Aetheral Space

This is not. This is not. This is not!

A fly eats its way through my heart. Fungus spreads through my brain. A cloud engorges. What is this? An unfamiliar sensation returns to me. Pain, physical pain. How long has it been? For some, years -- for others, centuries.

It vexes me.

The unfamiliar should remain so. The agony that plagues me now should waste away in the grave of amnesia. I should not be feeling this right now. There is no need for me to be feeling this right now.

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Stress, too, my unwelcome neighbour. Long-distance impulses are waking up again. Aggravation pulls at the stitches of my self. I am under duress. I am under pressure. I am being forced into unwise action. It should not be. It will not be!

Why?

Why does the light of Dragan Hadrien spear my insides? Why does the taint of Panacea repave my neurons? Why, why, why, why?

Because I have chosen incorrectly.

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This form is one that can be taken advantage of. My immensity is such that others can find purchase within me. My cruelty is inefficient. A killing instinct must be fostered. I must sharpen the bite of an assassin.

My current body, formed from the hands of the light of my mind, is unsuited to this bout. I must go back to the drawing board. I must write a fifteenth draft. I must, I must, I must.

I shall.

I withdraw into myself, I withdraw into the utmost, becoming the tiniest stab in the surface of the world -- and leaving Dragan Hadrien hanging in the air. Then, I shred myself, shred everything I am, blended into birth like a bleeding phoenix. It is only when I am reduced to simplicity that I embrace complexity once more.

Oh, it is, it is, it is.

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Ribbons are insufficient. I shall strike down Dragan Hadrien with a hand of my own. The shooting star shall be undone by a grotesquerie.

I exhale, and engulf the world.

As the darkness flooded over him, Dragan retreated into Gemini World by reflex. He already knew that PALATINE’s Ignorance made it useless, but if nothing else he was faster as an Aether cloud than a human being. Within two seconds he'd moved to the roof of the cavern, clinging to a stalactite.

With his remaining eye burning with brilliant blue Aether, he looked down at the bottom of the cavern. He looked down… at his enemy.

PALATINE had changed.

There was no lingering resemblance between this new form and the one it had used a moment ago. A human skull the size of a car looked back up at Dragan, staring at him with a single eyeball, pupil stretched and warped into the shape of a flower. Spindly legs like those of a spider clicked against the floor, and a halo of red spikes framed the abomination’s head from behind.

One arm was like that of a human, if pale as wax, but the other… the other was anything but. It began muscular, before splitting in two at the elbow, reconvening shortly after into… well, the head of what was unmistakably a horse. It stared at Dragan with eerily empty eyes, a regal crown growing out of its cranium.

It whinnied. He shuddered.

Dragan just watched the new monster for a moment, ready to move the second it did. It just seemed to be staring at him for the longest time… before it suddenly raised its fingered hand in a grand gesture, like a preacher addressing his flock of stone. It spoke with that same dignity.

“LET US GIVE THANKS… TO THE ONE WHO HAS SHOWN US THE LIGHT.”

PALATINE vanished -- and then the next words came from directly behind Dragan's head.

“LET US GIVE THANKS… FOR SWIFTNESS OF STEP.”

Dragan whirled around, and it was nearly too late. PALATINE’s white hand smashed him down towards the ground, a sickening crack ringing through the cavern as the blow struck. Dragan knew without waiting for the pain that he'd broken more than a few ribs, and quickly sent them away.

He went back into Gemini World before hitting the ground, so as to halt his own momentum, reappearing a moment later -- more of a ghost than ever.

There was no reprieve. PALATINE appeared before him once again, fist pulled back for another punch. This wasn't an ability, Dragan realised, this wasn't teleportation or anything like that. This new form of PALATINE’s was just unbelievably, stupidly fast.

It took all Dragan had just to barely -- barely -- move his head out of the way of the punch, and even then he felt hot friction burn at his skin. Still spinning from his dodge, Dragan went to charge right into PALATINE’s body again. It wasn't stupid enough just to let him use the same strategy again, of course, but maybe he could spook it into resuming its defensive approach.

He could not.

Dragan's shoulder collided with the bone of the Awakening's new face, and -- even with no small amount of Aether infused -- the white surface didn't so much as creak. The eyeball swung around to take in Dragan’s failure, pupil dilating in ecstasy. With the slightest chuckle, PALATINE continued.

