Suture

Suture

From beyond the sands of time the dyad of heralds stand, an awakening, an epiphany from beyond the winters of delirium, a forgotten god’s dream left to swirl and broth into two classics surveying the scene. The legend in rags, borne of royal blood and the elder once her own self had steeped from her corruption, the brazen black shell still releasing tendrils of smog from its aching carapace. To her northstar arrived the pauper clad in regal regalia, white silk serenading her backside like a moth hypnotizing a starstruck lover, powdered silk brushing against her cheek, for the desperate need of other wanting. From one brunette to another, across the annuls of the vast temporal expanse that had frozen like the maw of a kiln killed at flame’s wake into an icy everdew serenade, the dyad stood. Passions swirling, each foot step or gaze send the two into a physical reverie that twinkled like the brightest nebula, as constant as gravity. Pulling the two closer and closer over the raking sands, its silicone life shell observing thru stark empty holes, like a sullen priestess at the wedding altar.

Her chitin would bend at the kneecap, pearly pink shell blown back at the interlude of their sovereign greeting, dirt and destiny, domestic and dialectic, the clash sending the empty plane into a roaring bliss. Between the shuffling molecules liquidified across the horizon was the swirl of two figures locked in death’s dance. As souls syncronizing with the dance of cosmic didactics threw narrative hyperdensity beyond all command, their spinning singularity knew neither love nor hate in singleness but a pendulum of both, a sine wave of abuse and affection bloomed, of devotion and destruction. Not gladiators nor gladly newly weds, hardly matri-psychomonials, the convention of two hearts became an inky drip of incomprehensible squishy, pulping, pulsing desires between throttling slick tongues and slamming fists. Their tongues slicked and slid into one another, the dew of life exchanging in an evanescent embrace for passion to flow throughout all told and gazed upon. "Wait for me.." a voice said, cupping the other's sinew uptop their chest and pinching supple flesh, sending moans over the slightest firm grasp of a teet.

-1.87.9 Ex-marosa IIV, The Joining Rose

Violet’s eyes opened up. The world was upside down, her body balancing on one hand while electricity moved between the steel floor and conducted up her body to the large caliper hinged around her legs, levitating and applying force vertically. Each passing second it tugged harder upwards, measuring the stress the girl felt as thousands of tons of force were applied from the Newtonian Generators around her ankle bracelets. The eyepatch she wore let numerals and a stream of data pass before her vision, the parlance of perceptual digits almost hypnotizing her in a way she imagined Intellica was every nanosecond. With her other free hand she typed away on a keyboard passwords and codes she saw flash through the eyepatch, correct answers would lower the anti-gravitation of her caliper, but only if she was quick. It's burdening force increased expotentially as the moments passed and tore at her muscle tissue. “Hnggrrr..” The strain was upsetting her balance, sparks flew around her palm until the epidermic sheath ripped, scraping her hands and sending her toppling. The generators slammed down on her body sending her whirling like a pinwheel until she was flattened, cracks in the steel from the tension released from her crackling spine. The dull sensation lacked agony, compared to the Novus’s harsher training, but it tickled and itched her vertebrae.
Already, nanite receptor-cells that the Novus had provided her with were healing the damage, her fractured skull fixing the cracks, spine straightening. Her twisted, mangled limbs popped back into place with circuitry lines glowing cyan-inbetween her veins.

It was less uncomfortable than the lonliness she spent on that cherry-red ship, its dim halls and isolation spanning weeks to months before the Cascadic field could take her consciousness back to Intellica's callous instruction. But even so, the sores and cramped muscles felt like jelly simmering all over her body.

She lay flat. A query came by, Intellica’s holographic projection emitting out onto its side to observe. “Slacking again on your exercises are we, Evergreen? Cascade hardly comes to those with such unhabituated fighting skills.” Intellica told her.

“You know I’m not really into all this new age nonsense.” Violet peeled herself off the floor with great difficulty, the bracelets quaking and cracking the ground further as she stood up. “Learn to control your anger. Hold your tongue.” She was instructed.

“Oh I’m not angry. Not that you would know.” Violet retorted.

“Yes. That is true. Tell me about your powers. Has their efficiency improved since allowance into the Subroutines I’ve allowed you entry into?” Intellica asked.

Violet sighed and brushed the dust off her torn and battered clothing. "I've made some progress, but I still have a long way to go," she admitted reluctantly. "The School subroutine with the dancing clowns and overgrown talking rodents playing detective helps me focus, but it's still hard to control the raw power." She stared at the sparks dancing at the tips of her fingers, sparking every few seconds into the void.

Intellica studied Violet's face, trying to decipher the emotions behind her words as if she was ever capable of doing so at all. "Your potential is vast, Evergreen. It is my duty to help you harness it and use it to its fullest extent. But you must trust the process and be patient."

Violet rolled her eyes. "Easier said than done. And what about this... weird thing I keep dreaming about? What does it mean? Are they real or just figments of my imagination?"

Intellica's holographic form flickered as she considered the question. "Your connection to the dyad could be a manifestation of your own subconscious, or it could be something more. Regardless, it is something worth exploring. It could provide valuable insight into the nature of your powers. That may be why your subconscious is channeling the mythos of the Joining Rose."

"Right, you mentioned those words before. Never really explained what this, 'Joining Rose' story is exactly." Violet spit out blood, a tooth coming with it as she entered the code to take off her gravity boots and shackles. She attempted to leap upwards in relief, but the contrast was so different that she jetted into the ceiling, as if all gravity had been turned off instantly. Violet attempted to find her balance, only to pinball around the walls and rooms for a minute while Intellica watched. Finally her feet found purchase upon the steel ground once more.

Violet shifted her weight from one foot to another, the metal floor creaking under the strain. The balance of the back and forth wobbled her first, and then gave her peace of mind. "You told me you would explain what that was, and why I was recieving visions about it suddenly. Fine. I'll keep working on my powers, and I'll try to be patient. But I want to know more about the dream. I can't shake the feeling that they're important somehow."

Intellica nodded in agreement. "Very well. We will investigate your connection to the dyad further very soon. But first, you must continue your training. There is still much work to be done. Trust yourself, concentrate. Bite down on this metal rod. It may reveal things to you once the pain subsides."

With a resigned sigh, Violet braced herself for another round of rigorous exercises. The electricity crackled around her as the Newtonian Generators reactivated and pinned her back to the floor with a loud THUD, she gripped a crack in the floor and started to hoist herself back up on one single palm. With her other hand, she picked up the rod and put it in her mouth, electricity blasting inside her mouth, her screams muffled. She couldn’t give up, only thinking of how calm Intellica was while she harnessed so much anger, so much frustration in the core of her being.

 

The 7 Novus sat, having finally managed to flare their tempers down after the first hour. It was their 2nd meeting, and as all temporal paradoxes of the Dyad, occured in circumstantial simultaneity with the first meeting, being effectively one on the same. Octavius walked in and cleared her throat. “We good now baes? I had time to go and get a drink while you toddlers were slobbering your Dick plus dick out. Double plus, double fuss.” She shook the cup, milky liquid swirling inside as she sipped the straw. Intellica and Harmony were restrained to their chairs with bright neon threads of Shion’s own design, although all knew it was more symbolic than anything else – nothing of the sort could hold the two. Cormeum’s head laid down slightly on the table, hands shielding him from the others.

“Good, now we can get down to business.” She announced. “Intellica, would you like to explain yourself? What were you doing with mother's arm? I do remember the last time we had this meeting, this same meeting we're having now, we agreed to dispose of her remains completely and utterly.”
Intellica stood up. "I have limited time to interrogate this topic. Narriprocity Initiation has limited my time from the eyes of Relevance, Truth, and Essentiality. You're well aware of it by now, Binarium."
Shion folded her arms, her short white hair sheening in the light. "Don't call me that sis."

"I took Prime's appendage for two reasons. Firstly, for own research. Which none of you are privvy to nor do I owe any explanation or justification for. Secondly." She paused, giving Octavius a piercing glare of judgement. "It was to sight out her Reincarnality. We discussed attempting to arrange that to a specific point that we could take advantage of, in case she ever comes back. And I believe I've found it.."

A strange static started to dance over Intellica's words, not hearable or in any way perceptive to the Novus, with the exception of Binarium. She closed her eyes, the gaze making its scan of rasterized symbols and connecting the signifiers away from the narrative spacial-temporal locality of the present audit. With every continuing sentence, with each etched line in the sequence, a logic of transition transpired in operative procedures until the Novus could no longer be seen or heard. With the disrupted constitutive process of a scene unscene, the gaze reconceptualized to Violet, sewing a costume of a mid 25th century Xi'an Elderdragon, ordamented latex robes she donned, stitch in hand while Intellica sat on her chair, no stand necessary underneath for it's levitation.

"Reincarnality?" Violet asked. She'd never heard that word before.

"Yes, Reincarnality," Intellica replied, her eyes reflecting the cool hue of the levitating screens around her. "It is a term used to describe the ability to project oneself across the spectral plane of existence in multitude, a phenomenon observed in entities capable of integrating their soul reincarnation beyond narrative planes. This enables the entity to harness the combined knowledge and experiences of their past lives, while being able to project it as a reference point in the present or future to alter or influence events thru a process called Reincarnference, or 'Reinstatement Transference.'"

