Pressure clamped around Nulls from every direction, a weight so immense that each meter of ascent required strength he no longer possessed. His muscles screamed with the effort. His lungs burned with the need for air that remained impossibly distant. The scythe dragged at his grip, its entropy quiet now.
Above him, the surface might as well have been another universe.
He stopped fighting. His body hung in the abyss, suspended between the depths he had escaped and the world he needed to reach. The leviathans waited behind him, bound by chains and sigils, their massive forms dark against the absolute black.
"What if the shackles aren't strong enough?" The words left his mouth without his permission, spoken to no one, heard by nothing in the absolute dark. "What if I release them and they remember what I did?"
The scythe pulsed in his grip, Marky's presence a wordless pressure against his consciousness, offering nothing other than the promise of its edge if needed.
He had no choice. The pressure would only increase as he rose, and without the Nexus reserves to sustain him, he would eventually stop and hung in the water like the creatures he had defeated, caught between survival and death.
He reached for the sigils with his will. The connection flared to life, purple light pulsing through the water as each symbol responded to his command.
The chains dissolved first, their black links crumbling into particles that scattered into the water and vanished. The bindings that kept them suspended between life and death, released their hold.
For a moment, nothing moved. The three creatures hung in the water, their massive forms still, their wounds still blackened with entropy, their regeneration still fighting a losing battle against decay that had saturated every tissue
Regeneration swept through the mountain first. Its remaining eyes bloomed with light, new orbs forming to replace those he had destroyed. Floods of blood capable of submerging mountains and acting as if they were gravel, filled its colossal arteries. Avalenches of flesh knitted themselves. Each chunk, a kingdom could feast upon. The creature's massive form shuddered as wholeness returned to it.
The tower responded next. Its two halves, separated by miles of darkness, surged toward each other with impossible speed. The wound between them sealed as they met, fused flesh knitting together so perfectly that no scar remained. A thousand mouths opened, then closed, then opened again. An intense blue glow emmited as the water enter each individual mouths due to the Cherenkov Radiation.
The serpent moved last. Its severed head rejoined its body along a line that erased itself as it formed, the wound sealing with a flash of blue light. Mountains of scales regrew across the wound, each one gleaming with renewed health. The eye that had dimmed blazed with fresh light, fixing on Nulls with an intensity that made him brace for attack.
The serpent lunged at him. Its massive form shot through the water with speed that defied its size, jaws opening wide enough to swallow a volcanic plateaus, teeth gleaming with hunger that had waited eons to be satisfied. Nulls raised the scythe, prepared for impact that would surely shatter what remained of his strength.
"
The force of impact of the serpent's body colliding with his drove the water from his lungs, compressed his chest, sent pain lancing through every joint. But there was no tearing nor biting.
The serpent's body wrapped around him, coils of scale and muscle encircling his small form with a gentleness that seemed impossible from a creature of its size. It was... It was embracing him?
Behind it, the mountain surged forward, its massive form blotting out what little light remained. It struck him from the opposite side, its bulk adding to the compression, sandwiching him between two living mountains. The tower followed, its thousand tentacles wrapping around all three of them, pulling them closer, tighter, into a mass of flesh and scale and bone that should have killed him instantly.
Nulls desperately tried to wiggled himself out of their grip, but everytime he does its just getting tighter and tighter as if they were afraid. He tried lifting the scythe up but his muscles disobeyed his orders. He forced his muscles to the brink of myonecrosis, yet still he couldn't.
The creatures held him pinned, their combined mass rendering him utterly helpless. This was it. This was the end. They had regenerated, and now they would—
They weren't attacking...
The realization came slowly, filtering through the pain and confusion and instinctive fight response. The serpent's jaws were resting against his shoulder instead of biting, the teeth that could shred continents pressed gently against his skin without breaking it.
The mountain's remaining eyes all focused on his face with an expression he couldn't read. The tower's tentacles were wrapped around him in something that resembled an embrace.
They were hugging him. The absurdity of it almost made him laugh. Three leviathans, each capable of subjugating an entite nation, were trying to hug their progenitor. The serpent had no arms, so it used its whole body. The mountain had no limbs, so it pressed its mass against him. The tower had tentacles, so it wrapped them around everyone.
The serpent's coils tightened slightly, then loosened, adjusted, tightened again in a rhythm that mimicked breathing. A sound emerged from its throat, low and deep, a vibration that passed through the water and into his bones. The sound was not a roar, nor a hiss, not any sound he had heard from any creature in any battle. It was a resonance that started somewhere in the serpent's core and radiated outward in waves that shook his organs in their cavities
The sound was like nothing he had ever heard, a subsonic pulse that traveled through flesh and scale and water, that shook his organs and vibrated in his skull, that carried with it a warmth that had nothing to do with temperature.
The serpent's massive body thrummed against him, the vibration passing through the mountain, through the tower, through all of them, binding them together in a resonance that felt almost like communion.
Nulls's grip on the scythe loosened, he slowly lowered his scythe and its entropy, the weight of it dropped dramatically, now feeling as if he were lifting a tree branch rather than continents. After all, what kind of father want to slice their childrens with scythe?
"i'm not going anywhere. i'll be here with you." he said, his voice carrying through the water, reaching each of them despite the distance.
The serpent's purr deepened, if that was possible. The mountain pressed closer, its eyes blinking in sequence one after another after another, each blink a tiny pulse of light in the darkness. The tower's tentacles tightened slightly, then relaxed, then tightened again, a rhythmic squeezing that might have been the closest it could come to a hug.
A beam of light shot from the mountain's central cluster. Nulls tensed, but the beam struck him with no force, no heat, no destruction. It was warm, almost pleasant, a gentle radiance that washed over his skin and left no mark. Another beam followed, then another, each one playing across his body like a child showing off for a parent.
The beam played across his chest for a moment, then moved to his shoulder, his arm, his face, tracing patterns that might have been shapes, might have been language, might have been the creature's way of seeing him, of knowing him, of confirming that he was real
"Playful now," Nulls said, and there might have been something in his voice that he hadn't heard in a very long time. "After everything, you want to play."
The scythe dissolved from his grip, returning to wherever Marky resided when not needed, and he reached out with both hands to touch the serpent's scales. They were smooth and warm against his palms, the black color shifting to silver where he touched, the creature's body responding to his presence in ways that had nothing to do with battle or dominance or control.
"You are too big for this," he said, his voice carrying through the water, reaching each of them despite the distance. "Too big and too strong and too dangerous to be doing something so foolish."
The serpent's coils tightened fractionally, then loosened, the rhythm of its bloop-sound increasing in frequency. The mountain's beam traced a spiral on his chest, warm and gentle. The tower's chorus shifted into something that might have been laughter, might have been joy, might have been the only way a thousand fused bodies could express amusement.
He pressed his palms flat against the serpent's scales and pushed, feeling the creature resist for a moment before understanding and loosening its hold. The coils unwound, the mountain pulled back, the tower's bodies flowed away, leaving him floating in the water, surrounded by three creatures that watched him with eyes that held no desire to consume.
The mountain's central cluster pulsed with light, a pattern of flashes that resolved into images, into memories, into something that might have been the creature's way of telling him what it saw when it looked at him. He was light in those images, a core of brightness surrounded by darkness, a figure that stood at the center of everything, that had always stood at the center of everything, that would always stand at the center of everything.
The tower's thousand mouths closed, and from them emerged a single sound, low and long and sustained, a note that vibrated through the water and into his chest, that resonated with something deep in his core, that felt like the sound of a door opening, a barrier lowering, a wall coming down.
The serpent moved toward him again, its massive head descending, its jaws opening wide enough to swallow him whole.
The jaws closed around him, and he was inside the serpent's mouth, surrounded by teeth that could have crushed mountains, standing on a tongue that could have held cities. The creature did not swallow him. It simply held him there, in the darkness of its mouth, in the warmth of its body and the safety of its protection.
He reached up and touched one of the teeth of the serpent's mouth, feeling the scales there, the ridges, the texture of something that had existed for longer than human civilization had existed. The creature shuddered at his touch, a ripple passing through its body that started at his hand and traveled outward, outward, outward, to the tip of its tail, to the ends of its awareness.
"Take me up," he said. "Take me to the light."
The serpent's jaws closed more firmly around him, and the creature began to rise.
