stuck pig and tried to push away from him. He sped up. "ENOUGH!!! ENOUGH!!!!"

The word itself seemed to scorch the beast, its semi-gelatinous form blackening and shifting in hue like a rainbow of rot. It thrashed at him with limbs as long as his whole body, but some how, despite never being gifted with the fastest of reflexes, Nathan ducked and rolled beneath them, lurching closer to the horrific face and its too-wide mouth. Maybe it was fear again; just adrenaline? He would've laughed at such a mundane thing being the deciding factor of his success, but he was too afraid; too angry; and for once in his life, too focused. The thing had tried to kill his friends, and now it was trying to kill him. So he would do what humans did when faced with such situations: he would kill it back.

Another arm, like a rotten tree branch caught in a storm, crashed down in front of Nathan, crumpling the table beneath him. He nearly slid off, but managed to make it to the next section, and in doing so caught a glimpse of a figure in white being swarmed by gray figures crawling up over the lip of the pyramid. He almost hesitated, but the chill of the knife in his grip pulled him back. He threw himself forwards, towards the hollowed husk of meat and bone and decay.

"ENOUGH!!!" he howled. The monster howled back, its vast jaws splitting open like a ragged wound. Something gleamed in the depths, twinkling like a star; a light at the end of the tunnel. In an act of ultimate defiance, knife raised and teeth bared, Nathan threw himself into the monster's yawning gullet, stabbing down at the hateful thing, the golden light catching the metal of his weapon in a flash of amber.

Then jaws closed around him. The slimy weight of its cancerous, too-alive body made Nate want to vomit, but he ignored it. The knife was cold. The knife cut deep. He stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, wet tissue parting and pustules popping all around him as he savaged the Worm's guts. The gangrenous corpus tried to initiate peristalsis, squeezing tight around him like a straight-jacket and struggling to expel him. Nathan sliced it to ribbons, swimming through the bilious blood that poured free of the wounds. His inability to form weapons from Cammy's shape had not left him undefended; nor had it rendered him less than human. Fear compelled him; love armored him. He dug and dug and dug, tearing down towards the nightmare star at the bottom of the pit of greedy, twisted corpse-meat.

For a moment, the smallest of instants, he thought he might never reach it; that he would be trapped; forced to simply drag himself forwards forever towards a truth that would never be his. Then, suddenly, he was there. The body of the worm shuddered as he reached down into its heart, the whole of its being screaming "NO! NO!! NO!!!". But he could not hear it. He couldn't even hear Cammy now. The light of the fallen star; the Mechta Prizma; the Oneiroi Stone; drowned out everything. Its rays passed through his flesh and scoured his very soul, making him feel somehow separate from himself and yet more centered than he had ever been before. His senses were on fire; overloading; exploding with information they could no longer process.

With one hand he reached out, eldritch knowledge unfolding like a flower in his mind as he wrapped his fingers around the source of the Worm's stolen potency. He gripped it, the burning angles of its existence threatening to cut him apart like mist. Then he pulled.

Nathan had never quite been sure what dying would feel like. For his younger self, it had been a touchy subject, and had only grown more-so with time as his circle of relatives had dwindled and the specter of his own mortality took on the more defined shape that came with age and wisdom. Perhaps, he'd thought to himself, it would be like being buried? Would he sink into darkness, condemned to an even greater loneliness than he had been in life? Or would he instead suffer the slow dissolution of everything that was his self? An onset of sleep that he might not even know was taking him until he just…never woke up again?

As he gripped the fountain of living light, Nathan felt the touch of death…and found it wasn't quite like what he'd expected. There was no burial in a cell at the bottom of oblivion; nor a dissolution in the waters of Lethe as the hostile universe swept the stream of his consciousness into the night. Instead…instead…

There was an explosion.

Was it the world? Or was it him?

He felt…liberated; like he was free of a prison that he'd never realized was there.

The crystal tree fractured. Unfolded…

…and GREW.

 

[Vadrigos]

Interval 23​

Annika didn't know how it happened. She didn't even know what 'it' was. Her last coherent memory was of a red swarm of skinless bodies heaving towards her, like a single, thrashing column of meat; a flagella of some cosmic macrovirus swinging out to swipe her off her feet and crush her into paste. And then…

And then…

What?

She looked around. Darkness greeted her. Memories flickered in her mind about her father telling her of his time up in space, doing work on satellites and drifting at the end of his tether as he waited to be reeled back in. He'd often spoken of how small he'd felt; of how he'd had to fight to keep from looking away from Earth, especially in the early days. He'd feared that the great void of the open sky would catch his gaze and leave him unable to look away, paralyzed with fear of the bottomless depths of space.

Looking into the dark, Annika had a grim inkling that she now knew what he'd meant.

For a long time, she drifted. How long, she couldn't say, though it had to be at least more than a few minutes. Her attempts to test her hypothesis were what alerted her to the fact that her heads-up display was dark. She stiffened in terror at that knowledge, a new reason to fear filling her. Power failure in her situation was a catastrophic problem, a worst-case scenario with no clear outcome. Even in the most well-understood scenarios she'd been briefed on, losing power to her suit's integrity systems in an unclassified environment should've meant dissolution; a collapse of her body into particles that even the super-science of some of the greatest civilizations she'd seen in her travels had no name for.

And yet…she was still here.

The thought drained some of her terror…temporarily anyways. Of course, no sooner had she come to terms with her continued existence, then gibbering goblins of fresh uncertainty and swarms of unanswered questions sprang up in a rush, trying to cram into her forebrain and leave her frozen in dread once more.

This time though, she resisted, planting herself against the certainty of her present survival. Thoughts that didn't serve that survival were a luxury, so she pushed them out. Fighting the siren call of panic, she flailed her arms, testing to see how solid the-

Light.

The glow was sudden, piercing and uncontrolled. A hail of colors bombarded Annika's senses as she abruptly felt herself spinning out of control through…air? Water? Nothing at all? She couldn't tell. Her senses were overloaded, but for some reason, she couldn't black out.

She saw…

She saw the pyramid.

It was falling.

---​

Pain.

The Worm had known of the sensation; of the word and its meaning. It had taken knowledge from the Spencer-shell, pieces of his shape and those like it that had allowed it to understand. Pain was good, so long as it happened to others. Now it knew its touch for itself, and found it unbearable.

Wrath.

The intruder; the shapeless, two-fold interloper had hurt it. It had gotten inside and TAKEN. The tattered, makeshift consciousness of the Worm rebelled at this latter idea even more than the former. Pain could be overcome! But the interloper had STOLEN from it!

Mine!

MINE.

M̴̹̼͔̠͉͎̩̖͍̗͑I̷̛̛̦̥͌̾̐̈́͂͆͗̓͗͌̽Ṅ̴̼̬͈͇̺̭̋̂̿̓̑͂̿͛͝Ë̴̡̡̡̙̞̗̯̰̼̮̇̈́̆̓̉̓̆͝!


It tore itself up from its roots. There was more pain, as the not-world it had made in the swelling cyst in reality it had made by its presence and actions convulsed in sympathetic disquiet. The pain fed back into its rage, and the mantra of indignation rose higher, as the spilling wound in its stolen flesh began to pulsate with rotten, golden light.


M̸̡̩̩̲̃̉̈́̄̄̌̎Ì̴̯̈́̑̐̂N̴̛̹̘̺̻͚̊͊E̵̱̮̳̽̈́̈̿͛̕͠ͅ!̶̱̰͈̹̃̀̕

M̶̛͔̟̟͚̆̃̇̋̈́͠Î̶͈͚̥̠̳̤̆̓͝N̵̢̙͉̾̍̑̈Ȇ̵̫͕̭̩̒͜!̴̪̭̲̝̮̀̐̃͐̾!̵͈̻̹̳̫͗̐̊

M̸̱͆̓I̸͓̋̋̒̐N̴͎̬̽̆̋̈́̃̕E̸̗͓̘͒͊͂̃͌̎͝!̵̘͍̻̘̆͊̇̚!̵̳̝͚͚̭̙̪̂́̊̇̏͠!̶̡̧̡̗͈̺̬̑̾̋̾͂́͛

---​

The pyramid exploded. Bone became dust. Flesh combusted. From the avalanche of filth and corpse-matter a pustule-like monstrosity began to grow. Annika watched, mouth agape as she struggled to control her flight. Gravity had stopped working it seemed, because she could no longer even feel the pull of the false ground beneath her. All she could do was spin through space, each revolution bringing the thing back into sight over and over; a strobing nightmare show more hideous with every quick snatch of its form she caught.

Below, towers fell, and the great green-yellow-pink-white monstrosity rose above their toppled steeples. It had a shape; or perhaps it would've been more accurate to say that it had many, all crammed into the same ugly, putrescent form. A fetus, stillborn and red raw with polluted afterbirth; an amoeba, stretching out limbs that were pseudopods but also hands and veins and power cables; a cadaver, with limbs that were ungainly and sloughed flesh like an acid-burned side of beef; a tapeworm, but with a lamprey's mouth that belched waste and a centipede's scything pincers that were rusted red with the gore of slaughtered innocents. Annika tried to shut her eyes, unable to bear its presence as it revolved through her vision again and again. She tried to remember the prayers her mother had taught her, but the words would not come.

