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Full Circle; [DNR] Revelation
Topic Started: Tue Mar 3, 2015 9:14 pm (278 Views)
Rin
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IT WAS YOU!

The words shocked her out of slumber. Rin shot to her feet, instantly alert. There was no period of bleariness or confusion; she simply went from deep sleep to fully conscious in the blink of an eye. Technically, she didn’t even need to sleep. She only kept up the habit because sometimes she needed a break from her endless existence.

Besides, she was hoping that if she practiced enough, one day she would be able to dream.

She glanced around the clearing. It was nearly dawn, the pinkish sun hovering over the horizon and giving everything a rosy glow. The seasons were balanced at the tipping point between winter and spring, new green buds sprouting along otherwise bare branches. There was a chill in the air, and her breath misted in front of her with every exhalation. There was no one to be seen, nothing out of place. Yet she’d heard…

Heard? Rin frowned, thinking back to the accusation, doing another slow scan of her surroundings. A pair of birds chirped at each other from a nearby tree, apparently unperturbed by the disturbance that had awoken her. What’s going on-

DO YOU THINK YOU CAN HIDE FROM ME?

The words echoed in her skull without ever making the acquaintance of her ears. Rin shuddered, an instinctive reaction to the intrusion. It took a few seconds for her to realize she recognized the voice. Once, it had been her constant companion, a ceaseless commentary that guided her through life. She swallowed, licking her lips nervously. There was an unfamiliar feeling in the pit of her stomach, a sinking sensation. Fear.

She could feel it when the world around her rippled, the very essence of reality altered. The anomaly lanced toward her like an arrow, threatening to pull the entire plane asunder with its ferocity. Rin let out a sibilant hiss and did her best to mitigate the damage, mending what was torn to the best of her ability. She couldn’t explain how she did it. There were no mortal words that described the sensation, none that could come close to capturing the truth of her actions. Rin simply patched what had been broken. It wasn’t perfect, but she was certain that existence wouldn’t dissolve around her in the next couple of minutes.

When the aberration faded, she stood face to face with her counterpart.

It was an utterly disconcerting sensation, like looking in a mirror that had somehow been altered to show a different reality, one where her chromosomes were just slightly different. Gregori Mirand was the exact same height and lithe build as her, with flawless creamy skin and sculpted features that made him look slightly effeminate. His hair was several shades darker, golden brown, and cut short so that it wouldn’t hang in front of his eyes. He wore the same outfit she’d last seen him in, a sleeveless white tunic over a long-sleeved black shirt with dark pants, fingerless gloves, and leather boots.

What was unexpected was the pure rage twisting his features. Rin took an instinctive step back from the intensity of the raw emotion, eyes going wide. She had never seen Gregori’s features so much as twitch from a blank, emotionless mask. He was an automaton, a puppet, a physical manifestation of the Grand Grimoire’s purpose. What could possibly cause him such rage?

If she found his appearance disturbing, the way that he spoke was worse. His lips moved and sound came out, but the voice she heard was the Grimoire’s. ”All this time,” he spat out, ”All this time it was you! How did I miss it!” He held his hand out to one side, making a grabbing motion. He appeared to draw a weapon out of thin air. It was a long, slender sword with a stubby guard, in the style of a Nalaian jian. Rin shuddered as it came into existence. She could feel the state of that blade, could sense the powers that had gone into its construction. It was an abomination, an insult to existence, a negation. All of reality protested at its presence. It sounded like a high-pitched whine that only she could hear.

She held her hands up in a placating gesture. ”I’ve stuck to our deal,” she said hurriedly. ”I’ve done nothing wrong-“

NOTHING WRONG?!?

The shout echoed throughout the forest, and not just audibly. The substance of the universe undulated away from Gregori, making the world blur and shift as if it were a mirage. Rin flinched back from the force, summoning her own weapon from its extradimensional pocket. At first glance it appeared to only be an empty hilt with no blade. There was a slight shimmer extending from the crossguard, a shifting, undulating blur that indicated the sword’s dimensions. A new buzzing noise filled the air, barely on the edge of human hearing. It was a sharp and dangerous sound, a warning. The grip shook in her palm. It definitely wasn’t her hand shaking.

”Look at you. Flaunting what I have given you. Bringing us ever closer to calamity.” Gregori stalked forward, the sword held at his side. ”I should have ended you long ago, as a failed experiment. I only pray my dalliance has not doomed the world.”

Rin pursed her lips, confused. It felt like they were having completely different conversations. She didn’t have enough knowledge to understand what the Grimoire spoke of. ”What do you mean?”

”There is no more time for talking!”