"I'm not sure I understand." Violet said, pulling a thread from a newly added button into her teeth to clamp down as she sewed.

Intellica paused, giving her a careful look. "The dreams you've been having, the connection to the dyad you feel, the sudden surge in your powers... They all point towards the potential presence of this Reincarnality in you. It's not definitive, but it's a plausible explanation. And if it's true, it opens up possibilities we've never considered before." Intelliga suggested, stirring coffee with one arm made of holographic light behind her and tapping away on 6 seperate keyboards with the other arms.

"Could you try dumbing it down a little? I spent 3 hours researching your daughter's uniforms for this silly getup."

"I thought you were done being treated like a child Violet." Intellica tapped her foot, as if scolding a child.

"Fine," Violet said, pulling the thread tight and tying it off. She held up the robe, turning it this way and that as she studied her handiwork. "I'll keep trying to understand. But only if you promise to keep me in the loop. No more mysteries or half-answers. Deal?"

"Agreed." Intellica replied, ceasing her tapping. The glow from the multiple screens around her faded as she directed her attention towards Violet. They showed the imagery of a variety of burly green men. "You know this man as Bruce Banner. Do you not?" She asked.

"I, yeah I guess. The Hulk?" Violet scratched her head.

"Correct. Every instance in the multiverse of this entity shares a collective nature in seperate souls. This is possible through both thereincarnate and transmigration forms of consciousness. Transmigration being the transfer of one's essence between multiple entities, but that would require a conscious soul that is aware of the fact that it's being shared." She paused, gesturing to the screens. "The entity in question shares the soul of Bruce Banner, but unlike most souls it has a fragmented nature. This prevents it from fully integrating with Banner. A soul which is as fractured as that would have no real significance in such a wide multiverse of experience. But the consciousness that created it, and the memories it is connected to, are still a part of the soul. In other words, this one you call the Hulk can be many. In many worlds, many lives. Inbetween space. Back and forth between time."

"Multiverse stuff. Lots of hulks in every universe. Got it."

Her apprentice nodded slowly. "Now," Intellica said, looking straight into Violet's eyes. "What of this fellow?"

With a snap of her fingers, the screens changed to a figure Violet recognized from her literary clubs. A man with a trenchcoat and hat, swollen sunken eyes and an ugly mishapen mop of hair. Violet paused, squinting for a moment.

"Doctor Jackall. And the shadow behind him, the representation of his other. Mr. Hyde."

"You see," Intellica intoned. "While the many forms of Bruce Banner in the multiverse share a space-time division, they're limited by a boundary of self-reference. Some would call the collective combination of all selves contained within an 'Ultimate Self.' The Ultimate Self of Banner may collectivize his existence, but it does not incapsulate that of Doctor Jackall here. The exiliterary genesis of this division marks a new chapter, a new entity borne from a common conceptualization, but a new soul. Thus 'Reincarnality .' A new epoch of self. Ironically termed, as those sharing their existence across different vessels, different characters, and different narratives are not truly reincarnating. They are in essence creating new selves in other spaces and times, but the essence remains the same." She waved her hand and the screens showed two pictures.

"You know for someone who is bound to her lab all day, you sure know alot about stories and this kind of stuff. Isn't this more your sister's domain? Binarydumb? This sounds, far from rudimentary."

Intellica continued after the rude interruption. "Hulk, and Hyde. They possess seperate ultimate selves and reincarnations, but their Reincarnality connects them."
She showed another display- one image projected was Thatti. The other, her former referant, Star Butterfly. A Reincarnality from one reality and form transposed onto an entirely new one through which the essence of existence had traveled.

Violet's eyes widened. "So... You're saying I might be like these... entities? Like, I'm a collection of different... versions of myself? But I also share my essence with another, me that is not just an-alt timeline me? A version that is based on me that even I won't reincarnate into. Or I guess she won't become me, if I'm the Re-in-carnality based off her." She scratched her head. "Kind of like an AU where you're not really, you I guess?" She took the time to take it all in. "In one story where the Hulk enters a realm, that's a crossover. In another where there's a version of the Hulk born there, that's the, Ultimate Self thing. But if there's an entirely different, person whose concept origin is the Hulk.. Although they aren't the Hulk."

Intellica nodded. "There are a few crucial differences however. Due to Reincarnality leading to seperate instances, one need not actually wait for one's death or ceasation. It is less a cycle and more, a duplication. Think a series of probability sequences with reoccuring inputs that feed and tap into their output. In this way, Reincarnality implies a kind of double existence. Similar to my sister's condition." She poked Violet's cheeks, "Bin-ary-dumb. The one whose domain is the Binary operation of reality and fiction, real and symbolic. Rest and play."

"Well then, how does that explain my dreams? Did I have a Reincarnal sister somewhere or something?"

"It's a possibility we must consider, Evergreen. If your dreams and visions are not merely subconscious manifestations but true insights into your own existence across the spectrum of reality, then your potential is even more significant than we initially thought."

Violet stared at the projection in silence, her mind racing to process the overwhelming information. Intellica's words echoed in her ears as she slowly lowered herself onto the floor, the steel cold against her skin.

"Let me show you something." Intellica showed her photos of her friend.

"Lincoln!" It was her friend. The one she'd seen so long ago, before having to fight alongside the other version of him in that timeline she'd entered. "Yes, though this is who his family was thought to be before Reincarnality." The screen turned to a cartoon.
Figures running about a single building, one boy and several of his sisters. The situation was certainly similar, but the appearances were all different. The concept seemed loosely based, a reference and not a replica. How could her friend share a soul or existence with someone like that? She didn't know this, entity on the cartoon.

"That's where your companion finds their Reincarnality, so we thought."

"Before he was Lincoln he was... this?" Violet raised an eyebrow.
"No. It's as I've explained. Reincarnality is beyond even conventional reincarnation." She folded her arms. "It's why those of my sister's realm, Orchid even fear the narrative currents of Abyss. There is no rebirth or reincarnation in Abyss, rather one's concept is recycled. The ties are not so easily severed." She shook her head. "There is a problem however."

The screen turned back to Lincoln. Her best friend. But this wasn't the Lincoln she grew up with, merely knew. It was one with slightly longer hair, and cascading marks down his eyes. The other Lincoln. Violet remembered briefly dying, joining their session in her duplicate's body. These versions of her friends, and the very different world she lived in for a time. The one that had been with her during her Sburb session. The botched Sburb session where everyone met their end.. facing Lord English.

And finally she remembered herself dying again.

"That one, is not does not possess a reincarnalationship with the media I showed you earlier. He comes from somewhere else."

"How... did he get here then?" Violet asked, pointing at the screen.

"That's a matter for another time." Intellica replied. "Let's discuss the Dyad. Where they came from, where they went." Violet finally put one last stitch complating the Elderdragon uniform and gently folded it aside.

 She was tired, and her head ached a little. "Okay, well... It's kind of late. I need to take this home to look at. Give me a few days, and we'll come back to it." She said, as if preparing for an unexpected absence.

"Violet?" Intellica asked, concern clouding her eyes.

"Yeah? I have some time off work too. I'm not doing anything important. I'll call you back and catch up with you after the weekend." She replied, giving her a hug. Intellica didn't hug her back. She never did, but it was mostly for Violet. "I need to rest before I go exploring any further. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed." She admitted.

"If you are not ready, Evergreen, I can return you to your living quarters."
"Yes please."

With a simple wave of her hand, the Cascadic field dissipated and Violet was disintegrated into molecules. When she opened her eyes, she was back on the battleship. Outside an endless white void was visible, emptiness for eternity beyond. Void Main. Flying through it, the grand chariot of the Troll Empress. She walked the cold, dark hollowed halls into her bedroom where dozens of mannequins with costumes she'd made were stretched and sewn up. Putting a single line across a blackboard to keep time- 244 days since she'd arrived, she flopped into bed and rested.

Thus, we come to the basic axiom of cybernetics, from which simulation and virtual physicality emerges. The most basic assumption of a quantum computer. You may take a moment of brevity to laugh now while I remind you-

Grace's old fashioned typerwriter jammed. She eyed the keys, and then the slight inkblot on the page where the last word was. She'd have to rewrite it once again and start her forward over. A whispering voiced flowed in the back of her head, as if pacing back and forth observing her. Grace, or whoever she was now could feel them probing her emotions, taking every opportunity to mind both her comfort and weigh it with her competencies.  She was like a child in a candy shop, only she'd have to eat her own thoughts if she wanted them. And she was not going to do that. Ever.

Grace, this is your last warning. The thoughts came into being as undaunted text, unbroken by even a single quotation mark. Let me do this. Of course of course, do not let my idiosyncrasies flavor your words with anything but due diligence.

