Chapter 585 - The absolute limit

Foreign memories crept up in Sofia’s mind like a waking dream. She was in someone else’s body, looking through their eyes, but it was confuse, overwhelming. She understood nothing of what she saw, until, all of a sudden, it calmed down.

Sitting naked in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere, the person in the memories laughed, looking up at the blue sky.

Is this… The old Speed?

She could feel the person’s emotions, somewhat. Relief, excitement, pride. A joyful cocktail that had ingrained this moment in their memory forever.

It was short lived, the scene shifted and warped, a countryside landscape turning into that of a bustling city. Humans were busy, walking to and fro, but the person paid them no attention, just like they did not pay him any. Dressed in peasant clothes, he joined a long line of young people. Everyone’s faces were blurry and faded, the details of the shops in the street and the passing carriages were similarly undecipherable, but Sofia could read one piece of text. Above the gates the people were lined up to enter, a large golden plaque was etched with a few words, that the person in the memory kept staring at.

Ancient human. Sofia could tell. ‘Royal Lineguard Academy of Science’.

The scene warped again. The person was waiting nervously near some kind of altar. There seemed to be many people around, but it was all a giant blur, as if none of them had any importance. The location itself was blurry, Sofia could not understand what this was about, until a young woman made her entrance from a distance, she had beautiful black hair cascading over her white robe. Looking up at the person near the altar, she smiled.

A wedding?!

This memory was the last semi-coherent one, soon overturned by a flurry of scenes and images following each other so fast that Sofia could barely understand anything. Joy, pain, love, anger, overwhelming emotions swole up and recessed, and eventually the plentiful images ceased. Brutally, everything had stopped. Everything turned gray.

Sorrow and nostalgia was all that was left. In the gray world, a single thing remained, one dreadful image, a lonely grave in a city’s giant cemetery. 

‘Ophelia Deepes

4858 - 4940’

The world around the grave started moving like a whirlwind, but only the grave stayed as the core of the memory. The world was gray, without taste, without emotion.

The image of the academy’s gates flashed by again, new bright young people were lining up in front of it, yet the memory was forlorn and cold.

What followed, Sofia could barely even begin to analyze for it flashed by so fast, dozen upon dozen of equation-covered black boards, mathematics that one could barely even fathom could make any sense, questions upon questions upon questions. Chalk-stained hands, wrote and wrote, yet the final equal sign never gave any answer.

People came and went, many stared at the black boards in amazement and wonder, yet the person in the memories was unsatisfied.

He pushed further and further, until he found a most peculiar answer: Speed.

For the second time Sofia heard the person laugh, but it was not the same. It was a lot darker this time, fueled by the loathing irony of this solution to his problems.

The person returned to something they had abandoned, a purple world of blue hues, strange eyes staring everywhere from the swirls of this empty cloud in a forlorn realm. The rituals they had used to escape so long ago were still where they had been left, untouched despite the fleeting centuries.

From here on, the memories were clearer, as if fresher in the person’s mind, but they also flashed by much faster.

Unable to focus, the person started building a city on the clouds, a mirage of the places they once knew, a pristine, yet soulless recreation of the human city he no longer wished to return to alone. The familiar but silent environment helped him focus on his goals.

Speed. It all came back to this simple concept. More speed. That was all he needed.

Speed trained his speed. Again, and again, and again.

Even as the city in the clouds started to crumble, Speed needed to go faster and faster. Always faster.

Sofia did not understand why, the memories were overlapping and unclear, mushed together by the god’s obsession.

And on a fateful day, Speed reached his goal. But whatever he had expected to find was not what had been waiting for him at the end of the road. Instead, he discovered that his equations were wrong.

This was the clearest of the entirety of Speed’s memory, starting from a fully blackened vision. For the first time, Sofia could hear his voice, defeated.

“So this is the true limit… I was a fool…”

His vision expanded. It was not black, it was the void. The endless voice of space. The universe; everything.

It was not Sofia’s first time being subject to this vision.

Ormoncleth.

The vision crumbled. But the memories were not over.

Speed woke up just in time to save himself, hastily saving his essence from the brink of collapse, grabbing the last one which had been trying to escape him. He forced the essence back into his divine body. Standing up, he returned to the ruined city in his domain.

There, he prepared many things, though those memories were faint at best, overshadowed by constant visions of horror, of Ormoncleth’s incomprehensible nature that ensnared Speed’s every thought.

When everything was said and done, Speed trudged toward his favorite spot in the fake city, on a chair overlooking the godly realm’s depths. Finally, he let the last of his essence go, and his consciousness faded.

The constant flashing of memories was over, and Sofia soon regained her senses, just in time to see Speed appear right next to her. She was sitting on the ground next to the chair.

“I think it worked?” she told him, the blur around the zone starting to fade. There was now nothing special to see there aside from an empty chair. Conflicting emotions swirled within her mind, but she was quick to come to a conclusion, this story she had just seen unfold was something that she absolutely could not share with the current Speed, if only to prevent him from ever attempting the same stunt and meeting the same end.

“Oh thank fuck you’re fine. Got me scared for a second there,” Speed answered Sofia with a sigh.

“And you just ran in to see if I was alright despite it being potentially dangerous for you?” Sofia asked, pointing at the fading clouds of blurriness all around them.

“I’d rather not see anyone die in my home, you know. Especially not someone I’m trying to date.”

“Stop, you’re going to make me blush,” Sofia joked, grabbing his hand to stand up. “Looks like I got your home all cleaned up, no more blurry corpses ruining the view…”

“Thanks for that, I guess. I would not mind making you blush, it would be concerning if you managed to blush in that form, though.”

“Maybe I’ll work on that,” Sofia answered, her thoughts still enraptured by the old Speed’s memories, thinking back about it, she wanted to ask a question, “Actually, a weird thought, but… Do you find this kind of essence body more attractive than a physical one? I’m wondering how that works…” Since the previous Speed also ended up with a human…

Speed laughed, shaking his head, “Not at all, no, though it feels more natural to be like this, I grew up around mortals and this is what shaped who I am now. To begin with it makes little sense for someone with no need to reproduce to be attracted to women specifically, but here we are. So, I very much prefer looking at you when you look more human… Well, your demon form is not bad either, aside from the head.”

“Hey! What’s wrong with my demon head?” Sofia pretended to be offended.

“You mean aside from the mouth the size of your entire face?”

“Heh, we each have a good and a bad head then, guess that makes us even.”

“What, you don’t like a guy who’s got a divine rune for a head? You can use it to enchant boots and vehicles for a speed boost, by the way, but you have to actually punch in the holes, not draw them.” 

“Really? Interesting, doesn’t that steal some of your essence, though?”

Speed shrugged, “Usually people are happy enough with the added speed that I get the spent power right back, it’s a pretty neutral thing to maintain. Most gods do something like that with their rune. Gives us more places to observe the physical world from, too.”

“Huh… Speaking of divine runes, this is what the first letter you gave me was about actually, here, let me share a skill description with you…”