Chapter 225 - Ceaseless Divines, Turn Your Infinity Upon These Wretched Things (Patreon)

Alright, so it's not perfect. It's not perfect! But you know what? I think it's pretty fucking good. I think I got where I needed to go with it, and I think I had a good time writing it. I'm... in a weirdly delicate spot right now, emotionally? And so writing something so foundational was... moving.

Existence is a terrible burden sometimes.

What a joy it is, to be able to bear it anyways. And what a privilege it is, to have the choice to do and be better.

I hope this chapter has the weight it requires. I hope that this Tribulation, long held back, means as much to you as it does to the beautiful characters we get to experience living it.

May your journey be long, your step be sure, and your rest, divine.

And yes, that title IS another Magnus Archives reference!!!

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DISGUST

HATRED

REVULSION

ABHORRENCE

The little flames flicker. Together, they make something that is almost a blaze, more than a campfire- but not by much. Together, they color the void together in hues of gold, purple, red, black, and a strange haze that weaves throughout them, pushing heat in and out of a mixed circulation. The haze, the hungering crackle of fire, and the purity and mystery of intermingled flame all weave between each other, hints of other colors flickering at their edge.

That’s not all they are, of course, but that’s what is seen here. A little flame, wrapping itself and weaving through a bubble of… well. Human is… such a reductive word. A chosen label for a messy thing. The flames flicker in and out of blood and bone, organ and meat, of interconnected biomes of life and death in the cycle of biology. They flicker in and out of pride, in and out of duty and desire, of knowledge and fear, of honor and growth, threads connecting them even to a fluttering bundle of concepts and connections that speak of war and wood, steel and blade, of beautiful crafting and love, of mentorship and care.

All that is and is not about a person, about a being and its interconnected requirements to be, bathed in flame and purpose and awareness, ever so faint. A beautiful tide of existence, a mesh of every concept that makes up a human being and a person, including the concept of a name that, to something that speaks with something so simple and sublime and complex as a throat, might be Shin Ren.

And the world above the world, the existence above existence, a thing so vast that worlds fit in its eye, briefly flicks its attention towards him.

And all that he feels, in this moment, looked at by existence and that which it rests on, is DISGUST.

Reality sees him. The universe and all the things beyond it see him. The seven-sided infinity that is forever and is all that is and will be and has been look at him, infinitesimally small fractions of its perception turning to all that makes him up and all that the concept of him touches.

And it all HATES him.

It all DESPISES him.

The thing that is at once Shin Ren and also the many infinities that make him up, the concepts that connect them, feels it deeper than he’s ever known. As deep as he’s ever felt anything, he feels the infinite look upon him and knows what it thinks of him, and it only thinks of him as something that should not be. Like his very existence, his very being, from top to bottom, is an insult unto all that is and was and will be.

A Tribulation is not lightning. Lightning is an affair of Dao, a concern of atmospheric conditions and physics. Such things are the fabric atop reality, not its foundation. Its foundation, and all that it comes with, is something more profound. The fact that one’s body is annihilated in transformative power, that that power alters the world to reflect its impossible velocity and force, is a secondary thing. A consequence of something on-high.

Lightning falls during a tribulation. The heavens come alight during a tribulation. Existence catches flame and is transformed by a tribulation. 

None of this is what matters. 

To cultivate is to reach for the heights. To aim for transcendence, whatever form it may take, is to transform what you are into what you choose to be. And that comes with cost.

The cost is attention.

The higher you climb, the more all that is, was, and will be can SEE you. The larger, greater, more complex you become, the more you transform into something beyond that which binds you to what is lesser, the more you are visible.

And the more the DREAMERS see you.

Seven-sided infinity looks at all that Shin Ren is and could be, and JUDGES him as worthless. As a thing worthy of derision beyond derision, of annihilation for the disrespect of choosing to exist as he is. As he could ever be.

They see you too. 

Shin Ren, and all that he is and could be and touches, looks back out at infinity. The triumvirate existence of his Souls, of his pantheons to be, experience the gaze of all, and know what is thought of them. And he is faced with a choice.

To accept the judgment weighed upon him.

