Chapter 43: Shattered Reality: Through Desolation Lies the Climax
I fly up through the air, my body swerving back and forth as I pressed against the vanishing air around me and make my way towards the atmospheric layer. I could not see what lied in space no matter how much I tried to peer ahead. But what I was able to see as I turned my head back around was the planet decaying behind me. There was a massive hole in place of the great plains of the Mushroom Kingdom, and with gravity now a non-factor the citadel collapsed into the empty vastness of nothingness that existed below and left this world without a trace. Alex's condition was one of the first things I thought of as I tearfully continued to fly away from what was left of the planet.
I left him to fight the Reaper and the illusion of Joe Dark, and I had no idea if they vanished after the beast had appeared. I guess it didn't matter in the end, since even if he was able to return to the citadel there was no way for him to survive the deterioration of reality around him. In fact, I had to even wonder how I was still around after everything else had disappeared without a trace… "No, I can't start thinking that way. Whatever the reason, its up to me to finish this…And only me…" To think that I would truly be alone in this final battle…I can't even rely on the spirits of the others to be by my side after all that was sacrificed.
As I finally ascended past the vanishing atmosphere, I finally manage to catch a glimpse of the being truly responsible for the slow disappearance of reality, and am immediately reminded of an earlier mention about the horrors us higher beings are able to perceive. With the body of a leviathan that spanned outward for what appeared to be infinity and a coloring that allowed it to blend perfectly into the depths of space despite its pale white sheen along with a incomprehensible, phantasmal head whose scar shaped, glowing red eyes stared towards me without an ounce of emotion, the being spread open its planet-consuming maw to reveal a dark blue interior with the cosmic antiquities of a thousand stars glowing brightly behind its formless teeth. Attached to its expansive body was millions of ghastly tendrils that spread out across the boundless universe and wrapped themselves around both planets and stars to slowly erase them from existence.
Needless to say, the being was overwhelming in size, seeing as my body alone was merely as big as the corner of his eyes. Before the being fully acknowledged my existence, I turned back towards the planet, and watch as the remaining bits of distorted land deteriorates into itself. Within seconds, nothing remains of the planet besides the empty space where it once stood. I had nothing to land on from here on out, and would stay in the vast reaches of outer space until I failed or succeeded. "Everyone…I wish I could say you were counting on me from above…But that's not the case this time." I turn back towards the being and draw my sword from my holster, flipping it around and swinging it out beside my body as I say to myself "I can only go on my own beliefs and determination…And I'll do it all for those I love."
As I raised my blade to face the beast in combat, it too drew two three-clawed hands from the ethereal plane to float beside his head. I peered towards the center of the beast's forehead, and within the swirling darkness that composed its being I noticed a colored speck taking prominence amongst everything else. It was Mr. Reality, unconscious with his cloak wrapped around in a twister his hands have been forcibly crossed in front of his chest. "Well at least I know where he is…Now the question remains as to how I am going to separate him from the rest of this being…" I lean my body slightly to the right, holding my sword out in front of me as I look towards the being and send a powerful, illuminating glow into the blade to make sure that its attention is entirely on me.
As it leans its head down slightly and pulls the entirety of space forward with its sluggish tug, it says to me in a monotone voice without moving its lips "All shall be wiped clean…A universe without sustenance to curb the desires of my host body is one that does not deserve to exist in its current state…I will wipe the impurities clean, and recreate everything so my host body can no longer succumb to the tenacious grip of ennui. This reality shall be shattered, and that is the only, inevitable conclusion." "You'll have to erase me first before you can make that reality a possibility!" I declare out in brute defiance of the being's goals, and with a chilling laugh the spawn replies to me by saying "You are but a miniscule speck…An atom on the surface that is the universe…I have already wiped out hundreds upon hundreds of galaxies…It matters not what you accomplish, oblivion awaits you…"
With a slight movement of his right hand that covers half a planet's worth of space, a series of glowing, contorting portals open up in front of the being's expansive maw as he seals his lips shut. Through the center of these portals emerges solar empowered beams of energy that home in on my current location and threaten to incinerate my body whole. With their size proving to be double that of my own, I swiftly fly across the reaches of space as a blinding streak of light to dodge the attacks as they are fired out one by the one, new portals spawning to replace the old ones until I take my sword down beside my body and gather up light energy from the excess surrounding the beams that are fired my way.
