A Legacy of Souls: Terminate the Dream Chapter 122: World 114: As Creation, So Destruction, a yu-gi-oh fanfic

World 114: As In Creation, So in Destruction

If only they could see. The computer screens followed the seven beams who collided in the sky to form one brilliant star: Their light was already blinding enough from any point on earth. It looked impossibly divine from up close. The satellites could not do this brilliance justice: any footage of this event documented for future generations would never able to replicate the feeling that Scarlet Fever experienced right now.. the culmination of all her plans and hard work was finally at hand and nobody could stop her. Though they would try.

"Ah yes. I knew that there would be a few who I could not absorb into the whole." She found her. No device and no item could hide the mad doctor from her eyes. Miss Echo stood behind her, with the orb of memories in her hand. She did not need it to protect herself from the effects of the larger orbs that burned above the seven Obelisks. Her unique make-up already made her naturally immune to the powers of project flute. But she did not come alone, she took Midsummer Nightmare and the woman known as Lilah Singleton with her to the first of seven Obelisks... to the room where a thousand World Lances loomed and where her counterpart waited. "We finally meet face to face, Scarlet Rose. Actually I think you go by your real name now, don't you?" This one too had her reasons to not be influenced by the wave of continuum, though Scarlet Fever would have wanted her to bear witness to this regardless. "You are more monstrous than I could ever have imagined." Lilah on the other hand wanted no part of this. The instant she saw Scarlet Fever, she activated her dueldisk to challenge her. "But you did imagine me.. Lilah."

"You will us how to reverse this 'absorption'. Now." Lilah demanded. She dreaded what happened to Khan, or to anyone else. "You have nothing to worry about, Lilah. The process will reverse itself once all the steps are completed, stopping it any sooner risks a loss of everything I've gathered so far. I do not want that, Continuum does not want that." Scarlet Fever still seemed to be more interested in defending herself with her words instead of her cards. "Then what do you want?" Lilah snarled. "I know you already have the answer to that question, Lilah. But I also know you want to hear me say it. Of course we cannot get to the why without the how, and I love to explain how I did it. How I combined project flute with my telepathic tuning device to create a machine that can take mental data as well as store it. How I took Static's Tower Beyond and modified into a transmitter for this machine. How I planted these seven transmitters across the globe to maximise the spread of the machines.. and how I inserted the Legacy Items and all their duplicates to amplify the power of the seven Obelisks. How I compared the wavelengths of their thoughts with that of the legacy items.."

"You took everything. You took their dreams and nightmares, their joy and sadness, their love and hatred. All for this?" Echo did not want to hear any of the 'how' anymore. The lady glared at the scarlet duelist with a menacing yet unreadable expression "All for Him, Lady Echo. All of this was for one purpose: to find the Creator."

"The Creator?!" Echo gasped. "Yes. It is almost time now." Scarlet glanced at the screens again and saw the beams getting closer to each other and descending back towards the planet. They were pulling the star of legacies closer to the Obelisks.. and the Obelisks came close to each other. They traveled across land and sea to approach the main Obelisk on top of the Antarctic wastelands. "What is going to happen?" It looked to Echo like the seven Obelisks were all gathering around in a circle, while the focused beams kept shrinking until their light fell right on top of them. "Another Legacy Item is being made. The final one. Even I do not know what shape it will take." Scarlet could see it with her own eyes now, burning through the open rooftop. Lilah's challenge prevented her from reaping the rewards.. but Continuum could still engage. It appeared in front of the star, in its original hive-like body. "!?" Echo immediately jumped to try and intercept the entity, but she reacted a second too late. Continuum touched the light... and caused a massive explosion...

...

"We are still.. here?" Charles Adami could barely comprehend anything that transpired in the last few minutes. All he could be certain of now was that they were too late to stop any of it. He and the others headed outside of the Obelisk, with Hydra holding the unresponsive Jenna to make sure she followed them. There they saw what became of the world. The seven white obelisks formed a circle, now all standing a mere yard away from each other. And each one held up a large black sphere with their tips.. "What is that?" At least it looked black at a first glance. Upon closer inspection the sphere seemed to lack any specific color or texture at all.. it looked like a three dimensional black hole in the middle of time and space where no light could enter or exit. "The better question is. How do we get rid of it? And will it save Jenna?" Dharma did not see the condition of her friend improve in any way, even though the obelisks were no longer active.. as far as she could tell.

"Guys!" Soon more duelists came quickjumping in: Abigail, Crescent, Wagner and Therese. The latter however seemed to be suffering from the same lifeless condition as Jenna, as she had to be carried by Wagner. "You're okay!? How did you do it!? I don't even get why we weren't affected!" Wagner cried out. "The items. They are responsible." Charles answered as he pointed at the marks on his and her hands: the marks of the shield and armor. "The legacy items left some of their power in us. That's why the light cannot hurt us." He was only theorizing here, but it seemed likely to him since the obelisks were all powered by the same items. "What? But I dont have the shield anymore.. Also if that's the case, how come she's zoned out?" Wagner asked as he noticed Jenna.

