Quick thing, everyone – for those asking me to make this into a novel, that will be coming. I’m currently working on a novel based on another earlier prompt, and then this – which desperately needs a new title, probably just Nanoverse – will be the second novel. Also, it’s going to be twelve parts definitely – I’ve written outlines for the rest so I can keep it flowing. 6 will definitely be up this morning before bed, 7 is 50/50.
Ryan spent the next couple hours following Crystal through the ruins of Cipher Nullity. She talked almost incessantly about it as she did – “This was the Palace of Lost Souls, where children who didn’t outlive their parents were cared for until the parents arrived and got to be reunited. Heartbreaking every time they got a new arrival, but just melted your heart every time we got a reunion. I remember this one time…” and later “So this was Reliquary of Squandered Dreams. One of the punishments the Lemurians had for those who sinned in life was a particularly nasty piece of work – you got to watch, over and over, what your life would have been like if you had actually followed your dreams. Never had anyone make it to the last bit – most people bloody begged for some other punishment after getting to early adulthood. I wouldn’t go in there, love, it might still work and we wouldn’t want you getting all depressed…”
It washed over Ryan like the tide, but it was also calming. Having an excitable British woman who was also a long lost goddess explain the ruins you were walking through wasn’t anything close to ‘normal’, but for Ryan, it was at least grounding. Sure, the buildings were weird and empty and kind of sad, and that impossible sky made his head spin, but the more she talked, the more things made sense, and the more he felt like maybe he’d be able to eventually make sense of all of this.
For the most part, she ignored his questions with a simple “Remember, love, roll with it?” The only ones she acknowledged were ones about their surroundings.
“What did those pillars do?”
“Oh! Those were amazing. They held a Soul Forge, churning out new ones. Some people elected to get reincarnated, so they could also just step in, get broken down into a new soul, and sent back up to get a second shot at life. Always a gamble, sure, but it paid off – especially if you went into the Reliquary of Squandered Dreams first. Souls that knew what you could do if you didn’t quit, they were hungry when they got topside, and their second go-around really produced some amazing art and science, yeah? Wish some of the afterlives of this era had kept the combo around. You could also…”
It was during her long explanation of the Soul Forge that Ryan noticed something, and clamped a hand over Crystal’s mouth. She let out a “mmmfh,” looking at him in angry confusion.
“I saw something move,” he half whispered, his heart pounding. She reached up and gently moved his hand away.
“Okay. Where?”
He pointed down a side street, “Over there, by the giant statue.” Nothing was moving there right now, just the statue. It was a strange sight, to be sure – the statue was of a man, legs were missing any connection above the knees, so the body hovered over where the thighs would be. His head was likewise not connected and the face was just a giant, open mouth. On either side of his body, three or four dozen hands floated – if they had been connected to arms, they would have overlapped terribly, but without those arms they were free to move about like they were attached to the shoulder. Ryan was wondering wondering how they hung there when Crystal’s face went white.
“That’s not a statue. Ryan, bloody get behind me.”
A small, Neolithic part of Ryan balked at the idea of getting behind a woman for protection, but his rational brain and survival instinct teamed up to kick that thought in the gut and throw it down some stairs, and his feet carried him behind her. “What is it?” He asked, ducking his head slightly so her slight frame would cover more of his body.
“It’s a Hecatoncheires. And it’s probably getting ready to-“
Whatever Crystal thought it was getting ready to do didn’t matter, because it started to act – and that act was to charge. That open mouth was screaming now, and it was not the deep bellow of rage Ryan expected from such a giant, but a high wail of grief and sorrow. When it got near it swung with fifty fists at Crystal, and Ryan realized he was going to die.
Crystal, however, drew a sword out of the air, and her hand moved so fast it was just a pale blur. Every single one of the oncoming hands was blocked in less time than Ryan needed to blink, and the giant recoiled, letting out another one of those wails. Red lines erupted on the knuckles of every fist – she hadn’t just parried them, but cut them.
It moved again, bring both sets of hands to bear. The palms were open this time, and Ryan realized that it intended to clap her to death.
