Ceph gasped as her body jolted to life for the first time in what felt like millennia.
Her last memory was being swallowed by Orm, and yet there was a space between then and now that left her bewildered. A single instant that stretched on for eternity. She hadn’t been able to think anything beyond the awe at Orm’s immense size, and the fear of what would happen. None of her bodily functions had worked, but she got the distinct sense that the instant stretched further than she could imagine.
Ceph’s eyes spun in her head as she tried to collect herself. She tried to determine where she’d ended up, but what she saw only confounded her further.
A single radiant light stood overhead, but there was nothing else. Only blackness. She could breathe, yet there was no air. She stood — pulled down by gravity — but there was no land under her tentacles. The only things that were familiar, were the sun above and her own body. Even then, the sun was not nearly as harsh, and her body felt… strange. Ceph felt she didn’t belong.
This wasn’t her world.
Was this her afterlife? Ceph had never really been one to consider what would come after, but if this was it — a vast emptiness — then she didn’t want it. With nothing around, no people and nothing to fight, her mind would collapse from boredom sooner rather than later.
She began to walk. Thirty minutes… an hour… she continued until an unenhanced might grow tired. Nothing changed. That solid orb of light above remained locked. Even as the hours of the day waned and she picked up her pace to an outright sprint, the world around her never changed.
Maybe this wasn’t afterlife and instead some sort of torture chamber of the Anatla. They came from different worlds; if anyone was capable of such a thing, it was them. Did they want to watch her flail and starve in this cage? How many others were facing the same horror?
Eventually, she came to a stop. Curling a tentacle up before her eyes, the sensation that something was off with herself only grew stronger. The motion of her limb and the phantom feeling of where it should be were desynchronised. She would move her tentacles, and the limb would follow almost a quarter of a second late.
If the delay in her own body wasn’t unsettling enough, there was also the sickening sensation that her enhancement was unwinding. Ceph hadn’t even known that was possible without dying.
She wondered how the rest of her team were handling the situation. Assuming they were facing something similar. Albin would likely sit down and meditate through whatever boredom came his way. Tavi and Fay would be arguing. If they too were alone, they probably wouldn’t be doing as well. And Hirsh; the khirig was likely too wrapped up in analysing this space to even worry about escaping.
Not that worrying had helped her find an exit so far.
Ceph had nothing to go off besides her own internal clock, but she was sure long enough time had passed to have witnessed the arrival of sunset if such were possible when something finally changed. The sky cracked. Its webbed fractures were so reminiscent to what she’d experienced half a day before that she forgot to be concerned about the shattering of the world around her.
The endless expanse of black broke far quicker than it had the last time, and Ceph felt vindicated by what she saw. She’d trusted it was Orm, and it was the serpent that came through. He was smaller this time, though not by much. The space he came from… Ceph tried to comprehend it, but no matter how her eyes slid over the void, it never made sense to her mind. Her short term memory frayed each instant her gaze slipped away from it, and no amount of glancing back over the spatial crack filled in the blanks.
“Oh,” Orm’s voice was surprisingly absent of the immense pressure that had always been a problem. “I thought I had made myself small enough.”
Ceph couldn’t help but laugh at the statement. The last day was bewilderment upon insanity, and now this? “You are a little bigger than I remember.” The understatement of the century. He’d grown bigger than the planet itself. “What happened to you?” She glanced around. “And where are we?”
“We reside within a realm I have been cultivating. It is nestled in the fabric between my scales.” He paused for a moment to consider. The slow and endlessly patient way he spoke struck at her.
Orm had always given off the impression of almost childish naivete, despite how long he’d likely lived in those tunnels. Not anymore. Now, he sounded sagacious. A being so old that comprehension of their life stretched the mind. Ceph realised in an instant that what had been a few hours for her since she’d seen the serpent slip through the cracks of reality, was so much longer for the creature that now blotted out the darkness of an entire realm.
“Time has no meaning beyond the bounds of a realm, so I find it difficult to put into words the full extent of what has occurred between the moment I first left our world and now. Only know that I have come to learn a lot about the creation of realms.”
Ceph looked around her with new appreciation. “You made this?”
“It is a poor mimicry of the realm we originated,” he admitted. “Recreating a fabric with such an imposing array of threads may be impossible. This is simply a foundational recreation of the laws that allowed life.”
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“And… you cradle the realm between your scales?” she asked, not quite sure what that even meant. She looked over his expansive form as if she’d be able to spot the realm… that they were currently inside.
“Not physically. Unlike most beings, I have a fabric of my own. It is that personal realm which allows me to interact with other worlds and navigate the space between. When I slipped inside this fabric, I left a part of myself behind to care for the realms and people I’d rather not drift into eternity. Here; I’ll let you peek into my own realm.”
A massive tear ripped through the non-existent ground beneath her identical to the portals of the Anatla, and not the fractured webbing of Orm. Ceph didn’t have the time to panic though, as she suddenly found herself standing on an endless plane of green scales. She peeked through the cracks at the edges, and found that, however big Orm seemed around her, his form was all but endless in his own world.
Maybe his current size really was small for him?
