Chapter 257 - Enduring Balance

Nate was dying. Approaching the Divine Artifact of Erosion had been as painful and deleterious as approaching Ruin and different to approaching Change. Cataclysm had felt explosively destructive but its waves of destruction had, interestingly, been easier to avoid with his Concept of Space. Nate was now forced to walk towards the final Divine Artifact within Ankh’Aris’s realm. That artifact was killing him faster than he could replenish himself with Divine Energy. His understanding of Creation was too small, too limited, too weak, to truly fight off something that demanded non-existence. He was a candle flickering in the wind, caught between gusts of non-existence and the gentle breeze of Creation.

Entropy. Nate had left it till last and he’d done so for many reasons. The simplest of which was that he felt almost no alignment with the idea. Non-existence was something that he had never considered, nor had a desire to consider. Nate filled space with his creations. He didn’t take anything away. If anything, Nate was more aligned with Entropy’s opposite, Syntropy. The idea that through his efforts things would become more harmonious, ordered and, in many ways, complex. Wasn’t that what his art was all about? Revealing and portraying the complex, and how everything related to everything else. His mind seized up on that final thought. Everything else. That included Entropy.

Ankh’Aris chose that moment to appear next to him.

“You are dying,” the dragon stated, pointing out the obvious.

“I am,” Nate agreed, putting one foot robotically forth in front of the other.

This realm had scoured him, physically and mentally. Naked, bald, and bleeding he had walked from one artifact to another, drinking in their meaning, binding his understanding of Destruction into his flesh, and leaving bits of his flesh behind as he traversed this place. Mentally, he was being stretched. Concepts had always come so easily to him, but he had only recently stopped viewing them in isolation. 

Certainly, he’d bound multiple Concepts together before, but that binding had been based purely on his own desires. He had rarely considered how the Concepts themselves interacted, touching upon each other in a great painting that summed up the entirety of existence. Even now, he was only looking at a small fragment of that grand painting.

“You could stop,” suggested Ankh’Aris. “You have gained enough to accomplish what you wanted within Kali’Terra’s rules and their Class Cores. It would be a pale imitation of what you truly want to accomplish, but it would satisfy the basics of it. I could release you from her, and you would live. Live as a slave to the Class Core bound within you, but live.”

The dragon's words were so sweet. Nate felt tears fall down his pock-marked cheeks, scoured instantly by the winds of Destruction as his skin vanished under a wave of Entropy, only to reform slowly from the Creation he kept within him. He could just give up. He’d done enough hadn’t he?

With a pained scream he took another step forward, one of his toes vanishing as he did so. Simply unmade.

“You will almost certainly die,” pointed out Ankh’Aris, the dragon unaffected by the winds, a vessel for unmaking so perfect that he might as well have been the Divine Artifact himself. “I told you you were arrogant. Swallowing the meaning of an entire Reality. Is it any surprise that pieces of it would eat you so easily?”

Nate took another step, the end finally coming into sight. The End, because that was what it truly was. Entropy was non-existence. The very idea of an item being able to represent such should have been impossible. But in the open air, over a pit of nothingness, hung a black seed.

“What is it?” Nate tried to ask, but when he spoke, no sound came out.

Instead he stood still, pieces of him flaking away as he tried to understand what he was seeing. Visions flashed through his mind. The lights of stars winking out, planets turning to dust, then the dust to light, then the light to nothingness as a cold emptiness filled everything. The death of a universe.

That same cold was seeping into him and he felt himself fading, the waves of Entropy washing over the Space within him, breaching its ramparts and erasing the Creation hiding within. His sight started to fade, but he smiled as he felt himself falling. It had been Nothingness, but it had been beautiful, because he had found something that he had no idea how to represent in paint. It existed only in thought and Concept. With a final flicker at the corners of his mouth, he fell.

*************

Kiri looked up from her introspection as a head attached to a torso fell next to her. At first she didn’t recognise the limbless thing, covered in pockmarks as though scoured by a sandstorm. It was bald, noseless and earless. It looked pale like a dead thing. Then she realised what she was seeing and she screamed, lunging for him.

