The Perfect World

ASCIIN SERIES
== Prologue: The Making of a Scourge ==
"You are deemed by your fellow Antireality Guardians of the Second Gate to be unfit for your work. You are stripped of your authority and your duty. Now, rot in the Antireality Void for your crimes."
He stared in disbelief as one of his peers stepped forward, delivering the decree. Moments before, the four of them had been in a huddled circle, quietly conferring on what to do with him. They were, in hushed voices, deciding his sentence for an "unforgivable crime," as they put it. He didn't think that he deserved any sort of punishment; honestly, they should have been thanking him! He had been the first and only Antireality Guardian to harness Antireality Energy, allowing him to, among other things, traverse the Void with ease, pass freely through the Second Gate, and shape the Flow Narrative itself; there was a limit to his power, of course, but at the very least he was able to surpass the capabilities of any entity the five of them would ever have to stand guard against to an absurd degree.
This power, however, had been deemed a bit too gratuitously immense, and frankly, they'd practically screamed like the most cowardly of mortals the moment they saw it. Oh, well, what was that quote from that one human? "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds"? Yes, this was the epitome of that. It seemed like something that should be inapplicable to such powerful and important cosmic beings, but sadly, he seemed to be the only Guardian with some semblance of intellect.
How depressing.
He felt a sharp prod in his side. One of the other Antireality Guardians had come over and poked him with their sword, fixing him with an impatient stare, as if he were making a complete waste of their time and it wasn't their own fault that they'd called this whole meeting and taken time to discuss consequences and whatnot when they could very easily have just accepted that he was now capable of doing all their jobs on his own far more easily than the five of them put together had been before, freeing up everyone's schedules for whatever they wanted and ultimately improving their quality of life. Whatever, just another item to add to the "list of reasons that all the other Antireality Guardians are idiots, and the lot of them should be erased from existence".
"Go," they commanded, a deep voice resonating within their powerful form. He glared at them with as much force as he could swing a weapon.
"Fine," he grumbled, trudging away.
"Faster!" called another one, rather rudely. "If you're seen again near the Gate, the unanimous decision is to kill you immediately!"
He turned around, making as vulgar a gesture as he could, and then disappeared in a flash of his own Antireality Energy. He'd teleported himself who-knew where, not bothering or caring to check if it was any place in particular, or if he would like it. As it happened, he'd stumbled upon a small colony of Antireality Phantoms, who promptly jumped onto him, screeching and clawing and such. He shook himself mildly, and they scattered.
"Pathetic," he rumbled, and they fled before he could even manifest a weapon to counterattack. Then, despite his new situation, he laughed.
They're just like the Guardians! They think that they're far greater and more important in the grand scheme of things than they really are, and that they can handle things they really can't.
I'm not going to be like them.
That, however, reminded him of what had just happened, and he stopped laughing. He did not, however, stop trembling.
He shook with rage. He seethed. He roared his fiery fury into the abyss, not caring who or what heard him, if any.
He calmed.
He sighed.
He shrugged. If they didn't want him, they wouldn't have him. Their loss.
But if he wasn't on their side, they would know him as a scourge.
The Antireality Scourge.
== Chapter 1: A New Status Quo ==
An object whirled through the Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities at an astonishing speed, heading directly for an Allsphere Wave. A cascade of Allspheres thundered through the surrounding area, picking up more and more Allspheres, and leaving devastation in its wake. The object's inhabitants were well aware of all the death and destruction that such events caused, which was why they were there.
To prevent it.
Around them, Conspheres beyond any semblance of counting were whizzing in the same direction as their own, each with their own squadrons of cosmic beings who had been created for one purpose, and one purpose only: to save the poor, helpless people of any Allsphere that was unfortunate enough to undergo Allsphere Amalgamation.
Inside the Consphere, an omnipotent being, the leader, addressed a pantheon of, rather paradoxically, lesser omnipotent beings. The entity addressed its subordinates as a disembodied voice, since all of them existed far beyond any material form, and so could not pace up and down the hall like a drill sergeant, but still spoke in a rather similar, businesslike and brisk, fashion.
"Alright, team. As you know, this is our biggest job yet. The number of Allspheres here is so great that it might as well be infinity, and we're going to alter all of them. As we speak, our peers of other Spheres are joining us, ready to liberate those impotent mortal saps from their doom. Are we going to join them!?" There was a cacophony of wordless agreement. "Then get to your stations! Be prepared for Allspheres to come and go by us in any direction, and re-write them! We're going in!"
In perfect sync with a seemingly endless number of others, the Consphere sank into the massive wave, altering Allsphere after Allsphere. By the time they were done, there wouldn't be nearly so much destruction and amalgamation in the Hypercosmic Ocean.
______________________
Asciin walked through the streets of some city he hadn't bothered to learn the name of. It wasn't his home city; he wasn't in his home country, or on his home planet, for that matter. He was somewhere else entirely, shifting into their population for a day, just to remember what it was like to be mortal.
Frankly, it sucked, but he got bored if nothing in his life did for long enough.
He inhaled the crisp afternoon air, and then immediately coughed as fumes entered his lungs, which fought back ferociously. He felt like he was about to throw up. Well, looks like this society's pollution situation isn't dissimilar to Earth's, he thought wryly as his coughing fit died down. Around him, skyscrapers loomed so high that had he truly been a mortal, he'd have stared up at them in awe. However, he wasn't a mortal, and had seen far grander things in his relatively short life. Nearby, a car honked as a small truck ran a red light, cutting it off. The driver rolled down his window, screaming some obscenity at the truck, but its driver seemed to take no notice. He covered his ears; for some reason, this world's vehicle horns were ear-splittingly, absolutely gratuitously loud.
They're rude like humans too.
Grumbling to himself, wondering why he'd even bothered to come here, he crossed the street. As he continued down the sidewalk, soaking in as much of his surroundings as he could before inevitably retuning to his projects as a god, he heard a commotion coming from an alley to his right.
"Just hand over the cash, kid, and no one has to get hurt."
Asciin turned around to see what was going on. Three adults, ranging in age from perhaps thirty to fifty years and wearing all black leather, had cornered a youth who was clutching his wallet, obviously afraid. The muggers were all brandishing blunt weapons, and Asciin could see guns holstered on their hips, like something out of an old western movie.
He considered simply moving along; while his entire mission as a god was to make existence as a whole less of a hellhole for everyone involved, he'd also learned that if he was to focus on fixing things on a cosmic scale, he had to ignore the little atrocities. If he got in the way of every galactic war, every scandal of the lower gods, he'd never get anything done. An entity of his power and significance interfering in a petty robbery? Forget it.
Then again, he was here to walk among mortals anyway, and now that he thought about it, he hadn't done anything involving a lot of action since confronting the Weaver. Plus, the boy looked to be Asciin's age, if not younger, and seeing such injustices firsthand made his blood boil a lot more than being passively aware of them.
Eh, might as well.
"What seems to be the trouble here?" he asked the muggers. They whipped around in surprise, and he had to suppress laughter; they'd been conducting their theft in broad daylight, in an alley of a busy street. The only reason Asciin was the first to do anything about it was because the locals simply didn't care, or were maybe scared of getting caught in these dangerous individuals' bad graces.
"Just a little, uh, transaction," said the smallest one slyly. She raised he hands peacefully. "No trouble, none at all. And I'm sure you're a busy guy, so just move along now and leave us be." Asciin narrowed his eyes. So, that's how it's gonna be?
"Don't play dumb," he ordered curtly. "You were mugging this teenager, and I happened to overhear. Now, I suggest that you move along, before you end up feeling quite a bit stupid for not doing so."
"What'll you do?" barked the biggest one, clearly not taking Asciin's threat seriously. "Call the cops?" He laughed heartily.
"No," Asciin explained calmly. "They'd take far longer to arrive than you'd need to get out of here scot-free, and probably give me a good whack over the head on the way. And, even if you stayed, it'd just turn into a whole scene, and I have no intention of starting a fight between the local authorities and some thugs when I'm visiting."
"You a tourist?" asked the mugger who hadn't spoken yet, and seemed to be the leader of the group.
"Of sorts," Asciin replied vaguely, eyeing up his potential opponents, though he really had no need to. If he so chose, he could erase them from existence with a thought.
"Then you must have a good amount of money on you," the small one concluded, grinning. "Tie up the other," she instructed the big one, indicating the now cowering young man they'd been harassing moments before. "We'll take this one." The leader nodded.
"That won't be necessary," Asciin told them. "I think you'll find that I can take all three of you at once, if you want a fight."
"We don't want a fight," the leader replied, "but we won't back away from one either." Asciin only nodded at him, indicating that the crooks should make the first move.
The big one went first, roaring incoherently as he ran at Asciin and swung a metal pipe for his head. Warping his own perception of time, Asciin calmly ducked under, then stepped out of the way as the brute ran past him. If he hadn't moved, he'd have been tackled. The large man nearly ran out into the open sidewalk, but before he could get too far away, or even stop his own momentum, Asciin grabbed him by the back of his collar and swung him bodily toward the small woman, who had been slinking up to Asciin's side with a crowbar at the ready. The two of them slammed into the wall of the nearest building, both collapsing, unconscious.
That might have been a little obvious, Asciin reflected. Casually tossing a muscle-bound middle-aged thug hard enough into another person to send them both flying isn't exactly within the strength capabilities of most people my age. Well, whatever. It's not like I was going to take out a trio of armed criminals with my bare hands and no reality-altering powers anyway.
He walked slowly toward the leader, who was shaking after this random boy's nonchalant display of might, which had folded his lackeys in less time than he could even pull his gun out of his pocket.
His gun, which was now pointed directly at Asciin's face.
"I'll shoot!" he hollered. "Don't think I won't kill you! It's self defense!"
"I believe that you initiated this conflict," Asciin remarked coldly, "by threatening a kid for cash. In what world is it self defense to murder someone for trying to stop you from committing a crime?"
"I'm going to the slammer if I get caught anyway!" he cried. "If I take you out, I won't have to worry about it for a while!" The man dropped to his knees, quivering, as Asciin continued to walk toward him at a completely unperturbed pace, not slowing down in the slightest. Asciin hated people like this; they hurt others for their own gain, and only showed remorse when their actions caught up to them, fearing not their own conscience but the consequences for themselves, and themselves only. Frankly, he enjoyed seeing the terror on this pathetic excuse for a mortal creature's face as he stalked closer and closer.
Wait, do I actually feel that way? Yeesh, better do some more work on curbing my vengeful streak. Making a mental note to find an Allsphere where the inhabitants were particularly talented therapists, something he probably should have done a while ago, he returned his thoughts back to the present, in which he was staring down the barrel of a handgun that could very easily blow his human form's face off at the pull of a trigger.
"Alright then," he told the man, stopping just a meter away from where the mugger knelt. "Go ahead. Shoot."
"Really?" For a moment, he looked confused, then shrugged. "Night-night, nuisance."
BANG!
The lead projectile ricocheted harmlessly off of Asciin's nose, which he had hardened to a metal-like durability at the last moment. The gun, of course, had never posed any real danger to him; even if he somehow failed to prevent himself from getting a face full of bullet, his real form had no need of this human body, so it would be easy to re-manifest, or even simply turn back time by a few seconds.
