PART TWENTY: THE PRIME PROBLEM
The yellowed pages of the Ancient Tome of Lemuria flipped wildly before landing on the section of the Druidic Sagas. Avery paid rapt attention to each page’s contents, intrigued by the wealth of knowledge they provided. The Druids were true masters of the Mage arts thus achieving great fetes. Their prowess saw them grow in stature but also in hubris. They abandoned worship of their Creator (who later became the puer aeternus or the eternal boy) even in his greatest moment of glory prior to his defeat by the god Dune.
For several years, the Druids served Dune faithfully and were rewarded with more knowledge and power beyond their wildest imaginations, particularly in manipulating Tejas1 which was abundant in the world where Dune came from. Their hunger for even more power obtained from mastering Cosmic powers ultimately led them to the discovery of a Cosmic Force associated with Rebirth, Restoration and more importantly, Resurrection magic. This Cosmic Force also led the Druids to unlock the secrets of manipulating Prima Materia, the base element for all matter and antimatter in every conceivable universe.
Intrigued by what she discovered; Avery eagerly flipped to the next page wishing to learn more about the Druids’ great discovery. However, the next page as the one immediately succeeding it was entirely blank. Avery hastily flipped through all the pages of the Tome and noticed they were all blank.
Avery cast every revelation spell she knew on the Tome, hoping that she had inadvertently triggered some kind of magical protection spell that had rendered the pages blank but none of her spells worked. Frustrated, Avery looked up from the Tome and realized she was no longer occupying a physical space but was trapped in a void.
Avery tried to use her Traveler abilities to escape from the void but could no longer access them. She begun to wonder where she was and was suddenly overburdened with a deep sense of trepidation. Avery lost all sense of time and direction, and panicked when she discovered that she could no longer move in the void leading her to conclude that it was outside of normal space-time.
Avery knew she was in real trouble because the only beings capable of trapping her in such a void would have to be exceedingly powerful. She realized then that she was dealing with a malevolent god-level entity who had somehow entrapped her in the void using the Ancient Tome. She perused the blank pages of the Tome and had an epiphany on what had happened. The blank pages were contaminated with info-hazardous material hidden in between the texts.
Flabbergasted by the ingenuity of the malevolent entity behind her imprisonment, Avery carefully ruminated what she had learned so far.
“Who are you?” Avery wandered aloud. Her voice echoed infinitely in the void and made her feel completely abandoned.
“Hello?” She cried out fearfully. Avery’s voice sounded as if it were fragmented and strangely sounded like a discordant cacophony of different voices.
Avery was suddenly surrounded by copies of herself of all ages; from infants to elders.
“Huh?” they all asked at the same time.
“What the heck’s going on?” They all asked at the same time.
The void was suddenly filled with an indeterminate number of Avery Alison’s doppelgangers representing every possible version of her across the Multiverse. This soon caused a maddening and discordant chorus of thoughts and emotions, which echoed endlessly across the void. Avery soon could not tell her own thoughts and emotions apart and felt her sanity slipping away with each second that passed. However, a clear voice soon emerged from somewhere within herself which drowned out the rest of thundering voices in the void.
“I am a conqueror of worlds, a god of gods, the originator and destroyer of all thought, rational and irrational, concrete and abstract alike. I am Logic and I am Emotion. I am your Conscious, Meta-conscious and Subconscious thought. I am your Idd, your Ego and Superego. I am the Abstract, the Maddening, the Concrete and the Gladdening. I am Past, Present and Future… I am the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning… I am… The Psi-king,”
Avery’s entire perspective shifted as she adapted to her new identity- the Psi-King. They were a formidable and incomprehensible Eldritch entity driven by the need to unite all consciousness by cocooning it within themselves. Every memory and thought, mundane and great alike, had led them to this point. All conceivable universes were ripe for the taking and the Psi-King would eventually consume them all and take them within themselves for all eternity. In this way, those universes would be truly marvelous and divinely perfect.
