1009. Exogignesthai, 9
(Rose)
In the worst of realistic outcomes, I believe that Nightmare could turn into another Magenta. As would I.
But I want to believe there’s inner strength to keep grounded purple thoughts and the possibility to even accept death perhaps, if even sacrificing the whole world would not save us.
But I cannot blame a living being from enforcing its conatus. Only if it becomes grossly abusive.
Beatrice might understand that a little, but also how she could not accept it anyway. The right to live of a threat to you is never given freely.
God, now throwing a newly made army of flying monsters to protect itself while it’s being born, was threatening what little life was left around.
It might have been natural for Anima to try everything to insure its survival in the moment frailest, however it was just the same right for Beatrice and the other right then.
Because extremists like Redmia had culled every other possibility, making it for everyone an absolutist fight for life and death. She might have helped Anima begin its resurrection far sooner, but had won in such an amoral and improper way, that now the entire surviving world was bound to unite against them, to kill this god at all cost.
Beatrice’s plane almost crashed because of the dragons in panic protecting the place forming.
Odd beings with wings and these hairy scales. Creatures with holy names.
She fought them on the ground.
And gradually over the days, the bulb or gigantic embryo was growing, crushingly immense over the city and landscape. At the same time, survivors from all over the world were responding to all the human calls, rather now than god’s voice in their head.
They gathered urgently around the old capital in ruins, and began bombarding the growing entity and its guardian angels in turmoil.
The imperial army’s might, even if reduced at perhaps barely a tenth of its intended power and capacity, was still able to shell the towers and immense stellar wings growing, continuously.
The firework and strife would only grow in intensity as every other country or population surviving rather, would gather, converging and rushing in for winning this battle of the end of times.
The apocalyptic landscape now crushed by the grown moon with a myriad of wings was terrifying, and all everyone could fear was another wipe coming if they didn’t kill it first.
Beatrice was pleasantly surprised to see how everyone alive, with Animus or not, chose to join this last fight.
She had to lead and did. While all the artillery imaginable they could find, and even the last monstrosities liberated from the laboratories played their part. All heavy weapons were focused on breaking down one of the legs of the towering immensity, in a cloud of smokes and flames continuously growing.
Everyone else were defending the canons against the flying holy beasts and their own weaponry.
Everything was thrown in this gamble that had come inevitable. Explosions kept shaking the ground. If nothing else, they would dig it to make the enormous thing unsteady and fall.
It was unclear why some people randomly survived and whether the Monad could repeat its global strike. They didn’t know, but now that Redmia had forced this precedent, whether it had actually been needed by god or not, the humans couldn’t take that chance anymore. They had to give it their all and thrive with a will of revenge.
They defeated the angels on the frontline, and even pierced with the newest weaponry the outer shells and wings over persistence.
Beatrice’s Animus kept talking to her, but she now barely listened.
Once more, she spearheaded the unlikely assault trying to pierce the defences, and to reach something critical inside.
They made their way to Paradisio, within the new thing where the air was rapidly unbreathable akin to the land of the outer continent.
Beatrice prosthetic arm was hurting her a lot more for some reason. But she pushed her ranks further inside the inner dominion. She had a faint ghost sensation, as if her disintegrated hand was still around and only invisible, but still reaching and bringing sensations. As if it was elsewhere, touching things unclear and being touched at times.
Another reality was reaching her.
Other people got sick rapidly, even when sheltered inside their pressurised cockpits. Something was thicker in this environment and permeating even through the most modern technologies.
Only the fewer people with stronger Animus could still move forward in this increasingly surreal space being built before their eyes. God’s voices were becoming louder in their head as they saw the internal structure of the moon being erected gradually in this fluid and glowing space.
The turmoil and war outside was turning inaudible. The ground tremors were muffled.
The wide floating environment and collection of peculiar sculptures being assembled by metallic butterflies defied all they knew.
The world will be reborn behind, her Animus told Beatrice again.
Everything would be fine after Anima would be gone.
However there was one fight remaining to be fought. A last one that should not be won mercilessly but otherwise.
