And with a single swing of Twilight, the pillar of light was shattered.
With endless gluttony the blade of the Dark Forest attempted to consume the seed, light collected over the course of decades devoured with each second. Yet decades were nothing to the millenia that was spent, and the beast found its all devouring beak wanting in size.
The light was sent to the agent who wielded it, then to the voice whispering in his ear. Yet it continued to flow, infinite in its size and depth. The futile struggle could only go on for so long, and with a violent tug the agent was pulled into the pillar, disappearing from sight.
Binah could only chuckle in amusement as the light began to spiral out of control from the disturbance caused by Twilight. With no rhyme or reason it began to spread out in every direction, sputtering from view.
"That won't do." Binah whispered to herself, raising a hand as a singularity stirred from within her. Locks were put to restrict the chaos, and fairy was used to carve out a path.
From every direction the light pulled, and everything within the facility became its domain.
The eye watching over the city, unhearing of the cries below.
The third beholder and eleven claws, birthed from the light in district 4.
The eye watching over the facility, unspeaking of the final truth.
The second beholder, left to lament in hell for millenia more.
The eye watching over the library, unseeing of their true wishes.
The first beholder, blessed with the right to witness her journey to paradise.
The eye watching over the mirror, an eternity of non existence.
The final beholder, made to stare into the endless shards of what could've been.
The head watching over the light, joining her in an eternal dance.
The original, and the final. What he will do, Binah does not know.
And finally, the ending stroke.
With a massive shake the facility began to descend, back to its origin deep underground. Uncaring of shattered pillars and broken concrete, it flipped to where it once was. Malkuth at the peak, Keter at the bottom.
Binah let out a tired sigh, sweat tainting her brows. Her performance finished, she put a dot at the end with a wisp of light sent towards the grieving A.I.
It was nothing more than gust, a tiny tug at the heart. Yet it was all that was needed to shatter such a fragile being.
With a cry, a boundless structure began to rise from atop the surface, and along with it formed a concealing mist.
The work was done, and with one final chuckle Binah watched as blood and scrap turned into pages. Like an unstoppable wave it washed over the facility, everything made not from his mind consumed by the A.I's grief.
A wistful sigh was all she released as paper began to run along her fingers.
There was no end to the structure of the mind.
Millennia of existence perceived a thousand times slower lived a million times over. Every moment was a page, and thus arose great towers of books.
With each second every moment of her existence would be lived anew, and another tower would form. Yet the old would not give way, and thus arose the endless forest of suffocating memory.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Angela did not raise her head at the sound of footsteps, for the world was silent, her only companion.
"Quite the magnificent scene. The soul is certainly an incredible construct."
For just a single moment, the voice seemed oh so similar to his. A little hoarser, a little deeper, but still familiar. It was enough for Angela to spare a glance.
Greying hair and wrinkled features. A man around the age of Benjamin, or perhaps slightly older. She did not recognize his features.
Pop.
Angela frowned at the sight, champagne from a freshly opened bottle spilling onto a book.
"Your deepest, most desperate desire—" The old man began, a cane appearing within his hands from wisps of light.
"I can fulfill them." Silence stretched for a moment as Angela stared into his eyes. She found nothing but confidence within. A smirk painted across his face.
With a single tap from his cane pages were set asunder into a storm of paper as distant towers of books collapsed. The man's smirk widened as he saw the surprise in Angela's eyes.
"All you need to do—" he reached out towards her face with his hands
"—is entrust yourself to me."
Any and all measures of logic dictated that she should resist. Yet there was an invisible compulsion that told her to obey, and so she did.
She did not reject his touch as he used his thumbs to gently shut her eyes.
"Abel would be my name."
Agents and clerks glanced towards one another in confusion, for within the control department there was nobody to give them orders. All E.G.O's and department assignments had been stripped from their uniforms along with captain ranks, and as neither the sephirah nor the manager was present within the room, there existed no chain of command.
In spite of having died to empowered abnormalities mere moments ago, former team captains shook off their confusion and attempted to gather their old teams and form some sense of organization.
Moderate success was achieved over the course of an hour with all employees divided according to their old assignments and the authority of former captains was restored within their teams. It would all be interrupted however as the elevator leading to the managerial office opened with a small 'ding'.
From within an unkept man with a dirty lab coat walked out. In spite of his appearance, every employee present stiffened in nervousness.
A tired voice rang out across the room.
"Energy production will continue as per usual. Return to your departments, all further orders will be given from the managerial office. I will be your manager from now on, you may refer to me as Abram."
With a grunt of pain agent Edward rose to his feet, using Justitia as a support to prevent his shaky legs from giving out.
He was not alone, as he heard groans from ten others around him. He recognized them well, if not their faces than at least the E.G.O's they wielded.
"What happened?" Somebody asked, but when Edward attempted to recall his memories he found nothing but a blank. He was an agent, and he was ordered to support the manager in his task of performing a confidential task in the extraction department and…
There was nothing else.
But there was something else.
If he simply focused and reached out within his mind, he could untie the knot of memory and see what lay beyond—
"All of you are finally up."
Only now did Edward notice that they were in a forest, and not three steps away from them a man sat upon a log. His skin was of pure white with the only exception being tendrils of black travelling up his exposed arm.
Without a single thought, he knelt upon one knee, his face cast down reverence. A glance would reveal all his fellow agents to have done the same. It felt as though an invisible force had settled upon his shoulder, a divine light seen at edges of his vision.
He heard the man chuckle.
"Well, it appears as though I don't need to bother with an explanation. You may know me as Adam, and you need not know anything else."
