117

117
Astella's POV

I suspect their bonds too, I think harvestingly and breath in the experience of a consciousness only the few and desperate get to taste as void welcomes pack bond form they accept. Antennae stretch and reach as networks connect, wracking my senses like the ripples of a drop hitting an infinite pond.

'You're so… empty, but without spite'. They are as empty as a vessel is before it is filled with, waiting for something to infuse them with meaning and substance.

It is an experience like I never could have dreamt of, to bond with the beings of pure nothingness. And I can sense their confusion, the way they experience the world in an unfamiliar prism, awkwardly feeling around for things like friendship and familiarity when they've never tasted either before. These are ancient cosmic entities far older than time illuminating their senses for the first time, it's just like a little baby becoming aware of his fingers and toes.

The female twin returns in the womanly apparition, aglow as our matrix expands, emboldened with new substance by reality which gives her form unprecedented. “Every void entity that opts for connection gets a little closer to the impossible place from which none return."

“It's like they're showing each other what it is to be a part of something bigger than them, you know?”

When things change from impossible to possible, I feel his wonder through the mate bond Thane shares with me. This natural response to him being Alpha King has always been as a pack builder, but learning now how to expand that even farther than beings who have never lived independently had not only put his instincts through their paces, but pushed them in ways we did not see coming.

A couple of them are in the process of corporealising, I notice, my brown eyes widening as several darkness creatures gain physical frames that waver between shadow and form. They don't understand how to be prone in reality but they are getting there. What we now have are shapes that demonstrate their new understanding of connection, not the strange geometries bestowed by the Architects but those imbued up on companionship, cooperation and belonging.

“Impossible,” whispers Lord Valerian as the wrinkles and pallor of age melt from his features. The emergence of entirely new forms of being that we are seeing grow with our very eyes. What we are experiencing at this time are beings deciding to be, and not only that, they have decided to be in relation. They are realizing that isolation was not the way they were supposed to be – it was their cage.

The anger of the Original Void and others could reach levels that would be enough to rend the fabric of reality in twain, but more likely than not separately these void entities will break off from what is effectively an extension of a parent consciousness. The primeval void with its formless face has not tasted of uncertainty since before the dawn of the first universe and will not suffer even one infinitesimal something to question or disprove that eternal truth.

"You are corrupting them!" Atop all the fabric of reality, dread eternal echoes eternally, kicked off by the Original Void wailing too in every possible dimension all at once, a blistering non-voice with more weight than mere matter that never seemed to exist and made existence quiver. You are contaminating pristine nothingness with the virus of significance! You are disturbing their perfect harmony with the madness of a plan!

“Choice, offering them choice,” I exclaim — no longer quite there on my side of the veil, but equally not beyond it either. The choice we've always had — to seclude ourselves, or make contact with the world. To stay static or to grow. Embracing the void or crafting plentitude?

Sitting here with my awareness expanded, I can sense the Original Void gathering for one last desperate attack. Only this time, instead of putting the human race in its crosshairs or separating us from each other, it sits poised to obliterate reality itself — eroding away not just our universe but the very idea of existence across every conceivable dimension.

The cosmic forces simply align, and something clicks within my soul: "This will collapse the entire multiverse into primordial nothingness," I come to comprehend in utter terror as his voice drones forth, with my pallid hands going unconsciously over where his life grows inside of me. If it can't persuade existence to opt for nonexistence, then by gad, it will convince with nothing else available.

"How long do we have?" Thane questions us through our bond, his Alpha instincts that are of the best kind to win the war yet to be fought even though it could only end in our annihilation.

“If that wave comes towards me,” he seems to say rapidly, “I can hold my own against it, but only for brief minutes or less before it threatens not just the continuation of anything, but also of him. Once the cascade starts, it will be impossible to stop. Primordial emptiness will eat everything: all existence, every dimension, any place where something ever might take shape or happen.”

Yet as the spirit of despair begins to permeate our circuit, a change occurs within me, in my own awareness and in the awareness of our child that has not yet been born. Then the baby — a living, breathing potential — that is this essence at once dubbed Infinite Possibility starts to pulsate in me beyond anything else I have ever experienced.

The child, I breathe, feeling my mind find a link with the small life that is to grow inside me. In connecting with her, I get a glimpse – something ineffable — of what it is to be a sentient in the act of becoming touching quietly into that vast realm, unchained by immediate and here-beforesentedly-evengone circumstances.

Oh god, with dawning awe, not just my baby but infinitely more — I sense it as realization expands and a secondary understanding blossoms in celebration. It's the creation of each and everyone one of our decisions, every relationship we've built, every hope we have written; It is itself a living example of how combining things that are would create something new.

Seeing the Original Void through his eyes, with the clarity of a child's mind, detaches me from it as cosmic horror breaking reality, into something almost sad -- old and alone. For so many millennia it has endured in isolation that it has forgotten the touch of connection; been devoid for so long that it no longer recalls what fulfillment tastes like.

It is scary, I think to myself, and the answer jolts me with a sudden jagged bolt of lightning wrapped in revealing darkness. The Original Void isn't bad or angry — it's scary. It's been in solitary for so long that it almost fears being connected to. And as a result, it would sooner devour all than take the chance of being susceptible enough that other people actually count.

“We don't let it be weak,” Thane asserts through our bond, the solidity of his Alpha pouring over me and the baby that is not yet our child. “We show it that allowing yourself to be open to others does not make you small, it makes you big. You are a part of every person you have ever loved who is a part of you. Every link makes you greater, not less."

Yet just as I ready to lay our network down one last time, not against the Original Void but with it, something unforeseen occurs. With the entities of the void already linked to our rent pack, they begin a tuneless wail, their new voices rising and falling on wavelengths older than crisscrossed dimensions.

Remember, they sing in unison, a single howling music born of the companionship of being and non-being. We know what it feels like to be lonely. We recall the mass of infinite vacuousness. But, we remember the fear of reaching out and there being nothing. But we also remember the first inkling of a bond, the first hint of heat held in infinite cold, the first spark of purpose glimpsed from an ageless void.

Their lesion reaches the Original Void as a bridge between an abyss that cannot be bridged; their thought not accusation, but intellect inviting. And now, most for the very first time since reality itself began to exist, ultimate emptiness is afraid and waits a moment before hitting on existence.

"You don't have to be alone," I tell it in a voice of all the choices that have ever been made; all the bonds that have ever been broken; all the love that has never-ending declared. Yes, it is true that you also need not fall into the trap of being somebody or none at all. You can opt to be non-being that starts, stillness which develops into movement, noise which creates the home for audio.

Through Reality Itself, The Original Void's non-voice replies “it is full of harmonic confusion and longing, terror and maybe even hope.”

"But... but what if I decide to be more than nothing," it mutters across the cosmos, "what if I lose myself altogether? Wouldn't it change me too much, and then I wouldn't be who I am? The cost of meaning is the annihilation of my nature?”

“Then you'll realize what any sentient being must, come to terms with a single truth, and there is no way to avoid or escape it… you will know as I do the fullness of existence and the emptiness of nothing. Who you are isn't lessened by growth — it's uncovered by it. That your true self is not a thing to be kept safe and unchanged, but one to be discovered and manifested and spread. So that the only way you shed yourself is when you are eternally alone.”

Feel my words coherence across continued echoes in the rift of realities, and I feel wonder stir — the Original Nothing that is an idea starts to realize it just might want to be more.