The Void

Nothing…

Past the burst of the cold feeling blue flames and brief wavering of their heat upon the air within the chamber. Shaw had felt nothing.
Only the sadly familiar empty blackness of oblivion that the old temporal deity had held all too close in his remembered mind. Feeling his body and physical form falling away from both soul and the binds that linked the presence of the entity of Ruin to him all those millions of perceived and unperceived years growing wavery and thin under the draconian’s assault. Leaving him to drift in and out of awareness in the void. The passing of time only a faintly desired memory to the old timecaster’s soul. Not even the presence of the gold hued threads of the timelines reaching him.

This was no new experience to him, no new feeling, and while he technically felt nothing as he drifted. He was vaguely aware of the distant simmering of what might have been rage and grief at the edge of his perception towards Nagaetros. He had been in such a place before. The first time, all of those long years and eons ago. The flames of Rebirths incarnation and half realized ascension through the Ssavos remaining blood that had lain dying at his feet. Flesh burning under its illuminating light after too long had been lost to his words. Leaving the bones and illusion that had sustained him ever since. It infuriated him, the irony of his death. Its similarity to the first death he had suffered under no warning.  

The temporian had promised to himself that the draconian would earn his fair share of scars for the act he had committed. Under blame for not succeeding where the draconian himself had managed to fail and fall under the influence of the flux that both had sought. Hindered by her superior support and their inferior ones among their own ranks.

It had been too long now, far too long to make such promises sense the old era. But they had given him some solstice drifting in the void. Resting his otherwise turmoiled mind in old memories.

There was something in the distance, though with no true sense of time or space, it seemed to be both instantaneous and long lasting. There for nothing more than a glimpse and yet it could have been there for years to the conscious mind in this vast nothingness, both a star's distance and right next to him, but neither held more truth than the other. It was a color, a meaningless shape until Shaw's own consciousness gave it purpose. It was far until Shaw perceived it closer and there but for a glimpse until Shaw willed it last. Its very presence gnawed upon Shaw's mind and yet when he willed it away it did not leave. It defied him, it had a will of its own, and soon it took a defiant new form all of its own will.

Shaw recognized the form immediately as it bore that very same grin from ear to ear, the very grin responsible for Shaw being in his current state. He walked through the void as though there were something to step on. Naga, in an inky black suit and bright red tie, approached Shaw's space. He was becoming real while Shaw was but a consciousness. This being, this man, stood before Shaw’s thoughts and grinned his widest, whitest grin and joyfully shrugged his shoulders and squinted his eyes guiltily. It was mocking him. It unnerved him.

Shaw focused on the figure of the draconian. Had he a face or mouth, he would have scowled or snarled at the drakes presence in the place. Would have either growled or given a groan of annoyance. The mocking tone of the drake pose and gesture quickly overwhelming whatever unnerving factors there were about him and quickly irritating him. The timecaster’s consciousness shifting in its perception, having all the substance of ancient and tattered clouds wrapped around the air. if there was air to fill the space of the void.

For moments. He made silent contact with the drake, holding barely felt anger and irritation towards the draconian and his grin before the feelings grew hazy and shifted towards the indifference that his perception had created from long eroded emotions and experiences. Was this an attempt at mockery? He wondered to himself. With those old beings that were the draconian such truths of identity could even become hazy. So he just maintained his dourly toned contact with the being.

“Here to gloat of your kill?” he sent out to the being. “Or are you here for other business… I’ve lost enough time to deities before in mine own realm; I shan’t play these games nor follow your ruses. Speak your peace or leave me in mine…” He added.

And then he felt it. He could sense time once more and it was closer than ever in all of his inconceivable time being here.  It was moving closer, from somewhere in the void he could once again feel the sensation of that oh so familiar force. He longed for it and it only got closer. Closer and Closer until something new came into view from his side. it was no larger than what he perceived to be a marble as it drifted through the void. A small, formless black and blue thing that twinkled and shone like a finely cut diamond under the light. It drifted next to the man before him, this insignificant looking thing which for some reason shaw could sense timelines from within. Familiar timelines. The closer it got the more he could recognize it for what it was. It was a universe...and it was old...it was dying.

For something so vast for the living within it, from the void it was perceivable and finite where Shaw was. Here it was, this oh so important thing, drifting ever closer to Naga like debris in water. The form of Naga tilted his head as he acknowledged it, his grin was unwavering. With his hand, Naga reached out to it and took it in his hand as though it were tangible. His fingertips seemed to disappear within it like dust to the wind. Naga looked at it in his hand like one would an injured animal. With a keen interest in the thing which rested in his palm, He gazed upon it as though he could see every single thing which happened inside it. Shaw could feel the timelines from the creature's palm, from the universe. It was struggling, gasping, grasping to survive from within Naga's hand until suddenly there was nothing. No more struggling, no more gasping. The universe was dead.