"Wh- wha- what- who-" the thug stammered, collapsing onto his backside before lying down on the pavement defeatedly. "Who- or what- are you!?"
Asciin loomed over the helpless mortal, grinning with satisfaction.
"For dirtbags like you?" He crouched next to the despairing wrongdoer. "Your worst nightmare- actually, no, that's much too cliche. You know what? I'm just some guy who appears out of nowhere, administers beatings as necessary, and calls the proper authorities to deal with you." As he spoke, he hijacked a nearby phone, informing the police of what had just happened. Next, he turned to the boy who had just been watching from the corner.
"Hey, you're good now. Just give the cops your account on what just happened, and you can leave." He helped the rather bewildered youth to get up, and then jogged out of the alley, waving a goodbye as he turned the corner. The boy confusedly waved back.
"Thank you!" he yelled to Asciin, having been too shocked to say so earlier, but by then the god had already returned to the Ocean.
______________________
Asciin shifted back into his own body, shaking off the confining feeling of that limited form. He felt good, like he could take on any difficulty that lay ahead of him.
A difficulty like, say, the Allsphere Weaver popping up behind him with a very serious expression.
Uh-oh. The Weaver never brings good news.
"Asciin," it began. "We need to talk."
"About?" he asked curiously.
"My Ocean," the Weaver responded, its tone grave. "It's going stagnant. No new cosmologies are being formed. Crossover Rifts are no longer forming, and Allsphere Waves are breaking apart before they can properly culminate."
"And why are you coming to me about this?" Asciin wondered aloud. It didn't seem to be an issue that would concern him. "Why don't you just fix it yourself?"
"Because," it informed him, its voice conveying infinite importance, "I believe that I have identified you as the cause of the problem."
== Chapter 2: The Imperfect World ==
"What do you mean by that?" he asked sharply. Right now, the Weaver was accusing him of doing something bad- something about it going stagnant- to the Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities. This was the Weaver's creation, its sole reason for existing, to protect it. If Asciin truly was responsible for whatever it was talking about, he was in serious trouble, maybe even the kind of trouble that could get him erased, or some other fate that would leave him unable to influence the cosmos. If there was one thing he'd learned about gods since ascending, it was that they took their duties seriously.
"I mean that you have been deploying objects that stifle the development of my Allspheres." It spoke evenly, confidently and civilly, yet Asciin could sense another layer of the Weaver's words. Its tone almost implied... anger? No, that can't be right. In all the time he'd spent as its kind-of-equal, Asciin had never once seen the Allsphere Weaver angry. It had an astoundingly limited emotional repertoire; in every interaction it had been flat, impassive, completely neutral toward whatever was unfolding, even when he'd been screaming defiance and bloody murder at it, having first arrived in the Ocean. The only time it had even come remotely close to showing anything besides dedication to its work was when it had shown concern for his loneliness, but even then, it had been a sort of detached concern, like it was trying to help him out of obligation, or some other motivation, rather than genuine care for him. Anger simply wasn't something the Weaver could feel, or so Asciin had thought.
"I haven't been doing anything like that," he responded. "I wouldn't stop your development. I don't even know how you do it, so how would I sabotage it?"
"Then what," inquired the Weaver, "is this?" It raised its closed fist as if to show him something, slowly uncurling its fingers as it did so. Its face remained unexpressive, but he could somehow feel its rage growing, palpably so. In the palm of its hand, the object was revealed.
It was a Consphere.
"What- no, that's not... look, I wasn't trying to stifle your growth or whatever. I just wanted to stop Allsphere Amalgamation. You know what happens to mortals when it takes place; I just wanted to spare them from that." He stammered at first, but grew more confident, more sure, as he spoke. "I had no malign intent. I simply wanted to help people." He snatched the Consphere out of the Weaver's hand, redeploying it. The Weaver, without so much as turning to watch it fly away, raised a hand, causing Flow Particles to jet upward from the Ocean below, destroying it almost instantly. The Consphere had been removed from existence. "Hey!" he exclaimed, shocked by the sudden move. "What was that for!?"
"I've already told you," the Weaver sighed. "I cannot let you interfere with the development of new cosmologies. Allsphere Amalgamation must not be stagnated."
"Allsphere Amalgamation... is something you want to happen!?" he yelled, outraged. "You know what happens! Do those lives that are extinguished mean nothing to you?! I should have thought of this sooner; why didn't you prevent it yourself? Because you were causing it intentionally! Of course, of course! You're just as evil and destructive as I thought when I was ascending! I should never have doubted myself. You killed my parents! You killed everyone I ever cared about!"
In response, the Allsphere Weaver simply stared blankly at him, seeming almost... confused. It tipped its head to one side questioningly.
"Allsphere Amalgamation allows for the contents of Allspheres to come together, forming new and magnificent structures and cosmologies. It represents the birth of a fantastic reality, not a cataclysmic mass death." Its voice hardened. "It is a necessary force, and you had no right to interfere with it."
"Tell that to my parents," he muttered darkly, stalking off into the distance. He turned around, angrily glaring at it one last time. "Oh, wait," he said sarcastically. "You can't. Because they're dead." He turned back around and continued to storm off. He was aware that he was acting a bit like a child wh had just been yelled at for misbehaving by his parents, but this wasn't nearly as petty a matter as that. And he would never again be told off by his parents, either.
"You killed them."
______________________
Asciin produced Consphere after Consphere, sending them out en masse, trying to bring as many Allspheres as possible into the Postsphere, where no mortal would ever have to suffer again.
If the Weaver wants to hurt them, why should I listen to it? I'll just have to defy God. I've done it before, and I'll do it again, he thought grimly. But, in the back of his mind, a doubtful voice whispered, and how did it go last time? Were you successful?
"Shut up," he muttered, angry at himself for the thought. If I can just subsume the whole Ocean, I should actually be more powerful then the Weaver. That's all I need to do, and then it'll never bother me again. But, as he watched his creations whirl out into the infinite expanse, he wondered if such a thing was even possible. How can I ever, with my finite number of Conspheres, saving Allspheres at a finite rate, ever reach infinitely many?
A thought occurred to him.
Work smarter, not harder.
______________________
He looked down upon the Postsphere.
He had done it.
Every single Allsphere, the entire Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities. was contained within it. It was all under his control, and, more importantly, there was no Allsphere Amalgamation. In fact, there wasn't any more of just about anything that could cause suffering. He'd fixed the world.
"Development" can stop forever, for all I care. What good do new cosmologies do for people, for anyone, if infinite mortals die painfully in the process of their creation? What's the point?
The Weaver, of course, wasn't happy about this, but Asciin didn't care much about that either. He'd done what he had to, and now his power was beyond it. The Allsphere Weaver couldn't do anything. It had only been able to watch as he'd subsumed Allsphere after Allsphere, integrating them into the perfect world that was the Postsphere.
First, he'd done some testing in the Protosphere, created new designs for the Flow Particle Retcon Device. Before, those things had only been able to alter one Allsphere at a time, and without opposition from any of said Allsphere's cosmic beings. He'd changed that; now, a single Consphere was capable of converting an entire Crossover Rift at a moment's notice. All of the suffering of everyone within the Allspheres would be reversed, and every single one of them would be saved from ever going through that trauma again.
Next, he'd made some changes to the changes that were made to Allspheres; upon conversion, they would journey to the Postsphere, where they would transfer their internal structures to it, so that it would house the Allsphere's inhabitants. From there, the Allsphere would basically become a Consphere, complete with the ability to convert its own swaths of Allspheres. It was a chain of exponential growth that multiplied by orders of magnitude upon orders of magnitude with each passing moment.
These upgrades were made to every Consphere. However, conversion only went at a finite rate, and there were infinite Allspheres. For every life he saved, countless were extinguished. He'd needed to move faster still.
Then, he'd had the bright idea of putting a special Consphere around the Weaver: one that was stealthy enough to not be noticed, or else it would certainly be destroyed, but powerful enough that not a single Allsphere was weaved that wasn't rescued at birth. No new lives would be created only to suffer. No more adding to the pool of pain and death.
Finally, as his own power had grown with conversion, he'd allowed the structures of the Post- and Protospheres to grow with him. While the former had grown like a black hole of hope, directly absorbing nearby Allspheres and spitting them out as more Conspheres, the latter had simply spat out more and more Conspheres, creating them at ever-faster rates as Asciin and his creations became more powerful.
Eventually, the sheer amount of power Asciin had over their surroundings had allowed him to directly overwhelm the Weaver, feeding off of its power, fast-tracking his growth infinitely. The Weaver, at that point, had still surpassed him to a quite literally infinite degree, having domain over the whole Ocean; if it had known about his burst of activity, it could have stopped him in an instant, but, for reasons unknown to him, it didn't. Perhaps it was oblivious, or perhaps it had expected him to stop after their conversation, out of reverence or respect or fear or whatever it thought he felt for it. If that was the case, it had been very wrong. Therefore, when he'd subsumed enough of the Ocean, he didn't overpower it, taking its strength for himself and becoming truly on par with it, through brute force but the element of surprise; Conspheres had surrounded it, allowing them to sap its bottomless power and give it to Asciin.
The reason he did this was because he'd realized that his conversion rate, despite everything, was still finite. The Weaver, on the other hand, had complete power over the Hypercosmic Ocean, and could subsume the whole thing within the Postsphere easily of it wanted to. With its power, Asciin had done exactly that. He'd grown the Postsphere to the size of the whole Ocean in a flash of power, integrated every single Allsphere's contents into one Allsphere-like structure, creating separate ones for entities and worlds that couldn't coexist. If an entity died within the old Ocean, they were gone forever, but now the space that had one been the Ocean was empty, save for the Weaver, in its own section at the center. In his version, every single individual being had their own afterlife, beyond their mortal(or even godly) coil, which they could manipulate to be anything they wanted, essentially a localized version of Asciin's own power. The Protosphere orbited around this new paradise, awaiting more experiments, if Asciin ever again needed to develop a concept or cosmic device, which was unlikely. Within it, his entire fleet of Conspheres waited for a fresh task that probably wouldn't ever come.
Essentially, instead of a massive sea of Spheres, he'd created one massive one with internal sections for each "habitat," so to speak.
No one would ever suffer like he had again.
He cradled his own, original Allsphere, the one that held his parents, his world, and even the mortal version of himself. Slowly, gently, he placed it into the Postsphere, where his family would never be hurt by forces beyond their control again.
Finally, for the first time since the event that had made him a god, he was truly happy.
== Chapter 3: It Takes a Mortal ==
Asciin entered the void that had once been the Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities. Once teeming with life and growth, it was now a husk of its former self, inhabited only by its creator, equally empty without its sole purpose. As it tried to weave new Allspheres, they were pulled away, their cosmologies added to Asciin's perfect world, never to touch the Weaver's filthy void of death and destruction. He'd made sure of that.
