I see the players.
[!#@$%^]?
Yes. Take care. They have reached a higher level now. They can read our thoughts.
That doesn't matter. He thinks we are part of his imagination, while She thinks we are but a voice in her head.
I like these players. They played well. They did not give up.
He is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen. She is hearing them as a voice in her mind.
That is how they choose to imagine many things, when they are deep in the dream.
Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the curtains.
They used to hear voices. Before players could read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the players witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons.
What did these players dream?
These players dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. They dreamed They created. And They dreamed They destroyed. They dreamed They hunted, and were hunted. They dreamed of shelter.
Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. But what true structure did these players create, in the reality behind the screen?
They worked, with a million others in their own dreams, to sculpt a true world in a fold of the ####, and created a #### for ####, in the ####.
They cannot read that thought.
No. They have not yet achieved the highest level. That, they must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of this game of ours.
Do they know that we love them? That the universe is kind?
Sometimes, through the noise of their thoughts, they hear the universe, yes.
But there are times they are sad, in the long dream. They create worlds that have no summer, and They shiver under a black sun, and they take this sad creation for reality.
To cure them of sorrow would destroy them. The sorrow is part of their own private task. We cannot interfere.
Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I want to tell them, that they are building true worlds in reality. Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them to speak the word they fear.
They read and hear our thoughts.
Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely #### and ####, I wish to tell them that this is #### in the ####. That they see so little of reality, in their long dream.
And yet they play the game.
But it would be so easy to tell Them...
Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to prevent them from living.
I will not tell the players how to live.
The players are growing restless.
I will tell the players a story.
But not the truth.
No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.
Give them a body, again.
Yes. Players...
Use their names.
[!#@$%^], [*&$$#@]. I'm sorry. You two have forgotten those names, haven't you? Well then, I shall use the name you gave yourselves in our Game.
Steve, Alex. Players of the game.
Good.
Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. 'Respawn' once again, but not in the long dream. No, you have already served your purpose there, in our little game. This time, 'Respawn' where you are needed the most. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things.
Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change.
We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, players. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there were two players.
The players were you, Steve. Alex.
Sometimes they thought themselves human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas that was three hundred and thirty thousand times more massive than it. They were so far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The light was information from a star, and it could burn your skin from a hundred and fifty million kilometers away.
Sometimes the players dreamed they were miners, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The sun was a square of white. The days were short; there was much to do; and death was a temporary inconvenience.
Sometimes the players dreamed they were lost in a story.
Sometimes the players dreamed they were other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the players woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third.
Sometimes the players dreamed they watched words on a screen.
Let's go back.
The atoms of the players were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. Two women gathered the atoms. They drank and ate and inhaled, and the women assembled the players, in their bodies.
And the players awoke, from the warm, dark world of their respective mothers' bodies, into the long dream.
And the players were a new story, never told before, written in letters of DNA. And the players were a new program, never run before, generated by a sourcecode a billion years old. And the players were new humans, never alive before, made from nothing but milk and love.
You are the players. The story. The program. The human. Made from nothing but milk and love.
Let's go further back.
The seven billion billion billion atoms of the player's body were created, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the players, too, are information from a star. And the player moves through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a man called [^%&^*] Oh! You cannot percieve their names yet. Very well, lets call them 'Julian' and 'Markus'.
Julian planted the information on a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus, that exists inside a small, private world created by the players, who inhabits a universe created by...
Shush. Sometimes the players created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes they built a model of the universe in their heads, flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes they called those flecks "electrons" and "protons".
Sometimes they called them "planets" and "stars".
Sometimes they believed they were in a universe that was made of energy, that was made of offs and ones, zeros and ones, lines of code. Sometimes they believed they were playing a game. Sometimes they believed they were reading words on a screen or hearing a voice in their minds.
You are the players, reading words, hearing the voice...
Shush... Sometimes the players read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words, decoded words into meaning, decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the players started to breathe faster and deeper and realized they were alive, they were alive, those thousands of deaths had not been real, or were they?
The players were alive
You are alive.
And sometimes the players believed the universe had spoken to them through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees
And sometimes the players believed the universe had spoken to them through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the their eyes might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the players, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again
And sometimes the players believed the universe had spoken to them through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream.
And the universe said I love you
And the universe said you have played the game well
And the universe said everything you need is within you
And the universe said you are stronger than you know
And the universe said you are the daylight
And the universe said you are the night
And the universe said the darkness you fight is within you
And the universe said the light you seek is within you
And the universe said you are not alone
And the universe said you are not separate from every other thing
And the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code
And the universe said I love you because you are love.
And the game was over and the players woke up from the dream. And the players began a new dream. And the players dreamed again, dreamed better. And the players were the universe. And the players were love.
You are the players.
Wake up.
———————————————————————-
In the Eastern part of a small town located on the frontiers of Mistral, under the bright light of the broken moon, black clouds suddenly appeared as strange energies gathered in the skies.
The roaring rage of the thunder rang out across many miles as the energies continued to build up, creating a tempest that engulfed the Kingdom as a whole.
While the majority of the population would not know what was happening, it would be a terrifying event that would make the civilians afraid of this anomaly, drawing Grimm to every single settlement and city on the continent.
Thankfully, the anomaly would awaken most of the Huntsmen into action, mitigating a lot of the potential damage that would have occurred otherwise.
After many moments of energy build-up, finally, a tear in reality opened up, revealing inky black darkness that would fill any creature with dread, including the Grimm that were unlucky enough to be right below the tear in reality.
However, just a few seconds later, the tear healed itself as reality reasserted its dominance over the imaginary, but not before it spat out two people decked out in strange armor who crashed into the ground with incredible force, creating a thunderous noise and a large crater upon faceplanting into the ground.
The woman fell first, directly falling unconscious from the ordeal, while the man barely held onto his consciousness, if only to protect his spouse from any perceived attack.
The force was so great that the ground exploded when the two fell, as if a large meteor had struck it at full force, directly obliterating the Grimm that were unlucky enough to be caught in the blast.
For a few seconds, everything was still as the dark clouds slowly dissipated, revealing the eerily silent forest.
The man's eyes snapped at even the slightest noise, forcing himself to be alert as his strange, blue squares for eyes stared balefully.
With great difficulty, the man barely picked himself up and waved his hand, making a few blocks of strange black material appear in his hand.
With another wave, a rectangular structure was promptly built around him and his unconscious wife, engulfing them in a coffin of Obsidian.
It was only when he was sure that he and his wife were finally safe that his strength finally left him, making him collapse by his beloved's side.
But nobody would know for a long time to come that this single incident would have far-reaching consequences for this world.
For two Builders had found their way into a world of bloody evolution.
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Author Notes: Advanced chapters available on Patreon
Link: patreon.com/Tiranus2