Written by Dick
I stand at the apex of Mt. Medie, the closest I will ever be to the heavens. I turn my gaze upwards; only two words left on my tongue are worth speaking: I’m coming.
The training. The agony. The blasted wars. They’ve all culminated to this moment. To a broken and empty-eyed man atop a world’s peak, flanked only by doubt and fear. The weight of the past is heavy on my shoulders, but the weight of what is to come is heavier yet.
I raise my right hand, fingers tugging forth from air a swirling blue substance that cloaks my fingers like a linen cloth and masks it from the frigid cold of the mountaintop. “It’s not possible.” they’d said. “A soul is composed of both Order and Disorder; it can’t be brought back once the Reaper has made his claim.”
I look across the world beneath me, the fog of my breath draping it in a foggy veil. From this height, the cities below flicker like the dying embers of a hearth. Time seems to slow at the sight of them. Every man and woman in every city around knows that the height of mankind’s achievement is standing on this very peak. They know that today I will do what no one else could.
I raise my left hand, fingers spread wide and arm tensed firmly as though to stop the catch wind in my palm. Bright red lights jump between my fingertips, leaving dizzying trails in their wake. “It can’t be done.” they’d told me. “They’re fundamental opposites. Wielding Order and Disorder in tandem will surely undo you.”
I feel sweat run down my neck, my jaw clenched in focus and eyes narrowed in determination. They said I could not harness both Order and Disorder. And I did. They insisted I could not wield them simultaneously. And I did. They told me there was no way to bring her back. But I will. And if I have to throw open the gates of the Underworld and wrench the soul of my wife from the hand of the Reaper himself, then that’s exactly what’ll happen.
All that I need to do is create a fragment of her soul. Something for her spirit to latch onto, if only for a moment.
Order flows down my right arm, a liquid of impossible fluidity. It clings comfortably to the ornate sleeve hanging loosely from my arm. It shifts and swirls with unspent energy, almost eager to be put to use. I feel my eyes soften as I remember using this very substance in the wretched wars prior, constructing a shield of pure force in an instant to shelter a group of runaways caught in the crossfire. The gratitude I saw on those faces never quite left me.
Disorder darts down my left, like a loose rope wrapping unpredictably around the mast of a ship lost in a storm, leaving only the hastily-embroidered heart untouched in the sea of chaos. It’s nearly hard to believe that the energy I used to destroy a bridge in the blink of an eye could live inside of everyone. It’s harder yet to believe that such an energy could be tamed.
Memories come unbidden, summoned not by desire, but by need. Her laughter- soft, lilting, unremarkable to others but unforgettable to me. The way her fingers traced idle patterns along my wrist in quiet moments. The warmth of her voice, steady even in sorrow. I hold these fragments carefully, as if they might shatter under the weight of my thoughts.
Blood drips from my palm, staining the pristine snow beneath me a sickly-sweet red. The pain of my nails digging through my palms drowned out by the numbing cold of the air. I close my eyes and persist.
Channeling both Order and Disorder was a matter of organization and focus, allowing both to flow through and use your body as a conduit, but keeping them from mixing and disrupting the flow of the other. Now is the time to violate that principle and challenge the notion that man must be subject to gods.
The Order swells, drawn to the shape of her in my mind. It twists and condenses, a liquid shimmer that conforms to the contours of my memory. Her face forms in the shifting glow, a suggestion of features and the hollow echo of a smile.
Disorder coils tightly alongside it, its movements jagged and restless. It does not form. It does not obey. It licks at the edges of her image, distorting the lines, unraveling the structure before it can solidify.
I steel myself, and force the opposing energies into harmony.
The instant the two collide, I feel it. It’s not a clash, nor an explosion, just a sickening lurch, as though the world itself has tilted on its axis. The air fractures around me, cracking apart like impacted ice. My breath falters. The shape of her flickers.
I feel Order battle for dominance within me. It fights to mold and create. It draws the curve of her cheek, recounts all the times she’d forget her bag before leaving the house, and echoes the delicate cadence to her words. And somewhere, Disorder refuses. It shatters her image, struggling to warp her smile into something foreign. It twists through the foundation like roots through old stone, pulling apart what Order so desperately assembles.
And what is left in the wake of their battle is a woman. A woman with empty eyes, a smile that carries no weight behind it, whose words are more akin to the sound of leaves rustling than anything I once loved.
