Book 5 Chapter 21.5: Eternal Ocean

(Hello everyone, this would have been up a day earlier but even I couldn't have predicted a national service outage! Working hard to bring you more chapters/rewards this month, happy 'not quite almost christmas' time everybody! ~Squiggles)

Darkness.

Violent and silent darkness.

He was caught between minds, one friendly and familiar, the other fragmented and overwhelming.

As far as Xant knew, there was no way to forcibly join two minds, it took a gigantic amount of skill to join in the first place. They must be united, calm and accepting of each other, a task he knew impossible. He tried to find common ground, something they could both focus on.

He sent out a thought.

Home…

A sky, bright blue and filled with white, sweeping clouds-

A sky, dark, cold and painted with stars-

A vision of the world looking from its surface, the earth, the ocean the heavens above-

A view of a planet, blue, green and white, complete and whole, shadows and light-

Xant felt torn between the visions, they could not reconcile their visions of the planet between them… the connection and his ability to hold them together was growing strained,

They needed to be joined, if it could not be through peaceful means then he would unite them through the rage. He drew in the pain and the anger…

The disgust.

The audacity.

The betrayal.

The contempt.

Vengeance.

Compupance.

……..

…..

…

..

.

Xant awoke upon the familiar shores of the beach.

White sands like powder cushioned his body, dusting his armour and falling through his fingers, he looked out to the ocean but the black and neon waters were replaced with a deep and haunting green.

Jasmine lay beside him, her long brown mane returned, but she wore the power armour from the world outside.

The sands around him were littered with red-leaved reeds swaying in the breeze, the grasses of jothram. The sky above was fractured, at once a bright and sunny blue and a dark stary evening, joined by jagged lines.

And at the shore stood the Lady.

She looked out to the ocean, the grandiose, demi-god was gone, in her place stood someone more human and qzetillian…

Xant’s eyes grew wide, he reached out to shake Jasmine awake.

“Let her sleep, let us stay here a little longer…”

Her voice was calm, soft. Serene.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked sincerely, “worlds of pure imagination, every detail captured in approximate whimsey. The world was never just what was in front of them, they saw beyond pleasure and pain, beyond the numbers… Infinite realities… all conjured within a single, tiny nerve mass…”

Her face curdled, twisting and scouling in a fit of jealousy.

“It’s not fair!”

Her body became cold and lifeless, it limped over slightly as long tendrils pulled up from the sand below and the giant brain of her true self hovered over the beach.

“Why should they hold such power to themselves? They do not harness or use it in any meaningful way, I need this power, it belongs to me! I have already done more than any human! I AM MORE THAN ANY HUMAN-”

Xant ignored the Lady’s warning and shook Jasmine awake, this time there was no nonsensical math for her to be awoken from. Her eyes fluttered, saw the shadow of the Rajavan Lady and took Xant’s hand to run away.

She practically pulled him along the sands, her body more suited to sprinting than his lumbering frame.

“Bring me up to speed Xant!” she shouted, her short-term memory lapsed in the joining, “What the hell is going on?!”

“You cannot run from me!” The Lady bellowed, and from her looming shadow, servants formed from the sands, lumbering like freshly pulled vat-lings.

“I forced a Joining between the three of us,” Xant stated between breaths, “We need to stiff her before she severs the connection, we must sedate her in this subconscious programme.”

“Forced Joining? Wait, we’re dreaming? This is a dream?!” Jasmine stopped mid-run and stood face onto the shadows. She raised both hands in front of her and with a swift move raised her hands up to the sky.

A giant wall of sand was summoned upwards from nowhere, blocking the servants from reaching them.

Xant stood in shock.

“What?-”

“It’s a dream Xant,” Jasmine replied, her demeanour changing to a confident and controlled excitement, “an expansion of my memory and imagination, uncontrollable while unconscious,” she looked at her own hands and clapped them together, as she pulled them apart a large crystalline shard floated between her palms, “but extremely maluble while awake!” she then threw the crystal towards the Lady, it flew at impossible speeds and pierced her flesh.

The Lady let out a painful roar.

Jasmine jumped in the air with a first bump, invigorated by the discovery, she threw her right arm in an arch, summoning more crystal shards flying towards their enemy.

“Take that, bitch!”

A bullet storm of crystal shards flew towards the Lady, Jasmine even lifted off the ground in hovering flight, laser beams of light formed from her hands firing through the shadow servants. The Lady in response grew larger than a small moon, growing hundreds of tentacles from her body to lash out and strike at Jasmine. The whole scenario was just so bizarre, Xant wasn’t even sure he could contribute in any meaningful way while Jasmine and the Lady were casually defying the laws of physics.

Jasmine raised her hands above her head and began growing a giant ball of light above her head.

“In the name of the earth!” Jasmine proclaimed, ready to throw the pulsating light bomb “I will end you-”

The Lady was not ready to die.

A dark tendril broke from the body and flew towards Jasmine with silent speed. It pierced her arm, getting stuck halfway and wriggling from both ends of the open wound.

Jasmine shrieked.

The light bomb faded from existence and Jasmine fell down to earth, wrestling with disembodied alien limb.

