Chapter 60 - Singularity

  The chamber is nearing saturation. The Cultivator no longer just pumps his power into the conduits of the Burden of Intent, he has to force every mote of it into the packed channels. The emission runes that had been channeling the waves outwards now struggle to keep the energy flow moving in the same direction, barely functioning as one-way valves. The energy gradient between the citadel and the chamber outside is almost at equilibrium. A state that won’t persist for long.

  Finally, after so long of standing in one place and doing nothing but feeding the machine, The Cultivator receives the feedback signal he’d been longing for. The emission runes failed. No more energy could be pushed out. It’s ready. Shaking hands lift from the panels, and he takes a step backwards before his legs give out. The man slumps to the floor, utterly spent.

  For nearly a month straight, he’d done nothing but stand in place. Every joint in his body protests the motions that should have been natural, every muscle screams at him for the temerity of stretching them again. But it would all be worth it. It had to be.

  As wretched as his body feels, his soul is worse by far. The Cultivator’s spirit feels hollow, utterly wrung out. He’d kept his Animus accumulation pushing out as much power as his spirit's throughput would allow. The constant efforts had greatly expanded his capacity with the exertion, but that only allowed him to push the flow faster. And now it’s done.

  Not trusting his legs, the man crawls across the polished obsidian floor. Every motion hurts, but he doesn’t have far to go. Stretch, pull, slump, it was all he could manage. Nevertheless, he crawls out of the charging station and into the room at the exact center of the whole citadel. Positioned not just as the center of the citadel, but the very center of the whole chamber outside, is a throne. He’d never considered himself a pretentious man, but a throne is a throne. It was a necessity to house the layers of inlaid enchantment work to focus everything onto a single point.

  Heaving himself up onto the seat, he turns and slumps back against it. Panting for breath, he barely manages to get his arms and legs to cooperate enough to position them properly. But at last he was in position, the device was charged, and everything was prepared for the next stage. Then the time ran out.

  All around the surrounding chamber, the stabilization and collection runes invert. Within the barest fraction of a second, runes charged for over a month dump their entire stockpile of energy into transmission channels. Collection runes reverse their flow, then are completely overwhelmed. The monstrous accumulation of power surges back inwards, compressing the saturated chamber’s contents. The stone of the chamber’s outer surface is reduced to powder, then vitrified, creating a shell of molten glass dozens of feet thick. At the heart of the chamber, the citadel fairs no better. The Burden of Intent’s obsidian construction shatters like glass and is vaporized, leaving only its protected core.

  The rampaging energies crash inwards, compressing, intensifying, birthing a star. The exponential nature of the collapsing energies cause many exotic forms of unbound essence to spontaneously exist, then become consumed. The citadel’s core withstands the onslaught only long enough to witness the first of the cascading reactions before it too is consumed. Only The Cultivator remains, suspended inside a collapsing star of his own making.

  His three powerful evolved Titles, The Cultivator, The Verdant Sage, and The Creeping Growth, swirl around the nascent fourth Title. Their strength and resonance with the crushing power is all that stops him from being annihilated as well. Tighter and tighter the compression forces become until a singularity is birthed within the man’s very spirit, sucking everything inwards with a greed only matched by the crushing pressure.

  The Titles are pulled in as well, crushed together. In such an exotic environment, even the ephemeral nature of such things is violated, treating them as just another type of energy for the crucible. The man’s body is the last physical casualty of the process, utterly erased as his spirit is left naked and exposed. And then it too is compressed and absorbed by the singularity.

  Within the singularity, the infinite inverts. As the cataclysmic energies are all nearly consumed by its greedy hunger, from the depths of its impossible existence, three titles break. Their purpose and meaning is ground to dust, then from dust to vapor. The Cultivator ceases to exist. The Verdant Sage ceases to exist. The Creeping Growth ceases to exist. They are consumed as nourishment for the true heart of the singularity, the nascent Title. All the crystalized meaning and purpose, built over the stages of one man’s immortal existence, are shattered and reforged. As the last of the crushing energy-wave is consumed, the singularity stabilizes, its greed is sated.

  Sheltered at the heart of the newly formed Title, a guttering mote of Spirit finally has the shelter to burn again. As the crushing pressure of the implosion depletes itself, the soul finds the power to push outwards from that mote. The power starts rebounding as all that had been consumed is rebirthed in a flash of glorious purpose.

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  The spirit manifests, encapsulating the new Title within its core. The echoes of the soul resonate once more with the rekindled existence, returning to inhabit the reforged form. The exotic energies are woven into mass, rebuilding the body from single atomic components plucked from the chaos. The man exists once more.

