Erase the Effigy

The splash of color overwhelms me as I emerge from a surface that never truly exists. I am once again back in this realm. The realm where shape and form are part of mere dreams.

I don’t really have eyes; instead, I perceive in all directions at all times; no blinking or turning heads required. Bright concentrations of glow tell me of the location of the other conceptual entities. Those pseudo-stars are pinned in place, unmoving, and all have lost wills of their own.

It has been a while since I was here, but I still recall the central dictum of this place: never stop moving.

I can feel a presence fast approaching, like a shark swimming at full speed at me. No internal alarm is needed for me to flee immediately. But as I initiate my escape, a torrent catches me and drags me down into a cold and unforgiving quality. Undercurrents toss me around, hoping to digest me before the predator approaches.

Suffocation, struggle, darkness, overwhelming pressure, all these concepts are presented to me, but I cannot feel any of them. They bind me in place nonetheless.

My reaper darts closer. I predict it to reach me in seconds.

I need something to free myself. Something accessible that won’t consume too much of my essence. Sinking into the deep dark, what would beat all those tentacles that confine me?

A sort of buoyancy, a feathery lightness. Airy gaps. Evoking such ideas, at the cost of consuming myself, blasts away the surrounding clutches. I shoot up and into the embrace of flight, drift, and exposure.

My relief doesn’t last long. A moment later, a flock forming a white void is right up towards me. And I dive straight for the cluster of dense and fibrous, growth and fertility.

The void narrowly misses me, but immediately switches direction in pursuit. I thread through the rustling and branching. The void doesn’t care, crashing through the sturdiness and aged, and scattering about the verdant glidings.

Too occupied with my pursuer, I make the blunder of brushing past the sharp tip of a thin and brittle. It hooks me with just minimal contact. Lacking physical force, I cannot just break it off.

My projection of a snapping crack should have freed me; I even used up some of myself, but all that does is attract falling, a drop toward the littered bottom. Chaotic and forgotten. Concentrated by decay and dryness.

I change my momentum inches away from the buried and fertilizing, and thus avoid the swarm of wilted yellow from enveloping me. Hovering close above the crunchy heap, I navigate through the rough, layered, cylindrical obstacles. The fractured split still clings to me, but at least it is portable enough to not impede me in my mad dash for survival.

The void quickly notices my whereabouts. Relentless in its pursuit. Its movements flow smoothly despite its enormous size, since no air resistance or mass gets in its way.

My saving grace is the open vastness I stumble into. A veil of gray abundance lined the ground that something else is on. Manmade, aqua-repellent, almost pyramidal but a little rounder, granted a skeleton by malleable elongations.

There is another object nearby, with a type of glow that is similar to mine, but more vibrant and dynamic. That is exactly the lifeline I need, a chance to get back to the humdrum every day. I truly thought there wouldn’t be any of these sparks left out unprotected, ripe for capture; it rekindles the possibilities in what I thought to be an unavoidable destiny. Now all I need is to get to it before the void does.

The void is evidently focused on me, because I am a richer meal than the gimmicky glimmer. But I must still keep the lookout to ensure it won’t switch its target, or my ticket back to the human world would be lost. I swerve upward to stretch the distance between the void and me, so I can get the window to scoop up the spark.

The plan mostly works; the void mindlessly follows me to a sparser high point, but in an unexpected and annoying twist, it cuts past the synthetic temporary sanctuary and flips the structure over, granting one of four curved surfaces the chance to touch the all-encompassing solid footing.

The spark twitches, noticing the strange movements, and I sense a barrage of new ideas radiating from it: alertness, anxiety, attention. I can’t give it any chance of escaping. It’s all I want, to get this over with. To get back to the daily routines.

Determination seeps out of me, determination that I shouldn’t have, so it comes at the expense of my very being. I feel my awareness getting weaker, fading closer into nothing, as if I’m water evaporating in a boiling pot.

The useless sentiments have cost me more of my already-minuscule lifespan. I don’t mind it. I literally can’t mind it, but I also don’t mind it.

I surrender to the downward inevitability, entropy towards the center of the earth, crashing down like a shooting star, a fleeting sense of exhilaration, but all this effort ends up blocked by an emergent symbol.

The spark has gained a shield. A condensed trove of emotions and data. A hub to many other hubs, containing the pinnacle of human knowledge and engineering. An airtight defense that didn’t exist the last time I was pulled to this realm. I can’t stop my momentum quickly enough, and my being slams into the ultimate shield.

It rebounds me effortlessly, and the recoil sends me onto a slanted slope of more expired lushness and fragrance that had fallen from their sources, those forgone memories of photosynthesis. Those agents of nature clasp onto me, refusing to let go. Fortunately, I can still handle the weight of those few, and shoot off to the domain of elevation before the void reaches me.

The spark has noticed me, and worse, has deemed me a threat. I can outpace it without any issues, but its shield stops me from approaching it. There are ways to deal with it, through recruiting the help of some concepts; though, the constant displacement of the spark prevents me from formulating the best concept and taking aim.

The void is hot on my tail. Normally, I can overrun it. But since I have to stay around the spark, there’s no way to shake the void off me. The most I can do is swirl around and circle my target, to keep the void dancing only on my tracks.

In our three-way struggle, we have drifted towards another group of powerful abstracts in the distance: greed, suffering, and inhumanity, these concepts combining under a single shape to represent the very foundation of the societal structure. I can tell there are sparks under their protection, pieces of potential salvation that are impossible to access. That is what I had expected. The free spark I am pursuing is actually an unusually rare sight, such that if I fail to capture it tonight, it may spell the certainty of my doom.

The struggle for survival is never smooth; my prey slides within the range of a concentrated heart of wishes and dreams. Dimness and hollowness, both are concepts I can get past with no problems, but the center source is too potent in complexity; to dare getting close is no different from absolute termination.

Even a respite to think of a solution is a luxury, as the void is catching up. For now, I have to leave the spark in its shelter, and with that, my hope of a lifeline declines. The void will continue its pursuit, and I will get as far as I can, until the edges of this abstract space hurl me back in.

My life is truly over. I can keep running, but with the high tide of the realm mash ending and the sparks recovering their spiritual defenses, there won’t be any options but to take part in the eternal sprint until the next tide. In the process, it takes just one slip-up, one moment of forgotten purpose, for the void to ensnare me, and drain me into a fate like the bright husks I’ve seen earlier.