Chapter 770 - Both Ways

“You have no concept of what you’ve done!” shouted the Creator, and reality shook at his voice.  For his part, Zeke held himself together, though it was more difficult than anything he had ever experienced. 

But only a second later, he knew he’d chosen the correct course of action.

The Creator shifted, power boiling beneath the surface of his skin before it erupted from every pore.  Zeke’s entire body – every last thread – was obliterated by the massive explosion, but his soul thread remained intact.  At the same time, his mind nearly crumbled beneath the weight of the presence before him. 

No – it wasn’t in front of him.

It was everywhere, all at once.  Surrounding him in a way that should not have been possible.  That was when Zeke came to the realization that should have arrived years before when he’d first met the Creator.

Everything was part of him.

Not just the Framework.  Not just the worlds.  Nor even the physical setting of their reality.  Rather, everyone within the bounds of the Framework was an off-shoot of the Creator himself. 

Zeke’s identity nearly dissipated under the certainty of that realization.

But he held strong, clinging to the person he was.  To the relationships he’d forged.  He was an individual, not a mere outgrowth.  He pushed back, and not just against the dissolution of his soul.  Instead, he shoved the fraying threads of reality away from him, and with such ferocity that, at last, they broke.

And reality broke with them.

Massive gashes stretched across the sky, and the city beneath them folded in on itself.  Once.  Twice.  A thousand times.  It was like looking through a kaleidoscope, but instead of twisting light, it warped matter.  And Zeke felt it, too.  The wrongness of the setting.

Of being so thoroughly disconnected.

He wailed in despair, suddenly cut off in a way he’d never before experienced.  It was like standing outside a house and looking through a window, only to see someone else living the life he’d thought was his. 

“You are not strong enough to exist without me, parasite!” the Creator bellowed, shattering Zeke’s sense of identity.

But he recovered in an instant.  The Creator might have been all-powerful when he was controlling things connected to him, but now that Zeke was apart, much of that strength could not touch him. 

He reformed his body, bigger, stronger, and mightier than ever before.  He took the form of the titan – a creature of jagged rock and metal.  It felt more real that way.  More him than the flesh he’d recently lost.

Suddenly, he felt something creeping in through the cracks of reality.  He could see the Framework trembling under the pressure.  But more than that, he could see the Abyss for what it truly was.  Or more accurately, he saw the truth of the life he’d led.

“The Framework is not meant to keep it out.  It’s meant to keep us in,” Zeke muttered, his own voice booming even louder than the Creator’s.  The world continued to twist its being out of context, turning it into something unknowable.  “Why?”

“Parasites do not deserve answers!”

At that, the Creator yanked against Zeke’s being.  Their souls were still connected, and before he could respond, more than half of his power disappeared, flowing into the Creator.  That only exacerbated the imbalance, and in the space of a moment, Zeke felt the previously immutable thread of his soul begin to unravel.

Frantically, he tried to keep it together by pressing against it with his will.  It didn’t work.  The Creator laughed at his ineptitude, saying something Zeke couldn’t even begin to hear. 

And then his panic coalesced into desperate strength.  However, he didn’t direct it at the soul thread.  Nor did he lash out at the Creator.  Not directly, at least.  Instead, he pulled, and with everything he could muster. 

Miraculously, it worked.  Surprised, the Creator never even resisted as Zeke drained the entity’s power, absorbing it for himself.  Suddenly, his own might skyrocketed. 

The Creator attacked, throwing himself at Zeke. 

He threw his hands up to block, but Zeke’s body had never been the Creator’s aim.  Instead, he targeted the connection between them.  He severed it. 

In the silent aftermath, he demanded, “You dare?”

The world fluctuated all around them, and in so many dimensions that Zeke lost count.  The Abyss, once dark and unknowable, felt welcoming.  It called out to him, begging him to leave the prison the Creator had erected around him.  He ignored its plea, instead focusing on his adversary.

“I asked you a question.”

“You believe you deserve an answer? You, who is nothing more than an errant growth?  A cancer meant to be destroyed?”

“I’m part of you.”

“Everything is part of me!” the Creator shouted.  With a wave of his hand, he mended the Framework, pushing the Abyss back. 

“The Abyss isn’t.”

“You know nothing.”

Zeke took a step to the side, circling the Creator.  He mimicked Zeke’s action in a mirrored face-off.  “I know it’s not the evil, all-consuming force you made it out to be.”

“That depends on your perspective,” the Creator spat.

“Tell me yours.  I still might give you what you want,” Zeke responded, using the one piece of leverage he possessed.

“It does not matter.  You can’t escape me.  This is my reality.”

“I can make it harder for you.”

“Very well.  You want to know what it is?  The Abyss is me.  I am the Abyss.  Part of it, at least.  Severed, just as you just severed yourself.  It tried to consume me, and I resisted.  I fought for eons until I managed to escape.  Only then did I realize how futile my endeavor truly was.  I could not escape.  I could not defeat it.  But I could form my own pocket of reality, just for me.  Thus, the Framework was born.  And your people.”

“Why?”

“I just told you.”

“No – why people?”

“Consciousness is power.  Sapience is energy.  And I needed a lot of it to keep this going,” he pointed out.  “Inadvertently, you pushed my timeframe forward.  You killed so many.  More than anyone in history.  That is why the Framework began to unravel.  It started with your trip through Hell, and it culminated in you killing those so-called greater gods.  Batteries, all.  Some more powerful than others, but batteries all the same.”