Now, as he approached the defeated god, he felt an overwhelming sense of triumph, but underneath it... pity. It looks so sad... it doesn't deserve this. Almost immediately, he realized how ridiculous he was being. It most definitely does deserve this! And more! The Weaver had been responsible for amounts of pain, fear, and demise that Asciin couldn't even begin to fathom, and he'd done quite a bit of suffering at its hands himself. If I actively tortured it, made its entire existence a perfect, personalized hell, it would be a mercy. Instead, I've left it here to rot, and to contemplate its poor decisions. I've been entirely too kind to it. But then, I don't trust myself to dole out the punishment it deserves. I don't want to become a monster. I can't let my vengeful streak get the better of me, and so I can never, never bring myself to kill it or inflict unnecessary pain. Besides, it was no threat here, contained within the Hypercosmic Emptiness. It couldn't harm anyone, and so no further discipline was necessary. Justice was about helping the victims, not hurting the perpetrators.
As he approached, the Weaver looked up. All of the neutrality and detachment were gone from its face, but so was the stoic determination. The Allsphere Weaver, alone and impotent, just looked... defeated. It gave Asciin an apathetic side-eyed glance.
"Come to finish the job?" the Weaver asked sullenly. "I will not oppose you, if you elect to end my existence. There is no longer any reason for its continuance." It slouched, another strikingly mortal thing that Asciin had thought to be beneath the Weaver. But then, there was so much he didn't know about gods.
"No," Asciin responded. "I just came for answers." He floated over to its front to face it directly, looking it in the spot where its eyes would be on its humanoid form, if it weren't simply a visual manifestation of an ethereal entity. "I would have asked sooner, but I thought that my questions might lead you back to what I was doing, and you would stop me... and honestly? I was a little scared of what you would say." The Weaver lifted its head, looking at him more directly. "But now, I've won. I don't need to worry about you stopping me anymore. And whatever horrors you'll reveal, they won't keep me up at night, or wouldn't if I still needed sleep or even operated on a day-night cycle at all. They're gone now. I've gotten rid of them. They won't touch a single mortal ever again."
"Not horrors," the Weaver murmured. "Wonders. Wonders that you've deprived all sentient creatures of for your own gain. I'm disappointed, Asciin, truly." It held it head, and he saw its face flicker with yet another emotion that he'd never once expected to see on it: despair. "How could I have allowed this to come to pass? I was aware of what you were doing, I could have stopped you at any time. I assumed that you were simply a petty mortal, doing petty mortal things with the power of a god, power I could have stripped you of at any time. You could have been a mortal again, Asciin. I could have given you your life back. You'd be with your family, your friends, your parents. You'd be happy."
"I wouldn't have accepted it anyway," Asciin told it, "not when I knew about the things I had seen, the things that had made me a god in the first place." The Weaver laughed, its echo booming through the endless darkness and startling him. It sounded almost jovial, despite its clearly deteriorating mental state.
"And after all of this, I never did figure out why you were made a god." It chuckled to itself, grinning almost manically. "I still don't know what caused your world to be destroyed, what made you so rage-filled to begin with." It looked up at him again. "What happened, Asciin? Why did your world die? And why were you the sole survivor?" It grabbed him by the arms, its stare boring into the deepest reaches of him mind. "How did you become a being capable of breaking out of your Allsphere?! That isn't something I ever allowed to be a possibility! And why are you so set on Allaphere Amalgamation? What did you mean, blaming me for all the death?"
"As if you didn't know," he scowled, batting the Weaver's arms away. He turned his back to it. "I should've known you'd play dumb. Aren't I supposed to be the one asking questions here?"
"State your questions," the Weaver instructed, "and perhaps we can answer each other's." Asciin manifested a chair behind himself, a floor beneath them, and sat down. The Weaver continued to float above the surface, looking at him intently.
"I only have one real question," he said. "Why?"
"Why what?" the Weaver asked.
"Why did you let Allsphere Amalgamation happen- actively cause it, knowing what would happen to the beings inside? What good does a grand new structure do for the dead and dying? What made it worth it!?" The Weaver shook its head.
"I'm afraid I don't understand."
"Of course you don't," Asciin growled. "You're not capable of understanding empathy, or suffering, or anything else mortals can feel. All you do, all you care about, is making new things. You don't preserve the old. You throw morality to the wind in your single-minded pursuit of slamming your balls together like a child. You don't care about anyone in your creation."
"That is not true," the Weaver protested. "I am the guardian of this place every bit as much as I am its creator. I care for every life within it."
"THEN WHY DO YOU LET THEM DIE FOR YOUR STUPID AMALGAMATION!?" Asciin screamed, shocking both of them. Tears were froming at the edges of his eyes now; he supposed that this conversation, this ridiculous, ignorant god, had dredged up all of his grief. Yelling felt... cathartic. He continued. "WHY DO YOU CAUSE CATACLYSM AFTER CATACLYSM, TAKE MASSES OF ALLSPHERES THAT MORTAL MINDS CAN'T EVEN COMPREHEND, EACH CARRYING ENDLESS LIVES INSIDE, EVERY ONE THEIR OWN PERSON, WITH HOPES AND DREAMS AND PEOPLE THEY LOVE, AND MURDER THEM ALL AT ONCE!? FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR 'DEVELOPMENT'!? YOUR MIXING OF COSMOLOGIES!? IN WHAT WORLD IS SOME NEW COSMIC ECOSYSTEM WORTH THE LIVES OF EVERYONE WHO WOULD HAVE LIVED IN IT!?"
"Enough!" the Weaver commanded.
"WHO ARE YOU TO MAKE DEMANDS OF ME!?" Asciin screeched.
"I AM THE ALLSPHERE WEAVER!" it boomed. "I GAVE LIFE TO EVERY BEING WITHIN MY OCEAN! I HAVE DONE NOTHING TO RECLAIM THEM! WITHOUT CHANGE, THERE IS NO REASON FOR EXISTENCE, AS A STATIC LIFE IS NOT A LIFE AT ALL! YOU ACCUSE ME OF KILLING, OF DESTROYING, YET I ONLY CREATE, AND YOU YOURSELF HAVE CAUSED UNTOLD DEATH, SOMETHING THAT I WAS THE ONE WHO STOPPED YOU FROM CONTINUING! HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ME OF SUCH HEINOUS ACTS!? WHAT CAUSED YOUR ALLSPHERE TO BE DESTROYED, BOY?! ANSWER AT ONCE!"
The two of them lapsed into silence, staring at each other angrily. Eternities passed, or so it felt, without either of them so much as moving, deep in thought. Finally, Asciin spoke.
"Did you really not know what happens during Allsphere Amalgamation?" He looked disbelievingly at the Weaver. "Weren't you aware of how it shatters the worlds within the Allspheres?"
"It does no such thing!" the Weaver exclaimed indignantly. "Allsphere Amalgamation happens on the level of the Allspheres themselves; their contents should be unaffected! Only perhaps the highest of gods within them will even notice any change!"
"Then... what happened to mine?" Asciin asked. "An Allsphere Amalgamation destroyed my Allsphere. Realities collided, fundamental laws broke down, and you're telling me... it has no effect on the lower realms?" The Weaver nodded.
"I don't know what caused your Allsphere to be destroyed," it claimed, "but that is most certainly not the normal procedure. Amalgamation is harmless, and the new worlds it creates are more optimized to the sentient beings within, perfecting the Allspheres over time by enriching them with new, helpful concepts and other things while filtering out the bad."
"You were working toward my perfect world the whole time," Asciin breathed. "I was stopping you." He paused. "Come to think of it, I never stopped to wonder why I was the first to get powers from one of those events. I guess I figured survival was astronomically rare... but given how often Amalgamation takes place..."
"It must have been a result of the same thing that made the disaster happen in the first place," the Weaver concluded. Asciin nodded his agreement.
"Well, this has all been one massive misunderstanding, then," he said, snapping his fingers. Around them, the Postsphere shifted, and the Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities was returned to normal. Some of Asciin's tweaks to the whole of existence, such as the minimum level of happiness for any given entity and the perfect afterlives, remained, but every Allsphere was returned to the way it had been, contained within the Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities. "You may continue," Asciin told the Weaver, which was looking around in awe at its restored surroundings.
"You truly have surpassed my power," it remarked wryly.
"Yeah," Asciin laughed. "I really have. Now, you can work toward a perfect reality within the Postsphere."
"Which leaves only one issue," the Weaver added.
"Yes," Asciin assented. "What happened with my Allsphere?"
"We must find out," the Weaver stated determinedly. "And given that it occurred without my knowledge or consent, yet within my domain, which my power over is absolute, the source of the disaster must have come from somewhere else."
"Beyond the Ocean," Asciin finished.
== Chapter 4: The Prism ==
"Hello!" Asciin called to Stuart, Ali, and Victor. He'd reappeared in their warehouse-office to say goodbye, since he didn't know when he was going to return, if at all. Victor, watching some sort of music video on his phone- something about someone's mind getting corrupted(of course, what else would Victor listen to?)- was the first to look up.
"Hey, Asciin! It's been a while. You busy with all the god stuff?"
"Very," Stuart remarked, turning away from his monitor to look at them. "I've been keeping a careful track of the live feed; how did you do that!? Stuff the entire Hypercosmic Ocean into your sphere thing, I mean. Because that's insane."
"Everything about him is insane," Ali laughed. "We're talking about a guy who survived the death of his universe and gained reality-warping powers to transcend the multiverse in an attempt to kill the closest thing in existence to God. There's nothing about Asciin that isn't crazy." She was holding the book Asciin had given her, the one that could change into any text in all of the Ocean. It looked really thick; whatever book she was using to read it right now, it was a long one. No surprise there.
"True," Stuart conceded. "Anyway, what brings you here this time, Asciin?"
"I'm here to say my goodbyes-" he started.
"Are you dying!?" Victor asked incredulously. "Why?"
"Nothing like that," he assured them. "But I'm going on an expedition, and I don't know if I'll see you guys again."
"Where are you going?" Stuart questioned.
"Outside of the Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities, into what the Weaver tells me is called the Flow Prism," he said. The three of them just stared at him in shock. The silence dragged on uncomfortably long.
"Outside... the Ocean?" Ali finally asked. "As in... there's something outside of the Ocean to begin with?"
"Apparently," Asciin shrugged. "Turns out, what happened to my Allsphere isn't normal; the Amalgamation process is supposed to be harmless, and the Weaver would be able to tell me what went wrong if the cause of the problem came from inside its realm. So yeah, there's a bigger structure."
"Guess there always is," Stuart mused.
"Anyway," Asciin continued, "I came here to say goodbye, so, uh... bye."
"Bye," the other three chorused awkwardly.
"I suck at goodbyes," he chuckled to himself. "Oh, right- one more thing!" He held his palm out, and from thin air, a small ball appeared in it. It was like a Consphere, but about the size of an underinflated basketball; he handed it to Victor, who was nearest.
"Okay... what is it?" he asked, tossing it into the air and barely not fumbling his one-handed catch.
"A communication Consphere," Asciin explained. "If you guys need to contact me, just use that thing. Since it works on the same principle as my power, it works exactly the way you think it does. Literally. However you try to get it to work, it will."
"I'd really like to study your abilities some time," Stuart said wistfully.
"Wouldn't we all?" Asciin murmured to himself. "Also, the database should expand as I explore more worlds, so you should be able to keep track of me with it."
"Great!" Ali said.
"Alright, I'd best be on my way now," Asciin told them. "Goodbye!"
