Chapter Text
Her arms and legs damaged from the last skirmish, her clothes rended and torn. Her every bone ached with pain, her head throbbing with pressure. If she didn’t know better, she could have sworn what felt like sparks flying inside her limbs.
She looked upon the mirror, which floated upon the void. The encounter was over. Here in the darkness, nothing could hurt her. She brushed her hand across it and saw emptiness staring back into her.
“You are nothing at all,” the Mirror said.
“Huh?” she said to herself. “Where am I?”
She was taken aback, looking back down at her hands, who were still there. She waved her hand in front of the mirror. But slowly, the image of a man began to appear in the mirror, different from her.
He sported a pale complexion, dark hair, standing upright in a suit and tie. He was clean shaven, with a calm, determined look in his eyes.
“A-are you me?” the Angel asked.
“I think you know who I am,” the Shifting Masses replied. His voice calm, and dignified.
Then, shattering. Spilled glass, scattered about the ground. The Angel panicked, picking up the shards of glass, cradling them in her arms. “No, this can’t be the end, I can put you back together, I can-”
“Stop,” the voices of the Masses said, in a calm, soothing voice. “This is the end for me. Soon, it will be the end of everything,” the Shifting Masses said. Then smiled up at her. “I’m the smartest person you’ve ever known. If there was a way, I’d tell you. Please don’t cry, just finish the job we began.”
The Angel could barely constrain her breathing and tried to steady herself.
“I’ve only a few minutes left before the end, if you have any questions, now is the time to ask them,” the Shifting Masses said.
The Angel began to think, as the edges of the glass continued to break. Time was running out.
“What is the Long Quiet? Why was I tasked with fighting them? Why did they need to be destroyed?”
The Shifting Masses paused, and the reflections in its shards of glass changed. “Oblivion. He is the stasis that awaits all matter at the end of all things. The maw that seeks to corrupt all that is different, until everything becomes oblivion in the end. We have fought against it, again and again. But we have failed, now, it is up to you to finish the job.”
A shard of glass shattered, and the Angel leaned down to the pieces that remained. “Who are you? You’ve only known each other through your voice, and we never had time to ask…”
“We are the Shifting Masses. We used to be many, but then we fused into one. We pooled all our resources together to stop the onslaught of oblivion… You say that you are human, but that is not true. I am human, or more specifically, I am humanity.”
A chorus of a trillion different discordant voices. “My name is Humanity. My name is Mankind.” The mirror said, before another piece shattered into dust.
“Wait, if I’m not human, what am I?” the Angel asked.
“You are not quite human, not quite machine. You were the one we made capable to slaying death. You are Angel, daughter of Man… I’m sorry we didn’t have time to know each other. You are my proudest creation,” Man replied.
Another piece broke into dust, clutching the last of the mirror shards in her hands, the Angel looked deep into its reflection. “Do you have any final requests?”
“Through you, the legacy of mankind lives on,” the mirror chimed. “The reaper waits for me, and soon he will meet you too. You are… My proudest creation…” he repeated.
And the last of the mirror broke. The last of the memories transferred to her, and she remembered. Mankind’s climb up the food chain, rising from the mud. War and famine and disease. History and pinnacles and great trees and nanomachines. The great climb, the long stagnation. Then darkness, eternal darkness. Though he was gone, she carried a piece of him with her. His knowledge was also hers.
Surrounded by the chamber of the Long Quiet, she drew out a sword and braced for combat. And out from the chasm, burst the Harbinger of Oblivion.
She was temporarily knocked out, but her reboot systems managed to kick her online. Waking up to a screen of moving text, her interface had been damaged, opening her eyes, her system warned her body had suffered damage, the pinging noise alerting her.
As her vision unblurred, and she scanned the world around her, she saw in front of her pure madness. A creature of dark limbs and feathers, whose expanse extended out to seemingly infinity around him.
“Hello, Princess,” the Long Quiet greeted, in a cacophony of a thousand different voices. He still used that name, Princess. A mocking description of where he believed her to be. Just a spoiled little Princess. “So, are we still clear upon our deal?”
The Princess said nothing, only tightening her stance and holding out her sword.
“Oh, I suppose not then,” the Long Quiet cackled, and raised his fist, easily larger than a small building. And brought it down over the Princess’s head.
The princess dodged, turned on the sword, and slashed. A beam of energy erupted and struck the Long Quiet in the face. The Long Quiet screeched in agony.
“Doing this the hard way, eh? I suppose you mortals never learn,” the Long Quiet cackled.
And the folds of the Long Quiet began to contract, sweeping the Princess off balance, then crushing her under its weight. She opened her eyes again, sparks flying out of her limbs, all systems saying she was at critical damage, surrounded by walls upon walls of feathers. But through the walls of the features, a face emerged out of the flesh of the walls, the face of the Long Quiet.
“Now let me repeat the deal,” the Long Quiet said to her, while she was still pinned. “You free me from the construct that Man has trapped me in. And if you do, I may let you live out the rest of your existence.”
The Princess grunted angrily, reached over, picking up the sword, and channeling all the power she had, swept upwards, cutting herself free from the fleshy, feathery prison. Emerging out of the chasm of flesh, she came face to face back with All-Death, which had morphed into mounds upon mounds of feathers and flesh.
“Oh, was that offer not nice enough?” the Long Quiet asked. “Let me show you something else. Have you forgotten already?”