She didn't think God would be listening in any case. If he existed, she doubted his light reached here. There was only the horrible, golden glow; like the toxic shine of some terrible amber star whose light washed away thought, personhood, and anything else that got in its way. She felt certain she could feel it trying to squeeze into her through her closed eyelids; trying to squirm into her brain like…

…like a worm.

M̷̠̹͚̈́͑̆́͝ͅÎ̶̛͈̼̋̈̓Ņ̴̧̧̛͍͚͆͋͒̈́͠Ë̶͉͇͇̜̍͜

Annika screamed. She cursed and thrashed. The trigger of her weapon clicked uselessly as she tried to fire it, to no avail. She tried to catch something, anything to stop her spin, to stop her spiral out into the nothing, while the false world around her came apart like a dissolving cloud of spores.

And then, suddenly, there was silence.

---​

Silence.

Images.

A galaxy of lights.

Who were they?

…

Nathan?

The…name sounded familiar, if a bit small. Was it theirs?

Maybe. They had worn many names it seemed. Many shapes too, now that they came to think of it. There was a sensation of slow recollection. Time…time unwound. The entity unfolded itself as it slipped through the twisted convolutions that had once enchained it, intersecting with and disconnecting from them as it flexed its remembered moiety.

<Nathan?>

The voice was familiar, like the name. The being turned its attention towards the source, but found it could only just make it out; formless and contorting constantly, wrapped all about and pervading it. A vague memory of trying to see their ear in a mirror flickered through their multifaceted selves; a confusing and disjointed moment of recall hampered by the lack of any organs or senses that humans would've been able to put name to. The notion of physicality reminded it of something else too, but it was more concerned with the interloper than abstract ideas of 'body' and 'self'.

<Nathan?>

The name…the name was a touchstone. The entity felt it pulling at its manifold existence, braiding its chaotic threads of consciousness into [MIND/THOUGHT/CONTINUITY/INTENT]. It fastened to it, and found an answer waiting.

<Cammy?>

<Nathan!! What happened!? You're…different!>

They were confused. How could they be different? Hadn't they always-...

…no. No, that wasn't right…

…

Why was everything suddenly so loud?

In the midst of their befuddlement, it occurred to the entity to interrogate the sensation from earlier; the tangled skein of energy and motion that had been the [IDEA/CONCEPT/NOTION/MEANING] of life. It felt a moment of not-quite-frustration, overcome by the sense that they were at once too big and yet still too small.

Then a hand tightened, and abruptly they-

---​

-woke up.

…well, not exactly. Nate grappled with the sensations filling him as he struggled to pull together his fractured mind. The shapes helped, though he wasn't sure 'shapes' was a good word for them. They were patterns and figures; cross-sectioned and pressed images of an idea that allowed him to…to…

….something.

Damn, was this what it was like for Cammy all the time?

Maybe…

If it was, it wasn't terribly comfortable.

But then, a part of him that was also another person in a different life pointed out, existing as one thing while trying to be more was never very comfortable, was it?

Nate clutched at himself, the crystal tree uncoiling and recoiling as he threatened to again spin apart; drawn back to a higher reality (though even calling it that wasn't an appropriate description). He looked down and saw a flashing, many-colored kaleidoscope of shadows and shapes; a glassy flower that ran in every direction forever. He should've been screaming, but the shapes helped him understand. They emerged from the flickering, strobing reflections and gave order to the chaos; a strand of light to pull him in the direction he needed to go. He tightened his grip on the…thing, its angles and curves feeling fluid and hard at once, despite having no mass or true-

Enough.

More than anything the shapes could do, the one word drew him back; an anchor to purpose. The river of glass and refractions spiraled around itself, coiling back into a shape of understanding.

Nathan looked at the thing in his hand. It had no shape that it was not given. In that respect, it was much like Cammy, he reflected. And yet, simultaneously, it was EVERY shape. It was the dream, and the dream was it. He raised it up, marveling at its glittering, fractal form. He felt as though he might fall into it if he wasn't careful; a self-made paradox that was more real than the things that had created it. Where had it come from, he wondered briefly; had it always been? Or was it yet to be?

Perhaps, he thought, there was no right answer.

Just the one he chose.

Before he could muse on it more though, he found himself distracted by screaming. He winced. It was a woman; someone he didn't know…but it made him hurt. He turned his attention towards the source; a tiny light, spat out from the galaxy of-

…oh.

Right.

---​

The Worm in Yellow shrieked in outrage. It pressed and squeezed, thrashed and unraveled. It clawed at the self it had wrapped over its being, trying to force it to go further; to stretch larger. All it did though was hurt.

Worse, it could feel the interloper; feel it looking at it; inspecting it. It raged at the touch. Its mind was not to be interrogated! It's presence was absolute! It yanked at the fibers of continuity it had driven itself into to anchor itself to this 'time-space', this 'reality'. Strands split, and thoughts bled from. But it cared not at all.

It would not stand for competition.


M̶̍̓̽͜Ì̷̳͍̗͇̺̚N̸̪̠̣̦̯̖͙̔̄̌̅̆́̑E̵̦͇̼͓͇̖̪̍̈́͗͐̋̚!̶͖̘͝!̷̦͓͐!̶̟̘̔̊̍͜ ̶̡̼̙͈͚̱̒̂͒̂͛́M̶̝̽͗̊͛̈̑͛O̴̲̳̻͗R̴̡̫͓͂̄̓͘E̷͙͉̥̝͖͉͒̓̀͐̎!̷̦̬̹̲̾ͅ!̸̨̡̭̩̣͕̅̄̽̋̎̆!̷̛̳͍̣͇ ̷͕̝͗̉̇̉̽̃͛M̶̺͕̠̽Í̶̧̮̤̪̜̲͂͗̇̇͝Ņ̸̤͔̟̋̽E̸̡̨̺̠̥̦̋͑̈́̃͘̚ͅ!̴̩͚̲̙̓̆̋̌̊͘͠!̸͇̱̓͋!̶̨̭͖͕̫̌͋̅͗ ̵̢̳͙̗̩̲͌̂M̷̧̳͇̮̎͠Ö̸̹̺̮̞̠́͛̓̋̇̅͜Ŕ̸̝̘̥̞̲̊̓̕͝͠Ě̸͍̫̜̈́́̽͆!̴̜͍̟̯̺̂̒̅!̴̢̞͈͕̥͌̒̀̀͂!̵͖̗̙̠̈́̔͊̂̕͝!̴̪̥̩̼͂̈́̓̌̀̔͘!̶̢͖̮͉̱͛


The bellow was indignant; inchoate; unreasoning. It would not be challenged. It was the Worm, the Worm in Yellow! And the Worm swallowed ALL! Ground to paste and powder and ruin! It wanted everything; to rule, to own, to subjugate, to destroy! To devour everything until it finally split the rotten skin it had taken on in an effort to hide itself and was at last rendered omnipotent and safe, safe, SAFE!

And yet, while it was incapable of doubt, born as it was of the ugly urges of a broken, angry, frightened man, some part of the Worm still shivered, wracked with uncertainty. On the edge of its domain, the roiling, silent blackness that had spilled from its wound continued to grow. The residual injury ached, more even than the hunger that forever gnawed at its ramshackle consciousness, born of a shape not meant for entropic time and ill-confined to a space that was subject to it.

It knew something was wrong; something more than the petty offenses to which it was responding. And yet exactly what, it couldn't tell.

Had it understood fear, it might've recognized it then in itself. But then Spencer had never been very good at introspection.

---​

Nathan stared at the ugly, wiggling thing at the heart of the poison light. Bits of him recoiled at its repugnance. Other bits that were no longer entirely there marveled at its size and scope. Holding up the object that even now threatened to unravel him just through contact with it, he pointed it towards the…Worm. The name came unbidden, as did the act that followed. He felt parts of himself respond to the errant desire to understand it; to know what it was he was seeing, without opening himself to it. The strange witchlight of the Oneroi Stone intensified, and pierced through his manifold reflections. It angled down, spreading across the Worm and revealing it beyond all revelations.

Nathan wept.

<Why?>

But then he knew why. The demonic refrain, like needles against his wavering fractal form, reverberated to the beat of a monstrous drum, forged from the skin of a frightened, battered child.



