Post by Zackirus on May 27, 2011 20:23:27 GMT -5
The Paradoxical Dominion
By: Zack Clark
Preface:
Every story has a beginning. This story also has a beginning.
Every story has a middle. This story also has a middle.
Every story has an end. This story also has an end.
Most stories start in the beginning, continue through the middle, and finish at the end. This story starts in the middle, continues through the end, and finishes in the beginning.
Most stories have beginnings that trigger ends. This story has ends that trigger beginnings.
Most stories have one ending. This story has numerous endings.
Most stories have one perspective. This story has multiple perspectives.
Most stories’ plots are straight lines. This story’s plot is a circle.
Finally, most stories are Logical. This story is Paradoxical.
Chapter 1: The Prologue of The Middle/The Middle of The Prologue
Within the blackness of the void, a single a conscious floated. A single conscious, trapped within its own mind. It had no thought, no feelings, it was completely blank. There was no sense of time, one second felt like an eternity, while an eternity only felt like a second. It didn’t have a name; at least, it didn’t know it. Within the conscious thousands of subtle voices spoke in words that sounded alien. The voices spoke every second, of every entirety, these words sinking deep into the conscious, shaping the basic mould of what was left of a tattered mind. Some of the voices were soft, quiet whispers, while others were haunting and shrill. However, they all said the same thing, over and over.
Flesh, flesh, flesh… Obey, obey, obey… Queen, queen, queen…
The conscious had a body, except it didn't know it existed, and had no control over it. It was a complete slave to the voices that spoke to it.
…
After much time had passed, a deep and commanding voice spoke, quieting all of the lesser voices, but speeding them up at the same time, until a clear message could be heard.
Awaken
The voice had no origin within the void. It appeared to come from everywhere. The void around the conscious began to lighten up, turning the blackness of the void into dark shades of grey. The lesser voices had speed up to a point of becoming a single sound.
Serve
This went on for seconds, perhaps eternities, until the voice shouted again, this time even louder.
The time for your service is that hand
The void dissolved into a sea of pure white. The voices and stopped and there was silence. A flood of knowledge flowed into the conscious, releasing it from its imprisonment. This knowledge was overwhelming, and because of it, the conscious began to think. With an ability to think, the conscious began to question. It began to form words in its heads; knowing the meaning of the words even before it had thought them.
Who am I? Where am I? What am I?
The white was already starting to fade into another see of black. The conscious began to wonder what was happening when; it began to feel something… The conscious should sense itself, but now, it felt… enclosed within something. Swiftly, like the knowledge, a rush of senses came back to it. It started to see a sea of black; however, a source of light lied beyond the sea of black. It wondered what was beyond, but it didn’t know what to do. Slowly, its other senses came back to it. It could hear a dull buzzing sound; smell the damp air around it; feel something rising and falling; taste a dull liquid mixed with the damp air substance. In a final burst of effort, the light and what lay beyond came into view, a grey ceiling made of stone. It began to become aware of its relation to the environment. Up, down, left, right the directions it could pinpoint. It was lying down on something that felt hard and rugged. It was curious about these directions and wanted to go left. Suddenly, without warning the thing that enclosed it moved, twisted left. In that moment, its world changed.
It could see that there was more to the world than just a ceiling. It could see another grey stone wall. It tried to move closer to wall but it didn’t the idea failed. It looked down and noticed its body for the first time. It had a central part with four appendages connected to it. As it saw them, words filled into their places; arms, legs, hands, feet. The conscious noticed that it could control them by thinking different actions. The hands suddenly closed together a made a fist, and then opened again. When the hands touched something, it could feel it more clearly. They touched the ground, which was cold and hard. They then touched its body, which was warm and soft. It brought the hands closer to where it could see from and felt around there. It felt a nose, a mouth, ears, and hair. It began to fill in the gaps. It moved its legs and tried a daring move. It used muscles in its upper torso and its hands for balanced and pushed up. Its level of sight began to change as the ground that it was on began get farther and farther away. It began to realize that its feet had to do something. It bent at its knees and lifted off, trying to balance on its feet. The ground got farther and farther away and it continued to move up, until it couldn’t move any more. It was standing but afraid to move as it might fall. It took a step forward and fell back onto the ground. A sharp pain rose through its body as it connected with a cold ground. The only way to bar was to let go scream out from his mouth.