"Goodbye!" the three exclaimed as he dissolved back into the higher worlds.
______________________
Now, he stood outside of the Postsphere, staring out into the surrounding Oceans, each their own little bubble within the trippy mirror-maze of the Flow Prism. Metaphysical visions refracted all around him, making his head begin to hurt.
Well, I've finally reached it. A reality that's truly beyond not only my mental depth, but my power's depth as well. He stared at the expanse around him. Am I likely to survive this? I have no idea what's out there. He shook himself resolutely.
"I've been pushed and pulled by forces beyond myself for too long now," he said aloud to the whole of existence. "I've been fooled by my own ignorance and the mistakes of others to the point where I've barely begun to know what the truth is." He paused as emotions welled up inside of him. "I just want to fix everything. My world was infected by something that comes from somewhere vastly outside of what I was ever meant to comprehend, and as a result burned until it was gone." From the Postsphere, he pulled a single Allsphere: his Allsphere. Even with this right in front of me, the pain won't disappear. I can never undo what's been done.
But I'll still keep them near my heart.
______________________
First, he came upon a Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities that looked, at a glance, ideantical to his own, apart from the whole being-contained-by-the-Postsphere-and-orbited-by-the-Protosphere thing. It even had its own Weaver.
"Hello," he said casually to the alternate version of this being that he was so familiar with. The Weaver turned to him, seeming mildly surprised.
"Who are you?" it asked mildly. "I was not aware that there was another god in my Ocean."
"There wasn't," Asciin said. "I'm from a different Ocean. I'm searching on behalf of its Allsphere Weaver, and more myself, if I'm being honest, for the cause of an unfortunate event that took place within it."
"What kind of event?" The Weaver seemed mildly curious.
"Do you know anything about an Allsphere Amalgamation that causes the structures within it to break down, causing untold disaster for its inhabitants?" he asked bluntly. "That happened once in my own Ocean, and it cause a lot of problems. Snuffed out countless lives, turned me from a mortal into a god, created a vengeful nigh-omnipotent entity that tried to kill the Weaver there, stifled the whole Ocean, caused quite a few fights... just to name a few." The Weaver shook its head.
"No such thing has happened here," it responded. "I would surely notice."
"My Ocean's Weaver didn't notice until I destroyed an entire Allsphere and tried to kill it," Asciin informed it, "so perhaps you'd like to do a more thorough check, to prevent that from escalating to this point here. I mean, I'm a great help now, but boy did I cause problems! You don't want that, now, do you?"
"I do not," it agreed. "I will summon my Allspheres and be sure."
"All of them at once?" he asked.
"Yes."
Around them, out of nowhere, countless Allspheres gleamed. As the alternate Allsphere Weaver inspected each one for any disturbance, Asciin simply stared, looking all around him in awe. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, all of these worlds surrounding him on all sides. Each contained life after life after life, every single one of them a wonder in and of itself. They reflected upon each other, interacted in subtle ways, creating an intricate and dynamic interplay between every conceivable, and even every inconceivable, view. Now to mention the -Spheres themselves, glowing in neon blue-greens, rippling with vibrant color all over. He was lost in them for an extent of time that he didn't bother to keep track of, until the Weaver had made a thorough check of all of them.
"There was not a single thing that was not expected," the Weaver said finally. "Whatever has caused your world to be destroyed, I posess no useful information regarding it."
"Thanks for trying," he told it disappointedly. "I appreciate it."
"Good luck to you. It sounds as if this threat could affect the entire Flow Prism in the future."
"I have no doubt that it will," he said darkly.
And with that, he left.
______________________
Second, he came upon an Ocean that was... empty. Completely.
Or, almost empty.
One single Allsphere floated in the otherwise complete nothing, and inside of it, Asciin only found one universe. It was almost totally purged of life, except for one planet, which looked shockingly similar to Earth.
He assumed a human form, dropping down into what looked like an abandoned city. As he walked around, he realized that its lifeless state was not one of abandonment, but one of a massacre that had occurred not long ago, considering that the blood all over the concrete of the streets, while dry and crusted, still retained some red hue. He came upon what looked like a family of four, two parents and two children. Three of them were hung by the napes of their necks from oversized fishhooks that were themselves attached to a brick wall, which appeared to have no purpose outside of hanging these poor souls. A short distance away, a gutted figure, one of the parents, lay next to a large pool of blood. His stomach gaped open, and Asciin saw inside the mulch of dozens of vital organs, as if he had been force-fed his own entrails. He shuddered; whatever had done this had made a show of it, killing this person while their family had watched. The three on the hooks seemed to have died not of wounds or shock, but starvation, meaning that they'd probably been left to die after the morbid event.
He drew away, electing to repress all of those mental images from his head; he'd seen some truly nasty things, but none as awful as that.
Eventually, he happened upon a house that he sensed, with his powers, contained an actual living entity. He opened the door and saw a boy about his own age, standing over a body.
Asciin's body.
"What happened here?" he asked the boy gently. The young man whipped around, tears dry and crusty all down his face, and beheld the god who had asked him the question. Almost instantly, his eyes lit up with anger and hate.
"YOU HAPPENED!" he screamed, throwing a punch. Asciin easily caught his fist- he hadn't even needed to use his power. His human form had been given ample time, and the blow landed softly, despite the clear intent behind it. This kid's malnourished, thirsty, and delirious. He didn't do this, that's for sure.
"What are you talking about?" he asked. "This is my first time here. Believe it or not, this is my first visit to the planet."
"LIAR!" the youth attempted to throw another fist, but stumbled and fell to the ground. "Don't pretend that you didn't cause this," he coughed through the dust he'd stirred up by falling.
"I really didn't," Asciin insisted. "Can you just tell me what happened? You're not in any state to fight, and if I really did do all of this, then clearly a healthy human wouldn't stand a chance against me either."
"I killed you before, and I'll do it again," the boy spat defiantly. "I don't know how you came back, or why you didn't try to stop me before, but I'll avange my parents. I'll avenge everyone."
He's like me, Asciin realized with a start. Completely blinded by hate for the being that he thinks killed his family. He, on the other hand, has no power.
And I can save him.
"I saw you standing over a body when I first opened the door," Asciin said to him calmly. "Was that the person- or entity- that killed everyone?"
"Yeah," the kid sulked. "You, remember?"
"I'm afraid I don't," Asciin asserted, shrugging. "Mind if I check it out?"
"Do whatever you want," the boy muttered. Asciin obliged, stepping through the doorway to stand over the corpse. Sure enough, it looked exactly like him. This is... an alternate version of me? Did he... do all of this? He thought back to the world beyond this one universe, the the Ocean it was contained in. Not a single trace of any other Allsphere remained, and, now that he really thought about it, there hadn't been a Weaver, either. In this Ocean, I must have succeeded. I killed the Weaver, and it wasn't enough. Destroying an Allsphere was one thing. Asciin had done that himself. But for there to be no trace, this Asciin would have needed to be strong enough to freely create and destroy objects of such a scale.
Strong enough to kill the Weaver.
He could guess quite easily what had happened from there. Being still unable to handle the grief of losing everyone, just like the living Asciin had, but not having any friends or a wise god to help him, this Asciin had gone berserk, decimating the Ocean. He'd killed uncountable people in unbelievably gruesome ways, and ended up back on Earth. This massacre had been personal, reminding him of his home. But, when he'd come to this one child... Asciin could imagine a crazed version of himself seeing his final victim, how similar the two of them were, and just... stopping. He couldn't do it. He just couldn't. So, he'd let the vengeful child finish him off, and then prepare to die himself, the last spark of consciousness in a dying Hypercosmic Ocean. The body was covered in massive bruises, as if he'd been beaten to death with the kid's bare hands.
Wow. That's, uh, very dark. Very very dark.
He exited the house and stared at the kid, now curled up in a defeated fetal position. There was nothing this poor lad could do for himself but wait to die. That's so sad. He has no one, no chance to get revenge, no idea that his vengeance has already come and gone. But I can, at the very least, do something for him.
Wordlessly, Asciin ascended back up to the Ocean, and cradled the Allsphere in his hands. He took it from the Ocean, leaving it well and truly void of any contents, and carried it all the way back to the Postsphere. There, he slowly pushed it in, silently begging the Weaver to take special care of this particular Allsphere. It's sole inhabitant really needed it.
I hope he can get some rest.
______________________
Finally, he came to an entirely new, exotic structure. It was like a Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities, but it was somehow... different. It had an air of negativity about it, as if it were a terrible place. Perhaps it is. I don't know yet.
He approached this realm's ruler, eager to ask questions. Something told him that this place was promising to give him some sort of answer.
"Halt!" ordered the Weaver-like being. It looked almost identical to the Allsphere Weaver- an Allsphere Weaver- in form, but its colors were inverted, as were those of its surroundings. For some reason, its appearance was off-putting, almost intimidating to him. "Who dares trespass within the Anticosmic Ocean of Realities!? Your foolish endeavor ends here!"
"Didn't realize you didn't allow visitors," Asciin responded apologetically, raising his hands in surrender. "Look, I'm just passing through on an investigation mission from another Ocean. Do you know anything about the destruction of Allspheres?" At that question, the entity grinned devilishly, which unnerved Asciin. That's not a normal Weaver reaction.
"I know much about the destruction of Allspheres," it declared proudly. "I am the greatest cause of it in all of the Flow Prism." Asciin immediately started thinking rapidly. Is it that easy? I've only visited a few Oceans. Have I already found the cause? This being?
"How do you destroy them?" he asked. There may be more than one malignant entity that exists. Best to check.
"I take unstable cosmologies, and I weave them into Antispheres," it explained. "I send these volatile bundles out into other Oceans, where they detonate with enough power to decimate their targets. It takes most Weavers eons to recover their losses from just one strike. The Anticosmic Ocean, my domain, is an endless stockpile of them; if I were to choose to end the Flow Prism, I could unleash all of them at once, and decimate everything. But instead, I enjoy watching as the Allsphere Weavers scramble about, wondering what happened."
"And do you ever alter the Allsphere Amalgamation process?" he asked. Because so far, this doesn't sound like what happened to me.
"No," the Antisphere Weaver said plainly. "I amalgamate Antispheres to destroy; Allsphere Amalgamation is an act of creation, and one that I take no part in. The closest I come to that vile practice is when I crush Allspheres myself, rather than sending my creations to do it for me."
"Alright... not what I'm looking for then. I guess... you may proceed? I mean, you're definitely a serious problem, so I'll have to deal with you at some point, but for now, I have matters that may or may not be more pressing- actually, no. Whatever I'm after, it only affected one Allsphere, and, as far as I know, only two Oceans. That's a significantly less important threat than you." How can I beat it, though? It claimed to be able to destroy the whole Flow Prism. I mean, that's ridiculous, considering it's supposed to be some sort of Weaver, but still, one of those Antispheres would really hurt. Could I take it in a fight? Probably not. Then, an idea occured to him that was so obvious, so completely stupid, that it just might work.
"I cannot let you leaver here alive," the Antisphere Weaver informed him bluntly. "I cannot allow my existence to be known to the other Weavers."
