[hr][center][h3][b][u][???? ??st, ???? - 01:51am, Terminal Asylum, Low Orbit, ?-?][/u][/b][/h3][/center] [center][A ZombiesAnHyenas / XianaEvermor Collaboration][/center][hr] My eyes fluttered open, squinting reflexively at the brightness of my clock. The lights were dimmed, per my sensitivity settings, but my eyes had never seen light. The dull ache stabbed deep into my skull. 01:51a. Hard Reset. I had died again. As I had a dozen times since that accursed witch sent me to this Hell. As I would many more times it seemed, rebuffed by the demonic, alien, eldritch god-monster that had devoured my Sun, Moon, and Earth. Entity Designation A-Zero. The progenitor. It had spawned many different A-series creatures as it devoured aspects of my world and made them its own, but A-Zero was the first. We skipped A-One. Everyone agreed we’d be an embarrassment to the Multiverse if it sounded like steak sauce destroyed our world. Well… most everyone: Alchemist had found the notion particularly hilarious, mainly because Enchanter had been so vehemently opposed. Those two were always in opposition, rivals in some form in every dimension that I visited. It was practically a universal constant. Normally I would fight, tooth and nail to escape each time I woke up. Fight to keep moving, because stopping was death. Worse than death. This time I stared vacantly at the ceiling in the pools of blood, liquefied organs, and other viscera that had begun to accumulate on the bed from my repeated deaths. I’d noticed something. The intensity was lessening with each pulse. Or I was building up a tolerance… in-so-much as someone whose body regenerated to a state completely untouched by time, stimulus, or sensation after each death could even have a “tolerance.” Now that it wasn’t drowned out by the sheer magnitude of the scream, I discovered that there was information carried along with each wave… just a little bit. Snippets of a revelation I was on the cusp of understanding if I could be patient and get just a little more. Was there always knowledge buried in these screams? Was A-Zero communicating with me? Or did it finally let something slip? Something I could use… a weapon? Was it knowledge from the monstrosity? Or the inherent understanding of a thing born from a trauma induced second trigger event? [color=a187be][i]It came as a ripple, this time. Leaping across miles and miles and [i]miles[/i] of open, dead, air. A far off scream, wavering and warbling. The sky, usually filled with the pin-pricks of stars, shimmered as the ripple passed. Colors exploded across the dappled skein of otherwise nearly perfect black. The ‘sun’ shifted. Shivering in place before abruptly vanishing. The lines and lines of ‘script’ that stretched out from its pitch-black disk turned to dust, and began to fall in a terrible parody of snow. Droplets of prismatic oil fell, from the ripple, landing on the powdered surface of a once living planet. Each droplet slowly rose, becoming a towering pillar of marble-white, each with cracks of rainbow light spreading across its entirety. Eyes opened on each pillar, scattered across the surface. The ripple passed under the uncrossable barrier, blindingly bright as it went. Silence roared in the space traveled by the waves. Nothing else changed. Then… yet another scream came; bursting forth from a horizon that was simultaneously much too far, and far too close. The pillars on the surface screamed as well, lending a cacophonous chorus to the already deafening shriek. Information was exchanged, as a singular, massive, golden-green-grey-pink eye burned itself into any mind still living within the dimension. Perhaps she was right, this minuscule light hanging above a bleak, blank, tapestry. Maybe It [i]was[/i] getting weaker. Maybe It had [i]always[/i] been screaming information. It didn’t matter, she was learning, this tiny light, and so was It. It had already had countless thoughts of the multitudes of avenues by which she would utilize her newfound gifts. Gifts that It had forced upon her, ripping open invisible eyes sealed shut. And each thought was thrown across the heavens, endlessly screamed for the briefest moment. The shriek rolled through the uncrossable barrier, slamming through stone and concrete and steel and— It waited for her light to go out again. It would wait for however long It had to. She was learning, and It was a patient teacher. The information was always given as ‘an accident’. It rarely makes mistakes. But she didn’t need to know that.[/i][/color] I couldn’t help but pay attention, even as blinding white erupted across every nerve as it felt its first pain and my consciousness was abrasively shredded back into the void. Void. [I][VOID][/I]. Darkness. The bleak nothing. That brief and gentle respite from the pain, trauma, and mounting frustration that this wasn’t an error I could [i]learn[/i] from. Or was it? A new concept stuck in my mind, an [i]aspect[/i] that blanketed the in-between, just out of reach. Far too long, and not nearly long enough. My eyes fluttered open, squinting reflexively at the brightness of my clock. The lights were dimmed, per my sensitivity settings, but my eyes had never seen light. The dull ache stabbed deep into my skull. 01:51a. Hard Reset. My bed was becoming soggy, and the squelch of fluids I could only guess pressing my ruined Tinker-Silk sheets cloyingly against my skin made me shiver. My insides grated against my skin like coarse sandpaper against a sheet of Medium Density Fiber. I grasped reflexively at that concept at the edge of my mind; tried to pull it over myself like a security blanket. For a fraction of a moment something… [i]nothing[/i] flickered into existence, blotting out the cold, unforgiving interior of the station that was supposed to be our sanctuary. It wasn’t enough. It was incomplete, and shattered against the shriek of information that was getting drilled into my psyche. [i][COLD][/i] The absence of energy, the inverse of Heat. The biting, piercing, persistent frigidity that saps life from all things. [i][WEAKNESS][/i] Fragility, the inverse of Strength. The breakdown of bonds, the wearing of time, the thinnest gossamer of glass crumbling at the touch. Three parts of a whole, a [Voidlight]. These concepts stuck bluntly, and I could sense there was more, more information, more nuance. More… more, before I was scrubbed out of consciousness once again. 01:51a. Hard Reset. The stress was taking its toll. I felt exhausted, though my body should be young, vibrant, and full of energy. I could only hang on to the essentials, the nuances were lost. I sensed Monarch’s cold, clinical gaze observing me, awaiting my input. More information. How to “Cast.” How to “Weave” lattices of energy. Hard Reset. Tapestries of arrays, formulas, chemicals? Math. Was this science? Physics? Faster. Hard Reset. Transmuting matter, warping the latticework of physics, bending the laws, breaking them. Breaking the bonds that held the curtains between worlds and dimensions together. Hard Reset. The universe was suddenly such a tiny thing against the vastness of my understanding, my senses expanded. Energy was everywhere, everything, [i]in[/i] everything, [i]between[/i] everything. Building blocks, waiting to be stacked. Rivulets of [Black] shuddered against my awareness, bathed in halos of [Blue] and fading to a sickly [Green]. I leapt out of bed, the ruined sheets slashed painfully at my skin. I reached, grasping recklessly to throw anything in the way of the next wave. [b][color=#FA649B]"SHUT UP!"[/color][/b] I shrieked. The void responded, splashing up in a haphazard lattice between me and A-Zero. I felt it’s stream of consciousness splash against it… The station’s tenuous warmth was ripped out of the room, and my breath hitched. Frost shredded against my lungs, my skin burned cold. [b][color=#ab6879]"Temperature anomaly,"[/color][/b] Monarch parroted my voice back at me. A crack lanced through me from hip to shoulder, the last thing I felt. A sword that cuts both ways.