445. T.I, 8

(Rose)

For the days of walk that followed, I’ve been reduced to a level of misery I had never reached before.

I’m eating my clothes and my shoes. I’m eating my hair as well.

There’s nothing else for endless miles.

Blume is eating from within me all the wastes I would normally produce as well.

It’s painful. It all is. But these are the last steps on these marches.

There’s not enough earth and dirt left around for even plant demons to grow. We’re down to nothing.

The last thing I carry will be my sword, once I’m done eating my last blanket and clothing.

I wouldn’t have made it this far without Blume in such an horrendous desert.

Her abilities to twist metabolisms make our survival possible even that far, under these inhumane conditions.

My wings are built.

Two white smaller wings, which feathers generate an anti-gravitational pull if I focus on it. And right above them, a larger pair of black wings that absorb most of the light and T.I. radiations. It’s more to feed us than anything really. They’re extensions of Blume’s body more than mine, both pairs.

The two pairs are light and attached to my lower back like they were for Bleue. Although their nervous roots inside my flesh links directly to the rosebush on my torso.

My wings are thinner than Bleue’s. There’s so much Blume managed to do in a few days, and without any abundance of resources or even food. This was an impressive result given the constraints.

It’s finally done. Blume says we’re ready. I control her wings that grow out of my back. I drink what’s left and abandon my now empty bottle.

Whether we convince it, win a fight, lose or escape; tomorrow, we’ll have to be flying away elsewhere.

Blume keeps stretching the realm of possibilities, every time we need it. In order to survive, in order to learn, in order to fight.

She’s able to use T.I. in all its might.

I can use it to create light, intense enough to burn things away.

She knows how to use it to create matter and life, and transform flesh while keeping it alive. She’s the skilled artist, and I’m a primate.

Out of the ocean of T.I, we can see the seeds, embryos of new beings-like-her, in every form, floating around the world.

Out of this ocean, over time, some entities rose to become them. Some life forms evolved at uncanny speed to becomes the self-proclaimed gods of this world.

Ahead of us, the world mountain, filling the landscape and sky. The island that rose out of the ocean.

And this never was an Atlantis. It was never created nor soiled by humans.

It’s beyond a merkabah like the one once buried in England. No, this is a different ambition from Dragod.

All of that, all these powers, all these wills, all these gods and demons.

They all rose from the same chaotic ocean, the same essential water and air that is T.I.

A solvent. A chemical with infinite possibilities. Their water.

And in this world, it is now mixed to reality and matter, reacting everywhere, allowing new life forms to appear, and also allowing new gods to rise to that absurd level of strength...

Biology was limited by physics and natural selection.

Life was.

It is not that absolute anymore.

So like the right plague can quickly contaminate millions in the right circumstances, the right being-like-her can rise to a level of power that can change the shape of the continent. Maybe forever.

This one did.

Like a great plague, of a single mind.

It’s a difference in scale like the one between whales and worms, that is between me and that thing.

It’s far too big for me to see and grasp entirely.

And I will nonetheless ask it something difficult. Something insulting the pride of the powerful.

Because I strongly feel it is the right thing to do.

And I’m willing to risk our life for that. And I’m not having a laugh anymore. It feels more like a duty.

There’s an ominous cliff in balance over there, and I cannot wait for a society, someone else or another god to make things change in a better way. Something dreadful is happening here, and if I want it to go a different way, I must act on it myself. No one else will come here in years, and it will grow stronger by then.

How strong is my being, and my resolve, now?

How strong are that being and its resolve?

Hopefully, our fate isn’t inscrolled yet.

~

I focus on my wings. I feel the small ones vibrating. I can feel the weight being lifted off myself, as they spread around my centre of gravity. I use then the other pair, and we fly off and away quietly, in the leaden sky.

~

We travel faster by far through the flight.

Blume is focusing on keeping us alive in this still very toxic environment, whilst also designing the plea we will make to the god ahead.

She will send the message when she feels we’re close enough, and still as safely away as possible.

The mountain is huge and imposing now. We’re getting closer.

I wonder what the god sitting at its summit looks like.

Probably not a bearded and old muscular man in white skimpy dress, like I’m used to see in paintings.

It could simply have that common dark silhouette of a young and slim human body.

Humanity left enough of itself behind so that gods decided to become as humans. I know it’s kind of an instinct for them to assume that silhouette, and other human traits.

Still, it is somewhat ironic.

Humans could have become as gods. To many extents, they did.

Now gods can become as humans. And they can.

Actually, I recall there were already many a tale in ancient history about gods assuming human form in the older days, to frolic and play.

Maybe the irony isn’t that new after all.

The two worlds have always been eager to react with each other like chemicals.

As I fly into the clouds, my balance goes completely off. I fall. I recover just in time, as my feet are about to land on a flat surface, a part of the mountain.

As I look around, confused, we end up seeing where we are and what happened. Why I lost balance and why the clouds follow the slopes are tied consequences of something else.

We’re not the only ones playing with gravitational forces.

I’m standing right, but I see the land, the real land, as a slope in the distance.

It feels awfully odd to be standing tilted in the distance of the ground. From the looks of it, the world is tilting.

My brain accepts the perception by adapting the feeling of what’s up and down, to where my weight pulls me, not where it should be.

And where I stand, my mass pulls me toward the hollow of the mountain, not the centre of the Earth. So I stand at a clear angle, and I see the world just as tilted.

B - That’s unusual.

R - Why is it doing that?

B - It probably helps the structure to hold its weight and stand, and rise. And also, I may guess... Could you fly around that segment, toward the inside of the mountain, would you?

I proceed. I lift off, and fly around a segment that is like a huge root. The gravitational pull shifts as well.

The landscape twirling around me makes me feel really odd. It’s as if I were flying straight and the world spinning around us.

A few minutes later, I soon stand on the side that faces the inside of the mountain. I stand. Although my head is technically lower than my feet. I’m standing almost upside down, but that’s where gravity pulls me in here.

In what is that immense structure that looks like a mountain from a distance, there are different powers at work.

I look up. In the distance, ahead of me, I can see an enormous fruit, in the heights of the mountain, covered by its tallest elements from the outside. Like a marble pulling through a handkerchief toward the ground, this fruit pulls roots into a mountain toward the sky.

A gigantic pod, bud, or whatever thing this is, is lifting the mountain from within, slowly.

R - What is that? What did you have in mind?

B - That thing is likely what we’re looking for... It’s confined here in a space with virtually no gravity. Each of the roots reaching the keystone summit is cancelling Earth’s gravity and brings its own instead. So at a certain height in the middle, there, there’s a space that is in weightlessness.

R - It looks like a small moon.

While Blume tries to establish contact, I look around and behind the other half of what’s above me. The ground, the real ground, far below.

There’s a deep chasm in the Earth there. It’s so deep it becomes dark. There’s no water to make a lake of this depth oddly. There’s just a deep hole in the continent.

The rocks of the hole draw this inverted mountain landscape, in what looks like a surreal dark sky from where I stand. I feel like I’m looking at the sky, upward, and all I see are still ochre and dark clouds, down to a black moon or sun that is like a hole in the distance.

It’s the most oppressive sky I’ve ever looked at, the depths of Earth itself.

B - I have contact. It noticed our presence.

R - Does it understand your message?

The core in the distance above us, it begins to glow. There’s a reaction to our plea.

I can feel the ground beginning to rumble below my feet. What is Blume reading?

T.I. has the potential to make maybe all things a reality.

It could also help annihilate everything, as had been shown.

I feel the tremors around us, and now inside of us.

Blume has no more words to speak. There’s only terror left rising from her.

~