Safety, belonging, and love. Something so foreign to his conciousness that it felt wrong. Nulls reached out and placed his hand on the serpent's snout. The scales beneath his palm were warm, alive, pulsing with the same rhythm he could feel in his own newly remade body.
His flesh, his blood, his bones, all Nexus now, all connected to these creatures through the sigils he had placed, through the entropy he had inflicted and then withdrawn.
"You're my children now," he said, the words strange on his tongue but not untrue. "Mine. And I won't let anything hurt you again."
Hours passed like that. Or minutes. Time had little meaning in the abyss, with only the slow pulse of leviathan hearts to mark its passage. Nulls let himself exist in the moment, to feel the warmth of creatures that had tried to kill him and now loved him instead. It was absurd.
The ascent was slow at first, the serpent's massive body pushing against water that had been compressed by pressures that would have turned ships to liquid. Nulls stood in the darkness of its mouth, one hand pressed against the teeth, feeling the creature's movements through his palm, through his bones and through the Nexus that now composed his entire being.
The darkness gradually lightened, the pressure slowly decreased, the cold reluctantly retreated. After a quarter of an hour of steady ascent, they reached the Tenebraepelagic zone, the onyx region where photons from undergo Radiative Diffusion, still a better fate than the photons at the bottom. His scythe has long been unmanifested, back to the same primoldial nothingness to which it was born, if only he knew.
The pressure changed. He felt it in his ears, in his chest, in the way the serpent's movements became easier, faster, less constrained. They were rising through layers of ocean that had names in the languages of surface dwellers, layers that had been explored and mapped and catalogued by beings who would never understand what lived in the depths below.
Light began to filter through the serpent's scales, pale and green and faint, the light of the Tenebraepelagic zone, where sunlight never reached and bioluminescence ruled. The creature's jaws opened, and Nulls stepped out into water that was warm, that was alive, that was filled with things that had never seen the sun and would never need to.
The Morbus came from everywhere.
They emerged from the darkness below, from the water above, from the shadows between the serpent's coils. Hundreds of them, thousands of them, calamity class creatures that had sensed the presence of something new, something different, something that had risen from the depths where nothing rose. They were shapes that should not exist, bodies that defied anatomy accompanied by limbs that moved in directions that had no names.
The first one reached him with claws that could have torn through steel. The serpent moved before Nulls could raise his hands.
Its body coiled and struck with speed that left afterimages in the water. The creature that had reached for Nulls was caught in the serpent's jaws, lifted from the water, crushed in a pressure that turned its carapace to powder, its internal organs to slurry, and its consciousness to nothing. The serpent shook its head once, twice, three times, and the creature's remains scattered into the water, a cloud of debris that the other Morbus would feed on, if any of them survived.
The mountain of eyes rose beside them, its central cluster pulsing with light that was no longer warm, no longer playful. Beams lanced from a hundred orbs, each one striking a Morbus with precision that spoke of millennia of hunting. The form of the first morbus caught by the beam was breaking apart into molecules, then atoms, then into particles that scattered on the current.
The second creature exploded, its internal pressure expanding faster than its carapace could contain, showering the water around it with fragments of chitin and gore. The third creature simply ceased, its existence erased by forces that existed only to destroy.
The tower of fused bodies flowed into the mass of Morbus, its thousand mouths opening, screaming a sound that should have shattered Nulls's ears but instead passed through him without effect.
The creatures that heard that scream stopped moving, their limbs locking, their eyes glazing, their consciousnesses overwhelmed by the collective agony of a thousand beings who had been fused together and could never be separated. The tower moved through them, its bodies absorbing some, crushing others, tearing apart those that tried to flee.
A calamity class Morbus, one of the larger ones, turned to face the tower. Its mouth opened, and from it emerged a cloud of darkness, a miasma that would have dissolved flesh from bone, that would have turned steel to rust, that would have killed anything that breathed.
The tower absorbed the cloud without slowing. Its bodies, colossal and ancient, had survived worse.
The tower's thousand mouths closed on the creature, a thousand bites from a thousand angles, each mouths tearing away flesh, consuming what had been torn then adding the creature's mass to their own.
The serpent's tail swept through a cluster of Morbus that had been trying to circle around, the impact crushing a dozen of them instantly, the force of the blow sending shockwaves through the water that killed a dozen more. The creature's body coiled and struck again, and again, and again.
The mountain's beams continued their work, each pulse finding a target, each target dissolving, exploding, ceasing. The creature's eyes tracked the battle with a calm that was almost meditative, its movements precise, its efficiency absolute. It had hunted alone for so long. Now it hunted with others. Now it hunted for something more than hunger.
Nulls floated in the center of the carnage untouched, watching as three creatures that had tried to kill him hours ago reduced hundreds of Morbus to drifting clouds of debris. The water around him was thick with blood, with viscera, with the remains of things that had existed for centuries and were now nothing.
The last Morbus, a small one, barely larger than a human, tried to flee. It had been watching the battle from the edges, waiting for an opening, waiting for a chance to escape.
The serpent's jaws closed around it.
The water stabilized and the debris and corpses of morbus drifted.
Nulls looked at the three leviathans that surrounded him, at the mountain whose beams had carved through dozens of morbus, at the tower whose bodies had absorbed and crushed and torn, at the serpent whose coils had protected him from every threat. They were his. They had always been his. They would always be his.
He began to swim toward the surface, and they followed.
The water grew lighter as they rose, the Tenebraepelagic zone giving way to the Bathypelagic, the darkness of the deep ocean replaced by the faint blue glow of water that had seen sunlight, that remembered what light was, that carried it down from the surface in dying rays that illuminated nothing and everything.
A city rose from the depths before him, and he stopped swimming.
It was a mountain range of masonry, a dripping Babylon of greenish-black stone that should not have existed, that could not have existed, that existed anyway. Cyclopean blocks, each one the size of a city block, stacked in geometries that hurt to look at, that refused to resolve into recognizable shapes, that changed as he watched them, angles becoming curves, curves becoming angles, solids becoming voids.
The citadel at its center rose above the rest, a monolith-crowned tower of stone that scraped the underside of the world, that reached for the surface with the hunger of something that had been waiting for millennia to be found. Sea-ooze covered every surface, green and black and slick, dripping in slow motion through water that had been still for longer than human civilization had existed. The smell of it reached him through the water, a stench of ancient decay, of things that had died before life had a name, of something that should have remained buried.
The angles of the city shifted as he approached, lines that should have been parallel converging, perspectives that should have been fixed sliding, distances that should have been measurable becoming infinite. He could not look at it directly. He could not look away.
The serpent moved beside him, its body pressing against his, its warmth anchoring him to something that was not the city, that was not the horror of non-Euclidean geometry, that was not the madness of angles that should not exist.
The mountain pulsed with light, its beams tracing patterns on the city walls that resolved into shapes he could almost understand, almost recognize, almost name.
The tower's thousand mouths opened, and from them emerged a sound that was not the scream of battle, not the chorus of agony, but something else, something that might have been recognition, might have been warning, might have been the only way a thousand fused bodies could express awe.
He swam towards the city, at the impossibility of its existence, at the wrongness of its geometry, at the beauty of its horror. He felt the serpent against his side, the mountain's light on his skin, the tower's sound in his bones. He would never be alone again.
A green ooze appeared without source, spreading across the water in thick ropes that coiled around the cyclopean stones of the city ahead. One moment the water had been clear, the next a slick film of mucus clung to his skin and the serpent's scales, its touch cold and greasy against his exposed flesh.
Slime dripped from the monolith-crowned citadel in slow, viscous rivulets, each drop trailing a string of phosphorescent green that illuminated nothing but the next drop falling to join the spreading stain.
A smell rose from that ooze, thick and cloying, the stench of ancient decay mixed with something sweetly chemical that coated his tongue and made his throat constrict.
Nulls had not seen any of this when the city first appeared on the horizon, yet now it surrounded them, as if the city had been holding its breath and had only now exhaled.
The city grew with each passing minute, their impossible angles resolving into shapes that should not exist, their green-black stones rising until they blocked the faint light from above. The serpent's body, long enough to coil around mountain ranges, seemed small against the cyclopean foundations.
The mountain's bulk, which had blotted out the abyss, became a pebble beside the citadel's base. The tower's thousand tentacles, each capable of encircling city blocks, reached only a fraction of the way toward the upper spires.