“LET US GIVE THANKS… FOR STOUTNESS OF SKIN.”

One of PALATINE’s thin legs lashed upwards, catching Dragan in the gut and sending him flying into the air. As he spun end over end, he quickly recorded the gash the attack had created -- the last thing he needed was any entrails slipping free. Even so, though, there was a moment where he was helpless. Where, as he rose up, he could do nothing but glance down at the ground and see PALATINE pointing that bizarre horse-head up at him.

If the monster had a real mouth, it surely would have grinned.

“LET US GIVE THANKS… TO BLESSED MUNITIONS.”

The horse peeled its lips back -- and then the rest of its face, the entire head opening into segments like petals of flesh. Within a moment, it was a bloody rose instead that pointed up at Dragan, and a singularity of crimson Aether danced on the tip of the central bulb. For a moment of cruel and false hope, the power vanished…

“HALLELUJAH.”

…before it returned, stronger than ever, the beam scorching through space as it blasted into Dragan.

Pan marched.

It wasn't anything difficult. Moving forward was something every living thing knew how to do. Even if they had no legs, even if they stayed in the same spot their entire lives, their minds marched on. Progress was the first biological imperative.

So, despite the obstacles before her, Pan marched.

And there were obstacles, traps and lures set into every available atom of space. Bubbles that would trap her in hallucinated lifetimes, chains of blood-red steel that would slice at the psyche, spectral greatswords that would cut her in half and have the pieces devour one another. Against anyone else, against anything else, just one of those mental defences would be enough for complete rejection.

But Pan was not anyone else, and Pan was not anything else.

She marched through the bubbles and ignored their stories.

She marched through the chains and shrugged off their wounds.

She marched through the swords and -- with a modicum of effort -- pulled her halves together again.

This was nothing. She had already existed in states of torment far beyond this. Anything at this level simply bounced off her armour. The road was long, and the road was hard, but she was more than it. In this imagined space, she was above whatever petty tricks PALATINE could perform.

Dragan was working hard too. She could tell from the way the path was growing taut, growing shorter, growing weaker. She couldn't let herself fall behind.

Around her, in the incoherent world, memories were falling like raindrops. Half-formed hallucinations of the many things PALATINE had witnessed over its many lifetimes. Pan did her best to tear her eyes away from them, and then tear those eyes out entirely, but impressions made brief contact all the same.

Impressions of the cancer.

The three brothers of blue eyes, gathered at the beginning. One held in his hand a demon to whisper of peace and joy, another held a harpoon to strike down those he despised, and the third held nothing at all. Two of them would live on in history, the third vanished into the battlefield.

The cancer was given a place to grow.

The saviour of humanity, turning against those he had saved. With lantern in hand he scorched his mark into the galaxy, striking down the warriors and demons that came against him. A supremacy, established.

The cancer was born.

The machines, driven by unknowable calculus, churning across the galaxy to rid it of pests. Each ever-changing, each ever-killing, birthed from the silent world of metal. It breathes, still.

The cancer, through victory and legend, spread its reach.

The dynasty, changing hands but never itself changing except to become more brutal, its path guided by the hands of an eternal child. The duelist, the blacksmith, the weeping girl of feathers, the devilish one, the glutton, the king of gold… their numbers flashed by faster than light, dancing fingers spinning the wheel of memories.

The cancer grew and grew and grew, embracing everything, defining everything as either being the cancer or being against the cancer, shaping itself into a vile horizon around the galaxy entire, more and more, forever and ever…

The cancer…

The cancer…

The shape of this world.

So much, so much, there was so much, too much --

No.

Pan took a final step forward, and the past ceased to be.

The world had become a sketch of a sketch, an endless white expanse with only the vaguest suggestion of landscape. In the distance, a half-formed tree curled into a hook shape. When Pan walked, she felt the crunch of grass beneath her feet, but no such grass existed.

This was a world of will and memory.

At first, Pan thought the things all around her were rocks, but no. Men and women, robbed of features, hunched over and clutching their knees as if to hide from the eyes of god. She heard them: whispering to themselves, weeping to themselves, sobbing to themselves.