After a quick turn around I swing my sword outright towards the closest portal, releasing a powerful beam of my own that enters the portal and overwhelms it completely. The resulting explosion leaves behind a flash of light similar to that of a blinding quasar, but with my body turned around from the light I am able to keep moving onward and cleave my blade through five more portals that I reach by zipping across space at different junctions. I turn my back to the storm of explosions and calmly holster my blade while the gale from the blasts blows the top of my wings forward past the length of my body.
Once things have calmed down a bit I turn back around and try to keep my heart beat under control as I am once again taken aback by the size of the being before me. After that I fly backwards to get some distance, which in the end would prove to be a futile matter as a quick turn of the head would leave me watching as the being commanded its massive right hand to sweep across the vast depths of space without any debris to get in its way. Even though it was only half the size of the head itself, the hand was still way too big for me to avoid, even if I moved as fast as I physically could manage.
So with my sword gripped before my body while the handle hung in front of my waist, I jerked the blade once to create a pristine, light-blue glow around it and readied myself to cut a large enough hole through the hand to make it so the palm would not impact with my body. With a bit of concentration on the air in front of me and a calming shutting of my eyelids, I etched a two-dimensional seal out of pure white light to act as a barrier that would break and alert me of just the right moment of when I should strike out. I imagined the fuzzy glow protruding from the seal as it finished, but it was a beautiful sight that only lasted three seconds before it shattered upon making contact with the otherworldly hand.
With the shards of light flying my way I thrust my eyelids up and gaze through the storm, swinging my sword vertically to burn a large crack through the hand of darkness. It was surprisingly bigger than one would expect considering the size of my blade, and at an estimate I put it about twenty times the height of my body and ten times as wide. I slipped between it, making it out as the wound heals up and the hands flies over my head to return to the side of the being's head. "What the hell? I know light supersedes darkness…But my attack shouldn't have hurt it that much, should it?" As I turn my head slightly towards the right while my heart began beating quickly, I am interrupted from my train of thought by the being's next attack.
As space around me trembled, the begin pulled its head back and pulled its mouth up wide. Cosmic dust was dragged in from all-around via a powerful, tornado shaped vacuum that ended at the center of the being's mouth. The ceasing of the trembling universe only proved to be a warning to the severity of the monster's next attack. With little time left to move out of the way, I covered my body in an aura of pure light and zipped through space towards the right, leaning my body to the side while pouring as much of my excess aura as physically possible into my blade for the ensuing counterattack. As the being swung its head downward, everything slipped into an eerie silence.
Whatever stars remained ceased to shine their light as they were devoured by the tendrils of the leviathan, and some of their energy glowed through the body until it reached the core of the being's mouth. With a powerful light breaking through the cosmic confines, the being shot through the infinite reaches of the universe a mighty cone-shaped beam infused with the sparkling essence of a billion stars and the reality tearing energies that had been stored away within the incalculable length of its gut. The only reason I managed to survive was because I was behind the left edge of the beam…Though admittedly, avoiding it didn't stop me from looking on in horror as the beam tore through the pitch blackness of space and rendered everything white for light years of distance.
When the beam finally subsided and the tear had been left behind, I shook off the fear I experienced upon witnessing that and turned towards the beast, flying at its massive face without a care in the world as a blinding streak trails behind my folded wings. I begin a violent onslaught of swords slashes, my blade being swung about in multiple directions to carve apart the beast's gargantuan left cheek until the destruction causes it to flinch and react to my presence. As it began to turn my way, I pull back my sword and whirl it around a few times above the right side of my body before grabbing it in a backhanded manner and charging straight through the air across the front of the beast's chin.