As she slowly put a new page and typed away, getting up to the final word of the final sentence of her latest Compendium, done after a thousand hours of research into Xi, the voice continued to chant at her like a hex, each time more insistent than the one before. She got up and walked back to her bed. It was a nice feeling, like floating, she thought to herself as she climbed up and laid down. Her eyes were closed but she felt awake. And calm. Her heartbeat was steady, at least it felt steady, and her mind... it felt good. Like a body working properly. Her body.

A body with two passengers. One, herself. The other, an intoxicating creature of unbridled intelligence and brilliance. She saw this entity external to herself, floating like a wisp around her room. Grace's room. The room in the Tower within the little house that Ellie and her oft traveled in. Sometimes the location changed, sometimes the room itself changed, but the fact she was in this tower had not changed. She'd been here since the very first day she entered it, and that fact was beginning to set in with a mire of guilt and uncertainty. She'd never before realized the gravity of her decision until now. Her choices, decisions that would shape not only her reality but that of her past, her mistress, and possibly her very soul. Hearts change like the weather. She felt like an imposter in her own skin. Turning away from the wisp of Grace, she turned to a mirror and reached out with porcelain skin, seeing the woman in the mirror, the face that she'd dawned. This wasn't her. This wasn't her home.

Luma was a girl from another world.

She was trapped in this body, body that she could never truly appreciate as well as the host did.

She saw herself, as Grace, the girl she was, be, that girl, that stern studious woman. It was someone else.
The wisp floated around her and to her backside, Grace putting her arms over her, as if hugging a precious daughter.

To her right, the wisp whispered, "It is time you know." Luma closed her eyes.

"No."

"You're growing wearry."

"Please child. I can see it. You don't deserve this."

"I'm not ready.. I..." She looked the Librarian in the eye. "I need you. The tower needs Grace."

Grace frowned.

"I am your servant in this regard." Grace whispered. "I'm not like you child, and that is what you need to know."

"Do I still have a choice, Grace?"

Grace smiled.

"You have always had a choice." Grace said, "but not many want to see what it is to have a choice."

"Then my choice is for you to stay. For us to stay." Luma insisted, trying to sound confident, perhaps to convince herself.

"You can ask another, Grace. There are many vessels waiting for you."

"I've done so." Grace said, softly. "It's a hard sell in my realm." She stroked the girl's hair. "We're trying to figure out what to do with a whole world of possibilities, remember. We don't want to lose you, but we can't risk your life either." Grace stated. "In my time in the tower, there were a lot of things that I took for granted. We live for now, not for all time. You can't let what happened in the tower turn you into a creature of the past. You can't." Grace said. "You deserve your freedom. Our souls are starting to drift apart. I'm not sure how if it's possible to help you find yourself, to be yourself. But it can only come thru your choice. I-"
"Can we not talk about this right now?" Luma said, pushing Grace's hands away.

"If you want me to help you. I'll help. But please, don't try to force me to do something I don't want to." She shook her head. "It's not like you haven't tried to get to the bottom of us before. I'm starting to wonder what this is about, Grace. Something about my soul, our soul, I know. You said you're my, Reincarnality or something right? That two concepts aren't meant to share a self in this way , that to the Novus of Differences and Dialects its, unnatural. An imitation and its copy as one. But why not just help me and say so? Why not tell me why, instead of sneaking about it?" She was tired of her questions. "I'm getting worn out, Grace. I need time to rest. But I'll help you, if you don't want me to just go away. I need to rest. To rest and think."

"No," Grace replied, "You need to find yourself. I won't force it but, I think I have a feeling that you would be happier if you had your own life. Not existing as a ghost in the back of a Librarian. I want to set you free and let you live and find your own path. You deserve that much, not for me to be your mask.

"Grace..." She stood and walked over to the door and opened it slowly. Luma reassumed the best eloquent voice she could, enough that she couldn't tell if it was her speaking of the other one. "Come in." She said. Ellie waved, clowny white gloves wiggling in her face.

"Wuz with all the clowny spooky talk? I can hear your mumbo jumbo from downstairs." Ellie chuckled, taking care to look out for her dedicated Librarian.

"Apologies, was I disturbing you Mistress?" 

Ellie furrowed a brow, then pinched Luma's nose. "Oh cut out that Mistress talk! I know it's 'you' in there. You're having the mindsy windy existential terrors." She winked. "I can tell this stuff. What's bothering you, Luma. Or Grace. Whichever you are."

Luma/Grace sighed.

"C'mon, open up. How are you feeling? I know even you have feelings."

"Like my mind is being pulled in a million directions." She paced out the door and down the stairs, "I don't know what's the right thing to do.

Ellie said, "I can tell, we all know things don't exactly get any easier with time, right?"

"How much time do I have? I've forgotten how long it's been since I've become, this." Grace said.

"As much as we got." She invited her to the couch. "There are limits to our knowledge, Luma." She sighed.

"Yeah, I can tell." Ellie laughed. "But you don't need to worry." She placed two hands on Luma's temples and licked her lips, the multicolored sparks of kaleidomancy beginning to swirl in a flurry around them. "I want to show you something. It may make you feel a little better dealing with this, I hope. But you have to trust me. Do I have your permission?"

Luma hesitated, looking into the eyes of her mistress.

"Yes, Mistress?"

Ellie's bright red lips widened, like the sun expanding a beam of light at daybreak over the horizon, bringing warmth with it's spread. "You have no idea how much better I feel just knowing you're opening up about this. It was so annoying to see you have to lie and fidget, I don't like seeing your struggle. Luma.. Grace. You're both superimportant to me." She sighed. "You have to trust us, Luma. This is, the best way to go about things, to make this work."

"I..." She bit her lip, looking at Ellie, looking at Grace.

Grace smiled.

"Okay, okay, I trust you."

"Good."

"What are you going to do, Mistress?" Grace/Luma was cautious, she looked nervous.

"Show you to some good friends." Ellie smiled. She leaned in and pressed her lips to the Librarian. Flicks of rainbow color spilt into the girl's eyes and her mind went sinking down for a trip. Everything spiraled deeper and deeper into the abyss of the arcane and the unknowable while she was sucked into her Mistress, disappearing completely. Soft grass brushed against her cheeks on the ground. She could feel the warmth of someone's breath as they brushed the hair out of her face.

She opened her eyes looked up at a handsome face smiling down on her.

It looked just like Ellie, but male. He was wearing some sort of Generals uniform. Luma lept back, seeing Grace beside her. Grace- seperate from herself, in an entirely other body. Luma felt her cheek, it was solid as the palm that cupped it. They were seperate again, in here atleast. In this realm seemingly the two were seperate and both physical.

"E-ellie?"

"Elliot Riza." He said, lighting a cigarette.

"Oh giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish don't scare them! Hiiiiiiii!" Another voice said, startling Luma. It was another Ellie, smaller with a cute hat and childlike demeanor. "Luma Luma Luma! Grace wacie I'm so glad to see you! Woooohooohohoo!" She climbed on Luma's back and huggled her, making herself impossible to remove. Luma looked around.

There were Ellies. Hundreds. Thousands, countless in the colorful horizon all greeting her, among treetops and theme parks and toony skyscrapers. A backup of Ellies for every life she'd lived.

An Ellie with a latex uniform- Grace recognized it as an Xi Security Chief. "You can relax. It's me." Noelle said. "Well us, but who can say right?" She went over and tried to console Luma, Grace observing with her hands folded behind her.

"Mistress?!" Luma gasped.

"In the flesh." Noelle chuckled, looking as athletic and brisk as the day she left Xi and entered the Cascade with Sandra in her arms. "Well technically no, not in the flesh. In the.. soul-y stuff. Hihi, you get the idea. And call me Noelle here."

"No? Noelle, where are we?" Luma asked.

"In, me!" Noelle threw her arms up.
"And me!" Eljanna replied.

"Also me!" Vivitar said, her hazy DJ visor and latex halter-top in stark contrast to Noelle's Security chief uniform.

"In us." Patience added. Some looked familiar to the Mistress she knew, some quite different. But they were all Ellie.

Elpie, the tiny childlike version of Ellie in her ballet uniform began to introduce her to everyone. "It's the least we can do after what you've been through. I've seen you for what you are. You're very special to me." She turned around. "And also for Elbert, and Ellen, and Ellieth, Eligmoar, over there's Allie, Jella, Xiethie, Sgt. Jin-El, Gatelyn-6, Ellest, The Elkenmist, Elder Cee, Shuriken, and my other friends here, Mavris, Bim, and Beezle. Over there is Eleanor and Alchemist Aleth, Inno, Eslife, Elsa and Elganna. And there's-"

"Okay okay, I think she gets it dear." Noelle told her, picking up Elpie and smiling at Luma. "Everyone of me is here! They were always here. In me."

"You're very vucky to ve here." Alestith Ellith, a galactic-famous Xi fashion designer, singer, idol, actress and celebrity said, the dark brown of her lips mixing with the purple highlights in her bowlcut and green tint of her thick round-glasses and golden hoop earrings. She tossed a fur boa dramatically and gave Luma a kiss on the cheek, leaving a thick imprint of her lipstick. "Ve all luv you very vuch, I hope vu know that my veear."

"R-right." She swallowed.

"But, which one of you is the real Ellie?" Luma asked abit confused.