"Too late for that," Asciin said, having just created a Consphere that contained a personalized message from himself, a complete copy of Stuart's database, and all of the functions of the contact Consphere he'd given his friends. "I obviously couldn't win against you in an actual fight, but I quite like your idea of sending -Spheres across the Prism, so I'll be stealing it, thank you very much." He threw it out, spiraling off to the space between Hypercosmic Oceans, where it would multiply, sending a copy to every one. They were all connected to a copy he kept with him, so that they would act as probes; he could explore the whole Prism at once. All he needed to do was get out of here with his life, and wait for the important data to come back to him. Speaking of getting out of here alive...
"You insolent wretch!" it bellowed. "I will end your pitiful existence!" Around them, Antispheres began to drift toward him accelerating rapidly. In moments, they would make impact, and he would be blown to Flow Particles.
Asciin, however, had other plans.
Around him, as the Antispheres got closer and closer, a hail of Conspheres rained down on them, destroying each systematically before any could get close enough to harm him. The hail continued, destroying more and more Antispheres, and blasting the Antisphere Weaver itself with a constant rain of projectiles.
"Try me," he goaded. The moment he'd heard that this Weaver destroyed Allspheres, he'd summoned the Protosphere, and all of the infinitely many Conspheres it contained. It had arrived just as their interaction had gotten hostile, allowing him to bring his entire stockpile thundering down on the Anticosmic Ocean, slamming into everything around him with ruthless efficiency and precision. It was perhaps the greatest show of force ever exerted by any entity that had once been mortal.
"Agh- ack- NO!" The Antisphere Weaver manifested an Antisphere in its hand, lobbing it upward so that it exploded in the path of a group of Conspheres, stopping them from reaching the Weaver. "I will not allow this!" It sent another Antisphere directly for Asciin's face. He ducked out of the way, only to see another one rocketing toward him. He created two Conspheres, one in his right hand and one in his left, and threw the first one at the Antisphere; a direct hit. He shot the second one directly at the Antisphere Weaver's face, and, given that he didn't imagine it had ever had to dodge something before, had no trouble connecting with that target either.
As it screamed in rage, he quickly rounded up his remaining Conspheres in the Protosphere and made a run for it; he'd had the element of surprise, but he knew painfully well that his upper hand was going to go away as soon as the Antisphere Weaver got its bearings. He fled the Anticosmic Ocean of Realities, leaving the now utterly bamboozled Weaver screaming threats after him.
I just hope that my messenger Conspheres all get their jobs done. Good thing I included a warning about this thing.
And as he flew through metaphysical space, he couldn't help but feel like something was watching him.
== Chapter 5: The Dark Path Travelled ==
Surely not, he thought. There's no one out here but me. This, of course, was an incredibly foolish thing to gaslight himself into believing, but he was tired and didn't like the idea of being on his guard, or even considering the possibility that there might be an enemy out here for him to face. He trudged on, back to his own Ocean.
He felt a massive impact on his cheek. Before he could react, the force of the blow rippled across the rest of his face, then his whole body, passing through him like a shockwave. Then, as if catching up to its own magnitude, the attack pushed him to the side with astounding rapidity, directly toward an Ocean. He and whatever had hit him landed roughly among an endless swath of Allspheres, tumbling through them like a meteor screaming along the ground after its descent from the atmosphere.
Now quite thoroughly woken up, he scrambled to his feet to regain his bearings. This Hypercosmic Ocean seemed to be Weaver-less, yet it still contained plenty of Allspheres; he'd have to investigate whatever had happened here after he was done dealing with... well, whatever had just hit him.
He looked around at the nearby area, searching for his assailant, and spotted a lump, slowly getting up. This doesn't look like too much of a threat, he mused. If this entity is so slow to regain its footing when it's just started a battle, it's probably not that dangerous a fighter. But then he thought back to how hard it had hit him, mere moments ago. His entire body was sore from the impact, and the side of his face that had taken it was throbbing. I can't underestimate it. I've got to be prepared for whatever it does.
Finally, the entity stood, and Asciin got a proper view of what he was up against. The being was humanoid, complete with two legs, two arms, ten fingers, and a head. In fact, if he'd been back on Earth, he probably could have been convinced that it was a human, albeit one who made very convincing cosmic entity costumes. But, more importantly, the entity felt almost... familiar to him, as if he'd encountered it before. He looked at its face again.
His own face stared back at him.
"What!?" Asciin recoiled, stumbling backward. "Another one?" Since encountering the dead Ocean, he'd been subconsciously aware that there could be more of him out there, but he hadn't been prepared to actually meet one, live and in person. The more he stared, the more he recognized himself. But there was something different, too; this Asciin somehow seemed darker, more violent. Guess that makes sense, considering he attacked me unprompted. The biggest giveaway of the difference between them, though, was the doppelganger's face. Though identical to Asciin in features, his expression betrayed anger and hatred beyond anything else that existed. In his eyes, infinite suffering and malice gleamed. Asciin was shocked that he could ever look like that; he'd seen what torture and hate could do to someone, and even experienced plenty of it himself, but never so deeply as this alternate version of himself clearly had.
One thing was clear about this other Asciin.
He was here to kill him.
"Hello!" the non-hostile Asciin shouted to his counterpart. He figured he might as well try to be friendly; if that didn't work, he always had his inventory of Conspheres to defend himself with. He readied the Protosphere, just in case. The darker Asciin just glared at him.
"Tell me, how did we get here?" he scowled. "Why are there two of us? And why did you get an outcome that was so much better than mine?"
"I don't know," Asciin said, taken aback. Of course he talks. He wasn't going to just stand there in silence the whole time.
"Fine, I'll tell you," said the alternate Asciin, who Asciin decided he would call Dark Asciin until he had enough information to give him a proper distinguishing name. "We were both marred by the same event, you and I. We both lost everything in an Allsphere Amalgamation." Asciin nodded. "We both tried to climb the cosmological ladder, to kill the Allsphere Weaver. That's where our stories begin to differ."
"What happened to you?" Asciin asked him.
"You failed," Dark Asciin spat. "I succeeded."
A version of me that actually killed the Weaver! Instantly, Asciin was significantly more on edge; if they fought, he was up against someone who was at least as strong as the Allsphere Weaver. He himself was also more powerful than the Weaver at this point, of course, but he would still have difficulty winning against it. And he didn't know how much stronger than it Dark Asciin was; the two of them might be evenly matched, or Dark Asciin could wreck him in a heartbeat.
Well, no, I do have at least some indicator. When he surprised me, he probably hit me with his full power. The fact that he didn't kill me there indicates that I've got at least some chance against him.
"From there," Dark Asciin continued, disgust lacing his every word, "you got your forgiveness, saw the 'error of your ways,' and lived happily ever after. And now, you're just prancing around the Flow Prism like you own it, and nothing can hurt you."
"That's not-" Asciin tried to protest, but was cut off as Dark Asciin kept ranting.
"You know what I got? What my prize was for being the stronger version of you, the one who could actually accomplish this herculean task that folded you the moment you tried to finish the job?" He seethed with rage. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I became the new Allsphere Weaver. I ruled the Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities. And yet, I felt nothing. Not triumph, not guilt, not happiness, not loss, not any other emotion. Nothing."
"Is this your Ocean?" Asciin inquired softly.
"No," Dark Asciin told him. "This is just some anomaly, perhaps a creation that was given up on by its creator and left to its own devices. My Ocean is gone." He let that sink in for a moment, possibly waiting for Asciin to respond. After a short silence, he continued. "I just gave up after that. There was no justice, I figured. So I went and killed everyone. Every Allsphere, I decimated. Every world, I put through endless pain. I crafted an immaculate personal hell for each end every being that existed under me, and let them scream and beg to get out of there for an eternity before ending their worthless existence. And when I zeroed in on the final Allsphere, the final Box, the final Omniverse, the final universe, and finally, the last planet..."
"You slaughtered them," Asciin finished. "You tortured them, one by one. The planet was just like Earth." He'd figured out what was going on here, or at least started to. "Your last victim was a boy your age, who hated you for killing his parents right in front of him."
Dark Asciin just looked at him, not uttering a single word. They stared into each other's eyes for a long time, analyzing, wondering. Finally, Dark Asciin broke the spell that had passed over them.
"How do you know that?"
"Because I've seen your Ocean's remains," Asciin breathed. "I saw the single Allsphere floating in an empty void, containing only a single, empty universe. I walked on that planet, and I saw your carnage. And I met the boy. He thought I was you,-" I mean, I am him, he thought to himself- "and tried to attack me. I saw the body of your mortal manifestation that he had beaten to death. You allowed him to."
"What are you on about? I killed him," Dark Asciin cut in coldly. "I left no survivors, and I certainly didn't allow myself to be beaten to death by a child." He paused, seemingly considering what he was saying. "Though, I don't remember killing him, and my memory of our entire interaction is a blank..."
"You didn't," Asciin told him. "He was alive. I saw him."
"Nonsense," Dark Asciin said dismissively. "Now, let me tell you how this is going to go. I'm going to kill you. You can fight back if you like, it makes no difference. I'll win. All of your power, all of your creations, will be mine. I'll go across the whole Prism. I'll kill Weaver after Weaver, take over and destroy Ocean after Ocean. Eventually, nothing will be left. And I'll fade into the endless dark with it all."
"Why?" Asciin asked.
"You really don't get it, do you?" Dark Asciin laughed. "My family's all dead. I achieved the only thing I still wanted, and it brought me nothing but more pain. And here you are, a soft, weak version of myself, living your best life and being a pal to the same god that killed them. I'm not even myself anymore. Just a shadow." His eyes narrowed. "Your shadow." He laughed again, screeching and breathing raggedly all the while, sounding completely insane. Maybe he was. "I'm all alone here." It shows, too, Asciin thought pityingly.
"Listen, I have nothing against you," Asciin told Dark Asciin. "I don't want trouble. I just want to find the real culprit of that botched Amalgamation. Your understanding of what happened is way off, by the way; typical Allsphere Amalgamation doesn't do anything to the lower worlds. Some outside force caused our Allspheres to be destroyed in the process."
"Liar!" Dark Asciin roared. "I know the truth. In the entire Ocean, only the two of us have survived those events. You're a pawn of the Weaver. You've been manipulated into doing its dirty work. I don't know what it's sent you searching for, but I know this: you're not my ally, or my friend, or even me anymore. We've differed too much to think the same way, and so cannot predict each other the way two identical entities would. I have to kill you."
"I don't think I can trust the thought process of a guy who did what you did," Asciin remarked. "I mean, I knew that there were a lot of variants of me, but 'psychopath' wasn't one I thought I'd encounter." He paused to think one last time about the offer that he'd been thinking up as the conversation had progressed. This'll go either very well or very poorly, he thought apprehensively. "I'm willing to work with you," he said. "It doesn't matter to me that we've diverged as far as we have, because as far as I'm concerned, we're still the same person. Together, we can figure out both of our problems. We don't have to fight. I'll overlook all the threats, and even that punch- that really hurt, so you're aware."
"Good," Dark Asciin growled. "I have no intention to work with you," he said, spitting the "you" like it was the filthiest thing that had ever come out of his mouth. "I have my truths, I know what I have to do, and I don't need anyone else. I'll do what the Guardian told me to, end of story."