The sky above darkens. It grows impossibly black, as though I’ve torn a hole in the sky itself. It’s stretching, widening, almost recoiling from what I am doing. A deep, shuddering pressure builds in the marrow of my bones. A sensation I cannot name, only endure.
I grit my teeth, fingers trembling as I try to contain the energies, to force them into balance. But there is no balance to be found. A sharp snap rings through the air. My breath catches in my chest.
My right arm grows heavy, like it was turned to stone, and it falls uselessly at my side. My left burns, searing down to the bone despite the lack of any flame to be seen. The contrast tears at me until I feel like I am being unmade by my own will.
I try to gasp for relief, but my lungs no longer feel like my own. The forces I have invited do not retreat. They turn inward. Onto me. Agony unlike any I have ever known blooms from my core, raw and unrelenting, and tears through every inch of my body. I feel myself splitting apart. The fabric of my being unravels thread by thread, and for the first time in all my years, I know terror.
I was wrong.
Someone else’s scream escapes my lips, and the void rushes to greet me.
“Neither cosmos nor chaos…” Death muses, the fragmented and murky purple substance turning over at his will. “Something in between, yet equally unpredictable.”
The unknowing soul floats aimlessly in The Null, the only place found to be suitable for such a creation. It was no longer cosmic energy, nor was it simply tainted by chaos force. This soul was composed of something entirely new. It oscillates and shimmers, contorting like a tendril looking for something to latch onto.
“This is wrong,” Void interjects, their presence only inferred. “Cosmic energy and chaos force were never meant to combine like this. Whatever this is, it should not exist. He should not exist.”
Death raises their hand in a gesture that demands silence. Void is absent. They step towards the lone soul, and it ripples in response. The soul begins to orbit Death like a planet around its star, intermittently forming jagged edges and soft curves alike. Death watches intently.
“The nature to create… To grow…” Death observes, focused in the very depths of the soul. “The nature to unmake and undo. I see both equally in you.”
“You are a paradox. You should not be, and yet, you are. You are of equal nature to take as you are to give, to destroy as you are to make. Not chaos, not cosmos, but a Nexus of the two.” They said, voice equal parts awe and trepidation. “There is no telling what this means. For the stability of everything we have built.”
Suddenly, Void is present once again, their voice filling the mind of Death. “You know that we cannot let this continue. If we cannot tame whatever this Nexus is, then we must ensure it lacks the ability to become more than what it already is.”
Death falls silent. The destruction of a soul. Was it their prerogative to annihilate the very thing they were made to be arbiter of? Death glanced back towards the soul hovering behind them. The soul of a man who was willing to sacrifice anything for a loved one. The soul of a man that he would have to unmake.
Death stands still, unable to will themselves to approach the violet soul. It pulses and shifts, unable to settle on a single form nor space. Even here, in the Null, where nothing should have claim over it, the soul resists stillness. It persists.
Void’s presence looms. Their voice, neither sound nor silence, presses into Death’s mind. “You hesitate.”
“I do.” Death admits. The words are quiet, nearly lost in the great empty expanse. “And I wonder if you do as well.”
Void does not answer.
Death extends a hand outward. “Zerdun.” They call, the true name echoing throughout every corner of The Null.
The soul falters in its orbit. It recognizes Death’s pull, the belonging, the summon that all things obey. Slowly, it drifts toward the outstretched fingers, stretching and contorting as though it were fighting the process.
“I am sorry.” Death mutters, unsure if the words are true. With a flex of their will, they unravel the bindings of the palmed soul.
A scream, more in feeling than in sound, tears through the nothingness of The Null. The soul spasms, fragmenting into thousands of twisting shards of violet and gold. They deform and reform erratically, coiling upon themselves, refusing to be undone. It does not want to die. It fights.
The fragments seek form, scramble to exist, only to devour their own order with a seemingly insatiable hunger. They cycle through creation and destruction faster than thought can comprehend.
Death presses forward. Death closes their hand.
The fragments sputter and flare one final time, burning bright as stars in their final collapse. Then, they scatter.
Across all that was, all that would be, all that could be, the pieces of the Nexus fling themselves into the infinite. Some vanish into the inky black, swallowed by the nothing between worlds. Others find purchase, embedding themselves into reality, imperceptibly settling like seeds in the fabric of the universe.
Void stirs, their presence cold and vast. “It is done,” they intone.
Death stares into The Null, hand still clenched tightly around the space that a man used to be.
“So it seems.”