  From the moment everything had been set in motion until the moment of his rebirth, the time could be measured at Planck scale. Preparations that were measured in millennia culminating in an event that is over in the same instant it began. But the effects will linger for an eternity.

  Having sensed the coming calamity, Leviathan had been moved to action. The foolish pawn that had arrived near her domain had contained enough knowledge to garner her attention. The building pressure contained within that chamber shouldn’t have been capable of reaching those heights, but somehow one of the lesser Apex had found a way to concentrate it, distill it. And as the mechanism reached its culmination, even Leviathan was affected by the palpable sense of danger surrounding it.

  Reacting by instinct at first, Leviathan makes a conscious shift in her perspective. Her Territory is, and always has been, her personal sea. But with a flip of a mental switch, ‘her sea’ expands to encompass the entirety of her full domain. All of this region of Hell becomes ‘her sea’. And within her sea, Leviathan is Sovereign.

  She turns her myriad eyes to the cities and settlements, fixing each one within her gaze. Every soul, every mortal, every demon, she sees them. All the lesser existences that swim within her waters, she knows them. And with all the restraint, all the care, all the control she can muster, she whispers two words into deep. “Seek. Shelter.”

  She knows that even withholding as much of herself as she can, her warning will have casualties. Those too close to the cusp of dissolution would be snuffed out simply by being touched by the current of her words. But it is unavoidable. They must be warned. Many more would perish if her message wasn’t given.

  Then she focuses on containment. Slithering her immense form through the sea of her reality, Leviathan passes through stone with no more resistance than water. Her serpentine body with its multitudes of tendrils glides through ‘her sea’ unhindered. The distance between her Territory and the device of annihilation is vast, but the distance matters even less than the solidity of the stone. Once the chamber is in range of her direct presence, Leviathan gets to work.

  Subjugating reality to her will, Leviathan interposes the concept of an infinite ocean around that chamber, sequestering it from the rest of Hell. As it forms, two versions of reality compete for primacy. An ocean of stone, a cavern of ocean, currents of rock, pillars of wave, and it expands beyond comprehension. The turbulent waters soon settle to their purpose, becoming the bulwark to protect the true reality.

  She feels the other Apex darting away, krill attempting to avoid the mouth of a whale. Most escaped the range of her intervention, but one unfortunate soul was caught within the chamber. The lone Apex that had tried to reach the center, still trapped bodiless. There is nothing Leviathan can do for that one.

  With the conceptual ocean acting as a shield, Leviathan pours her intent into it. Through force of will, the creation is superimposed against Hell’s reality, becoming a second truth as real as the natural stone. The infinite expanse contains fathomless depths, and she holds strong in the conviction that it will contain the coming cataclysm.

  And then the device detonates. The newly born ocean shudders as the implosion first drags part of its depths into the true world, and then the waves of infinity boil. Hydro-static pressure crashes through even that barrier with a ferocity that reaches the layer of true reality, shattering the surrounding stone for miles. Entire chambers destabilize, their self-contained biospheres put in existential danger.

  Leviathan coughs up a mess of tainted blood into the ‘waters’ of stone surrounding her. Her spirit had been assaulted from every angle as that impossible detonation threatened to unmake her conceptual sea. The backlash had momentarily broken her focus, causing reality to reassert itself around her, stone attempting to inhabit the same space as her flesh. It had only lasted for the briefest of moments, but it was enough to wound even Leviathan. Redoubling her will, she attempts to further dampen the racing shockwaves with a counter-current through her sea. And still, it’s only triage.

  Shalmond hears Leviathan’s warning. He’d felt it when his grotto had been ‘drowned’ in the sea. It didn’t truly overwrite his own Territory. Even an existence like Leviathan could never do that. But it does have effects. Some of his mushrooms that create the spore-forest begin to adapt, creating mycelial variations for deep-sea life that reach fronts up and out to feed on passing nutrients in the currents. On a hunch, Shalmond touches Leviathan’s Sea, and some of the Abyssal Grotto’s spore gets swept into the deep, adding life to her creation.

  Shalmond’s origin region of Hell contains endless expanses of wetlands and oceans, and many of the denizens are beings of aquatic nature. In this, he feels a kinship to the immense sea-serpent. He isn’t certain if his trivial addition to her attempts will help or not, but he must try.

  Across the region of Leviathan’s Domain, other Territories make similar contributions. Not all have the power to be able to do so, either because their connections with their Territories are weaker, or they lack the personal power to survive brushing against Leviathan’s will. Within heartbeats, the expanded Domain-sea contains a conceptual biome representative of Hell’s messy nature. And Leviathan draws it all in to fuel her efforts.