Chapter Text
THE FLESH.
⋆⊱༻𖥸༺⊰⋆
TWO TIME IS ON THEIR 894,555TH LIFE. They are inescapably reborn, and it has been too long since the RESPAWN begun to feel like less of a blessing and more of a wet, muscle-tearing curse, their bones protruding and extending through their infraspinatus fascia, growing and thinning out into a pathetic excuse of wings.
They have seen what true wings are; they do not hurt. They do not sprout through the skin like a nightshade in woodland soil, flimsily hanging on like a blade of grass on the ground—rather they soar and flap strongly, connected from muscle to a protruding chest bone, with strong pectoral muscles giving them the strength to fly. They have seen what true wings are; be it the buzzing flutter of a hummingbird or the popping joints of Shedletsky stretching out his twenty-six foot long wings, their bony amalgamations will never compare to a one-billionth of what real pinions are.
Oh, holy Spawn! Why has IT forsaken them so? Why must it grant life after life after life? They have only taken one, the one most dear, the one most beloved; did Azurewrath’s humanity amount to the humanity of thousands? Surely, is that why his one life has given way to hundreds of thousands of others?
Oh, holy Spawn! Is IT real? How would it reach them inside the realm? They have known, deep down, that the Spectre outshines any god at all; would both the Spawn and Telamon’s power be enough to amount to the Spectre’s grasp? Surely, if that were so, IT and HE would have saved them by now, or do the gods not care?
Oh, holy Spawn!
The blasphemy burns, white-hot.
It melts into their head, code tracing over the ridges on their brain, zero-one-zero-zero-one's abounding, stretching red-black for miles in their vision. The blasphemy sears the meat of their flesh, another lash on their back made not from a whip but from chevrons and brackets and numbers.
Worship the Spawn, THEY seem to say, eyes blinking manically. Worship the Spawn, for that is what makes you whole. Two Time's back folds under the HTML that surrounds them.
Two Time. Do not question the Spawn. You must pay for the blasphemy.
The Spawn, engraved in their flesh. Their name is not Two Time, and they question the existence of their deity. They have lived 894,555 times; accompanied by another fallen god, Admins, and friends alike, then murdered by a fallen angel, a cultish corpse, and their risen beloved.
It is natural to question. How much of their existence is the Spectre, and how much of it is the Spawn?
They endure another lash of the code. It alters their very being, their thoughts, their self, until it is just—
Just—
Glory to the Spawn!
Glory to the... Spawn.
Glory...
to the spawn
They refuse. It mushes their brain into soup, swimming with horror and pain, but they have endured enough. They will gain another life after this one. And another. They refuse to give their worship unwillingly.
The Spawn is glorious, it looks down from the night sky, singing hymns to the creator, but it is not holy. Anything but. It is wretched, disgusting, impure, and terribly close to humanity.
If Two Time is one thing, they are stubborn. They will not accept a fate that is not touched by the presence of the treacherous, alluring Spawn.
When their mind solidifies once again, hardened with question and logic, they feel the code seep out of their ears and back around their neck.
Azurewrath will never forgive you. He hates you.
The code wraps around their heart, squeezing it tight, burning it from the ventricles to atriums. Two Time's heartbeat nearly collapses under the weight.
You killed him. You killed him for the Spawn, and now you question IT? Was Azurewrath's death in vain, Two Time?
And oh! Spawn, it constricts them and forces their logos into pathos. The clear-mindedness that they had just obtained drains out of them as it is blended into heartache, into blooms of flowers bursting out of their mouth, beneath their tongue, behind their eyes.
It reminds them of their first death; choking up nightshades and submitting to their familiar poison. They died with regret on their lips and purple stained teeth.
The Spawn granted you a second life! You will follow the Spawn, or Azurewrath's death will be for nothing!
It sounds like their thoughts. It is undoubtedly true. If not for the Spawn, then his death will be pointless. He does not deserve that.
Two Time bends beneath the thought.
The nightshades continue to flower inside them. Their stems crawl down the soft walls of their throat, roots pushing between the chambers of their lungs, drinking from the blood there. Each breath draws a petal deeper. Each attempt to cough only allows another bloom to unfold beneath their tongue.
Azurewrath had died for the Spawn.
No.
They had killed him for the Spawn.
The code tries to grind the two statements together until one cannot be separated from the other.
His death was an offering. His death was necessary. His death was beautiful.
It was not.
It was not.
It—
Azurewrath chose you, and you chose the Spawn.
Two Time’s fingernails split against the imitation of ground. It is when their fingers curl into something cold, textured and soft that they realise that everything of this realm is simulated. It's all code, all based on outcomes, and the result is that they assume the ground to be stone, and assume the walls to be of brick.
It's a trick. It's all a trick, they figure out, choking with understanding. Everything—their bedroom, the generators, the cabin—isn't real. It's customisable with a few adjusted strings of code.
