Last Shard: Truth/Lies
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Twilight, stretching in every direction, fading into pitch black. Smooth reflective floor made of irregular anthracite plates. Shards of the destroyed world scattered around, events, faces flashing in them.
In the distance a crumbling spiral tower, rising from the mirrored floor like a broken tooth. And a dark humanoid figure closing in, dragging a leg, four stumps behind its back, its face a misshapen blob with a horizontal slit where its mouth should have been. It hobbled closer and stopped, examining Nitori with its non-existent eyes. The slit moved.
"I am Pazuzu," it said in a screeching, broken, but undoubtedly male voice. "The God among gods."
"We met," Nitori said. She was way too tired to care about anything at this point.
"I granted your desire," Pazuzu said and started to move sideways, circling around. "You wished to become a god, and I made you a god. Nitori the World Breaker, this will be your name. Rejoice."
Nitori looked at her blackened arms, her blackened dress. "I was drunk when I made the wish," she said bitterly. "I never wanted it. My true desire was to save everyone."
"Wishes are not desires. Your true desire was to change everything, the whole world with your experiment, your willpower, and that is what gods do," Pazuzu said, making a full circle. "I granted that, just like I granted the desires of others. Marisa's desire for truly difficult challenges and choices, Utsuho's desire to be smart, to help. Reimu's desire to be punished for her failure as a savior of Gensokyo."
He raised his right arm up, and in a distance a twinkle of light appeared. It became brighter, then gained shape. It was a small multicolored bubble, flowing, undulating. It stopped between Nitori and Pazuzu.
"Infinite worlds are brought into existence by human belief and faith," Pazuzu said and tapped the surface of the bubble with his claw. "Some are big, some are small. Some persist, some fade quickly into oblivion. This one is stable and ready for corruption. Look closer."
Nitori looked into the bubble. It was Gensokyo, but not like she remembered it. It was like a blueprint, like a model made by a child, mountains, rivers, forests – everything sketchy and bland.
Then she looked closer. Everything inside was unreal and hazy, only Reimu, Marisa and Alice looked vibrant. She saw their daily lives, their parties, their bickering…
"It is a love story," Pazuzu screeched. "A time and place where nothing exists but their interaction. Another reality. Another cycle. A book, a persistent thought, a song, a waking dream. A world. And I am the corruptor of worlds. I am the shaper of worlds."
He closed his claws over the bubble. Nitori wanted to stop him, to scream, to tear the world away, but she couldn't move, she couldn't even blink. The talons went in, and darkness seeped inside the bubble. A sketch of a tiny temple appeared within, an unassuming triangle of yellow.
She watched with horror as the bickering between the three escalated. They grew apart, and jealousy set in. Reimu screamed at Marisa, and Marisa vented on Alice. More and more darkness flowed in, starting to darken the sky. Then one day Marisa decided to use a kitchen knife for a whole different purpose than it was intended.
"Stop it…" Nitori choked out.
"I already started," Pazuzu responded. "The world will either stay pure or turn black. Perfection or nothing."
More and more darkness, tainting the sky and the land. Alice found the temple and used some kind of ritual to bring it to life, Nitori could not see the details. The land burned and blackened, and soon only a few flickering sparks remained, going out one by one. Then the sphere turned pitch black, and Pazuzu retracted his claws, a tiny speck of yellow on one of them. The speck blinked and vanished.
"This is how I do it," Pazuzu said. "It is my stage, my puppet show, the temple projects my will, and cycle breakers are the strings I pull. I whisper, and the puppets dance. Sometimes I amuse myself with these little shows, but most of the time I just pour plague in, it is faster. Now I will show you how the world will be shaped."
He turned and awkwardly limped in the direction of the tower, a black sphere in his hand. Nitori followed, drawn by an invisible paralyzing leash. They walked in silence for a while and the tower drew closer.
"Why am I alive?" Nitori whispered. "I was thrown into the screecher like everyone else. I should have died. There is no excuse."
"There is," Pazuzu responded. "This is the void between worlds, and I made it habitable for myself. And you have the shard of my power in you, implanted into your soul during your visit of my temple."
"It was Suwako's power."