Or to deny it. To claim that existence itself has no more right to judge him than he has to judge himself. 

Shin Ren experiences an infinite moment of attention.

He has a choice to make. The only choice, in the face of an unloving world.

He chooses.

He has hated himself. He has been disgusted with himself. He has been unmade by his own being. 

And then… he made peace with that.

To be considered disgusting by ALL is… it hurts. It hurts like only knowing that you are not loved can hurt.

But he has already judged himself, and found himself wanting. What does the judgment of the other matter, when the judgment of the self has already been so scathing?

And what does he care if an unknowable forever hates him, when he was so much more deserving of hate, and yet was found to be cared for by someone he deemed so worthy?

His master made him a better person. No, his master gave him the tools to be better, and he has made himself a better person. And as much as he may still be a work in progress, he is working. He is embodying, step by step, the ideals he has chosen.

So what if he is disgusting? Reality stares him down like it is already true, like its perspective is all that matters, like the endless void is simply grander than he could ever be, so what choice is there? A refusal? A refusal? How childish. How foolish.

But Choice Is Universal.

There’s always a choice. Everything has one. Based on the metric of choice itself… reality chooses to view him with DISGUST.

He chooses to view himself with hope. With pride. With the realization that who he is is his to define, and his to make decisions for, and his to BE.

And with that choice, with that solidified self and that perspective in the face of the ALL, Shin Ren begins to drink deep of who he is and what he’s connected to. 

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In the void, a world spins.

Stars glimmer in the void. 

All the stars, of course, are eyes.

They all watch.

An infinite number of gazes have their attention focused on a single, tiny little marble of existence. On a little speck of dust in the face of an uncaring and endless darkness that is simply the void of all that is.

It’s a pretty marble. There are trees on it, and rolling tides of many things that could be. It sparkles with beautiful fires, glistens with the wetness of red and the shine of gunmetal and steel. In this one, tiny little dot, there is a reflection of so, so much.

It even has life.

Life is not so rare a thing. Not nearly so rare as some might think. To crawl and consume alone is, by many considerations, to be alive. Barely larger than the atoms that make up reality, and yet, life can still be. Nexi of plasma and energy and magnetism, writhing through infinity, and yet, life can still be. In scale, it can eclipse all existence or be only its smallest piece. But life compounds on itself. Life builds upon life, and it is, actually, rare to find the places where it has built high enough to become more.

Proteins, nutrients and minerals build into little machines that consume each other. Those little machines become chains of motion, interconnected in great ebbs and flows of predation, procreation, and transformation. Eventually, those chains become interwoven and knotted, building new patterns between their many weaves. A chain becomes a link in a grander thing, which becomes part of a weave.

And sometimes, if it’s woven just right, that collection of impossible pieces of life makes a part of itself that can think. That can see the world. That can taste and experience and, in its own way, begin to know the weave of the whole.

A little thing that is alive and which can see and experience the glory of existence looks back at the forever-eyes of what is layered above-below. 

Raika is as herself. She is concepts and ideas both, all the concepts that make up a body and all the ideas and beliefs and pieces of Self that make up who she is as a person.

She doesn’t look human. The concepts don’t line up just right to appear human anymore.

She’s… surprisingly alright with that.

She stands there, as triune. Each layer of her extends out from the other, like snapshots of different parts moving in sync. A Body stands as the first layer, shaped vaguely humanoid, its materials an ever-shifting sea of different forms of biology and atomic materials. A Mind stands as the second layer, connecting the two furthest sides, its shape matched vaguely to the Body but its material a series of equations, running like lightning between cores of memory and thought and perspective. The Soul stands as the third and final layer, covered in brilliant scars of every color imaginable, shaped to match who Raika is, but dancing with her experiences as topography.

Raika, atop the marble-world that is her Heart, looks out at the infinite.

And it looks back.

Infinity, or at least its eyes which look at her, don’t seem to know what to think.

She remembers the last time she came here. She was… less defined. Broader. Touching on a sea of connections, of blood and steel and sharpness and fire. If she squints, just a bit, she can still see those connections, can still trail them into some other layer of reality to glimpse the concepts that underpin everything.