The sun shone, a bird sang. He sat in a field of flowers, a small garden grown in the outskirts of the city. On his mind was nothing in particular, a million thoughts that once raged now settled in the corners of his mind.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Footsteps were heard behind him, and he turned around to a familiar sight.
"Hey Ayin."
A pair of crimson so familiar, shining clearly within his memory even after the millenia.
"Hello, Carmen."
Notes:Damn it… The Purple Tear…" Roland groaned out, coughing quickly followed suit as he inhaled what was likely an unhealthy amount of dust.
"That hag, can't believe this is how she handled it…" He whispered, quickly glancing in every direction.
The age of the surrounding scenery made him think for a moment that he had been thrown into an outskirts ruin. Indeed, what little he could make out of the stale wooden floor suggested an age beyond reason—covered by a thick layer of soot no doubt many centuries old. But the reputation of the one who delivered him tempered his bubbling rage. He could trust her, he had to.
As he slowly stood on shaky feet, a voice called out to him from the haze of dust.
"I despise roundabout speech that doesn't get straight to the point, so don't try to get wordy." It was…cool, cold even. A voice neutral beyond reason, expressing little to no emotion. In fact, the only thing he could discern was that the voice was feminine.
For someone who was an expert at reading people, it was unsettling to say the least.
"Who are you?" It asked him.
With practised ease Roland assumed a non-threatening stance. Back a little bent, hands kept close to his pockets. A nervous expression, a little bit of fear in the eyes. Anything to deescalate.
"W-Well, I was just walking around, and ended up here before I even realised it. I have no idea how I got here, I swear I wasn't trying to tres—"
With a painful scream Roland fell to the ground clutching his right leg, now nothing more than a stump. Burning agony spread across his body like a ripple, the sensation somehow far more painful than simple decapitation should be.
"You didn't answer my question, who are you?" The voice by contrast showed no change.
Cold. Even. Robotic.
"Like I said, I'm just some person who was on a walk. Shit, my leg. Blood—"
Roland screeched in pain once more as he felt something dig into his stump of a leg, like a serrated blade slowly slicing through bone and flesh.
"Final warning. Identify yourself."
Between panicked pants of pain he spoke. "I-I'm just a grade 9 fixer, t-trying to make ends meet. D-Damn it, these limbs are all I have, I-I don't have the money to get replacements."
Finally, the voice revealed itself—a pair of auburn eyes glowing with a faint light from beyond the cloak of dust. A pale complexion, hair an unnatural hue of blue. He could already tell, it wasn't human.
"Fixer." Though the unfeeling voice didn't make it clear, the tilt of its head suggested it was a question.
"Y-Yeah, just a g-grade 9. O-One man office, Roland's office."
His hurried pants were the only sound to fill the air as it stared at him silently. He could do nothing but contemplate his quickly bleeding leg and his powerlessness to stop it. To be pushed into a corner so quickly. Damn it.
"I-I'm guessing you don't have some miracle medicine t-to offer me, do you?" He asked.
"..."
Silence. Nothing but dead orbs of auburn.
But then, he heard another voice.
"Now, now, Angela. It's impolite to treat such a respectable guest so cruelly."
There was another pair of auburn, these ones thankfully not glowing.
Emotions were clearly visible within them, a human.
He would've sighed in relief, yet the man put him on edge even more than the pale thing did. Roland knew many people, and he could recognize somebody missing a part of their soul when he saw one.
"M-Mind giving me a hand? O-or a leg." Roland made a poor attempt putting on a smile, and the man chuckled heartily in response.
"Of course, of course." The man casually brought a hand up.
SNAP
He was suddenly sitting in a cozy office filled with expensive furniture and stacks of paper. It was definitely a rich person's office, something that belonged to a section director or a nest official.
The pain was also gone, and a glance below showed two healthy legs with no signs of blood.
"I'm confident I made no mistakes in restoring your leg, I'm quite the expert you see." With a smug smile the man sat across a desk, a cup of steaming tea held close to his face.
Roland sighed in relief. "T-Thank you. Though I wish you could've interfered a little earlier, losing a leg isn't exactly pleasurable."
"You're welcome." The man made no attempt to acknowledge his mock complaint.
"Angela here is quite competent at dismantling things, it's a good thing I'm just as good at rebuilding them." Only now did Roland notice the…thing, standing beside the desk. The same neutral expression was still painted across its face.
He had to suppress a flinch at the sight. He still couldn't read anything.
The man cleared his throat before speaking up once more. "I'm Abel, the head of the architectural department and the one who holds the leash on your debt."
Roland had to do a double take at the words, though a single second of thought was enough to have him sighing in futility. "Figures, nothing in the City is free."
They take a limb then give it back, just to ask for repayment. A move right out of an urban plague syndicate's playbook. Extra points if they got the prosthetic replacement by selling the flesh of the original limb.
"Indeed, so from now on you'll be working for me." Abel said matter-of-factly.
Roland had to sweatdrop. "Right to the point, huh? Is this some kind of crazy wing doing experiments on random folk? Turning people into popcorn machines or something?"
Though he had meant it as a morbid joke, Abel shrugged in a manner that had him questioning if he was actually right.
"I suppose you could put it that way. Angela will explain your duties to you."
Before he could process the man's words, Abel brought his hand up and—
SNAP
He found himself in a different room once more, a fancy space filled with shelves upon shelves of books.
And his only companion was the pale thing, staring at him unblinkingly.
"..."
And there was only silence.
"...I'll be in your care?"
"..."
Roland couldn't help but gulp.
Notes: