Causality and Resonance

Storyline Exploration. Digging out old works to inspire new writing.

 I'm going to slowly bring out some of my old posts from free form rp writing to energize myself and others for when we do storyline work for TS and other projects. Maybe we'll see p an area for more in depth work over time if people feel a need, thus the following is an old work for one of my oldest online storylines.

 *****

There was a soft stir of air, carrying with it a cold sensation of familiarity even before his eyes opened. Like some distant half remembered dream fragment, long since suppressed, it stirred his awareness. With a slow flutter that seemed to disturb dead air, his eyes slowly opened. Unsure even with the sensation within, he did not risk exposure to too much light, though as his vision started to focus, the precaution was largely unnecessary. For he was simply created with more darkness, his eyes taking in what trace amounts of light there were around him. He could see very little, save the faint pulse of stars trying vainly to penetrate heavy, angry looking clouds which covered the sky. Something fell against his cheek, so softly it felt almost like a snow flake, yet as his awareness grew, he knew it was not cold, but rather quite temperate. Where he was, remained a mystery, no matter how vaguely familiar, he could see nothing but dark sky. As his eyes came fully into focus, he could see more of the small particles falling towards or around him. He was laying apon the ground, he realized, for beneath his hands he felt marble, scarred marble, not polished smooth, but rough as though poorly treated by time and people. Reaching up a hand to attempt catching one of the falling specks, he felt it touch his palm only to crumble instantly, rubbing it with his opposite finger, it yielded it's identity to him, ashes.

"Ashes...."

He spoke softly to him, as he moved to push himself up to a sitting position, his head swiveling in various directions to survey the area around him, only to see nothing but darkness, impenetrable darkness save for the sky and falling ash. He shook his head then and cautiously struggled to stand. His body felt incredibly weak, as though he'd been hammered to the ground by a giant mallet repeatedly. He felt extremely weary, his physical energy depleted as badly as he felt beaten. He made a vein attempt to try summoning forth enough power to both heal himself somewhat and to generate some light to see by. He gasped softly in shock when nothing happened, his majik, something that was almost central to his entire being simply did not exist. he could not sense it within or sense any outside of himself. Like being mute to sound and speech, he felt nothing beyond dead tired and thoroughly thrashed. he shook his head rapidly, trying to perhaps rattle his brain to wake himself up from this seeming nightmare. Which only served to cause a throb behind his eyes. Muttering a curse, he tried again to reach within and call out his majik, again nothing happened save a growl within his stomach.

"I advise against continuing to try that, you'll only make your headache worse."

A very familiar voice said from behind him, with no small difficulty he struggled to turn about and see whom it was he expected to see. Even with the small movement it required, it caused him to be dizzy, and he staggered to one side before he caught himself with a grunt. His eyes had shut while he'd tried not to fall on his face, and he opened them again slower this time then before. He was rewarded then with the rather bizarre image of two orbs of liquid seeming metal. No not metal, but deep, infinite shades of grey; he told himself. Blinking as the orbs seemed to hang in the air of their own accord he coughed as he inhaled ash and air before he managed to speak.

"Darius...Darius is that you?" A grunt came followed by the voice again from the area of the two suspended orbs of shifting grey.

"Disturbing isn't it, feeling so powerless, so unstable." It was the closest to disdain he had ever heard from that voice. He blinked in response both to the words then the sight that altered before him. Light seemed to leak from the grey orbs, and while he looked on, what were orbs soon became the deep ageless eyes set within the handsome face of the Deity he'd known since birth. Again the words Darius spoke echoed in his mind and the tone and inflection of them. He had never heard Darius speak so before in his entire life, and the fact it was directed at him made him shiver at the implications. He found he had taken a step back from the Deity, unintentional as he'd never felt threatened before, yet the fact remained, he felt very threatened in that moment.

"I..... I don't understand." Was all he offered in reply, he was off balance physically and mentally, taken so aback that he could think of nothing more to say.