Just touching Nate’s ruined body left her forced to empower herself. Laying a hand against him had tried to eat away at her own body. The same energy that was killing him had tried to kill her.

“Help him!” and she screamed, looking over to where Ankh’Aris lounged nearby.

“He must help himself. He chose to push himself. To test his limits. Let us see if he can find it within himself to survive his choices.”

The Ancient Dragon climbed back to his feet and wandered closer, even the casual movement appearing sinuous and deadly.

“He pushes himself. Will you match him, or will you suffer in mediocrity?”

Kiri looked to where Nate’s body lay. Now that she looked closely she could see bits of skin reappear at times. Her brother was still fighting. She grit her teeth and looked up Ankh’Aris.

“What do I need to do?”

“Nate seeks to find balance. But you…you must Endure.”

Ankh’Aris held out a small, black seed, “Swallow. And Endure.”

Kiri didn’t even pause to think about it, instinctually recognising something opposed to her very essence. Letting the small seed fall into her mouth, the change was instant as she felt the world trying to unmake her. The Divine Energy within the seed washed out in waves, trying to eat away at her soul and body. Kiri recognised the battle for what it was and did her best to build up walls of her own Divine Energy and understanding, to create flesh and soul that could endure that which sought to end her. With eyes closed, she sunk into herself, forgetting about the world around her as she fought for her life.

*************

Ankh’Aris lay down to watch the two young Divines. When he had first spied them upon their entry to his Realm he had known that Kali’Terra was up to something. Then the Dungeon gifted to him by that annoying Spirit had shifted to challenge them in an unusual way. That had made them a little more noteworthy. Enough that he might have offered them some advice or assistance if the ask was not too great and if Kali’Terra was willing to pay.

The first surprise had come when Nate had offered guidance to the little Sect beneath the waves. Their Elders had long been trying to produce an Ascendant, and their rampant desire to do so should have made the cost for anyone bound by Reciprocity too great to give them the answers they sought. Yet the little artist had managed a partial answer. That spoke of two things to Ankh’Aris. A powerful desire to help others, and given the reward he sought, an even more powerful desire to understand Concepts. Yet those same Concepts were so broad. Learning the assigned Embodiment by Kali’Terra had helped Ankh’Aris see the truth. The little artist was arrogant beyond imagination, wanting… no, needing… to understand the entire nature of their Reality.

Then, he had thought that Kiri was too weak. Her Path was already all wrong. Any Ascendant worth anything could see that she had incorporated Shadow into her Path without understanding a single thing about it. In fact, it was clear that she didn’t truly understand herself. Most would have failed at that point. They would have taken the easy way out or been unable to see the truths of their own existence. But she had lived up to her true ideal. She had Endured.

Ankh’Aris snorted in amusement. He had expected both of them to baulk at his teaching. To shy away from truly putting themselves at risk. To fail. Neither had. They were both pushing forward, and if they managed to come out the other side, who knew where they could end up? They might actually be able to escape from Kali’Terra’s clutches. They wouldn’t be the first, but the others who had done so could be counted on one, clawed hand. 

Kali’Terra wasn’t above freeing those from the shackles of its System. It just came at a grand cost, and earning that kind of debt from Kali’Terra was not easy. For many, it was impossible. Years and years of growth due from easy access to power that the Class Cores offered meant that few would ever be able to offer something to Kali’Terra that it desperately needed enough to balance the scales. These children though, they were in with a chance. They possessed debt owed to them already. If they could grow it further, they could barter for the removal of their Class Cores. They could become true Ascendants, unbound by Reciprocity. Unbound even by this Reality.

All they had to do was survive. To find balance, or in Kiri’s case, to Endure. Ankh’Aris watched them fight even as he kept mana from entering his home and sealed off access to the Spiritual Realm. For now, Kali’Terra had no sight or connection to this place. To his pupils. But if they survived, he would be forced to let Kali’Terra back in. Going forward the pair would need to work to rely less and less on their Class Cores, but if they did that, then given some time and some tasks, they could be free.

Ankh’Aris just wished he could give the same gift to his own kind. But they were almost gone and a new dragon had not been born in an age. He wasn’t even sure if they could be born anymore. With a sigh he settled in to wait. The pair of humans were dying, but he hoped for a better outcome.

