Sell you a Bridge chapter 362

July 15th 2016 Scala ad Caelum, 7:00 PM EDT

Silence.  There was only silence as I stood in the forge of worlds. It wasn't  total nothingness, not the silence of the void, but more the silence of  the world holding its breath. The silence between two drops of water  from a leaky faucet. The silence of a temporary stay of execution.

I  could still see the dragon. The castle. The world of Scala ad Caelum.  Despite that though I could also see more. The voice spread out beneath  the lodestone of the multiverse, worlds upon worlds, and beneath me, my  kingdom, the dark multiverse, the decomposing corpse of countless dying  universes, arrayed in counterpoint to the original like a single  discordant note in a beautiful sonata.

There was a million  worlds, with a million versions of my loved ones. Zee dating Nightwang,  Zee dating some blonde brit, Zee with two guys, an older Zee with  Batman. I saw Drea get married to her old teammate on the forever  people, Bear. Artemis ending up with Wally mostly, a few times with  Aqualad, Gojo's life back in his old world in a dozen variations.

Weirdly,  I didn't see...me. Not once. Rana wasn't there either, mostly because  I'd created her so if there was no me there couldn't be a her, but it  was still jarring to see a world without my daughter. I couldn't  understand why there were no multiversal copies of me. I could only  assume it was an Endless thing.

As I watched all of this, I  learned. I saw the bedrock of these worlds, easily able to process the  slight differences in the makeup of the multiverse with my perfected  void knowledge. I could have started already, but I had more to learn,  and with time not passing right now I could take my time. I watched each  universe, understanding how it was formed, how it came to be.

All  worlds begin in darkness. That sounded like a bit of showy meaningless  nonsense but it was nothing but truth. The whole 'let there be light'  thing was true, but light was born from the dark, it was a contrast, an  opposite, and one couldn't exist without the other.

Barbatos  thought he'd created the Dark Multiverse, hell so had I, but it was  always there, waiting to be born, waiting to exist. In fact, Barbatos  had slowed it down, putting a rotting carcass in the place where an  equal and opposite force was supposed to be born. It was why it took so  long for me to come about. The Dark had needed to form around the corpse  that he'd shoved in its way.

It  took me about a dozen worlds worth of study to figure out the  relationship, though honestly I should have gotten it at a glance. The  Dark Multiverse was a shadow. As soon as I got that I found my angle,  what I needed to begin the process.

My  powers had begun with shadow. Just as my void bloodline was necessary,  the dark that was my nature was necessary too, and it had taken me  longer than it should have to figure out why, but that bit of  information was all I needed. Since I knew shadows, I had the perfect  way to work this.

I  reached out with my shadow powers, one of my core abilities, and  grabbed hold of the Dark Multiverse. I had the hammer, the flame, the  anvil, and this was the tongs that would hold the thing in place. With a  mighty metaphysical heave I cleaved down with the X-blade, smashing it  into the dark multiverse in a motion that both smashed it out of shape  and cleaved off part of that excess deadness.

One  strike. The Dark Multiverse shook. Deception flooded the entire plane,  seeping into every world as I 'heated' the 'metal'. Two strikes. Another  shake as the worlds contracted, evil and malice being squeezed out as  it happened. It was more than just swinging away though, I had to watch  the whole multiverse, had to perceive the space through the void to find  the faults in the material.

I  hit Earth -11, and the darkness of the Drowned began to recede,  purified by the fires of deception and the hammer of my will. Then the  next strike point, a world I recognized based on the aura as the one  where the speedster Batman had come from. Then another. As I worked, I  had to adjust the entire multiverse, had to shift it ever so slightly so  it wouldn't crack or break.

A  million little factors went into every single swing, and I shaped the  plane to my will, making sure to leave a gap in the middle where I would  set the crown jewel. Each swing taught me more, showed me how the Dark  Multiverse SHOULD be. The Darkness never went away. It was natural, but a  shadow isn't malicious, it isn't evil. It's quiet, and peaceful, and  whats more, it's deceptive. A shadow is a lie that light tells the world  to trick it into thinking something exists where it doesn't.

As  the Dark Multiverse began to take its proper form, I felt myself become  more whole. Barbatos had been using the power and that had kept me away  from it, but that wasn't all. An Endless WAS their domain, and the Dark  Multiverse was mine. A true domain, not the little corner of space I'd  carved out with my stunted powers.

Realizing  that helped me shape it even more. I knew how Domains worked, how to  use and mold them. It was absolutely necessary that I'd shattered the  defective product I'd made too. It might have put me in serious danger  if I hadn't. As the Dark Multiverse became more whole, I felt myself  CONNECT to it, the same way I'd been connected to my original Domain.

I  felt myself becoming whole, and realized that all this disgusting  corruption had been polluting my power, my source. That was why my  ability was so stunted. It was why it had manifested as it had, a  Deception that allowed the universe to put me on the path to fixing  itself. Finally, I had it in the right shape, had fixed it well enough  to begin the creation of my new world.