With a powerful yet precise cleaving motion, I cut through the entire chin and disconnect it from the rest of the creature's head. Though without the weight of gravity to pull it away, the regenerative process of the leviathan causes the separated halves to fuse back together in a matter of seconds. Even though the damage was repaired, the beast lets out a hollow yet painful sounding roar through its mouth. When I emerge on the other side of the creature's head I flip myself around while rapidly ascending through space, swinging my sword as each of my rotations positions my vision towards the beast to unleash a formless wave of light towards my opponent.
Each collision releases a burst of energy that disintegrates large portions of the beast's head at a time, leaving little on the right side of the face by the time I have risen above the top of it. "Insolate particle…" The beast growls towards me, and as it recreates its damaged features it turns towards me and drags space apart as I swings its infinite body through the depths of space. With a mere glow of its eyes and a shifting of its brows I am suddenly bound by three dark red rings of solar energy that are kept together by black lightning with a powerful magnetic pull surrounding it. As the inner edges of the rings burn themselves against my skin, my sword is rendered useless by the electricity coursing down through my arm and into the blade.
"Now you shall see the birth of something magnificent…" The beast raises its hands beside me, and with but a whim they are flipped through space so the right one is below me and the other is above me. "See what can be created through the hands of your new god and tremble…" As the hands were brought down against me, I did not feel my body getting squished together but rather absorbed into the darkness exuding from the palms as the heat from the rings expanded outwards in a spherical shape until my entire body was consumed. With the temperature rising to near inhuman degrees, I had to coat myself in a veil of light just to prevent my blood from boiling.
Then the hands began to pull apart from one another, the sphere stretching outward in circumference so the edges stay close to the palms. The heat increases even further, but I keep my veil up even though its strength has to be increased to match the temperature around me. "He is creating a miniature sun…" I note as the density within the energy's core begins to push against my veil and crack it without much difficulty. I widen my eyes upon thinking about my revelation a bit more, and realize that there was only one way this was going to end. "He's going to detonate it!" And with me trapped in the center, I would receive the full brunt of the explosion, which would likely kill me if I let it go through.
(Author's Note: Now, I really know this breaks the tension of the fight for those of you who have read up until this point, but I really need to address something that is going to happen in this next paragraph before anyone starts calling bullshit. You see, while writing Chapter 42, I was going to include a sentence that indicated that Mew used his light powers to pick up the Time Stone before engaging the Reality Avatar, but in my rush to get the chapter out in time I neglected to put it in. So since this was all part of the original plan, the event in question did happen, I just…Well, am an idiot for failing to remember that detail before I posted the chapter. Anyways, now you may continue unabated.)
With quick thinking, I reach into my left pocket and pull out the Time Stone, grasping it tightly and close to my chest as I can feel the sphere reaching its maximum size. I had to pull this off perfectly by waiting for the exact moment where the heat vanished and the explosion began, otherwise I would be consumed and the time freezing effect would be negated. Everything became silent as I closed my eyelids and concentrated on the crackling atoms around me. All I could hear besides those was, to him, the quiet whisper of the leviathan's voice. "I give this new universe its first sun as a declaration of the true destruction of the old universe…Be birthed…And tremble the depths of space…"
As the reaction began to form in the core of the sun, I activated the Time Stone and deactivated the veil around me. The heat became non-existent for but a brief moment as the area is bathed in a pale light-blue aura. I push through the thick heat of the sun as quickly as I could, until I make it out through the front. I keep going though just to make it away from the brunt edge of the explosion, and once I turn around and see that the place where I once was had become the size of a baseball from the distance I was at I release the effect of the Time Stone from the universe. The explosions bursts out in a glowing red spectacle of energy, extending far beyond the grasp of the hands, uncontained and bright in its form.