M̷̲̮̝͍͚̽̌͛̆͗̉̆͆͝I̸̢̡̗̝̼̰̼̗̳̩͍̣͙̞͑̋́̑͐̑͆͌̆̑͘͘͝N̷̢͎̦̩͚̭̫̰̟͚͍͋͊͗̂͑͗͒̐̚̚͠Ȩ̸̨̢̮̖̮͓͖̲͈̹̼͇͔͐̓̉̈́͋̃͊̀̽̊̌̾͘̚!̴̧͓̹̝̺̫̼̅̒̇͌̋̕ͅ!̷̠̝̻̦͑̈́̓̉͒̕̕͝ ̷̢̧͉̯̹͇͒̋̈́̅̅̓͛̉͐̆̈̕̚͝M̵̝͚̼̱̽̋͌͋̈́́Ơ̴̪̼͚͈̱̟̯̺̒̅̆̌̓̔̐́̚͠R̷̲͎̦͚̝̰̖̎̐̋̿̀͊̆̄̈́͒̿̀̏͝͝Ẽ̴̘̫̝̮̐̽̃̅̋̿͒̎̄̇͑̒!̶̡̫̀̂͋̀̈́̃̇̎́͛̇̂̀͜͝!̷̤͚͉͉̩̝̠̻̝̻̗͉̍̀̌̇̓


Small words for a small thing; always hungry, never sated. He saw it winding itself along timelines, coiling through realities and into the minds of beings for which mankind would never have a name. Its venom spread up and down the length of his own history, and he recognized the teeth marks of its gruesome, gumming bite. Somewhere, somewhen, men chose to keep for themselves what by rights they should've saved for their scions. Somewhere, somewhen, a father deceived his son for his own gain, and in doing so made a monster that would haunt the dreams of history forever. Somewhere, somewhen, a moment of vulnerability was rewarded with misery, for no better reason than distraction from the pain that all living things knew.

Over, and over, and over, and over…

Nathan's sight blurred with tears, and he was grateful; he could not bear to look another second at the poison paradox. He felt anger; shame; betrayal. He experienced, on the fringes of his hyper-consciousness, emotions that the ape-brain he had been born into could not wholly contain, and this could only taste viscerally, so great was the burden of their knowing. It was painful; so very painful. But then what other response was appropriate for looking upon the cancer of cancers; the insatiable, misbegotten thing that had now sunk its hooked fangs into the subconscious of all mankind?

<Nathan?>

The voice drew him back, enough to form words at least and stave off dissolution yet again.

<It's too late.> he wept. <Too late.>

Uncertainty; confusion.

<Is it?>

Despair; grief.

<Yes! It's everywhere! It's…it's…it always was! It's part of us! It was always here!>

And then, from the darkness around him, came words of hope.

<Maybe. But so are you.>

Nathan felt his hand tighten. His fingers ached, even if he wasn't sure anymore if they should be called that or something else entirely. He stared into its strange glow, feeling his eyes dry as he did.

<I love you, Nathan.>

<I love you too, Cammy.>

He held up the source of the living light. It was every shape and no shape…and now, it was HIS shape. He tightened his fist, and gripped the handle.

The handle of a knife.

The last knife.

He turned his gaze to his adversary. In his swelling radiance, its toxic golden shine seemed pale and pathetic. Its roars, so full of wrath and loathing, sounded far away now; small and puerile… so very mortal. He raised the edge of the blade that severed destiny, aiming its point at his squirming nemesis as it stretched its stolen skin tighter. It recoiled, howling; its voice a shrill whine on the wind. He could see parts of it trying to wriggle away, even as the rest rose to face him; like a hate-maddened crowd whose fringe members nevertheless had suddenly grasped that they were staring at something even their massed strength could not hope to overcome.

Nathan reached out; a motion that was both his and not his that swirled a velvet-dark wall around the poison glow of the Worm, smothering its escaping strands as it reared back to strike like a coiled viper. It lashed out, beating with flagella like a pinned bacterium against the grip of encircling night, its hue so blue it was nearly black. Words, gibbered and screamed at volumes that would've shattered planets, drifted towards Nathan and past him like so much meaningless noise. Perhaps it was telling him to take out his own eye; something petty that would match the character of the mask it had made for itself. He could not imagine it asking for mercy; he doubted it would even understand what that meant.

Either way, it wouldn't have mattered; his choice had been made.

There were no words left to speak.

Well…

…maybe one.

ENOUGH.

---​

Annika saw it happen in slow motion almost, even though she knew deep within it should be happening all at once. The repulsive glow of the slithering nightmare dimmed, as if shrouded by a darkness which only suffered light to pass its substance if it so desired it. The putrescent glow of the hateful star strobed and thrashed, as if attempting to throw off a constriction that was pressing in from every angle. It began to sink; an evil sun drifting towards the horizon.

Then, above it, a new light exploded into being. Its rainbow fluorescence was more colorful than anything she'd ever seen; more beautiful and more painful to behold than all the sights she'd yet witnessed on all her journeys.

A terrible light.

A killing light.

A renewing light.

It speared out from a kaleidoscope-storm of shimmering mirror surfaces that had been concealed in the compressing dark. The divine majesty of the ray bent and twisted through those strange mirror surfaces, channeled down to a column of ultimate and final revelation. It smote the worm like a sandblaster, even though it remained as soundless as the night from which it sprang.

Flesh peeled.

Matter dissolved.

Dust remained.

In the flickering, fading depths of Annika's consciousness, she felt the urge to attach some poetic nuance to the sight; some metaphor or rhyming couplet that would pull it all together and give it meaning beyond the experiential.

But then some sights were too wild for words to encompass…and besides, she was dizzy, and so very, very tired. As the dark closed in, she found herself wishing she'd had the chance to meet that boy the detective Kyle had mentioned. What had his name been?

Nathan?

Yes, Nathan…

If only she could tell them…

Tell them…

---​

For the longest time, there was silence. An ache washed over Nathan as he felt himself begin to fold up. It was almost a subconscious movement; a return to the shape that was most familiar. An infinity of fragmented, fractured perspectives began to condense, a kaleidoscope losing its detail and divisions, until a thousand became a hundred, became ten, became one…

"And now, at last, we come to it."

The voice was familiar, if a bit startling. For the life of him though, Nate couldn't recall where he'd heard it before.

He looked around, and found that he was…standing. He looked down at himself. For a sliver of a second, he thought he was naked, though for some reason that didn't bother him terribly as much as it might have. But no, he was dressed, albeit in some very scruffy and dirty clothes. A white t-shirt, shorts, and a coat…no shoes though.

Strange, that.

He looked up, and found he was still standing…standing on the lush carpet of a hotel lobby. At least, he thought it was a lobby. It had the shape of one, but any time he tried to focus on the details, they receded into obscurity like a camera lens shifting its field of focus. All that remained were general shapes; a vague expression of liminality; a space of transition, distilled.

Nathan frowned, questions already collecting inside him like dust in a filter. When had he ended up here? Where was Cammy? Was he still himself? Was this a dream? Like dust though, the questions blew away when he saw the figure occupying the armchair in front of him.

"Hello, Nathan." said the man with the green eyes. "I've been waiting."

"Who are you?"

The man smiled, cocking his head with a wry glimmer of amusement in his emerald gaze.

"Who did you expect?

Nathan felt his brow furrow, before he caught sight of another figure in a second chair off to the side. Whoever they were, they were slumped over like a drunk (or possibly a corpse), and unlike his curiosity for his surroundings, Nathan felt a sudden instinctive aversion to examining the individual more closely. At the same time though, there was another sensation; not of direct familiarity like he'd felt for his mysterious host, but a sort of recognition of unrealized potential. Briefly, with the strange spontaneity of subconscious understanding, he recalled a memory of seeing a man on the street while passing through one of the bigger slums of Kansas City, a ragged old scrounger whose face he'd glimpsed as he stepped quietly into an old camping tent. He'd worn a look of profound misery and anger, and Nate found himself thinking for a moment that he had seen the same expression on his own face in many mirrors over the course of his life. His reaction must've registered with the green-eyed man, because his gaze flicked over to the limp figure.

"Ah yes." he said, "Him." The man gave a shrug. "He played his role, such as it was." His expression turned thoughtful, and he tapped one of the metal fixtures on his face that was not a face. "In another time, in another place, perhaps he could've been worthy." Then he shook his head, and focused on Nathan again. "But no; you could never have been him."

Nathan paused. How had he-

"Nor could he have been you." the man continued, rolling right over the questions before Nathan could voice them, "You, who were stronger of character." He waved at the figure in the other chair…and suddenly, there was nothing there.

There never had been.

Nathan shivered, but-

"You, who were faster to extend your hand." the man spoke, again flattening all thoughts in Nate's head, leaving his world a narrowing tunnel that was focused solely on his host. "You, who were wiser…"

The man stood, his eyes suddenly no longer glimmering, but shining with a flickering tourmaline fire. The urge to turn and run flared briefly in Nathan's gut, but he clamped down on it. He had only just stopped running, and he didn't feel like starting again for this.

"You…I like…b̵́ͅe̷͔͒t̶̺̀ẗ̴̙ȅ̸̱r̴̥̓."