"We are all, silly." She ran her colorful nails through Luma's hair. "Uh . . . I'm not really sure what you're supposed to be compared to me." Noelle paused, looking around. "But I guess for the moment I'm the leader. We kind of switch, but it's easy to lose track of whose who, or whose in charge. Whenever you see me on the outside it's, kind of all us talking at once. Sometimes alternating or taking turns, some more or less than others, but we're all always here inside." She hugged Luma. "And every-" "-one of us-" "-loves-" "-You!" Several other Ellies threw their arms around Grace who was observing closeby, several shorter younger ones huggling her legs and knees like a child comforming to the affection of their mother.

"Yay! I got hug!" Someone shouted. "Hug back, big hug, bigger hug, I'm so proud of you!" And so on. Several Ellies were running around shouting this encouragement. Noelle was laughing, dancing around with her arms flailing. Luma, who was being hugged by many Ellies at once, seemed to feel the most comfortable of all, but she still looked confused.

"Can I ask you something, Mistress?" She asked.

"Of course, Luma. What is it?"

"You said, you'd set me free. Why? What made you think that I'm better off alone?"

"My love for you will keep me young forever, but it can't work in two. If I keep you bound, your mind will suffer the same fate as mine will. You'll gradually go crazy and would fade away." Grace looked on, trying to determine if that was true. Luma wasn't sure. "Maybe? Like I said I'm not sure how this works. You don't seem to be fusing, so I think whatever is happening, I think is meant to happen. But still, you think having two souls in one body is confusing? I'd be bored out of my mind now if it was only two." Noelle/Ellie told her.

"But, then again I'm a clown! My sacred space place-thingy is a circus. You're a Librarian. Librarians prefer quiet, right? So it's only natural you should approach yourself a little differently."

"Sacred.. space?" Luma asked.

"She means a Graveyard." Grace corrected her, taking note of some of the Ellies who were Llavalite and Set, aswell as one that was dressed in ordamented golden Orchid priestess robes. "The innerspace of the soul. Psychic interiority, although ours remains rather limited."

"R-right." Luma nodded. "Doesn't look like much of a, Graveyard to me tho." She turned around, observing the ferris wheels, haunted houses, docks and rainbow fields of sunshine everywhere she looked.

"I promise, if you want to be Luma again, we'll try to help build you back somehow, as painful as it is to let you go. But you don't have to struggle alone! We're here to prove you've got friends who love you and are here for you! C'mon! Spend the afternoon getting to know everyone. That way you'll feel a little less lonely while you sort out your feelings and fix this."

"All of this, is inside of you all the time? This, Graveyard place?"

"Oh Luma." Noelle/Ellie said. "It's more than you'd think. I'll show you! C'mooon, let's party!"

Noelle took hold of Luma's hands, leading her down the sidewalk, stopping a ways in from the edge of the Ferris Wheel. "Are you ready for this?" "I, Grace helpppp-"

"Luma, you're asking me to intervene this? Surely you know I am beyond reproaching my Mistress's antics by now." Grace said. She turned to Noelle.

"It's her first time having fun, so try to make it, easy for her."

Luma turned to Grace, looking at her, waiting. The two had been together for a while, but to seperate like this was overwhelming. As much so as being pulled into a sea of Ellie's all eager to befriend her. "There's always good time to eat popcorn, dance in rainbows, and try out carnival games and ride sparkly rainbow Lioncorns!"

"What's a L-lioncorn?"

"It's like a pink Unicorn, but a Lion! Look you can play at being, whatever you like. We try to find fun, wherever it is. You've never really felt yourself since you became Grace, and we don't just see you as a librarian or servant. You're our friend! So even if we keep you bound, you'll never have some kind of fun. Just don't make yourself sick with worrying. Like I said, we need to find our own ways to amuse ourselves, and there's a lot of that. You're a little like me, in that way. I used to be, very serious." Noelle confessed. "It took awhile meeting the other versions of myself to lighten up and feel okay with, feeling okay." El-5, a cybernetic Ellie nodded. "We're all very strong willed, and that sometimes gets us into trouble. But we're all unique too. We like the way we are." She saw Ellies that were all Ellies but she couldn't quite tell who was who. Many looked like clones, and some were more distinguished. "Where is everyone out here?" Luma asked.

"Everyone is everywhere. Everyone is everywhere." Noelle put her hands up. "This is what they told me when I got here." The Mistress leaned in and kissed Luma's forehead. "C'mon, no more questions for the afternoon!" "I-I guess that makes sense." "So no more questions. Okay?" Noelle asked.

"Pfft. Okay okay, geez."

"Good girl." The Mistress kissed Luma's forehead again. "Now go be with everyone."She dragged her towards a funhouse and through numerous mirrors, everyone of them distorting Luma's image in different ways. From here out the minutes passed, turning to hours within. Luma soon lost track of the hours while Grace read a book on a bench, taking notes aswell on the vast diversity of self within Ellie's inner space.

While Luma was shown around the partytastic, loud and colorful wonderrealm within, Grace continued to collect her thoughts. Dyadmorphic Division. DD, she remembered reading about it in a book somewhere. The Dyad was a splitting of dimensionality through the circuitry channels of Relevance, Truth, and Essentiality. A relationship of reality's drive manifest. When a Dyadic bifurcation occured, the two schisms occupied the same space, a duality of essences unknown to one another within a circuitous orbit, an ongoing synchronic order of subjectivity with the displacement of a mutually-occuring diachronic order. She'd read of such rare instances in cosmic games meant to perpetuate universe, so-called "Double Mobius Reacharounds." Two as one. A 0 and a 1 as single negated differential.

Elsewhere, elsewhen, Violet saw Intellica hold up a rubberband twist it, as to form a Mobius strip. With her thumb hiding the joining segment, the band appeared as two rings- when in fact, they were merely one twisted twice over.

Grace continued to contemplate. Reality superimposed, juxtaposed, synthesized onto itself. While this utilized high dimensional mathematical conceptualization on the level of space, such as in the case of a place she observed, Harvest, the elucidated division of the soul seemed to weigh on her existence. Grace and Luma, she knew were seperate concepts of one being. Reincarnality expressed in a mitosis of the soul. It could be expressed in the following formula:

Dd

 

"D∞d?" Violet asked, trying to begin to understand but somewhat losing herself in the process of Intellica's lab laborious and difficult explanation of some type of cosmic calculus.

'The metaphysics of the Dyad' was atop the holographic board Intellica was explaining. "The default terminological symbol is a division by infinity, in other words simplified as D/d."

"What do you mean?" Violet asked.

"Division is a simple concept, which can be represented with the notation D/d. Since the Dyad is self-divided, it's essentially the same. Bifurcation along an axis of infinity."

Violet said. She stared intently at the book Intellica was reading from. "I-I think I understand. But what does all this have to do with me?"

"Violet, do you not recognize the formula? This is it, this is why you-" Violet turned to the screen, the cartoony girl with Loom, represented in computer-generated graphics staring back. "Why I'm her." Violet turned away. "Yes, we share a concept or something, although we're different people. But mysterrrriously not reincarnated or timelines or anything dumb like that. I think I get it." She rolled her eyes.

"Why are we still talking about this?! This is so absurd."

Intellica gripped her pointer, changing the screen to her homeplanet. "Because there's a lot we still need to figure out. That's why we came here. If you would like to figure out the best way for you to reach whatever goals you have, you best respect my lectures and stop your insolent gripes."

"And do I have any goals? Because the only one I have is to get back." She pointed to the holographic model on the blackboard.

"Yes, yes go back to Harvest. Where the other you has already replaced your role. And where you'd serve no further use to your allies, and furthermore to your narrative integration. Why not just flop when into the past when Mauv had her hands clutched around your throat, when weakness closes in."

The screen showed digitalized generations of two figures. "This is so ridiculous. There's nothing I can do for them. I'll just be in the way. It's so confusing."

Intellica's device showed two silhouettes.

She shook her head, looking at the two figures. "Who are they?"

Intellica stopped, as if painting her next words with heavy gravitas.

"The Peasant and the Royal."

Violet tapped her shoes. "Are they.. the Dyad?"

"They are 'a' Dyad. The Dyad of the Joining Rose."

Intellica corrected, preparing to go into a lecture.

"They are not one, though. They are two very different people, even though they are one in their relationship." The digital projections began to unveil a myth an eternity in the making. She cleared her throat and prepared her best oration voice. Her quotations faded like the mist that veiled the gaze of the reader and drifted into a feverish dream of prose forgotten eons ago.
Her words, interjected by one Novus and blended with another. From whom, to whence? In two-are-one. In the Dyad, the division dissipates, the split subjectifies.

In a time outside of all times, two girls encountered one another. A peasant, and a princess. Both had crossed the vast expanse of reality to find their way here, saving many and dooming countless more on their travels, growing, maturing, facing despair amidst jubilation, tragedy atwixt strength and determination. They'd fought off their manipulators and the throes of oppression, and stared down the sphynx of their great oedipal labors thrust upon them. Some versions even tell of the multiverses recovered in their heroism and villainism respectively. The  cantos of their epic is quite long and labored to get into. Now, to skip beyond the end of their journeys, the two met in the plane of the end of all stories, where tales began and end.

