Jeremy; Divine Singularity OP

Wrapped in the amniotic darkness of space, the planet shone. A blue-green orb, daubed with earth and ocean, wisps of cloud painted across it in slow white swirls. The distant stars looked on, cold and unblinking.

Yes, this was a young world. Their technology was crude, their discoveries unrefined and undirected. They were still in a state of chaotic flux. They had not learned how to work together for their own good.

And yet they were the only sentient beings in their universe. The Multiverse worked in mysterious ways.

Poised in the middle of the jet-black canvas, the serene figure looked down at the world from above. His soft hand stroked lightly at his immaculate goatee. He was clad all in white, in a flawless business suit that smelled faintly of lavender. His brown eyes were pensive, his profile unfailingly composed. To even the casual observer, he was unmistakably Arabic, handsome, affluent and cultured - that is to say, strikingly normal, insomuch as an extremely rich and elegant man is normal. Had he not been floating in the middle of space, one might pass him on the bustling streets of Dubai and remark on nothing but his sheer effortless grace.

And his skin. His skin would draw attention.

Like living brushstrokes, black dots and curves flowed under his smooth coffee-colored skin, spreading in a mesh of beautiful patterns. They played off the starlight, shifting past his lapels and cufflinks and collar like shadows, melting into each other and reforming into new shapes, vivid and pleasing to the eye. Only the slightest impressions intruded on his face. They went up from his neck to the sides of his jaw, but left the rest untouched. Motes of ink floated off them, brushing past his suit into the vacuum. Living black and cold white, laid in perfect contrast.

The informed would recognise the patterns as words, and the words as Arabic calligraphy. But the words were not sacred text. Instead, they all said, in essence, the same thing -

''The above-signed agrees to the conditions stipulated below''

''The contractee\\
Hereby swears and binds in ink\\
To fulfill the conditions stipulated above\\
As forfeiture on failure to complete the\\
aforementioned terms\\
Payment of\\
One daughter\\
Five years\\
The below-signed’s soul\\
Effective immediately\\

The above-signed agrees to the conditions stipulated below

The contractor\\
Hereby swears and binds in ink\\
To fulfill the conditions stipulated above\\
As forfeiture on failure to complete the\\
aforementioned terms\\
Payment of\\
Immortal life\\
Eternal servitude\\
The contractor’s soul\\
Effective immediately

Signed\\
Nomad ‘Ayn

Every stroke was a contract. Every stroke was composed of smaller strokes. An infinite number of contracts, coiled around his body like filigreed black chains. Restraining Words. Marks of promises made and broken, but none by him. He had fulfilled every single one of those agreements to the letter. The Words were marks of his integrity. It was the others who had failed him, every time.

But that did not matter. The Nomad ‘Ayn would continue his work. To bind others, to fulfill his contract, and, if betrayed, to exact the agreed punishment on the breakers of faith. It was his ''raison d'être.'' He had been thus for eons. He would be thus until his end.

...But his line of work was under threat, and the key to saving it lay in this perfectly ordinary world.

What delectable irony.

So musing, the god - for he could be nothing else - stirred from his reverie. He thrust his arms outwards. The Words responded, leaping out to pool around his fingertips like suspended ink. He raised his hand and pointed an unruffled finger at the planet below him.

The Words melted. Like a striking snake, they shot down towards the Earth at the speed of light, coiling to create a liquid cord of barbed ink. The planet's atmosphere was reached in a heartbeat. It would take another nanosecond to actualise his Concept. Binding the entire planet should have been trivial.

As expected, there was nothing of the sort. The thousand-mile chain, anchored to reality by dust and electrons and quarks and neutrinos, reached the exosphere of the Singular World and simply stopped. It was not a forceful resistance. It was a void.

[[youtube:MbM0hqljvb8]]

He could have no effect on the planet. He was not allowed to exist there. None of them were. Nothing from another universe could touch anything on this Earth.

It was extraordinary. Nothing like it had ever been seen. A phenomenon forbidding interference from extra-dimensional forces on a planetary scale. Not a force. Forces could be overpowered. So far, all the experiments of his brethren had failed. No, it was not a power but a Status, an axiom imposing itself on all of reality. This unlikely planet was the only true Singularity in the Multiverse.

 And yet no-one knew why. There had been theories in the distant past by enlightened members of his race. But that had been purely hypothetical, and he had never been a intellectual. To him, and to the rest, the Source of the Singularity Status was an enigma.

Enigmas were often more terrifying than the known. If this one could be harnessed or reverse-engineered, it would make its user invincible. It would be terrible, perhaps even more than than that mad one who had hijacked Entropy. The possibilities were endless.

He had no desire for an invincible entity.  It would be worse than the current annoyance. Others had different ideas. He cared very little for other people’s ideas.

The god looked down at his gold Rolex, noting the time in that one city. He had imitated every detail to the last. He had also calibrated it perfectly.

Eight hours forty-five minutes, post-meridian.

His Host would be ready, then. For months he had deliberated, choosing the right mortal from thousands.

‘Ayn closed his eyes. A raw pulse shook his body. Wisps of smoke began to curl from his suit. His essence was being changed. The form he had had for eons was becoming something alien. In any other situation, it would have been suicide.

