Chapter 229: Silently Spilled Secrets
[Level Up!]
The notification hit towards the tail end of his stay in Rust, when he explored all of it. Apparently, his enjoyment or desire to see it all had qualified him for a level increase. This put him at level 31 of his current species. There was an evolution on the horizon, then.
Briefly, Mercury wondered if his evolution would be at all influenced by his closeness to fae and dragons, then placed the thought aside. It wouldn't matter all that much, he'd be offered something that fit him, he was certain of that.
After all, the point of the system was desire. If it didn't offer him something he desired… he smirked, thinking of how he had acquired
But that wasn't currently a concern, not really. Right now, Mercury sat in a carriage. With him were Alice, wearing a new dress woven from leaves. Her hair was adorned with twigs of red hair, woven into a headband for her by Nether, and given as a gift.
It was, in fact, the first gift Alice had ever received from the fae, and she'd cried when receiving it. And it came without strings, no debts, no promises, nothing. They knew it didn't, because the gift triggered an activation of
Orin also sat in the carriage. Their beige-orange fur was more covered now, since they wore bits of rusting armor. The metal thrummed with faint heat to Mercury's senses, having been crafted by Heath themselves, and the crystal lattice seemed to writhe under the oxide layer. By all means, it was almost alive, and the places could shift along Orin's body to protect them.
As for Mercury himself… he, embarrassingly, had already broken most of the stuff he received. It was multiple alloys in various states of life or decay, shaped into different things. Little daggers and weapons. But he had simply wanted to understand them, so he had taken them apart inside of his forge, little pandora.
And, eventually, he'd crafted them into the Dream of Starvation.
The flowing, dark metal had grown in volume, though much of it was currently unneeded. Flecks of red drifted through it, and Mercury was never quite sure if it was rust or blood. But it had strengthened the weapon further, pushing it to rank 2.
Rust worked well with its effects of applying decay, and now any wound it left would rot faintly, and any weapon it clashed with would rust.
[Dream of Starvation:
Grade: Bound C - Proficiency (975/1000)
Rank: 2 - Growth (234/1000)]
[Rank 1 Bonus: Aspect
[Rank 2 Bonus: Aspect
He was also remarkably close to increasing its grade, which would be exciting. The proficiency had increased a lot since he used it as a prosthesis for so long - an unintended but beneficial application of it. Right now, he only needed a bit of it anymore. His ankle had already regrown, and his paw was taking shape, helped along by
As a human he'd probably have called them his beans, but that felt entirely undignified, so he settled for "front digits". The deadly, literally nightmarish, weapon was used to mimic the front of his paws.
And so, the unlikely trio sat in a carriage. They were headed for the court of Joy in the end. Mercury had patched it up a little, but it was already coming apart again. Frankly, after having done a few more of these procedures, the work he'd done on Joy was slapdash at best. The equivalent of slapping a bandaid on an amputated wound.
Sure, it slowed the bleeding. Maybe even a bit if he used a big bandaid, but it would never have worked long term. So, he was off to remedy that, even if it meant travelling to the corners of the fae realm where the world came apart at the seams.
"Are you scared?" Mercury asked his friends in the silence.
"No," Alice replied instantly. "Well, not really," she added with a smile. "I think it'll be okay. If things go too poorly, I'll just bail." She stuck out her tongue at him.
Orin shook their head, too. "I'm not. See, even if I die here, it'll have been better than the life I lived before." With a faint grin, the fae stared at the ceiling of the carriage, running a hand through their fur. "I still can hardly believe I'm free, after all of it."
Mercury nodded, looking upon the two of them and feeling pleased. In a lot of ways, amusingly, the three of them were essentially the most free people in the fae realm. And, as Orin said… he'd die before he let that change.
Nothing was ever going to tie him down. Alice and Orin were the same as him in that way. They fought in different ways, but each and every one of them cared profoundly about their own freedom. "No chains, no masters," Mercury whispered with a smile. Never.
- - -
Travelling through the edges of the fae realm was a strange experience. More often, Mercury began to actually see people around. Amusingly, since there weren't that many fae in a position to be very mobile, vast stretches of the fae realm were largely empty. Sure, there were the occasional beasts, or reality devourers, but nothing with more complex thought patterns.
Out here, though? On the vestiges of the fae realm? Two courts were present.
Shadow and Chill. Those who guarded against the incursions of the Void.
The unending dark hunger lingered just beyond the edges of the realm. It was a bizarre experience, too, because to Mercury's normal vision, it seemed just fine. Like looking at the wall of a house. The landscape simply tilted another direction as a solid mass, pillarring into the sky.
But when he sank into ihn'ar, the truth was revealed. The world frayed and came apart. It was strange, seeing it unravel so clearly.
Mercury felt that it was a little like looking at the edges of an unfinished carpet. Threads hung off it in tethers, some bundled and some lonely, some coming apart and spilling into finer and ever smaller bits of fabric.