"It was my power," Pazuzu screeched, slightly raising his voice. "Mine and only mine. I changed it, processed it, distilled it after you made your wish. You are a part of me, Nitori, and this is why Yukari's gaps screeched. You will color worlds with me, color them black."
They reached the tower, and up close it didn't look that impressive. Only five or so floors, a single spiral ladder inside. They started climbing.
"It is the true tower of Babel," Pazuzu said. "The other gods may have banished me from the core outer world, but I will never stop building. One day I will reach the sky."
"Sorry, I was never that good at obscure history. You should have brought Keine here if you wanted to be understood."
"It is not obscure," Pazuzu hissed, his voice much more screechy and hateful now. "The Tower is a symbol, a symbol of perfection, of unity of all humanity. Millions, working as a one, a single goal – to reach the sky. My goal. My dream. A dream the other gods trampled into dirt."
"It is impossible to reach the sky with a tower," Nitori said calmly. "You'd need a rocket for that. I think Patchouli would build you one if you asked nicely."
Pazuzu didn't respond, but his back stumps angrily twitched once. They kept rising up and reached the top. There was a thin walkway to the unfinished part of the wall, and Pazuzu carefully stepped on it.
"Behold my power," he screeched, and the blackened world detached from his hand. It bubbled, and thin angles appeared on its surface. Pazuzu muttered something, and the world wobbled, flying to the unfinished section. It reshaped into a black irregular brick, fusing with the wall.
"A world… for an ugly brick?" Nitori whispered in horror.
"It was a small, useless world. The more complexity there is originally in the world, the better the brick is. Your own world, if it was corrupted properly, it would become a very robust one. You should be proud."
Nitori fell silent. She looked down at the floor below. How many bricks did he already make? How many would he make in the future? This had to be stopped, right now. Would he die if he was pushed down? Would she die if she fell?
"You will not die if you jump," Pazuzu said, as if he read her thoughts. Maybe he did.
"I will not live like you," Nitori said defiantly, staring at Pazuzu's face. The effect was somewhat lost because there were no eyes to defiantly stare into. "I will not corrupt anything. I'd rather die."
Pazuzu shrugged. "Then die, walk towards the edge of the mirrored plain where the chaos boils. Fall, and be devoured by it. Just don't forget to tell me first."
He turned to the wall, rattling the new brick to see if it was properly attached. Nitori took a step forward.
"If you push me off my tower I also won't die, no matter how symbolic it would be this way. And I can't be killed by the spells I designed, no matter how symbolic it would be this way either. Stop wasting my time."
Nitori stopped. Maybe he really could read her thoughts. Maybe he could turn her into a mindless slave if he wanted to.
Nitori shook her head. It could not just end like this. She had power, and she had to try to do something with this power first.
"I will save everyone," Nitori said sternly.
Pazuzu released a small screeching chuckle.
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Nitori sat on the ground and picked up the shard. It was mostly black, only a few lights gleamed inside. She looked closer.
A part torn out of context, held together by a single theme. Nitori saw Marisa as she received love letters, and Wriggle was also in the shard, composing dark rhymes about Yuuka. Little existed beyond that, the interior of Eientei was smudged and blurry, and so was Marisa's house, formulaic, unimportant background to the theme.
Another shard. Wriggle attended school, went to Eientei, then met Hatate…
Another shard. Their first visit to the temple, apples shared, Marisa made a joke about the inscriptions… only Nitori was not there, Marisa was talking to a ghost, a faded image. There was no Nitori in the shards, as there was no Yuuka, Sanae, Patchouli and everyone else who disappeared in the screeching gaps or left the world on their own power. Only vestiges of the memories remained behind.
Nitori held the shard. It was where it all started, and it was where she would start too. She would connect the shards together, she would rebuild the broken world. And then she would find a way to clear it from corruption. And the world would restore everything that was lost using the memories that remained.
"The capacity for the false hope mortals possess never ceased to amuse me," Pazuzu screeched from behind, leaning over her shoulder.
Nitori didn't answer, picking another shard and connecting it to the first. They fused together with a soft clink.
