Chapter 734 - Driven by Need

Reality imploded.

Zeke blacked out. 

And when he opened his eyes, there was nothing.  No strings.  No cavern of splintered wood.  It was as if he’d broken through to a different plane of existence, and it was entirely empty.  No sound.  No smell.  He wasn’t even sure if what he saw was due to a lack of visual stimuli or if there truly was nothing there.

It lasted for only a second before the roar of an explosion burst his eardrums.  Then, his world was all splinters and space, the strings snapping back into place all around him.  But they were frayed, their threads spiraling off into eternity. 

After only a moment, Zeke realized that he was flying backward so fast that he could barely discern his surroundings.  With a herculean effort, he grabbed hold of one of the nearby strings and halted his flight.  A second later, he was pelted by a million shards of splintered wood.  Some simply disintegrated upon impact, but plenty ripped right through him. 

He embraced [Hand of Creation], healing himself from the barrage he was forced to endure.  The first few threads snapped under the pressure, but he continuously grasped others until, at last, he came to a stop. 

The planet was gone.

So were the moons.

Only empty space remained, though Zeke saw plenty of evidence of destruction.  Huge hunks of rock remained floating in space, what felt like thousands of miles away.  And with every passing second, more smashed into him.  It was like weathering a storm, but instead of rain, he needed to endure rocks and hunks of sharp and splintered wood.

He held on, and after a while, the tempest passed him by. 

When it did, he dragged himself through space to the rough location of the implosion.  A bit of divine energy remained, so he had no issue tracking it down.  That’s when he saw Aja’s true form, floating in the middle of space, curled into a ball, and weeping. 

He approached.

Her eyes snapped open and she unfurled herself.  Naked, she faced him down.  Her elven heritage was on full display, though only one half of her body remained perfect.  The rest had been twisted and charred beyond all recognition. 

“You.”

“Me,” Zeke agreed.  He nodded at her injuries.  “Did I do that?  Or has that been with you for a while?”

She didn’t answer.  Instead, she simply glared at him and asked, “Why?  I did nothing to you.  I helped you!  And this is how you repay me?”

“We’ve been over this before.  You only helped me because you wanted something from me.  And this is for the greater good.  The fate of reality is at stake,” he stated for what felt like the millionth time.  He was so tired of explaining himself, especially to people whose opinions on it genuinely didn’t matter.

It wasn’t as if Aja was going to experience a sudden epiphany and surrender.  She knew her fate.  She either fought, or she died.  There was no captivity in her future.  No quarter.  No peace.  That was the entire point. 

Zeke needed her essence.  He needed to add her power to his own so that he might have some chance of saving everyone else.

“So I am to be a sacrifice?”

“Yes.  So everyone else can live.”

“You truly believe that, don’t you?” she demanded. 

“I do.”

“Lies.  All of it.  You want me to be a sacrifice on the altar of your own self-delusion.  You only care about power because you wish to reach the top.  I have seen your kind many times before,” she growled.  “You will kill billions, all the while telling yourself that it is the only way.  That only you can be trusted with all that power.  That you are doing it for the greater good.”

She floated closer.

“In reality, you are just a small man with delusions of grandeur.  You will go the same way as all the rest,” she finished.

“And which way is that?” he asked, floating only ten feet from her.  The void of space extended all around them, isolating and cold.

“You will ascend, and you will be unmade.  The eternal war is not for the likes of you.  You haven’t the stomach for it,” she stated evenly.  “They will eat you alive.  There will be nothing of you left.  And all the while, that old fool will look on with equanimity, only acting when his hand is forced.”

She sneered. “That is the fate of all who ascend from the Ethereal Realm.  It is called The End for a reason.  There is nothing up there.  No great rewards.  No more hills to climb.  Just an endless battle against an unknowable enemy at the behest of an uninterested creator.”

“Perhaps that’s the problem,” Zeke said.  “Maybe I’m here to change things.”

“Hubris.”

Zeke shrugged.  “Maybe so.  Probably.  There’s every chance that I’ll get up there and find out that I’m grossly outmatched,” he conceded.  “But I don’t think so.  I believe I’ve different.  I think that saving all of reality is my fate.”

“Fate is an illusion meant to comfort fools.”

He shrugged again.  “Maybe I’m a fool, then.”

He had never before acknowledged the notion of fate, but now that he had, it made perfect sense.  He didn’t think he was some sort of chosen one, but he did believe that he was uniquely gifted, both through his own innate characteristics and his experiences.  In some ways, Oberon had manipulated him, and in others, he’d followed his own path.  But in the end, he had become what reality needed him to be.

A savior.

But that didn’t come without a cost.  Personally, it meant that he would never live the life he’d sometimes fantasized about.  No wife and children.  No collection of close friends.  He had experienced some of that, but he knew it would be short-lived.  Soon, he’d be forced to leave them all behind and meet his destiny.

The other cost was external. 

Aja needed to die by his hand.  So did Shar Maelaine, but that was not a task for the present.  The sun goddess wasn’t floating in front of him.  Aja was.

“You are a fool.  A hubristic sociopath that deserves precisely the fate he seeks.  Should you survive this day, remember that I warned you.  This will end in ruin.  For you.  For your family and friends.  For everyone you have ever touched.”