"No I suppose not" Darius shook his head, then looked hard at him, and he felt as though the grey eyes were cutting deep craters into his soul. Darius shifted his gaze then from him to the sky, the ashes fell around them both as the Deity again spoke. Though Darius' voice shifted from disdain to almost sympathy. "You really have no idea what has happened or what is truly happening." It wasn't a question, it was a plain statement of fact, to which he could only nod slowly, mindful as he was of his throbbing brain. With a casual seeming wave of his hand the terrain of darkness around them shifted. The change was instantaneous and he was painfully aware of just how much power the Deity possessed, another bolt of fear rain through him.

Even as intensely as he felt that fear, it was supplanted by shock, awe, and disbelief. Turning carefully around he looked at the scene that now lay around them. First he saw the ruins, recognition came without a second look, they stood in what was left of his personal sanctum within the Palace complex. High atop the main structure had been the domed ceiling and walls of his personal conference room. But as he saw around him, only charred walls remained and the dome was a gaping hole with jagged teeth around the edges. Large sections of the walls were gone and he could see the burning remains of the capital below. It was almost surreal, for he remembered only what seemed like moments before waking in darkness the vibrant city. The busy aerial and ground traffic of his people and visitors from other worlds moving about. Now he could see nothing but destruction and felt deep down that nothing lived save himself and Darius on his world.

"What the fu..." Darius silenced him with another gesture and though he thought nothing more could happen to shake his grip on sanity and reality the cityscape around the sanctum vanished into darkness and a circle of large crystal spires rippled into existence. Formed in a circle all around them. Yet none of that had cause him the fresh quake of fear and astonishment. His physical condition practically forgotten he spun about frantically his eyes darted in their sockets. Within each crystal spire stood Soulfires. Trapped in repose like statues within statues. He  recognized his father Anjelus then his children Teirnan and Orchid instantly, then Damascus the interloper from another dimension. As he moved around the circle, he strained to see details. Upon the spire of each Soulfire their name was inscribed in gold.

"Caspian? Epiphany? Roznine? Erasmus? But Erasmus has been dead for almost four hund..." His voice failed at the incomprehensibleness then his mind went absolutely blank. The last spire made his head spin and he fell to his knees, a ragged cry caught between denial and escape apon his lips. Within was someone that could not possibly be, yet the gold lettering stated simply and accurately "Daire" The disbelief that overcame his psyche drew a deep well of terror and panic out him as he staggered to rise and turn back to Darius wasn't born from the seeming body of his own within the crystal, but from a raging sense of guilt and utter familiarity of a similar scene buried inside his memories. He had seen himself in that crystal spire before, he knew it down to his core, yet the why , how and when answers were blank. "Darius...The..fuck.." he managed to croak. "Who or what the fuck are they, what is fuck is happening, what the fucking hell have you done??" he found strength at last a product of his attempt to turn his shock and guilt into anger and directing it as the source that made even a small margin of sense in the chaos presented to him.

"What have I done? WHAT HAVE I DONE?" Darius boomed at him, the Deity's voice seemed to echo from the very edges of the universe and drove Daire to the ground like a wave of force. "Look around you again, There is your family, your father, your children, your ancestor and even," Darius pointed at the spire holding Epiphany "your yet to be grand daughter and grand son." Darius lifted Daire off the ruined marble by will alone and turned him helplessly from spire to spire. "You did this, no you do not yet appreciate things in full." Darius paused long enough to flick a hand outward, the scene altered from the bizarre surreal scene into for Daire something truly chaotic and insane. In all directions from the original circle countless spires rose up, each containing another Soulfire down through history and into the yet to come. "Look well, this is your entire line in both directions of time. You and you alone have caused this" Daire tried to shut his eyes, tried to escape into his own mind, but the will of Darius held him as firmly in the mental as it did in the physical, with no escape he screamed in the agony the sight caused him.

"Me, How, I could never do this, this is not real, it cannot be, this is not my reality!" Darius dropped him as suddenly as he picked him up, leaving him in a crumbled heap on the ground while he wept. One moment, then several more passed before he could even gain marginal control of himself and he lifted his head. The countless spires were gone only the inner circle remained and Darius watched him for a moment more before speaking.

"In that you are correct, yet not in the way you believe. No this is not your reality, it never was, this is his reality." Darius pointed at the Daire within the spire.

"What, that, that can't be possible, I remember...I remember my entire life!" Daire objected weakly, "I remember being born, I remember it all."