From the slime-slicked vaults that gaped between the monoliths, the first of the creatures emerged.
They had no single form that held, their bodies shifting even as Nulls's eyes tried to fix them in place. Green rubbery skin covered torsos that bulged and contracted with each pulse of the water around them.
Tentacles, each thicker than a road, coiled from faces that were all mouths and no features, mouths that opened and closed in rhythms that matched the throbbing of the ooze.
Wings of translucent membrane stretched from their backs, unfurling into shapes that caught the phosphorescent light and bent it into colors that had no names.
Each creature stood as tall as the skyscrapers Nulls had seen in human cities, their heads brushing the lower spires of the citadel, yet they were dwarfed by the serpent's bulk.
The moment they emerged, the whispers began.
They came not as sound but as pressure behind his eyes, a weight that settled into the spaces between his thoughts and began to pry them apart. A thousand voices, or perhaps one voice speaking a thousand languages he had never learned, scraped against the inside of his skull.
Images flickered at the edges of his vision: faces he did not recognize, landscapes that folded into themselves, geometries that made his stomach clench. The pressure built until his teeth ached and his sinuses burned, until he could feel the outer layers of his soul shudder under the assault.
The armor held. A cold certainty wrapped around his consciousness, a shell of ancient knowledge and implacable will that absorbed the whispers and rendered them harmless. The voices still scrabbled at the edges, still tried to find purchase, but they slipped off the surface of that armor like water off oiled stone. He could feel them, could feel the madness they promised, but they could not reach him.
He stood on the serpent's tongue, the creature's purr vibrating through his bones, and looked at the dozen winged shapes that blocked his path to the city.
"Kill them," he said. "All of them."
The serpent struck first, its dorsal fin slicing through the water toward the nearest creature. The edge of void-glass caught the thing across its midsection, and the flesh parted, not bleeding but dissolving into vapor that clouded the water with gas and organic debris. The creature's upper half began to fall away from its lower half, but even as they separated, new flesh knitted across the wound, pulling the two halves back together. The regeneration was instantaneous, the wound closing before the creature could scream.
The mountain's beams followed, lancing through the water to strike three of the creatures at once. Their bodies vaporized where the beams touched, great cavities opening in their torsos, limbs falling away. The cavities filled. The limbs regrew. In the time it took for the light to fade, the creatures were whole again.
Tentacles from the tower wrapped around two more, their thousand arms coiling so tightly that the creatures' rubbery flesh bulged between the coils. The tower squeezed, and the creatures' forms compressed, their internal structures collapsing under the pressure. Then they reformed, pushing against the tentacles, forcing them wider, and new tentacles grew from their own bodies to wrap back around the tower's limbs.
Nulls leaped from the serpent's mouth simultaneously while conjuring Marky, the scythe already swinging, the blade caught a creature across its wing, carving through membrane and bone, and for a moment the wing fell away in a spray of green ichor. The wing grew back before it reached the seabed below. He swung again, carving a trench across its chest, opening it to the water. The flesh sealed itself behind his blade.
The serpent's fin slashed again, and again, each strike opening wounds that closed as fast as they appeared. The mountain's beams fired in continuous volleys, each one creating cavities that filled before the next beam could strike. The tower's tentacles tore and were torn, regenerating faster than the creatures could damage them, holding their prey in a grip that would not break.
No matter how much damage they inflicted, the creatures healed. No matter how many times they were cut, vaporized, crushed, they reformed. Their own tentacles slashed at the leviathans, their claws tore through scales and flesh, their mouths bit down on limbs and swallowed whole chunks of living matter. The leviathans healed faster than the damage was done, their regeneration outpacing the squids' ability to harm them, but they could not kill what would not stay dead.
Nulls landed on the serpent's head, his chest heaving, the scythe dripping with ichor that evaporated as soon as it touched the water. He looked at the dozen creatures, each one whole despite the wounds that should have ended them a hundred times over, each one locked in combat with his children in a stalemate that could last forever.
"Tower— Walpurgis" he called, his voice carrying through the water with a resonance that had nothing to do with sound. "Hold them in place, each and every one of them."
The tentacled leviathan released the two it had been grappling and spread its arms wide. A thousand tentacles shot toward the creatures, each one finding a target, each one wrapping around a limb, a torso, a wing. The creatures thrashed, their claws tearing through tentacles, their mouths biting through limbs, their wings slicing through coils of flesh.
For every tentacle that was severed, two more took its place. For every limb that was torn away, a new one grew to wrap around the struggling prey. The tower's regeneration was absolute, its flesh reforming as fast as it was destroyed, and its grip never loosened.
The creatures struggled against their bonds, their tentacles slashing, their claws tearing, their mouths biting, but they could not break free. Each time they tore through a limb, the wound sealed and the hold tightened. Each time they forced a tentacle open, three more coiled around the gap. The tower's thousand arms held them in place, a living cage of regenerating flesh that would not let them go.
Nulls watched for a moment, ensuring the hold would hold. The serpent coiled beside him, its massive eye fixed on the trapped creatures, its purr a low vibration that traveled through his bones. The mountain floated above them, its beams ready, its remaining eyes tracking every movement.
"Keep them here," Nulls said. "I will go ahead."
He turned away from the battle, toward the city that rose from the depths like a wound in reality. The ooze spread before him, a path of green slime that led between the cyclopean stones and into the vaults beyond. The smell grew stronger with each stroke, thick and sweet and rotting, coating his throat with each breath.
Behind him, the tower held the creatures in place, its tentacles wrapped around a dozen struggling horrors that could not escape. The serpent waited, its eye following him, its purr a steady pulse that marked the seconds as they passed. The mountain floated above, a silent guardian of the path he had taken.
Nulls swam toward the city, toward the ooze and the slime and the wrongness that waited within its walls, and he did not look back.
A green ooze appeared without source, spreading across the water in thick ropes that coiled around the cyclopean stones of the city ahead. One moment the water had been clear, the next a slick film of mucus clung to his skin and the serpent's scales, its touch cold and greasy against his exposed flesh.
Slime dripped from the monolith-crowned citadel in slow, viscous rivulets, each drop trailing a string of phosphorescent green that illuminated nothing but the next drop falling to join the spreading stain.
A smell rose from that ooze, thick and cloying, the stench of ancient decay mixed with something sweetly chemical that coated his tongue and made his throat constrict.
Nulls had not seen any of this when the city first appeared on the horizon, yet now it surrounded them, as if the city had been holding its breath and had only now exhaled.
The city grew with each passing minute, their impossible angles resolving into shapes that should not exist, their green-black stones rising until they blocked the faint light from above. The serpent's body, long enough to coil around mountain ranges, seemed small against the cyclopean foundations.
The mountain's bulk, which had blotted out the abyss, became a pebble beside the citadel's base. The tower's thousand tentacles, each capable of encircling city blocks, reached only a fraction of the way toward the upper spires.
From the slime-slicked vaults that gaped between the monoliths, the first of the creatures emerged.
They had no single form that held, their bodies shifting even as Nulls's eyes tried to fix them in place. Green rubbery skin covered torsos that bulged and contracted with each pulse of the water around them. Tentacles, each thicker than the serpent's head, coiled from faces that were all mouths and no features, mouths that opened and closed in rhythms that matched the throbbing of the ooze. Wings of translucent membrane stretched from their backs, unfurling into shapes that caught the phosphorescent light and bent it into colors that had no names. Each creature stood as tall as the skyscrapers Nulls had seen in human cities, their heads brushing the lower spires of the citadel, yet they were dwarfed by the serpent's bulk.
The moment they emerged, the whispers began. They came as pressure behind his eyes, a weight that settled into the spaces between his thoughts and began to pry them apart. A thousand voices, or perhaps one voice speaking a thousand languages he had never learned, scraped against the inside of his skull.
Images flickered at the edges of his vision: faces he did not recognize, landscapes that folded into themselves, geometries that made his stomach clench. The pressure built until his teeth ached and his sinuses burned, until he could feel the outer layers of his soul shudder under the assault.
The armor held. A cold certainty wrapped around his consciousness, a shell of ancient knowledge and implacable will that absorbed the whispers and rendered them harmless. The voices still scrabbled at the edges, still tried to find purchase, but they slipped off the surface of that armor like water off oiled stone. He could feel them, could feel the madness they promised, but they could not reach him.