The last word rumbled through his body; an alien sensation absorbed by half-alien senses. Nathan knew then suddenly that his current form, like the structure around him, was a tenuous illusion, sustained purely by both his own will, and the intent of the figure before him. Said figure now seemed even less human than before; an indistinct shape against a dim emerald glow from some direction he couldn't have pointed to if he tried.

"Let me ask, truly:" the figure said, "Who exactly, did you expect at the end of all this?"

Nathan shook his head, bewildered. "I don't know."

"Hmmm." The man-shape folded his fingers together and began to pace in a slow circle, his long…coat? Shroud? Whatever it was, rasping against the patterned carpet that wasn't all there.

"If I were God," he said after a moment, "I think, given your nature, you might feel morally obligated to kill me." He circled Nate again, his grin smaller now, but persistent. "Lucky for me then, that I am not."

"Does that make you-" Nate began, the question feeling foolish even as it came spilling out, but again, the green-eyed man was ahead of him, waiting and ready to cut his query short.

"The devil? No; not by any definition that you might make. But then you knew that; know that…" Another pass, another smile. "What does that leave?"

A grim thought struck Nathan, and despite the implications, he eventually answered.

"Death?"

Silence. Stillness. The figure with green eyes stopped his circuit, the light of his existence flaring briefly. The quiet stretched on until Nate knew he had guessed wrong, and frowned with consternation even as the man's smile widened again, his head shaking.

"No…no, though a fair guess. Fitting, even." He gestured at the wobbling, indistinct columns and old-world luxury surrounding them both. "But still, wrong all the same. You know this too, I think." Again, he shook his head. "There is no skeleton with a scythe at the end of your tale, because there are no endings; no beginnings. Only points of transition."

The man sat, arms spreading to encompass all things around him, and with an indescribable mental shift, suddenly the context of the scene felt less like a stranger in a lobby...and more like a king on a throne.

"No." the green-eyed man said, "Not God. Not the devil. Not death." His eyes gleamed.

"Just…M̶̯͌Ȇ̴͙͓."

Nathan took a step forward, and found a chair waiting for him. He felt he should be surprised, but right then, surprise felt like something that mostly happened to other people. He sat, grateful at least for the chance to rest his legs, regardless of how real they were.

"What do I call you?"

"Whatever you like." the man replied, leaning back in his seat, one leg coming up to fold across the other in a strangely casual gesture. "I am partial to Οἶδα, if you feel so inclined."

The name sparked a bit of trivia in Nate's brain and he scowled. "Kind of pretentious…but then I guess it fits." He leaned back a bit himself and sighed, resigned. "I was hoping you'd tell me exactly what it IS that you know. But I'm not that lucky."

"Do not sell yourself short." the green-eyed man replied, "You have done very well for yourself, all things considered."

"What happens now?"

"Now?"

Nate shrugged. "I held a knife. I killed a god. What happens next?"

"And then."

Another frown; a fresh sense of frustration. But hold on-

"As I said; there are no endings. No beginnings. Not for me. Only moments of transition." A gesture, ephemeral and flighty. "You stand at one now, like so many before you, and the many more who shall come after. Eternity lies ahead and behind…and still, you have not had your fill."

"Then what was this…all of this for?"

A smirk, unchanging; the expression of one who knows a secret, but does not share.

"What do you want?"

 

[Vadrigos]

Interval 23​

Annika didn't know how it happened. She didn't even know what 'it' was. Her last coherent memory was of a red swarm of skinless bodies heaving towards her, like a single, thrashing column of meat; a flagella of some cosmic macrovirus swinging out to swipe her off her feet and crush her into paste. And then…

And then…

What?

She looked around. Darkness greeted her. Memories flickered in her mind about her father telling her of his time up in space, doing work on satellites and drifting at the end of his tether as he waited to be reeled back in. He'd often spoken of how small he'd felt; of how he'd had to fight to keep from looking away from Earth, especially in the early days. He'd feared that the great void of the open sky would catch his gaze and leave him unable to look away, paralyzed with fear of the bottomless depths of space.

Looking into the dark, Annika had a grim inkling that she now knew what he'd meant.

For a long time, she drifted. How long, she couldn't say, though it had to be at least more than a few minutes. Her attempts to test her hypothesis were what alerted her to the fact that her heads-up display was dark. She stiffened in terror at that knowledge, a new reason to fear filling her. Power failure in her situation was a catastrophic problem, a worst-case scenario with no clear outcome. Even in the most well-understood scenarios she'd been briefed on, losing power to her suit's integrity systems in an unclassified environment should've meant dissolution; a collapse of her body into particles that even the super-science of some of the greatest civilizations she'd seen in her travels had no name for.

And yet…she was still here.

The thought drained some of her terror…temporarily anyways. Of course, no sooner had she come to terms with her continued existence, then gibbering goblins of fresh uncertainty and swarms of unanswered questions sprang up in a rush, trying to cram into her forebrain and leave her frozen in dread once more.

This time though, she resisted, planting herself against the certainty of her present survival. Thoughts that didn't serve that survival were a luxury, so she pushed them out. Fighting the siren call of panic, she flailed her arms, testing to see how solid the-

Light.

The glow was sudden, piercing and uncontrolled. A hail of colors bombarded Annika's senses as she abruptly felt herself spinning out of control through…air? Water? Nothing at all? She couldn't tell. Her senses were overloaded, but for some reason, she couldn't black out.

She saw…

She saw the pyramid.

It was falling.

---​

Pain.

The Worm had known of the sensation; of the word and its meaning. It had taken knowledge from the Spencer-shell, pieces of his shape and those like it that had allowed it to understand. Pain was good, so long as it happened to others. Now it knew its touch for itself, and found it unbearable.

Wrath.

The intruder; the shapeless, two-fold interloper had hurt it. It had gotten inside and TAKEN. The tattered, makeshift consciousness of the Worm rebelled at this latter idea even more than the former. Pain could be overcome! But the interloper had STOLEN from it!

Mine!

MINE.

M̴̹̼͔̠͉͎̩̖͍̗͑I̷̛̛̦̥͌̾̐̈́͂͆͗̓͗͌̽Ṅ̴̼̬͈͇̺̭̋̂̿̓̑͂̿͛͝Ë̴̡̡̡̙̞̗̯̰̼̮̇̈́̆̓̉̓̆͝!


It tore itself up from its roots. There was more pain, as the not-world it had made in the swelling cyst in reality it had made by its presence and actions convulsed in sympathetic disquiet. The pain fed back into its rage, and the mantra of indignation rose higher, as the spilling wound in its stolen flesh began to pulsate with rotten, golden light.


M̸̡̩̩̲̃̉̈́̄̄̌̎Ì̴̯̈́̑̐̂N̴̛̹̘̺̻͚̊͊E̵̱̮̳̽̈́̈̿͛̕͠ͅ!̶̱̰͈̹̃̀̕

M̶̛͔̟̟͚̆̃̇̋̈́͠Î̶͈͚̥̠̳̤̆̓͝N̵̢̙͉̾̍̑̈Ȇ̵̫͕̭̩̒͜!̴̪̭̲̝̮̀̐̃͐̾!̵͈̻̹̳̫͗̐̊

M̸̱͆̓I̸͓̋̋̒̐N̴͎̬̽̆̋̈́̃̕E̸̗͓̘͒͊͂̃͌̎͝!̵̘͍̻̘̆͊̇̚!̵̳̝͚͚̭̙̪̂́̊̇̏͠!̶̡̧̡̗͈̺̬̑̾̋̾͂́͛

---​

The pyramid exploded. Bone became dust. Flesh combusted. From the avalanche of filth and corpse-matter a pustule-like monstrosity began to grow. Annika watched, mouth agape as she struggled to control her flight. Gravity had stopped working it seemed, because she could no longer even feel the pull of the false ground beneath her. All she could do was spin through space, each revolution bringing the thing back into sight over and over; a strobing nightmare show more hideous with every quick snatch of its form she caught.

Below, towers fell, and the great green-yellow-pink-white monstrosity rose above their toppled steeples. It had a shape; or perhaps it would've been more accurate to say that it had many, all crammed into the same ugly, putrescent form. A fetus, stillborn and red raw with polluted afterbirth; an amoeba, stretching out limbs that were pseudopods but also hands and veins and power cables; a cadaver, with limbs that were ungainly and sloughed flesh like an acid-burned side of beef; a tapeworm, but with a lamprey's mouth that belched waste and a centipede's scything pincers that were rusted red with the gore of slaughtered innocents. Annika tried to shut her eyes, unable to bear its presence as it revolved through her vision again and again. She tried to remember the prayers her mother had taught her, but the words would not come.

She didn't think God would be listening in any case. If he existed, she doubted his light reached here. There was only the horrible, golden glow; like the toxic shine of some terrible amber star whose light washed away thought, personhood, and anything else that got in its way. She felt certain she could feel it trying to squeeze into her through her closed eyelids; trying to squirm into her brain like…

…like a worm.