Naga's grin grew wide as he brought the dead thing close, up to his head. A new mouth started to open, a black hole which stretched and tore across the draconian's face, as though what Shaw had seen before was but a mask for something beneath. From ear to ear, the new mouth tore and formed over what had been Naga's grinning face until the entire lower half had been replaced. It opened wider and wider across the form's head until Shaw could see perfectly inside this new cavernous maw.

And what he saw caused him pain but for what reasons he knew nothing of. It was the sensation of dying, over and over again. His memories were burning out and just as rapidly replacing themselves in his soul as they could not handle what they witnessed. He tried to retreat as a reflex, a subconscious reaction, the only kind his mind could commit to as his sanity took nose dives and immediately recovered, but he was forced to watch. In an instant he felt like a child, he remembered what it was to suffer. He saw his own life repeat before him in that same instant, he could feel the pain of aging and living all at once. He was given no peace in that briefest passage of time. His very soul burned for what felt like an eternity as Naga brought the universe up to his mouth and let it drift, slowly, into the chasm below? besides? above? Shaw could no longer tell these dimensions from the other. With the sound of countless screams of those that once were, screams which rang in Shaw’s mind as though he were among them, It disappeared among others of its kind, more dead universes, fading into the darkness of this toothless new void within the void, this pure and utter chaos. This chaos which closed slowly behind it, sealing shut and replacing what it had once covered until only Naga's grinning face remained once more. The screams thankfully silenced. And while Shaw had immediately recovered, he could still feel the scars of what he had witnessed burned deep inside of his very core. Naga just grinned as though what had just happened was nothing at all.

The old time caster watched through the whole ordeal, the temporians consciousness recoiling almost in its tattered form at the spectacle that he had been made to watch as the draconian face simply split, as if a painting on tearing canvas. An entire universe or creation and destruction, cycles over and over killed and consumed by… he paused, his spinning and shattered mind going through vicious cycles of restorations then destruction. His consciousness and awareness trying to pull away from the sight, finding that he couldn’t  

No, it was not consumed by; It was consumed “Through” The draconian. He was not the consumer. The… thing. The living darkness that had coiled within the draconian. That was…

The thought flicked a candles flame in the wind of a black hurricane that rose from an empty sky and swept aside the ancient foundations of his mind and his soul. The ageless sand and eroded stone shattered and blown away, swept up. Only to restore them in place for the storm to tear at again, over and over for what was an eternity. A Tempest of oblivion and shattered time that tore at him and shredded him in its winds. The screams an orchestra of the dead and the lost of not just that one ended universe, but so many others. A cycle of the underlying chaos of all things that had gone on for so long naming it would have been to insult it.
Yet he knew, somehow through all the shattered pain and death and life and aging that it had a name. Some deep instinctual knowledge deep in the recesses of his soul that told him that it did….

He would remember it, as his mind and soul recovered themselves from the sight, enfolding in on itself. Lines of dark spreading scars criss-crossing the old deserts and going deep into the eroded foundations that stood at his center. Damage from, what he knew he should not have been able to recover from. As if, some force had willed his mind to remain whole or roughly, in some way or form. The very notion of trying to find comfort of some kind, lost on him now.
The time caster turning his attention back up, perhaps shaking, or perhaps in stony silence to regard Nagaetros still standing before him. Memories eating at him like necrotic tissue.

He struggled, for seconds to speak… it could have been hours or days. It felt much longer than it should have.  … He decided he didn’t know and didn’t care.

“What…. What do you want?” He asked. Looking at the draconian with all the tension to recoil away from him.

This form, this "thing" which had appeared before Shaw....it was not Naga. In the deepest depths of his mind, Shaw could hear it ring out like base instinct. He simply knew as though the knowledge had been placed there without his knowing like a feint memory, but whether he had always known or if this information was actually new, he could not tell. "Naga" gazed upon Shaw's consciousness, not unlike he had that universe only just before. Its gaze practically unravelling his mind, stripping him of his thoughts and laying them out for all to see.

In its own way, Shaw soon found the knowledge of while searching his thoughts, this thing was actually communicating with him. Communicating by placing the knowledge directly into his consciousness. He could keep no secret from it. No lying to it. No history beyond its sight or place beyond its reach. This thing with the familiar face, the face of Shaw's murderer, was beyond everything Shaw had previously believed. From a bigger picture than even he could not see past. This thing, it made its place clear in all its horrifying glory. It made it clear what it was capable of.