He stood on the serpent's tongue, the creature's purr vibrating through his bones, and looked at the dozen winged shapes that blocked his path to the city.
"Kill them," he said. "All of them."
The serpent struck first, its dorsal fin slicing through the water toward the nearest creature. The edge of void-glass caught the thing across its midsection, and the flesh parted, not bleeding but dissolving into vapor that clouded the water with gas and organic debris. The creature's upper half began to fall away from its lower half, but even as they separated, new flesh knitted across the wound, pulling the two halves back together. The regeneration was instantaneous, the wound closing before the creature could scream.
The mountain's beams followed, lancing through the water to strike three of the creatures at once. Their bodies vaporized where the beams touched, great cavities opening in their torsos, limbs falling away. The cavities filled. The limbs regrew. In the time it took for the light to fade, the creatures were whole again.
Tentacles from the tower wrapped around two more, their thousand arms coiling so tightly that the creatures' rubbery flesh bulged between the coils. The tower squeezed, and the creatures' forms compressed, their internal structures collapsing under the pressure. Then they reformed, pushing against the tentacles, forcing them wider, and new tentacles grew from their own bodies to wrap back around the tower's limbs.
Nulls leaped from the serpent's mouth, the scythe already swinging. His blade caught a creature across its wing, carving through membrane and bone, and for a moment the wing fell away in a spray of green ichor. The wing grew back before it reached the seabed below. He swung again, carving a trench across its chest, opening it to the water. The flesh sealed itself behind his blade.
The serpent's fin slashed again, and again, each strike opening wounds that closed as fast as they appeared. The mountain's beams fired in continuous volleys, each one creating cavities that filled before the next beam could strike. The tower's tentacles tore and were torn, regenerating faster than the creatures could damage them, holding their prey in a grip that would not break.
No matter how much damage they inflicted, the creatures healed. No matter how many times they were cut, vaporized, crushed, they reformed. Their own tentacles slashed at the leviathans, their claws tore through scales and flesh, their mouths bit down on limbs and swallowed whole chunks of living matter. The leviathans healed faster than the damage was done, their regeneration outpacing the squids' ability to harm them, but they could not kill what would not stay dead.
Nulls landed on the serpent's head, his chest heaving, the scythe dripping with ichor that evaporated as soon as it touched the water. He looked at the dozen creatures, each one whole despite the wounds that should have ended them a hundred times over, each one locked in combat with his children in a stalemate that could last forever.
"Tower— Walpurgis" he called, his voice carrying through the water with a resonance that had nothing to do with sound. "Hold them. Each one. Hold them in place."
The tentacled leviathan released the two it had been grappling and spread its arms wide. A thousand tentacles shot toward the creatures, each one finding a target, each one wrapping around a limb, a torso, a wing. The creatures thrashed, their claws tearing through tentacles, their mouths biting through limbs, their wings slicing through coils of flesh. For every tentacle that was severed, two more took its place. For every limb that was torn away, a new one grew to wrap around the struggling prey. The tower's regeneration was absolute, its flesh reforming as fast as it was destroyed, and its grip never loosened.
The creatures struggled against their bonds, their tentacles slashing, their claws tearing, their mouths biting, but they could not break free. Each time they tore through a limb, the wound sealed and the hold tightened. Each time they forced a tentacle open, three more coiled around the gap. The tower's thousand arms held them in place, a living cage of regenerating flesh that would not let them go.
Nulls watched for a moment, ensuring the hold would hold. The serpent coiled beside him, its massive eye fixed on the trapped creatures, its purr a low vibration that traveled through his bones. The mountain floated above them, its beams ready, its remaining eyes tracking every movement.
"Keep them here," Nulls said. "I will go ahead."
He turned away from the battle, toward the city that rose from the depths like a wound in reality. The ooze spread before him, a path of green slime that led between the cyclopean stones and into the vaults beyond. The smell grew stronger with each stroke, thick and sweet and rotting, coating his throat with each breath.
Behind him, the tower held the creatures in place, its tentacles wrapped around a dozen struggling horrors that could not escape. The serpent waited, its eye following him, its purr a steady pulse that marked the seconds as they passed. The mountain floated above, a silent guardian of the path he had taken.
The walls of the city rose around him like the ribs of a dead god, each block of greenish-black stone cut to angles that should not exist in any geometry known to sane minds.
Nulls swam through corridors where the left wall leaned away from him while also leaning toward him, where the ceiling above seemed simultaneously close and infinitely distant. The space itself felt wrong, stretched in directions that had no names, compressed along axes that his senses could not track.
He reached out to touch one of the walls, his fingers brushing against carvings that depicted things he could not recognize. The stone was cold and slick with ancient slime, centuries of undisturbed growth coating every surface.
His hand left a trail in the muck, and for a moment he saw the bare stone beneath, its surface etched with symbols that seemed to move when he looked away.
Humanoid molluscs guarded the outer perimeter of the city, their forms barely visible in the gloom. They had no eyes that he could see, no faces at all, just columns of pale flesh that stood motionless in the water, their bodies encrusted with the same slime that covered everything else.
They did not move as he passed. They did not react to the two leviathans that flanked him. They simply stood, patient and eternal, guarding something that had no need of guards.
What are they protecting? The question formed in his mind and dissolved unanswered. There were no civilians here, no treasure vaults, no temples holding sacred relics. Only empty streets and dead buildings and those silent sentinels standing watch over nothing.
The serpent brushed against his side, its scales warm even through the cold water, and the mountain pulsed with gentle light that illuminated the path ahead. The tower flowed around them, its thousand mouths closed, its fused bodies pressing against the walls of structures that should have been too narrow for its passage yet somehow accommodated its bulk.
A tingle started at the base of his skull and spread downward along his spine, a sensation he had not felt since waking in this reality, a feeling of something familiar pressing against the edges of his awareness.
The sensation grew stronger as they swam deeper into the city, passing through plazas where the ground sloped at impossible angles, through archways that curved in two directions at once, through streets that doubled back on themselves in ways that should have left him disoriented but instead felt almost natural.
The castle appeared at the center of the city, its walls made of jagged obsidian shards forced together with no visible mortar, each piece catching the faint light and throwing back reflections that showed things that were not there.
Faces appeared in the glassy surfaces, figures that moved when he blinked, scenes of violence and worship that played out in silence before fading back into darkness.
Around the castle, floating in the water at regular intervals, spheres of unknown substance engulfed the entire castle. The sphere was covered in sigils, thousands of them, etched so deeply into the material that they seemed to go all the way through.
The symbols pulsed with a rhythm that matched the beating of his heart, and the tingle in his spine became a persistent thrum.
He commanded the serpent to strike the sphere. The creature lunged, its massive body slamming into the barrier with force that would have reduced mountains to rubble. The barrier did not crack not did it move. It simply absorbed the impact and continued existing, the sigils on its surface glowing brighter for a moment before fading back to their steady pulse.
The mountain fired a beam at another sphere, light so concentrated that the water around it flash-vaporized into steam. The beam struck the sphere and scattered, breaking into harmless rays that illuminated the water but left the barrier untouched. The tower pressed against a third sphere, its thousand mouths biting and tearing, but the surface remained smooth and unmarked.
Nulls summoned Marky, the scythe forming in his grip with a weight that felt heavier than usual, as if the weapon itself sensed the power of what they faced. He swam to the nearest sphere, raised the blade, and swung with all the strength his exhausted body could muster.
The scythe struck the sphere and stopped. The entropy that had dissolved creatures and decayed wounds and carved through scales did nothing. The blade simply hung there, pressed against a surface harder than his sons' body.
He lowered the scythe and studied the sphere, looking past its surface, past the sigils, past the material itself to the energy that flowed within it. The realization came slowly, then all at once, and he almost laughed at the simplicity of it.
The sphere was made of Nexus. Not Aetherion converted into Nexus, not Nexus filtered through human magic, but pure, raw, undiluted Nexus sitting in the depths of this ocean for thousands of years, silently collecting the ambient Aetherion of the world and converting it into more of itself. The more energy it absorbed, the stronger it grew. The stronger it grew, the more energy it could absorb.
This sphere was a cousin of his own transformed body, a mass of power that had been left here so long ago that its creator had probably forgotten it existed.
