Zero Six-Six

Why is Uncle Kolisa here, where are the others, what is happening?

I’m itching to speak but I know my place is to shut up. Uncle watches stoically as the Faceless healers work on the raving Luyolo, a limb bursts into being from the stamp of his arm. That looked like it hurt, I wish the Gaians had left him dead.

‘’This is where you choose to live out your exile?’’

‘’I... I’m just passing through Uncle.’’

‘’On your way where?’’

‘’On my way to strength enough to kill him and return back home,’’I point at the raving Luyolo straigning against restraints.

‘’Ahh... that is what I said was the condition of your return isn’t it?’’

Of course, you know it is, ‘’yes Uncle.’’

‘’Why do you want to return home?’’

‘’Pardon me?’’

‘’You have not fit in with our people in a long time if you ever did at all. Your mother didn’t fit in, your great grandfather certainly doesn’t fit in. Why is it that you want to fit amongst us so badly?’’

‘’I...’’ I’m clogged up. I don’t know what he wants me to say, is he even really asking me this? Is this some trap I’m supposed to fall for? ‘’I am a Bantu-jin above all else Uncle.’’ I strike fist to chest.

He snorts in amusement, was that a chuckle? Did Uncle Kolisa just chuckle?

‘’You know we were trained into having that sense of pride by our conquerors. I suppose it's also something we had to believe in order to justify our existence,'' he smiles almost sadly at me. ''Son, you will always be a Bantu-jin but you could be anything else as well.’’

He sighs, ‘’I thought I was giving you a gift by exiling you. I expected you’d be halfway to Burundi by now not in a pocket dimension in our backyard still. Why aren’t you bedding beautiful exotic women and conquering empires on some grand quest far from Velaria mhmm? Why are you still here?’’

I must be hearing things, there is something in the air making me hallucinate this conversation. From as early as I can remember I have been taught to think about family, about how much more superior from everyone else we as a family are, how much more superior we as a race are to every one else. Things I have never really fully accepted from the way I experienced life growing up but Uncle Kolisa has always been a patriot, a believer.

‘’Uncle why are you speaking like this?’’

‘’Because I can. Look, your cousin is going to survive this and whatever they did to him seems to has tempered his body further than I’ve ever seen for someone that age. Even with your new toy you won’t stand a chance for another 200 years if ever at all,’’ he smiles mischievously at me. ‘’He was a disgrace in his household just a moment ago, now I doubt even the eldest in that house will be able to handle him easily.’’

So much is going on in my head right now, the fact that Luyolo has gotten more powerful seems like a side note to my overall concerns, ‘’why are you even here? What’s going on Uncle?’’

‘’The rifts have been deemed a larger threat than originally anticipated. Our neighbours are getting invaded by inhabitants from one of these space rifts so we’re going to mass cultivate everything we can and shut all rifts in Valeria. We are here to secure the heartlands while we loot at Shamayim and deal with the threats bubbling from there.’’ He laughs with eager glee, ‘’I haven’t been to a mass cultivation before. I hear even old cronies can break thousand-year-long bottlenecks if the source is rich enough.’’

‘’Mass cultivation,’’ every cultivator in the family will siphon essence from the place en mass through a formation and cycle it. ‘’That will leave the place depleted of essence.’’

‘’It will, and you'll be far from here by that time. If you're wise.’’

‘’Ndaba, Tshibase and Mntungwa households should be here within moments, they will be the forerunners to cull the inhabitants. Then the helots will come to build the formation and then the cultivation will start. So roughly three days before we start properly with the cultivation, maybe sooner.’’

Shit! ‘’Uncle, I promised the natives I'd help them for this?’’ I upraise the object I’ve been wearing, now much heavier than it was but a moment ago.

‘’Yes, I’ve been wondering about that. Another thing that will forever set you apart from us.’’

That ‘us’ stings because it excludes me, stinging more so because he’s not trying to sting me.

‘’Here they are now,’’

Not a moment later three people appear around us one after another in a single eye-blink, they look around like curious children, disappearing to appear again as they curiously explore things. The demeanour of Uncle Kolisa is suddenly what I’m used to from him, he isn’t as animated as he was but a moment ago.

