Chapter 764 - A Losing Battle

Zeke watched, awestruck and terrified, as the cage of the Framework encapsulated him.  The Creator, in a form almost as unknowable as the Abyss itself, descended from his perch and planted himself at the rift exposing reality to its opposite.  Zeke’s mind struggled to comprehend what he saw, though he did manage to glean a few tiny bits of information here and there.

The threads were not threads. 

The Abyss was not a place, but an absence that ran opposite to the very nature of creation. 

The clash wasn’t between the Creator and an enemy.  Rather, it was an unknowably powerful entity who’d sacrificed himself to shield his creation from the forces of non-existence.

It brought to mind something Zeke had long since eternalized.  The notion had solidified the moment Tucker had died, and he was forced to confront the reality of death.  That event had laid bare the brevity of existence, making clear the one rule that could never be broken.

All things were destined to end.

Life.  Love.  Reality itself.  It didn’t matter how enduring those things might seem.  They had a shelf-life.  That realization surged forward, wrapping itself around his mind and forcing him to recognize the truth of the Creator’s existence. 

He was no Creator.

Rather, he was a protector.  He’d sacrificed everything to shield reality from the inevitability of its own demise.  The threads Zeke took for granted were not some artificial creation.  Instead, they were pieces of the Creator’s soul given form so that they could form a wall against the advance of nothingness.

Zeke was uncertain how long it took him to understand that simple fact.  Ever since the Creator had arrived bearing the glittering cage that was an extension of his soul, time had stood still.  Or perhaps it only seemed to.  After all, there was no context for the passage of years.  Even millennia felt no more substantial than the blink of a god’s eye. 

Yet, he knew that perception and reality – at least for him – were two very different things.  It might as well have been a second, but in that infinite moment, Zeke learned so much. 

It was enough to show him just how little he truly understood.

The Abyss could not be fought.  It could not be beaten.  Instead, it could only be guarded against, and only then by sealing reality away from everything else.  Was there something beyond the Abyss, though?  Something lost to the Creator and the pocket reality he’d managed to sequester in its own forgotten corner of existence?

Perhaps.

Zeke was no great thinker.  He often found philosophy to be a tedious endeavor.  Rather, he preferred straightforward questions with concrete answers.  He was a warrior.  A fighter who’d never encountered a problem he couldn’t defeat via the strength of his arms and the endurance of his spirit. 

But this particular issue was different, and he had no idea how to combat it.

Not that he could affect the struggle before him.  Even as the cage of the Framework wove itself around the Abyss, forming layer of later of an infinitely intricate, maze-like cage, Zeke remained quarantined, likely for his own protection.

Regardless, he could not help but be affected by the presence of such powerful entities.  Both had the might of entire universes behind them, pushing them forward.  But he knew that the even the Creator, for all his seeming omnipotence, could never fully overcome the Abyss.

It was not a question of strength.  Rather, it was the simple reality that, in a battle of infinite equals, the one tasked with protecting the weak would always cede victory to the one only focused on destruction. 

Zeke had used a similar strategy himself when he’d attacked Shar Maelaine’s followers.  The same had been the case when he had forced a genocide against elves in the Eternal Realm. 

Not that he believed the Abyss to be a thinking creature.  It was not.  It was a force of nature.  A law of reality made manifest.  Thinking of it in those terms truly put the entire struggle into context, and it made Zeke realize just how ridiculous his plans truly were. 

He could not fight it.

Of that much, he was certain.  Meeting that force head-to-head would destroy him utterly.  Any notions otherwise were simple hubris, and entirely unrealistic to boot. 

But despite the fact that he could not win, the Creator endeavored to reach a stalemate.  Slowly, through skill born of millions upon millions years, he wove a cage around reality, mending the breach and entangling the reaching abyssal tendrils in its eternally complex structure. 