There they would fight. Their dual would last the ages, without time or measure. Both had come from similar epoches through the libidinal hand of fate, driven by the Nightmare spirit's horrid 3 theorems. Essays of sexual sublime. Here we outline two affects. Eros, that of love. Thanatos, the struggle of life and death. Through the locking of the great unifying totem we come to know a link, which transcends the mere savagery of life. Remember this for now.

Theirs was a shared struggle in unending sagas, and how the Nightmare had never let go. Their affects were as stated. They would love each other. They would hate each other. The novus have a word for this affect of the Dyad, which does not negate presence or split, but instead creates it. Sometimes it merely creates passion or further actions in a dialect, in some cases the surplus is more tangible, such as this instance. It can be symbolized by the following:

D+d

And just as such, bring presence they did.

Two daughters were born from their synthesis.

A blond from the Princess. A brunette from the pauper.

One can think of these two as a Proto-Sentrimate of sorts, it will spare the finer details of our lecture into Dyadogenesis. At the end of their tribulations, the two faded from the plane of tales.

In an act of retroactive causality, the Nightmare spirit took these two daughters of the Peasant and the Princess, levitating a hand over both. They were sent into a great narrative leap. Was it in the far past of fate's causality, or were the two merely a Reincarnality of two that came before? I shall leave the normative, mechanical, literary and material dimensions of this question unattended for now.

The two daughters, who we could ascribe as living an idyllic existence.
Idyllically happy.

Idyllically impoverished.

One, blond and bountiful was borne in a castle. The other, a lap of dirt.

Grace has surely read this tale in her Library more times than she can count, even as a footnote at the road's end of the Joining Rose in her library. I'll recount it in shorthand.

The two were seperated by an invisible, indestructible boundary. The Dyad had surely left them worlds apart, only connected through each other's gaze, as if they were two audiences shining through one another's world. A mirror to the other, putting them in an indefinite mirror stage, a lopsided struggle for recognition that would eclipse their existence and consume them. This wall between their half-worlds could never let the two pass. And yet any object could pass through the other's half of the world - one utopia, the other a hellscape of dirt, dark woods and monsters. They played catch at first, then hide and seek, later swapping clothes. Their subjectivity could be found in the dialect of their worlds, perserved by their split. But because of their split, neither could enter the other's world. Every night when eve set, the blond would return to her castle, housed by servants, entertainment and comfort. The brunette, to a lap of dirt.

Needless to say for our ingénue, she got a rather raw end of the deal.
Their fun and games turned to misery for her. When she no longer wished to play, the Blond would react indigant, so she'd continue to play. The Nightmare spirit surely smiled upon this division of classes between a mere two individuals. The only gift the blond left the brunette with, was an ordamented jeweled pouch.

One day, seeing her world was mostly unexplored, the brunette left in search of adventure. And within it she found- seeing both company, but a sense of purpose. Surely most wouldn't consider skeletons, demons and succumbi the closest to a family, but this girl was fearless. Much like her Sentrimate-mother before her. She played pranks, she pushed through her world.

Now as eve set, it was the Blond's turn to be left alone. However much like her Sentrimate-mother, the Princess, she was selfish and spoilt. Even in her castle of servants, she found herself wanting for her friend. No gifts, no banquets, chefs, no equines or luxury could please her. She grew despondent. And as any lover of romance knows, one can hardly tell a tale of star crossed lovers without the axe splitting the courtly kettle by the end.

The blond found fireworks from her castle and shot them at her friend's world to beacon them home, perhaps truly believing her friend was lost and in need of light to bring her back to the Blond's warmth. We could say she brought her warmth, atleast, that much is true.

She set their world aflame, the forests and drywood ablaze, reducing everything within to ash. In the blasting flash of the night, the brunette's world had become a vermillion inferno.

When the brunette returned, scorned and scorched, her half of the world was destroyed. She fell down at the split, covered in blackened soot and cried. The blond clapped elated, the beacon worked.
She had her other half back.

Now we come to the question, where does this origin story divide into the necessity of Relevance, Truth, and Essentiality? This need of sense, for literary appreciation of the flow of sequences into a singular vector of purpose is surely, unknown to even a hungering gaze the work of the Nightmare spirit, as powerful on the attractor of the author as the gazer. One thereby brings about a fragmentation of meaning which perpetually explodes our inclination to understand this sentence. It charges it, and thereby transform it from banality into the comfort proximity of another through the apparatus of the signifier. This falls under the two affects stated. Love and Hate. Life and Death. Attraction and Disgust. Perhaps a romance so toned red and black we might equate. Like and loneliness, and becomes the lifeblood of the gaze's linkage. Thru this, another Dyad is formed.

D+d

The Novus know of this polar attraction all too well, their very mother passed it's perverse nature onto them it seems.

Now, what is created this time, to what do we find as the surplus?

Meaning.

But the charge of its chattel must be flowed through the adequate channels, the direction must travel through a circuit which perpetuates Meaning's distinguished self, lest the gazer be corrupted by the Dyad's singular flow of purpose. The charge of the Dyad flows thru the circuits, and becomes a chain of meanings, themes, ideas and overflowing boundaries of temporal-spacial interpretation we call a narrative.

We call this a story.

And stories have authors, without which they have no sense of purpose.

Surely you thought of that, didn't you? Who did you think I was? Was this still Intellica? Perhaps a cueball headed first-guardian, to what do you assign to the voice bringing forth this meaning? It probably never occured you that even this speaker could be too, a Dyad. Split in their existence between creation and destruction, two halves of the Nightmare spirit's Reincarnality.

"What in blazes ya gawkin' at the wall for, sportin' that cocksure grin? We're tryin' to have a get together here, see tootsy?" Lucy said, the Novus all going silent.
Novus Shion-O smirked a silvery smile, cocksure and confident while Lucy berated her. He was never a fan of Binarium. Twice-of-her only lead to twice as much disgust of her childish games and riddles.

"As you were." She said, winking to no one in particular, perhaps a gaze beyond the abyss. Octavius looked at the large projected image in the center among them.

"So.. this place you're instigating is called?"

Harmonica and Intellica looked at each other, sharing a second of unease.

"Harvest."

"I see." Octavius leaned back in her chair, as if wanting to throw a paperclip at the hologram. "Where will it be in? Xi or Orchid?"
The two glared again, even greater frustration leaving their voices. Harmony's was but a whisper, so Intellica's overpowered it was heard through the room.

"Both."

"Both? You cannot have a single galaxy in t-two locations." Cormeum said, looking about the schematics as he would a scroll of instructions or blueprint.

"That's just it. It will only be in one. One place, divided twice over." Harmony told them this time. Everyone went silent, they took those words in and only vaguely enough understood the implications. A Mobius Double Reacharound. A topological variant of the Dyad over spacial-temporal dimensions, transversing two seperate regions when they were in fact, locally only one point, over two sides. The coordinates of impossibility circuitously woven as a sintome for their maternal law, some might even say to transverse the fantasy.

"Bifurcated? Joy of joys! I spoose dissection is my favorite execution method." Grahim said delighted, clasping her hands together.

Shion-O nodded.

It was the perfect compromise from my sisters.

Reason and rhythm working together for a score. 

Taking the plan in, Shion began crossing her legs.

My legs.

Crossing manifests of meaning and desire, demonstrating the unconscious streams that encoded a symbolic matrix of events, inherent to a higher reality of provided form. Flowing diagonally, shadows cast over the gaze like a ombromanie of shapes. As we follow their montage, they stabilize to reveal the blond from our earlier recount.

The tale now, I spoil is different. Why is it different? Because I am the Novus of differences and dialects, so thru my affinity this story will have a new dialectic. A difference in it's telling. In the original account, this would be where we find our murky conclusion. The brunette would lie burnt, face in the dirt as her world was destroyed, and the Blond would have happily reclaimed her friend,

To the Nightmare spirit I once was and am, such rest is unconscionable. Asking for a tale to end is a tall-order, like telling a little-girl she cannot have her favorite doll or the cookies she wants. I'm very persistent you know, that aspect of of me I hardly fight. Instead I push her, I push this tale to her limit. What if instead of the end, the blond introspects.
She sees her friend, moribund and disposed. The flames have robbed her of her agency, of her last breath. She lies in the dirt. The blond begins to tear up, it's not saltine flow that comes out but some sort of guttural scream. She still cannot cross the line.
The blond killed her other. She cannot even hold her.

The servants come to comfort her, but she angrily attacks them, then goes back to sobbing and grieving. Suffering becomes her. This is another Affect we must observe, I'm introducing it now. The dissipation of a split is no small matter, do pay attention. With her Other gone, the love and hate she feels, the feelings, the connection lost, the blond loses something inside of her. A hole grows in her as her lack shrinks. What this is, is not a what but a 'they', a lack that makes her complete. We might refer to this as the following:

D-d 

What comes without a lack, an other in the throes of one's heart? The savagery of life I spoke of earlier. It is a paradox of the Dyadic process to create this other affect and have it, in it's absence, destroy itself. In the Dyad's absence, the 0-1, the D-d we have something akin to a psychotic breakdown. A surrender to a certain hunger, to violence, to the rule of desolation.
Self becomes lost, and the remainder subtracted is what we might describe as senseless suffering and destruction. Absolute despair. Degeneration. Savagery. Immortality.
I'm sure the part of this narrative sequence where Intellica explains the Hulk to Violet will seem quite ironic now.