I shiver as the white-skinned hairless mass of a man has my hand up sniffing my brass knuckle-guard before I can even register him. I clench my fist, or try to but fail. I can’t move my hand at all, manna around and within me is completely choked dry.

I'm completely helpless to a curious monster's whims.

Please don’t take it please don’t take it. He doesn’t take it, dropping my hand to go sniff at the raving lunatic on the stretcher. Luyolo keeps breaking the restraints on the platform he’s so strong, fuck.

I really wish he had died and stayed dead. I clench my fist and keep it clenched over my... ‘soul weapon’. They called it a zanupakuto...

How am I going to help these people in three days? Fuck, I’ll give them a three-day warning at the very least then get myself scarce. I feel the yet unexplored depth of this soul weapon and the similarities with how like some sort of Core it can be utilised. Yea... I best warn the Sandersorian king at least.

The newcomers communicate with uncle nonverbally and all suddenly disappear, the ground quakes as they start their bloody work, ''goodbye son,'' Uncle Kolisa says and disappears.

I Blink away. Moving fast through the air, I Blink.

[BOOOO!]

A mountain explodes upward in and a roaring cloud of dust and power some kilometres northwest of me, I change route. Blinking I move quickly south, mass cultivation. I need to get the fuck out of that thing’s range.

________!

A piece of the landscape in the eastern horizon disappears in a flash of white. It just disappears from perception without warning, the sky opens-

________!

I wake startled by shaking, quaking, Recovery. I’m up Blinking through the grey cloud of destroyed rock and raging mountain fires. A man thing towering so high into the sky there is snow across its shoulders throws a rock that claps the air in aftershock.

[BVHOOOO!] The sky thunders.

I change direction again, moving as far from the ensuing clash of titans changing the topography all around. Recovery keeps my stamina topped as I exhaust my Blinks to continue my flight as far from the conflict as possible.

From every which way the day turns to night for a full 3 seconds before brightness exerts its dominance again.

Yea, I think the Gaians get the gist of what's happening and Nappa can find his own way forward from here. I fly fast chasing the horizon.

*

Asriel

It’s chaos. Everything is in chaos.

A third of the city disappears along with everything in it, people turn to sculptures of dust quickly blown away by a gust of wind that cuts furrows in the stone-like claws of a thousand beasts. A new sun blooms in the sky pushing me down dazing the entire retinue.

_____!

...ZWEEEE..., my ears ring from the explosion. My senses are completely blind.

The next thing I know I’m in someone's arms and we are running down a steep bank, ‘’what’s going on?’’

There are people running everywhere, the sky thunders like the outraged bellow of an angry god. The air shakes in a passing wave that pushes against everything in its path, an explosion out in the distance creates clouds around a dark mound of dirt mushrooming into the sky.

‘’Take cover!’’ people throw themselves on the ground covering themselves and each other under shields. I cast Mana Shield.

BOOOM!

...I come to; I’m on a mat lying amongst a plethora of people, I get up.

‘’Easy,’’ I recognise the voice as telekinetics push me gently back down. Turning slowly, I study the pale-faced man, Daoine Sidhe Carmella’s majordomo sitting up with half his torso a red mess of writhing wound. ‘’Your skull was cracked open, you are currently still healing.’’

‘’Fae Anos, what happened? What’s happening?’’ I indicate to the people running back and forth, the people strewn around the unfamiliar place injured or dead. They all look so shocked.

Confused people with unfocused eyes staring blindly about.

‘’The invading cultivators are fighting the sidhe and everyone else that can help slow them.’’

‘’It’s the invaders that did this? Last thing I remember..."

It doesn’t matter, I try to get up but fall as my centre of gravity is way off. What the! ‘’Where is my arm!?’’

‘’Easy now;’’ the majordomo telekinetically stabilises me into a semi-sitting position. ‘’you were in the blast zone of an attack.

An attack, I remember now. The chaos. ‘’have the armies mobilised?’’

‘’The armies,’’ Fae Anos giggles a sharp unpleasant sound breaking from his usually stoic facade. ‘’The cultivators have stopped playing around I’m afraid, if the armies still exist they won’t make a difference now.’’