At some point, Zeke recognized another basic truth.  To date, he’d looked at the Framework as a static thing.  But now, he saw how rapidly it shifted.  It made sense, too.  If it was stationary, the Abyss would easily find a way through.  But constant motion served to slow it down just enough to protect reality. 

Finally, the world shuddered – almost as if the still unseen Creator – let out a sigh of relief. 

Then, the cage around Zeke slowly unraveled.  At the same time, his body rebuilt itself until he felt his feet settle upon cold metal.  With brand new eyes, he looked down to see that he stood on a thin, circular platform of bright silver.   

He fell to his knees, weak and panting. 

Through his reckless actions, he’d very nearly brought about the end of all things.  He’d defeated the Waymaster, but in doing so, he had come close to destroying everything. 

“You are a curious child,” came a withered, raspy voice. 

Zeke looked up to see an old man hovering above him.  He was clad in a simple robe, and he looked ancient beyond all things.  If Zeke had ever laid eyes on someone so visibly old, he couldn’t remember it.  Deep lines creased his face, his teeth were yellowed with age, and only a fringe of hair remained on his head.  By contrast, a stark white beard fell to his knees, stiff and coarse. 

But there was something strong about him.  Even incalculable age couldn’t rob him of a warrior’s broad shoulders, and his gnarled hands – clutched together at his waist – looked powerfully strong. 

“You are the Creator.”

He sighed, drifting down to set foot on the platform.  Then, he extended a hand.  Zeke took it, then allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. 

“You are stronger than you look,” the Creator stated.  “A step beyond godhood, yet a long way from something more.”

“What?”

“A few billion more years, and you might achieve something spectacular,” the Creator went on.  “A shame this reality will not last so long.  I would have loved to see how you turned out.”

“I don’t understand,” Zeke said.

“You understand perfectly well, Ezekiel Blackwood.  You have seen the unraveling Framework.  You know the problem we face better than anyone else in the universe.  Especially since you destroyed Kevin.”

“Kevin?”

“You knew him as the Waymaster.  Pretentious name,” he said.  “I preferred the one I gave him when he was nothing more than a promising amoeba.”

“I once had a hamster named Kevin.  He got out of his cage and disappeared.”

Indeed, that experience – from when he was no more than a kindergartner – was his first with a pet.  It had taught him a valuable lesson about responsibility.

“Interesting,” the Creator responded.  “In any case, Kevin never truly understood the Framework.  A failing of his nature.  He could only repeat what he was told, though he was quite good at that.  He had some degree of power, but the scope was far more constrained than if he’d been sapient.  Still, I will miss him.”

“I…I’m sorry.  He…”

“Was out of control.  I know,” the Creator stated.  “As was that little goddess, though at least she knew her place.  She never tried to climb above her station.  Not like a certain naked warrior sitting in front of me.”

He spoke like an amused parent chiding a child, and it sparked a note of anger within Zeke’s mind.  He suppressed it, and not just because, at that moment, he considered it a useless emotion.  He also knew just how far above him the Creator stood, and the last thing he wanted was to be obliterated.

But then again, why did he want to continue his existence?  If he was so far from becoming strong enough to make a difference – millions of years, according to the Creator – then his plans were all for naught.  He was too late.  Perhaps he always had been. 

“You have figured it out, haven’t you?”

“Figured what out?” Zeke asked. 

“Purpose is an odd thing,” the Creator stated.  “Don’t you agree?”

“I…I don’t know.  I guess you could characterize it that way.”

“I could,” agreed the ancient man.  “What do we do when we lose our purpose?  I have long pondered that question.  After all, I saw the unraveling of my life’s work well before anyone else did.  I’ve known about it for so long that I scarcely remember the days when I looked upon existence with any sense of optimism.  Day by day, I saw it erode, and all the while, I knew there was nothing I could do to change it.”  He flicked his eyes up to make contact with Zeke’s.  “I believe you feel something similar, do you not?”   