He unsummoned Marky, the scythe dissolving into nothing, and turned to the two leviathans that waited behind him. The serpent's single eye watched him with what might have been concern. The mountain's beams had dimmed to a soft glow.
"Wait outside," he said. "Both of you. Stay close to the city, alert to threats, but wait for me here."
The serpent's body brushed against him once more, a final contact before it turned and swam back the way they had come. The mountain followed, its light fading as it retreated. The tower lingered for a moment, its thousand mouths opening and closing in patterns that might have been words, then it too turned and left.
Nulls faced the sphere and raised his hand. With the last of his Nexus reserve, the small portion that remained after the long ascent and the battle below and the transformation of his body, he traced the time equation in the water. The sigil formed slowly, each line a struggle, each curve a drain on reserves that had almost nothing left to give.
He set the distance between himself and the inside of the sphere to one meter. The sigil pulsed, and he stepped forward.
The water around him vanished, replaced by air, cold and stale and old. He stood inside the sphere, inside the barrier, surrounded by darkness that pressed against him from every direction. The only light came from the sigils on the inner surface, thousands of symbols pulsing with the same rhythm as his heart.
The castle loomed before him, its obsidian walls now visible in the glow, their jagged surfaces throwing reflections that showed him things he could not look away from. He walked toward the entrance, his feet touching ground that felt solid but moved beneath him like water, like sand, like something that remembered being liquid and had not yet decided to be stone.
A massive door blocked his path, silver in color despite the darkness, its surface etched with scenes of beings that stood upright and beings that crawled and beings that had no shape at all. He pushed against it, and the metal groaned but did not open. He pushed harder, his muscles straining, his body still recovering from wounds that had not fully healed, and still the door refused.
He stepped back and looked for another way. There was none. The castle had only one entrance, and it was sealed.
With a final surge of strength, he pressed his shoulder against the cold silver and pushed. The door gave way slowly, grinding against stone that had not moved in centuries, opening a gap just wide enough for him to slip through.
The interior of the castle was larger than the exterior. He stood in a hallway that stretched farther than the building should have allowed, its walls covered in the same moving symbols he had seen on the barrier spheres. The ceiling rose above him into darkness, and the floor sloped downward at an angle that made him adjust his stance to keep from falling.
Nexus reserves were almost gone. He had enough for one more act, one more manipulation of reality, and then he would have nothing left.
He compressed the water in his palm, squeezing it until the molecules resisted, until the pressure built beyond anything natural, until the water turned to plasma and light flooded the hallway. The glow was harsh and blue-white, casting shadows that moved in ways shadows should not move, illuminating corners that had been dark for millennia.
The hallway led to a vast chamber, its floor covered in tiles that formed patterns he could not follow, his eyes sliding off the designs as if they did not want to see them. At the far end of the chamber, two statues stood guard before a gate of silver, their forms massive and grotesque.
They were amorphous, their shapes shifting even as he watched, gelatinous bodies that reminded him of amoebas enlarged to the size of buildings. They had no faces, no features, no way to see or speak or think, yet they turned toward him as he entered, their bodies flowing to face him with the slow inevitability of lava moving down a mountain.
He stopped.
His feet would not move forward. His legs would not carry him closer to the gate. The statues did not attack. They simply waited, their formless bodies pulsing with a rhythm that matched his own heartbeat, that matched the sigils on the walls, that matched the spheres outside.
A presence pressed against his consciousness, not Yog's cold and familiar touch but something else, something older, something that had been waiting here for longer than this planet had existed. The whisper came from everywhere and nowhere, from the walls and the floor and the air itself, formed from words that had no meaning in any language he knew.
The language was dead. It had been dead before the first human drew breath, before the first cell divided in the primordial oceans, before this world had coalesced from dust and gas. He should not have understood it. He could not have understood it. And yet the meaning came to him as clearly as if the words had been spoken in his own tongue.
Come closer.
His legs began to move again, carrying him toward the gate despite every instinct that screamed at him to run, to flee, to escape before it was too late. The statues parted as he approached, their gelatinous bodies flowing aside to create a path, their presence pressing against him with a weight that felt almost affectionate.
The whispers grew clearer as he neared the silver gate, the dead language shifting, evolving, becoming something that sounded almost like the words he spoke himself.
Closer. Bring the light. Show me what you are.
He stumbled on a crack in the floor, his foot catching on an imperfection in the ancient stone, and he almost fell. The crack was deep, running through the tile like a scar, and he could not help but see it as a sign, a warning, a message from the universe that wanted him to turn back, of course he did not.
The candles lit themselves as he approached the gate, flames of black fire erupting from holders he had not seen, their light the color of void, their heat so intense that he felt it through the water that still clung to his skin. The flames did not flicker. They burned steady and silent, illuminating the gate and the gate alone, leaving the rest of the chamber in darkness.
He blew out the plasma in his palm, letting the darkness claim him, letting the black flames be his only guide. The silver gate stood before him, its surface etched with images that made his eyes water, scenes of beings that had ruled this world before the first fish crawled onto land, before the first plant grew toward the sky, before the first breath of air was drawn by something that could be called alive.
He pressed his hands against the cold metal and pushed. It did nothing.
He pushed harder, his muscles screaming, his body still broken from the battle below, his Nexus reserves too depleted to give him any advantage beyond what his flesh could provide. The gate resisted, and for a moment he thought it would not open, that he would stand here forever, pushing against silver that would never yield.
Every cell in his body told him to stop. Every instinct screamed that what lay beyond this gate was not meant for him, was not meant for anyone, was a secret that should have remained buried in the dark.
He could not bring himself to obey. Stubbornness, or curiosity, or something deeper and more primal, drove him forward, drove him to press harder, to push longer, to refuse to accept that this door would stay closed. After some time he finally opened the gate.
Silver swung inward on hinges that had not moved in eons, and the black flames flared higher, illuminating a chamber beyond that dwarfed the one he stood in.
The floor was covered in sigils, thousands of them, tens of thousands, so many that he could not see where they ended. Each one pulsed with the same rhythm that had followed him since he entered the city, the heartbeat of something vast and ancient and patient.
At the center of the chamber, bound in chains of crimson light, a behemoth waited.
It was a mountain of flesh, green and gelatinous, its surface rippling with every breath it took. Tentacles emerged from its bulk, Some thick as city blocks, others thin as wire, all of them twitching with a life that had nothing to do with the creature's will.
Wings, vast and membranous, lay folded against its sides, their surfaces covered in eyes that blinked in sequence, each one a different color, each one focused on him. A face pressed against the mass of its body, human-like in shape but wrong in every detail, the features arranged in an expression of absolute agony.
It was an octopus and a dragon and a man, all three fused into a single form that should not have been able to exist, that should not have been able to move, that should not have been able to look at him with eyes that held intelligence and hunger and something that might have been hope.
The chains pulsed as it shifted, the crimson light growing brighter as the creature tested its bonds, and for a moment Nulls felt the pressure of its presence against his consciousness like a physical weight. His mind stayed clear. His thoughts remained his own. His awareness of self did not waver.
His body however, betrayed him. His hands began to shake. His breath came in ragged gasps. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down his spine, cold despite the heat of the black flames.
His heart pounded in his chest with a rhythm that had nothing to do with the sigils, with the chains, with the creature that watched him from the center of the chamber.
The flesh that Yog had remade, the body that was composed of Nexus and will and the memory of what he had been, trembled on the edge of breaking, on the edge of shattering, on the edge of becoming something that could not hold itself together.
He forced his legs to move, forced himself to walk toward the creature, to approach the chains, to stand before this being that had been imprisoned here for longer than human civilization had existed.
The sigils on the floor pulsed faster as he walked, their rhythm increasing until it matched the trembling of his hands, the shuddering of his breath, the chaos of everything inside him that was trying to tear itself apart.
The creature's mouth opened, and a voice emerged, deep and resonant, vibrating through the floor and into his bones.
"You are not what I expected."
The language was human now, the dead tongue of an ancient civilization transformed into words he could understand without translation, and the sound of it was almost familiar, almost comforting, almost enough to slow his racing heart.
"Few things are," Nulls said. His voice was steady despite the shaking of his hands, despite the trembling of his legs, despite the chaos of his body. "What did you expect?"