I lie on the mat listening to my body, its not in very good shape. All this damage from the backlash of a single attack...

‘’Now what?’’

A commotion spreads from further ahead.

‘’I don’t know,’’ the words whisper into my mind like a sigh as the fae forces himself to his feet.

I push myself up with a dizzy grunt, if it's a route then we need to keep running to survive.

*

Sachihiro van Damage

I’m dying.

So I escape into the spiritual realm. Spirit and body wholly.

###

The broken pieces of my physical form disperse themselves within my spirit-self as it blooms round and solid in this disembodied existence... As a mot of dust in a sand storm I float within the vastness of the spirit realm as a tiny anomaly in vast endlessness. A lot of me is lost to the spiritual but here my existence stabilises, emotions are calming now that my life is no longer draining away from me even as my flesh burns away.

I’m safe here, there are rules here. I don’t need to have a physical form to survive here.

~~~~

The particles that are my physical remains resonate with each other in increasing harmony even after most of the physical me is burnt away. Physical pieces spread within me until every nook and cranny of my now rounded spiritual body houses a piece of my physical form. I bloat and shift in strange ways experiencing internal motion that redefines where my sensory dimensions begin and end. I’d be disoriented right now if I had ears, being in pieces and being so big... Being so dispersed but as different everything is there is also familiarity I have with myself.

I calm... Calm enough for the gravity of the situation to not just be adrenaline-fueled reactionism. Shit! I blew myself up!

The gravity of the situation is not lost to me. I can’t die yet, especially with Lysandra and Kira still lost to us.

What will I do without legs, what will I do without arms, what will I do without eyes or hands? I can’t be a blob of spirit existing here like this. Is being like this here even sustainable?

I have recalled myself fully back into the spirit realm hoping to rebuild myself here but my physical particles disperse outward out of my control stretching until all that's left fills my spirit body’s exact dimensions. My physical body's particles stretch and stretch until they fully take the shape and dimensions of my spirit-body as I fit into myself. My physical parts fit into my spiritual existence.

Nothing else happens.

Nothing else happens.

Nothing else happens!

I’m a blob.

Shit!

*

I float within the vastness of this place, the only thing of any shape in a world of malleable spirit. A bird floating in an empty sky of air.

Alive but I’m no longer as I was.

I have always been humanoid, designed and built that way; to so suddenly not be what I’ve always been creates in me an existential dread that paralyses me. Scared, untethered, lost as to the next step, discouraged by what I’ve found in the Foothills and what I may have just done to myself.

To experiment with the energies of existence as I have is dangerous, and now I know first-hand just how disastrous such experiments can get.

At first it’s scary not having a body but I quickly feel the comforting familiarity of myself as/within my spirit-body. Familiarity of being the exact shape and dimensions of dimensional awareness I have enjoyed since my first Awakening.

Did I blow up my body? Was I always meant to be this way? I'm entertaining the idea that this is the form my Awakening was always leading towards but I'm not really convincing myself. My identity is intrinsically tied to my humanity and humanity comes within a certain definition as far as I understand it; flesh, blood, a beating heart being part of that definition. Or am I simply no longer a human being?

I cannot find answers to anything, no one can teach me the way forward from here. I’m alone.

I connect to God.

*

Everything is made from the same thing.

There are many ‘things’ each of different sizes and depending on those sizes attract and repel each other at various strengths but they are all the same ‘things’. These ‘things’ bind to each other building shapes dictated by their attractive/repulsion that form with other shapes to create structures that make up the things perceived in the world.

The smallest creature on the planet is made from the same ‘things’ the largest is with the only difference being the way ‘things’ are bound to each other. Even rocks and soil are made from the same ‘things’ found in water and air, trees and dragons, flesh and blood.

Everything is made from the same thing.

I realise this, there is never a shortage of material.

*

‘’You have become bold to come here as you have after having sent your dog to me. I don’t want to see it again.’’

My dog? Is this what the Draug warned me about, he did something involving me besides removing the geas?