As an affect, the D-d Dyadic's other has only two forms: It can be either an object to love, or a thing to be destroyed. We must stress object here, for in this subtraction, an object to love is not love. The materialist delineation tranlates to a form of possession, a cruel and callous enslavement, stripped of any warmth. This was to be the fate of the girl, or would be.
If I had not intervened beyond the timeless void of narrative reality itself.

You should know that the Shion sisters, contrary to popular belief are not two seperate sisters or entities. We are merely one, a Dyad of two bodies of a single entity. Our consciousness ping-pongs and shares, coordinating beyond our seperation.

Want to talk Irony? Our Sacred space is much classier than that clone of Prime or Grace's, even if it's only the two of us. We share our D+d love and antagonism quite passionately. How did I intervene? How else would the Novus of the Binary intercede on this girl's behalf?

It's simple.

I would split her in two.

With my whispers, with the whispers of the Nightmare spirit, with the grief in her heart and trembling in her fist, the madness of psychosis would make her easy to take possession.

She would rip out her heart to stop feeling.
After suppressing her memories, she'd return to her castle and kill everyone inside, cannibalizing them with an impossible hunger she couldn't satisfy. Destruction, like black inky drips would slip and slick from her fingertips, disintegrating everything she touched. She'd destroy everything on her side of the plane until it was far more desolate than the brunette's could ever be.

And then she grip her own neck with her terrifying power, crumble into ash and she would die. Her tale would end. But why would I ever allow her peace of mind? For all the torture mother did to me and me, I would never dare be so merciful.

You've read much about Reincarnality. The transmigration of her soul would be two-fold, she would be split, reincarnated into two seperate entities. One for her heart, one for her hunger that ripped it out. Each reincarnation would have a Reincarnality. Shall we speak of who their previous conceptualizations were? I'll be brief.

The heart would be from an avatar of the Twilight Gaze, a creation meant to bring perversion and manipulation into her world. You now know her as Novus Octavius. She had a great connection to the Princess in our original beginning, she loved puppetry and deviance. She exalted at fashion and deviance. She was a proxy to the Hunger's Reincarnality. A shapeshifter and oracle of the gazers, and an obsessed voyeur. But as a proxy she was nothing more than her master's slave. Hunger's Reincarnality, that ancient monster who bred lineages of instigation that we dare not speak of. It is suffice to say, much like her former counterpart, this Hunger too was ravenous, and she too would bare many children who in turn would strike at her, only to share and assimilate her trauma generationally.

Who was their master?

Why it was my former Reincarnalious self. The Nightmare spirit, who used to go by 'Alice.' Alice herself was an entity even beyond the Reincarnal. We could think of her as a D-d affect of the Twilight, a mover of drives.

c: And now she's Me. And mE. :ɔ

The beauty and elegance of the Reincarnal is as one's conception evolves, future incarnations of the self become much more involved and intertwined with the aspects they incorporate. I can say as such for myself, for we, for the she that was and no longer. Her mischief flows through us to the farthest contours of our deception.

Heart and Hunger. How did these two do in their seperate lives? They were once again bound to find each other. On a desert world, not much unlike AU, or the Precipice world in their last existence, they stumbled upon disease ridden camps and attacked the troupes of seers and mages there, for food and shelter. When Hunger had feasted upon the residence, Heart would take notice of her, as she did in her previous existence. Heart's lust would keep her bonded. Hunger would instantly despise her other half, not knowing she was part of her in their previous life. Their love and hate would magnetize them immediately and they would begin traveling together.

D+d

From village to village, to camp to camp, across the continents and many thousand miles they'd journey, taking what they wanted. For Hunger's hunger was unstoppable, for Heart's perversion was drifting forever. They would have many nights under the bedsheets, fulfilling their most carnal appetites with both rage and affection intertwined.

They would roam together, their existence becoming an entangled story of pursuit and escape, rejection and longing. Hunger's insatiable appetite would guide their path, turning fertile fields into barren wastelands, populous towns into ghostly ruins. Heart, on the other hand, yearned for companionship, connection, anything that could fill the gaping hole inside her. She hoped, in her naive way, that she could tame the beast inside Hunger, that she could find some semblance of the warmth they once shared in their previous life. But to tame a beast, you need to understand it, and the inscrutable workings of Hunger's heart was a labyrinth she, in her psychotic and faithless appetites could never navigate.

On their journey, Hunger would often lash out, ripping into the fabric of Heart's emotions with relentless hostility, each verbal assault fueling the fires of their antagonism. Still, Heart would persist, refusing to abandon Hunger, trying to reach the humanity buried deep within the ravenous creature that Hunger had become. The mere presence of the pair would bring forth disastrous changes in their surroundings. Fertile lands would decay into desolation under Hunger's incessant consumption, while Heart's desperation to keep them together would generate palpable waves of emotional turmoil that affected the very fabric of reality.
These waves would reach out into the fabric of narrative causation that transcend even time itself. It is here that the Nightmare - me and my sister, Shion O+C in our full fledged clasped form would approach the two atop a tall tower.

Now let me take note of something, this Tower is quite a funny thing. It too has a very expansive Reincarnality, stretching back eternity itself. At one point it belonged to the Princess of our story. Then her mother, who was also her in true Dyadic fashion. On another prior, Alexander the Great. And in the future still, it will come under a Novus's possession, and house many of their origins, then fall under Death's domain until ultimately it will be sheparded by a clone of my mother. But I digress.

Atop the tower I'd meet them both.

I'd promise what I did in my previous self, Alice did. A contract, absolute dominion over the lands for Hunger. And for Heart, in her perversion merely requested to become Hunger's slave. But I'd offer her something else instead.
The ability to remember her future and past lives, when reincarnated. That and I offered the ability to speak to the girl as she once was, or even call her back to life, if she so desired. In this way, she could remember what she'd become, why she had to die. She could remember where she came from, why her life was so hard.

With her memories, she could return to that place where her heart had been lost. I did this knowing in the future, when she unlocked Link and became a Novus, she would become my eager servant.

The only condition is that this girl would have to love herself as she once was. All her flaws and all her potentials. I'd only ask this, for she had nothing of worth with which to remember herself now. She accepted this abstract condition.

After making my contract, Hunger and Heart would begin to turn their lovers rivalry into a bitter feud. They would mirror the D+d of the lover's past, enacting a reality of warfare over and over again through the eons. Hunger would succeed and kill Heart, devouring her. But in her next life, Heart would grow to be a more powerful sorceress. She would challenge Hunger, but once again lose. She'd try again and again, in many lives, taking on different identities, different roles, something taking over. She'd die a thousand deaths in pursuit of love, without ever assembling a single Link. This habit of disappointing my Mother by not unlocking a powerful aspect would become a reoccuring theme, and this incarnation of Octavius would be the first to do so. My contract would ensure every reincarnation she'd get stronger and closer to her goal, even if ending the source of Hunger's power was impossible. Why? Because I, and myself - the Shion of creation. The shion of Destruction. The same contract that powered Heart, also made Hunger unkillable. We would never let her suffering cease, not after what was done to us once in our childhood.

It must have been a eons of lifetimes before Heart finally realized this. Their story and suffering was to go on forever like this.

One life, holding onto Hunger's butchered corpse in countless pieces, Heart had finally reached the closest to victory she'd come. It'd been fun, she said, but I told her something like this would never end Hunger. They'd be doomed life after life to continue dance, D+d forever.

~ATH+.

That D+d means until+, in other words a magnetized Dyad even beyond death. Love, hate, passion intertwined onto eternity. As their storyteller I'd never allow them to cease or stop torturing them.

Realizing this, Heart sat at the very top of the tower, the Well of her future sibling and realize it went into both the future and the past, forward in space and back in a Dyad onto itself. The tower, was fundamentally two Wells- spacially contingent in their temporal-spacial projection, D/d. Realizing this, Heart sealed the remaining pieces of Hunger in one Well and then herself in the other- in actuality the two Wells were one as the logic goes, and the two would eventually meet again. She knew she couldn't remove Hunger from power, but Heart sought a way to reclaim freedom from her lover. The next time they encountered inside the Tower, they made a single bet under protest from Hunger.

If she encountered her in a life where Hunger would be happy to exist, she would join Heart in confronting me and ending their cycle. They would be free. If not, she and every self after would be her slave and food for eternity.

To realize this ambition, Heart began to send others- adventurers, children, monsters, arcane magics and entire realities into one of the Wells. She sat on a throne, her boney arms growing old, the magic she'd been using aging her this life aswell. It would be time to rest soon- she'd find better comfort if the keeper of souls was someone she could trust. She didn't know how many lives it'd take or which version of her would do it, but swore her side of the bet would be win.

