Chapter 5864: Narrative! II
Chapter 5864: Narrative! II
The future self remained utterly grand and magisterial. As if all of existence trembling around them were nothing.
{We made ourselves a leader of the dreams of Humans. We draw our strength from those dreams.}
{And you will find, more and more, how little the dreams and lives of those you rule matter to anyone else.}
Inside the bubble, the light burned steady.
{To uphold your dream, and to keep those you rule from being scattered into ash, you must stand without peer. Trust no narrative of others. Build your own. And let it encompass everything.}
The figure lifted its head, and its voice rose for the first time, rolling out of the bubble and through the frozen Heart like a tide through an empty harbor.
{Existence breathes, and epochs pass. They leave behind Civilizations that become monuments, that crumble into memory, that are long forgotten by the time that breath comes again.}
{And through all of those epochs, Infinity reigns supreme.}
WAA!
{We reign supreme.}
{Our dreams reign supreme.}
{Our humanity...}
The blazing figure smiled.
{...reigns supreme.}
BOOM!
Existence began to crack!
Long fractures ran out from the bubble through the frozen air, through the falling snow, through the dark itself, fraying at the edges like old cloth pulled too tight. Noah felt the thread across time straining, stretching, near its end.
And the future self let go.
Its blazing hand drew back from the inside of the bubble. And it stepped back, a single pace, into its own light.
Noah’s golden eyes blazed!
Beams of light poured out of them, gold and blue, pupil-less and brilliant, and his whole existence buzzed so hard that the white throne hummed beneath him.
His future self had left behind no technique, no treasure, no secret of what was coming, no name, no warning of a single enemy, nothing he could hold in his hand, write down, or use tomorrow.
And yet it had given him something grander than all of that.
His eyes shone brighter and brighter.
CRACK!
The bubble split down its center.
A long, bright crack ran through it from top to bottom, and the blazing figure inside began to fade, its light dimming, its edges softening into the glow around it.
Noah looked up.
And for one moment, as the light around it dimmed just enough, he could see its eyes.
Gold, like his. Pupil-less, like his. And they were looking straight at him.
Their eyes locked.
HUUM!
In those eyes, he saw something.
He blinked.
And the moment his eyes opened again...
BOOM!
Everything had dispersed.
The bubble was gone. Every bubble was gone. The thread across time had snapped clean, and the dark of the Descent was only dark again, and the snow was falling in slow, gentle flakes, and the dead chains hung quiet in the black.
But existence was still shaking.
It trembled around the throne in long, slow waves. The shallow seas rippled. The cracked walls of the Heart gronaed.
On his lap, Emotive stirred.
She raised her head from his chest, her hair spilling across his skin, her eyes still heavy. She looked around the trembling Descent, at the rippling seas and the shuddering dark.
Emotive knew at once what it was. The shaking was his. All of it. His own Dream, trembling.
"What... happened?" she asked softly.
Noah blinked.
His golden eyes shone brighter with every blink, grander and grander, until the light of them lit the whole bottom of the Descent and her upturned face in blue and gold.
"I am..." he said slowly, "having an epiphany."
...!
An epiphany!
That was what this felt like. His whole existence churned like a great engine turning over for the first time, every part of him grinding and catching and spinning faster, and through all of it, his hand kept moving slowly through Emotive’s hair as he thought.
Narrative!
Everyone had their own Narrative.
The ones who had lived longest had built theirs wide. Immensities spread across existence, and around each of them, a story. Stories about IT; about the path above, and how it broke; about Lucy, and what she had done, and why; about the first lifeform ever to touch IT, who had stood at the edge of absolute authorship and then torn out its own trueness and ended itself.
Narratives. Legends. Told and retold across countless existences, heard by countless ears, believed by countless minds, until they settled into existence like stones into a riverbed.
And those legends held power!
He could feel it now, more clearly than ever before. Every story he had been told had weight. It pressed on the shape of things. It decided, quietly, the limits of the possible, simply by being believed for long enough.
And his own future self had just told him to trust none of them.
HUUM!