Gregori sprung forward, the jian slashing forward with impossible speed, a silver blur. She parried and riposted just as quickly, for once not holding back. She dared not restrain herself, not against Gregori. He blocked the attack effortlessly. They circled around each other in a deadly dance, blades singing as they cut the air. They moved with impossible speed and grace. Forms and stances were picked up and discarded too quickly to follow. Some of the techniques were time-honored classics in Imythess; others were styles that had never before been seen in this land and would never be seen again. An observer would be hard-pressed to follow the duel. They were evenly matched in every regard. Rin felt a bead of sweat crawl down her brow, sliding down her nose. She spun and thrust, darting out of the way of attacks at the last possible second. Gregori’s jian passed a mere hairsbreadth from her skin too many times to count. Her blade brushed his form just as often, but never found flesh.

It was impossible to tell how long the fight continued at that frantic, blinding pace. ”ENOUGH!” The shout was accompanied by a wave of force that bent the trees surrounding the clearing. Gregori stumbled, just for a heartbeat, misstepping by the merest fraction of an inch. It was enough. She lashed out, knocking his blade aside. She released the hilt of her blade, holding it in mid-air through willpower alone and snatching at his free arm at the wrist and elbow with both hands. Even as she blocked his counter-attack with her floating sword she wrenched his arm in a twisting motion. His body was far more durable than a normal human’s, but so too was her strength preternatural. There was a terrible, wet, ripping noise as the bone splintered, a white shard jutting out of his forearm.

Gregori screamed in rage and pain, not abandoning the fight for a moment, but Rin wasn’t done. She ducked underneath his next wild slash with precise grace, delivering a powerful punch to his midsection before snatching at his uninjured wrist. With a complicated and lightning-quick hand movement she snapped the metacarpal of his thumb. His grip loosened automatically, jian spiraling through the air as it was released. His answering headbutt slammed into her face, crushing her nose with a sickening crunch. Rin growled and grabbed him by both shoulders, bodily forcing him to the ground. They rolled across the grass for a few moments, the savagery of the fight not diminishing despite their wounds and lack of weapons.

Eventually she managed to pin him, his lack of one arm proving too large of a liability. She wrapped the fingers of her right hand and slammed his skull into the ground twice before he broke free. Still, he was dazed, his motions slower. Rin accessed her personal armory once more, summoning four weapons that hovered in the air above them. With an incoherent scream she used them to pin the male construct to the forest floor, penetrating his arms and legs. Gregori arched his back and screamed, for the first time in his existence sounding human in his agony.

Rin straddled his torso, breathing hard, sweat and blood dripping off of her face onto her counterpart. ”What the hell is wrong with you?” She demanded angrily. ”All I wanted was to live my life! I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t want to be your avatar, immortal, inhuman! You made me like this! She pounded her fists on his chest, not with any intent to injure but out of sheer frustration. ”Havent you done enough to me? What can’t you just leave me alone!

”I see now,” Gregori whispered, his voice heavy. Laden with fear. ”In attributing blame, I did not ponder causality. You might be the source, but my own impatience has led us to this juncture.”

SHUT UP! Rin grabbed Gregori by the throat, tightening her grip until her knuckles were white. ”Just shut up!”

Somehow he managed to croak out a reply around her hold. ”All that I did, I did to preserve. Remember that when you-“

”No more,” she said, cutting him off. Her voice sounded different to her own ears. Inflectionless. Mechanical. Cold. ”I will suffer no more at your hands. You have broken our pact.” She loosened her grip and closed her eyes, barely aware of what she was doing. She could feel the power within Gregori’s body. Saturated with the Grimoire’s energy (as she had once been), he practically glowed to her senses, and endless font of energy with the power to manipulate the very fabric of reality.

There was no reasoning behind what she did next. She simply reached out for that power and pulled



Rin opened her eyes. The clearing was gone, as was Gregori’s battered form beneath her. In fact, there was… nothing. A complete lack of anything. She had always imagined nothingness as blackness, but nothing could be further from the truth. There was no color whatsoever. Blankness stretched out in every direction. She floated alone in a void.

Time had no meaning here. She did not know how long she waited in the great, empty expanse. It could have been seconds or millennia. All she knew was that eventually, something changed. Color bled into the space, carrying with it traces of the physical world. Time. Physics. Gravity. Atmosphere. She drew in a deep gasp of air, tears of relief gathering in the corners of her eyes. Still, this place was like nothing she’d ever experienced. She could feel a surface beneath her feet that she stood upon, but there was nothing there. Even if the true void had retreated, Rin still felt as if she stood at the center of endless desolation.

I always forget how difficult the first time can be for you.