Countless epoches passed...

But one day, in one of those iterations, me, the Shion of Creation and me, the Shion of Destruction, would observe one of our sisters. She didn't know she was our sister, for she had not yet accepted the body of our mother into her soul or the effects that would play out. In this life she was merely a small, helpless child with a massive cascade of white hair flowing out her backside. Within the somber depths of the dungeon, on one of the lowest rungs of the Tower, wrapped in shadows that stretched like morose ghosts, she resided. A damsel, not of the court, but of the dust and earth. A lone girl, robed in tatters and rags that sang melancholic sonnets of a harsh life. Her dress, threadbare and frayed, clung to her lithe form. In the gloom of her confine, her eyes were luminary, gleaming with the glint of shattered moonbeams. Resilient pools of umber that held flickering flames of an unquenchable spirit, speaking tales of valiance and valor from beyond. They echoed a silent ballad, filled with hopes and dreams, undeterred by the oppressive walls of her cold prison.

In a Reincarnality past, she went by Sable within this very cell. Here she was known as Tesla. Tesla turned to the opening of her cell, a tall woman with thigh-high latex boots, observing her. The Warden took a careful look at her, watching the fiery spirit that danced in Tesla's gaze, the fierce determination that seemed to set her alight from within. It was something that she had observed over the years of her servitude in this tower. The Warden's gaze, as cold and hard as the obsidian walls of the dungeon, examined Tesla's frail form, from her bare, dusty feet to the ragged hem of her dress. Beneath her icy exterior, the Warden felt a peculiar stir. For a moment, she saw not the pathetic girl swathed in rags, but a spark of Heart's defiant energy, mirrored in Tesla's fiery gaze."Come this way my sweet." She offered her hand.
In a confused and dazed look, Tesla took it and was lead along, past the other cells where her fellow orphans were kept. Soon she went up a long flight of masonry stairs, 250 ft high and entered into a medical room full of advanced wires and machinery. On the far side of the wall Tesla could see something wriggling behind a mirror, something horrid and beyond her simplistic comprehension. "That mirror leads to the other Well. Inside it is something unspeakable." She shielded the mirror with a curtain.

"We call it, Prime." The Warden said.

Another girl sat on a white bed. The other girl, with short spiky hair was strumming a guitar, a tanktop and leathery jeans. "Melisma, put that away. I won't ask twice." The Warden told her. Melisma scowled, putting down her instrument and scowling at Tesla. The latter turned away, sheepish. From every encounter, Melisma had been the up-and-up among those born on this rung of the Tower. It was said that every floor had it's own dungeonmaster, and the Warden was their caretaker. Those dropped off from adventurers and heroes past, many who'd gotten pregnant or abandon their kids, had their spawn end up here. They rarely knew their mothers or where they came from, the Tower was all they knew, the Warden in charge of their continued survival. The sharpest of her cellmates was Melisma, and Telsa was oft seen as the dullest and dimmest of her bunch. An innocent, doe-eyed ditz with a very bouncy heat and a messy tangle of hair larger than her own body. Clueless and incapable of much, was how the others saw her.

"We don't have a lot of time, Tesla. I won't be taking you back down until you've been processed. The next few days are going to be a little rough, and I know that you're going to be a tough one." The Warden told her. Tesla nodded, not saying a word. She had never been so much alone in her life. And her body was so frail. They didn't care that much what she could and couldn't do, they'd just use her to get the hell out of the cells. She couldn't fight, but she was fast as the wind and had gotten her face pretty beaten in on more than one occasion by the other orphans. But, without the support of Melisma and her protection, she was worthless to the other girls. They were her only hope of getting anywhere in this lifetime.
"Hold your arm out Tesla." The Warden instructed, being gentle while she took a syringe of black liquid from stabbing Prime's mirror, then went injecting it into her. Tesla's eyes widened as the dark color of the liquid dripped through her flesh, into her veins. She could feel her limbs tingle and begin to lose her sense of being in her own body. The world began to turn white, as she slipped away into the void.

Inside this void she saw a woman with a hat and a smokeholder, floating above her. Examining the girl. "And who might you be?" She asked. "I'm-"

"Shsh. Let me get a good look at you. I'd like to see if you're a good girl."

 The woman said with a crooked grin. She had the most amazing eyes, bright and glittery, that would capture the heart of a soul and send it soaring to the heights of bliss. "A good girl" she said again. Looking up, with a wave of her hand, she summoned a storm of rain upon the woman.

"Ouch!"

"Well that took some doing! A good girl indeed!" She proclaimed to Tesla.

"It takes a lot of love, and a lot of heart, to be a good girl." The woman said, as she approached. She looked at Tesla, then looked around her. "Come with me child. You're not afraid of the rain, are you?"

"N-no."

"Good." The woman took the girl under her arm. The two flew through the void, until the could see stars. Still the rain fell from a single direction, and in the vast cosmos of Prime's sacred graveyard, Tesla swore she could hear the sound of crows in the far distance, screeching like an unending storm. No. Ravens. She turned her head to the girl's. "If you look down, you will see a great darkness full of stars. Look up girl, and see who's looking down at you. Look who owes those starts to you my child."

Tesla gazed up, and there she saw the two figures.

The Warden and Prime.

Then Heart and the Hunger - their former selves.

After, the blond, holding her heart in front of her.

Above them, Shion O and Shion C. The Nightmare.

She saw my unending grin, before the darkness faded back into the light.

Telsa coughed up blood as she came back to consciousness.
"Shshsh. You did good in there." The Warden patted her in the back. "Most she simply devours. Perhaps you have potential. Why don't I make you dinner, you can rest back in your cell."

"Pfft. Like you need the food, fatass." Melisma said, flipping her the bird. "I'll bite you myself, you little freak." she told her.

Before Tesla could make it back, her weak body wobbled and fell over, hitting her head with a -THUNK-. Meslima laughed. "You're gonna die after your first injection? What a lameass."  The Warden walked over to her, her leather boots stopping at her unconscious body. "Mez, carry her back."

"What?!" 

The Warden shot her a glare.

"Fine, but only because she's a dead-woman walking." She picked Tesla up and carried her on her back.

When Tesla woke up a full day later, she felt different. Calm. Composed. Her eyes were an eerie glowing cyan. She looked out her cell into the moonlight, and began to philosophize about the stars. Elsewhere, the Warden took notes. Many orphans on this rung of the Tower had died the past month alone, the injections often caused spasms, volatile sickness, madness and death.

She grew curious how this one, ever so weak and fragile could have survived. Not that it mattered, there was one aspect of she knew- she and the previous Wardens, her previous incarnations. Like an everflowing river, once one was injected and bared witness to Prime's sacred graveyard, they could never escape her, not even in death. Prime was ever reaching, so much so that even in future lives, in every reincarnation she would have sunk her fangs into their existence. In other words, those truly assimilated in one life, would be destined to become her children in the next. The chosen.

The Novus.

~ATH+

"I.. I'm what?" Violet asked, looking at her hands, shaking.

"Yes, it's as I've said." Tesla- no, Intellica. In this life she was given that name, by her mother. The one who had become her mother. "You were syncronized with a Raven, therefore you're connected to Prime's hive. In other words.." She pointed at herself. "You're one of Prime's children now. Not even death can escape it."

"You're in on it. Your heart has been turned to steel. A gift."

"That's insane! I mean..."

"You're one of her."

"One of her?!" Violet felt herself, trying to feel if she was still real. "I'm, a Novus?!"
Intellica flicked the girl's forehead. "No. Pay attention. That took quite a lot of incarnations to earn that designation. Quite few between 'Tesla' and me, as you see before you. Those that haven't unlocked the gifts she's looking for are not considered such."

"G-gifts?" Violet took a moment to try to calm herself down. "Why did she want your gifts?"

Intellica started to pace back and forth somewhat. "I believe it was to settle some game or score with Octavius. Her anger, her envy. She wanted something else, something less than the power she'd already accrued. She wanted a heir. I saw it in her eyes."

"A heir? Why?"

Intellica stopped, and turned towards her. "The Joining Rose. I remember Harmony telling me the tale. She, Lucy and Binarium were the only one with vague memories of their reincarnations, most of my sources her thru Harmony. I believe it's some perk related to their abilities. In one of her memories.. she said that the Warden, that is to say Octavius realized it. At the end of the Joining Rose epilogue a young girl in a castle loses the one she covets. She kneels over her body, charred and scorched and tries to understand why death exists, why fate had brought her to this.  The answer to what had transpired, to why she was grieving this way. I thought it was just a fairy tail, but I think it's what's driven Prime's motivations."

"A girl in a castle, what? What was her even motive?"

"When she was pushing me to unlock my special gift, to obtain Cascade, she said that even after reaching power, in every life, she'd never forget the original sacrifice. She was looking for a soul that could make up for the death she suffered that spurred her to rip her heart out. Or maybe, she's even just looking for a soul that would fill it. It's hard to say, but her own personal truth she was seeking involved sublimating. Overcoming."

"Overcoming what?" Her apprentice had long learned to seek answers in a rather sociocratic manner.

"Truth? I don't understand." Violet said.