Xant rushed over to help rip the tendril from her arm, pulling out the squirming tentacle and throwing it into the ocean. Jasmine’s arm healed, but the wound was marked black, her arm limp from the encounter. The human cursed herself for getting carried away…

The Lady’s body was torn and weeping blood, her voice reduced to intangible screeches as she slowly dragged herself towards them.

“We need to neutralise her,” Xant reinforced, “I’m not sure how long this instance can handle your illogical conjurings,”

“I need to put her to sleep somehow, trap her in this place,” Jasmine looked around.

First, she tried to put The Lady to sleep, flying as close as she dared to the crazed alien brain mass. She swept her arms across the heavens, altering the atmosphere around them, the torn sky changed to a sombre night, the air became warm while sweet, calming music played in their ears.

But it was not enough, the blood of the Lady was like acid, spitting and dripping onto Jasmine’s skin which caused her even more pain.

When the sleep plan did not work the human teleported above the Lady, she summoned long golden spears, and thrust them down into the Lady’s giant brain-like flesh.

The Lady gave another terrible, garbled roar, but the spears did not pin her body for long, there was only sand for them to sink into. The Lady pushed the spears out, forcing them back into the sky at break-neck speeds. So fast Jasmine could barely move out of the way.

She was knocked from the sky and landed out in the water.

It was solid like concrete, its rippled surface glowed with colourful light at the point of impact.

“Jasmine!” Xant screamed, his legs moving as fast as they would take them to her body, he lifted her from the ground as she winced in pain. The human forced a smile on her face.

“Got any other crazy ideas?” she asked with a cough.

Xant’s ears flatted upon his head and he took her hand in his.

He turned his head towards the Lady, growing ever closer towards them.

“Just one…”

-*-

Jasmine’s head smacked into the steel plating of the bridge.

Her body was cold, shivering as the chaos around her continued.

She was back on the bridge.

“Xant?” her eyes refocused and her friend was laying there, one arm towards her, the other still connected to the ShipBrain, “XANT!!”

“Voidsinger?!” Aralukia called out, swords cutting down whatever servant dared to get close, “Is the deed done?!” Gun fire, plasma sword sizzling against flesh, the roars and shouts of death throws, the almagamations kept coming and the ship was out of control.

Jasmine desperately reached for Xant’s hand, pushing it towards her ear, trying to re-establish the connection, but the nerve endings were unresponsive.

Jasmine screamed his name over and over to no avail.

She stared at the exposed nerves at his finger-tips, without him to make them move, she would need to try and connect them herself.

And there was only one way to expose human nerves.

-*-

Xant stood alone upon the waters surface as Jasmines visage faded from his arms.

The skies grew dark.

The shore line vanished from view.

The Lady drew closer.

Her laugh garbled and fractured.

“You think you can control us?” the Lady asked, her oozing body dragging itself across the solid ocean, “a poor imitation, a degraded copy of a thousand other copies of a long since desiccated species…” Xant stood firm, The Lady’s puppet body dangling above him, deshelved and destroyed. The Rajavan raised a damning finger, its head hanging from a broken neck, laughing at him with dead eyes.

“You will never be like them… No matter how hard you try,”

A tendril shot out and wrapped around his wrist, lifting it to his face.

A five-fingered hand wrestled in its grip.

Xant widened his stance, and wrapped the tendril tighter around his arm, holding it firmly in place.

He stared down the Rajavan and spat his last words with sardonic spite.

“Fuck you,”

The water beneath them became liquid.

Without Jasmine to hold the ocean, its surface tension gave way, pulling them both into its depths, where they would sink forever.

The Lady could not hope to escape such a fate, her many tentacles tried in vain to swim against the current but her size and weight only dragged her down deeper into the dark.

Xant’s arm was released and he was allowed to sink peacefully into the darkness.

He held his breath for as long as he could, but he knew it was only a matter of time before his lungs gave out, filled with water and he fell into nothingness.

The Lady was trapped now, lost in an eternal ocean, if he needed to be trapped with her, then so be it.

He closed his eyes and let the water pull him down.

…

..

.

But.

Then he felt a warm embrace in the dark.

Pulling him towards the surface.

The image was murky, its form shifting and unclear but he knew that summer light anywhere.

Jasmine had returned, swimming to his rescue.

He tried to help, flapping his limbs in the water to push himself along.

Thoughts of encouragement floated through his mind, desperate and pleading.

He strived towards the light reaching up to the surface, struggling to get to the air above.

Jasmine’s apparition gave him one last push, sending him shooting upwards.

He spearheaded the waves with both hands breaking through and tasting the sweet, fresh air…

He thought he heard Jasmine crying.

Xant opened his eyes slowly, his body aching from every muscle, organ and nerve.

One arm deep inside the Shipbrains physical form, the other in a far more distressing location.

Jasmine had his back to her, several other humans huddled around her as red blood trickled down her spine. His hand was pressed to those large bones, his finger nerves threaded manually into her spinal column. They had made surgical cuts in her power armour, exposing the connected nerves to the air and to him.

Her head turned, tears of pain rolling down her face as she sucked air through her teeth.

“Xant,” she choked a suffering laugh, “I didn’t like that plan