"You are aware that there are literally thousands of shards around here," Pazuzu said half-questioningly. "Collecting them all, every minor chink would take months, maybe even years of true time. Fusing them together, by broader categories, would take even more. And even then you would achive nothing and gain nothing. Absolutely nothing."
Nitori still didn't answer. Two of the fused shards slowly rose up, floating in front of her. Pazuzu released somewhat of a screeching sigh.
"Well, to each its own obsession, I guess. Call me when you are ready to die."
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How much time has passed? A day? A month? An eternity?
The last shard clicked in place, the last one Nitori found. And there were so many still lost, way too many. Ran's investigation, Aya's funeral, nearly a half of what was between Reimu and Marisa, everything between Yuuka and Wriggle when Yuuka was still alive…
It couldn't be helped. It could be mourned, but it couldn't be helped. The world would have to fill in the gaps on its own. Nitori was sure it would manage.
The world didn't turn to liquid. It remained solid and stained, light flickering where the shards connected. The light inside undulated, playing and replaying the latest events, darkness shrinking and expanding, but never taking hold completely. The last cycle, never broken, but never complete either.
Time could never be changed from the inside. Her machine, her tragic failure – it was all planned, planned from the start by the unseen puppeteer, pulling at her strings, amusement on his hideous eyeless face. It was his stage, his own sadistic show.
And now it was her show.
Nitori waited. Another incomplete cycle collapsed, and time jumped back to the very start, the very beginning. Nitori pressed her black talon to the surface and pushed in.
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"Yukari-sama, is everything all right? It took me a while to find you…"
The flickering vestige of Ran Yakumo, the fox-tailed shikigami, or a guardian youkai for short landed to the side of her mistress. Spectral, torn Yukari was sitting on the grass, twirling her parasol and staring somewhere in the distance. The top of the hill offered a good view on the main valley of Gensokyo, and as usual for the late summer the valley looked vibrant and fresh, flower fields creating patches of color on the green carpet of forests.
Cracks, shiny and jagged cracks crossed it, rising up to the sky. Nobody knew where they came from or what was their nature and purpose, and if Yukari knew, she never told. They were just there, as they have always been. They were just as a natural part of this Gensokyo as everything else.
Yukari slightly turned, examining Ran with indifference. The shikigami flinched a little and took her usual pose. She expected to be shouted at, but Yukari slowly turned back to her Gensokyo-gazing.
They spent a while in silence. The wind picked up, a small red ribbon in Yukari's hat flopped a bit and she adjusted it. A cloud covered the cracked and fractured sun.
"Yukari-sama, I am sorry I'm asking, but is something bothering you? You look a bit off as of late…"
"I'm bored, that's it," Yukari said and made a gesture covering the valley below. "Everything is so… placid. Don't you agree?"
Ran tried to find the right words. It was her job and the meaning of her life to protect Yukari from all threats, including the ones the elder gap youkai would invent for herself because of her boredom. An idea that would lead to an "incident" was something she would not want to be responsible for.
"Yukari-sama, if you are bored we could just go and meet some people, talk to—"
"What of that mountain ridge?" Yukari suddenly asked and stood up, closing her parasol. Ran held her pose and glanced at the ridge in question. It was nearly on the horizon, the largest peak being the Youkai Mountain and smaller crags stretching down the western side of the valley. It was just as broken and misshapen as everything else.
"It's… grey, I guess?" she carefully said.
"Exactly!" Yukari exclaimed and rubbed her palms in anticipation. "It's the most boring sight in Gensokyo, so let's renovate! So, any suggestions?"
Ran felt relieved. At least they wouldn't be wrecking any fates today, just a little landscaping. Not that bad after all.
"Yukari-sama, I don't think it would be wise to change it completely. Let's just add a little color…"
And then she stopped. She felt a sudden jab of pain at the back of her skull, like a white-hot nail was just pushed into her brain. She felt like a fish dragged on the sand, a helpless toy of something horrifying and alien. It ordered her to speak.
"Black," she said mechanically.
Yukari chuckled. "Well of course you would suggest black, who would have doubted that, you black, black magic wielding fox. But today I'm just in the mood. So let's do this!"
