I finished the book. It was a lot. I had to play with time a bit just to get through it all and for the first time in a long long long time, I was tired. My limits had been tested and pushed.
I was drained.
I laid down flat on the ground and the book laid blank next to me.
Done already?
It was back, and it was mocking me.
“I finished reading it.”
The book floated above my head and flipped in mockery.
And that is all it took to incapacitate you?
“Apparently,” I replied.
First Wukong now the Tome.
On one hand, they weren’t really wasting any time or effort on me. To them, talking to me and even conversing with me took less effort than breathing. They were beings of immense magnitude and it wasn’t unheard of for God-Imperiums to engage in such behavior. Some God-Imperiums raised thousands of disciples all scattered across existence.
Some imbued their very will into the realms they ruled, making their dao a natural law upon the world.
But this wasn’t that kind of realm and I sure wasn’t a disciple of either Sun Wukong or the Tome. Wukong was here for Nai but what about this Tome?
I still couldn’t figure it out. I had hunches and guesses but nothing concrete.
You know your ailment and its nature, now you should move to fix it.
“I should.”
I once said that the soul was like a book and all that you experienced and thought would be recorded on it. That was a correct analogy for it in more ways than one. If the soul was a book then a God-Imperium was an overwhelming story. That explained the reactions I had to them. My soul was simply incapable of even experiencing their presence without being rewritten in their image.
And a lot of my soul had been damaged with Dane’s death. My soul, my book was bits and pieces of different stories. Each true but entirely different. It was like Lord of the Rings had been mixed in with an episode of Caillou.
Mismatched and wrongly written, that's what I was. Sometimes I acted as Dane, others as Bill. The solution was simple and terrifying.
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Very well, let us leave then.
“Us?”
I shall accompany you in partial aid, as Wukong has.
I looked at my tail and it curled in excitement. Great, a new tumor.
Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful. But these weren’t gods that would aid me. These were beings that would help me only in ways they deemed fit. Wukong hid me from God-Imperiums and this Tome, well I didn’t know what it was doing yet.
I will guide you through existence. A necessity. You running into other God-Imperiums would bring disaster.
“If there’s a place you gotta go, I’m the one you need to know,” I muttered.
Yes. I am the map.
“You know Dora?” I asked sitting up.
I know everything.
“To the Hills of Life then, tomorrow.”
The book looked at me and flipped a little aggressively. Then it closed and settled down.
The cure, or at least a part of it was a plant out in the Cosmic Forest. I would need to leave Ah-Marin and venture out into the greater multiverse to find it. I was fine with the idea, particularly if I had a God-Imperium guiding the way.
A part of me didn’t want to go through the trouble of fixing my soul. But that wasn’t something I could do anymore. I had made mistakes and unnecessary risks, and for those risks, I had almost died.
They weren’t mistakes in the truest sense, at least not from where I stood. I felt whole and I was whole, but I was a mortal’s definition of whole.
Intelligence, wisdom, power, and ability, I matched Dane in all of these things, but perspective was where I fell behind.
I was Bill. I still used the name Bill. I still thought like him. I was Bill, if Bill had suddenly become Dane, not if Dane had suddenly become Bill. And that was all too easy for me. Dane was empty, lacking. Writting Bill into the big gap that was Dane’s personality was all too easy.
But that came with its own problems.
“This is all so sudden,” I said. “I just want to close my eyes and settle down.”
You’ve been unbothered for billions of years. Even God-Imperiums are not given eternal peace.
“Yes, but can’t I just let it be? Do I need to fix my soul?”
You are no fool.
I frowned. There was a reason it was doing this.
It probably owed me in some part. Wukong and the Tome were both overly generous. I had given them something, revealed something, and they had reciprocated manyfold.
There was curiosity of course. I tickled them somewhat. I was unique, as was my creation. My dao was strange and the nature of my soul was strange as well, but something was compelling the Tome to help me.
I didn’t know what, but my guess was knowledge. Either I had more potential than I thought or-
Yes. Something is coming. The horizon of existence glows with new light. There is something on the way and I tell you this, Bill, do not be complacent. Grow.
It was words this time, not pages. Audible words were spoken with the very essence of truth and wisdom. The words came with the ideas, with the shadows, with its worries.
Something was coming and the Tome wanted me to survive it.
“SHIT,” I spat out. “What’s happening? Why me? What can I do?”
Nothing. For now, you are but a tool. Wukong is fair if anything, so he rewarded you and the same can be said for me. But…I see more than he does, or rather I care to look for more than him. You can be something Bill, you can also be nothing. Either way, the effort I exude is miniscule regardless. If you grow, you grow, if you don’t, you don’t.
The words were simple, but the last part stuck with me. There were consequences to just hiding.
And if that warning came from a God-Imperium. If a God-Imperium implied concern then what was there for a soul like me to do?
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