"If you insist," Asciin sighed. "Fine. Close yourself off to anything but your own fixed view. Never thought that anyone who used to be me would die on that kind of hill. But hey, you learn something new every day." Wait, who's the "Guardian?" He'd have to ask, but right now, he had to avoid getting killed; Dark Asciin looked ready to attack. I'm not a person to him, he realized. I'm an obstacle. And there was another thing he'd realized.
There's someone else at play here.
"You don't know the kind of hate that I do!" Dark Asciin screamed. He raised his hands, and all around them, tendrils of Allspheres erupted from the Ocean, making a beeline for him. If those hit me, I'll be impaled! They were massive, fast, and coming from every direction. He had no time to dodge, and doubted that they could be broken up by Conspheres. He only had one way to get away. It's risky, but I don't have much of a choice, he told himself grimly. From the Postsphere, he produced what first appeared to be a telescope of some kind; quickly brandishing it, he pointed it at a nearby spot, one where there were no tendrils closing in on him. Hastily, he activated the experimental device.
In a flash, he found himself in the place that he'd just pointed.
"Hey, it worked!" he exclaimed ecstatically. "I haven't tested that thing before- for all I knew, it could have turned me into a mortal, or erased my mind, or something else that would suck!" Among his many experiments in the Protosphere, he'd created a teleportation device, but abandoned it for its lack of use in his rather passive existence in his own Ocean. Here, however, it had saved him; realizing that Dark Asciin could knock it out of his hand, he quickly dissolved it into himself, allowing him to teleport without any sort of special item. Speaking of Dark Asciin...
"Ridiculous," Asciin's alternate version muttered. "Of all the cheap, convenient ways to escape-! You know what? Whatever. That was only one attack. You can't dodge forever, and I'm not stopping." The Ocean rippled out from him, building up a massive wave as it blasted its way toward Asciin, who quickly pulled a Consphere from the Protosphere. He shot it out above the wave, and then teleported to it, getting out of harm's way again.
"What's your problem!?" he called. "I mean, I know your problem, because I had it too, but I didn't turn into a mass murderer! You have no excuse!"
"If only you knew the kind of pain I've been through!" Dark Asciin shouted back, conjuring up a blast of Allspheres that rocketed toward Asciin. "Then, maybe you'd get it!"
"I do know, though!" Asciin replied, exasperated. "We were traumatized by literally the same exact thing!"
"Then why are we so different!?" retorted Dark Asciin. "Did you see what I did!?" Asciin dodged the blast and teleported close enough to Dark Asciin that they didn't have to yell at each other. "You feel no sympathy for me, and aren't going to. If you were, I would have broken through by now."
"I can say the same exact thing for you," Asciin replied. Dark Asciin laughed again.
"Yes, because we're the same, aren't we?" He grinned. "Pretending is a waste of time. The only thing we share is dissatisfaction. You're never going to achieve what'll truly fulfil the purpose of your existence; you've abandoned it. I, on the other hand, have embraced it; all I need to do it complete this task. We're both unsatisfied until you die."
"You've lost it," Asciin said bluntly.
"Maybe I have," Dark Asciin shrugged. "But at least now you get to understand before I kill you."
"I think I do understand," Asciin murmured. "I see it now. There's someone watching us right now. Someone behind you and your mad scheme."
"Is that so?" Dark Asciin asked sharply. "Do you think that you're capable of finding out the answers? Well, I am to. There's only one thing left for the two of us here."
"I suppose so," Asciin conceded, resigning himself to a fight. Resuming his attack, Dark Asciin unleashed a volley of Allspheres, waves coming at Asciin from all angles, forcing him to constantly teleport.
"I know that this is crazy, but it's your fault that I'm this way," Dark Asciin ranted as he attacked. "All my life, I've been waiting for something that I needed to do, but now it's time, and you've got to go." He created a massive eruption of Allspheres right underneath Asciin, who barely managed to teleport away in time. He flung a Consphere for Dark Asciin's chest, attempting to knock him over, but it was batted out of the air effortlessly. "Do you think that there's some sort of unspoken joke here, something about everyone's lives being insignificant? Please. All I did in my home Ocean was clean up the mess. Think it's fine for the Weaver to kill off the people of a broken world? Well, I'll be the one killing off the rest of them." With a heave of his arm, Dark Asciin shot a massive, thundering tower of Allspheres speeding toward his target.
Crap! If that touches me, I'm dead. He decided that staying defensive wouldn't do him any good, since Dark Asciin was attacking constantly. He could only avoid getting hit for so long, and his opponent showed no signs of stopping. He'd have to attack, and hope that it would stop the onslaught.
He summoned a massive armada of Conspheres, sending them blasting through the Allspheres, breaking up the attack, and soaring right for Dark Asciin. Wait, there are cosmologies in those Allspheres; populated cosmologies. Quickly, he manifested a second Postsphere, grateful that he'd stored a template for it in the Protosphere. Then, he sent out another fleet of Conspheres, this time with Flow Particle Retcon devices that would instantly transmit all of the contents of Allspheres they touched to the new Postsphere. Using Allspheres with people in them as weapons... that's disgusting.
Dark Asciin conjured a wall of Allspheres to block the first Consphere volley, causing them to be scattered in every direction. Asciin pulled them back to himself, sending them out with the same upgrades as the rest of them, firing into not Dark Asciin himself, but the Allspheres around him. Quickly, they were converted into Consphere-equivalents, their contents send to the copy Postsphere, leaving Dark Asciin unable to control them. Asciin raised them in a massive geyser on all sides, trapping his evil counterpart inside. He teleported above the prison, standing on a hovering Consphere.
Dark Asciin, however, summoned more Allspheres from the areas outside of the cylinder of Spheres now trapping him, bringing them in on all sides and smashing the walls around him. Asciin's Conspheres were quickly overwhelmed, and before he could teleport, a large burst of Allspheres came up from beneath his feet and covered his body. However, instead of slamming into him, or some other offensive action, they simply... restricted him. He tried to move, to bring a Consphere, or better yet thousands of them, to him, to no avail. Dark Asciin rose up to face him on a calm wave of Allspheres.
"Go ahead," he said breathily, grinning. "Call me crazy. Call me insane all you like. It doesn't matter anyway." And with that, Asciin was pulled under the tide of Allspheres, dragged down by the ones that had forcibly affixed themselves to his body. He was now essentially "underwater," to whatever extent that the Ocean of Allspheres could be considered "water".
Oh, shoot. I'm at his mercy now.
Unable to break the surface or use his Conspheres, he was hit with a barrage of Allspheres. He had no way of escaping, and no way of fighting back. Naturally, he tried; he flailed his limbs about, tried to punch the incoming Allspheres, but it was pointless. He felt his strength ebbing. It wouldn't be long before he couldn't even brace himself against the constant attacks, and then he'd be guaranteed to die.
Above, he could make out the vague outline of the Protosphere, floating above the Ocean, collecting Conspheres. It seemed to be storing all of them now; if he could only get to it, he could unleash an unstoppable torrent upon Dark Asciin that would almost certainly end the fight. But that's impossible, he lamented glumly.
Just then, as if sensing the thought, Dark Asciin noticed the Protosphere, with all the Conspheres inside. He gathered up a massive storm of Allspheres, momentarily halting the attack on Asciin himself. Before long, Asciin wasn't covered, and could move again, albeit barely given his beaten-up condition. It took him a moment to realize what was going on.
He doesn't know that I couldn't access it while I was under there! He thinks I was moving it into position for some sort of surprise attack! This was a somewhat suspiciously convenient turn of events, but he wouldn't look such an amazing gift horse in the mouth. Guess I have plot armor.
Now free, he could make good on his previously nonexistent threat, and as the Allspheres rushed toward their target, Asciin blasted his own massive wave of Conspheres right back at them. Dark Asciin stood with his back turned to him, too busy fighting the losing clash between Allspheres and Conspheres to notice Asciin controlling the Conspheres, though he was of course aware that Asciin was causing the outburst. As the Conspheres touched the Allspheres, they were converted to Conspheres, purging them of Dark Asciin's influence. Before long, the dark alternate Asciin was desperately pulling Allspheres from the deepest corners of the Ocean, trying to keep fighting. Asciin teleported in front of him.
"This battle is pointless," he declared. "Quit fighting now, and I'll let you go."
"Never!" Dark Asciin snarled. He summoned every remaining Allsphere under his command for one final attack.
"I really can't escape cliches, can I?" Asciin asked no one in particular. In response, he raised all of his Conspheres above the two of them, staring down at his counterpart in disgust. "If you truly can't let yourself concede..."
The Conspheres rained from the space above them in an unforgiving blitz.
Dark Asciin jerked wildly with each impact, in obvious pain from blow after blow. Around him, his accumulation of Allspheres dissolved as they were all converted into more Conspheres. Before long, every Allsphere in the Ocean was converted, and the second Postsphere was complete- and Dark Asciin remained under fire. Asciin pounded him with every Consphere he had at his disposal, not bothering with niceties or mercy anymore. His wrath had been quite sufficiently incurred, and he went in for the kill.
A final Consphere send Dark Asciin, barely conscious, reeling. Around him, the Conspheres gathered to converge from all angles, gleaming with almost sentient anticipation of the finishing strike.
"You chose this," Asciin whispered, feeling one last fleeting wisp of remorse. "We could have been friends."
The Conspheres shot inward, and the explosion shone across the whole Ocean.
______________________
When he finally came to, floating in the empty Ocean, Asciin was filled with a certainty that he'd won. Dark Asciin was gone. Then, he had a horrifying moment of clarity.
I needed him for answers!
He sighed. What in the Flow Fabricator's Prism just happened? How did Dark Asciin find me?
And, of course, the most important question.
Who is the Guardian, and what do they have to do with my Allsphere?
Then, he saw the entity watching him.
== Chapter 6: Truth ==
Without hesitation, Asciin gave chase. In response, the entity turned and fled, moving at an astonishing pace. Asciin had to teleport constantly just to keep up. It was a cloaked being, hood obscuring any sort of a face it might have with shadows. At the same time, the cloak opened at the front, showing a display that looked less like a body and more like a miniature collection of nebulae. It ran frantically, as if desperate not to be caught. Asciin could understand why; he'd just put on an incredible display of power. It made sense for any sane cosmic being to fear him. Yet, at the same time, this being should have also been aware that Asciin wasn't hostile unless provoked, since it had almost certainly been watching the battle.
The two of them broke out of the now empty Hypercosmic Ocean, flying through inter-Ocean space. Asciin teleported from Ocean to Ocean, trying to keep it in sight as it dashed in and out of various realms. His forehead creased with concentration as it got further and further away.
I can't let it escape! Without Dark Asciin, that thing is my only chance of getting any sort of answer. I have to catch it. He sent a few Conspheres out, not to attack, but just to stop it; however, it easily dodged around them as they attempted to form a blockade, leaving Asciin scrambling to disassemble the obstacle he'd created before he reached it. Having been unable to see through the Conspheres, Asciin momentarily lost sight of the entity, before spotting it off in the distance. It manifested some sort of gate in front of it, and before he could do anything, it was gone.