"No, you remember his life from before you came, and you remember what you have since done. None of it since you came should have happened, and you, your presence has nearly destroyed this tangent, this true reality, on the verge we stand now. The very precipices of destruction looms before us." Darius looked hard again at him and the grey eyes took on once more the consistence of liquid titanium before hardening to what could only be called as solid time itself. Daire pushed himself up to sit at least on the marble, his head shaking as he denied within his mind over and over the Deity's words. yet inside, in that buried substance of memory lost and suppressed he felt Darius' words rang with the solid power of truth.

"Before? Before I came, came from where? What the fuck are you talking about? If I came from somewhere, how is it that I remember his life as you put it." he looked at Darius and his own eyes filled with a colour of their own. Not at all intense of powerful, but filled with his plea of explanation of truth and mingled with the struggling denial he tried to hold on to.

"You, are not from this tangent, this reality, you never were. You came from a dead end happentrack, one of those could have been realities. So far removed from this one in aspects yet temporally very close. It took even I time to finally piece together the truth of it all, and for all that only now in these the final moments before this tangent ends have I been able to intervene." Darius paused and looked around before he once again flicked his hand outward and the scene changed. Shifting into darkness, Daire felt motion at a stand still, it was familiar. Though he himself could move through the Eternium to other worlds and other times, this seamless transition was beyond him as the sun was beyond a simple lit match. The sensation of motion ceased and around them reality flickered to a chamber far within the Palace complex, obviously in a time passed for it was n pristine condition, save for the crystal spire that still held his duplicate. This place more then any other he had thus far witnessed was the most familiar and most alien of all. Darius finally spoke again once the Deity and Daire became fully and flawlessly inserted in the present Linear moment.

"This is where it all started, this is where you came and started the ripple effect that is, will destroy the truth tangent you were never meant for. Before that however, one more part of an answer for you. While you initiated the destruction that will, is coming you did not cause yourself to come here. That was my kin's fault. In your home reality, your dead end tangent that ceased to exist though you were removed from it was brought about long ago and far away during the Infinity Wars. Your appetite for destruction and the shards of Chaos's power eruption at the moment of his death caused you to come here. That much at least you are blameless, but what you did afterward however is another story."

The explanation thus far cause him to shake his head at Darius for he spoke of events that were beyond his memory or hidden within it. Save for the appetite for destruction, that he knew had once been reality for he remembered that hungry, that dark time when he was killing anyone and everyone he came across for the shear pleasure of it. Yet, that was due to the illness hadn't it, the one that had almost killed him several times, that Damascus had brought upon him. Looking again at Darius, he turned his head from side to side in confusion.

"No Damascus caused me to be that way, caused me to change when he broke into the tangent! If what you say is truth how is it I remember so much, and overcame that dark filth injected in me?" Denial was powerful, and he tried to hang on to it as tightly as he could against the echoing chimes of Darius' truths.

"Damascus isn't the interloper, he belongs in this tangent, it was your coming that forced him out into yet another tangent which had twisted him. Your coming corrupted everything and sent ripples across this reality throughout time. You overcame the darkness you say? Hardly, you projected it, your corruption was forced out of you and it infect the ones whom belong here. It was your corruption that sent Teirnan to kill billions on the frontier worlds. It was your corruption across this space time that killed Caspian, Epiphany, Roznine, and Erasmus. They are all from a time before and a time yet to come that this tangent brought into play early by Tempus Aquaria's own will to correct this tangent from your intrusion. It was the Time Stream herself that brought Damascus back, damaged as he was, to correct her child. But enough of this, first , first you must see the beginning." A new flick of a hand and Darius activated a vid screen beside them, it showed the same chamber they occupied, yet different. It was in the true temporal moment, not this side junction of Darius's will and Daire watched the screen in muted awe.

He watched as he saw the chamber shimmer as though a massive heat wave filled the chamber then a jagged seam of multifaceted light erupted from nowhere, the hallmarks of a rip in the Linear and he watched as an image of himself stormed out of the tear. He gurgled as the realization of familiarity and the expression this image Daire bore. For it was the death lust, the image Daire's eyes were a continuous blood red. The angle of the event altered to follow this Daire's back as image Daire seemed to peer around before giving a satisfied growl. What followed next made no sense at all, or none that he could discern, for image Daire bent before a strange yet eerily familiar console and typed in a command with sadistic giggling glee. When the command was executed the video display before him and Darius blurred and went to total static. When it cleared it displayed the scene that had shocked him entirely moments before, it portrayed image Daire seemingly gloating before a spire of crystal, the spire that held, what he could only find to call, True Daire.

