Chapter 425 The Quiddity of Elan (1/2)
CHAPTER 425
THE QUIDDITY OF ELAN
”The City shall burn!!” the voice, mingled with screams and shouts, beckoned. It wasn't lonesome, isolated, or unique. Voices beckoned in ways hardly comparable for a timeless period, bouncing against the invisible walls of the never-ending dark.
”This… this should not happen!!” she didn't recognize them, even if she heard them before. A blend of monstrosities uttering words, phrases, sentences, creating a slew of sounds masquerading as something she could not understand.
”We trusted you!!” who was 'we'? She did not know. Who did 'they' trust? She did not know. To her, all the voices were sequences of sounds coming from the same soul split infinitely unto itself. An abomination. An ilk.
”You—you killed him…” killed? A heed of death? She could not grasp, could not conceptualize what it meant to die, as she didn't know what it is to be born and to live. Was she alive? Or was she dead? Or was she both yet neither?
”You were never supposed to be born!!” birth? Was that the beginning point of life? Was she born? She doesn't recall. She has always been such, always, forever. Was there even a beginning to something? To her? To her world?
”What are you doing?!!” she shivered and trembled, floating in the ceaseless ether. The voices… they began benign, calm, ever-graceful. Yet, they turned horrid, wrathful, vengeful, fierce. They shook her, frightened her, terrified her. She closed her eyes.
”Retreat to the Palace! Seal the Gates! Call the Children!” when she closed her eyes, she could pretend voices were not there. Whether open or closed, though, it hardly made a difference. There was no light either way. No sign. No signal. Nothing. Perhaps not even her.
”Demon, be purged!!” why were they so angry? So hateful? She did not know. She could not understand. Just remember. Remember it all. Every last word spoken. Every last sigh whispered. Every last curse swung at the empty sky.
”Why… why is it like this…” why, indeed, she wondered. Why was she here? Why could she hear them? They could not hear her. She tried. She called out. She whimpered and winced and screamed and whispered.
”… you parasite… you are just a parasite. You don't deserve to be animated.”
The voices suddenly ceased. Ever so often, they would do that. The empty ether would go quiet, as though to give her a moment to calm, to process, to capture everything. Lately, however, she dreaded these moments of silence. She didn't want to remember. To understand. To listen to her own empty voice. There was so much hate, so much pain, so much anger, so much guilt and shame…
The tendrils of the time past beckoned to her, yet she could not swim back. She could not collapse unto herself and hold her hands over her ears and shut everything out. The voices spoke directly into her mind and soul, etching themselves like carvings on the stone into her heart. She remembered every single word ever spoken. Every single emotion ever put into a broken voice. It was terrible. Dark. Empty. Cold. Hollow.
She tried to escape, she tried to run away, to hide… but she seemed to run in place, forever orbiting the small nothingness she existed within. She learned language from them, she learned words, phrases, emotions, ideas, everything she knew… she learned it all from listening to them. Yet, she wished she hadn't. She wished she'd remained as ignorant as she was at first. An empty vessel, void of thought.
She learned it all against her will, absorbing everything. It made her, shaped her, built her into who she was. Yet, despite all she had learned, she could not understand what she was. Or where she was. The sole thing she knew of herself was her name… Gaia. Somewhere back-beyond it was whispered to her, the first-ever sound carved into her essence.
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