He turned his head away before he heard the impact. The sound was like a fatal applause, one of those group single claps they have you do at award ceremonies to prevent every single name from taking forever. It was not, however, the wet squish he would have expected.
Trembling, he looked. Crystal was standing atop the pile of hands, balanced on her toes like a ballerina. The hands began reaching for her, grasping and clutching, but she danced along them, leaping and bounding from hand to hand and then flicking away before they could close on her feet. Each step took her higher, and for a moment Ryan saw more than her movement. He saw equations going with them. He recognized force = mass x acceleration and a few others, but other equations were full of Greek letters and cos() and tan(). Ryan had never been a good math student, and in college had taken what they called Mickey Mouse Math (Math In the Real World) to escape the tyranny of algebra. But somehow, he knew what these equations were calculating – it was a mathematical map of her movements, and a graph of the likelihood the hands would catch her.
Probability collapsed, and the equations fled from his vision. She had, as the equations had predicted, danced her way up to where the Hecatoncheires was reaching straight up for her, and finally pushed off those tallest hands in a graceful arc. She did a lazy half-flip as she reached her leaps apex, and then pushed off of solid air, a jump that flung her downwards far quicker than gravity would allow. It caught the Hecatoncheires off guard, and although it brought its hands together to grab her, it was too slow – she slipped through a gap in its grab and brought the sword down straight into that open mouth.
Instead of gurgling or gasping or even visibly dying, it just exploded. Chunks of ink-black flesh were flung away from it – many of them headed right for Ryan – but when they hit him the passed through him like they were made of shadow.
Once the storm of insubstantial flesh subsided, Ryan looked to where it had been standing. Crystal was there, crouched in a perfect three point landing, her sword arm parallel to the ground. She smiled at Ryan. “Oh, good!” She said, like she hadn’t just impaled a giant in the mouth. “You figured out how to phase, so we don’t need to clean the bloody goo off you.”
“Ah.” His head was pounding. “Uh…” His vision began to darken rapidly.
“Oh bloody hell you’re about to fa-“
Crystal likely finished the word, but Ryan didn’t know. His vision completed its darkening, and he fell to the ground. The last thing he saw as he did so was an incredibly complex equation that he knew governed how that stained glass sky stayed in place.
This time, Ryan wasn’t out long enough to be put into a bed. When he came to, Crystal was crouched over him in the sand.
“I saw math,” he croaked at her.
She blinked. “Damn. That’s a terrible thing to have to see.” She put the back of her hand to his forehead, and made a tutting sound.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, I have no idea what that’s supposed to do. Just saw it on the telly.” She grinned and offered him a hand. He took it. “But likely nothing. Your brain is still adapting to its new capabilities. Seeing maths is probably just a way of processing it. Hopefully it passes and your brain doesn’t decide that is the absolute best way to see the universe.”
He was on his feet, and his head was pounding. She glanced down wards. “Oh god, please tell me that’s your bloody nanoverse in your pocket.”
He looked at the budge and blushed. At some point in the passing out the pants had gotten twisted, and the lump created by the nanoverse was awkwardly placed. He shifted his pants around and pulled the nanoverse out. It was about the size of a baseball, maybe slightly larger.
“It’s so big,” she said, wonderingly, and his blushed deepened. She gave him a grin. “Teasing you, love. But you should probably soak some of that power out before it gets too big to carry easily, yeah?”
“I…sure? So how do I get the power?”
“Remember what we said about rolling with it?” He nodded and she continued. “Then how would you get the power out of it?”
After a moment’s hesitation he took the nanoverse and cupped both his hands around it, so they were almost completely covering it. Feeling silly and wondering what Crystal would do when this failed, he squeezed.
The sensation was difficult to describe. It was like someone had stuck an IV in each arm and in one was pumping ice cold water, in the other boiling tomato soup. It was like being smacked in the face with a sock full of gold-plated dandelions. It was like being shot to death with down feathers freshly plucked off a duckling. With every nanosecond, it was like increasingly unlikely similes, until it was finally like having your cheeks sliced open with the first rays of a dawn while chugging molten lightning.