M̷̠̹͚̈́͑̆́͝ͅÎ̶̛͈̼̋̈̓Ņ̴̧̧̛͍͚͆͋͒̈́͠Ë̶͉͇͇̜̍͜

Annika screamed. She cursed and thrashed. The trigger of her weapon clicked uselessly as she tried to fire it, to no avail. She tried to catch something, anything to stop her spin, to stop her spiral out into the nothing, while the false world around her came apart like a dissolving cloud of spores.

And then, suddenly, there was silence.

---​

Silence.

Images.

A galaxy of lights.

Who were they?

…

Nathan?

The…name sounded familiar, if a bit small. Was it theirs?

Maybe. They had worn many names it seemed. Many shapes too, now that they came to think of it. There was a sensation of slow recollection. Time…time unwound. The entity unfolded itself as it slipped through the twisted convolutions that had once enchained it, intersecting with and disconnecting from them as it flexed its remembered moiety.

<Nathan?>

The voice was familiar, like the name. The being turned its attention towards the source, but found it could only just make it out; formless and contorting constantly, wrapped all about and pervading it. A vague memory of trying to see their ear in a mirror flickered through their multifaceted selves; a confusing and disjointed moment of recall hampered by the lack of any organs or senses that humans would've been able to put name to. The notion of physicality reminded it of something else too, but it was more concerned with the interloper than abstract ideas of 'body' and 'self'.

<Nathan?>

The name…the name was a touchstone. The entity felt it pulling at its manifold existence, braiding its chaotic threads of consciousness into [MIND/THOUGHT/CONTINUITY/INTENT]. It fastened to it, and found an answer waiting.

<Cammy?>

<Nathan!! What happened!? You're…different!>

They were confused. How could they be different? Hadn't they always-...

…no. No, that wasn't right…

…

Why was everything suddenly so loud?

In the midst of their befuddlement, it occurred to the entity to interrogate the sensation from earlier; the tangled skein of energy and motion that had been the [IDEA/CONCEPT/NOTION/MEANING] of life. It felt a moment of not-quite-frustration, overcome by the sense that they were at once too big and yet still too small.

Then a hand tightened, and abruptly they-

---​

-woke up.

…well, not exactly. Nate grappled with the sensations filling him as he struggled to pull together his fractured mind. The shapes helped, though he wasn't sure 'shapes' was a good word for them. They were patterns and figures; cross-sectioned and pressed images of an idea that allowed him to…to…

….something.

Damn, was this what it was like for Cammy all the time?

Maybe…

If it was, it wasn't terribly comfortable.

But then, a part of him that was also another person in a different life pointed out, existing as one thing while trying to be more was never very comfortable, was it?

Nate clutched at himself, the crystal tree uncoiling and recoiling as he threatened to again spin apart; drawn back to a higher reality (though even calling it that wasn't an appropriate description). He looked down and saw a flashing, many-colored kaleidoscope of shadows and shapes; a glassy flower that ran in every direction forever. He should've been screaming, but the shapes helped him understand. They emerged from the flickering, strobing reflections and gave order to the chaos; a strand of light to pull him in the direction he needed to go. He tightened his grip on the…thing, its angles and curves feeling fluid and hard at once, despite having no mass or true-

Enough.

More than anything the shapes could do, the one word drew him back; an anchor to purpose. The river of glass and refractions spiraled around itself, coiling back into a shape of understanding.

Nathan looked at the thing in his hand. It had no shape that it was not given. In that respect, it was much like Cammy, he reflected. And yet, simultaneously, it was EVERY shape. It was the dream, and the dream was it. He raised it up, marveling at its glittering, fractal form. He felt as though he might fall into it if he wasn't careful; a self-made paradox that was more real than the things that had created it. Where had it come from, he wondered briefly; had it always been? Or was it yet to be?

Perhaps, he thought, there was no right answer.

Just the one he chose.

Before he could muse on it more though, he found himself distracted by screaming. He winced. It was a woman; someone he didn't know…but it made him hurt. He turned his attention towards the source; a tiny light, spat out from the galaxy of-

…oh.

Right.

---​

The Worm in Yellow shrieked in outrage. It pressed and squeezed, thrashed and unraveled. It clawed at the self it had wrapped over its being, trying to force it to go further; to stretch larger. All it did though was hurt.

Worse, it could feel the interloper; feel it looking at it; inspecting it. It raged at the touch. Its mind was not to be interrogated! It's presence was absolute! It yanked at the fibers of continuity it had driven itself into to anchor itself to this 'time-space', this 'reality'. Strands split, and thoughts bled from. But it cared not at all.

It would not stand for competition.


M̶̍̓̽͜Ì̷̳͍̗͇̺̚N̸̪̠̣̦̯̖͙̔̄̌̅̆́̑E̵̦͇̼͓͇̖̪̍̈́͗͐̋̚!̶͖̘͝!̷̦͓͐!̶̟̘̔̊̍͜ ̶̡̼̙͈͚̱̒̂͒̂͛́M̶̝̽͗̊͛̈̑͛O̴̲̳̻͗R̴̡̫͓͂̄̓͘E̷͙͉̥̝͖͉͒̓̀͐̎!̷̦̬̹̲̾ͅ!̸̨̡̭̩̣͕̅̄̽̋̎̆!̷̛̳͍̣͇ ̷͕̝͗̉̇̉̽̃͛M̶̺͕̠̽Í̶̧̮̤̪̜̲͂͗̇̇͝Ņ̸̤͔̟̋̽E̸̡̨̺̠̥̦̋͑̈́̃͘̚ͅ!̴̩͚̲̙̓̆̋̌̊͘͠!̸͇̱̓͋!̶̨̭͖͕̫̌͋̅͗ ̵̢̳͙̗̩̲͌̂M̷̧̳͇̮̎͠Ö̸̹̺̮̞̠́͛̓̋̇̅͜Ŕ̸̝̘̥̞̲̊̓̕͝͠Ě̸͍̫̜̈́́̽͆!̴̜͍̟̯̺̂̒̅!̴̢̞͈͕̥͌̒̀̀͂!̵͖̗̙̠̈́̔͊̂̕͝!̴̪̥̩̼͂̈́̓̌̀̔͘!̶̢͖̮͉̱͛


The bellow was indignant; inchoate; unreasoning. It would not be challenged. It was the Worm, the Worm in Yellow! And the Worm swallowed ALL! Ground to paste and powder and ruin! It wanted everything; to rule, to own, to subjugate, to destroy! To devour everything until it finally split the rotten skin it had taken on in an effort to hide itself and was at last rendered omnipotent and safe, safe, SAFE!

And yet, while it was incapable of doubt, born as it was of the ugly urges of a broken, angry, frightened man, some part of the Worm still shivered, wracked with uncertainty. On the edge of its domain, the roiling, silent blackness that had spilled from its wound continued to grow. The residual injury ached, more even than the hunger that forever gnawed at its ramshackle consciousness, born of a shape not meant for entropic time and ill-confined to a space that was subject to it.

It knew something was wrong; something more than the petty offenses to which it was responding. And yet exactly what, it couldn't tell.

Had it understood fear, it might've recognized it then in itself. But then Spencer had never been very good at introspection.

---​

Nathan stared at the ugly, wiggling thing at the heart of the poison light. Bits of him recoiled at its repugnance. Other bits that were no longer entirely there marveled at its size and scope. Holding up the object that even now threatened to unravel him just through contact with it, he pointed it towards the…Worm. The name came unbidden, as did the act that followed. He felt parts of himself respond to the errant desire to understand it; to know what it was he was seeing, without opening himself to it. The strange witchlight of the Oneroi Stone intensified, and pierced through his manifold reflections. It angled down, spreading across the Worm and revealing it beyond all revelations.

Nathan wept.

<Why?>

But then he knew why. The demonic refrain, like needles against his wavering fractal form, reverberated to the beat of a monstrous drum, forged from the skin of a frightened, battered child.



M̷̲̮̝͍͚̽̌͛̆͗̉̆͆͝I̸̢̡̗̝̼̰̼̗̳̩͍̣͙̞͑̋́̑͐̑͆͌̆̑͘͘͝N̷̢͎̦̩͚̭̫̰̟͚͍͋͊͗̂͑͗͒̐̚̚͠Ȩ̸̨̢̮̖̮͓͖̲͈̹̼͇͔͐̓̉̈́͋̃͊̀̽̊̌̾͘̚!̴̧͓̹̝̺̫̼̅̒̇͌̋̕ͅ!̷̠̝̻̦͑̈́̓̉͒̕̕͝ ̷̢̧͉̯̹͇͒̋̈́̅̅̓͛̉͐̆̈̕̚͝M̵̝͚̼̱̽̋͌͋̈́́Ơ̴̪̼͚͈̱̟̯̺̒̅̆̌̓̔̐́̚͠R̷̲͎̦͚̝̰̖̎̐̋̿̀͊̆̄̈́͒̿̀̏͝͝Ẽ̴̘̫̝̮̐̽̃̅̋̿͒̎̄̇͑̒!̶̡̫̀̂͋̀̈́̃̇̎́͛̇̂̀͜͝!̷̤͚͉͉̩̝̠̻̝̻̗͉̍̀̌̇̓


Small words for a small thing; always hungry, never sated. He saw it winding itself along timelines, coiling through realities and into the minds of beings for which mankind would never have a name. Its venom spread up and down the length of his own history, and he recognized the teeth marks of its gruesome, gumming bite. Somewhere, somewhen, men chose to keep for themselves what by rights they should've saved for their scions. Somewhere, somewhen, a father deceived his son for his own gain, and in doing so made a monster that would haunt the dreams of history forever. Somewhere, somewhen, a moment of vulnerability was rewarded with misery, for no better reason than distraction from the pain that all living things knew.