‘’Phosphorus,’’ I recognised the Spirit instantly as it appeared even with the strangeness its form takes here. ‘’What do you want?’’ The Spirit is an ocean unto itself that boggles anything I have ever imagined in terms of form and existence. A living ocean of significant spirit giving me the feeling of standing on top of a planet seeing the majestic vastness of a sea that fills half a world.

‘’Bold indeed. No matter,’’ things shiver. ‘’I have come to provide what was agreed for the price of a flesh body. Wealth and Freedom.’’

VHOOO, there is a perception of movement.

Suddenly I am next to a burnt-out sun, dry and dark in calcified crystal hardness hungry to be awakened with life. I gravitate towards it even as it lies dead; it is glorious in its silent death.

Never have I seen anything more ... more.

It pulls me in closer breaking the barrier that is my body, I’m perceiving it within me.

Shit!

Quickly I retract myself as it tries to suck me out of myself into itself binding me instead of me binding it.

That was close, this thing would exhaust my spirit entirely I feel without a doubt. A shiver goes through my particles as I palate the existential dread of being completely spiritually extinguished. Not too close.

With just the tip of my body against its edges, I explore its entire dimensions realising what it is as my spirit tastes its edges. It’s beautiful.

‘’Wealth,’’ the Spirit Phosphorus says.

The vision from my first meeting with Draug comes to mind, freedom from Spirits being my death. I have come towards many realisations between the time I made that bargain and now, I know this creature will comply with the letter of the agreement not the spirit of it. Ironically enough.

I look at Phosphorus unable to hide my awe at this treasure presented to me. It’s a great treasure but I don’t want to deal with this creature, and for the Draug to get it to cough up this much while I expected gold, platinum and gems... I was so short-sighted it worries me how short-sighted I might be even now, maybe that body Phosphorus acquired is worth more than even this. That would be insane.

‘’It’s beautiful,’’ how could I deny that it excites me? ‘’But I will let ‘my dog’ handle collection of what I’m owed.’’

WHITE!

______!

Everything goes white for an uncountable time as I experience Phosphorus’ anger.

If there were any doubts before they are gone in an instant. This creature is my enemy; it will end me from existence as soon as it gets the opportunity to do so.

______!

My frequencies while releasing Shikai are cutting. Nothing is within me but if it were it would be sliced to pieces with those pieces sliced to pieces by the sharp power of Shikai within me. Me within Shikai.

My existence is threatened.

I am a god, I am part of infinity. A being of mortal flesh and immortal spirit that’s part of a greater whole.

The outer edges of my spherical body harden as the frequencies within me change the form of matter the spirit realm perceives me as. I become more solid in a way I haven’t before as more and more of the waxy matter of the spirit realm is sucked into me.

It grounds me, knowing that. Knowing that even if other parts of me die the part of me that is spirit will always be. I shine myself against death fearlessly, zanjutsu, the particles that are me vibrating at their sharpest frequency. Shikai activated, there is honour in death, release, a new journey. Shikai has my particles moving slower, heavier, more strongly attracted to each other in a way that creates a cold polarity on my shimmering outer surface.

I looked for myself and I found godhood, I looked for God and found it/him within myself waiting to be acknowledged and tapped into. So I acknowledged it and recognised myself to be divine simply by being part of that divine. Even now that reassures me, taking away the painful sting death has over the living.

It’s funny, I’ve faced my death so many times yet this is the first I consciously think about God. About where my divinity comes from, about my eternity.

When I found It I didn’t give it any name, it existed before there were names.

I give all the energy I have into empowering myself against whatever it is Phosphorus is doing or has done. With all my abilities blasting away I tune into that divinity within me. I wonder what I will be after death, what form I will take.

_ _ _

The white fades in a wispy bleached existence in which I find myself alone, a speck suspended in emptiness.

*

Michael O'Hare

‘’Nothing yet?’’

‘’Nothing,’’ I reply stabbing the spear into the murky silt where John’s experiment disappeared. I can’t see much but it can’t have fallen far from the hole up top, ‘’I don’t understand how you still have butter fingers after all your time here.’’ I send. I smirk imagining him turning red.

‘’Hey that thing nearly took a finger off you’d have dropped it too.’’

‘’Thou protest too much.’’

‘’Could it at least not have been in the only deep hole in the ground for miles around.’’

‘’Hey that just happened, have you found it yet?’’