As the hands are drawn back to the side of his head, I notice something odd with the being as I looked over at him. His figure had become more diluted, and the darkness composing his head was now a lot more hazy than it was when the battle began. A similar change can be noticed in my own aura, which is wrapped lightly around my body with a rather hazy border. My skin and armor also looks a little paler compared to before, which was rather suspicious considering the fact that I wasn't even trying to cast an aura. But as I loomed on the issue for but a few seconds, the leviathan stares out towards me and says "Hmm…So the sun was unstable…A pity though that you did not die…That Time Stone of yours cannot allow you to secure victory like it did against my host body, but I will not deny that it is still a pesky relic of the original Overlord's existence…Seeing as he used it to seal me and my brethren in the Light Citadel two-thousand years ago…"
I cared not about the information that the being revealed to me at the moment. If anything, I'll try and remember what was said and get some details out of someone else later on. I began to hold my blade out in front of me and looked onward waiting for an opening to strike the beast, even though he had healed all the wounds that I inflicted on him up until this point. It was strange though. As I tried to perceive his power level with a focused glance, I noticed that it was climbing upward consistently with no end in sight, and yet despite that I felt that he was on even ground with me at all times. "What is going on here?" I asked in my mind as the beast then said to me "Very well…It seems all I can do is devour you, where you shall spend a nightmarish eternity being consumed by my leviathan gut. You have nowhere to run child…The entire universe has been made blank by my powers…"
With a furious roar, the beast lunges forward through the depths of space. With its girth, its movements are sluggish, yet because of its size I knew it wouldn't take much for the beast to consume me with its open maw. As I readied myself to escape the initial lunge, my body is suddenly struck with a sharp, throbbing pain through my heart. I am forced onto my knees with my left fist plunged against my chest, only for my knuckles to not feel anything as my body starts to become weightless and my chest cavity becomes hollow. With fear gripping my twitching body, I raise my left hand up in front of my face, only to find that the flesh had been replaced entirely with pure light.
A quick look at the rest of my body revealed that a similar change had occurred all-around, and one thing for certain was that this was something I did not activate voluntarily. My sword had slipped out of my fingers and floated in the gravity-less vastness in front of me, leaving me with no weapon to defend myself with as the paralyzing agony brought on by my sudden change in body structure rendered me unable to move away from where I was currently kneeled down at. The beast was an immeasurable distance away from me, but that gap was closing swiftly. I couldn't do anything, and I both knew and loathed this reality. I was going to be consumed, and a new universe would be born without anyone I knew in it.
As I tightly shut my eyelids and leaned my head forward with my illuminated body trembling in fear I said to myself "This can't be how it ends…Please…There has to have been someone who survived the erasure reality…I beg you, if you can hear me…Please save us all…" My gentle, whispered prayer slips through my lips as tears fail to be drawn from my vanished tear ducts. As the beast draws ever closer, I suddenly sense a new presence that was never there before, and in a matter of seconds I manage to catch a glimpse of a familiar cloaked figure leaping across space upon opening my eyelids. In its otherworldly right hand was my Time Stone, and from his left sleeve emerged two hands that extend past the believable length of a normal human's limbs until they reach the forehead of the leviathan.
With a simple collision of the palms, the beast is knocked back to its original starting point after two resounding, phantom green shockwaves are released from the impact points. Stunned by the fact that this mysterious person has harmed him and deterred him from his predetermined goal, the beast says with a stutter in his voice "Y-You?! Impossible…All beings should be erased from existence…The only reason the Elemental Overlord still exists is because of the Light energy reserve he absorbed!" After regaining his composure the beast raises his head back up and lets out a subdued growl through his lips, saying to the mysterious stranger "Very well, then…I WILL DEVOUR YOU TOO!" Before lunging forward once more, ready to eat us both.
"Yeah, I don't think that's likely to happen…" The cloaked figure raises his ghoulish right hand swiftly into the air, activating the Time Stone with but a gesture and freezing everything but myself and him in place as a pale blue aura covers the depths of space. After activating the effects of the relic the being flings the stone casually over his shoulder, and as the pain in my body suddenly subsides I cup my hands in front of me and catch the Time Stone, looking up in bewilderment at first as the cloaked man turns around and withdraws his ghoulish hands into his body. "A-Aren't you the Chronicler? …The real one, that is?" I asked, his appearance garnering a familiar recollection of the things Alex told me about the mysterious, otherworldly being not too long ago.