Zeke wanted to deny the Creator, but he didn’t see a point.  So, he said, “I…I do.”

“Tell me about it.”

And so Zeke did.  He’d given up everything just to have a chance at saving reality.  He had done so in the believe that only he could do anything about the degradation of the Framework.  He’d even harbored some belief that he could somehow replace the Creator and create a better world.

But now he knew better.

And that knowledge was as devastating as it was obvious.  One moment with the Creator was all it took to establish that he was an entity on an entirely higher plane of existence.  He had more power in a single atom of his being than Zeke had ever managed to amass.  That alone was enough to show Zeke just how foolish he’d been, and it wasn’t even considering the reality of their differing levels of experience.

In short, Zeke had sacrificed everything for an unachievable goal.

He would never climb that mountain.  He would never save reality.  He was, at the end of the day, just a man.  One with god-like powers, but even that fell far short of what he would need to accomplish the goal he’d set for himself.

“There’s this pit inside of me now.  The knowledge that I could have spent all these years with friends.  Building a family.  Living my life.  But I gave it all up, and for what?  So I could beat a few gods?  The things I’ve done…at the time, I justified it all because I thought the greater good demanded that sacrifice.  But now I know different.”

“I sympathize.”

“Do you?” Zeke asked. 

“I was not so different from you, once upon a time.  I too sacrificed everything.  The only difference is that I was successful, at least for a while.  You can sense how it turned out.  An unraveling reality I can’t save.  So, I suppose we’re both failures.  Victims of hubris.  And I assure you that I have been wrestling with it for far longer than you.”

Considering that Zeke’s world had just come crashing down around him, that wasn’t difficult to believe.  He asked, “How do I deal with it?”

“If it’s any consolation, you won’t need to.  Not for long, at the very least.  After all, I can’t hold this reality together for much longer.”

“That doesn’t help.”

“Truly, I didn’t expect it would.  But it won’t matter once the Abyss consumes us all,” he said. 

“What is it?” Zeke asked.

“Does it matter?”

“To me, it does.”

The old man sighed.  “I suppose its nature is unique.  A natural consequence of existence is that everything must end.  In this case, the thing in question was my original universe,” he said.  “I shifted my reality into its own secluded corner of existence, but the end – the Abyss – pursued.  It does not think.  It cannot reason.  And yet, it knew its purpose, and it very much resented having its prize taken from it.  It followed, though by the time it found us, I had implemented my plan.

“You saw the first iteration.  That piece of nothingness I trapped inside the first version of the Framework,” he went on. “At the time, I thought I could simply destroy the adversary.  More of that hubris I mentioned.  Over the course of millions of years, I tried everything, but in the end, I found no success.  Not until I realized I’d already solved the problem.  I could create a cage to contain it, so why couldn’t I simply manifest a similar cage to quarantine reality?

“Once I decided on that course of action, I got to work.  I forget how many times I shifted reality further from the all-consuming Abyss, but eventually, I completed my work.”

He sighed.  “Or so I thought.  I soon discovered that my work would never truly end.  The Abyss is more than simply all-consuming.  It never tires.  It never rests.  It never slows.  My cage must always be monitored.  It must constantly shift, and in so many dimensions that most are no more than conceptual. 

“But how could I do anything else?  I worked.  I fought.  And I reached an equilibrium.  Or so I thought until I noticed it unraveling.”

“And now we’re here,” Zeke guessed.

“Ah, no.  That was seven-hundred and thirty-three iterations ago,” the Creator admitted.  “Which brings me to your role in all of this?”

“My role?”

“Yes.  Believe it or not, Ezekiel, you still have a purpose.  It is just not the one you envisioned for yourself.”

“What is it?”

“You won’t like it.”

Zeke shook his head.  “If it means accomplishing my goal, then I’ll do whatever it takes.”

The old man smiled sadly.  “I both hoped you would say that and dreaded the certainty that you would.”