Absently a single thought moved the pieces across the board. Even as the greater self pushed through a thousand scripts searching for the answer. The world around him slowly collapsing piece by piece as he unravelled the possibilities.
His opponent moved another piece just as absently, the old man hunched over and staring off into the distance as his mind wandered. "The monsters have come again, have you managed to find the disturbance in your calculations yet?"
The thought process playing the game paused, the easiest answer coming to the fore. "There are no deviations in my own mindset, and the world itself hasn't collapsed to the point that the formation of my reality marble should be collapsing."
And yet the monsters at the edge of the abyss still surged forwards, like a tide of nightmares drawn forth from his subconscious tearing away at the sanity of the world.
"Because you observe it?"
He paused. "You think I am expecting a collapse eventually and it's being reflected on my world as we progress?" It was perhaps the closest possibility they had considered and a thousand of him passed forward for every script in search of an answer to the problem. "But none of my calculations even come close, the whole play is collapsing into shambles, and I don't quite know why."
A few more pieces switched sides, neither of them paying attention in the slightest to the game. "It seems we both need more information on how to progress. Can you look after my granddaughter in the future?" The man moved before the answer came, his chair unfolding into a monster of bone and intent. "Let us see if I can narrow down some of the variable you still lack. Log will be taking over as the source if I fail to return."
The desert sands felt cool beneath his feet, the first time he'd stepped out in an age. His duties, the mission always something more to do in the service of humanity.
And finally, it was time to do what he did best.
A thousand thoughts poured themselves free of his mind, each one a consciousness of its own waiting to be made manifest. And deep within himself he pulled upon the power of the world, the tiny fragment of magecraft that remained, ready to struggle against the world to make them real once more.
The world refused to struggle back, every flicker of its strength aiding him in that moment as they rose from the sands. Not ten, or a hundred, but legions upon legions of the dead as an entire army was made manifest before his eyes. "How the times have changed."
From desiccated wrecks to armoured guards standing with the full remains of their armaments, shambling horrors and twisted monsters rising in time, every one of them animated by a simple sliver of his will. With a thought he armed them further, tens of thousands of mystic codes carved by his ancestors falling into place.
And at the centre his own magnum opus rose, a twisted thing made not from a corpse, but ten thousand corpses stitched together into a misshapen parody of life, imbued with their age and cast into the world that it might grow beyond the sum of its parts.
"This is what it was like for my Ancestors so long ago."
With an ease of motion, the years faded away and his body pushed itself upwards, easily vaulting onto the back of his masterpiece, and he surveyed it all. The remnants of a lost civilisation brought to the battlefield once more.
In the distance the mud grew, an oozing thing that surged over the desert sands as the shape of monsters began to rise from it once more. "Perhaps this game will be more to our like eh Zepia, my monsters against your own."
The tide advanced.
As one they raised weapons and marched forward, spilling flesh and blood as they traded their lives against the enemy, each soldier moving in concert.
Crushed all the same as the tide belched forth.
So the first calculation ended.
Moving perfectly in sync their blades fell in perfect harmony, dancing around every strike as it came, cleaving their lives without trading a single drop of blood as an army of beasts were laid to rest on the sands.
A second instant spilled forth and they regrew themselves, falling upon his soldiers in an instant as the second calculation ended.
Regrew themselves onto readied spears and scything blades, dying again in an instant as they reformed. Their every moment another death as he carved a perfect slaughter through their ranks. The weaklings mere fodder for his blades.
As a true phantasmal beast rose and tore through his ranks in an instant.
Rose only to strike air as his forces were no longer there, and a blade of flame burned the world around it until there was nothing left but ash and mud. Their blood pouring away into the desert again and again.
Until the desert became a maw, the very world underneath his feet collapsing into an abyss of chaos and destruction as the army was swallowed whole.
As his mount threw itself back, hundreds of soldiers carried along beside it as they escaped the maw before it could close, even as he pulled back his consciousness from the pieces still left behind. Their mystic codes glowing with an unnatural light as they overloaded themselves and burned away at the existence devouring them.
Idly the part of him sitting back and watching continued their conversation even as the battle unfolded. "Zepia, I can at least conclude it's not merely one of your nightmares, they hold too much substance even when dispersed as though they were returning somewhere else."
After a pause that lasted a full second Zepia finally spoke in return. "A mindless nightmare should become mine the moment it enters this place, without an internal logic of its own it should not be able to separate itself from me."
He nodded calmly enough. "We're fighting a fragment of a nascent world slipping in through the cracks, endlessly rebuilding itself and held together by its own logic outside of the world."
The world around him bent and twisted, the image of a monster staring down from the abyss at the centre of the world. An existence standing at the summit staring down at his prey. "So they're merely dancing on our stage, destroying a world is such a trivial thing wouldn't you agree?"