He watched as behind that, there was
The gash that was torn into reality was ever so clear. It was infinite, it enraptured every edge of the fae realm, and the darkness lingered just beyond. Hungering. Wanting.
It was kind of funny, then. That eternal stalemate. Mercury was here to reclaim, to fight on the behalf of reality. But, to the Void, he probably looked like the aggressor. After all, he was encroaching into their territory and weaving more reality in between the endless nothing…
With a shake of his head he placed that thought aside. He would try his best to create an environment where no one needed to die for it to be created, neither on the side of the nothingness, nor on the side of reality. The Void had been encroaching on the fae realm for ages, so changing up that status quo a little was something he could find agreeable enough.
Still, seeing the fae outside, vigilantly standing against the tides of the Void was strange. Every so often, the wall of vertical reality that his eyes saw physically would crack, and the fae would rush there like bees in a hive. It was a little like a wall opened up and a window suddenly appeared.
The dark would quickly flow inside like a cold draft of air on a cold winter night. A bit more of reality was lost, the threads coming undone, more of that emptiness settling in the gaps as it grasped with tentacles and eyes and a thing that was all grasping hands and faceless smiles.
Somehow, the creatures that made Mercury's eyes bleed by sheer incomprehensibility still were so vivid in his mind. Their alien shapes were dissected and put back together in things he could understand, into masses of limbs and shadow and wind and grass and water. Things that clicked and could exist, and yet none of that at all.
And when he looked closer, looked at the
Once, twice, and then a thousand times more, he switched back and forth between perceptions. He looked at the void with his eyes, seeing it forced into shapes that conformed to reality yet distorted it, twisting and turning and interlocking and folding in upon themselves in impossible twists.
Then he saw them for what they were, as well as he could. Peered where reality wasn't and saw behind the myriad mandated masks. He saw things he couldn't describe because there were no words for them. He saw the way they fit and belonged and still twisted and turned in ways that he could hardly comprehend.
Mercury observed their shadows, he observed their mana, he observed their auras that somehow seemed turned inside out. Slowly but surely, he got a little closer to understanding it all.
"Please clean the floor of the carriage," Alice asked.
Mercury obliged, of course. "Sorry," he said, summoning a raincloud that quickly washed aside the sheet of blood the wood was covered with. Of course, he knew how it had gotten there. Mercury had just genuinely cried his entire bodymass in tears of blood by now.
And, of course, he felt entirely fine.
It was entirely strange. But he didn't worry about it too much. He didn't need to feel human, he was himself and would always be himself. His past self was a shadow he cast, and his future was something that hadn't come to pass yet. So, he simply was who he was, and that was fine.
With a soft sigh, Mercury curled up more, laying his head onto his front paws. Well, more onto the paw that was mostly fur, and less on the one that was mostly metal, but who was keeping track, anyway.
He looked out of the window for another moment, then closed his eyes and just… meditated on what he'd seen. The void was so strange and bizarre, yet it didn't invoke that feeling of disgust he'd thought it might. It was just… different. Strange and somewhat unknowable.
And that kind of just made him more curious. Especially since he had received
Mercury took a deep breath. The outskirts of the fae realm smelled of nothing much at all, except cold. There was not a whole lot around that it could smell like, with so few… things around. He sighed softly.
The carriage rolled on forwards. More tears opened in reality. More closed. Days passed. The floor turned from rocky wastes into grass that was first soft, then tall.
Joy sprouted at all them insidiously. Not all at once, but a slow, gradual buildup of colourful rainbow smears and vivid life. But it all felt thin to Mercury, unformed. A veneer, barely plastered onto an unstable backboard.
It was pretty. And Mercury could see it being intoxicating for those who didn't know any better. But it was a lie.
A little trick to play on the gullible, like a spider in the middle of a web, just waiting for insects to get caught in its ephemeral threads. A thin covering of leaves one stepped on and felt the floor drop beneath them.
Knowing how faint they were, none of it touched the mopaaw anymore. The hallucinogenic drugs slid off him, and the infectious aura of laughter in the branches rang hollow in his ears. He saw the swaying of the jungle for what it was, saw past the projections of fun and happiness.
Because it was all lies.
Steadily, the carriage advanced. The grass grew high enough to tangle the wheels, and the forest dense enough to where there shouldn't be a path. But Mercury was
There was no path, but the world stretched and bent until there was.
Leaves of rainbow colours parted until they were no longer in the way, and Mercury's carriage rolled ever forward. Forward and forward, until there was nowhere left to go. Until the world had begun falling apart again.
Joy was dying. Broken and battered, and the rainbow eye made of a million intersecting strands of light was falling apart. Shattering into shards of glass.
Like a plague, the grass around the broken throne was grey. No, the entire world was monochrome here. It felt stifled. Quiet.