I  had materials too. The excess dark had been smashed loose, purified by  the heat of the forging, and I collected it, pushing the Dark Multiverse  aside with my shadow manipulation as I molded the material into the  shape of one of the multitude of universes I'd witnessed. In fact, I  molded it into the shape of hundreds of them.

Making  a new world couldn't be freehanded, but I didn't need to. I had plenty  of sources to draw from. I started with the broad strokes. In the  beginning, God said, let there be light. That was important. Even moreso  for mine. Light had to give birth to darkness, as darkness had given  birth to light. I ignited a burning spark of radiating power, casting  the shadow I would use to shape the details and further purifying the  corruption from the base I was using.

Once  that was done, I added the next block. A lie. I told the world it was  whole, told it I'd already formed it, and I watched my intended universe  begin to coalesce. It wouldn't create it from scratch for me, but it  acted like a template, a self fullfilling prophecy, and the Dark  Multiverse needed to be built on Deception because it was MINE. Then I  added humans. The greatest like the universe had ever told. The source  of all falsehoods.

Animals,  plants, stone, water, fire, lightning, evil, good, pleasure, pain,  danger, safety. I harvested memories of them from who I had been and  used them to as a seed to form my world. All good lies have a kernel of  truth within them. I brought down the X-blade after I'd formed the whole  thing, maneuvering it with my shadow power to make sure the hit came  down on the EXACT right spot, avoiding any dangerous faults.

The  world shook, cracks formed, and I shook myself because I knew if this  broke I'd lose it, lose it all and being this close to what I was meant  to be would kill me. The Dark Multiverse would collapse and I would go  with it, shattering and fading from reality as if I'd never existed. A  lie exposed and brushed aside.

But  it held. The work I did had been enough, at least to start. A second  blow brought it down again condensing the world again, closing the  cracks as if they'd never been, even as new ones formed. I swung again.  And again. And again. I lost track of what I was doing, of who I was.  The world I was creating was me, and it was on fire and burning and  melting and being crushed and so was I and I had no idea what was going  on and I was terrified/joyful/despairing/proud/a million other things as  I felt the emotions of trillions of new lives.

A  keyworld, a base. I slotted it into the bottom of Scala ad Caelum, in a  place that I knew without asking had always been meant for it, and the  world coalesced. Scala ad Caelum shook but I ignored it, grabbing the  dark multiverse and slotting it right on top of the keystone world.

The  Dark of the multiverse quenched the new world, strengthened and  empowered it as it became REAL. The silence snapped, and suddenly, I was  just...me. But so much more. I was Endless, was unstoppable and  implacable. The dragon fell upon me trying to tear me apart. It failed. I  wasn't there. I wasn't anywhere, and I was everywhere. I smiled  menacingly at the beast as I appeared before it, meeting its eyes.

Red eyes that blazed with hate and malice. "Trash!" It roared. "Thief! It's mine! Give it back!" Its  voice was a rockslide, a cacophony of clashing stone and death and  destruction as it began to fracture, creating a hole in the world. A  dragon that was nothingness that was a portal.

I  just shook my head. "It won't be enough." I said lightly. "You can't  beat me now. You're strong, maybe even as strong as I am. You've gotten  fat on all that misery and harvested despair, but it doesn't matter. I'm  Deception. I am Endless. You can come at me for eternity and you'll  never win, never gain ground. You can't destroy a lie, can't crush a  rumor or a falsehood."

The  final traces of the monster dissolved as a figure stepped through the  portal. A tall, muscular man in a hood with a bare chest. The hood rose  in familiar points, and a skeletal bat adorned his chest, plastered  against mottled grey skin by a red smear I knew was blood. He had a  black wrap around his hips. cinched with the skull of the bat skeleton  and adorned with dark metal chains.

Red  eyes, twin to the ones in the skull of the dragon, burned beneath the  hood, the only thing visible in an endless sea of darkness. Massive red  and grey wings erupted from behind his back, and he towered over me as  he glared down hatefully. "Lies." He boomed. "All you know is lies. No  substance, no spine. Just a storyteller, a fiction weaver. You're an  ant, boy, you've always been an ant, and will always be an ant."

I  shrugged. "Maybe." My voice was casual, and I was far from worried.  Just to be safe I reached out and with a flick of my power I shifted  everyone in my team back to Gotham. I didn't need any extra steps. They  weren't there, and I decided they should be. Lie to truth. Cracking my  neck, I got ready for the fight I'd been waiting for, a fight I knew  would span the entire Dark Multiverse. "But like I said. I am Endless.  There are as many of me as I need there to be." My voice echoed from a  legion of clones surrounding us, one on every building. "So lets see how  many ants it takes to eat an elephant." And the fight was on.