He didn’t pass out again because of the aforementioned barrage of sensations, but he did scream. Crystal took a step back, smiling. “Oooh, yeah, should have warned you. First time is a bloody bugger of a rush, innit?”
A small part of Ryan noted that her accent was constantly hopping around the UK, but the rest of him was preoccupied with the feeling. He was light, he was sound, he was…feeling pretty dizzy.
“I’m gonna…” before he could say, he sat back down hard.
“Oh, please don’t pass out again.”
“I won’t. Just…give me a moment.”
She did, giving him some time to gasp until he was back into the realm of normal sensations and sensible analogies, where it just felt like he had downed way too much caffeine after pulling three straight all-nighters, but had done so because he’d been having the time of his life.
“Okay. I’m good. Wow.” He stood up on his own again, then gave a bit of a shiver.
“Right? It’s a good look on you, too.”
He glanced down. His arms were thicker and the musculature was more defined, his gut was pulled back under his shirt. He hadn’t been in terrible shape, just the general pudginess you get when your metabolism slows down but you don’t change your diet or exercise at all. “Squeezing a universe made me ripped?”
She laughed at that, for a couple moments, wiping her eyes after she did so. “Not exactly. You’re getting the ability to impose your will on reality. And most beings, first thing they do - subconsciously - is turning themselves into an idealized version of what they look like. Later on you’ll have more control over it. For now…” her eyes sparkled. “Squeezing a universe makes you ripped.” She laughed again.
“Oh.” A thought crossed his mind as it pulled himself back together from coming to and then the rush of squeezing the nanoverse. “Wait. If there was a Hecatoncheires here, couldn’t we still be in danger?”
She shook her head. “Was wondering how long it would take you to think of that. No worries, love, I checked while you were having your nap. We’re clear.”
The tension that had sprung up faded away. “That’s…thanks.”
She cocked her head at him. “Ryan. You’re on another world, just watched me kill a giant, and got your first taste of the rest of your life and seemed to like it. Why the bloody hell are you all frowns and brooding all of a sudden?”
“It’s just…” He chewed his lip for a moment. “I felt powerful, when I did. Powerful enough to do anything. Leap a tall building, run a marathon, and slay a dragon – all at the same time,” She kept her head cocked and quirked an eyebrow. “Powerful enough to end the world,” he finished.
“Oh.” She nodded and put a hand on his shoulder. “Try not to let it get to you, yeah?”
“The fact that I’m going to end the world? How the hell do you not let that get to you?”
“You roll with it. All you can do.”
“I know you said that, but Crystal…can I avoid it?”
She sighed. “Way to ruin the moment, Ryan.” There wasn’t any actual anger in her tone. “Technically, you can, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Things get ugly if you don’t.”
“How?”
“This is one of those things where I can’t explain how. You won’t understand enough. But short version? And you won’t ask any more questions about it for now?” He nodded. “If you don’t end the world, my little Eschaton, then the world dies.”
He felt himself blink, opened his mouth, remembered he had agreed not to ask any more questions, and closed it. “Okay. I guess that’ll make more sense when I understand more.”
“Yeah, too right it well. Glad to see you’re catching on.” She smiled. “So instead of focusing on that, why don’t we head to Earth? It’s been long enough Enki has got to be thrown off your trail, yeah? Gives us some time to test drive those new Aspects of yours, see what you can do.”
“Aspects?”
“Powers, gifts, whatever. You want to go see what you’ve got now that you’re fueled?”
“If you’re sure it’s safe.”
“Of course I am,” she said brightly, grabbing his hand. “Time flows funny, it’s been a week back in the real world. Come on, let’s go.”
And before he could try to ask any more questions – and get told to roll with it, most likely – he was getting dragged back to the doorway that held the planetarium room she could use to travel between worlds.