The man nodded, and edged closer to me with his face obscured entirely by the shadow of his hood. He had a rather spectral way of flying, especially with how the bottom of his cloak moved about without a single bit of wind to help it. "But…What are you doing here? I-I have to share some agreement with the beast on this one…Shouldn't everyone have been wiped from reality?" As I voiced my inquiry, the Chronicler stopped but a few feet away from my body and extended one of its hands outward, expecting me to take it so he could help pull me back onto my feet. I accept his offer by holding out my right hand, and once I have stood up straight I keep the Time Stone grasped in my other hand since I have no pockets to store it away anymore.
The Chronicler finally acknowledged my question afterwards, and with one hand suspended out of his right sleeve he says to me "Good thing I exist outside of reality then. Also, without even counting me, not everyone has been wiped away, though the number of people isn't really higher than the single digits…" Though I didn't really like the prospect of knowing, I turned my body in caution and asked the Chronicler "How many are left?" "You, the beast, the one called Mr. Reality, the three higher-ups, the one who watches all of his children from above, and his antithesis. So about nine beings out of a once countless life form filled expanse…Though out of everyone, only Mr. Reality retains any flesh on his body."
The Chronicler's last sentence brings a bit of curiosity to my mind, especially considering the current changes in my body. After a quick look at my "skin", for lack of a better term, I lift my head back up at the mysterious being and ask him "So…Do you know what is going on with my body?" With a hesitant sigh the Chronicler shakes his head a couple of times and says to me "You know how the universe is supposed to maintain a perfect balance between light and darkness at all times, and will at certain moments create new beings when the balance is tipped in the wrong direction by death?"
I nodded my head, and the Chronicler continued on with what he was saying before. "You see, because of the leviathan's efforts, he is the only being of darkness left in the universe while you are the only being of pure light. To owe up for the fact that all other beings from both sides have been erased, both of your powers have been continually amplifying further and further to the point that the only way to keep light and darkness maintained in the universe is to rid you of your flesh and turn you into nothing more than a sentient being of pure light. However, this process isn't something that will last for very long…If you don't strip Mr. Reality away from the leviathan, both of you will lose all traces of sentience and the light and darkness that remains will merge together…Unifying and collapsing to the point where you'll create the universe's second Big Bang, causing everything to start all over again with Mr. Reality himself acting as the catalyst for the rebirth of fleshy beings in the new universe."
It was a lot to take in at once, and if I still had a beating heart the amount of stress I would have put on it due to hearing this information would have likely given me a heart attack. "H-Holy crap…" Are the only two words I can muster through my mouth as I try to keep my composure. The Chronicler folds his arms in front of his chest and says to me in response "Don't worry, I was told to interfere specifically because the higher-ups DON'T want a billion years of history to repeat itself all over again…" "But how are you expecting me to pull Mr. Reality away from the beast?" I then asked. The Chronicler turns around and unfurls his arms, pulling through his sleeves many of his ghastly hands at once. "The only way you'll be able to do something to stop the beast is if its weaker than you…So I'm going to tear away as many of its tendrils as physically possible to weaken it and give you an opening to separate the leviathan from its host body. After that, you HAVE to use the Time Stone to freeze time so the beast isn't given a chance to reconnect with Mr. Reality. Everything from that point onwards is up to you to deal with getting reality restored to its normal state."
"…And what about the leviathan itself? In fact, just what is that thing supposed to be? It said that the Elemental Overlord 'sealed its brethren away' or something like that." The Chronicler stays silent for a moment, his arms drooping beside him as he refused to at first reveal what he knew. "Do you not want to reveal it? Cause if so, I'm sorry for-" "The Parakali are invisible, otherworldly parasites that dig themselves into the vulnerable subconscious and amplify the person's powers in order to fulfill their innermost desires in the most vile way possible. However, the Parakali are rather slow and cannot get in contact with pure light or else they will disintegrate. The Elemental Overlord once encountered a large swarm of these parasites and had to use the Time Stone along with the Dark King's assistance in order to contain all of these creatures within the innermost chambers of the Light Citadel. You see, the defenses of the Light Citadel weren't just implemented to keep people from breaking in and using the battleship to attack other planets, but also to keep the Parakali from escaping. Mr. Reality setup the 'Midnight Channel' inside of the Light Citadel to hold back the Parakali until your Time Stone broke it and allowed one of them to slip into the reality bender's mind and create the leviathan and the avatar you fought earlier…So because of how deeply the Parakali has ingrained itself into Mr. Reality's subconscious, even when the alien restores the destroyed reality, that parasite will still be there waiting to return the moment the reality bender overuses its powers."
