Chapter 3966: Desecration III
Chapter 3966: Desecration III
Far above this terrible ritual, floating in the twisted space that served as sky in the Paradoxical Folds, another gathering had formed. Thirty Dukes hovered in perfect formation around a single figure whose presence commanded attention!
Not through ostentation...instead through its profound absence of such things.
Duke Schrodinger sat in the void as if it were the most comfortable chair ever crafted, his ragged clothes hanging from his frame like flags of defiance against the very concept of appearance mattering.
He wore no golden armor to announce his authority, bore no royal robes to demand respect.
Yet the thirty Dukes who surrounded him...each one a power that could reshape Existence according to their whims...arranged themselves around him like planets orbiting a sun they didn’t fully understand but couldn’t resist.
His smile was a thing of terrible simplicity, carrying within its curve the weight of someone who had seen every possible outcome and found them all equally amusing.
The other Dukes looked to him with expressions that mixed reverence with uncertainty, as if they knew he held answers but were afraid to ask the questions.
This was power in its truest form...not the ability to destroy or create, but the capacity to make others recognize your authority without ever having to demonstrate it.
Schrodinger didn’t need to yell or posture or threaten. His mere existence in that space created a gravity that drew other powers to him, made them seek his approval even when they didn’t understand why they needed it.
As these important Living Paradoxes observed the ritual below with collective anticipation that made the air itself hold its breath...
BOOM!
The sound that erupted wasn’t quite sound...it was the sensation of reality recognizing that something fundamental had changed!
The endless sockets of the corpse, those abyssal voids where eyes had once perceived dimensions beyond counting, suddenly flashed with light that should not have been possible.
HUUM!
Within those empty spaces, paradoxical radiance bloomed...dimly at first, like candles being lit in caverns that had known only darkness since the foundation of existence itself.
Dimly. So dimly that it might have been imagination, might have been wishful thinking given form.
Diviticus, standing in the heart-that-was-not-a-heart, breathed heavily as doubt crept into her expression!
The power flowing through her was immense, yes, but was it enough? Had they failed in this impossible endeavor?
The light in those sockets was so faint, so uncertain. Perhaps the corpse was too far gone, too thoroughly dead to ever be brought back to even a semblance of-...!
Her expression changed with the suddenness of realization becoming horror. She felt it before she understood it...authority being drawn from her with such rapidity that her very existence began to dim!
Her skin, which had blazed with the healthy glow of accumulated power, began to gray like ash in rain. The glow of half-drop of blood that had made all of this possible was being consumed, burned through at rates that shouldn’t have been possible.
"MORE!" she screamed, the word tearing from her throat with desperation that transcended mere vocalization. "GIVE ME MORE!"
HUUM!
The eight Dukes responded without hesitation, their beams intensifying until the chest cavity blazed with light that would have been visible from dimensions away.
They poured everything they could spare into her, and then they gave more, pushing past boundaries that sensible beings would have respected!
And then, with the terrible certainty of nightmares becoming real, the abyss-looking eyes of the corpse blinked.
It was a simple motion. Eyelids that shouldn’t have existed anymore moving across surfaces that contained nothing but void. Yet that blink carried within it the weight of significance that made existence itself take notice.
From those blinking eyes...
BOOM!
What erupted defied every category of description that language had developed.
It was blast and whisper, light and darkness, beginning and ending all at once.
The force that emerged was terrifying in its primordiality, archaic in ways that predated the concept of age itself! It was the visual representation of what existence had been before it learned to be anything in particular.
Obsidian light...a contradiction in terms that nonetheless perfectly described what witnesses saw, erupted from those ancient sockets!
It shot upward through dimensions, through layers of reality that most beings didn’t know existed, creating a crack across the Folds themselves!
A crack...across the folds!
Through it, witnesses could perceive immense darkness...the presence of something that made light irrelevant. It was depth without measure, void without boundary, an abyss that gazed back with intelligence too vast to comprehend.
The obsidian light continued shooting upward, disappearing into distances that had no meaning, yet emanating a dread so profound that even Honored Living Paradoxes found themselves stepping back involuntarily.
This was fear on a cellular level, the kind of terror that preceded consciousness, that existed in the space before thought.
Then, in a motion that should have been impossible for dead flesh to achieve, the hand of the corpse moved.
It was deliberate, purposeful, carrying intent that spoke to consciousness where none should exist.
That massive appendage, each finger larger than buildings, reached up toward the rupture it had created. With the casual certainty of someone closing a door they hadn’t meant to open, the hand grasped the edges of the crack in reality and pulled them together!
...!
HUUM!
The rupture closed with the sound of existence sighing in relief, as if it too had found the glimpse beyond too terrible to endure.
The assembled Living Paradoxes watched with expressions that cycled through every possible emotion...awe at what they had accomplished, reverence for the power they had awakened, and fear that transcended rational thought at what they might have unleashed!
Then, with movements that carried the weight of mountains learning to walk, the corpse of the Early Creature sat upright.
...!
"It’s alive!" someone screamed, the words escaping before thought could censor them.
"IT’S ALIVE!" others bellowed with glory, their voices carrying triumph that bordered on hysteria.
At the center of it all, within the chest cavity that had become a makeshift heart, Diviticus laughed with the wild abandon of someone who had gambled everything and won prizes beyond imagination.
Could Ozymandias have done this?!
With his measly power!?
Obsidian power flowed into her from the awakened corpse, not draining her now but feeding her, transforming her existence into something magnitudes more powerful than she had been moments before.
She wasn’t just controlling the corpse, she was becoming one with it, her consciousness spreading through its ancient vessels, her will becoming its will, her desires its purpose!
The half-drop of blood had been the key, but now she was becoming the lock itself, the mechanism through which this impossible resurrection functioned.
In the distance, floating in his simple yet commanding position, Duke Schrodinger observed these shocking developments with an expression that had grown profoundly somber.
When he finally spoke, his words carried the weight of philosophy.
"Death," he said, each word falling like stones into still water, "is only truly defeated when we stop trying to control it. The moment we believe we command the end, we discover that the end has been commanding us all along. What rises from death’s embrace carries death within it, spreading that condition to everything it touches. We have not conquered mortality today...we have simply given it legs to walk and hands to grasp."
Oh.
Oh!
He rose from his seated position with movements that somehow made standing seem like an act of profound significance, patting his ragged clothes as if brushing away the dust of eons.
"Very well," he said with that same terrible smile, "let us see what all of this leads to."
On this day, Living Paradoxes had made a choice...to wake what should have remained sleeping, to give movement to what should have remained still, to bring into present what should have remained past.
As for what this choice would lead to... who knew?
The butterfly had flapped its wings. The storm was beginning to form.