She spread her arms, and a small gap appeared in front of her. The strange alien feeling was gone as suddenly as it appeared, and Ran saw the reality to tear in the middle of the ridge, something reflective and black slowly being pushed out. It looked irregular and flat, and after a few moments settled in, a tiny cloud of dust around it.
The enormous gap on the ridge closed, and so did the smaller one in front of Yukari. She turned and looked at Ran questioningly, expecting a reaction. Ran blinked a few times and rubbed the back of her head. Yukari kept staring at her, and Ran decided to not bring the subject of her strange feeling up. If it returned then yes, definitely, but at the moment it was more important to keep her mistress happy.
"It looks pretty, Yukari-sama," Ran said, squinting to see what was pulled out from the outer world this time. From such a great distance, it looked like a tiny reflective black mirror.
"Thank you," Yukari said, slightly out of breath. "It was no big deal, I just pushed some natural coal deposits to the surface. I think minor youkai will like the new landmark." She opened her parasol again and sat down, admiring her work.
And the day went on, the residents of Gensokyo unconcerned about the event. Coal was just coal, after all.
({\}o{ })
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Nitori retracted the talon. The cycle went on, and there was no more darkness in it. No temple, no idol, no evil…
Nitori leaned in and hugged the world, feeling the warmth coming from it. Everything went wrong, but still she succeeded, she did everything that was logically possible. Now, all she needed was a little miracle to happen, just a little one…
"Everyone will live," she whispered.
And the world heard her, light darting over the edges between the shards. It heard her and restored them all, one by one, the lost, the maimed, the killed – all of them, restored from the memories of the land. Nitori saw a tiny version of herself, busily working around her house, giving up on the idea of time travel after a first failed prototype. She saw Hatate's and Aya's friendly rivalry, Momiji's patrols, Wriggle, playing with other fairies, her visits to Yuuka's garden. Reimu, always vigilant, always serious and kind, chasing Cirno and the Mischievous Trio around, Marisa, designing something with Alice…
Nitori stood up. She did all she could, she saved everyone. Her dreams came true, and there was nothing left for her. She could of course try to save other worlds, try to oppose Pazuzu, but it was not her power, and it was not her place. Yuyuko joked about it, but she was right. No one would care for her and no one would cry. It was time to die.
She quickly walked away from the unfinished tower, and it disappeared in the darkness. The world followed her like a shiny balloon, light pouring out through the cracks where the shards connected. It lit her way, and she was thankful for that.
She saw the edge of the plain, where the irregular tiles of floor ended. Not abruptly, there were gaps, then larger gaps, and beyond that – once again a swirling chaos of fires, geometry shapes and liquid spinning wheels. The world stopped, as if afraid, but Nitori kept moving forward towards the edge.
"I told you to tell me when you decide to die," Pazuzu said from behind. Nitori turned and smiled.
"I never thought you would care so much. Are you so lonely that you would cling to any companionship?"
Pazuzu's face made a disgusting sucking sound, and Nitori realized that it was laughter. "There is a shard of my power in your chest," he then said. "Give it back."
Nitori demonstratively turned and walked. The floor plates did not connect here, and she had to jump to get to the other one. Then she jumped again, boiling chaos below.
"Give it back," Pazuzu said, and there was clear threat in his voice now. Nitori turned, balancing on a small unsteady tile.
"If you want it so much, earn it."
She turned her arm inward and dug the talons into the right side of her chest. She found something solid and thin inside and pulled it out. It glowed red and purple, a tiny shard of divine.
And then a gust of wind nearly knocked her over. It was howling, piercing, moaning, the searing wind of the merciless desert. It seemed to come from all directions at once, and it tore away the thin film of darkness that covered Nitori's body. She shielded her eyes and looked at Pazuzu.
Pazuzu was hobbling, jumping from a plate to plate, careful, way too careful. He jumped closer, and spread his crooked arms to remain in balance. "Give me the shard," he hissed.
Nitori smiled, twirling the shard between her fingers. Pazuzu followed her movements with his eyeless forehead.
Then he jumped, without warning. Nitori stumbled back, but her heel reached the edge of the tiny plate, and there was nowhere to dodge. Pazuzu landed on the other side of the tile and threw his arm forward, grabbing the shard and wringing it away.