"Would you take the stage my dear."
Deep within the heart of Atlas power began to coalesce, a thriving beating thing slowly pulsating to life as the flames grew. A swell of feeling pooled at the centre, an emotion that had only grown with time as more and more lives poured inwards.
The woman at the centre continued to sip her tea, even as the machine around her sprung to life fully in answer as it blossomed into the full height of its power. "This world is so well suited to our magecraft, even more so than the world was before."
The boundary collapsed as everything flooded to the centre. The flame and passion of life itself bleeding into definition as it became a true flame that melted the walls around as the world turned to lava. "It is good to know you still have the sense to fear us old man."
The nightmare inclined its head, a light smile resting on his face. "Of course, who else could I trust to hold a weapon capable of ending the world."
The inferno spilled outwards, racing across the desert and crashing down upon the sea of chaos, and wherever it touched the mind beneath it burned, hope and dreams and warmth blasted away as they became an all-consuming flame.
Until all that was left in the darkness was despair.
The beasts died as one and returned, the mud unravelled and was torn away.
In the glimpse of a moment his eyes reflected the life beneath and the tree was inverted. A single seed pouring into the world and making itself real in his eyes as a soul poured itself out and manifested itself through his nightmares.
Afraid of losing control to his own madness. The shade grew in a web of vines that tore into the scriptures of his world and injecting a thousand new stories of screaming wrath into his mind.
Afraid of losing control. Across the expanse it burrowed into etherlight nerves touching at the world and clutching it close, severing the links that bound him in even as it supplanted him. New life blooming as its own nightmares tore across his world and meshed with his own. Sealing him away as his workshop became a cage of thorns binding tighter around them both.
Afraid of the end of the world. Deep within the recess of his soul he felt the gate tremble, as something beyond his mind pushed down against the fabric of existence. Overwhelming and more monstrous than anything, it pressed firmly against the barrier of existence that held them in, even as the thing in the nightmare reached out to meet it.
It welcomed her in.
The world broke, a single shockwave tearing across the world and splintering his army in a moment. Every calculation wasted in the face of raw overwhelming power as the sky came crashing down around them.
"Ah I finally made it in myself to this tiny little world." The voice thundered across the world as much force as meaning as it tore away at the last remnants of his army, the colossal titan from which it emanated merely smiling down at the devastation around her.
The world itself responded, a thousand nightmares pulling free, weakness and death and revenge mercilessly tearing apart at the fragments of what remained.
She rose above and shattered them like insects, the swarm dispersing with but the lightest touch. "Now where is the centre of this world, I'll just collapse it and she'll praise me."
Her words were met with fire and devastation, heaven split asunder as the well of emotion poured forth more fire burning their lives away amidst the flames. The desert sand turned to glass; the wind became a storm, existence frayed at the seems as nightmares spilled forth from the decaying emotion as the world trembled.
And the girl in the centre smiled back as it crashed against her. "It tickles, but BB thinks you all have to die for this world to be saved."
From his own crumpled body he pulled it forth, an ancient bone from before humanity, the fading essence of a dragon. The might of a beast long dead coming to life as he poured his life forward. The memory burning for a single instant as it rose in overwhelming glory, a beast strong enough to rival the heavens themselves.
Everywhere the water touched the world broke, scoured away by the presence of a myth greater than itself as it cleansed the world before it in disaster. Unmaking everything in preparation for the new world that would come after it was gone.
A single hand swatted it away. The tsunami shattering and breaking against her will.
The titan dismissively passing him by as it trampled over the defences of their citadel, shattering every bounded field as it passed with merely the weight of its presence.
A single palm swept down, tearing away the roof. plunging into the heart of their home.
Mist poured up into the sky as Antaria entered the fray, searing and dissolving everything it touched as it reinforced the concept of the world itself, devouring the outsider and using its power to stabilise the world once more.
Ishtario responded, the outer layers of Atlas unfolding into a thousand layers of skin and flesh as it wrapped around the titan, carving a new world in the boundary inside themselves separate from all that had come before.
Pulsating and flickering in and out of existence as for a moment it turned itself as a weapon against the world, provoking the purge as it was dragged free of existence once more.
Shattering into so many gossamer threads of thought as a simple hand shattered their dreams, the titan slowly stretching back out into the world as their plans crashed down around them. "Where was I?"
She looked down on the wreckage, before reaching out as a delicate hand clamped down on the heart of Atlas. "We don't need this anymore, in fact all of you just need to disappear right now."
Blood poured down as she danced over the remnants.
