>>5213875“Alright, you three…are you ready?” You ask, glancing among the faces that loom high overhead.
Ziz give a series of nervous, yet dutiful nods, while Leviathan merely give you one, slow and solemn.
Behemoth, on the other hand...he, for all his earlier rage and bluster, seems to have made himself smaller. Maybe it’s in the way his shoulders are hunched as though they’re trying to meet somewhere in the middle, or perhaps it’s something in the way he’s crouched low, like he’s trying not to be seen.
In any case, he’s the last to reply—just a small, slight tilt of his head to let you know he’s as ready as he’s going to be.
“Make the call.” You say, and the last thing you see before your world explodes into a riot of color and chaos is the Hope fragment erupting with the radiance of small star, razing your eyes with its impossible light.
Once more unto the breach.
And a breach it is; a wound in reality, a place that should not be. A thing violently carved into the fabric of space and time by a spiteful hand. An undulating field that defies description, an assault on senses that’ve been robbed from you in this place and substituted with intuition, with perceptions that are alien to you, even on your third visit to this anomalous plane. Once more you’re torn asunder, distilled to the very essence of existence…only this time, you’re not alone.
Before you float three diminutive forms, somehow standing out amidst the riot of kinetic color that is the creator’s prison. A fish-like shape flits to and fro before you as though overwhelmed by this new locale, while an embryonic foal hovers far to your left, curled into a fetal position with its seven pencil-thin legs clutched right to its chest. The largest of the three is to your right; an avian caught between a chick—flecks of shell still attached to its seven-fold wings—and an adolescent’s gawky physique.
You feel their Creator before you see him, with a perception that is not pure sight—a vast presence turning its attention towards you as though you’re a krill that’s drawn the attention of a whale…
…or, perhaps, a warship.
and here I thought I’d seen the last of youbut I am made a foolby youonce againYou’re not sure quite what you were expecting. Exasperation, or maybe something closer to irritation? Anything, really, other than the amused lilt to his tired chuckle of a greeting.
nowas impressive as this isand it isquite impressiveI’m afraid I can’t afford to spend what ti-A realization. A revelation.
A sudden, sharp recognition, of who you’ve brought before him.
(Continued)