Over, and over, and over, and over…

Nathan's sight blurred with tears, and he was grateful; he could not bear to look another second at the poison paradox. He felt anger; shame; betrayal. He experienced, on the fringes of his hyper-consciousness, emotions that the ape-brain he had been born into could not wholly contain, and this could only taste viscerally, so great was the burden of their knowing. It was painful; so very painful. But then what other response was appropriate for looking upon the cancer of cancers; the insatiable, misbegotten thing that had now sunk its hooked fangs into the subconscious of all mankind?

<Nathan?>

The voice drew him back, enough to form words at least and stave off dissolution yet again.

<It's too late.> he wept. <Too late.>

Uncertainty; confusion.

<Is it?>

Despair; grief.

<Yes! It's everywhere! It's…it's…it always was! It's part of us! It was always here!>

And then, from the darkness around him, came words of hope.

<Maybe. But so are you.>

Nathan felt his hand tighten. His fingers ached, even if he wasn't sure anymore if they should be called that or something else entirely. He stared into its strange glow, feeling his eyes dry as he did.

<I love you, Nathan.>

<I love you too, Cammy.>

He held up the source of the living light. It was every shape and no shape…and now, it was HIS shape. He tightened his fist, and gripped the handle.

The handle of a knife.

The last knife.

He turned his gaze to his adversary. In his swelling radiance, its toxic golden shine seemed pale and pathetic. Its roars, so full of wrath and loathing, sounded far away now; small and puerile… so very mortal. He raised the edge of the blade that severed destiny, aiming its point at his squirming nemesis as it stretched its stolen skin tighter. It recoiled, howling; its voice a shrill whine on the wind. He could see parts of it trying to wriggle away, even as the rest rose to face him; like a hate-maddened crowd whose fringe members nevertheless had suddenly grasped that they were staring at something even their massed strength could not hope to overcome.

Nathan reached out; a motion that was both his and not his that swirled a velvet-dark wall around the poison glow of the Worm, smothering its escaping strands as it reared back to strike like a coiled viper. It lashed out, beating with flagella like a pinned bacterium against the grip of encircling night, its hue so blue it was nearly black. Words, gibbered and screamed at volumes that would've shattered planets, drifted towards Nathan and past him like so much meaningless noise. Perhaps it was telling him to take out his own eye; something petty that would match the character of the mask it had made for itself. He could not imagine it asking for mercy; he doubted it would even understand what that meant.

Either way, it wouldn't have mattered; his choice had been made.

There were no words left to speak.

Well…

…maybe one.

ENOUGH.

---​

Annika saw it happen in slow motion almost, even though she knew deep within it should be happening all at once. The repulsive glow of the slithering nightmare dimmed, as if shrouded by a darkness which only suffered light to pass its substance if it so desired it. The putrescent glow of the hateful star strobed and thrashed, as if attempting to throw off a constriction that was pressing in from every angle. It began to sink; an evil sun drifting towards the horizon.

Then, above it, a new light exploded into being. Its rainbow fluorescence was more colorful than anything she'd ever seen; more beautiful and more painful to behold than all the sights she'd yet witnessed on all her journeys.

A terrible light.

A killing light.

A renewing light.

It speared out from a kaleidoscope-storm of shimmering mirror surfaces that had been concealed in the compressing dark. The divine majesty of the ray bent and twisted through those strange mirror surfaces, channeled down to a column of ultimate and final revelation. It smote the worm like a sandblaster, even though it remained as soundless as the night from which it sprang.

Flesh peeled.

Matter dissolved.

Dust remained.

In the flickering, fading depths of Annika's consciousness, she felt the urge to attach some poetic nuance to the sight; some metaphor or rhyming couplet that would pull it all together and give it meaning beyond the experiential.

But then some sights were too wild for words to encompass…and besides, she was dizzy, and so very, very tired. As the dark closed in, she found herself wishing she'd had the chance to meet that boy the detective Kyle had mentioned. What had his name been?

Nathan?

Yes, Nathan…

If only she could tell them…

Tell them…

---​

For the longest time, there was silence. An ache washed over Nathan as he felt himself begin to fold up. It was almost a subconscious movement; a return to the shape that was most familiar. An infinity of fragmented, fractured perspectives began to condense, a kaleidoscope losing its detail and divisions, until a thousand became a hundred, became ten, became one…

"And now, at last, we come to it."

The voice was familiar, if a bit startling. For the life of him though, Nate couldn't recall where he'd heard it before.

He looked around, and found that he was…standing. He looked down at himself. For a sliver of a second, he thought he was naked, though for some reason that didn't bother him terribly as much as it might have. But no, he was dressed, albeit in some very scruffy and dirty clothes. A white t-shirt, shorts, and a coat…no shoes though.

Strange, that.

He looked up, and found he was still standing…standing on the lush carpet of a hotel lobby. At least, he thought it was a lobby. It had the shape of one, but any time he tried to focus on the details, they receded into obscurity like a camera lens shifting its field of focus. All that remained were general shapes; a vague expression of liminality; a space of transition, distilled.

Nathan frowned, questions already collecting inside him like dust in a filter. When had he ended up here? Where was Cammy? Was he still himself? Was this a dream? Like dust though, the questions blew away when he saw the figure occupying the armchair in front of him.

"Hello, Nathan." said the man with the green eyes. "I've been waiting."

"Who are you?"

The man smiled, cocking his head with a wry glimmer of amusement in his emerald gaze.

"Who did you expect?

Nathan felt his brow furrow, before he caught sight of another figure in a second chair off to the side. Whoever they were, they were slumped over like a drunk (or possibly a corpse), and unlike his curiosity for his surroundings, Nathan felt a sudden instinctive aversion to examining the individual more closely. At the same time though, there was another sensation; not of direct familiarity like he'd felt for his mysterious host, but a sort of recognition of unrealized potential. Briefly, with the strange spontaneity of subconscious understanding, he recalled a memory of seeing a man on the street while passing through one of the bigger slums of Kansas City, a ragged old scrounger whose face he'd glimpsed as he stepped quietly into an old camping tent. He'd worn a look of profound misery and anger, and Nate found himself thinking for a moment that he had seen the same expression on his own face in many mirrors over the course of his life. His reaction must've registered with the green-eyed man, because his gaze flicked over to the limp figure.

"Ah yes." he said, "Him." The man gave a shrug. "He played his role, such as it was." His expression turned thoughtful, and he tapped one of the metal fixtures on his face that was not a face. "In another time, in another place, perhaps he could've been worthy." Then he shook his head, and focused on Nathan again. "But no; you could never have been him."

Nathan paused. How had he-

"Nor could he have been you." the man continued, rolling right over the questions before Nathan could voice them, "You, who were stronger of character." He waved at the figure in the other chair…and suddenly, there was nothing there.

There never had been.

Nathan shivered, but-

"You, who were faster to extend your hand." the man spoke, again flattening all thoughts in Nate's head, leaving his world a narrowing tunnel that was focused solely on his host. "You, who were wiser…"

The man stood, his eyes suddenly no longer glimmering, but shining with a flickering tourmaline fire. The urge to turn and run flared briefly in Nathan's gut, but he clamped down on it. He had only just stopped running, and he didn't feel like starting again for this.

"You…I like…b̵́ͅe̷͔͒t̶̺̀ẗ̴̙ȅ̸̱r̴̥̓."

The last word rumbled through his body; an alien sensation absorbed by half-alien senses. Nathan knew then suddenly that his current form, like the structure around him, was a tenuous illusion, sustained purely by both his own will, and the intent of the figure before him. Said figure now seemed even less human than before; an indistinct shape against a dim emerald glow from some direction he couldn't have pointed to if he tried.

"Let me ask, truly:" the figure said, "Who exactly, did you expect at the end of all this?"

Nathan shook his head, bewildered. "I don't know."

"Hmmm." The man-shape folded his fingers together and began to pace in a slow circle, his long…coat? Shroud? Whatever it was, rasping against the patterned carpet that wasn't all there.

"If I were God," he said after a moment, "I think, given your nature, you might feel morally obligated to kill me." He circled Nate again, his grin smaller now, but persistent. "Lucky for me then, that I am not."