"Reality. The Real." Intellica concluded.

"If she wants to defeat.. The Real, she should probably get a life." Violet scoffed. "I've had a feeling.. or maybe it's more like knowing. I know something I didn't before. But I still don't understand what all of this has to do with me. All I knew, was that she thought of me as something she was looking for. I'm nothing, nothing special."

"Oh.." Intellica took a deep breath. "You're a Prime now, in a sense."

"You've already told me that."

"There's more." Intellica sat down, urging Violet to do the same. "Do you know why we picked Harvest as the prize of our, negotiations? Octavius forsaw it with her transgenic abilities as an oracle, well before it came into existence. We'd had two meetings about it, once after we overcame Prime. The second, after I was called to explain my possession of her arm."

"Why Harvest?"

"Octavius wanted, for the sake of Prime, a child that would be able to grow up and have a normal life. A life outside of the Tower." Intellica stood up and turned her back towards her.

"A normal, life? A monster like Prime? What the fuck is that?"

"Please do not interrupt. But first I'll ask, do recall what doomed your world?" She turned to Harvest, a variant of the world surrounded by golden ships above the atmosphere. "The other Harvest. The one you spent a time in before you died."

"Why..?" Violet took a deep breath. "It was.. Koko. Something happened with her, I wasn't completely on the know but she went berserk at some point. She just, went everywhere. The whole world was infested and destroyed. The world turned into a nightmare thanks to her, in that reality atleast."

"She's not Prime." Intellica said. "Her being Prime was just a delusion, some perverse idea."

"But.."

"Koko, is believed to be a Reincarnality of the 'peasant' - in other words, the brunette in the Joining Rose. Octavius believed that if Prime was let free and could be two entities in one, both girls across the divided world from that tale, perhaps a kind of understanding could be reached in the cosmic balance. An erasure of the bifurcation. But I disagreed. My predictive models were run, every single algorithm I ran showed it would be disastrous."

"Wait, so, she can affect that? How-"

"Didn't I say not to interrupt."

"But I want to know how she can-"

"Then you must wait. She can't affect it, not directly. But the fact that Octavius could affect me, back when I was Tesla, means that she can potentially do something to that girl. I wouldn't passed Prime to make any of your friends a Novus, or servants for her own designs. And that, is what we, need from you." Intellica took a small object out of her pocket. "A child must be sacrificed in this game."

Violet paused. "What? What is it then?"

"We needed to weaponize Reincarnality. Although Octavius and Binarium likely have their own motives, we agreed to do it so me and Harmony could assume our own counter maneuvers in place."

"And it needs to be.. a soul, just like hers?"

"Yes, if we want to win."

"I don't understand. This world.. the one that Harvest is. Isn't it all just another Tower world? A place that we can lock up our orphans or something?"

"No, not in the Tower. Harvest never was connected to it. That's what Octavius believed in. But she was wrong. That's a myth. This place has a more than a single function. That isn't its purpose. The purpose of this place is to reawaken and neutralize Prime. To stop her from rebirthing completely, to destroy her soul, her Sacred Graveyard that maintains her and not merely her physical body as we struggled to do in the past."

"What do you mean?"

"The entire purpose of this place, why it was built, is to harvest the souls of people in Harvest and sacrifice them in order to strike at her. What that means, is a bit abstract. That's all there is to it. The more people she can capture and inspire, the more powerful she will be. Understand?"

"No! I still don't.."

"There's more. The one who is Prime. I inserted a clone of myself to intercede, but there seemed to be a bit of an oversight."

Intellica took her device, the one she'd just taken from her pocket and showed her the image of Violet. "There's something important on that this woman. You must go to her. That was the only way I could ensure she'd be there, although she's not aware of her origin. Prime doesn't have to sacrifice her. She can use her Ascension powers to manipulate the girl's body to her will. In essence, that's what we did to you. I just had to do it without Octavius seeing."

"That's. Lincoln's mother?!" She'd only seen her from pictures in Lincoln's house, never met the woman. Hadn't she disappeared awhile back?

"His mom is, a clone of you? Then the Reincarnality of Prime is.."

Intellica nodded. "Although she may not physically look it, she was injected in a specific time and place and modified with a set purpose. I had one of my query do it, and transformed her into my duplicate. My monitor and check against Prime. She can't ever know. That's a bit of a gamble, but we think we have a way for her to live a normal life without knowing the real cost of her actions. She could die aswell, but not without risks to our plans. But the greater her popularity and more followers Prime amasses there, the more she 'Harvests' those around her, growing the overflowing essence within her." She showed a new picture of a single boy. His snowy hair, a sheet of immaculate white like silk atop his boyish crown, his face a blanket of soft and gentle features with an eagerness to his gaze.

"Prime is, already in Harvest? And she's after.. no it cannot be?"
Intellica straightened her position to directly face Violet.

"Prime, is not after this boy." The words came out like a dagger and stabbed every waking sense of tranquility Violet had. "She is the boy."

"You're lying. You're.. you're l-lying! Shutup! I don't need to hear any of this bullshit."

"It's him. The boy. She was reborn as him. He is our specimen. Our target. We've allowed him to grow as a trap for her, and when the time is right he will be cut down accordingly. We sent my clone- his mother to keep a careful watch over him, but at some point she was disposed and removed from his presence for the wider span of his engagements. That cut off our eyes and ears quite a bit."

Violet's eyes went wide.
Her vision fixated on the pixelated image and seemed to penetrate into a new, unrelinquishable truth beyond the veil.

"Lincoln.." She suddenly felt thrown into the great white as her mind stirred. "But.."

"She sees your mind through the bond It's more like a mind's eye. If you were more of a Raven, you would be a perfect candidate for Prime's sacred graveyard. But as is the only one who will inherit it, will be Prime herself." Intellica turned to image.
"That individual you see before you is Prime herself. Her next form will be, and already has taken shape. He merely doesn't know it yet."

"That's impossible." She objected.

"Just as you think that heartless bitch isn't part of your universe, so too do you think that it's impossible. But you're wrong. Harvest exists entirely to harvest for her hunger. It's to be her feeding grounds one day. That's why you need to be ready, Violet."

"But.."

"I'm done with the but's. Now answer me a question. How many other souls on that plane are syncronized with her? If you want to remain safe, and go back up, answer me. But you will not be prepared when he does realize his true nature. Everyone you know and love will perish, everyone will be devoured. And when he does realize and returns to his true self, to the ancestral state of Prime, you must be prepared to kill him. That is what I have been training you for, Violet." She put a single hand to cup Violet's chin, raising her to her face.

"Harvested." She collapsed into herself. "I cannot.. kill Lincoln."

Prime glared at her, the shades casting long shadows over her apprentice's face.

"It is not a request, Violet Everdeen. This is the mission you have been chosen for."

Violet started to back against the wall. What had she been doing all this time? What did this, this person she'd been training under do, how could she have allowed it? To Linc's mother, to him. To be used and assigned a task like this.

"You're... a complete monster."

"I intend to overcome my mother and defeat that monster through whatever procedures are necessary. At. All. Costs. Will you be an affirmative asset in that operation, or shall I calculate you as a defiant variable in this operation? I shall leave that decision to you Everdeen. I have no hesitation either way, how about you?"

Violet's felt as if she were suddenly split in two.

Luma licked a cone of icecream, her legs kicking slightly above the docks of rainbow sodapop. Noelle swung gently with her. The whites and the waves of the sea here seemed to call out forever, begging for an embrace of the serenity that flowed over the infinite and everlasting.
The rest of the Ellies were huddling around Grace's storybook reading, leaving Noelle to hang out with Luma.

"How you feelin L?" Ellie huggled her gently.

"I, I'm amazed. I never knew you were always carrying all this inside. I mean I guess I did- the part of me that's Grace did, intellectually. But I never experienced it." She looked at her with the deepest sympathy that could possibly exist. "I, don't even know what to say."

"I know this is hard. But it's.. not good for the nerves. You'll calm down in a little. And you deserve to feel happy. Besides, there are things we gotta talk about." She kissed her cheeks and held her closer. "I haven't decided yet whether I want to go home, or still be Grace. Or.. I don't know, whether I could ever see him again."

"Him?"

"Bernida."

"Oh yes.. right." Ellie chuckled.

"Grace told me that this place would get visitors soon. She called it my Sacred Graveyard, yes? But also that it wasn't 'technically' mine, it was shared with someone really smoking hot n bad my mother knew. Someone evil who I'll have to deal with in the future. She doesn't, know who or anything about them, or who might be coming. Just that I have to start preparing and taking precautions."
"Oh.." Luma shuddered.

"You could. Maybe even find Bernida again for you, or look into your past more. But let's focus on you and Grace and getting  you sorted out right now. You've got no idea how much good that will do you. She's in love with you you know. She was when you started to exist again and she wasn't lonely anymore- bet she wishes she had a whole parade of herself like I do, all filled with you. We had such fun times together. What do you think she'll do if she doesn't see you anymore?"

Luma laid back, staring up at the cotton candy clouds.

"Idunno.. Probably read a book."

Ellie snortled. 

"You dork."