"What... what was that command, that computer...I.. I feel I know it, yet I.... I don't" He asked Darius, turning as the vid screen went blank. He tried to dig it out of his memory, out of it's buried place in his mind, but could not. "And you still haven't answered how it is I know so much if I am this demon from some dead time you say I am?" Darius pointed away from them to a corner of the room within which they were. turning to look Daire rested his eyes on the odd computer terminal, it's projected 3d screen frozen in the moment from hence he'd watched image Daire imputed whatever command it was. He walked to it, his hands trembling violently as his memory played hide and seek with his conscious thought, and he forced himself to read the words displayed, a gasp followed as he finally brought himself to read the glowing letters. "Dark Soul Agenda Initiated."

The Dark Soul Agenda, he spoke again inside his mind , and the memories locked away flared into being within his mind. It was a doomsday program, created with only intention of a last defense against Intrusion from greater powers within the original Soulfire tangent, before all the happentracks and divergence caused by the fall of Infinity and her children during the Infinity Wars. It was buried within each happen track, a consistence piece in the scattered puzzle of temporal reality's that came after the War. It would lock away all true Soulfire's beginning with the current King and down through the tangent from start to finish and replace them with the Dark Souls, opposites that would fight with the ruthlessness required to defend the tangent or destroy it to save it from being dominated by pure evil intelligences. yet used as he had done it. Could corrupt the timeline and grant the outside user control.

"Fuck"

"Yeah, Fuck" Darius replied bluntly as Daire turned back to face him, he could no longer deny any of it, for he remembered it all. Even however in remembering, questions remained, and while the memories came to be, he did not revert to his true nature, which made no sense, since logic should dictate , that with regression of mind came regression of being. One answer came to him in that same instant; with the DSA initiated, logic goes right out the window.

"I know all this is real now, yet, why am I not who I was, or should be .... how is it that even as the Tempus Aquaria tried to repair things, by whatever means you said and ones you didn't, I should have been unalterable, that was the true chaos code of the Agenda." Darius nodded at him for that was supposed to be the case. On many other happentracks, the DSA had happened and those tangents dead-ended. then Darius spoke as he brought forth another positional transition, back to the ruined sanctum and the circle of spires.

"They altered you Dairisian" the Deity pointed to the various core Soulfires of the true Linear and the use of Dairisian's true name form became apparent, it flooded him with more memories of his real past in his long since dead home reality, of murder, torture, rape and many other unspeakable, and to him as he was in that moment, disgusting crimes. Darius returned his gaze to Dairisian and spoke matter of factly. " They whom are within yet cut off from their own reality changed you by the truest strength of the Soulfire quantum genetic strength, By their will and their purest emotion." Pointing to each in turn Darius named each case, " Epiphany, with her melancholy, her heart's yearning to not be the last surviving, but to be surrounded by the family she fought across time to save before she was taken in by the Agenda. Caspian, with his love for both Kalilya and his yearning to be with his parents, Damascus , for his plea for healing and redemption from what he had become during his exile. Teirnan, with his pure heart and innocence which was destroyed by his Dark Soul Opposite. Orchid, his desire to be true and honourable. Roznine, for his wish to be found by his family which he never knew. Erasmus, and his dedication to safe guard his families future with his personal sacrifices." Darius lastly pointed at the Daire within the crystal.

"And lastly, Daire, the one you supplanted and replaced, he was the instrument by which altered you so completely, for even as you stole his place, his life and sought to destroy everything and everyone he loved, He forgave you. And his capacity to love in itself, he filled you with his memories and essence, in hopes of saving everything. Yet he could not, and he can not save this tangent. This reality, which is moments now about to cease, which I can no longer hold back for even I am limited by the Agenda, neither they nor I can fix it. Even Tempus Aquaria can do nothing for her child now, and she mourns where none of us may reach to console her, New tangents form from each tear, but these will be places of sorrow for eons. Only one may save this reality, only you Dairisian hold the power to return all things to order." Dairisian shook his head, he knew not how, he had only ever learned how to activate the Dark Soul Agenda, the means by which ending it was lost in long off antiquity, and the means by which he had started it were against it's real purpose twisted by his former true nature.