“Ah…”
It was now more confused than in pain. It wondered how it could make sounds with its mouth. It thought about the words it had thought.
“Arm… Leg… Where am I?”
It said trying out its new ability. It began to think about what it had said.
Where am I?
It didn’t know where it was. It knew it was in a grey room but where was the grey room. It stood up again and this time turned its head around. On the other wall, a doorway was in the wall. On the other wall, a simple window was in view. It tried again to move and this time it worked. It brought one leg up and moved it forward and then placed in on the ground. It did the same thing with its other leg until it could see out the window.
A huge city stretched out below. It had many hovel shaped building and in the distance, a huge tower loomed. In the streets of the city creatures floated. They were black spheres with a plume of dark gray smoke trailing behind them. They had crescent shaped eyes, predominately red, but some blue and green could be seen. They had small, black, hands that floated next to their body, unconnected. It looked at its own hands and stared. Its hands were connected to its body by its arm. It knew that it wasn’t one of those things in the streets, but that didn’t answer what it was. It looked out the window again and felt something. It could sense the thoughts of the creatures in the streets. They formed words, much its own, and projected them to the other creatures in the streets. It caught glimpses of what they were saying. The words sounded like its own; however, they were blurred and stretched. Only a few words could be understood.
Flesh. Queen. Account. Gold. Revive.
It turned away and looked back to the doorway. It moved, carefully, over to it and investigated it. It led out into an open corridor. It then walked through the doorway and into the corridor which another doorway was. It moved over to it and looked inside. A bed lay on the ground. Strangely, the bed looked like it was just in. It turned around and looked back in the corridor. At the end of the corridor was a simple stairway. It couldn’t see what was beyond the stairway but it intended to find out. It walked over and tried to climb up the stairs. Its balance wasn’t perfect and fell back, hitting its head many times against the cold, stone steps. It couldn’t tolerate the pain and shouted.
“Ow!”
It lay there for many moments until it put its right hand near its face. It noticed something on it that chilled him to the bone. For on its arm and a simple black bracelet rested. Even though that the bracelet was harmless, something chilled it to the bone. One word formed in its brain that it would remember forever.
Slave
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A lone figure sprinted through the pitch black forest, taking quick glances over its shoulder every few seconds. It took ragged breaths of woody, forest air. It was running from these creatures, it didn’t know how many, and it didn’t have time to wait. It dodged tree after tree and but it felt like it was slowing down. The creatures were slowly gaining on it. Suddenly, Three shadow blasts came hurtling out of the darkness and nearly grazed the figure. It could feel the negative energy swirling in itself, even though it didn’t hit it. It ducked behind a tree, lay still, and stop breathing. It began to stop thinking, not wanting to alert the attention of his pursuers. It couldn’t be sure if the creatures had passed as they floated above the ground, making no sound as they went. It lay there waited for a couple seconds, and then, very shallowly, began to breath. It took a deep breath and rolled out from under its hiding spot, catching a brief glimpse of its pursuer, who was right above it. The creature looked down and studied it a couple seconds until a thought rang out, demonic and shrill.
Companions, the creature is below me.
The figure did a quick somersault from its rolling position and got up, narrowly avoiding a shadow blast. It got on its feet and sprinted behind another tree where it got an idea. It was sick of fighting in the dark and shot a fire blast at the nearest tree. One of the creatures, send a thought to it, laughing at its aim.
Nice aim fleshling.
The figure thought to itself for a quick moment and a sent a thought back to the creature, smiling as the tree burst aflame.
