Chapter 256: The All Devouring Truth

Amanda opened her eyes, confused. What had happened? 

She looked around the strange new environment and saw that she and about half of the cult were in a strange place that she had never seen before. Billowing fog surrounded her, thicker than anything she had seen before. She couldn’t make out the sky or the surrounding horizon, as it was cutting off her vision to only a few meters in front of her. 

She inhaled and found that the air was moist with a strange scent that she couldn’t quite place. Four huge, impossibly tall pillars surrounded her, yet strangest yet was the eldritch circle that she and her fellow religious worshippers. She had to avert her eyes from the red symbol, it made the woman dizzy just looking at the thing.

Amanda frowned, refocusing on the present situation. How did she get here? Was it a dream, or perhaps an attack from one of their many foes? The cult had been trying out new psychedelics and profane rituals of late, and she had heard from other leaders that it had interesting effects on the human mind, but she should be immune. She had been personally blessed by the Prophet himself. Not only that, but she had completed the five labours of devotion and had been one of only four who had consumed the holy eucharist. She was a leader among the cult; her mind and insight expanded greatly, so such things as hallucinations shouldn’t be possible. 

 Yet here she was. Before Amanda could question things further, the fog around their immediate surroundings started to clear, if only just a little, and that’s when she noticed It. That’s when they all noticed. 

Amanda’s eyes were drawn to the sky. Her mind, every neuron and synapse that still belonged to her screamed at her to stop, to look at anything else, to look elsewhere, but she couldn’t stop. None of them could, and as their eyes inevitably looked up, into the sky and past the crumbling stars, they saw It. An eye of unimaginable size that gazed down into their very souls. Into the essence of what made them who they were. Their feeble minds protested and strained at the anathema sight, at the profane thing that shouldn’t be, yet before they could retreat into the sweet oblivion of insanity, the Thing forced the group to see. They had no other choice. And so they saw.

They saw their God. And they wept at the majesty of it all. This was the entity they worshiped. This was the being who would free the masses from their ignorance and set the world in the right direction. A direction where reality and fiction blend into one, where anything and everything is possible, one where Truth is just a suggestion, a thing to be devoured. 

Yet not every person remained unscathed. Out of the corner of Amanda’s eye, and from the screams of agony, she could see that a few of the gathered faithful had not survived. She couldn’t be sure of the exact numbers, but perhaps 4 or 5 were affected in total. Instinctively, or perhaps it was through divine revelation, she knew that they were the cursed nonbelievers. The false worshippers who only prayed without putting their souls into it in a vain attempt to deceive the God and gain Its gifts. 

They would no longer trouble her. They would trouble no one any longer. 

But that was when another question hit her. As far as Amanda knew, this was the first time that anyone had witnessed the greatness of their God first hand, and if only the truly devout would have an audience with It, then where was the Prophet? Surely the most devout among them all would be the Holy David. 

Yet no sooner did that question come to her mind did it disappeared, for high above the now prostrating individuals, on an inky platform made of solid fog, stood the raptured form of their Prophet. He had appeared out of seemingly nowhere, but it was clear to all that gathered that he would be the instrument of their God. David’s eyes radiated a maddening clarity as he listened. Everyone knew instinctively that while they were unworthy of hearing the voice of the divine, their leader and Prophet could.

After an impossible amount of time, the Eye of the Devouring Truth retreated, and the horrible pressure of Its presence subsided. Yet even with the eldritch gaze gone, none of the gathered devotees rose from their prostrated positions. It was only when David opened his mouth that they raised their heads. 

It was then that they experienced what David had saw. Ingrained in their very minds were the instructions for what they must do to appease the God of Devouring Truths. It wasn’t told in any language, any feeble form of mortal communication, but rather, as a pure stream of information that threatened to drown our their minds and rupture their souls. It took only moments, nanoseconds, for the information to be processed, yet it felt like a lifetime.

Amanda saw the foul enemies of their great master holed up in Canada. She saw them wreath and plot and corrupt the brilliant light of the Devourer of Truth, of how they harbor unbridled hatred for the one true deity. Then she saw what would happen to them all should nothing be done to this infestation. The coming invaders were just a symptom of something much worse, and it was up to the cult to bring about a cure.

This blasphemer known as Ryan and his abominable lieutenant Ashwin must be purged. 

And the gathered faithful knew that they could do that as well. Once the task at hand was firmly ingrained in their minds, every person who received that revelation felt their bodies fill with eldritch might. Their muscles condensed and morphed into forms that defied all logic. They felt their feeble minds expand and open, allowing them to manipulate the very essence of the world with just their thoughts. 

Their bodies became closer to It.

David laughed, his eyes filled with both madness and clarity, before finally screaming. “Have we heard the Truth?!” 

No one responded. Not because no one wanted to, but simply because no one had recovered enough to do so much as even blink. 

“HAVE WE HEARD THE TRUTH?” he shouted again, louder this time. 

“We- We hear and we obey,” Amanda, one of the first to recover, croaked. “We obey the will of God!”

