106. Aftermath

Aftermath

For the last time, the course of future events was adjusted—not through direct intervention, but through communication and information.

Many would protest. Many would cry unfairness.

But it did not violate the ancient treaty, especially not when the other side had violated it so blatantly first.

When nuclear power empowered by the idea of heroic sacrifice killed the physical vessel of their energy, the Lords of Mavis did not retreat.

On the contrary, they continued pouring energy into this world, trying to drag it into the hell they had created.

Through them, their master sought to leave an indelible mark upon eight billion souls, a mark too terrible for most mortals to imagine, let alone truly understand.

But that trespass also created an opportunity.

I am a wheel, I am a wheel, I can roll, I can feel,And you cannot stop me turning.

Because I am the sun, I am the sun, I can move, I can run,But you will never stop me burning.

Come down with fire, lift my spirit higher!

I am the day, I am the day, I can show you the way,See me standing right beside you.

I am the night, I am the night, I am dark and I am light,With eyes that see inside you.

Come down with fire, lift my spirit higher!

Lia sang as she cast aside her disguise, and the mortal composer’s song suited the moment perfectly as the planet sank beneath her across multiple dimensions.

As she rose through the layered planes of reality, reality itself appeared to change. It was an illusion without factual basis, a trick of perspective.

Earth. The blue planet. The water home.

It shone like a jewel in the universe, the only place for many light-years around illuminated by creative thought.

Yet a calamity was darkening more and more of it, ruining everything that might have been beautiful.

Stop, or be destroyed, she said to the thing crawling through the connection between realms, its many greedy arms trying to drag the planet into its own domain.

[REFUSAL]

The answer was not expressed in language, for the thing and others of its kind had long since cast aside intellect and creative thought.

But it did convey meaning, because information is the foundation of existence and inseparable from it. Existence was what the thing had touched in its twisted effort, and for that reason, certain laws had to be obeyed.

Stop, or I will erase your name from beneath heaven and make your victims a people stronger and more numerous than you.

[OBJECTION]

Yet the thing that had enslaved the Mavis with the promise of power in exchange for abandoning intelligence insisted on its path.

It tried to force the pattern of this world to conform to its own.

That, Lia could not allow.

So be it.

A word is a world. A word is a sword as bright as any star. Its name is Truth, the First Existence, and with that sword she opposed the enemy of creation.

She spoke. She struck. She revealed their lies.

The thing recoiled, then gathered itself again, splitting into countless reflections of itself, each existing on a different plane of reality.

Two beams of light stretched upward.

Two streams of power extended downward.

Two currents of knowledge carried her across all levels of reality, for Truth exists in all things, and no time or space lies beyond it.

Her sword shone brighter than a hundred billion suns. Wherever the enemy’s heart might be, she could strike it.

For a second time, the thing recoiled.

The thing’s influence gnawed at the world, corrupting, weakening, consuming everything, pushing all things toward an end that approached with terrible speed.

She laughed. She sang. She danced.

Her vast existence narrowed further and further until every one of her countless selves could stand upon the point of a needle.

Yet Truth is real, and its gravity reached into the decaying world until the entire world was sheltered upon a single point, just as it had been at the beginning.

The thing might rage, but it could not touch the all-that-had-become-one, that single whole…