‘’I can’t find it.’’

‘’Shit, okay come up it’s getting dark,’’ John calls from above ground.

The hole is a deep channel that opens into a wet silt-filled cave, I look up at John’s head in the distance. ‘’I like the dark.’’

‘’You do know we’ll miss dinner right, and whatever is down there might be nocturnal.’’

I release some of the storm inside me using it to buoy myself up the tunnel.

The truth is I don’t want to go home; I don’t want to see the sad eyes of my wife who won’t let me hold my child for very long. I don’t want to feel the weight of the things the others have suffered through like an elephant in the room.

We make our way back in the red twilight of the Gaian sky, the forest already alive with night insects, smaller reptiles with some of the luminous petals already brightening to attract pollinators. We make our way onward slowly, the leaves are thick and no path cut through the foliage last more than a few hours before being again overgrown. These islands are practically bursting with life, the soil here fertile.

‘’So now what?’’

He shrugs, ‘’I’ll make a new one don’t worry.’’

I worry, the mana stones we collected from the fishmen proved themselves invaluable to our survival then and continued flourishing now. Batteries that can power practically anything, including people which with access to theory Nikita and John have managed to do some interesting things with them.

‘’Hey Michael.’’

‘’Yea.’’

‘’You know you can talk to me if there was anything you wanted to talk about.’’

Several emotions whirl through me before falling on tiredly amused, I clasp his shoulder, ‘’thanks big guy. I appreciate that.’’

We pass the first check post, greeting through sending the two people stationed in the hidden treehouse up above. The last rays of dusk turn into night changing the reds and dim honeyed orange of the light breaking through the canopy to deep shadowed darkness.

‘’About you and Nikita...’’

I sensed this question was coming. ‘’We flirted at being something, we both liked each other but with everything that’s been going on nothing ever really formed between us. You like her?’’

‘’I do,’’ he nods. I nod back.

‘’Go for it man, life’s too short to have hang-ups about these things.’’

He smirks, ‘’especially life on Gaia.’’

It’s already rowdy in our part of the isle as the others eat, drink and tell stories with people sitting in various locations around the blazing spit roasting listing or having their own discussions. I grab a plate filling a laden of soup getting into Esuas’ tale, which has the kids and various others raptly captured with his tale.

My eyes wander around the van Damage women protectively clumped around each other and the babies peeling and slicing vegetables as they talk, I haven't caught much of her attention today either. When did my life turn into a drama? I get lost in the tale of the Stone Dwarves.

*

Sachihiro van Damage

There is no spirit around me.

Since my first Awakening way-back-when, I have always had this dome-shaped dimensional awareness in which I am hyperaware of activity. I feel things move, I feel mana being used, I experience the vibrations of things within this awareness with an acuteness that has successively grown through the years.

I have imagined my awareness as a physical balloon at times which I fill with my aura and spirit especially when performing abilities like ‘spirit oppression’ on someone within its bounds. It’s been a part of me so long I don’t remember how to be without it.

I’ve been floating in emptiness for a while, suspended. Unable to move or connect to anyone with not spirit around me with which to connect.

I really am an actual ball now which I’m sure is ironic in ways I can’t currently think of. A ball of spirit and flesh particles interlocked in harmonious synchronicity that maintains me in the middle of the nothingness I’ve found myself in. Flesh particles keep my spirit from dispersing and my spirit keeps my flesh from disintegrating, one won’t survive here without the other. Not in these conditions.

I can’t but feel like a single drop of water in an otherwise empty sky unable to do anything but hold myself together. Held together by forces beyond my understanding really ‘cause I don’t know how I’m able to hold myself this way.

Time is meaningless here especially as I currently am, disconnected from the spirit

Like rolling waves of a rushing ocean, spirit comes fort from every which way, finally.

[Blast]

It hits me from all sides at the same time completely wrenching my body like an overstretched balloon. I twist this way and that completely battered and out of shape but my particles keep together even as they roll over each other like sand in a bag.

I roll about like an overstretched water balloons, twisting like a cucumber all the spirit about me twist about. I slow, I come to a stop.

I am a moth of dust floating in endless spirit, but now I’m connected to everything.