And Nitori pushed forward. It was a weak, desperate push, but it was enough. The lame creature stumbled, and after hanging a moment on the ledge Pazuzu fell, flopping his useless wing stumps, screeching and holding to the shard. The boiling chaos consumed him, snuffing out the screech.
The wind didn't stop, it continued to howl, and grains of sand dug into Nitori's dress, tearing it away little by little. Without the power protecting her, it wouldn't be long before she would fade into nothingness.
She stepped forward, the chaos calling her. Another step, and she was on the edge. Just one more step, and it would all be over. Just one more step, and there would be no hurt, no pain, no tears. Just one more step…
At the plain, one of the tiles exploded up. A clawed arm held onto the edge, and Pazuzu pulled himself over to the solid ground. He straightened up to his usual crooked posture and shuddered like a wet dog, boiling darkness coming off in drops. He then slowly turned.
"I can not be destroyed," he said. "Not by this or anything else. And I will not allow you to defy me."
He flexed his arm, and tiles rearranged, making a bridge for Nitori to walk to safety. A few tiles went vertically up, forming guard rails.
"One last chance to reconsider," he said and waved for the restored world to float closer. "Let us talk as equals."
({\}o{ })
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They sat on the ground, the shattered and restored world between them. Wind continued to nibble at Nitori's spectral body, taking away little by little. Pazuzu yawned, scratching behind his wing stump.
"What do you want?" Nitori wearily asked.
"I already told you everything about me," Pazuzu said, and there were much less screeches in his voice now. "It is not about me anymore, it's about you. What do you want?"
Nitori didn't answer. What did she want anyway? Her wish came true. Her desires came true. Everything she wanted…
Pazuzu chuckled at her silence. "Well of course. You have nothing left now. Your soul was in you obsession, but now your obsession is here, right in front of you, and your soul is not in your body anymore. Symbolically, not literally. But it still feels so empty, doesn't it?"
He raised his talon and lightly tapped on the surface of the crystal sphere. Nitori couldn't stop him, she couldn't even move. She looked down at her arms and saw her fingers were now skeletally thin, cycle breaker symbols visible around the bones.
"I won," Nitori said. It was starting to get difficult to talk. "This world, my world that I recreated from the shards. It is pure, and you can't corrupt it ever again. If you try, it will shatter."
"Why would I want to corrupt something so flawed?" Pazuzu said with genuine surprise. "It was pure before, it was beautiful and flowing, but now it is rigid and disgusting, like a drinking glass that was shattered and glued together, you can't drink from it anymore. The best you can do is to put on a shelf to gather dust."
Silence fell between them again. Pazuzu took the opportunity to pull another small globe from the darkness and started examining it, listening to what was happening inside.
"We are the same," he said after a while and released the globe. "I, like you, was born from the belief of humans, the belief in perfection of evil. Join me, and I will give you a new meaning to your life, a pursuit of perfection that is I."
"You are a hypocrite," Nitori said, and it took her some effort to remain sitting upright. "You always talk about purity and perfection but you, yourself, are a wretch."
"I am perfect," Pazuzu responded, and screeching overtones returned to his voice. "I am a pinnacle of adaptation. I don't need wings, there is nowhere here to fly. I don't need eyes, I use other, superior senses. I don't need to be fast, or strong, or immensely intelligent in this place. And I certainly don't need to justify anything to you."
"You are a liar and a failure," Nitori said and nearly fell over. "The other gods, they… crippled you. And you are now so weak you couldn't even corrupt… one little world. You couldn't even corrupt… me."
For a moment, Pazuzu's face cringed, but then the edges of his toothless maw went up.
"And even when you are dying you still hold on to your pride," he said and stood up, circling the small crystal sphere between them. "Overcome yourself and join me. I am perfection."
Nitori tried to turn to the approaching monster, but all her strength left her, and she fell back.
"Pazuzu… the toothless," she whispered. "Pazuzu… the killer of helpless… Pazuzu… the impotent… Pazuzu…"
And then Pazuzu roared, a screeching, guttural roar. He jumped forward and grabbed Nitori by the neck, hoisting her up and leveling her face with his. In his other hand a shard of power flashed into existence. He snapped it, and it turned to liquid, absorbed into his arm.