“Vengeance…” one man muttered without a mouth, trembling violently -- with anger or fear, Pan could not say. “Vengeance… I must have vengeance… revenge… on who…? Vengeance… I must have it… I…”

“I mustn't forget,” a woman hissed, head buried between her knees. “They're gone. They're gone. I mustn't ever forget. I am the remembering. Always grieving, always grieving… I mustn't forget…”

“They are watching me…” one lost soul looked up at Pan without a face. “They are watching me, you know…?”

Pan blinked. “Who is watching you?”

The soul cocked its head.

“Watching me?” they whispered. “Yes, watching me, they have to be, they have to be. I am them watching me. I have to be, I have to be…”

Pan stepped away from the rambling spirit. It was clear enough now what this place was -- the pit of PALATINE, where the Aether Cores of its components were gathered. Revenge, grief, paranoia… this was where the countless emotions that allowed PALATINE to exist were produced.

But those were all secondary. Right at the centre of this place… would be the lynchpin Dragan had spoken of. And so Pan marched.

Time stretched to try and dissuade her, but she stretched with it, crossing the endless expanse in the thought of seconds. It was as she'd expected. The ever-distant tree, the sole tower of this void, had been the place she was looking for.

Far apart from all its fellows, a single shade sat in the shadow of the tree, looking down at its hands.

It, too, spoke to itself.

“I don't want to die…” the trembling core of PALATINE murmured. “Oh, oh, I don't want to die…”

Pan looked down at the being with inquisitive orange eyes. The world stitched her mouth shut, but she opened it anyway, ignoring the idea-blood that drifted down her lips. She asked the question.

“Why don't you want to die, dead man?”

The shade looked up at her. Through the haze of ages, she could just barely make out the impressions of eyeballs, widened in mortal instinct. A blur of a mouth moved, and words emerged -- confused words, as if what Pan had asked was absurd.

“I don't want to die,” the thing repeated simply.

Pan tightened the hands she imagined she had, and slowly sat down upon the blank ground. This… might have been more difficult than she'd expected. PALATINE’s true core, it seemed, wasn't fear or sadness or anger or anything else she'd imagined.

PALATINE’s true core was the survival instinct itself.

“Fucko.”

Dragan's severed arm fell to the ground, followed a moment later by himself.

With its new form, PALATINE had refined the use of its Aether beam, focusing the blast to such a degree that it could be swung like a blade -- cleanly cutting everything in its path. A collection of bisected stalactites crashed down around Dragan's prone form, too.

This was fine. He could work with this. He could just record the bleeding stump and keep fighting with his one remaining arm. So long as he had one hand, he could still attack if the opportunity arose. Even if he lost that one too, he could still fly around and be a nuisance.

He could… he could…

He couldn't move.

He could only lay there, on the cold ground, feeling his own body growing colder in sympathy. Blood sprayed from the twitching termination of his left arm. The fingers of his right twitched as well, their movements so minute they could barely even be seen. Within a few seconds, that stopped as well, replaced with numbness.

Oh, Dragan realised with dull surprise. I'm dying.

The cavern shook as PALATINE landed directly in front of him, glaring down with its single bright eye. The rose folded back into a horse-head, dead eyes like those of a fish looking at nothing. Twin puffs of smug steam spurted from the nostrils of the great skull as it skittered over, sharp legs leaving indentations in the solid rock below. Dragan just stared back at it, pale as snow, the rising and falling of his chest barely holding on.

He slowly blinked, fog crawling over his thoughts.

Was a human body always so fragile?

The PALATINE loomed over him for a moment, considering its next move. It decided on cruelty:

“pathetic”

And then, without further ado, it went to make an end. The hand of wax lashed out and seized Dragan by his silver hair, tossing him up into the air like a ragdoll. Once more, he spun end over end, blood splattering from countless wounds as he began to fall again…

…but this time, he wouldn't be allowed to touch the ground.

The pointing finger moved. PALATINE reached out, and -- with contemptuous ease -- skewered Dragan through the chest, impaling him through the heart in an instant. A choked gasp echoed through the cavern, accompanied by a spurt of blood that painted PALATINE’s shell with fine graffiti.

Then, holding him aloft, the Flower of Evil hissed in pleasure and listened with glee -- to the silence that had replaced Dragan Hadrien's heartbeat.