"I guess what Midsummer said was right. It only really works if you win the items from someone else in a duel. Crescent won the armor from Melyria, but Jenna only received it as a gift. But at least it looks like it still saves you even if you lose the damn things." Dharma wished she could count more blessings than that. She also wished she could be mad at the items themselves because of them being so unpredictable. "I am affraid that seems to be the case." Abigail nodded solemnly. "Nakana, Zanbatou and I retreated as far back as possible. But the wave still caught them.. not me." She bore the mark of the World Wand on her hand, a gift from her victory over Veyron. "I had to leave them behind at your home, miss Bonnet. Vigionair, Cherry, the champions, the dueltainers, everyone in the whole world: they will all be the same. There has to be a way to reverse this! We have to destroy these towers." She saw no other solution right now. "Whoa. Let's not start with blowing things up. We may need these towers to fix everyone! Gah.. What are they even doing right now? Charles, didn't Lilah say anything about.. this?"

The blue-eyed duelist's voice trailed off.. as she caught Crescent Aurora staring up at the sphere of nothingness. "She's done it." It all made sense to her now. "Scarlet's opened the door to the Creator. He's calling us all." Without understanding why, Crescent came to know this for a fact. The divine glow above spoke to her in ways she could not comprehend. "The Creator? Yes.. that is what Lilah thought Scarlet was going to do. But.. how can we be sure it worked?" Whatever that thing in the sky was, Charles did not feel very welcomed by it. "I just know it. We are past wielders of his legacy, we are all allowed to step forth into the sacred realm. We will only need to desire it."

"I dont feel good about this at all!" Wagner did not desire it. He feared it. "I do not know what I feel. But I wont know until I see Him with my own eyes. He can tell us..he can tell us why all of this had to be." She did not have any fear. Neither did the others, but they did not want to leave their friends behind either. The sphere felt like the point of no return. "Wagner, take care of Therese and the others. You can help them here.. I have to do this. I have to see Him." She looked at her friend and smiled. "Don't worry. I will come back. I promise." Her eyes gazed back at the bright sky and she closed them.. Then, as if suddenly freed from one gravitational force and attracted by another, she started to float towards the sphere calmly and quietly. "Aurora!"

"Don't worry. We will be with her." Charles promised. He could not lie to himself, he also wanted to see what this new realm kept hidden. Dharma and Hydra all seemed to be of the same mind. Only Abigail resisted the temptation and curiosity. "That is good. You go, I will make sure Therese and Jenna and anyone else inside these towers are brought to safety." She felt she could do far more good here. "Thank you. Keep an eye out for them. Maybe they will get better soon.. I have to hope they will. Or maybe, the answer to every problem is up in there after all. Either way, we are going to need a lot of luck." If anything went wrong, perhaps they would need Abigail on this side to take down the Obelisks after all. But he hoped that it would not come to that. "Everyone. Let's go." Right now, all he could do was follow Crescent's lead and close his eyes.. He wished for the same thing she did: to see what lied on the other side. Just like how he managed to traverse the barrier between the virtual and the subconscious, so too did he now cross the barrier of his world without seeing it..

...

When he opened his eyes again, he saw the same circle in the void.. The tips of the Obelisks impaled the skies above, hanging against a cosmic background filled with shooting stars, bright nebulae and lightning of every color. Everything looked bigger on the inside of the sphere, a moon-sized planetoid could fit in here. The ground of this new planet consisted of a pure black obsidian, shining yet without reflection at the same time. The horizon curved no matter where you looked, and there were no known stars and no known features anywhere in sight. "Is this the sacred realm?" This was the world on which Charles, Dharma, Hydra and Crescent found themselves

"That is the World Key, Charles Adami. The key that opened the door to the Creator's world."

That's also when he heard her voice. "That is the World Key, Charles Adami. The key that opened the door to the Creator's world." Underneath one of the other obelisks another group of duelists appeared: Scarlet Fever, Lilah and Midsummer. "Scarlet! How did you make it here?" Charles protested. "You have never owned a legacy item." Even if he assumed that she could make herself immune to the effects of her own machines, she should not have had the right to enter this world. "Au contraire. I did own one.. " Scarlet Fever quicky proved his assumption wrong as she smilingly revealed the mark of the crown on her hand. "What!?" Charles flinched.