Even if it was a risky gamble facing the unknown again.
Beatrice and the last few stepped forward. Their Animus kept echoing louder inside of them.
They found the four Monoliths making Anima around the inner sanctum.
However something seemed weird.
Demiourgos, Nous and Soul were still dead. They were empty shells crumbling now.
And the fourth one, Monad, was a soulless machine.
So Beatrice and the others were puzzled as to what still made Anima’s heart beat again.
She turned around, looking at the others with her. All of them had links becoming visible to one or the other of the old Monoliths. The ones carrying Animus had a tiny red link or chord pulling them here.
Perhaps it was them... All the ones carrying an Animus with them.
From the ones that were dead and the ones still alive and carrying them, all the fragments of Animus were also converging around here.
The voices were extracted painfully from all of them but Beatrice.
And the dark shape of something very alien appeared from this amalgam before them, reaching a similar silhouette to any of them.
All of them could now see the faint connections between them and Anima fading. They had gathered like a hovering slow gas flame around the shape and the Monad behind.
The shade was similar but denser form of magical emanation that had taken shape.
One last fight, where the entity without name replicated to anyone attacking her or the Monoliths to try breaking them.
One after the other, the friends of Beatrice turning mad were broken and crushed, then evaporating in this hollow merging of everything.
Tiny elements to reconstruct something much bigger. Everything and every machine they had brought were being dissolved and absorbed by that thing.
Beatrice was facing an indomitable shadow of Soul mostly, recovering forcefully her voice from the last ones here that had been Animus of her.
Only Beatrice was left standing, facing a collection of hatred and fear from mixed origins. What her human friends had brought, and what god herself had felt, perhaps still seeing in Beatrice her antitype.
Perhaps the shade had a sinister insecure laughter, but mostly it glared, wondering.
It was one fight she couldn’t physically win, but Beatrice had understood what it really meant from the peculiar voice behind her head.
B - I know you hate this side in me... But we’re only here to balance you. To avoid the extreme ends that incur return of flame.
They were leaving the world behind already. Beatrice only now noticed it. The ship had already left the planet behind. Anima had already recovered enough to just start the whole bulb lifting off, hovering, and then flying upward gently.
It was about to leave, without a need nor reason to cause further destruction.
Thankfully as Beatrice was abandoning her weapons and advancing calmly toward the entity, she had no ill intent nor animosity. Reflecting this good will in kind, Anima’s anger could also begin to fade gradually. They weren’t locked in pointless strife. Just enough insanity to accept this other part of themselves they hated and still were afraid of.
Instead of repeating sadder fate, they could meet and unite. They merged willingly, with confidence over dread.
They could leave for the next chance, aligned and reunited as one, with a little more noise or a brighter balance in Anim Mundi’s serenity.
This planet would be left to live as it was, now the people free without any other echoes of Soul or the others, nor further crystals of Monad’s power scattered accidentally.
Anima Mundi would repair its hypostases outside in space more peacefully, accepting the occasional pain or concern from the pink countertype in her mind. One bug she could not reasonably excise and mean to remain whole, balanced and kind.
Beatrice embraced a queer new fate, to become an inverted buzzing voice in the head of her god instead.
One to remind her next time if things were carelessly driven irrationally or with blind spots she could see in rationality. One to reassure her and realign her thought, when reality would appear to lose sense or tilt and slide in ominous meaning onward.
A newfound balance, for the next try, into eternity.
~
I was about to collapse, my head in fires and spikes like it never had been.
Tilke was looking at me, staring deep into my eyes.
T - ... Pervert.
R - Oh... Don’t say that! I tried my best to give you and me a good ending! All I have left otherwise of Nightmare, are memories... With the grief of a loss that’s not death, all I have next is the foolish hope of a rightful end for her... Even if she struggles for a very long time, I do hope she will find her peaceful balance and happiness... Even if it takes another try.
I rambled on, expressing my feelings without inhibition nor humility now.
I was drunk and my head in shambles. I had too many emotions...
Tilke was listening to me rapidly losing sense...
And I saw her smiling.
~