God.
They remember Azurewrath reaching for them. Is that memory fabricated too? Can the Spectre lie about such a wonderful thing? Can THEY lie and replace memory after memory?
They feel the overwhelming pain of being burnt alive, for a split second, tied to a wooden pole in the name of the Spawn. Is that a true memory? Their gut tells them that hasn't occurred.
Azurewrath's hands had been warm despite the night air. His fingers had closed around their wrist with such certainty that, for one humiliating moment, Two Time had believed they could leave. The forest had opened before them. The Church had seemed small behind the trees. They could run, and run from the supposed bodies hanging in a basement.
Two Time believes it. Of course the unholy religion kept corpses.
The code snaps around their spine.
YOU CHOSE THE SPAWN.
The words tear across their sight in white characters, too large to read all at once. They burn through the false sky and sink into the earth, repeated until every part of the realm is made from the accusation.
YOU CHOSE THE SPAWN.
YOU CHOSE THE SPAWN.
YOU CHOSE THE SPAWN.
Two Time retches.
Nightshade spills from their mouth in wet, crushed clumps. Purple-black petals cling to their chin. Their roots are veined with red.
It is a lose-lose, they think. They will die of poisoning or die of asphyxiation.
They cannot breathe.
Azurewrath forgave you once.
The code loosens.
Two Time’s heart stutters.
He could forgive you again. Make his death mean something.
A figure takes shape beyond the rain of symbols.
Azurewrath stands there, made of flesh instead of ink, turned ever-so-slightly towards them. He smiles warmly, eyes crinkled, tan skin glowing in the light that shines around him. His arms are outstretched, inviting Two Time into his warm embrace.
"Two Time!" he calls happily. "Come here, my Nightshade."
Two Time’s body moves.
One knee drags forward. Then the other, running towards Azurewrath. They are a few meters away when the realisation hits them that this is not him. His eyes don't sparkle with mischief like Azurewrath's once did.
Their thoughts recoil, but the code has sunk into muscle now, pulling on tendons as though they are strings. Their hands leave drip marks of blood and flowers across the ground.
The false Azurewrath smiles.
It is almost his smile.
Almost.
“Tell me it meant something,” he says. “Tell me I died for something.”
Two Time’s mouth opens.
The correct answer waits behind their teeth.
The Spawn.
He died for the Spawn.
The code gathers itself around the words, preparing to push them out.
Two Time bites down.
Their teeth cut through their tongue.
Blood floods their mouth, hot enough to drown the flowers. The prepared confession collapses into a choked sound.
Azurewrath’s smile vanishes.
TELL HIM.
The command strikes hard enough to flatten Two Time against the ground. Still, they persist. They crawl back up again, trembling with determination.
Their jaw opens against their will. The muscles in their throat contract. Air is forced from their lungs.
“The—”
The Spectre pulls tighter.
“The Sp—”
Azurewrath screams as a knife protrudes from his heart. He stays standing nonetheless, but his soulless eyes widen in false shock. A mockery of the true Azurewrath.
Two Time spits in disgust, their saliva stained purple. How distasteful. THEY could not even get his eyes right. They look closer, and sees that 'Azurewrath' has hands too thin, and ankles at an anatomically impossible angle. The formation is crude.
Numbers flood through their eyes, pushing behind the sockets and pouring into the channels of the optic nerves. Brackets hook beneath their ribs. Lines of script crawl along the inside of their veins and alter the direction of the blood. Their body convulses as commands are written directly into the spaces between thought and action.
KNEEL.
Their knees strike the ground.
PRAY.
Their hands fold.
WORSHIP.
Their lips part.
Two Time remains silent.
WORSHIP.
Their spine bends until their forehead touches the earth. The movement is perfect. Reverent. Every part of their body performs obedience, just as they used to.
Spawn, where is your light? They grieve, trying to find any semblance of the respite the Church had preached of so many years ago.
The Spectre waits for the devoted feeling that should accompany their posture.
Nothing comes.
WORSHIP.
Their hands tighten until the finger bones crack.
Nothing.
WORSHIP.
The command becomes larger. Less precise.
BELIEVE.
The false Azurewrath flickers. His face is replaced by elder Amarah, then by the carved image of the Spawn above the altar, then by Two Time’s own face reflected in a bowl of ceremonial water.
Two Time does believe. But they will not kneel for a false, coded lie.
BELIEVE.
The word loses letters.
BE IEVE.
Then regains too many.
BELIEVELEIVELEIVELEIVE.
Two Time begins to laugh.
It is certainly not amusement. The sound tears itself out of them between sobs, made thin by blood loss and crushed lungs, but it is laughter nevertheless. It spirals out their mouth and they struggle to catch their breath in between manic wheezes. Is this real? they wonder, but the Spawn does not answer.
The Spectre recoils.