His existence buzzed harder.
On his chest, Emotive lifted her head and looked at him, her hair falling across his skin, her eyes still soft with sleep.
"You know," Noah said, "the weavings of a true Protagonist are clear."
His voice was quiet and thoughtful, as if he were working it out aloud.
"I made it one of my Letters. PROTAGONIST. A Protagonist is surrounded by a unique narrative and legend. He moves through cycles, across the whole narrative of his existence. And every Protagonist has a hero’s journey."
He lifted his free hand, palm up.
"It begins with a call to adventure. Something that pulls them out of their ordinary existence, toward something grander."
Around them, the golden clouds of his Dream began to move.
They drifted up off the shallow seas and gathered in the air before the throne, blue and gold and softly glowing, and slowly took shape. A little village, built of cloud. Small houses with smoke curling from their chimneys. A well. A road leading out into dark hills. And in the middle of the village, a woman.
She had no face. She was only a shape of soft blue-gold light, a humanoid outline drawing water from the well, ordinary and quiet.
"A problem comes," Noah said. "Something that forces them to change what they have done all their lives."
The clouds at the edge of the village darkened and twisted into monsters. Long, clawed things of shadowed dream, pouring down out of the hills toward the little houses. The village burned in silent golden fire.
"For me, it was an apocalypse. My home went to ruin, and I had to change in order to survive."
The faceless woman dropped her bucket. She stood in the burning street as the monsters came for her, and something inside her woke, a bright point of light flaring in her chest. She raised her hands, and the light poured out of them, and she fought.
"Some hesitate," Noah went on. "Some doubt, before they answer the call. But in the end, they go."
The faceless woman stood at the edge of her burning village, looking down the road into the dark hills. For a moment, she stayed. Then she turned, and walked.
"They might meet a mentor, someone to help them on the road."
On the cloud-road, an old figure of soft light appeared, bent and patient, and walked beside her a while, showing her how to hold the light in her hands.
"They delve into a new, fantastical realm they never knew existed, and leave their ordinary one behind. They make allies as they go. And they certainly make a great many enemies."
The cloud-road opened onto strange lands. Towers that floated. Seas of colored light. Figures gathered around the faceless woman, three, then five, then a dozen, and others gathered against her in the dark, many more, with clawed hands and burning eyes.
"And they come across terrible ordeals. Ordeals that almost break them."
The faceless woman fell. A great shape of shadow loomed over her, and her light guttered, and she lay still in the dark.
"They nearly die."
His voice stayed calm.
"Then everything reverses. They overcome life and death. They take their first grand reward."
The faceless woman rose, blazing. She struck the shadow down, and from its ruin she lifted something bright, a shard of blue-gold light, and held it high.
"And they begin the journey home, transformed. Elevated from what they once were."
She walked back along the cloud-road, taller now, brighter, toward the little village, which had rebuilt itself in her absence.
"Until another problem comes. Another adversity, threatening to break everything all over again."
At the edge of the hills, the clouds darkened once more.
"It is a narrative," Noah said softly. "A journey. And it is always full of adversity. Some narratives are especially dark. The Protagonist is pushed through cycle after cycle of torture, and loss, and grief."
In the clouds, the faceless woman fell again, and rose again, and fell again. Around her, her allies faded one by one into mist.
"All that pain makes them stronger. That is true."
His hand paused on Emotive’s hair.
"But that is one part of the Protagonist I want to reject. The immense torture. The pain. The loss."
The clouds of the faceless woman flickered.
"It is hard to reject. Existence always has adversity. Without it, existence would be something else. And yet, right now, I have begun replacing existence with my dreams."
His gold eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
"So does that mean I will be able to erase adversity? Or only soften it? There are many unknowns."
He breathed out, and his breath fell as snow.
"But there is one thing I can always do. I can control my own narrative."
He looked down at Emotive.
"Others have built their narratives across existence for Ages. They told their stories, and existence came to believe them. So at this moment... why can’t I simply begin to dream my own narrative, and let existence gradually accept it as if it were true?"
HUUM!