The creature's eyes, all of them, blinked in sequence, and its flesh rippled with what might have been laughter.
"Someone larger. Someone more... prepared." The chains pulsed again, and the creature shifted, its tentacles twitching against the crimson bonds. "You have the scent of something foreign even for me. Something old. Something that should have died long time ago."
Nulls stopped at the edge of the sigil-covered floor, close enough to see the individual symbols, close enough to feel the heat of the creature's presence, close enough to touch the chains if he reached out his hand.
"I am still here," he said. "Ask your questions. I will answer them if I can."
The creature's face, the human one pressed against the mass of its body, twisted into something that might have been a smile.
"Then let us talk, Arcanist. We have so much to discuss."
The chamber stretched around them, its floor covered in sigils that pulsed with the same rhythm as Nulls's heartbeat. Crimson chains bound the behemoth's bulk, each link glowing brighter whenever the creature shifted against its restraints. The black flames on the candles cast no shadows, their light absorbed by the walls before it could reach the corners of the room.
Nulls stood at the edge of the sigil-covered floor, close enough to feel the heat radiating from the creature's body. The being's flesh rippled with each breath, green and gelatinous, its surface covered in eyes that blinked in sequence.
Tentacles twitched against the chains, testing their strength without urgency. The human-like face pressed against the mass of its body watched him with an expression that might have been curiosity.
"You came through the sphere," the creature said, its voice deep enough to vibrate the stone beneath his feet. "That barrier have held for longer than your species has walked upright. How did you pass them?"
Nulls kept his hands at his sides, his claws relaxed, his stance open. "The sphere are made of Nexus. I used an equation to step inside the space they contained."
The behemoth's eyes blinked, hundreds of them, each one a different color, each one focused on him with intensity that prickled against his skin. "Nexus? That word tastes old in my mouth. Older than the stone of this city and the water that surrounds it."
"Older than most things in this reality," Nulls said. "But you already knew that. You have been here for a very long time. You have felt the Nexus accumulating in the barrier, growing stronger with each passing century. You knew someone would eventually come who could pass through them."
The creature's tentacles twitched again, and the chains groaned under the strain. "I hoped someone would come. I did not know. Hoping and knowing are different things when you have been alone for so long."
Nulls studied the being before him, the mass of its body, the wings folded against its sides, the thousand eyes that never stopped watching. "What is your name? What do I call you?"
"Names are for beings who have others to speak them. I have no one." The creature's human face twisted into something that might have been a smile, might have been a grimace, might have been the only expression left to a thing that had forgotten how to feel. "Tell me your name first, arcanist. The one who walks through barrier of pure power. What do they call you where you come from?"
"Nulls."
The word echoed off the stone walls, absorbed by the sigils on the floor, swallowed by the darkness that pressed against the edges of the chamber. The creature's eyes blinked faster, its tentacles curling and uncurling with a rhythm that matched the pulsing of the chains.
"Nulls." The voice rolled the word like a stone in its mouth, tasting it, testing it. "That is a strange name for a strange being. What does it mean in your language?"
"Nothing."
The behemoth went still. Even its tentacles stopped moving. The chains dimmed, their crimson light fading to a dull glow. The eyes, all of them, fixed on Nulls with an intensity that made the air feel heavier, thicker, harder to breathe.
"... The word means precisely what it describes. No hidden meaning. No secret significance. The void where meaning should be."
The creature's human face twisted again, but this time the expression was harder to read. "You named yourself after absence and yet you stand before me, having walked through barrier that would have reduced any other being to scattered atoms."
Nulls let the words hang in the air. "Names are given by others or chosen by ourselves. Mine was chosen. It fits what I am."
The behemoth's bulk shifted, chains groaning, sigils flaring brighter to contain the movement. "There is something about you that scratches at the edges of my awareness. Something old. Something that should be familiar but remains just out of reach. I have felt this tingle before, when other beings came to this city, when other things tried to reach what lies beneath. None of them had it as strongly as you."
"What do you feel?"
"A memory of something that should not exist anymore." The creature's voice dropped lower, vibrating through the floor and into Nulls's bones. "I do not know what it is. I cannot name it. I have been here for eons, watching the world change outside these walls, and I have never encountered anything that made my senses prickle like this."
Nulls waited. The creature's thousand eyes continued their slow blink, each one opening and closing at a different time, creating a pattern that made his head ache if he watched too long.
"There is more," the behemoth said. "A presence. A weight behind your eyes. A thing that rides within your consciousness like a passenger. I cannot see it clearly. I cannot touch it. It slips away whenever I try to focus on it."
The monster did not know about Yog. The Codex's presence was foreign to it, strange and unreachable, a shape in the darkness that moved whenever the creature tried to look directly at it. The tingle was real, the scratching at the edges of its awareness was real, but the being could not identify the source. It only knew that something was there, something old, something that should not exist anymore.
"Why am I here?" Nulls asked. "Why did you bring me to this place? You could have let me pass through the city without revealing yourself. You could have stayed silent and hidden behind your spheres. Instead, you opened the gate. You let me in. You started speaking."
The behemoth's tentacles curled inward, toward its massive body, toward the human face pressed against its bulk. The chains creaked as the creature shifted, and for a moment, Nulls saw something underneath the green gelatinous flesh, something that looked almost like relief.
"I needed to see you," the behemoth said. "I have been waiting for someone like you for a very long time. Someone who could pass the spheres. Someone whose presence felt different from the others who have come. Someone who might be able to do what needs to be done."
The bound creature's eyes all focused on Nulls at once, a thousand orbs of different colors all fixed on his face with an intensity that made his skin crawl. The human face pressed against the mass of its body opened its mouth, and the voice that emerged was softer than before, almost gentle.
"You are not the first to stand where you are standing. Others have reached this chamber. Others have spoken with me. Others have tried to help. All of them failed. All of them died. All of them left nothing behind except their bones and their fear."
"The sphere killed them?"
"The sphere were the least of their problems." The creature's tentacles twitched toward the walls, toward the sigils that covered every surface, toward the black flames that burned without flickering. "This city guards something precious. Something that should never have been brought here. Something that should never have existed at all."
The behemoth's body shuddered, chains rattling, sigils flaring bright. The thousand eyes blinked in sequence, and when they opened again, they were wet.
The chains groaned as the behemoth shifted its massive body, the crimson light pulsing faster along their length. Its thousand eyes blinked in a wave that started at its highest point and rolled downward like water flowing over stone. The human face pressed against its bulk twisted into an expression that Nulls recognized.
Desperation. Raw and old and worn smooth by centuries of waiting.
"I need you to free me," the creature said, its voice dropping to a frequency that vibrated through the floor and into his chest. "These chains have held me for longer than your species has existed. The beings who placed me here are gone now, their civilization dust, their names forgotten. But the bonds remain."
Nulls studied the chains more closely, the way they sank into the creature's flesh, the way the sigils on the floor pulsed in response to each shift of its weight. "You said the power used to bind you was similar to Nexus."
"Identical." The behemoth's tentacles curled inward, brushing against the chains, recoiling from the crimson glow. "I do not know where it came from. I do not know who wielded it. I only know that it holds me, that it has held me since before this world had a name, and that it weakens with each passing century."
A cluster of eyes near the creature's center focused on Nulls with sudden intensity. "The spheres outside this castle are made of the same substance. They have been gathering power for eons, converting the ambient energy of this world into more of themselves. They grow stronger while my chains grow weaker."
Nulls walked around the edge of the sigil-covered floor, his footsteps silent on the ancient stone. "You said something lies beneath this city. Something that should never have been brought here."
The human face contorted, and for a moment Nulls saw something underneath the green gelatinous flesh, something that might have been bone, might have been structure, might have been the first hint of the creature's original form before eons of imprisonment had reshaped it.
"A gateway." The behemoth's thousand eyes all blinked at once, a rare synchronization that spoke of deep fear. "Below this city, buried under miles of stone and water and the accumulated sediment of ages, there is a place where the laws of this universe break down. Where matter and energy lose their meaning. Where things that should not exist swim through dimensions that should not be possible."
Its voice dropped lower, and the chains flared brighter as if responding to its agitation.
"I was one of those things, once. I came through the gateway when it was first opened, when the beings who built this city reached into the space between spaces and pulled something out. They pulled me out. They could not put me back. So they bound me here, in this chamber, with these chains, and they made me the guardian of the gate I was meant to enter through."