*************

Nate hung within a space of his own imagination. Around him was the place between worlds, alight with colours and filled with fantastical astronomical bodies that couldn’t exist in reality. Stars in the colours beyond the rainbow orbited by planets and fragments that shifted in unnatural ways. A liminal space. A space that was being destroyed as lances of pure darkness pierced its edges, trying to devour it and make it like themselves. Turning them into nothing. Against those lances of darkness shone beams of pure, white light. Where Destruction was a force of change that broke down what existed, Creation put it back together in new and interesting configurations, restoring the space between. The battle was endless and felt like it had been waged for an eternity. It was at the center of that space where Nate existed.

When Nate had made his plans, he had at first only considered the element of creation, after all, as an artist, he created. What he hadn’t considered was what he created from or where he created. Art was, in many ways, created from nothing. That wasn’t to say there weren’t substrates, like his paint and whatever he used as his canvas. But those could be argued to just be pieces used to represent the artwork. The creation itself started out as nothing. It didn’t exist. Then there came an idea. From the idea the substrates were gathered and put together. Until finally, the artwork was completed. An act of creation.

The final piece was the answer to the question of where. It was a quote that Nate had remembered that helped him realise the truth of it all. Art was how we decorated space, and music was how we decorated time. Space was the secret. But it wasn’t really space. It was Reality, after all, their reality was just a collection of spaces all bound together somehow and following similar rules.

When he had realised that he had stopped trying to remove Destruction from himself. Destruction was necessary. Because where Destruction and Creation met, a space was created that was their Reality. He wasn’t so arrogant or foolish as to think those were the only factors, the only Concepts, that mattered. But they were the only Concepts that mattered to him, because they were the core of his understanding of Reality and his place within it.

From his understanding, all other Concepts would stem from those three core pieces. Destruction, Creation, and the Space where they met. An artwork he could, and would, slowly create that would eventually encompass Reality. As he ceased his fight against Destruction, instead incorporating it into his being, he slowly found that he became more focused, more real. The Divine Energy flowing into him certainly helped and using his understanding of the Concepts of Life and Creation he slowly rebuilt himself.

He opened his eyes and found himself naked, seated on the floor of Ankh’Aris’s throne room. Across from him sat Kiri, covered in blood and partially naked herself. Her Mythic armour was in tatters around her as she sat with eyes closed. The occasional shiver passed through her body as blood leaked from her mouth. A moment later she opened her eyes and smiled at him.

“You’re alive,” she whispered hoarsely.

“You too,” he agreed, his own voice barely a whisper.

Happiness flowed through him and without thinking he called on the Sigil for Joy and let it resonate out of him, surrounding the both of them. Kiri relaxed, turning to the side to spit some blood on the floor.

“That’s no excuse to be naked,” Kiri taunted.

“You’re one to talk,” he muttered with a raised eyebrow. His throat was still sore but getting better by the second as Life and Creation knit him back together. “Were you so jealous of my new robe you destroyed your armour so I’d make you some?”

Kiri glanced down and grunted her acknowledgement with absolutely no shame, before glancing at the dragon watching them both in amusement.

“He tried to kill us,” Kiri stated.

“He did,” Nate agreed. “Lord Ankh’Aris is Destruction. Even his teachings incorporate that Concept. I can see that now.”

Nate looked around for a moment and frowned, “Where is Frick?”

“The Third Hell. You needed to understand how you relate to Destruction. She needed to have her preconceived ideas destroyed and to find out how to Endure. The little spirit will take far longer to match the pair of you, but I put him on the Path, for his is one of Destruction, particularly that of Change and Consumption. He’s finding balance, assuming he survives.”

Ankh’Aris smiled then, razor sharp teeth on full display.

“Shall we find out what Kali’Terra thinks of the changes within you both?”

Nate didn’t get a chance to answer as he felt the mana of the Wild Realm rush into the throne room, having been too distracted to notice its absence. With that rush, came notifications. The first hung before him in bright blue letters. Skill Synergy discovered.