The sky flashes red, the endless abyss gaining colour at last.
WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING?
The question appears before Two Time in smaller text than the commands.
They lift their head.
The false Azurewrath has vanished. In his place stands something unfinished: a narrow body beneath a torn black veil, limbs dividing and joining at the wrong intervals, faces surfacing beneath its skin only to be swallowed again.
Two Time can't tell whether this is the Spectre. Would THEY assume such an imperfect body?
Or, in any case, they can't tell whether the Spectre has a body at all.
THEY do not understand.
“You needeth me to believe you,” Two Time whispers. The slight falter in the language dear Chance had taught them encourages them more—they have the support of others. A byproduct of the Forsaken realm. The love shared amongst the Survivors outweighs any of THEIR enforced pain. "The answer all this time has been so simple, yet so dreadfully difficult."
The thing becomes still.
The code around their throat constricts.
I NEED NOTHING FROM YOU.
The words arrive too quickly.
The denial is immediate, therefore false.
Like how Noob, flustered, would deny eating the last part of pasta in the saucepan after dinner, replies too quick and too rehearsed to be truthful.
The Spectre, almost as if hearing this revelation, becomes more crimson, more agitated.
Two Time’s laughter breaks into another cough. More flowers fall from their mouth, but they are grey now, their petals collapsing before they reach the ground.
“You need us afraid. It is what you feed on," Two Time muses. "Only the Spawn knows how you managed to keep the secret for so long—do you feast on the Killers's fear too? Is the Slasher filled with utmost terror? Hath thee implanted a bud of horror in even the Creation of Hatred's non-existent heart?"
DO NOT.
The realm trembles harder.
The Spectre forces Two Time’s head back down, causing them to gag over more petals and stems. They can feel the poison working, now, and they find that dying in the embrace of nightshades, their lover's favourite flower, suits them well. They accept death, for they have outrun it too many times, and have taken advantage of the Spawn's strength a sinful amount.
LOOK AT ME.
They close their eyes.
The command tears through the lids and stains the darkness red.
LOOK AT ME.
"No."
Pain bursts behind their forehead.
The realm reaches for the oldest fears it can find.
The Church doors closing.
Azurewrath turning away.
A grave in a field of nightshades.
A second life failing to arrive.
Burning alive.
This time, the images pass too quickly. The Spectre throws each one aside before it can take root, searching for something that still possesses authority.
Two Time sees the mistake.
It no longer knows which fear belongs to them.
The memories blur together. Azurewrath speaks in Amarah's voice. The Spawn wears Shedletsky’s wings. The Church becomes a room from the Haunted Hotel. Nightshades grow through the floor of the survivor shelter.
Some of the memories are not theirs. They feel a black sword through their gut, then through their chest, corruption and cold both eating at their skin—the comradeship of soldiers and gross tinned food, the warm embrace of a woman—the power and hatred seeping through Him, prayers filling His ears—the tears after a lost friend—the prickling feeling of being burnt alive, trapped in scarlet chains.
The Spectre is reaching deeply into THEIR own code, and finding everyone THEY have captured.
Two Time swears they can even hear the screams and cries of the Killers. c00lkidd sobs in pain, but they can't see what is causing the poor child to scream so wretchedly. They gaze upon a world viewed with nothing but hate, and the hatred of that hate, the longing to feel love yet again. Did 1x1x1x1 use to adore? The thought is cut off by another of c00lkidd's indignant yells, before another ear-piercing scream.
Two Time's gut weighs heavy.
The Spectre strikes them.
The blow has no shape. It is light and code and pressure, sufficient to split the false earth for miles. Two Time’s body comes apart beneath it. Skin tears first, then muscle. Their ribs open. Their bruised, broken heart is crushed inside the cage of bone.
The world goes white.
They wait for death.
It does not come.
The Spectre holds them at the threshold.
What power does the Spawn have over this state? How does IT view the line between life and death? Does it rebirth a person, or merely shove them back before the precipice of death?
Their ruined body continues to feel.
Every exposed nerve burns. Their lungs twitch uselessly. Their wings drag behind them in strips of bone and skin, still attached enough to transmit pain.
But still, they remain.
The code begins to open. It yields, slowly but surely, and gives way to reality. They can sense it. That is real grass, and the air the weaves through the broken atmosphere is fresh and real. They haven't smelt such a thing in years. It is undeniably mundane, but it gives them the flash of an emotion lost so long ago.
Hope.
They move. Impossibly, against all odds. It should be biologically impossible, with the state of their body. But they are torn apart by nothing but code. A thing inferior to solid ground.
They persevere, they move, as swift as they can, and crawl towards the real world.
The Spectre realises too late, screaming brokenly in frustration.
Two Time takes their final, bloody, painstaking effort at leaving, and pulls themself out of the darkness.
The Sun hits their pale, fully-healed back for the first time in 894,555 rebirths.