The twilight around disappeared, pierced by the rays of a bloated, sickly sun. The plain around spread in all directions, and Nitori saw beyond the crumbling tower, she saw lines of ziggurats, shadows dancing over their white sandstone terraces, she saw endless worlds, drawn to the ziggurats, gathering between them like fat, lazy sheep.
She saw others like her, the ones he brought from the shattered worlds with shards of his power, now his slaves, toiling endlessly, corrupting the multicolored blobs, and every blob was someone's fate, every blob a reflection of a few true worlds he would never be able to touch.
And beyond that was a humongous tower, spiraling up into the reddish sky, slaves crawling over it, and when someone would fall no one would care, but if a brick would fall it would be mourned.
And before Nitori stood Pazuzu himself, a powerfully built humanoid with the head of a hawk, proud in his nudity, bulges of muscles flowing under the bronze skin, four black wings spread royally behind his back.
Then it all faded, and she was again in the damp and dull twilight, held by the neck by a wretched misshapen creature. Nothing remained of the glory, even his grip was limp.
"Only those who are able to see beyond the obvious are worthy," Pazuzu screeched. "And no one else."
"Illusions change nothing…" Nitori whispered. "You are still… a failure. Kill me… solidify your failure… in eternity…"
Pazuzu's face twisted into something utterly incomprehensible, the maw twitching, the eyeless forehead rippling. His hand trembled, and the talons dug painfully into the skin.
And then there was that disgusting sucking laughter again, and Pazuzu's maw formed a smile. He waved his free arm to the side, and a tainted shard of the world jumped into his hand. He pressed Nitori's back against the surface of the crystal sphere and aimed carefully.
Then he stabbed forward, piercing through the heart. There was no pain, it really didn't feel like anything, but Nitori felt the wind change its direction. It was now blowing at her face, and the world behind her clung to her, sucking her in.
"Puppets sometimes seem so lifelike," Pazuzu mused. "It is so easy to forget that they are just objects. And objects do not get to choose, their owner chooses instead. So live, live your dream where you saved everyone, a pathetic broken dream pieced together from the shards of your obsession. Live and remember my mercy, my power, my radiant glory."
"You are a pathetic… slave… to your tower… your own… obsession…" Nitori managed to say. Almost her entire body was now absorbed, only her head was still above the surface. The smile of Pazuzu was gone. He raised his right arm, and a dull curved sword appeared in it.
"I am Pazuzu," he said, cold anger in his voice. "I am the ultimate corruptor. I am the disease, the drug, the worm that eats from within. And you, Nitori, you may have defied me and fate itself, but it doesn't change the fact that you are most definitely, eloquently and utterly fucked."
He slashed down, the blade painlessly passing through Nitori's head, and pushed her under the surface. She could see the scowl of the maw for a second, then the darkness above her filled with stars.
She was falling, and managed to turn in air. Below her was Gensokyo, broken, stitched Gensokyo, the lines where the shards connected glowing slightly. She saw a single light in the Hakurei shrine, the Human Village preparing for the flower festival, the Moriya Shrine...
No, there was no Moriya Shrine in this world, just some lights at the top of the Youkai Mountain. And no Scarlet Devil Mansion either, just a crumbling ruin where it should have been. The world didn't restore them, it didn't need to. They lived elsewhere, in other worlds, lived thanks to their own power, knowledge and cowardice.
Nitori saw her own little home, and she saw herself, sleeping on the bed. She kept falling and realized that when her tainted spirit connects with her body that other, innocent and helpless Nitori would die. And when she wakes up next morning she would have to fake a smile, and tell everyone that everything was perfectly fine, and decline spell card fights, because now as much as a slight blow to the head could kill her, destroy her soul. A broken wind-up toy in the world of immortals.
She fell faster and faster, but she could clearly see now how damaged this world was. The cracks crossed not only the land, they crossed the people, youkai, everything. Everything, absolutely everything was in some way incomplete, flawed, less than it was before.
She wished for the impact to kill her.
It didn't.
({\}o{ })
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