Although Avery had accepted her divine mission as the Psi-King, as an absolute truth, a small part of her did not relinquish control to it. That small part reminded her of the fleeting moments of her life, that meant little in the grand scheme of things and yet they were solely her own. The joy and laughter of her family, the feeling of triumph after completing a particularly challenging mission, even the grief of having lost her beloved niece to the insidious grotesqueries’ scourge.
Avery then realized that she needed to prevent the Psi-King from being conceptualized by Reality’s Collective Universal Consciousness. This ambition was what had led to the Psi-King’s devious scheme to infect Avery’s Consciousness. The Psi-king was well aware of Avery’s special ability to manipulate Universal Truths since she had used this ability against it when it broke from its previous mortal shell and begun to consume the Consciousness of its native Timeline E-25.
However, each passing moment only served to increase the disquietude of Avery’s consciousness as the Psi-King continued to reel it into itself like a black hole. It became increasingly difficult to remain focused and Avery had just about thrown in the towel when she was suddenly struck by a fact that was always with her- she contained within her consciousness, the lingering essence of seven fallen deities.
As soon as the realization that the godly essence that shared her consciousness hit her, Avery suddenly saw a thought-form take shape. The Thought-form was hastily scrapped together from Avery’s own imaginations of what the gods themselves would have been. The Psi-King pulled in what was left of Avery’s consciousness into itself including the Thought-form.
The Thought-form then begun to fight against the Psi-King and as it did so, it also spoke to Avery’s soul. It thanked Avery for her noble sacrifice back in her rookie days when she had encountered the curiosity that the essence was- seven fallen gods, blinded by their own hubris who were terrified of fading into Non-Existence and clung to the only other thing that remained following their worlds’ destructions- each other.
Avery had so graciously agreed to take the godly essence into her consciousness in exchange for the knowledge they offered. However, the Curse Breaker had gone over and beyond their initial agreement and had actively ensured the gods’ legacy lived on in various forms of art like paintings, music, performance art and writing, even utilizing the abilities of the muses to see to this end.
The Thought-Form reassured Avery that because it was eternally grateful for what she had done for them, they would fend off the Psi-King even if it meant erasing themselves from Existence. They knew they would live on in the art that Avery had inspired some of the best minds in the world to create and they were content with that. Avery hoped and prayed that it would not come to that but felt a deep sense of comfort by the gods’ willingness to sacrifice themselves for her sake.
A fierce and truly epic battle of Wills ensued between the Psi-King and Avery’s most powerful Thought-form. While the battle waged on, Avery was able to regain more control of her consciousness until she was strong enough to kick the Psi-King out entirely. The Messenger Purity appeared shortly after to exorcise the Psi-King out of Reality by returning the dark energy back to where it came from- the Higher Dimension occupied by Eldritch beings.
Once Purity had kicked out the Psi-King from Reality, she guided Avery back to normal space-time. Avery witnessed Imani still cowering in a corner and the Ancient Tome still thrumming with life. Avery quickly shut the Tome and expelled it from Reality, vowing to never resort to using it again from that day onwards.
Avery then turned to face Imani and smiled wanting to reassure her apprentice that she had decided against using the Ancient Tome after all. However, before Avery could utter a peep, she suddenly fainted, with the events that happened in the void finally catching up to her.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Will Avery learn the secrets behind the Druids’ great discovery now that the Ancient Tome is no longer an option? Stay tuned to find out! The Links to the associated parts in this thrilling tale is listed below. Enjoy!
DEFINITION OF TERMS
- Tejas- Tejas is a Cosmic Force which is found across many universes but is more abundant in other worlds such as that presided over by the Lord of Fire. Tejas can be utilized in manipulating light energy obtained natural sources of light such as Sunlight, Moonlight, Fire and Lightning. The god Dune came from the world currently presided over by the Lord of Fire when it was under the control of the defeated god, Ull.
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