He leaned forward, adding, “You are the author of your own demise.  Your actions have doomed your world.  Your friends.  The only way to save them is to submit.  Do it, and you may yet redeem yourself.”

Zeke very nearly did just that.  It all fit so neatly together that the guilt almost overwhelmed his good sense. 

“What is out there?” he demanded.  “It felt right.”

“Many terrible things feel right,” the Creator stated.  “Clearly, your instincts are suspect.  Do not listen to them.  Be the hero you set out to be.”

Zeke narrowed his eyes.  “There’s just one problem with that,” he stated.  “I never set out to be a hero.”

With that, he threw himself at the Creator.  He moved so quickly that, to an outsider, it would have looked like teleportation.  Not that anyone could have survived being in close proximity to them.  They would have been twisted into the environment, then destroyed utterly.

And most importantly, the Creator was not prepared for Zeke’s attack.  His fist landed with world-shattering force.  If he’d struck a planet, it would have been atomized.  And yet, the Creator was only staggered.

He recovered quickly, responding with a counterpunch that took Zeke in the gut.  His rocky muscles spasmed and his organs ruptured beneath the blow.  He could endure the force of an exploding sun, and yet, when the Creator hit him, he couldn’t maintain his feet.  He dropped to his knees, heaving for breath.

More troublingly, his rocky façade fell away, laying him bare before his enemy.  As he struggled to catch his breath, the Creator took him in the chin with a kick that sent him sprawling across the twisted ground. 

“You are nothing.”

He kicked him again, and to similar results.

“You are a pockmark on the reality that is me.”

He stomped on Zeke’s head.

“You are an energy source.”

He bent down, grabbing Zeke’s hair and lifting him to his feet.  Finally, he commanded, “Play your role.”

A headbutt came next, shattering Zeke’s skull and sending his brains splattering across the ground.  Zeke’s thoughts went silent, and his body went limp.  In most cases, the destruction of his physical form would have been inconsequential.  But he wasn’t fighting a normal opponent.  For reasons he didn’t quite understand, the Creator had chosen to pin everything on a fistfight. 

And with appropriate consequences.

Zeke hovered over his body, detached, both physically and mentally.  In that moment, he saw everything so clearly.  It was all connected.  The Creator.  The world.  Even the Abyss. 

But as isolated as he was, he could not bring himself to care. 

Then, he felt it.  He could scarcely define it, save to refer to the force as faith given form as pure energy.  All the people he’d touched.  Everyone he had loved.  The ones he’d killed.  The people he had saved.  They all touched him at the same time, and suddenly, he slammed back into his body. 

The damage wrought by the Creator mended in a scarce moment.  In that brief instant, he knew that, even if he’d severed his connection with his friends, family, and worshippers, they had not abandoned him.  And billions of souls all clinging to him at once was enough to give him hope.

Zeke spat on the ground, then looked the Creator in the eye.  “Is that all you’ve got?”

The Creator ground his teeth together, shedding the façade of the old man.  He became the very picture of a perfect warrior.  “You think a few worshippers can save you?  I will slaughter them without –”

“No you won’t.”

“What?”

“They’re the only thing standing between you and your little cage unraveling,” Zeke said.  “You said it yourself.  Every death weakens the cage, right?  I might not be able to beat you, but I can damn sure get away.  Maybe I’ll just go on a rampage.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t I?  It won’t be my first time.  I know you’ve been watching.  That’s how I beat Aja.  And Shar Maelaine.  I destroyed their base and –”

The creator screamed in primal rage, then slammed his fist into Zeke’s face.  For a second, Zeke blacked out, but he came back after only a moment.  Just in time to take another punch. Then another after that.

But if Zeke excelled at killing, he was a true prodigy at enduring well past the point where he should have succumbed. He channeled that characteristic and took everything the Creator could dish out.

The entity was strong.  Far stronger than Zeke.  But if there was one thing Zeke had discovered over the years, it was that no one could keep going indefinitely.  And the fact that the Framework was unraveling told Zeke that the Creator’s reserves weren’t what they should have been. 

Still, he was a creature with power beyond comprehension, so he kept going for far longer than Zeke could understand.  It didn’t help that he spent quite some time unconscious.  But eventually, he came back to himself to find the Creator, his shoulders sagging as he looked down on him.

“Why…won’t…you…die?”

Zeke pushed himself upright.  “Not really built like that.”

Then, he attacked, and this time, he was the one dishing out the punishment.  However, Zeke didn’t do so in uncontrolled rage.  Rather, he kept his true goal at the forefront of his mind, and when the opening finally presented itself, he pounced.

Grabbing hold of the Creator’s soul thread, he pulled.  Energy flowed into him, and the being was far too weak to resist. 

“You must not!”

“Agree to disagree,” Zeke grunted.

“The Framework will collapse!  Everyone will die!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You…m-must…not…”

His voice petered out as he collapsed, his body withering by the second.  Zeke felt the threads of the Framework unraveling with every passing moment.  Reality shook, and the Abyss loomed over everything.  Once, he might’ve looked up and saw an unknowable nightmare waiting to pounce. 

But now?

He saw the welcoming embrace of a long absent parent.

Finally, after some interminable amount of time, the Creator finally breathed his last breath.  Zeke was ready to finish him off when the Framework finally shattered, and an overwhelming force fell upon him.

The Abyss had finally come in truth.

“Cease.”

Zeke’s mind went blank, and he stopped draining the Creator.  He could not move.  He could barely exist.

But somehow, he managed to utter a question.  “What now?”