"…I-I can't believe it, so reality has been torn apart this far because of what I did…" I was very guilt ridden by what the Chronicler said to me, and as my body shivered in surprise of what the leviathan truly was the mysterious man turned towards me and said "In a way, you are both to blame for what has happened, and believe me when I say it is really hard to have to say that to you of all people…But the matter of blame is something you and the reality bender will have to handle later on." "Huh? What do you mean its hard for you to say that to me?" The Chronicler's mysterious comment snapped me out of my guilt as the begin turned his head slightly and I could feel a warm smile coming from behind the shade of his cloak. "Trust me, much later on everything will make sense…But for now, there is no time to be worrying about my comments. Now, on my cue, prepare to deal with the leviathan…Time Stone, BREAK!"
With but three words the aura around us shatters, and everything resumes as if not even a second had passed. With the leviathan still lunging towards us, the Chronicler thrusts himself through the air with hundreds upon hundreds of ghastly lands being drawn out of his sleeves ready to put our plan into motion. With a few of the hands being thrust against the forehead of the beast to keep him at bay, the remainder curl around the sides of the leviathan's head and extend out like an endless web of limbs until they reach the tendrils and begin to wrap themselves around the joint between the body and the actual tendrils. "W-What are you doing?!" The Leviathan asks in utter bewilderment. "Allowing everyone to see tomorrow, that's what…" The Chronicler calmly responds.
With a violent pull on every tendril he had latched his hands around, the limbs are ripped right off with minimal effort as an alien, bluish goop floods out of the broken joints and spreads across the depths of space. The leviathan roars in pain as the Chronicler retracts his own hands and turns towards me. "You only got thirty seconds before he regenerates! Its up to you now!" And just like that, the Chronicler flies out of the target range of the flailing, cosmic beast. With my body on the edge of existing as a sentient being and my aura of light fizzling out of control, I calmly nod my head and slant my eyebrows in furious determination as I fling my arms out beside my body and work to channel all of the limitless energy I could into an attack that would be powerful enough to briefly separate the parasite's physical body from its host.
The energy swirled outwards in a formless spiral around my body, expanding farther and father as the intensity of its luminescent glow breeched that of a newly born star and continued increasing immensely until it reached the point that someone at the very edge of the universe likely could have seen a hint of its brightness. I keep pouring light into the swirling mesa of energy, focusing as hard as I could as I counted down the seconds until my opportunity would be lost. Eventually, the final product is a massive, galaxy-shaped attack of pure light that hovers above me as the epitome of my power. As I grit my teeth and kept my arms held beside me to hold the galaxy at bay, I saw with incredible vigor "Our reality was fine the way it was! We don't need you to change anything, so disappear!"
I swing my arms straight in front of my chest, feeling the powerful breeze flowing across my celestial body as the galaxy flies forward through the air at a million miles per hour. The leviathan had no chance of defending himself as the central nebula collides with his face and pushes his entire body backwards against its will. Through the ethereal streams of galactic energy I could see Mr. Reality failing to stay connected to the thickened darkness as strands of that very energy are snapped away from his cloak one by one until he has truly been freed. As the leviathan screams in pain from the amount of light being exuded against his face, he is flung through the depths of space, my bright galaxy eventually becoming a miniature star in the distance as Mr. Reality floats as a speck in the middle of the murky depths, his cloak unfurled as his hands float beside him and his sleepy expression starts to flinch slightly. As I pant lightly and feel relieved that I will still able to retain my sentience for now, I look over at the alien and say to myself "This is where things will get difficult…"
Next Time: Mr. Reality's True Motivation