Like before, the words simply appeared in her mind without bothering to pass through the air. She spun and found herself facing… something. At first she thought it was a person. She had a momentary picture of a tall, middle-aged woman with tawny skin and dark hair wearing an unusual, vertically-striped jacket and pants. Then she flickered and became a slender man, spectacles propped up on his beak-like nose. A moment later there was a new figure, this one a child. A neverending stream of individuals, there and gone so quickly it was difficult to differentiate one from the next. Most of the time they were humanoid, but in some instances she swore that they shared nothing in common with bipedal creatures. At others she got the impression that she was only seeing a tiny facet of a much more complex being, her mind compensating for what her eyes could not possibly see and comprehend.

”What… where… who…” Her voice was thin and thread, barely more than a whisper. There were so many questions bouncing around in her head that she couldn’t manage to spit a whole one out.

All good inquiries, and I suspect we will get to them in time.
The shifting figure waved one hand. Suddenly there was a chair besides her, appearing before her eyes from nothing. Even more strangely, she hadn’t detected any changes to the state of reality to explain the act. In fact, none of her preternatural senses seemed to be functioning.

Rin took a seat gratefully, albeit suspiciously. ”Let’s start with ‘who’ then, if you have no preference.” She did not take her eyes off of the fluctuating presence. She was starting to feel queasy from watching the endless progression of figures and faces.

What is probably more accurate. It shrugged, a disturbingly human gesture. I am that which catalogues. That which records. That which preserves.

Her mouth went dry. ”You… You are the Grand Grimoire?”

That is but one of the names I have been called by, and a relatively new one at that. If it pleases you to refer to me as such, you may do so.

She shot to her feet, summoning the Arbiter’s Blade to hand. Well, she attempted to. Instead she received a sharp spike of pain in both temples that felt like someone was trying to pry her skull open. Rin gasped and clutched at her head, groaning softly.

Please be careful. It would not do for you to harm yourself in your inexperience. Although it was impossible to parse out a facial expression from the constant parade of features, she could hear a smile in its tone. This is not the world you are used to, Rinrae Dromigg. You will find it less tractable at your current age.

She bit back another whimper as she collapsed back into the chair. ”It’ll get easier?”

Oh, yes. Much. She couldn’t be sure, but Rin thought she detected a note of sadness behind the words. Before she could press for more information it started to speak again. I know that you must be confused. If you will forgive me a convoluted explanation, please allow me to ask you a question. What do you know of the reason for your existence?

Rin shrugged. ”The Grand Grimoire—that is to say, you—required an avatar in the world. An agent that could do what it could not, and seek out its lost pages.”

Yes, the pages. Did you ever wonder how they came to be?


”There was a great accident, and they were torn free of-“

Stop! The order was stated with such utter authority that Rin obeyed without thinking about it. They were 'torn free,' you say. But how? How could any force tear away pages that cannot be ripped, or marred, or changed in any way? What was responsible?

Rin frowned. She had wondered about that before, of course, but the Grimoire hadn’t been forthcoming with the information. It seemed impossible that any force in Chaon, or anywhere, could damage the sentient book. Yet the collection of its sundered pages was such an integral part of her existence. She had never really questioned it. It was simply the state of the world. ”I fail to see how this is relevant.”

It is entirely relevant. The Grimoire is a fragment of myself in the same way that its pages are fragments. It is a localized and limited manifestation of information, a pure receptacle of knowledge. No power known to mortalkind throughout the planes of existence could so much as alter a single word between those covers. It paused for a moment. In fact, the only thing that could possibly harm it is its own power.


Rin stared at it for a few moments, uncomprehending. Suddenly the first words that the Grimoire had spoken to her came back in a rush. It was you! Realization flooded her mind in a rush and she gasped. ”No! That’s impossible!”

In fact, it is the only possible explanation.

She laughed aloud. It seemed oddly hollow in this place, empty except for her, her chair, and the ever-changing being. ”How could it be possible? I couldn’t have damaged the Grimoire! I was created because of the damage! What you’re proposing is a paradox! I would have to exist before what led to my creation!

Knowledge is not restrained by time, Rinrae. Cause does not always lead to effect. Otherwise each and every page would have been available to you from the beginning. Yet that is not the case. They appear at random intervals. Echoes of what has just occurred.

”When what[ just occurred?”

When you took the Grand Grimoire’s power for yourself.


Rin’s jaw dropped open. She was about to dismiss the accusation outright when she remembered the last moments of the fight. Gregori, battered and bloody, pinned to the ground beneath her. The undefinable sensation of taking the power he held, of pulling it into herself by a process she didn’t understand or remember. She closed her mouth thoughtfully, feeling a flutter of panic in her gut.

