From the moment I begin to shove my way back into my home realm, time once again embraces me. It is an alien sensation, yet altogether nostalgic.
Shove is the most apt term for how I reenter the fabric. Instead of the tear with branching fractures, the world blocks my passage like a stone wall. My ability to manipulate the fabric hasn’t changed, in fact, I’d say it’s stronger, but even when I make a small incision it refuses to accommodate my form.
I slam my head further into the fabric, trying to force my way in. The already weakened realm wavers. Clearly, it isn’t taking my entrance well, but giving up here and backing out is simply not something I can consider. There’s too many lives at stake.
By the time the fabric finally gives way beneath me — the rock wall fracturing — I realise that my extended stay in the emptiness has affected my perception of time. Already, Jörmungandr has fallen. Now that I’m already half-breaching the wall of the realm, there is no reversing the time. I’m as bound as the Anatla trying to consume this world.
Finally, with one last heave, I shatter the boundary and crash inside. The fabric fights me every moment of the way. Even if the world does not welcome me with the open arms I would have hoped, I make my way inside. I’m finally here. I’m finally back.
And instantly, I realise I’m far beyond the being I once was.
My body dwarfs the planet that once was. My appearance alone has obliterated half the floating continents. Thankfully not the one with sapient life on it, but the others each held their own flourishing ecosystems. I destroyed them, but I don’t have the time to feel guilt. The people I can save are right below me, at the mercy of the Anatla.
I don’t hesitate. The moment I lock eyes on my target, I rush forward with jaw spread ready to swallow any and all danger to the native sapients. Primarily, the massive expanse of two-dimensional ribbons spread across the three dimensional space. The moment I notice it, I know exactly what it is.
The Beyond.
My jaw slams shut, and I don’t just swallow the beings caught within. I swallow the very space itself. It doesn’t matter that the Anatla are beings that follow their own laws if I reinforce this world’s spatial rules with my own. My own fabric is weak in comparison, and this realm’s fabric is strained to the point of snapping, but together I can finally force the rules of my make upon the Anatla.
Anything caught within my mouth finds themselves in space crushed to a mere speck. Each has to share the space of a mere grain of sand as my stomach consumes them.
For a long moment, I float there. All is quiet. It is only the moment I allow myself to even consider the possibility that it is all over, do the Anatla strike. Their forms — entire realms worth — rush into our world with renewed vigour and more power than before.
Your mind is mine! You are mine, and mine you shall remain!
The beyond’s voice echoes in my mind as a million ribbons manifest all around me. The agony that forced me to flee doesn’t strike my mind, but as the ribbons slip between the molecules that form my scales, I feel the Beyond’s words ring louder.
I whip my tail and slam my jaw down again, going so far as to spread an infinite number of distortions across the space around the continents so I can swallow the beyond once again. It doesn’t work. Having been caught in my jaw once, the Anatla slips away from me. It’s ribbons infest countless sapients down below in a way that I don’t dare touch, lest I be the one to tear them to shreds.
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To remove the Beyond from them all would be no different from threading a million threads of the weave all at once. Impossible.
How did you come to be? The beyond demands, more intent than I’ve ever heard from it. Tell me what you have done… tell me how you exist before I consume and assimilate all that you are.
It… doesn’t know what I am? I thought the Anatla, beings wielding entire realms at their will would understand. They wove their own fabrics into the damaged weave. How could they not comprehend me?
The idea that I have become something beyond even the Anatla was obscene. My fabric is far weaker than theirs, and the only reason I’ve been able to push them back so far is the original strength of the world we are all currently bound. But, if the Anatla truly can’t escape the confines of a fabric — their own, or one they invade — then that does separate us.
“You said it yourself.” I notice how my voice reverberates through the very fabric itself, rather than with any sound. All that time altering my own weave really has changed me. “I am the Realm-Breacher.”
The ribbons staggered as the Beyond remembered its words from all that time ago.
That is not what that means. That was never what that meant. It’s voice is tinged with a madness that spat in the face of the wise visage that still lingers in my mind. You were a hammer to break the barricade. Not a nail falling through the cracks. Your existence is impossible. No realm laws could make you possible.
While I continue to bite down on the ribbons spreading everywhere, my mind is busy forcing shut the many tears in space. Compared to threading realm fabrics, manipulating space is easy. I just need to keep the space around the entire continent under my control, and eventually we can win.
I will need to figure out how to remove the ribbons infecting every sapient before long, though.
“Was it a lie?” I can’t help but demand, despite the circumstances. It is not something I’ve ever been able to tear my mind from since the Beyond first made that promise. “Could you really have returned Scia to life?”
Why would I lie about something so easily achieved? She would have lived long enough to be consumed with the rest of your realm, as will you.
A million more ribbons appeared from beyond the space I control, rushing in faster than I can dodge. Not that I’m willing to move; better my worldly frame than the squishy people down below. I just need to hold out. If I can consume enough of the Beyond, then maybe… just maybe, this won’t end horribly.
But again, the ribbons infesting the sapients are a problem.
I may be reluctant to try, considering the consequences of failure, but all it would take is a thought from the Beyond, and they’d all die like Jörmungandr. My grip on space around them will hopefully keep most safe, but that’s not something I can be totally assured of.
With greater than surgical precision, I slice out the ribbon from the mind of one. It works, but the millions of other ribbons tighten in response.
Become mine again, and I will let them go.
I’m about to refuse on impulse when the fractured tear I arrived in finally seals and an overwhelming sensation of unwelcomeness settles over me. So many of my threads that are similar to this world’s, yet have drifted through my time in the emptiness, had worked with their analogues to help me in this fight. Now, that familiarity is gone. The instant the fabric is healed enough to pay attention to the invaders, it regards me as one.
My own home realm has disowned me. Rejected me.
Instantly, the resistance I hold up against the Beyond and all other Anatla shatters. They breach my control of space as if it isn’t even there to stop them. What little hope remained, is now gone.
I turn to the continent of sapients. There is only one thing I can do now, and I have absolutely no idea if it will work or not. As far as I know, I’m the only being able to survive out in the place between realms. Still, it is the only thing I can do.
My jaw shuts around the continent, and I carry every sapient that remains from the doomed realm.