In one reality, she sees herself as a bundle of concepts and equations, interwoven atop an island in a sea of seas, each wave and ocean some foundational part of all that IS. In another, she is a tiny thing, a titan atop a marble that dwarfs her in an infinity of eyes that dwarfs them both, given a sense of scale and self.

The last time she was here, there was a feeling of DISGUST. Capitalized and bolded, embodying something beyond words which turned its gaze to her.

She can still see it. Behind the eyes, there is that greater infinity, that sevenfold throne upon which all of existence spirals and grows like… like a tree.

Like an upside-down tree, growing up out of an ocean that gets heavier with every layer one descends / ascends through. 

The sevenfold infinity looks at her… but the disgust is gone. Muted at worst.. No sense that she is something meant to be hated, some sort of insult in her being. In some ways, that would have been… easier. To be hated. To be seen as lesser. She has experience with that. She can understand that. She’s even faced it before, directly, and found that judgment… wanting. She is, and she is hers, and existence couldn’t take that from her.

She faces something new now.

INDIFFERENCE.

She’s not disgusting. She’s not an insult so vile that she can never be forgiven, as she was before. Now she’s just… irrelevant. Part of the scenery. Part of the background.

Gods and the impossible things beyond them stare at her and judge her to be… meaningless.

Raika, in every aspect and piece of herself, stares out into an uncaring existence.

There’s so much.

And not one piece of it cares about her. The fabric, the underlying foundation of ALL THAT IS, WAS, AND WILL BE sees her through and through… and considers her worthless. Meaningless. Unworthy even to be JUDGED.

In some ways, that is so much worse than DISGUST.

In others, it’s… almost quaint.

When has the world ever loved her?

But then… when has she ever needed it to?

She has been loved. She is loved now. She will be loved again.

Is that enough?

…No. It isn’t. To be loved by another is a beautiful thing. To be judged by another as worthwhile and beloved is without compare in all the worlds, this much can’t not be true. But it’s not enough.

In the face of an uncaring reality, it is not enough to be judged by others. One must be judged by the self. In that way, there’s really no difference between this Tribulation and the last. 

Does she love herself? Does she value herself? Does she know, down to her core, that she and all she is has worth in the face of a world so impossibly vast it cannot even be comprehended, and which views her as less than nothing?

All the eyes see her. Soul, Body, Mind, and all that they stand upon and are. They deem her unworthy. They deem her unimportant. They deem her undeserving of even their DISGUST. 

And something in her smiles.

That’s ok.

Fuck the world.

I Am Me, I Am Mine.

I Can Change.

We Are What We Eat.

And I’m enough, she thinks.

It’s not an absolute. Maybe she’ll judge herself otherwise someday. She’s not a monolith, not a perfect existence. But faced with a reality that is uncaring, she can choose to care. Raika realizes, foundationally, that just because the flavor of disdain has changed doesn’t mean her response has to.

She is enough. And she will be more. And she, not an uncaring void, not a God, not some higher authority that tries to judge her, she decides who she will be and what she is worth. She’s not where she wants to be, or who she wants to be, and she’s not even entirely sure what those are… but she can choose her own purpose, and she can choose to see herself as she is and find worth.

And as if by that claim alone, that sudden realization that goes deeper than bone, she feels the beautiful marble she is on become… denser. More solid. She feels the layers to her being deepen, feels the added heft that her very being embodies. She watches the waves on her island and on her being crash into her, sinking into the ground and into her being. The seas she stands closest to, the parts of reality that she chooses and that are Her, crash and build onto who she chooses to be until her island has expanded by more than double, until she stands taller and heavier upon it.

She IS.

And along one of the angles, one of the Concepts, she glimpses something in the waves. Smaller than she is, but only just, and adrift on the tides rather than standing on its own shore.

Three sources of heat, wrapped around each other and Of one another, drink deeply from the interlocking seas, but especially those of Flame and all its connecting pieces.

The fires wrapped in and a part of a set of pieces that shape a being… see her. 

And she sees them. 

Fuck it. Why not?

With a thought, she shapes who and what she is…, and opens a hand to reach towards the flames.