He collapsed onto his knees in defeat. Crap, crap, crap crap crap crap crap crap. Now what? I have no idea where it went, I don't know how I can find it again, I'd probably lose it even if I did find it... All hope of finding out what had happened to his Allsphere, it seemed, was lost. And if he couldn't find out what had caused it for him, he had no way of stopping it from happening to others. I've failed everyone. Well, not everyone, since the phenomenon seemed to only target one Allsphere from each Ocean, but that was still a lot of preventable death that he'd allowed. Very unfortunate.
Okay, let's be rational, he mentally told himself, imagining the Weaver's stern tone. Let's go through everyone I know: what would they do in this situation? His first thought was his parents, but he quickly realized that they were so far removed from both these circumstances and his recent experience that he didn't really know what either of them would do. In fact, they'd probably do what he was doing right now: go through the thought processes of everyone they knew to find the best course of action.
Next, he thought of the Allsphere Weaver. Honestly, it would just give up and go back to its Ocean, he thought. That's why it sent me instead of ding this itself. It has other things to do, and without it, the Ocean would experience a lot more death than one Allsphere ever could. Besides, the Weaver's course of action would probably be based on its knowledge of the entity he was trying to chase, which Asciin had none of.
Hmm... that leaves Stuart, Ali, and Victor. He dismissed Victor, who would probably just punch a wall and go back to scrolling on his phone, immediately. Stuart, for all his curiosity, wouldn't be able to do much without a lead; he'd probably ask around, but if the Antisphere Weaver and Dark Asciin had taught him anything, that was a dangerous option, probably not worth it. I'm no more able to complete this task dead than I am right now, so it's best to leave that kind of risk as a last resort. Ali, on the other hand, would probably think logically about the situation, and try to deduce something with the knowledge she already had. Too bad I'm not smart, he groaned inwardly. She'd also probably use the resources she had, like that book I gave her that- wait a minute!
He'd been stupid. Those gifts I gave the three of them- one is a database of everything I've encountered! I can use that! Without a moment of delay, he pulled out a Consphere on which he displayed the database. Projecting his mental image of the being into the database, he found the entry he was looking for.
The Antireality Guardian is a cosmic entity that guards each Antireality Gate from entities attempting to cross it. Usually, multiple Antireality Guardians are stationed on both sides of each gate. Antireality Guardians have the ability to banish traversing entities to the Antireality Void. Despite being extremely powerful, Antireality Guardians are not very good at guarding the gates, as they tend to be unintelligent and gullible. As a result, traversing entities can easily trick these guardians into letting them through.
The extent of an Antireality Guardian's power depends on the level of the Antireality Gate that it guards. Antireality Guardians of the First Gate are the weakest, and the Antireality Guardian of the Third Gate are the most powerful due to being above the others.
Six guardians are stationed at the First Gate, with three on each side. Only four are stationed at the Second Gate, with two on each side. Guardians of the First and Second Gates are unable to pass through the gates. Thus, multiple are required to be stationed on each side of the gate. While guardians stationed on the lower side of the gate can access any realm below it, guardians stationed on the higher side cannot venture too far from their gate - they are simply unable to enter higher realms.
...
In addition to guarding the Antireality Gates, Antireality Guardians also patrol the bounds of the Antireality Void, preventing entities from exiting. However, due to the vastness of the Antireality Void, Antireality Guardians are rarely effective in preventing entities from escaping the void.
He searched a few more of the terms mentioned in the entry; Antireality Gates, Void, and Energy, for example; and before long, he felt like an expert of all things Antireality. For a brief moment, he wondered how he'd gotten past the first Gate during his initial ascent to the Allsphere; he eventually elected to believe that he'd simply been able to bypass it through sheer power, since his abilities were at the level of the Hypercosmic Ocean of realities. Presumably, that had allowed him immunity to the unfortunate side-effects that traversing Antireality Gates had on entities who existed below them.
That said, he had no way of reaching the Guardian; it clearly wasn't one of the ones guarding the First Gate, since they couldn't access anything outside of individual Allspheres. That meant that it had to be one of the Guardians of the Second or Third Gate, which, by extension, meant that he'd have to go through at least one Gate to follow. That's... risky. Very risky. There was a slim chance that it was one of the two guarding the lower half of the Second Gate; that way, he wouldn't have to make any dangerous travel attempts. But then, how would he even find the Gate? The entry had conveniently left that part out. Just my luck.
Then, in his peripheral vision, he noticed an object.
It looked to be some sort of tablet, spinning around in the void between Hypercosmic Oceans as if it had been haphazardly dropped. Which it might have been, he realized with a start. That thing belonged to the Antireality Guardian I just saw. He floated over and grabbed it. It activated as soon as he touched it, displaying a wall of text. Might as well. He started to read, but stopped just a few sentences in.
This thing was watching me the whole time! Me and Dark Asciin! He scrolled back to the top of the document. He sat himself down on a chair that he created; Asciin didn't expect this to be light reading.
______________________
I'm keeping this log because I don't have any access to the Antireality Archives, now that I've been ousted from the Guardians. Ha! I'd like to see them try to handle that place's maintenance without me. The rest of them can barely read, let alone observe, research, and write their findings. What a shame; the place was magnificent. Well, too bad. They shouldn't have gotten rid of me. From now on, I'm no longer an Antireality Guardian of the Second Gate. I am the Antireality Scourge, and with my mastery of Antireality energy, Antireality Rapid Travel, and vast intellect, I will live up to that name.
______________________
My first experiment, my first act of terror, has begun. I've made a slight, imperceptible change to one Allsphere from each of two identical Hypercosmic Oceans of Realities; when they Amalgamate, instead of the normal process, they will utterly collapse. Neither Weaver has noticed. The Allspheres themselves differ ever so slightly, meaning that the results of their disasters will be ever so slightly different.
I've used Antireality Energy to make these Allspheres spare one being, too: one survivor, who will be given a glimpse into their Ocean in their last moments as a mortal. I don't know who this mortal will be, except that it will be the same one from both Allspheres. I have no doubt, however, that this survivor will blame the Weaver for their reality's disappearance. What they do from there will differ at some point, just by a tiny bit at first, but later massively, as the tiny differences add of to culminate into something great. Regardless, both will be exposed to enough Flow Particles to gain power beyond the scope of even an Apex Allsphere; this mortal's potential will outclass even the Weaver.
This will be very, very interesting.
______________________
The two Allspheres have finally Amalgamated- and what a spectacle! Countless world burning, countless insignificant lives snuffed out in moments. The torture was incredible; after such a harrowing experience, the survivors will doubtlessly wield incredible might.
Speaking of which, I now have the result for which mortal was selected: Asciin, a human boy whose age is roughly equivalent to seventeen revolutions of his home planet around its star; approximately 42 AESM1s. In the final moments before exposure to the Ocean, he was with his parents, with whom he exchanged goodbyes. He's hotheaded, as mortals go, and of a species that form a particular emotional attachment to family. This combination is ideal for this experiment; I have no doubt that he will attempt to kill the Allsphere Weaver. In both Oceans, he's been deposited in a nearby Allsphere, soon to be found by a group of local humans.
______________________
The two have followed largely identical paths so far: both have befriended the group that found them, discovered their powers, and realized that they were capable of killing the Weaver. This is perfect. I'd hoped for more divergence, of course; one is a bit quicker to snap at his new friends than the other, but they've largely remained the same. They're ascending through their new Allspheres, if unnecessarily slowly. Apparently, they aren't going to think of simply imagining themselves outside of their Allspheres. Or maybe one will, and the other won't. Who's to say?
______________________
Finally. I've been hoping for this exact result since the start: one of them has succeeded.
Both confronted their Weaver, and both were met with passive psychological warfare. Weavers are pathetic creatures; why shower an entity in guilt and fake pain when you have the power to destroy them easily? In one Ocean, this proved to be the Weaver's downfall; the snappier Asciin took control of the whole Ocean in a blind rage, and killed it. The other was weak. He let it talk "sense" into him, and he now resides peacefully within his domain. Rubbish. I'd hoped for more from him.
Both, however, seem to be mentally volatile, which is promising. I'll be following the more interesting path, that of the successful one, much more closely.
______________________
The lesser of the two has now begun a new project. Apparently, he's now given the event I caused thought, and, laughably, concluded that all Allsphere Amalgamation causes catastrophe. This is hilarious; perhaps I shouldn't have been so quick to dismiss him as a failure. After all, trash can be entertaining, in its own way.
______________________
The better of the two is still the successful one. As I expected, his psyche has grown increasingly unstable. He recently began a rampage across the Ocean that he now uncontestedly rules- and his brutality is magnificent! I've borne witness to an endless number of tyrants, malignant gods, and other affronts to morality, but this one blows them all out of the proverbial water. For each and every one, he studies them, learns exactly what they love and hate the most, and subsequently uses that information to inflict upon them a world of pain beyond any hell I can bring myself to imagine. His success, as it turns out, is mine; with time, he will grow, and when he's done, he'll approach the Gate.
What a surprise that will be for the Guardians.
______________________
The weak Asciin has now, in a sickeningly "heartwarming" development, found his old Allsphere, realized that it still held traces of the reality that I went to the effort of destroying, and restored it. He hasn't undone all of what I've done to him- he, for instance, is still most definitely an isolated god, -but his reality now exists in his previous state. Seeing his replacement didn't deal the emotional blow that I had hoped for, either; his acceptance marks an incredibly unexpected and equally unwelcome increase in his mental stability. My high hopes for him are dashed; the other will more than make up for it, though.
______________________
NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONO!!!!!!!!
That's what I get for relying on mortals- pathetic, worthless, stupid, unreliable mortals.
The better Asciin had almost finished the job. He was so close. But he threw it all away, and for what? Because he felt sorry for some nameless boy who reminded him of himself? Why!?
Well, whatever the reason, he's gone now. What a pathetic showing. What a pointless exercise.
Unless...
______________________
The remaining Asciin has, startlingly, taken over his Ocean, had a bout with the Weaver(a verbal bout, the pacifist wretch; you wanted to kill it earlier, didn't you!?), and realized his critical error. He's now left his Ocean entirely and started searching the Prism for the cause of his misfortune- me- and wants to make sure that nothing like it ever happens again. Well, I won't be denied more experiments, and he's bound to find me eventually.
Fortunately, I have a plan.
______________________
It worked.
It actually worked! Truly, this is the pinnacle of my genius. Using Antireality Energy and Flow Particles, I have brought back the form, mind, and very essence of the dead Asciin back to life. He tried to fight for a moment, but was easy to subdue(perhaps he wasn't yet ready to face my former colleagues) and wipe his mind of his last moments. That old murderous rage is back, as is his power. I've made him believe that he was successful in killing everyone, and that I stopped him from finally killing himself, which he planned to do to complete the cessation of the reality he knew. I've successfully convinced him that I am his "Guardian"- which is true, to an extent- and that I could not allow him to die due to his greater purpose.
That purpose, of course, is the destruction of the Guardians, though I've allowed him to think that it is instead the end of the entire Flow Prism; that destructive mindset will serve him well in his first task: killing his counterpart.
______________________
The target has traversed various Oceans. He first searched one that was nigh-identical to his own, save for my lack of action within it. He found nothing, and moved swiftly onward.