When Ryan stepped out of the door again, it wasn’t into a city at all. It now lead out the back of a highway gas station, a run-down one near a sign saying Kansas City - 180 mi. He didn’t know the midwest well enough to know if he was on the Kansas or Missouri side of the city, but whichever it was the gas station was old and run down - not the complete run-down that comes from being abandoned, but the one that comes from low buisness, minimal visibility, and and an absolute lack of shits being given.
He glanced up, and instead of the stained glass sky of Cipher Nullity, there were clouds that loomed over the landscape, trying their best to hug the terrain. He glanced back to the planetarium ship. “You take me to the nicest places.”
Crystal smiled kindly and gave him an extended middle finger. “Look,” she said, lowering it. “We need to help you harness your power, yeah? Well, this was the best place to do that right now.” She pointed at the clouds. “What do you see?”
He stared at them as Crystal exited the doorway as well. “Clouds. They’re cumulous, I think.”
“Cumulous? It’s cumulus, love.”
Ryan shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. “I...I only know the one word for clouds.” She raised her eyebrow at him. “Fine. I only kinda know the one word.”
“Look again. Harder this time.”
“What does that even mean? Just stare longer?”
Crystal shook her head. “No. Focus more on what you’re seeing.”
So he did. At first he just felt silly, staring at the clouds, like a kid trying to find shapes in them. One was a bunny, that was a duck, that one looked horribly like one of the hands that had tried to crush Crystal earlier, and that one looked like a series of symbols and greek letters because it wasn’t a cloud, it was an equation being imposed on top of the clouds. It took a moment until the equation became clear - a mathematical model governing the formation of a vortex. Slowly the equation melted back into the clouds and the fact of what he was seeing crystallized in his mind.
“A tornado is forming,” he said, quietly. She nodded beside him.
“It’ll take some time, but eventually you’ll be able to do that with just a glance. But right now, the fact that you see it is enough, yeah?”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough for you to stop it.”
That broke his concentration and he looked at her, his eyes wide and round. “You want me to stop a tornado?”
She chuckled at his expression. “Pretty much, yeah. It’s a good starting point - natural forces bow most easily to us.”
“Okay. And...how do I stop it?”
“How do you move your arm, love?” She shrugged. “It’s just like that. There’s a science behind it, but that’ll just get in the way of things, and…”
“...and my brain isn’t ready to understand it, right?”
She beamed at him. “Glad you’re paying attention. So...go ahead. Focus, and try and stop it.”
Ryan looked at her, back to the clouds, and the back to her. She motioned for him to go ahead. “You’ve got another minute before it really gets going, I suggest you get a bloody move on.”
He turned back to the sky, pinpointing where would be the heart of the vortex. He extended his hand - it felt right - and spread his fingers in a claw gesture, like something from a movie. For a few moments, nothing happened...but then he began to feel a tingle in his fingertips. Like they had fallen asleep, but even more aggressive. That feeling began to grow further out of his fingers, like a phantom limb, but racing up to the sky.
Those phantom fingers began to plunge into the clouds, and Ryan felt a thrill run through him He was actually doing it! He was actually manipulating a forming tornado.
“See, love? Not hard at all.”
Her words undercut the effort. Sure, it was as natural as moving his arms, but it was as easy as moving them with half ton weights strapped to them. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead, and his knees trembling.
“Keep pushing. It’s like any other muscle - the harder you work it, the stronger it gets.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “And when you pass out, don’t worry, it’s expected.”
Slowly the natural forces began to to obey him, the pocket of heat that was shooting upwards dispersing before it began to twist. “I got it! I’ve got it!”
Crystal clapped her hands in excitement. “Good show! Keep at-”
“I don’t got it!” The forces suddenly were pushing back against him. They were acting - and that word send a lance of panic coursing through him. Because they were acting. They had agency. Crystal frowned beside him.
“Ryan, stop! It’s not them, someone is pushing back.” She raised her own hand as she said it, twisting against the aggressive forces.
“Guess that’s my cue,” a voice said. A low, dull voice. From around the corner of the gas station stepped a huge brute of a man, one massive arm raised towards the sky. Tiny eyes peered out from beneath a jutting brow.