"Does that make you-" Nate began, the question feeling foolish even as it came spilling out, but again, the green-eyed man was ahead of him, waiting and ready to cut his query short.

"The devil? No; not by any definition that you might make. But then you knew that; know that…" Another pass, another smile. "What does that leave?"

A grim thought struck Nathan, and despite the implications, he eventually answered.

"Death?"

Silence. Stillness. The figure with green eyes stopped his circuit, the light of his existence flaring briefly. The quiet stretched on until Nate knew he had guessed wrong, and frowned with consternation even as the man's smile widened again, his head shaking.

"No…no, though a fair guess. Fitting, even." He gestured at the wobbling, indistinct columns and old-world luxury surrounding them both. "But still, wrong all the same. You know this too, I think." Again, he shook his head. "There is no skeleton with a scythe at the end of your tale, because there are no endings; no beginnings. Only points of transition."

The man sat, arms spreading to encompass all things around him, and with an indescribable mental shift, suddenly the context of the scene felt less like a stranger in a lobby...and more like a king on a throne.

"No." the green-eyed man said, "Not God. Not the devil. Not death." His eyes gleamed.

"Just…M̶̯͌Ȇ̴͙͓."

Nathan took a step forward, and found a chair waiting for him. He felt he should be surprised, but right then, surprise felt like something that mostly happened to other people. He sat, grateful at least for the chance to rest his legs, regardless of how real they were.

"What do I call you?"

"Whatever you like." the man replied, leaning back in his seat, one leg coming up to fold across the other in a strangely casual gesture. "I am partial to Οἶδα, if you feel so inclined."

The name sparked a bit of trivia in Nate's brain and he scowled. "Kind of pretentious…but then I guess it fits." He leaned back a bit himself and sighed, resigned. "I was hoping you'd tell me exactly what it IS that you know. But I'm not that lucky."

"Do not sell yourself short." the green-eyed man replied, "You have done very well for yourself, all things considered."

"What happens now?"

"Now?"

Nate shrugged. "I held a knife. I killed a god. What happens next?"

"And then."

Another frown; a fresh sense of frustration. But hold on-

"As I said; there are no endings. No beginnings. Not for me. Only moments of transition." A gesture, ephemeral and flighty. "You stand at one now, like so many before you, and the many more who shall come after. Eternity lies ahead and behind…and still, you have not had your fill."

"Then what was this…all of this for?"

A smirk, unchanging; the expression of one who knows a secret, but does not share.

"What do you want?"

"What I want is an answer."

"And if there is no answer?"
Silence.

"Then I'll…I'll make one."

And then…understanding.

"I…but…why?"

'Οἶδα' smiled. It was not cruel, nor was it kind. It was.

"I told your friends that the nature of the finite is to crave the infinite. But the infinite too, is finite in its own way; and so it is, that it craves perspective; a sense of novelty, beyond even what the absolute can provide."

The smile faded then, for only a second, and in the expression that replaced it…

"The circle is a line is a circle…so it goes."

Bitter resentment filled Nathan, and he felt his hands clench into fists.

"Entertainment?"

The laugh that answered him should've been confirmation, stoking the flames of his anger to fresh wrath. But they didn't.

"No." chuckled Οἶδα, "No…a reason. A story. A lifetime." He leaned forwards, his gaze full of mischief, but yet bereft of the malevolence Nate had expected. It was not a look he had ever expected to see him wear…but then even beings like him were more than the masks they wore.

Cammy had more than proved that.

"You have come to the end of this journey." Οἶδα said after a while, "You have enlightenment. You have love. And you have courage."

"And now?"

Another laugh; another smile.

"And now…one last test."

---​

The hotel vanished. Space vanished. Time vanished. Nate rose again, swelling upwards suddenly, to a state of being that was now familiar, yet still more alien than the mind of God, if one such truly existed. He looked around, the world illuminated by the shimmer of a ghostly green flame from somewhere that was behind him, ahead of him, and all around him at once. He saw…

He saw the scars.

"But I won!" he said, confusion cresting in his soul before the tidal wave of grief it heralded. "I WON!"

"With love, and courage, and a choice; yes."

"But why…"

He trailed off, because he knew; he knew already.

"And then?"

"And then."

Nathan stared, the flame of hope in his core flickering. It was so vast. The darkness had obscured it; tried to shield him from it. But as he was now, he could still see it; see THEM.

Up and down the tangled, rushing river of history, he saw.

He saw the echoes of the Worm, and the cold shapes it had bored into the hearts of all living things, mankind most of all. He saw the bleeding wounds where its tendrils had been wrenched free in the incinerating storm of his wrath, which for all its fury had done nothing to cauterize the damage. He saw the fading nightmare of what might've been, stretching out now into what might yet be, if nothing more was done.

He had won. But winning wasn't the end.

Nothing was.

No endings. No beginnings. Just transitions.

"What do I do?"

Silence. And then…

"Who are you?"

Nathan looked out at the desolation. It had a beauty to it, in a way; tragedies always did. But as much as he'd come to see all of life as a sob story, the part of him that rejected that could never let go.

After all, who would he be without it?

"What do you want?"

Nathan smiled, though he had no mouth to do so.

"No more questions."

"Ah, then you already know what is next."

"I do." he replied, "Because it's my choice."

"And what is your choice?"

Nathan did not answer, but instead looked into the darkness.

"Are you there?" he asked quietly. For a moment, there was no answer, but he did not let fear fill the silence. He waited…and then-

<Always.>

"I have…something to ask of you. I know we only just met, but-"

A finger laid upon his imaginary lips, soft and warm and understanding.

<I will.>

Nathan wept silently, shedding tears that were thoughts that were memories as he gathered the dark in an embrace, and felt it embrace him in turn.

And then, together, they began to dream.

---​

Beyond the night, the sun rose.

In the spires of a city of shining tomorrows and bright memories, the bells tolled.

Gulls called, and across the horizon, white sails rose.

The stars, with all their mystery, faded into the blue, but were not gone; merely waiting.

And in a place between two rivers, a garden that bloomed forever.

It was a vision of paradise, in the corner of the mind's eye.

For some at least, it was enough.

---​

For a while afterwards, there was silence again. Nathan stared at the flickering shapes, then turned to face the night again.

"You know what happens next, don't you?"

<I do.>

He shook his head, feeling fresh tears threaten to spring out.

"...it's not fair!"

<Such is life.>

The soft embrace held him tight, so like what he'd felt from the others who'd loved him, but so unique. Until today, he'd never known anything like it, and now for the sake of those dancing images, he had to step out of it.

"I know. But that doesn't make it easier."

<Think of your friends. If you left them, would you still be who you are?>

"...no. No I wouldn't."

For a long time, he watched the soft lights of his visions play about the breadth and length of imagination.

<It will only be for a little while.>

"Will you…wait for me?"

<Always.>

He nodded.

"Okay then."

He sucked in a shaky breath.

And then another.

And another.

And woke up

 

[Vadrigos]

Epilogue​

Natalie wasn't sure when she'd fallen asleep, nor how she'd managed to given how much worry had been consuming her. Letting Nate go without at least trying to follow had been anathema to her, but between Kyle, Beka, and the short note he'd left for them, she'd eventually been convinced there was nothing she could do. Thus, she'd settled in, and tried her best to distract herself with what mundane tasks she could find around the depot while the world slowly ended outside. It wasn't that hard, truth be told; in the end, they'd all had a lot of practice.

Then, somewhere between sitting down to rest her legs and turning to ask Beka how she felt, Natalie found herself opening her eyes with a newfound sense of restedness. She quickly worked out that it wasn't just her that had changed though; sunlight, real and unpolluted by the gray filtering of fog, streamed through all the nearby window-slits she could see. Rising almost at a run, she began to search for her girlfriend, and after asking several equally confused and worried passersby, she was able to track her down to one of the service garages, where her eyes were greeted with a sight that twisted her heart into a knot.

Everyone was present; Kyle, Beka, Mark; even the strange woman in the white that she'd known only by proxy for less than half an hour. Her strange astronaut-like getup looked worn and world-weary in the light of the sun streaming through one of the room's rollup doors, all of which were now open and allowing in a strangely cool desert breeze. Most importantly though, Nate was there, sitting up in a folding seat that had been dragged out from who-knew-where. It took all of Natalie's restored energy not to tackle him out of it with the biggest hug she could give.

For a while, she stood there in the doorframe, staring at the tableau. The group was talking about something, though their voices felt vague and sounded farther away than they should be. Through her scattered wits, she heard them voice words and phrases, none of which made sense in the context. None of it mattered though, because it was drowned out by the turmoil roiling inside Natalie. She wanted to kick Nate and cuss him out for abandoning them all. She wanted to embrace him and tell him he was the best friend anyone could ask for. She wanted to turn and run because there was every chance that after the day she'd had, the thing sitting there covered in a foil blanket of some kind might not be Nate at all…

She swayed, taking a step forward and bracing herself on a cabinet. Nobody seemed to notice her. More words were exchanged; some sort of deal was being struck. Nate said something about a box, and Kyle asked if it was safe. The woman in white nodded, assuring them that it would be. More words; more answers without context as to what questions they deserved. Then it was over. The astronaut woman turned, picking up a wooden and metallic thing that Natalie couldn't quite see. Without a word, she strode out through the nearby door, and into the sunlight, exiting Natalie's world as mysteriously as she had entered it.