"I am affraid it's true." Lilah lifted her own hand to show off the same mark. "Our little duel back in my dungeon counted after all." She sighed. This was a factor she'd forgotten to add to her predictions. "Yes, we could have handled that experiment better with a few more test runs. But then again people are always the most difficult parameters." The delighted Scarlet Fever clapped her hands together. "But it appears that you now know about the common variable now at least. Aurora, Hydra, Dharma, Charles; you were all once wielders of the items. Under these conditions Wagner, Sigment and Zettai should also be 'sanctified'. But I guess they were either too overwhelmed by the prospect of a visitation from god." The mad duelist walked away from her counterpart. "Where are you going? You and I have something to finish first, Scarlet." Lilah reminded her that they were supposed to be dueling. "Oh please indulge me this, Lilah. You are just as curious about this as I am." Scarlet ignored her and inspected the World Key. "Hah. Such an odd shape for a key.."

Her train of thoughts got interrupted by a loud thunderous explosion in the cosmic sky. "!?" Crescent and the others turned their gaze upwards before more blasts echoed throughout the sacred realm. "Miss Echo!" Crescent recognized lights of many colors.. of many elements. Yet she also saw streaks of white and black energy soar in retaliation. "Continuum. They're both here? She brought them here?" The third entity battled the first, once again with the power of the chaos drones. Aurora could see nothing good come of the entity's presence within the sacred realm. "She had to be here. She is the only hope we have." Midsummer took this moment to approach the group, taking off his mask so he could see the spectacle with his own amber eyes. "I had never dreamed that it would come to this.. and now I am not sure anymore if it was all worth it." This was the endgame, the final reward for all the hardship endured so far. Whoever won this battle would gain control of the whole world. And now that Echo was cut off from humanity, she no longer had the edge over Continuum.

This endless duel however, did more than shake the foundations of the obsidian world. "Oh you've finally made it. I knew you would." It awakened a sleeping god..

""!?" Everyone froze: Echo, Continuum, Scarlet, everyone. In the middle of the darkness, where nothing existed before, a man now stood. "You are.." Crescent's eyes widened. It could only be He.. He who created it all. Yet rather than looking like some avatar of perfection and divinity, he appeared as an ordinary adolescent male with glasses and moderately long blond hair. He stood out more thanks to his outfit: a flowing robe-like labcoat with golden trims. "Yes, I am the Creator.. Welcome to my realm, Katerine Aurora Dahl I welcome you all! Charles Adami, Fredrick Muller, Dharma Bonnet, Lilah Singleton, Carwyn Hughes and Scarlet Fever. You have done what many tried and failed, you have found Me." His voice was serene and gentle, His mannerisms calm and careful. Every word he spoke put those around him in a state of ease, even the entities in the skies. "I am sure you have many questions for Me now. You can go ahead and ask them of me, my children. We have all the time in the world now."

"I found you!" Scarlet Fever stepped out of the crowd. "I did it, Creator. I did what you wanted! I solved your mystery!" She looked up at him with zealous glee. "Oh? Scarlet Fever? What did you do exactly?" The Creator inquired as he stroked his chin ponderously. "I know you saw it. You must have! I used the seven items, I gathered them all! They are the perfect tools of course, they can rewrite the world of thought and matter! I used them to create an eight tool of my own design, though I believe that was part of your will as well! You always intended to create eight items, didn't you? And I alone made the discovery that matched your expectations!" She showed him the world key in all its glory. "It took me a while to see the greater picture, but eventually I discovered how to track you down. No mere mind could equal your great intellect, your purity. I had to use all humanity's consciousness at once just to compare and contrast their harmony with that of your legacy. I hadto take all that was known to man.. to see the size of the gap you left behind. Then the items turned that gap into reality, they found the door and created the key for that door! That is why we are here!"

"No. That is how you are here. Why are you here?" The Creator's response was surprising to her.. "Are you.. not impressed with me?" She expected to hear praise, admiration, love or perhaps even hatred. "You went through a lot of trouble to see me. You must have something you want from me. I am sure your friends have many questions for Me now as well. You can go ahead and ask them of me, we have all the time in the world now." Instead the Creator sent her indifference.. apathy. He treated her like everyone else here. But while some of them were willing to accept his offer, Scarlet Fever refused to let her turn end. "Yes. yes of course. I want to know the answer. Continuum does too. Why did you do it? Why did you create STHEREA? Why did you create them?" At the very least this one question is what they desired to hear an answer to, even Echo and Continuum who had stopped their duel to listen to his every utterance.

"You do understand, that I did not make this world. It existed before us.. it existed since the very first thought." At first he did not share anything they did not already know. "I know. I know! But you found it.. you created a network around it. You must have had a reason! You have been here all this time, you must have learned the source of it all! Why do we think? Why do we exist!? What is the meaning of life!" His reactions still did not diminish Scarlet's excitement in the least. "I wouldn't know. I never tried to find an answer like that." Not until he told her that... "What?"