Like a puppet caught on its own strings he watched helplessly. Each layer peeled back as effortlessly as the first as it set to work. Cutting his limbs free of his control and rising ever stronger in the place he had once held his own.
Each limb lost to the world; each thought caught in its web. Held in a perfect stasis as the thing started to turn the rules of his world into a new creation of its own.
Yet even as he felt more helpless his shadow moved. Tearing itself free of the strictures of his body and growing in the darkness until it had an almost physical presence beside him. "So, you are the one who made this world, what a strange resonance that has come to pass."
He made to speak in answer and the thorns bound him tighter in response. Silencing him before he could utter a word.
"You've lost I see." The distortion in the world grew, a nightmare stepping out into form as it spoke. A twisted demon growing ever larger as it seemed to eclipse his own presence. "Well, I'm not really here or alive again so the help I can give is rather limited."
A second mouth slowly formed on the creature's flesh, speaking with his own voice as it replied. "A demon here to offer me a Faustian bargain at the end I take it. My life in exchange for abandoning the world?"
The demon laughed, a thick guttural sound echoing through his bones. "I have no interest in saving your life, nor can I in this state. But I can play the role of Mephisto if you really desire it. Your life in exchange for the rest to escape."
It's twisted limb reached out and touched the thorns binding his world in place, flesh meeting plant and being torn to pieces in response. Yet he only laughed and plunged himself ever deeper amidst the thorns, willing them to respond and tear him to pieces.
The vines drank deep of his blood, and in that moment they tore themselves asunder, the cage binding him in place shattering as it tore itself apart even as the demon smiled. "That none may harm me and not suffer the consequences."
Power flowed back through his senses as his touch reached out through the world once more. Through the corpses of his comrades, the titan that had broken them and the shattered remnants hiding in the recesses of his tomb, fleeing wherever they could from the madness.
His own body wretched as the invasive presence was expelled, and he spoke once more. "I haven't had the chance to agree yet."
"You will, we shared a world of nightmares and fear of what we could become. We are not separate in this place so come, cast a light out into the future and march alongside me."
A simple wave of his hand and it was no longer a shadow, the writhing creature pulling itself into form as it wrapped around him, armour made manifest and the glimmer of a spear falling into his hand. "Your name."
"I am you, what more is there to say."
He grinned, even as the armament set itself fully and power beyond reason flowed into his corpse once more. "Well then Oberon I guess I'll be taking this part."
The world inverted as his nightmares were dragged down, all the strength in the world condensed to a single point. And the shadow laughed along beside him, as they tore across the night.
A tiny fragment spoke, a single thought partition left behind. "I've gone ahead Sion, so I'm leaving the position of director to you." It paused not even enough of a mind left to properly calculate the future. "A good place to start, where would that be?"
She stared back at him, thoughts racing even as an etherlite raced across the ground around her connecting her thoughts to the other survivors. "I will be taking the remaining survivors to Rome, I've already calculated the best route."
"You've contacted them already; good you were my best student."
An impassive expression, voice as calm as ever. "You're going to die then? All of my calculations suggest it."
"Of course, my part has come to an end." He smirked. "Because someone must take the stage and stop her. If I were stronger it would last an eternity, as I am now it seems a few days may be all I can manage. Use your time well for I already ran out of answers."
"Then if we're in agreement I won't waste more of your time." She turned her back on him and strode away. "I will review your defeat and use it to calculate the victory that you could not next time."
"Your daughter doesn't care for you much does she?"
What nonsense, "Can you understand my daughters love? She works hard, cares for humanity well… and she's adorable when she struggles to express herself like that." The thought faded as he re-joined his greater self, last words hanging in the breeze. "The door is open; I leave the next act to you."
"Ah you came out, just stop struggling and it'll all be over in a moment."
As he grew, she seemed almost youthful, childish even. Overwhelming power
A single swing carved open existence and shattered his limbs, broken body collapsing in an instant as…
Even if you win, she won't love you.
The shadow stepped on, drinking in the night alongside him as it preyed on her fears, touching at the core of her own nightmares and manifesting alongside them.
Poor abandoned child.
Wreathed in the sky above he towered over her, the broken fabric of the world forming into a spear, and crashing down to impale them both.
The backswing shattered them entirely as the world itself collapsed, as the broken shattered fragments of existence splintered around them. The little girl crushing everything with a swing of power so great the whole world trembled and collapsed.
Slumber until you find someone who cares.
She collapsed, and the sky crashed down alongside her as his world broke.
AN: I think I read a bit too much Xianxia for this. But I enjoyed writing it so everythings fine, even if I pulled large parts of Atlas out of my head to make it work.
More horizontal lines than I anticipated.
My failure to write Sion more weighs heavily, but oh well I have a whole arc to try and give her more scenes to try and get better.