An electrical jolt knocks my head back, and an acute pain pierces my skull. Startled, as I am torn away from my deeply entrenched and spontaneous engrossment.
Roused from my trance and extracted from the past, I have returned to the Eckrhyne founder's inner realm of fantasy. I bring my head back down and rotate my Oculus's lens to recapture my loss of normal perception. Apprehending sanity once more.
I do not wish to surmise what is considered normal here. Not in his twisted and unhinged domain, where normality is defined through his subjectivity.
When I was fully immersed, I tried to find the indicative feeling of separation. Seeking dissociation from within the inescapable heaviness of his pungent negativity.
And there was none.
I felt no contrast at all. No mental boundaries. No self-control. I couldn't manipulate the emotional immersion, and calm his racing thoughts. I found them impossible to navigate. I absorbed them as though they were mine, and my identity vanished. It had become nonexistent. There was nothing malleable for me to use as an escape. We were inseparable.
Then a fluttering sensation in my chest occurs as I notice a residuum of dark prana wavering within the illumined fissures.
Have I become...tainted?
Why is the Mal's darkness coming from inside my nexus?
Did I contract it from my Esseden - or from Ira? Or is it but a figment? I cannot discern whether the contagion is real or not. The fine line between factuality and illusion has become distorted. Unclear.
His memories, which have amalgamated into an abominable cluster, have shown me his disposition and behavior in greater detail. Broken down into chronological and linear junctures. He was swept along by his emotional turmoil throughout the course of his grieving. Impelled by his unsound fixation. He did not seek closure or desire it. He strived to resurrect the past. Recover what he had lost. Yearning to reunite with his significant other.
When I was experiencing his grief through his narrative, I was caught in the merciless throes of toxic emotion and brittle reason. His memories reaffirm his depraved incentive. Spurring his unconstrained lunacy in the celestial present.
In the past, his amorality and severe lack of sanity were indisputable, and yet, I have come to sympathise with his introspective, even though I condemn the use of his unethical methods to achieve his long-term goal. He convinced himself that his creation would bring him closer to his late subject of affection despite the mal's soul being forever out of his reach.
In his early years, he held no concern for others – except for himself - and of course, the Sincistic Mal - my Esseden's bane. However, there was an instance in his memories when he did almost reconsider his options before he stepped through the portal. He contemplated the possibility of the unforeseen implications if he were to travel far back in time for biological materials. It was a fleeting intersection of thought.
Witnessing his suffering from his perspective was maddening. I genuinely pity him. He had no one to turn to. And now he dwells within his fictitious domain of self-denial. Holding onto the past. Latching onto present events. Biding his time. Waiting. Deliberating. Nurturing his vendetta against us.
If it were myself in his stead, what would I have done?
If I had lost someone close to me, would I be able to function?
Come what may, I still have faith that she will overcome her ill state of health. And for the sake of all, she must quell his internalised rage, or put him out of his misery before it escalates any further. If he reattempts universal domination, the Mal will not be there to stand in his way again. Only my Esseden and the Hunni founder remain. They cannot let him reach the core of creation.
Although we are not from the same generation, I do understand the toll that eternity brings and what it feels like to lose a personal connection with someone, even if my separation has been evanescent compared to his. His strain of obsessive rumination is very similar to my matriarch's. There is darkness in both of them. Serving a different purpose. Within my creator, it is a sickness, whereas the other strain belongs to the new life developing inside Ira. It has inherited its energies from both parents, just like my brother, Azokin. It does not matter if the new life is a product of conflict or an intimate bond. They are innocent. If the
Eckrhyne founder perishes, so does his unborn offspring.
Is my matriarch even aware of its existence? She must sense it within him. She would never forgive herself if she harmed an innocent, but if all life in our universe is at stake, we may not have a choice. For the betterment of all, some sacrifices do need to be made – unfortunately.
Then a sudden spike of energy strikes my enrooted cords from deep inside the cluster - faint, yet fierce. My hand dives into the assemblage, and an ingesting sting crawls up my arm. Eating through my Alosium ligaments. I touch something palpable. Nondescript. I quickly seize the subject and pull it out. And there, lying unconscious in the palm of my hand, is the living imitation of the Sincistic Mal.
It took all that I had to abstain from crushing him here and now in the flesh.
The astral-fabricated empyrean tears itself open. Creating a new rift. Ira falls through and drops from high altitudes. He crashes into the simulated floor, producing a crater of protuberant, reflective splinters. Swiftly ensuing Ira, my Esseden shoots downwards from the malformed portal. The Eckrhyne founder rolls over onto his side before she could stomp down on him. The forthwith impact of her landing expands the crater by tenfold. Orbs spiral around him and fuse to his form. She slices diagonally across as he disappears. Then he reappears from afar, cupping his right eye.
She dashes towards him.
He removes his hands, revealing a golden slit going across his eye, discharging particles. He leaps back, earning multiple cuts across his raised arms as he tries to pitifully shield himself from her perpetual and vehement slashes, using them as a futile means of defense. Flecks of energy exude from his cuts and melt away – returning to the surrounding oversoul. Then he directs his attention to me and catches sight of the specimen in my grasp.
His eyes widen, and his palps flare.
"No." Dread overtakes him, as it is emphasized in his inflexion, and his voice resounds from all around us.
My matriarch follows the direction of his glare and notices me hovering above the multifaceted conglomeration. Cognizance settles into her sullied visage.
"GO NOW!"
I obeyed her command, sensing the immediate magnitude of urgency, but then, my body became paralyzed. I cannot move. His over-soul has immobilized me. I struggle against the surrounding force keeping me at bay and unable to act. He grabs her sabre, letting it sink into his palm, bleeding his energy. The apprehended blade dematerialises in front of her, and Ira conjures a golden duplicate. He clutches the handle with both hands and drives the lambent sabre through her chest. Twisting it. Asserting his intent, as he reenacts his fantasy. Repeating history. The cluster of memories below mounts upwards and reforms its shapeless constitution into a wide, circular mouth of splintered teeth. The unsightly abomination mounts upwards and ingurgitates me whole.
Casting me in between worlds, as I fall and sink into my ocean of memories - my innermost illusions.