“So be it.”

As he spoke, Zeke shifted his awareness so he could see the threads that comprised all of reality.  When he did, he noticed two important aspects of her being.  First, her threads were so compacted that they looked almost solid.  Even when he drilled down with his perception, he could scarcely discern where one stopped and another began. 

Idly, he wondered if his own strings were like that.

But the second aspect he recognized was that the threads on her left – and damaged – side were far looser.  A few were even waving in a nonexistent wind, straining to connect to something. 

Zeke reached out, grabbed one of those loose threads, and pulled.

Aja screamed.

She pulled away, desperate to flee as that half of her body steadily disintegrated.  When she couldn’t get away, she clearly turned her attention to remaining whole.  Suddenly, Zeke’s efforts weren’t enough, and the thread wouldn’t budge.  So, in characteristic fashion, he pulled harder.

“What are you doing? What sort of skill is this?!” she screeched.

As she did so, Zeke was pelted with her threads.  He knew they represented skills, each one powerful enough to overwhelm him.  However, it only took a bit of split focus to grab hold of those skill-threads and unravel them.  Still, some managed to slip through the cracks and assail his body.

He looked down to see that his own strings had begun to split.  He willed them shut.

No skills.  No abilities.  Just pure manipulation of the comprising components of reality.  And they responded as if he were a maestro, tightening and settling back into place.  When the next skills hit him, they bounced off like the pitiful things they were.

Suddenly, Zeke made a connection.

All those years he’d spent manipulating runes and glyphs – they’d just been a representation of the strings.  The resulting practice had prepared him more than he ever could have expected. 

When he dove into the threads, they responded to his will just as readily as the runes.  Now that he knew precisely what was going on, he had no issues making them do what he wanted.

Which spelled Aja’s doom.

And she seemed to know it, too.  Briefly, Zeke wondered what it was like from her perspective?  She was an all-powerful greater god who’d spent thousands of years unchallenged.  She was worshipped by millions and acknowledged as one of a handful of the most powerful people in all of existence.

Yet, all her attacks had proved entirely ineffective.  And with every passing second, her body unraveled.  She had to feel it, too.  She had to know what was happening, even if she wasn’t aware of exactly how. 

She was being unmade.

Bit by bit.

Thread by thread.

Soon, nothing of Aja would remain. 

That wasn’t to say that her resistance ceased.  It didn’t.  She continued to fight with every tool she had at her disposal.  Zeke was vaguely aware of the expression of her power, which trended toward nature and trees.  She tried to encapsulate him in a cocoon of vines that withered before they ever touched him.  She surrounded him with a cloud of spores meant to poison him, but those little particles were made of threads too.  And they unraveled as easily as anything else.

A half dozen other skills assailed Zeke.  They were all impotent against his manipulate of the threads. 

And then she started begging.

“Please,” she said, her voice perfectly reasonable.  He could hear the bottomless well of fear.  The pitiful desire to extend her life.  “D-don’t…”

She followed that up with an insidious attack that was meant to be a surprise.  Zeke had seen it coming.  She could hide the divine energy, but she couldn’t conceal the threads.  They sent ripples across his awareness, and Zeke had no issues grabbing hold of them and ripping them to shreds.

The remnants dissipated into tinier threads that joined all the others.

Zeke focused on the task.  He didn’t enjoy killing her.  In fact, he just wanted it to end.  He wished she’d stop struggling.  But then again, if their places had been switched, he’d have never even considered that path. 

Neither would Aja.  She would never give up.  She wouldn’t give in.  He would have to destroy her utterly. 

So that was what he did, ruthlessly ripping her to pieces.

She screamed. She begged.  She fought back.  None of it mattered.  Zeke was in total control.  Right up until he wasn’t.

He’d just destroyed the final thread, and he watched as it rebounded into another collection.  But intuitively, he knew that Aja hadn’t died.  There was still something about the threads that had once comprised her core.  Some awareness that remained. 

It was her soul.

Or spirit.

That ephemeral bit of reality that marked her as a unique and sapient entity.  Zeke narrowed his eyes and focused on it, but try as he might, no matter how much he ripped those threads apart, nothing really changed.  That feeling diffused into other bits of threads, but it did not dissipate.  It didn’t change.  It just floated there, taunting him.

He bored down, past a seemingly infinite layer of threads on threads until, at last, he saw something different.  It was the same shape, but it glowed in his awareness like something wholly unique. 

Zeke grabbed ahold of it, and the world shuddered.

The second he touched it, he knew Aja down to the very last second of her existence.  A trillion memories flashed before his inner eye, and in only the briefest of seconds.  He saw who she was, who she’d been, and what she’d hoped to become.  He knew what drove her, what she loved and hated.  He knew the very essence of Aja. 

And he could feel her pleading as his own. 

He didn’t care.  So devoted to his task was he that he embraced the one talent he’d nurtured above all else – that of destruction.  And it responded in kind.  He wasn’t entirely certain how he did it.  Perhaps it was as simple as willing it so.  Or maybe he flipped some unknowable switch.  But somehow, he destroyed that glowing thread.

And in doing so, he broke reality.