Next, he encountered the other Asciin's Ocean. This has provoked an interesting emotional reaction within him, though it wasn't as strong as I would have hoped. He seems relatively unfazed, in fact, by just about anything; he can still be shocked, or enraged, but factors that should cause him to melt down entirely seem to have a lesser effect on him. At this rate, the shock value of seeing another of himself will be but a momentary distraction, not the psychological flashbang that I wanted. Oh, well. The Asciin I'm sending is still the stronger of the two; he will win.
Most recently, he visited the realm of the peculiar Antisphere Weaver. Their conversation was civil, at first, but between a cretin and a mortal, it was bound to go south quickly. He's narrowly escaped that encounter with some useful information; the entity that did this to him is not an overtly destructive being. I'm not yet worried that I'll be discovered, however; he has yet to connect me to this alternate version of himself, of whose existence he is now aware. Fortunately, he believes his counterpart to be dead, meaning I still have some element of surprise.
I am sending my soldier now.
______________________
First contact has been made.
Right now, they're conversing. The better Asciin is ranting maniacally, as expected; he's fortunately not given away much useful information. If I watch from a safe distance, the dangerous one will be killed before he ever knows of my existence.
Never mind. As I write this, my own Asciin has mentioned a "Guardian."
Whatever. It's vague enough, and the Asciin I didn't want knowing about me will be dead soon anyway.
As I wrote the previous sentence, they began fighting. They currently appear to be evenly matched, though the target was forced to use a new tool, some manner of teleportation device, in order to not be defeated immediately. Mine, however, has the upper hand; the other attempted to trap him, but he's easily broken free.
The target has been pulled under the Hypercosmic Ocean's tide. He can no longer do anything to save himself.
No no no no no what are you doing why are you attacking his toy with all the weapons in it he can't use them right now finish him off first no no no no no he's gotten out why are mortals so stupid how has this pathetic creature survived the Flow Prism so long no don't let him hit you so many times no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
I've been granted a respite to calm myself; the target is unconscious.
.And the other Asciin is dead again.
He made a critical error, thinking that his enemy was able to attack him from behind. Idiot. Even if that was the case, he wouldn't have had to worry about that if he'd have just finished him off instead of playing with his food. Mortals are so petty.
I still have time. I can resurrect him once more, wipe his memory of the fight, start over. I'll train him properly. Next time...
The inferior, or, I suppose at this juncture, superior Asciin, is waking. He look agitated. He's now scanning his surroundings.
Oh, no.
______________________
End of current logs. Read again?
The message flashed in his face like some sort of taunt.
Read again? That? He clutched his head with both hands, reeling from the information he'd just consumed.
So, I was an experiment all along? Nothing but a test subject. And a failed one, at that. The being that created me attempted to dispose of me. Guess I shouldn't be too surprised about that; I already knew it probably didn't like me very much.
"This is a lot to take in," he muttered to himself. So why am I not all that shocked? I mean, I'm surprised, but it's not... the sort of absolute flabbergasted-ness that one would expect. "Guess the Scourge was right." He laughed. "I am numb." From what he could tell, there was only one way for him to process all of this information.
He sat down to write his own entry on the tablet.
______________________
My name is Asciin. I was once a mortal; those days are long gone.
I am a god.
My home, the reality I spent my time as a mortal in, was destroyed in a catastrophe triggered by Allsphere Amalgamation. During the catastrophe, I saw my Ocean's Allsphere Weaver, and blamed it for the death of everyone in my Allsphere, save for myself. I attempted to kill it. I failed, fortunately, and began a peaceful coexistence with it.
A different Ocean, one where the same catastrophe occurred to an identical version of me, wasn't so lucky. In that one, I succeeded. I killed the Allsphere Weaver. What happened next perfectly illustrates how fortunate it is that the version of me writing this failed; the "successful" Asciin went on to lose his mind, killing everyone in his Ocean except for one human, in one universe, in one Allsphere. The rest was gone; by the time I found the remains of his rampage, it was all void, except for the boy he allowed to kill him in a moment of partial clarity.
Recently, my misconception that all Amalgamation results in the disaster I witnessed was shattered, and I left my home Ocean to find its cause. I was sent by my Weaver, a being whom I had recently surpassed in power through subsumption of the Ocean into my own structure, which I call the Postsphere; something I deemed to be a perfect world. I was wrong in that belief; I stifled the Ocean. This has since been rectified.
On my journey, I witnessed my world as it should have been, the Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities harmonious and peaceful. I witnessed the aftermath of my counterpart's rage, and the empty husk of a child he left behind in death. I witnessed a destroyer that was no the cause of my own disaster, but many others which I hope to quell.
As it turns out, I was merely an experiment, a test subject of an Antireality Guardian who was cast from the Second Gate for, as far as I can tell, dabbling in power beyond what should have been his. He created me, and the other Asciin, for the purpose of his own entertainment, and to kill his former peers. Deeming me a threat, he used some means to bring my counterpart back from the dead, and sent him to kill me, only for the reverse to occur instead. I feel no guilt; I acted in self-defense, and self-defense only. I have no sympathy for the pitiless, murderous psychopath that it seems I was at one point on the brink of becoming. It's funny, in a way, that the self-proclaimed "Antireality Scourge" thought that I was inferior for not killing the Allsphere Weaver, only to say the exact opposite when I won.
After the fight, I saw the Scourge. I chased him, but was unable to catch up. He escaped, however, I have acquired his log, hence my knowledge of the truth of my existence. I now know what I must do. I don't know who might find this message, but whoever it is, I ask only one thing of you: if I fail, make sure that there's someone there to continue the fight. This being is vengeful, sadistic, and irrational. He doesn't care who he hurts to achieve his goals, and will surely cause more harm to many, if not all Oceans on the Flow Prism. He must be stopped.
However, that's only if I fail; a backup plan, if you will. I have no intention of such a thing being necessary. It's just a precaution.
I'm going to stop him myself.
== Chapter 7: Antireality's Savior ==
Far away from any drama an Allsphere Weaver peacefully watched as another Allsphere coalesced in its hand. It enjoyed peace; peace was all it had ever known. Peace was the whole of its existence, here in this Ocean where nothing ever happened, and it liked it that way. The Allsphere floated away, drifting off to be one of the infinite Allspheres within the Ocean, and the Weaver began work on another. It could go at a faster pace if it liked, but there was no rush; on the grand scale of infinity, there was no real impact any one Allsphere could have n the rate of Amalgamation, so why hurry? The time before it existed didn't count toward its wait, after all.
The Weaver spotted an object in the distance, approaching it. It looked somewhat like an Allsphere, but was obviously not. It contained no cosmologies, that much was clear; in fact, inside, the Weaver found pure information, and nothing else. A messenger, it concluded. Another Allsphere Weaver wants to speak with me. It allowed the curious device to play its message.
"This is a Consphere," said a voice from within. It sounded like a teen human. "An Allsphere-like device that I have sent one of to every Hypercosmic Ocean of Realities in the Flow Prism. Each one carries the same urgent message: your Allspheres are at risk of self-destructing. I don't know what the cause is, at least as of creating this message, but I was originally a mortal, before being made a god by a catastrophic event, triggered by Allsphere Amalgamation, which collapsed my world. I have since grown in power to surpass my local Allsphere Weaver in power, and am now searching for the cause of this event. If I currently know more than I did when I sent these Conspheres, the additional updates should also be available to you. With these objects, back-and-forth communication is possible; if you know anything about an entity or force that could have caused this, please reach out to me with information. If not, please keep this object near you, as the search is ongoing, and you may be of help yet. This quest concerns the whole Flow Prism, so ignoring me is ill-advised."
The Weaver checked the Consphere. There was no more information, meaning that this being hadn't found anything else, or at least hadn't updated it. This seems... important. Very important. This sounded like change, and the Weaver didn't like change. None of them did. Of course, if it was a minor, temporary change, like keeping a foreign object around, instead of a major and harmful change, like the destruction of an Allsphere, it supposed that it would be bearable.
Very well, child.
______________________
Asciin looked upon the Second Antireality Gate in awe. He'd found it using the coordinates that he'd conveniently found on the tablet; right in the middle of the Prism. Surprisingly easy, but hey, I can't complain. He paused, staring at the tablet. Wait, I should update the messengers. He pulled out the information stored in the log- just the pure information- and uploaded it to all of them. Nearly missed that. That could have been very annoying; if I died without anyone ever knowing, the whole Prism would be back to square one. After all, he was at a great risk of dying soon. He didn't mind, though; if he didn't attempt what he was about to attempt, what would he do?
He approached the Gate, and two Guardians looked his way.
"Halt!" bellowed one. "You cannot pass through the Gate! We will not allow it!"
"I recommend that you make an exception," Asciin commented. "I'm here to deal with a friend of yours."
"Incorrect," the other Guardian said. "We know of no such entity that you might call our 'friend'."
"The Antireality Scourge," he elaborated. "The guy you booted a while back. He's causing problems in the lower realms, and I'm here to teach him a lesson."
"The lower realms are not under our jurisdiction," the first Guardian told him. "Our duty is to keep any lower being from passing through the Gate, and we cannot make an exception on account of a lesser concern."
"He's a threat to you too," Asciin added desperately.
"How so?" the first Guardian scoffed.
"He planned to use- er, his experimental pawns to attack you. If he goes unchecked, he will eventually succeed in killing you."
"Ridiculous!" the second exclaimed. "He's been banished."
"What makes you think he'll respect that?" Asciin asked. The Guardians gave each other a dubious look.
"He has to," one of them finally answered. Asciin sighed. This wasn't going the way he was hoping; these Guardians weren't the most intelligent entities he'd ever encountered. They didn't think at all beyond their duty. Clearly, the Scourge's ruthless intellect is part of what made him an outlier.
"I have his logs as proof," Asciin pleaded. "I need to go through. Someone had to stop him."
"And the next time he appears on this side of the Gate, you can do that." The Guardian's tone was unsympathetic and flat. "We don't have time to read your fake proof."
"Would you quit blinding yourselves to the truth!?" he cried. "You have plenty of time, all you do is stand here! I've read up on you! Do you think I don't know how free your schedules are!? And what's with the assumption that I'm lying?"
"Your story is preposterous," one said.
"And guarding the Gate is a full-time job," the other added.
"Screw this," Asciin muttered. He needed to get through, but how? He wasn't willing to risk fighting them; there were two, and that ran the risk of being killed before he could even begin to fight the Scourge. Besides, annoying though they were, they still held a lot of cosmic importance; killing them could upset the balance on a larger scale than Dark Asciin did with the Weaver. He began to turn his back to them and walk away for the time being, until he could figure something out.
Wait a minute...
He whipped around and ran full-tilt toward the gate, gibbering nonsense at the top of his lungs. The Guardians, stunned by the sheer randomness of what was going on, were delayed in their reaction. They both reached out, trying to stop him, but he'd already gotten past. I'm going to make it!
"Stop!" one of the highly bewildered Guardians bellowed, but by then it was too late. Asciin had reached the Gate.
He was swallowed by darkness.
______________________
TBA
== Epilogue:??? ==
TBA
Category:Story
Category:Unfinished