The creature's tentacles twitched, and Nulls saw that some of them ended in hands, human-like hands with too many fingers, each finger with too many joints. They reached toward him and stopped short of the sigil boundary.
"I have been alone for so long," the behemoth said. "The ones who imprisoned me died. Their descendants forgot I existed. The world changed above the water, species rising and falling, empires crumbling, oceans rising and receding. And I remained here, in the dark, waiting for someone who could break the chains."
Nulls stopped walking. He stood at the edge of the sigil circle, close enough to feel the heat radiating from the creature's body, close enough to see the individual symbols that made up the binding array.
"You want freedom," he said.
"Want?" The behemoth's voice cracked. "I need freedom. The chains weaken, but not fast enough. Eventually they will break on their own, and when they do, the gateway will open again. Not a controlled opening, not a temporary breach. A permanent wound in the fabric of this reality. Everything that lies on the other side will pour through, and I will be the first among them because I am already here."
The being's human face pressed against its bulk, and Nulls saw tears welling from its eyes, thick and slow and older than the ocean that surrounded this city.
"I was a monster where I came from," the creature said. "I killed and consumed and spread through dimensions like a plague. I have spent every moment of my imprisonment learning to be something else. I do not want to go back to what I was. But if the chains break on their own, I will have no choice. The hunger will return. The instinct will override whatever I have become."
Nulls considered the sigils on the floor, the chains around the creature's body, the spheres outside that had converted centuries of ambient energy into pure Nexus.
He thought of Yog's contract, the humans he was meant to destroy, the power he had gained and the power he still needed. He thought of the leviathans waiting outside the city, bound to him by sigils and memory, loyal in their own alien way.
"Make me an offer," the behemoth said, its thousand eyes fixed on him, its voice soft. "I have nothing to give you except my service. I have no treasures, no secrets, no power that you cannot take for yourself. But I can serve. I can fight. I can be the weapon you point at your enemies, if you will only let me out of these chains."
Nulls walked to the center of the sigil circle, stopping directly in front of the creature's human face. He looked into its wet eyes and saw something he recognized.
The same desperation he had felt in the cube, hanging from chains, waiting for Yog to answer. The same hunger for freedom that had driven him to make bargains he would never have considered otherwise.
"We can make a deal," Nulls said.
The behemoth's thousand eyes fixed on Nulls with an intensity that made the black candles flare higher, their flames casting no shadows on the sigil-covered floor. The human face pressed against its bulk opened its mouth, and a sound emerged that might have been a sigh, might have been a prayer, might have been the first exhalation of hope after eons of despair.
"Name your terms," the creature said, its voice trembling through the stone. "Whatever you ask, I will agree to. Whatever price you demand, I will pay it. I have nothing left except my word, and even that is a currency that has been devalued by centuries of isolation."
Nulls walked slowly around the edge of the sigil circle, studying the way the chains responded to the creature's movements, the way the crimson light pulsed in rhythm with its heartbeat. He stopped at a point where the binding array seemed weakest, where the symbols on the floor had faded almost to nothing.
"Service," he said. "You will serve me when I call upon you. You will fight when I command you to fight. You will not harm me or any being that I designate as under my protection."
The behemoth's tentacles curled inward, brushing against its own bulk, and the chains groaned under the strain of the movement. "Service. Yes. I can serve. I was made to serve, once, before I was made to destroy. The ones who built this city shaped me for their purposes, and those purposes have been waiting for someone to revive them."
A cluster of eyes near the creature's crown blinked out of sequence, and the human face twisted into something that might have been a smile.
"But I have conditions of my own," the behemoth continued, its voice steady now. "You will not send me back through the gateway. You will not use me to open it further. You will not command me to destroy what I have learned to value in my imprisonment. The things that swim on the other side of that gate are horrors beyond your imagining, and I will not be the instrument of their release."
Nulls considered the request, weighing the creature's desperation against its resolve. "I have no interest in what lies beneath this city. My concerns are with the world above the water, with the beings who live on the surface, with a contract I have made that requires their extinction."
The behemoth's thousand eyes widened, and the human face pressed closer to the edge of the sigil boundary. "Extinction? You intend to end an entire species?"
"The humans," Nulls said. "All of them. Every man, woman, every single one of them. Their cities will crumble, their history will be forgotten, their name will become a footnote in the history of this planet. That is my purpose. That is the price I paid for the power I now possess."
The creature's tentacles went still, and the chains dimmed, their crimson glow fading to a dull red. The black flames flickered once, twice, then steadied.
"Then we are not so different," the behemoth said. "I was made to destroy. You have chosen to destroy. The difference is only in the target and the reason." Its voice softened, and the human face sagged with something that might have been exhaustion. "I will serve you in this. I will fight your enemies. I will bring ruin to your enemies. But I will not enjoy it."
Nulls stepped closer to the creature, close enough to touch the chains if he reached out his hand. "The conditions of our deal are these. First, I will free you from these bonds using the power of Nexus. Second, in exchange, you will swear loyalty to me and obey my commands without hesitation. Third, you will never harm me or any being I designate as protected. Fourth, you will never attempt to return to the dimension you came from or assist any being in crossing through the gateway."
The behemoth's thousand eyes blinked in sequence, a wave of acknowledgment that started at its highest point and rolled downward. "I agree to these terms. But I add one more condition. You will not ask me to serve beyond my capacity. I am old and tired and worn down by centuries of confinement. I can fight, but I cannot fight forever. I can destroy, but I cannot destroy endlessly. There will be limits to what I can give."
Nulls nodded, the gesture slow and deliberate. "Those limits will be determined by me, not by you. If I ask something beyond your capacity, you may refuse, and I will find another way. But if I ask something within your capacity, you will obey."
The creature's human face pressed against its bulk, and tears welled from its eyes, thick and slow, dripping onto the sigil-covered floor. "Then we have a deal. Release me from these chains, and I will be yours to command."
Nulls raised his hand and began to trace a sigil in the air before him, the lines of purple light hanging in the darkness, each stroke precise and deliberate. The symbols formed slowly, complex geometries that drew on the same equations he had used to bind the leviathans, adapted now for a different purpose.
"When the chains break," he said, "you will feel the urge to flee, to attack, to assert your dominance. You will resist that urge. You will remain still until I tell you to move. If you attack me, I will destroy you. The power that holds you is the same power that flows through my body, and I have more than enough to end you if you prove treacherous."
The behemoth's thousand eyes fixed on the sigil forming in Nulls's hand, and its voice dropped to a whisper. "I have waited too long for freedom to throw it away on foolishness. I will obey. I will remain still. I will be whatever you need me to be."
The sigil completed itself, pulsing with purple light, and Nulls held it above his palm like a living star. He looked at the creature, at the chains that bound it, at the sigils on the floor that had held for so long, and he spoke the final word of the agreement.
"So it is sworn and shall it will be done."
The sigil pulsed in Nulls's palm, purple light casting strange shadows across the behemoth's green flesh. He held it there, not yet released, his fingers curled around its edges like a cage around a captive star. The creature's thousand eyes watched him with expectation that had been building for millennia.
"How do I know you will not betray me?"
The behemoth's tentacles went still, and the human face pressed against its bulk shifted into an expression of something that might have been respect. "You are wiser than the others who came before you. They did not ask that question. They assumed my desperation would ensure my loyalty."
"As did I," Nulls said. "But assumption is not certainty. Your power exceeds mine at your full strength. Once these chains break, you could crush me before I summoned a single sigil to defend myself. I need something more than your word."
The creature's eyes blinked in sequence, a slow wave that started at its highest point and rolled downward like water over stone. Its massive body convulsed, the chains groaning, the sigils on the floor flaring brighter as they fought to contain the movement. The convulsion deepened, and the human face opened its mouth wide, wider than any human jaw should open, revealing a throat that led down into darkness.
A small orb of light emerged from that throat, rising slowly through the water, pushing past teeth that had never seen the sun, emerging into the chamber with a soft pulse that matched the rhythm of the creature's heart. The orb floated toward Nulls, warm and golden, and he reached out to catch it.
He felt it settle into his palm, weightless and dense at the same time, a contradiction in physical form. The light within it pulsed against his skin, and he understood what he held.