"Nat!"

The sound of her name finally broke the spell, and Natalie turned her head to see Beka calling her over. She strode over unsteadily, knees feeling like jelly for some reason, until she was within reach of her gaggle of friends.

"Nate's back." Beka said, sounding sheepish as if embarrassed to be stating the obvious.

"I can see." Natalie replied, staring at her friend, who blushed slightly at being subjected to her gaze. Now that she was closer, Natalie could see it was very likely that Nate wasn't actually wearing anything under the blanket, which had a strange hammer and sickle logo stamped in one corner. Strange, she thought to herself, the details that you caught when you felt as if you were in a dream.

But then, this was no dream…

…was it?

As if he could hear the thought, Nate locked eyes with her; something he did very rarely, and in that moment, a feeling settled over her that she hadn't felt for a long, long time. She gave him a grin, which he returned bemusedly.

"I said I'd be back." he quipped.

"Yeah…yeah you did." Natalie chuckled weakly. Then she nodded in the direction of the departed woman whose name she couldn't remember. "What happened? Is she coming back?"

"No." Kyle said, "Nate made a deal. He gave her the Box."

Ice trickled down Natalie's spine that those words, but melted just as quickly as Nate stuck out a hand from under his blanket and gestured toward the open air.

"She's going home." he said, "That was our agreement." He shrugged, then added: "I'm keeping the Book though. That, and all the memories."

"Just so long as it's not here." Mark said, visibly shivering, "At least this way it'll be under lock and key than rolling around like a live grenade, waiting for another Spencer." He paused then continued: "No offense to you Nate, but like…you get what I mean."

"Yeah." Nathan replied, shrugging. "Still I'm keeping the Book. I let her make copies of a few pages I thought would be safe, but the rest I'm holding onto. There's stuff in there that goes beyond just how to use the…thing."

"So just enough not to blow up the multiverse, or whatever?" Beka asked, half-joking in tone despite being deadly serious from what Natalie could read of her body language. Nate gave her an eyeroll, but smiled as he did.

"Basically. It's safer with her. She DOES have a giant vault after all."

For a while, they were silent, unsure of how to proceed. In the end, Natalie couldn't take it, and asked the only question that mattered; the one that had been gnawing on her mind since yesterday morning, and maybe even long before that.

"What happened?"

Nate shrugged again.

"Honestly, I couldn't totally tell you. It feels like a dream; the more I try to make sense of it, the harder it gets to remember…" He stopped, looking thoughtful, then continued: "There was a monster. Pretty sure I killed it…sort of."

"Sort of?" Kyle asked, looking uneasy. "What do you mean? And what happened to Spencer? Inquiring minds would like to know."

"Dead." Nathan said, his voice tired and a little sad. "I think…I think it ate him. From the inside." He shook his head, shuddering slightly. Natalie felt the urge to hug her friend rise again, but resisted, not sure how he would respond. He seemed to be processing a lot just then, and normally she would've left him to it, prepared to step in whenever he was ready to talk. This was too important though, and so she compromised, doing her best to change the subject rather than let his mood start to spiral and preclude any chance of further answers.

"But you won, right?"

Nathan nodded slowly.

"Basically." he answered, gesturing at the air in front of him, speaking exactly like someone trying to recount a dream. "It won't hurt anyone anymore."

"Well…that's a relief." Kyle said, not sounding very certain.

"It left scars." Nate added, "Not just on me."

A sudden grim realization struck Natalie, and another question popped out of her before she had time to stop it.

"Where's…where's Cammy?"

"Who?" Mark asked, but Beka shot him a glowering stare. She needn't have bothered though. Nate stared off into space as he answered, his look unreadable in a way Natalie had never seen on anyone's face before. The closest comparison she could make was of someone holding a secret they didn't actually understand and weren't sure they should hold onto. But even that wasn't quite right.

"She had to stay behind." he said after a beat, "Though I think we got married…kind of."

"Whoa." Mark said, "Hold on, you, uh…you wanna explain that buddy?"

"Can he not?" Kyle replied, looking uncomfortable, such that Natalie nearly burst out laughing at how absurd the situation had suddenly become.

"I don't think I could if I tried." Nate admitted, looking sheepish. He shook his head, then looked down at his lap. "She said we'd meet again though, someday. For now though…"

"Oh…" Kyle said, looking suddenly uncomfortable for entirely different reasons. "Sorry to hear that."

"Don't worry." Nate said, and for a moment Natalie thought she saw a tear roll down his face, "It's just for a while."

Silence descended again, and Natalie stared at her friend. She realized now that her worries standing there in the doorframe had not been completely unfounded after all; this wasn't Nathan sitting here in front of her. At least, not as she'd known him. How could it be, after what he'd experienced? She finally gave in and hugged him, bending down to wrap her arms around his shoulders.

"Thanks for coming back." she said, "It wouldn't have been the same without you." She felt a hand land on one of Nate's shoulders and looked up to see Mark.

"Yeah." he said, "Welcome back, buddy."

Beka added her arms to the embrace then too, leaving only Kyle, who hesitantly stepped forwards and clapped a hand on Nate's other shoulder.

"I won't pretend I know what you did." he admitted, "I doubt I ever will; that any us will…but I'll just say thank you anyways." He nodded, "You did good, pal. I hope you know that."

"Th-thank you." Nate said, the very edge of a sob in his tone. For a while they said nothing, for it seemed like there was nothing more to be said. Then the embrace broke and Nate's eyes lit up.

"So, uh…I know I missed the breakfast." he said haltingly, "Would you…be okay if I made up for it with lunch?"

Natalie burst out laughing and ruffled his hair.

"Come on." she giggled, "Let's get you dressed. Then we can see what's still open."

Nate smiled.

Then and there, the world wasn't perfect…

…but it was enough.

---​

They did indeed eat well that night. And while there were awkward silences and much confusion all around, it was a good dinner, one they would all remember fondly, as time carried them further from that day. The aftermath and cleanup was a messy affair, of course, and the whole event would make circuits on television and network news, with investigations aplenty raining down one after the other, each struggling to make sense of it all.

In the end, of course, mundanity would prevail in the public consciousness. Less than a year later, most people, if you asked them, would say that the strange encounters and injuries sustained by the people of Hobbs were the result of a fast-acting hallucinogenic compound. Those believed responsible were of many flavors, varying based on who you asked. Neo-fascists, eco-warriors, Texan nationalists; the list went on and on.

Granted, the scale of the happening made it hard for the world to ignore completely, and there would be trials, accusations, political maneuvering, crackpot theories, and all the other consequences that might've been expected from such a dire and unusual catastrophe. But all of this passed around Nathan and his friends like water around a rock in a current, and like a current, it rushed along, eventually merging into the sea of memory and discourse that was the human experience.

Is this enough?

Perhaps…or perhaps not.

Natalie and Beka would eventually marry three years later. Ten more down the road, they would adopt a young boy named Max, to whom Mark would become a godfather. Kyle eventually returned to Sioux City, where he finally confronted at least some of his demons before leaving again, pursuing a life of travel as a private investigator, working with Natalie's brother Dean after the conclusion of his military service to do what he'd always wanted: be the 'good guy' of his own story.

And Nathan?

He lived.

He lived a long and surprisingly happy life, and while he never married, he was loved by those around him. His stories never saw great popularity or wide publication, but they touched those that read them all the same. He traveled with Kyle sometimes, and to Max, he was a loveable uncle. He gardened when he could, and cooked for friends often. He did so much he would've been afraid to do before that mysterious misty day.

And then, at last, he died.

All human stories end in tragedy if followed too long. Such is the nature of mortality.

But then, it is of course the journey that matters some would say. Because the truth is that there are no endings, and no beginnings; only moments of transition.

Thus, when his time came, and he sank at last into the darkness beyond that final wall of sleep, he found despite all his fears and worries, there was indeed someone waiting for him.

And she was not alone.

I should know.

I was there to see it.

And though none of them saw me, I watched; I watched as friends met again on that timeless shore, and old loves were finally renewed. I watched them as the white ships carried them into the sunrise, whose rays brought color to a colorless world.

Nathan's story is over. But it will never truly end.

He and I, and all those he touches, are bound to one another in ways unwritten and unshaped; beyond the ken of those shackled to this thing called 'eternity'. And so I know we shall meet again. With newfound names, and in other places; in other times, with different faces…

...

…and in a thousand, shifting forms.​

 

[Vadrigos]

Just going to lightly bump this now that it's complete. Any feedback I can get would be great!

EDIT: Just realized I never marked this complete. Now it is.