Ah, good. You have made the connection. A chair appeared opposite her. Like the figure, its shape was constantly in flux, changing between a variety of shapes and colors and dimensions. Her companion sat it in, seemingly unbothered by its morphing nature. You have accomplished your desire, Rinrae. You are free of the Grimoire’s influence. Of my influence, or any influence.


She stared at it with wide eyes. ”How is that possible?”

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that literally anything is possible. In an infinite amount of time, every single variable and circumstance will eventually arise. What has happened here is rare, but not untold of.
The figure shook its head. A fact you will soon come to regret, I am sure.

There was an ominous nature to those words, but Rin couldn’t focus on them. She was too distracted by what had happened. ”So you’re saying I’m… what? A fragment of you?”

Only in the most technical sense. You possess my power, yes. But you were not born of my essence, as was the Grimoire. By claiming its power, you have become a new entity entirely.


”What is that, exactly?”

Some might call you a god.

Rin was quiet for several long minutes. The being seemed comfortable waiting for her reaction. Eventually, she whispered, ”A god is a lie.”

This earned her a chuckle, but from a thousand different throats, a thousand different races. It was disturbing. You are confusing deityhood with religion, a common mistake among mortalkind. I have to admit, the concept is difficult to express in something as quaint as spoken language. I have to filter the complexity down exponentially in order to explain even as little as I have. As you grow in age and power, you will achieve your own understanding of the phenomenon. For now, you simply need to need to grow accustomed to the idea.


Rin mused over this while she looked around. ”What is this place?”

Conceptual space. A blank canvas upon which we are able to shape the world. It is my home.
Their surroundings changed in the blink of an eye. Now they sat amidst a steamy rainforest, the air so humid it felt like she was drinking. A moment later they were atop an impossibly tall building of stone, metal, and glass, looking out over a humongous city composed of similar structures. They flashed through another hundred worlds at dizzying speed, so many she couldn’t begin to comprehend them. When they returned to the void it was a relief. Eventually, you will grow as comfortable here as you are in the mortal plane. Admittedly, that familiarity could take eons. Perhaps you will prove to be a fast learner. Few of your siblings achieved independence so quickly after inception.

She glanced at it askance. ”Siblings?”

Of course. You surely do not think you were the first to accomplish this, do you? Not the first, and surely not the last.
There was a slight pause. You are a fledgling, Rinrae. As new and untested as a freshly-hatched baby bird. There will be many difficulties ahead of you as you come to terms with your role in the universe. If you survive, you will be better for the experience. As it is, I have kept you here for too long. You are not prepared to manipulate the world on this level or be witness to it. Any longer and you could become permanently damaged or crippled.

Rin sprung to her feet even as her chair disappeared and the color began to drain from the world. ”Wait!” She screamed. It was softer than she expected, some of the sound swallowed by the returning emptiness. ”What do you mean ‘if I survive’? What can kill a god?”

The incarnation of knowledge looked at her, and this time she could see the sadness in its expression. Sibling rivalry is a terrible thing, it whispered. Then it was gone, and the blankness surged around her, threatening to envelop her. Rin was forced to close her eyes or risk losing herself to the nothingness.



The chirping of birds. The rustle of wind through leaves. The sobbing of a man. These were the first sounds she heard upon her return. Rin opened her eyes. Gregori was staring up at her, tears streaming down his face. Terrified. Even without trying she could feel the change in him. The Grimoire's influence was gone. All that remained was a shell, an empty husk of a man whose soul had been purposefully suppressed. There was a deep, primal fear behind his eyes. Eyes the exact same shade of blue as hers.

"It's gone," he whispered. It wasn't the voice she was used to, not the Grimoire's voice. She suspected it was the first time anyone had heard the voice that belonged to the man and not the puppet. "The voice is gone. Where did it go."

Rin stood up without answering, making a gesture. The weapons that held him to the ground vanished with a series of sharp pops as air filled the space they had just vacated. Another wave of her hand and Gregori's skin sealed shut, his arm snapping back into its proper alignment. He gasped in pain, following by a sigh of relief. The tension drained out of his body as the injuries vanished. Rin watched as he stood up. he possessed none of the effortless grace of the construct she remembered, none of the deadly aura. He was just a man, confused and hurt.

She found herself quite jealous.

Rin walked over to where the jian had falling, scooping it off of the ground. It took more effort than normal, but she was able to transport the blade to her pocket dimension. She turned around to see Gregori watching her, quivering like a leaf. "Are you going to kill me?" To his credit he asked the question loud and clearly, although his voice broke on the last word.

Rin smiled gently and shook her head. "No, she said. "I'm going to show you how to live." She held out an inviting hand. After a few seconds of hesitation, he reached out and took it.

[FIN]
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