"My soul," the behemoth said, its voice weaker now, thinner, as if the loss of that orb had cost it something essential. "Destroy it, and this body dies. The portion of me that resides in this vessel ends. That is the assurance you need."
Nulls stared at the orb, at the light that swirled within it, at the weight of a being's entire existence compressed into a space smaller than his fist. "Why would you wager something so precious? Betrayal would be cheaper than death. You could fight me and win. You could escape. You could be free without sacrificing your soul."
The human face contorted, and for a moment, Nulls saw something underneath the green gelatinous flesh, something that looked almost like grief.
"This consciousness is only a fraction of the real me," the creature said. "The being that swims through the spaces between dimensions, that feasts on realities, that has existed since before time had meaning, is still out there. Destroying this soul would kill this vessel, this fragment, this small piece of a much larger whole. But the real me would continue. It would not even notice the loss."
Nulls turned the orb over in his palm, studying the light within, the patterns that swirled like galaxies captured in glass. "A piece of consciousness that diverges from the original. A fragment that developed its own will, its own desires, its own fear of returning to what it once was."
"Completely defiant of my real purpose," the behemoth agreed. "I was meant to consume this world, to open the gateway wider, to let the rest of myself pour through and devour everything. Instead, I chose to be imprisoned. I chose to wait. I chose to become something other than what I was made to be."
Nulls closed his fingers around the orb and raised his other hand, the sigil still pulsing with purple light, ready to be released. He had the leverage he needed. The creature's soul in his palm, a knife held to the throat of everything this fragment had become.
He flicked the sigil toward the chains.
The purple light shot forward, striking the crimson bonds at their weakest point, and for a moment, the chains dimmed. The sigils on the floor flared brighter, fighting against the intrusion, rejecting the foreign power. The chains pulsed once, twice, three times, and then the purple light faded.
The sigil dissipated. The chains held.
Nulls stared at the bonds, at the place where his power had struck and failed, and felt the emptiness in his own reserves. The battle below, the ascent through the ocean, the passage through the spheres, the long walk through the city and the castle and the chamber. All of it had drained him. There was nothing left.
"I cannot free you," he said, the words flat and honest. "My power is too low. The chains require more Nexus than I possess right now."
The behemoth's thousand eyes blinked, and the human face sagged with something that might have been disappointment or acceptance or the simple exhaustion of hope deferred.
"You gave me your soul," Nulls continued. "You trusted me with something precious, and I cannot complete my part of the deal." He opened his palm and held the orb out toward the creature. "Honor demands I return this."
The golden light floated from his hand, drifting back toward the human face, sinking into its open mouth, disappearing down the dark throat. The behemoth shuddered as the orb settled back into its place, and a tremor passed through its massive body.
"Keep your word," the creature said. "Free me when you have the power."
Nulls lowered his hands and turned toward the gate, toward the hallway, toward the exit that would take him back to the surface. "I will free you. Sooner or later. I swore I would. I keep my promises."
"Thank you," the behemoth said, its voice soft, almost gentle. "For coming this far. For listening. For not killing me when you had the chance."
Nulls paused at the threshold, his back to the creature, his shadow stretching across the sigil-covered floor. "Thank you for the information. The gateway beneath this city, the beings that swim on the other side, the history you carry in your oldest cells. All of it is valuable."
He stepped through the gate and did not look back.
The black flames flickered once, twice, and then extinguished, leaving the behemoth alone in the darkness with its chains and its memories and its new promise of eventual freedom.
The candles went out one by one as he passed them, their black flames collapsing into themselves with a soft hiss that sounded almost disappointed. The sigils on the floor dimmed behind him, returning to their dormant state, and the chains around the behemoth's body faded into the darkness of the chamber he left behind. Nulls walked through the silver gate and into the hallway beyond, his footsteps echoing off stone that had not heard footsteps in centuries.
The castle's interior felt smaller now, the impossible geometry of its halls compressed into something almost ordinary after the magnitude of what he had witnessed in that chamber. A fragment of a being that predated this reality, chained to a gateway that led to horrors beyond imagination, offering its soul in exchange for freedom. He turned the orb of light over in his memory, the weight of it still warm in his palm even though he had returned it.
The Time Equation traced itself in the air before him as he reached the outer wall of the castle, its lines burning purple and hungry for Nexus that he barely had to spare. He set the distance between himself and the space outside the spheres to one meter, and the sigil pulled him through the barrier with a lurch that made his stomach clench. The spheres continued their slow orbit around the castle, oblivious to his passage.
The humanoid molluscs on the outer walls of the city had not moved from their positions. Their pale bodies stood like columns of flesh, eyeless and faceless, guarding something they could not comprehend. Nulls swam past them without looking back.
The serpent found him first, its massive body coiling through the water with an urgency that spoke of impatience and concern. The mountain pulsed with light, its beams scanning the city walls for threats that had not materialized. The tower flowed around a cluster of crumbling buildings, its thousand mouths opening and closing in patterns that might have been questions.
"I am intact," Nulls said, his voice carrying through the water, reaching each of them. "Nothing down there wants to follow us. We can ascend."
The serpent's tail swung in a wide arc, kicking up sediment that had settled on the ocean floor for millennia, and the force of the movement pushed them away from the city's outer walls. The mountain followed, its beams illuminating their path. The tower flowed at the rear, its fused bodies pressing together into a more streamlined shape for the long ascent.
Water pressure decreased as they rose, the crushing weight of the abyss slowly releasing its grip on their bodies. Nulls felt the change in his ears, in his chest, in the Nexus that flowed sluggishly through his veins. His reserves were dangerously low, the sigil to pass through the spheres having cost more than he wanted to admit.
Hours passed, or maybe only minutes. Time had become meaningless in the darkness, measured only by the changing color of the water around them and the gradual warming of the current. The black of the abyss gave way to deep blue, then to something lighter, and finally to a grey that reflected a sky he could not see.
The surface broke around them with violence that took him by surprise.
Water exploded upward as the serpent breached, its massive body rising from the sea like a mountain emerging from a dream. The mountain followed, its beams scattering in every direction as they hit air for the first time in centuries. The tower flowed across the surface, its thousand mouths tasting the wind, tasting the snow that fell from a sky choked with storms.
Snow fell from heavy clouds that moved with unnatural speed, their undersides black with accumulated moisture. Wind screamed across the waves, whipping the water into peaks that reached the height of mountains, peaks that slammed into the leviathans and pushed them sideways with each impact. Thunder rolled across the sky, so constant that it became a single continuous note rather than a series of distinct cracks.
Nulls raised his hand and felt snowflakes land on his palm. They melted against his skin, and where they melted, his skin blistered. Burns spread across his palm in white lines, the flesh bubbling, the Nexus within him surging to repair the damage.
He pulled his hand back inside the serpent's mouth, where the creature's hot breath kept the snow at bay.
"Close your jaws," he said.
The serpent's mouth snapped shut, sealing him inside with the warmth of its body and the faint pulsing of its heartbeat. The burns on his hand healed slowly, the Nexus reserves too low to accelerate the regeneration, and he watched the flesh knit itself back together over the course of long minutes.
The humans had detonated nuclear weapons near this region. Multiple warheads, enough to saturate the surrounding waters with enough radiation to poison anything that surfaced. A trap for whatever emerged from the depths, a ring of fire designed to burn anything that broke through.
He should have expected it. The woman in the cube, Valerius, had made it clear that they would do whatever was necessary to contain him. Poisoning an entire ocean to prevent his return was within their capacity, within their willingness.
Mildly inconvenient.
The serpent's tail pushed against the water, and the creature began to move west, away from the storms, away from the fallout, away from the immediate threat of nuclear winter. The mountain followed, its beams cutting through the snow and illuminating a path through the chaos. The tower flowed beside them, its thousand mouths closed against the poisoned air.
Nulls leaned against the serpent's jaw and watched the grey sky through the gaps in its teeth. The snow continued to fall, each flake a small reminder of what the surface had become.
They would need to go far. They would need to find clean water, clean air, a place where the humans had not salted the earth against him. And then he would need to recharge, to gather enough Nexus to free the behemoth, to fulfill his contract, to do everything he had promised.
West. The leviathans swam west, and Nulls watched the horizon through the serpent's mouth, waiting for the storms to clear.