Orm didn’t allow the tear between realms to linger. He sealed it and Ceph was left to stand on an invisible ground once again.
Once her mind stopped reeling, she turned back to the words he’d spoken. Realms? Plural? Was Orm creating entire worlds himself? Ceph didn’t ask, as something even more important fought for her attention.
“People? Those you swallowed, you mean?”
It was strange for a planetary sized serpent look embarrassed, but Orm somehow managed it. “It was the only way to peel you all away from the collapsing realm.” He tried to hide it, but Ceph noticed the devastation beneath his tone. “Everyone else is out in the Emptiness. Without the laws of their home, they are stuck in a permanent stasis. It took me a… very long time to extract the pieces of Beyond from everyone’s minds. You are the first I’ve brought out of stasis.”
“Really?” Ceph was stunned. After all she’d done to the serpent, she was still the first one he wanted to bring back. Had he not met anyone else he could trust even in the years before his return? Then he’d spent an unimaginable amount of time alone. It was horrible. “What can I do to help?”
“I… I want to talk. To speak with someone that can communicate back.” She didn’t let how painful that was to hear reach her eyes. “I want to know if what I’m doing is the right thing. Whether people would accept this realm as it is, even though it is bare and weak compared to their last.”
Looking up into those moon-sized eyes, she really wanted to tell him yes. That there would be no problem to suddenly unleash an entire continent worth of people in this barren place… but she couldn’t. There was a reason she couldn’t. And that reason was growing more obvious by the second.
“What has become of the old realm?”
“It is consumed by fire. The Anatla have overcome the realm, but until only one remains, their fabrics remain bound. Soon enough, there will be nothing left of the realm for you to return to.”
If that was the case, then Orm would have to wait some more. She hated to force this upon him, considering how clearly the serpent was struggling with the isolation, but the alternative was worse.
“Orm, I want you to know how appreciative I am — how I believe everyone is — that you have gone to such lengths for our sake. You have saved us, and I believe you’ll go on to bring everyone back. Eventually.”
He accepted her words easily, if somewhat downtrodden. “So the realm isn’t ready.”
Ceph smothered an agonising pang before it could reach her expression. “No. Unfortunately, it is too dissimilar.”
Orm sighed, and despite his massive form slouching over her, she didn’t so much as feel a breeze. “Then, you at least didn’t have to remain aware during your time in the Emptiness?”
“No.” She shook her head for emphasis. “One moment the world was ending, then the next I was here. About that, what took so long to join me after dropping me in this realm?”
“I did not mean to leave you here for long. Time continues to… slip away from me. I’ve been trying to reintroduce it to my personal weave, but it is a difficult process. Time is one of the most confounding set of rules I’ve seen in any realm, and I can’t tell you how lucky I was that I managed to reforge the combination through this fabric.”
For the next few hours, Orm unleashed a tidal wave of exuberance. It was clear he had a lot of pent-up topics he was all too happy to share. Most were about the creation of realms, the descriptions of which flew straight over her head. She spoke where she could, engaging the lonely serpent’s interests.
She was inexorably happy that he had at least retained his curiosity through all that had happened, and felt just as guilty that she would have to leave him to that eternal isolation once more.
Eventually, her body could stand it no more. Ceph tried to laugh at Orm’s description of how a pair of realms once circled each other, clearly compatible, yet refusing to fully commit, but the sound that left her throat was warbled.
Orm ceased his story immediately. His eyes were for her all at once, serious, yet confused.
“Ah, I’m sorry, Orm.” There was no concealing the sluggishness in which her body moved anymore. “I hoped I could last a little longer.”
His eye was suddenly far too close. She couldn’t even see his snout now, given the distance. “The realm is tearing you apart,” he finally realised. In a blink, the world was shattered around them. “Hurry back to the Emptiness before you lose any more of yourself.”
The giant serpent moved to — ever so gently — shove her through the portal, but she had to refute. “No! We both know it’s already too late for that. I can feel it. The very formation of my existence is crumbling. This realm cannot handle me, and now that I’ve fallen apart this much, there is no saving me. Not even if I was returned to our original realm.” She paused, trying to hold his gaze despite how impossibly difficult it was with the differing size. “I did this to myself. Not you. Orm, after the horror I put you through, this was the least I could do to set things right after all the pain you’ve been through.”
“I do not wish for your death.”
“And I am honoured to hear it, but this was a selfish choice more than anything else. The guilt at my betrayal has never left me. At least with this, I can be proud to have helped you… in whatever small way I have.” Ceph relaxed her posture. Orm was stiff and unmoving, and she used the opportunity as she felt the very threads of her existence snapping apart to tell the serpent what she believed he needed to hear. “You are the world’s saviour, Orm. And so long as you can push through this next period, I believe you can do it. Millions of people are in your scaled coil, but there’s no better grasp they could be in.”
Ceph felt a strange, esoteric power wash over her. She felt it trying to tug as the strands that no longer fit together. She gazed up at him with a sad expression.
“This was my choice, Orm,” she reiterated. “When you succeed — and I know you will — the world will love you.”
Ceph splintered. In moments, no trace of her remained.
The realm thundered.