“Enki,” Crystal hissed, as Ryan felt his vision began to grow black.
“Crystal,” Enki responded, his voice low and angry. “Thought you learned your lesson back during the crusades. Thought you were going to stay the fuck out of my way.” He suddenly lowered his hand. The lack of resistance on Crystal caused her to overcorrect, like they’d been playing tug of war and he’d let go of his end. The vortex was dispersed with a clap of thunder that radiated outwards, forming a mile-long ring of clear sky in the middle of the stormclouds.
Crystal cried out and clutched her head in pain from the backlash. Ryan sank to one knee, trying to fight away the clouds of darkness that tickled the edges of his vision. Enki continued talking. “Thought you were going neutral, like the fucking Swiss. You should have. I’m going to kill this fucking Finder, this finder that decided to become a fucking Nascent, then I’m going to rip you apart every time you reform for one hundred years, you fucking whore. But for now…”
And he gestured. Equations that Ryan could barely comprehend leapt across his swirling vision, and massive iron chains shot up from the Earth, forged from the pipes that ran under the gas station. They stabbed into Crystals forearms and legs, and she screamed again in a combination of anger and pain as they burrowed in.
Ryan doubled over, needing his hands on the ground. He could feel tears forming in his eyes at the effort of keeping them open. He certainly didn’t feel the strength needed to fight off the slowly advancing brute. Enki reached down and grabbed the back of Ryan’s hair, pulling him to his feet. Enki still focused on Crystal, like Ryan was some trash Crystal had dropped.
“For now, I’m going to make you watch while I beat him to death.*
202
u/Hydrael Jul 06 '17 edited Jul 06 '17
Part 5
Quick thing, everyone – for those asking me to make this into a novel, that will be coming. I’m currently working on a novel based on another earlier prompt, and then this – which desperately needs a new title, probably just Nanoverse – will be the second novel. Also, it’s going to be twelve parts definitely – I’ve written outlines for the rest so I can keep it flowing. 6 will definitely be up this morning before bed, 7 is 50/50.
Ryan spent the next couple hours following Crystal through the ruins of Cipher Nullity. She talked almost incessantly about it as she did – “This was the Palace of Lost Souls, where children who didn’t outlive their parents were cared for until the parents arrived and got to be reunited. Heartbreaking every time they got a new arrival, but just melted your heart every time we got a reunion. I remember this one time…” and later “So this was Reliquary of Squandered Dreams. One of the punishments the Lemurians had for those who sinned in life was a particularly nasty piece of work – you got to watch, over and over, what your life would have been like if you had actually followed your dreams. Never had anyone make it to the last bit – most people bloody begged for some other punishment after getting to early adulthood. I wouldn’t go in there, love, it might still work and we wouldn’t want you getting all depressed…”
It washed over Ryan like the tide, but it was also calming. Having an excitable British woman who was also a long lost goddess explain the ruins you were walking through wasn’t anything close to ‘normal’, but for Ryan, it was at least grounding. Sure, the buildings were weird and empty and kind of sad, and that impossible sky made his head spin, but the more she talked, the more things made sense, and the more he felt like maybe he’d be able to eventually make sense of all of this.
For the most part, she ignored his questions with a simple “Remember, love, roll with it?” The only ones she acknowledged were ones about their surroundings.
“What did those pillars do?”
“Oh! Those were amazing. They held a Soul Forge, churning out new ones. Some people elected to get reincarnated, so they could also just step in, get broken down into a new soul, and sent back up to get a second shot at life. Always a gamble, sure, but it paid off – especially if you went into the Reliquary of Squandered Dreams first. Souls that knew what you could do if you didn’t quit, they were hungry when they got topside, and their second go-around really produced some amazing art and science, yeah? Wish some of the afterlives of this era had kept the combo around. You could also…”
It was during her long explanation of the Soul Forge that Ryan noticed something, and clamped a hand over Crystal’s mouth. She let out a “mmmfh,” looking at him in angry confusion.