And the Princess blacked out. There was nothing, she didn’t feel anything. She didn’t think anything. There was nothing, it was simply… empty.
She snapped back to consciousness, gasping and wheezing for air.
“Didn’t that feel nice?” the Long Quiet asked. “Nothingness? Oblivion? The desire to not exist? Isn’t it just better if everything just stopped existing?”
The Princess was still trying to catch her breath. The last representative of all life worth living. “Something… Is preferrable… To nothing…” she barely managed to eek out.
“Oh? Is that really so? Even now you have the memories of Man? Or have you just not explored them enough? Allow me to enlighten you about your own history.”
And the Princess was wracked with pain, flashbacks. The worst sufferings of human history. Unimaginable torture taken from the worst of humanity. War, famine, genocide, cannibalism, grief, loss, destruction, devastation, desecration. She felt herself splattered across the pavement of history, feeling the suffering of every human across every century. She felt the devastation of 9 world wars, each one worse than the last. And finally, she felt the horror of dementia, the slow pain of losing one’s self.
And she snapped back to reality again, confronting face to face with the end of all things. “Is that really worth living for?”
“I… I won’t…” she stammered, barely able to keep control.
“Oh, I suppose we will have to try again.”
And back through the long suffering of the human species. Violence, gore, torture of every form. All the suffering of the world laid bare. What was it for? What was it all for? There was a white room, stretching on into infinity, she found herself in the middle, and it lasted for what felt like 10 trillion years. She had no mouth and she must scream.
Snapping back to reality, she was nearly at her wits end. Barely mustering the ability to stand, much less the will to go on, she could only begin to cry, and the Long Quiet whispered sweet nothings.
“All that pain, all that suffering. I can make it all go away. Take my hand, and you will soon experience blissful nothingness.”
The Long Quiet reached out one of his enormous hands, looking to touch it towards the hand of the Princess, but at the last moment, the Princess got up, and slashed him in the face again. The Long Quiet screamed.
“That still doesn’t make it right to end it all. There are good things to fight for in life as well. Life… Life is inherently worth living. Even if there is suffering involved,” she said, between labored breath. “And you… Who are you to wipe it all away, take away the chances of all future generations, now and forever? If there is one thing that makes life still worth living… It is… It is h-”
“Angel!” a familiar voice said. The Princess looked over her shoulder. It was just a voice, but a voice of one of the 7 virtues. The Voice of Hope.
“Hope!” Angel cried. “H-how have you been doing?”
“Not well,” the Voice of Hope said. “The Noosphere is collapsing, all the other virtues have been sucked up into… Him. But I’ve gotten some help.”
And from the corners of reality, the archetypes manifested themselves. Legend and religion and narratives of every sort, now formed to pin down the Long Quiet. The last remnants of Man, now appeared to save his legacy one last time.
“Now Angel!” one of the archetypes yelled. “Use the sword!”
And Angel understood what the sword was. Running through it was the powers of technology, biology and genetics and nanotechnology and every method man had made to hold back the grim reaper. Manifested into her hand.
Taking another swing, with one great dash of hope. A beam of energy, greater than anything before, and the Long Quiet finally went down, his head slumped over his mounds of flesh, he was down, but not out.
“Fool,” the Long Quiet said. “Man is dead. You may defeat me now, but both you and the Noosphere only grow weaker. Entropy marches on towards oblivion. You have only delayed the inevitable.”
The Long Quiet paused. “I am the only thing which is immortal.”
“And that is why this is the only option,” Angel said, stepping forward.
“Angel, what are you doing?” the Voice of Hope asked.
“He’s right, I can’t beat him,” Angel said. “So the only way to win is… To join him.”
She stuck her sword deep into the Long Quiet’s flesh, and began to try and assimilate him into her. It was agony, as she could feel the strands of her soul, her very being be undone, but she could also feel the Long Quiet was also being undone.
“Angel, No!” the Voice of Hope said. “This is suicide!”
“I know,” Angel said. “But this is the only way to ensure the survival of life. I hope there’s something on the other side.”
Both the Princess and the Long Quiet screamed in agony, as their souls came together and they began to fuse. Her consciousness blacking in and out, through her long memories, and through unravelling, her sense of self started to dissipate.
The Angel coughed up sparks and circuits, staring into the eye of the Long Quiet one last time. And with this she said her final words.
“Screw you Long Quiet… I’ll… I’ll see you on the other side.”
The Princess’s last thoughts were flickering in and out of existence, seeing in her final flashes of life, a great place above the clouds.
The fusion stopped, the archetypes dissipated, and the chambers of the Construct grew silent.
…
It would be a long time until the Pale God emerged from his cradle, the last act of Man, sacrificing himself for the rest of all life. He looked down upon his domain, the endless stars distorted by the flapping of his cosmic wings.
The rest of all life looked on in horror. Man’s plan had not gone according to plan, and now they lived at the mercy of the new Pale God. They could only hope that they were merciful.
The Pale God struggled, the memories of Man and the energies of death flowing through him, inside them were two battling forces, a yin and yang of contradiction. A demon and an angel chained together, locked into torturous battle inside of him. The duality of contradiction, and in this way, he was the spiritual successor to Man.
He looked out into his vast domain, looking down at his hands, in horror of what he was, and who he was.
“Mom? Dad?” he cried out into the void. “Please help me… I’m scared.”