"Me... I am powerless, I have nothing left, I can do nothing but end with chaos I created. How can I stop what I have begun? The Agenda cannot be stopped, no one save the original Soulfire's knew that and it was never passed on!" Darius' expression altered dramatically as he regarded Dairisian, the faintest smile crossed his lips like some deep secret danced there for a breath of a breath of an instant ten was gone before he spoke, his voice for once soft, almost caressing and his eyes softened back to the flowing sea of ageless liquid metal.

"You can, but will you? To end all this, to restore all things within to their proper being, to return things to the point before you altered it all, you must accept your cessation, you must voluntarily complete the cycle you were meant for in your home dead ended tangent. To stop the Agenda, the Initiator, must quite simply sacrifice their own life."

Dairisian stepped back, and even as he took the moment to consider the answer his former nature surged into awareness, taking duality within himself, screaming that it would never relinquish control, but the altered Dairisian, looked from face to face within the spires around himself and Darius, struggling within, yet pointing around and asking softly.

"What happens to them were I to do this thing?"

"They return to the points within the tangent they belong, all things that have occurred since they were overcome cease to exist and time, for them resumes as though none of this has happened. Where things go from there... who can say, their stories interrupted, thus unwritten, some may cease to exist for they were products of your corruption, only..."Darius smiled faintly at his personal joke "time can tell"

Dairisian stood amongst the chaos he'd created outside and the chaos that fought within him. Altered Dairisian and Former Dairisian battled each other, evenly matched with their opposite sides, one of darkness, the other of forgiven light. He shivered from the intensity , torn inside by his two natures. He hated his former nature, yet his altered nature could not find the strength to do win. Darius watched him in silence, acutely aware as the tangent began to dissolve on he fringes of it's reality. The veil to the Eternium rippled into sight as the tangent degraded, the end coming exponentially. Dairisian looked up and saw the rushing conclusion of what he had wrought. No, he screamed within himself. His altered self reared up as the image of the countless multitude of crystal spires containing Soulfires untold burst into sight on his minds theatre screen. His former nature shrank even from the sight for it struck deep into the barest core pf his soul, that preternatural place where emotions were birthed and the true soul resided.

"No!" he shouted as he embraced the decision that came to him in that resonant moment when he truly was no longer a being of his nature and personality but the elemental creature of Soul fabric. Darius watched the moment with even a deities brand of awe as reality paused. Dairisian brought out the long forgotten essence of himself, his Soulfire igniting for the first time since his lost childhood in a reality which no longer existed. Forming that Soul majik into a blade he committed himself to the task he had chose and plunged the weapon into himself.  Even as the soul blade passed through his physical essence, lanced through his mental essence and into his soul core, he spoke one last time to Darius, the only being whom would remember his words.

"I am...sorry, Darius, for it all... I never thought I could do this, before I would never have, and I would have laughed at the thought. I doubt anyone would think I could change as I have. nor do what I am doing. I sacrifice myself now , not for glory, but to be forgiven, though no one can forgive me for I ... I do not exist." A faint chuckle passed out of Dairisian as the soul blade pierced into his Soul Core and began to sever the corrupted link and remove himself from this tangent had had almost destroyed. "Bet no one saw this coming." As he felt himself dissolve, ceasing to ever be or ever having been, his awareness for one last moment caught something, a voice, that familiar voice speaking. it came just as the last trace of him vanished and the reality that should be restarted.

"I did Dairisian, no matter what you did , had done, or would do, you are still a Soulfire." Darius turned and looked out as the tangent shimmered, and rippled, the crystal spires vanishing across the great planetscape as each occupant was returned to their proper position. He shook his head and allowed himself a sigh of relief and then a chuckle at some deep hidden thought. "I wonder what comes next" he asked into the fabric of renewed reality before exiting the Linear, strolling out leisurely across the length of the Eternium, passing countless realities , temporal tangents and worlds. With another faint chuckle, Darius decided it was time for a nap; it had been , after all, a rather long day.