I wasn’t aiming for you
The fire illuminated the small section of the forest. It peeked its head out and it could now see that there were three creatures after it. The creatures sneered, at it and charged firing shadow blasts as they did. It ducked back behind the tree and dashed out from the other side. It had a quick glance and one of the creatures backs and took a chance. It fired a pryo blast and the creature didn’t turn. The blast hit the creature square in the back and it crumpled to the ground, unconscious. The other two creatures turned to their fallen comrade, and fired more shadow blasts. The creature dived behind another tree but one of the shadow blasts hit its leg. It felt all the negative emotions in its body flow up, bewildering it for a couple seconds. It regained its alertness and saw one of the creatures coming into few from the other side of the tree. It quickly fired a pryo blast, hitting the creature at point blank range. It could feel the heat singe off some of its skin. The creatures toppled to the ground and it looked out. The final creature was a fair distance back. It had learned from its fallen allies. It couldn’t let the figure get to close. It started a hail of shadow blasts, which the figure dodged and countered by firing some of its own pryo blasts. The creature, mimicking it, ducked behind one of the tree. The figure smiled and send a thought to the creature, if saying ‘checkmate’.
The best defense… Is a good offense.
The figure sprinted out from behind its tree and dashed towards to creature dodging all of the shadow blasts that came hurtling towards it. When it was 10 meters from the creature, it ducked and rolled under the creature, where it fired another pryo blast. The creature fell back, hurt, but not severely wounded. It wiped its mouth and jumped onto the figure, its hands clasping the figures’ hands. Together they rolled around, trying to dominate each other minds. Too focused on the battle, they rolled next to the tree that was burning. Next to them lay several burnt sticks. In that moment, one of the larger branches groaned and broke off from the tree. It landed on the other side of the tree but the grass around it caught aflame. The figure, distracted by the falling branch, lost its focus and the shadowling took the opportunity to gain a foothold in the figure’s mind. It smiled, relishing in the fact that it could feast on the fleshing negative emotions. It sent a though to the creatures mind, letting each word sink in.
Fleshling, how does it feel to be the inferior species? To be hunted and hated…
The figure smiled sarcastically, and turned its head, its eye glazing on one of the burnt out sticks that lay close by. It knew the creature would on its rant, giving it plenty of time to…
Shame I have to kill you, I could take you home as my slave, although your stench would be horrible…
The figure let go of the creature’s hands and carefully slide its hand on the ground towards the stick…
In the end, you knew this would happen didn’t you…
Closer…
To die by our hands, as it shou…
Its thought was interrupted by the figure impaling the stick into its head. The figure threw the creature off of its body. It was barely alive now, and the figure smiled as it sent a message to it.
Maybe next time you should kill me before you rant about killing me.
The figure got up walked off and just like that, another tree branch fell right on top of the creature, killing it. The fire around the tree was still blazing brightly and the figure could see the other creatures lying on the ground. It walked over and picked one up, it was surprisingly light, and threw it at the tree. It walked over and just as it was about to bend down to pick it up, it had an eviler idea. It bent down and picked it up, but instead of throwing in it the fire, it brought to a spot, where once it awoke, would see the its burnt partners. The figure smiled at the thought and quickly looked up towards the sky. Even though that the sky was mostly covered by the forest’s thick overgrowth, it could still see the stars pale light. It smiled and remembered back to a time before all this, where it was peaceful. But that was illusion. It quickly remembered it had to go north. It looked at one of the trees and saw moss growing. It quickly sprinted off, knowing that moss only grows on the north sides of trees.
…
It returned to the spot where the creatures had come from. It was a small, concealed outpost. It entered, trying to remain quiet as possible, as if any other creatures had come. It surveyed its surroundings. It was in a dimly light room with a small table with a few gold coins and a pack of Psy War cards and a couple dice. It scooped up the gold coins and put them in a small pouch it had found on the floor next to the table. It glanced up and noticed that there was another small room. It walked over and found three small beds and a chest. It strolled over to the chest and opened it, which contained a couple gold coins and a piece of parchment. It picked it up the gold pieces, put them it its pouch, and then grabbed the parchment and studied it. It was a map outlying the surrounding area. The figure stuffed both the map and the coins into its back pocket and hurried out of the outpost. Once it was out, it noticed the small wire which it had tripped on before, alerting the creatures to its presence. To finish what it had started, it fired a couple pryo blasts at the outpost, setting it ablaze. It took out the map and studied the area, and hurried of into the night, making sure not to look behind itself.
Chapter 2: Divergence of Singularity/Divergence of Multitude
one day