Mercury felt like there were fingers wrapped around his throat, choking his experience. Everything felt dulled and boring. Joyless.
He opened his mind and sank into ihn'ar, seeing beyond sight. The world was frayed, tangled threads interlocking and then left grasping, a broken, incomplete weave. Mercury sighed, softly.
"Lots of work ahead, friend?" Orin asked, and the mopaaw nodded.
"Lots," he said. "This won't be a quick operation. In fact, I'm unusure I'll be able to do it in one sitting. Well. I might have to, but it'll be a long sitting."
Alice nodded, then whispered to the grass. "Make us an area to rest if you would?" she asked the ground.
The grass, of course, acquiesced her requests. Stalks intertwined, forming rudimentary benches. Moss from trees grew into hammocks. The greenery even cleared out and the dirt rose and dipped, creating a small firepit.
Mercury almost laughed. It was a campsite. Seriously, about as cliche of a campsite as you'd ever get - well, except that there weren't any tents. But the hammocks had coverings to shield them from the rain. So, really, those were the tents.
It was always bizarre, seeing something so ordinary in a place so strange, where rainbow grass grew and the trees laughed with the wind. Alice had build the campsite at the edge of the oppressive grey that festered at the heart of joy.
A broken throne.
The last time Mercury had done this, it had taken him literally dying to put his little plan into action, to make that tiny rebirth happen. He had taken all of that old world and left Uldyrel to build a new one, and in the process, so much had broken. Even though he had left them with many threads to repurpose… in some ways, he'd failed.
Of course, Mercury still considered it a success. He'd had absolutely no interest in letting Yearning keep on in the way it did, and Appreciation was a far nicer court, anyway. But Joy… perhaps there was a little more of it that could be salvaged. Perhaps it was a little less beyond saving.
A little less… broken? He wondered.
"Come down here, then," Mercury said, speaking to the enormous breaking rainbow eye in the sky.
Joy heard him, and its ruler obeyed. Slowly, with an air of oppression travelling along, the eye lowered itself down to Mercury. In fact, it even shrunk.
The thing, vast enough to cover the sky, always took up the same amount of space in his field of view. It was rather hard to tell it was coming closer at all, since it shrank at the same rate.
Standing in a rain of glass shards, Mercury waited, stepping further towards the throne himself. The air grew heavy on his shoulders. The way that Joy's existence was broken and twisted, the way the eye's gaze laid only on him, made it about as heavy as Oberon's presence.
So, Mercury withstood it.
When the dull grey started to seep into his fur, leeching his own colour, he let
A wreath of silver branches manifested around Mercury's head. At its center sat an amber gemstone, bathing the world in orange light.
Dull grey was pushed aside by glimmering amber. The world went from quiet to silent, the laughter dying in the trees, the wind no longer swaying the grass. It was like a picture, a frozen landscape, a moment captured in stillness.
Mercury did not speak. His words had gained more meaning. It was as though the world itself was drawing him to see it for what it really was, to bend it with his will. The amber spread from the gem, from Mercury's feet, trickling over the grass and encasing it all.
He breathed. The air was silent, and there was no perturbation when he breathed out. Joy was in front of him, on its throne, the eye hovering just above the broken chair, its eternal extravagance terminated.
Slowly, a minute passed. The world grew stiller, and stiller. Luminescent amber rose to envelop it all, the grey haze of decay pushed aside for the moment.
The liquid filled the gaps in reality, then solidified. It glued to the fraying threads only Mercury saw, and held onto them. It created walls and boundaries for this world, carrying a hint of
Was doing it trivial? No. Mercury was silent not just because it would make his words mean more when he eventually spoke, he was also silent because it took all of his focus. Tiny bits of his dream were laced into the amber, letting it bond with the bits of Joy that aimlessly drifted in the Void.
Extending himself like this was exhausting. It was risky, because it might draw attention from the things that lingered beyond reality. But it was also necessary. Like clamps and anaesthesia before a surgery, Mercury laid an amber blanket of silence onto the world.
Bit by bit, it crept forward, until eventually… Nothing moved.
The entire world was still.
Mercury looked at Joy. He took a deep breath of amber air. He looked at joy, already deep within ihn'ar, already seeing the many ways the world could untangle, already unbound by reason and probability.
He saw that Joy would die within a few seasons.
"Do you want my help?" he asked.
It was a necessary question, one that rang out in the silent world. The eye bobbed, in affirmation. Mercury knew it was, because he saw its prismacolour aura shift.
Knowing that, feelings blossomed within him. Relief, excitement, and a bit of that curiosity that came before taking something apart, as well as the dread that came before a big task.
Still, he smiled. Then, he made something halfway between a request and an order. "Show me your deepest secrets."
The silent world boiled to obey, and the prismatic eye acquiesced.
Coloured glass split open and spilled its secrets. In a prismacolour rain of coloured light and shattered glass, Mercury's mind churned. And he