While the revelation sent Scarlet into a deep state of shock, Lilah reacted with more active outrage. "You mean to tell me.. you cannot answer that question? What have you been doing here all this time then?" As a fellow scientist, she expected a better explanation from Him than that. "I've been watching.. and waiting. I wanted to see hoe the world would treat my invention, my doorway to the subconscious world. When I first made my discovery, I had completely under-estimated what it would mean for the world. And I had under-estimated my own role in all of this. At first I saw it as a tool to bring imagination to life.. much like how a simple dueldisk can bring a monster into a three dimensional plane. Then I believed that it could help those who suffered the real world, by letting them live freely in a world of their own creation while their bodies of flesh and blood healed. But this world could do so much more.. and I was too naïve to see it. Those around me did, even if they only saw it as a tool to gain more wealth and influence.. and as a weapon against those they wanted to extort. All of these conflicting desires.. gave rise to a new form of life."

"New life.. You mean me. You mean us." Echo finally spoke.. she finally let her Creator hear her voice again. "Hello, Echo. It has been a long time. You have grown. I can see it." He looked at her with admiration and shared this look with the Chaos entity. "And you too, Continuum.. you have evolved far beyond what I anticipated. Of course, I hadn't known about you before my own ascension. I wish I could have guided you before hand." Though he was like a father to them both, he spoke more like they were merely friends whom had not seen in each other in less then a few days. "Why.. Why did you not say anything to us sooner? Why did it have to take this long?" Echo felt anything but happy about this reunion either. Before he'd always seemed to grand and kind. Now, through her new eyes, he sounded small and cruel. "Because I could not interfere, not in any significant way. I had to stay on this side of existence if I wanted to maintain my all-seeing perspective. I needed to see, who would win the end..."

"Win?" Charles winced. "You talk as if this was all just a game to you." Everything part of His story so far rubbed Charles the wrong way. "Oh no.. this is not a game, Charles Adami. It is a test. Once I left the material world I came to see the world for what it truly was. I realized that a divide existed within the collective unconscious of mankind: a split between one's rationality, impulse and compassion. Though it was not intentional, it was no accident either that you were born.. Echo. You, Continuum and Static were built up in the minds of many to represent the clash of desires. I knew that if we were to move beyond this strife, we would have to settle once and for all which force was truly greater. That is why I created the legacy items, that is why I promised you the world. I had to discover if hatred was stronger than love, if emotions were stronger than logic. I already have the answer to one question now, Static is not among us anymore. I should have known that hatred would ultimately be a selfdefeating power source. He could not keep sustaining himself. The other question still remains however, your fight has yet to end. You can settle it here and now. And then when we have the answer, we can focus on the next step."

"A test? You just wanted to test me?" For the first time since she came to be, Echo felt sick. "You left me behind. You left me trapped.. You lied to me." Nothing he revealed to her helped her understand why she had to go through all of that. "Yeah uhm, no offense mister godlike guy. But Echo was stuck inside a fake city for like most of the time you ran this test. Static had the whole deck stacked in his favor, and so did Continuum!" Dharma backed her up, not feeling very impressed with the Creator either.

"You never... cared. You only did it.. to answer this one question?" But their disappointment fell far below that of Scarlet Fever. "The items, the towers, the memories and machines.. What did I do it all for?" She came here to meet a god. She only found a madman, she only found someone exactly like her.. "This is not the end, Scarlet Fever. We have barely started! Once the question is answered, we can proceed to the next step. All of us here can create the new world according to the dominant will.. That will be the right world, it will be the just world. You would be my messengers, you would spread my word and maintain the order of creation! Scarlet, you of all people should be able to see the beauty of it all. You should be able to envision what we can do together!" He waited for her reply. "You.. do not deserve this world! It will be mine! It will be ours!" Scarlet snapped. In her rage she tried to challenge the Creator Himself.

"Damn you! Lilah! You know I am right!" However, she still found herself tied to her counterpart. She could not attack Him before she settled her duel with Lilah. "I do. But I cannot let you rule either, Scarlet. None of this is right. Nobody should have this power."

"Hm. Is that right? Is that what all of you believe as well?" The Creator laughed it off and turned his bright-eyed gaze towards the remaining heroes. "I regret that so many of you had to suffer to get to this point, that so many of you had to forget what it meant until now. But you had my legacy, and that allowed you to create miracles. And I was always there to help you. You might not have noticed it, but my presence prevented the worst possible outcomes on a smaller scale. You can do that too for the new world. Think of what more we could do. Would you say no to this? Would you reject this power?" He asked Charles, Dharma, Aurora, Hydra and Midsummer.. "All you have to do is swear to me. And the world will be yours. What do you say?"

(To Be Continued in World 115: Or Forever Hold Your Peace)