“Good!” Their prophet smiled. “Then we will act at once!”

“Then we move out!” David exclaimed, “We move to enact God’s will!”

*

“Was that it?” Xaz said, sounding a bit deflated. “All you did was send a bit of info in their heads, fiddled with their biology a bit and called it a day? What about all of the special effects? Wouldn’t it be better to have a grand entrance and showcase your full power; we can afford to blow up a few heads.”

Xalla groaned next to me and shook her head.  “We can’t just explode cult members for no good reason, sister. That was one of the professor’s comments, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah…” She rolled her eyes. “As if that old fart knew what he was talking about.”

I shrugged. “And I couldn’t do much more with them without risking their minds collapsing. Honestly, I’m just surprised that they lived through the minor augmentation.”

“And you think they’ll be strong enough to do what you need?” Xaz asked as she dismissed the eyeball and gloomy fog. We found ourselves back in the white expanse of the dreamscape, sitting around a table. 

“Probably not,” I admitted, “Especially since the Overseer’s gotten his grubby tentacles on that group.”

“So you’re just sending them to their deaths?” Xaz said with a raised frill. 

“No… I’m sending them to slow down whatever it is that Ryan and Ashwin has planned.” I grinned. “I just need a distraction, to cause a scene if you will. To force their hands in managing a crisis.”

Now it was Xalla’s turn to frown. “What for?”

I chuckled. “Well, my job as the Lord Arbiter is to watch over the Anomalies and to ensure that nothing goes wrong in the Trials, yeah?”

Xalla nodded. “It’s one of the responsibilities, yes.”

“And if I still remember correctly, I can’t directly interfere with the Aspirants, even anomalous ones, without just cause…”

“I’d have to be an emergency situation that threatens the well-being of the Trials… Ah.” Xalla muttered, “I see where you’re going.”

“So all I have to do is cause a big enough scene that the stability of the Trials are at jeopardy, something big enough that the Anomalies will have to resort to using their unique set of skills to solve. After that, I’ll just step in and help smooth things over.”

Xalla chuckled. “And with the amount of oversight you have in an emergency situation, you can do practically anything you want.”

“If I can justify my actions at the end,” I added with a grin. 

Xalla smiled. “As if you ever had a problem with that, Walter.”

Xaz rolled her eyes. “Alright, enough with your private talks. Let’s head out and see if those minions of yours are doing their job.”

“Wouldn’t it take a while for them to get organized?” I asked. “I mean, I just told them what to do like, 2 minutes ago.”

“Yeah…” Xaz said, “Your messaging was a bit strong, Walter. They’ve already mobilized their troops and are beelining it to Toronto. Pretty sure that Prophet of yours had planned for such an eventuality, so they’ve already set everything up. He’s an impressive minion, that one.”

“If the timing is right,” Xalla added, “They should meet up with the next wave of alien invaders as well.”

Right, I had almost completely forgotten about the reason the Aspirants were here in the first place. Noe was piloting my physical body while I was in this dreamscape, but a quick peek back showed me that some of the weaker city states were already feeling the strain of the invasion. The worst-performing ones were the Aspirants who chose to defend a city that was way too large for the amount of manpower they had. Tokyo and New York, in particular, were already devolving into anarchy and chaos. 

The Regressor was right, this was more of a test to see how well the Aspirants could adapt and plan. Too bad they had been so conditioned by Central to fight for a top rank. It didn’t take a genius to realize that the added stress and need for prestige had caused a lot of the leaders to choose the wrong path forward. If nothing changes soon, I could see close to half of the city-states collapsing. This was the test to weed out the weak en masse, ouch. 

Of course, Ryan’s guild wasn’t among those who were struggling. I still wasn’t sure what his abilities were, but the man had managed to predict where the portals would open up and had set up a well-formed and disciplined perimeter around those locations. His soldiers were able to repel the black clad aliens with ease, not losing even a single Aspirant in the original assault. However, I had anticipated that much. He wouldn’t be much of an Anomaly if he couldn’t even do that much. What did surprise me, however, was his sudden shift. 

Abruptly, as if sensing some kind of change, Ryan halted everything that he did and started to shout out new orders to his generals. Worse, I couldn’t, for whatever reason, hear what he was saying, even when I focused my gaze toward him. 

“What is he doing…?” Xalla muttered, noticing the same situation. She frowned when she couldn’t intercept the message either. “Hold on a second…”

Xalla did something on her end and everything that Ryan said could finally be heard.

“Sorry,” she muttered, “It appears that some of our monitoring devices had decided to glitch at the last second, and instead of recording what the Aspirants are doing, they’re doing the opposite. I’ve fixed that.”

“How convenient…”

“Indeed. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

I nodded and focused on Ryan again. 

“...changed, get all of our reserves-- No, tell Ashwin to abandon the north sector and head to the Lakeshore area right now. Tell him it’s alpha-level priority. Get Marj to cover for his position.”

I frowned. “Let me guess, is that where my cultists will be headed?”