"Naga" moved closer but not by moving a single muscle, he simply was, like a skip in a recording. The closer it was the more Shaw noticed it was not solid. it was more like a living mosaic, with pieces chipping away and disappearing in the void, only to be replaced immediately. But that was the oddest thing; Shaw could swear he could feel the faintest beginnings of timelines in the wayward fragments as they drifted off. Fading away the further they got from their source, but never truly gone. Just lost in the void.

And then it made its desire known. So simple and yet its meaning could mean everything. It very simply wanted Shaw to recognize it. For what it was, for what it is, it wanted Shaw to recognize it and its truths. One simple word was all it would take.

The time casters consciousness, shredded and tattered yet whole and with solidity recoiled with the entirety of itself at the seemingly naturally gleaned knowledge that flowed from some deep place in his basest of mental functions, reacting to it like an invasion. A spring of black water flowing from deep within some long forgotten mountain range to fill some long dried riverbed.
The thing that stood before him was no draconian… it was worse.  

He was still coming to term with the, vastly overwhelming weight of its presence. The infallibility of its sight and insight. When it moved closer to him with only the faintest of flickers. Causing the temporal being to recoil again with a suddenness and voiced cry of surprise and, for the first time in a long time. Fear. Seeing the vestige worn by the intelligence before him and its fragmenting form. its lost pieces momentarily catching his gaze. Feeling the beginning of growth and development that he could scarcely fathom the purpose of.

For what felt like minutes, but what could have been hours, months, years… he stood there, never taking his eyes of the thing as the true purpose of its being there slowly dawned on him by what had been placed deep within his mind by the thing. What it wanted from him. What it wanted him to accept.

It wasn’t hard for him to. For once before a very similar entity had asked the same. In what had felt like the same circumstances so long ago. It was not hard, because once before he had dome similar…

There was a pause, and then he uttered the word.
“……………..Apophis…"

With its desire satisfied, the figure faded, not unlike how it moved closer. Simply disappearing into the nothingness like its fragments before it, leaving Shaw, briefly, in silence, but Shaw could still feel its presence. His consciousness found his attention wandering. Observing up, down, left and right, looking for something, anything in the void.

In the distance, though how far he could not tell, there was a sunrise on the horizon. Signaled by the sudden horizontal line of light breaking across the void as far off into distance, as far as Shaw could see, tracing the horizon in opposite directions and began to rise. This odd sight caused him to pause as a new, very tangible light began to bathe him in its glow. It was too fast to be a sunrise, Shaw realized. An explosion? Vast and bright golden? In all his years Shaw had never seen an explosion of this magnitude or type. Its light certainly could be felt; warm like the rising sun but quickly the heat intensified on Shaw's soul as the light began to grow in the distance, quickly consuming the whole of his sight in a brilliant golden sky which bore down upon him with its intensity. The burning was unbearable but there was no escape from this eruption of light and agony. The light concentrated to a single vertical point on the horizon, darkening, like a figure walking against the light, a large black form tore through the middle of the blistering golden and shining sky.

Shaw could feel the sensation from before begin to set in once again, this mind rending agony, his soul burning and regenerating just as quickly. Time in this state was immeasurable as this new sky intensified and focused, focused on him. Of all things in this endless nothingness, it focused on him and its gaze only made the pain worse. Gaze? Shaw soon realized, this was no sky, no space, no sun or explosion, no, this black and gold, fiery thing, was an eye. The eye of Chaos itself.

Madness tore through his mind as he was forced to meet its gaze. Whole new personalities formed and just as quickly died. Feelings Shaw had not felt in millennia soon returned and with force, as though cursing him for forgetting them. His emotions all hit him at once. happiness, anger, misery, The whole spectrum that his years of emotionless wandering had made him forget were violently returned to him as this vast and all seeing eye gazed upon him. He soon realized this pain, like the eye, was and would be, endless for as long as he was in its presence. But that was only the beginning he would soon find, as  he soon heard something.

Like a chorus, and like a tragedy, a cacophonous noise comparable to the wails of a million animals and beings all united in agony, tore through Shaw's being, wearing him down further yet, further than looking upon the eye ever could. Had he any ears or even a body he would surely be in flames by this point, burning away to ashes with ever intensifying heat. It was its voice. Long and agonizing it spoke, almost like a song that only calamity could master. Shaw was fading, his mind could not take much more, any longer and he would be lost to the void, to his ever conflicting soul and mind. All of this, for simply two words, Two words and a flood of new knowledge, knowledge which Shaw could never have known alive, Knowledge and a promise. Before He could no longer take it, upon the brink of fading, it finished what it had to say.

"Shaw....Haust"