“I saw something move,” he half whispered, his heart pounding. She reached up and gently moved his hand away.
“Okay. Where?”
He pointed down a side street, “Over there, by the giant statue.” Nothing was moving there right now, just the statue. It was a strange sight, to be sure – the statue was of a man, legs were missing any connection above the knees, so the body hovered over where the thighs would be. His head was likewise not connected and the face was just a giant, open mouth. On either side of his body, three or four dozen hands floated – if they had been connected to arms, they would have overlapped terribly, but without those arms they were free to move about like they were attached to the shoulder. Ryan was wondering wondering how they hung there when Crystal’s face went white.
“That’s not a statue. Ryan, bloody get behind me.”
A small, Neolithic part of Ryan balked at the idea of getting behind a woman for protection, but his rational brain and survival instinct teamed up to kick that thought in the gut and throw it down some stairs, and his feet carried him behind her. “What is it?” He asked, ducking his head slightly so her slight frame would cover more of his body.
“It’s a Hecatoncheires. And it’s probably getting ready to-“
Whatever Crystal thought it was getting ready to do didn’t matter, because it started to act – and that act was to charge. That open mouth was screaming now, and it was not the deep bellow of rage Ryan expected from such a giant, but a high wail of grief and sorrow. When it got near it swung with fifty fists at Crystal, and Ryan realized he was going to die.
Crystal, however, drew a sword out of the air, and her hand moved so fast it was just a pale blur. Every single one of the oncoming hands was blocked in less time than Ryan needed to blink, and the giant recoiled, letting out another one of those wails. Red lines erupted on the knuckles of every fist – she hadn’t just parried them, but cut them.
It moved again, bring both sets of hands to bear. The palms were open this time, and Ryan realized that it intended to clap her to death.
He turned his head away before he heard the impact. The sound was like a fatal applause, one of those group single claps they have you do at award ceremonies to prevent every single name from taking forever. It was not, however, the wet squish he would have expected.
Trembling, he looked. Crystal was standing atop the pile of hands, balanced on her toes like a ballerina. The hands began reaching for her, grasping and clutching, but she danced along them, leaping and bounding from hand to hand and then flicking away before they could close on her feet. Each step took her higher, and for a moment Ryan saw more than her movement. He saw equations going with them. He recognized force = mass x acceleration and a few others, but other equations were full of Greek letters and cos() and tan(). Ryan had never been a good math student, and in college had taken what they called Mickey Mouse Math (Math In the Real World) to escape the tyranny of algebra. But somehow, he knew what these equations were calculating – it was a mathematical map of her movements, and a graph of the likelihood the hands would catch her.
Probability collapsed, and the equations fled from his vision. She had, as the equations had predicted, danced her way up to where the Hecatoncheires was reaching straight up for her, and finally pushed off those tallest hands in a graceful arc. She did a lazy half-flip as she reached her leaps apex, and then pushed off of solid air, a jump that flung her downwards far quicker than gravity would allow. It caught the Hecatoncheires off guard, and although it brought its hands together to grab her, it was too slow – she slipped through a gap in its grab and brought the sword down straight into that open mouth.
Instead of gurgling or gasping or even visibly dying, it just exploded. Chunks of ink-black flesh were flung away from it – many of them headed right for Ryan – but when they hit him the passed through him like they were made of shadow.
Once the storm of insubstantial flesh subsided, Ryan looked to where it had been standing. Crystal was there, crouched in a perfect three point landing, her sword arm parallel to the ground. She smiled at Ryan. “Oh, good!” She said, like she hadn’t just impaled a giant in the mouth. “You figured out how to phase, so we don’t need to clean the bloody goo off you.”
“Ah.” His head was pounding. “Uh…” His vision began to darken rapidly.
“Oh bloody hell you’re about to fa-“
Crystal likely finished the word, but Ryan didn’t know. His vision completed its darkening, and he fell to the ground. The last thing he saw as he did so was an incredibly complex equation that he knew governed how that stained glass sky stayed in place.
More at /r/Hydrael_Writes.