It was a simple task, in theory. If he changed his existence into a form similar to the soul of a specific human, he could latch onto that person's essence and become one. The Singularity Status would be subverted by way of a protective suit of mortal flesh.

But Celestials were not lesser beings. To change into such a primitive form was the human equivalent of shoving oneself, feet-first, into a meat grinder. And the Status would apply itself to him. He would lose his very sentience for a moment. It was a horrifying task. But he was not daunted. He had never allowed himself to be daunted.

His real suit was unravelling, his skin bursting with fissures of white light. He ignored the pain and kept going. Yielding for a moment to the nerve-wracking agony, he allowed his brow to crease slightly.

It was another deal, a calculated bet between himself and the Singular World.

He hurtled down. He was white light, a vague humanoid outlined in radiance that peeled away like sloughing skin. Teetering on the brink of mindlessness, desperately clinging to life -

He passed through the atmosphere, and the alienness closed in on him like an iron maiden.

He was not meant to be here.

Consciousness fading.

He fell towards the target continent.

He was losing himself.

''He was not meant to be here.''

He was losing

He fell towards the target country.

He was not      to be here     not meant   o   e  he e to be n t t  be n  not ''not'' '''not''' '''''not'''''

He fell into the target city, fell through the roof of the target building, and just as the last dregs of sentience left him

reached the target

----

[[AC:[[center: Divine Singularity]]]]\\
[[AC: [[center: A Chronicles of the Gods RP]]]]

----

'''St. Claire'''\\
'''Flat 85'''\\
'''Fenton Villa'''\\
'''09 Baker Street'''\\
'''8:40 P.M.'''

If he went from the old Central District down to the great conglomerate of malls in the new heart of the city, it would take him ten minutes. If he moved east from there and skipping all the apartments and varying degrees of park-laden urban sprawl in his way, reaching the neighborhood of Baker Street would take him another twenty minutes. By car.

He didn't have a car and he hated buses, so he got by without the malls unless he caught a ride. But that only happened when his friends were out, so he didn't bother. It was working out fine. He was at the mercy of the local supermarket, but he doubted instant ramen would be going up in price any time soon.

The Chinese store down the road was cheaper, but it was Chinese.

It was Saturday, grocery day.

Holding the week's food in one hand and calculating his remaining allowance with the other, Jeremy Zhang stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for floor 8.

On the surface, Fenton Villa was just another apartment building among dozens, desperately trying for new tenants with a thin veneer of class and a pretentious name. On the inside, it was just that. The shoddy velvet and flaking gold handrail in its sole working elevator was just one clue. The fact that the whole complex was an unspeakable shade of purple was another. The contractors obviously had a disturbing disregard for the Geneva Conventions.

He never looked at the thing too long. He might lose an eye.

There was the chime for Floor 8. He stepped out, turned left and set out towards Flat 85. The contractors seemed to have given up halfway through. The corridor was plain concrete and the doors plain white. It was almost a relief after the elevator, which was rather sad.

The boy was Chinese, looking around 17 or 18. He had a pale, unimpressive frame and was middling in height. He had clearly spent a vast amount of his life indoors. The loose white T-shirt, beige shorts and brown sandals gave no impression in particular. Unathleticism aside, he was kind of good-looking - nothing spectacular, but not run-of-the-mill, either. He would have been noticed more if he hadn't tried so hard not to stand out at all. He wasn't introverted or nerdy. He was just your average American kid. He intended to stay that way.

Jeremy wrestled the keys from his pocket and opened the door. He walked in, shut the door and locked it. The sandals he left outside, as per usual.

He switched on the lights. The living room was more family-sized than he cared for. He had scrounged most of the furniture. There was an old white sofa, of the spongy, man-engulfing variety, with several springs clearly loose. There was an old CRT TV. There was a bookcase, with various textbooks and no leisure reading. There was a large desk, with a large lamp and various pens strewn across it. There was the kitchen in the back, and a kettle. There was his bedroom, with a bed. The walls were bare.

The rest of the rooms went unused because he had nothing to put in them. All in all, it was depressingly empty, and far too big for an unattached student.

His mother had arranged it for him in two days. It never popped into his head to complain.

Walking to the kitchen, Jeremy put his groceries on the kitchen bar. The lights flickered. He looked up, frowning. Did he have to replace them again?

The lights flickered again.

"Damn." Seemed like it.

Sighing, the boy began unpacking his chicken-flavored dinner. He would go down to the shops tomorrow. Maybe Peter could give him a rid-

There was a muffled thud, like something very soft and very dense had hit him in the chest and sunk right through. His body froze up. His mind exploded. He hardly had time to cry out.

Eyes rolling into the back of his head, Jeremy Zhang keeled over. He was dead before he hit the floor.

----

It burst through St. Claire like a bomb. Lights all across the city dimmed for a moment, leaving the inhabitants dazed but otherwise unharmed. They would later explain it as a brief, inexplicable power outage.

But it was a message, audible only to very specific ears. The location, Flat 85 of Fenton Villa, 09 Baker Street, had already been given beforehand. The voice was unmistakable. Confident, sweet as honey, elegant like nothing else.

''Midgard. I have arrived. To me, if you would.''

No matter their affiliation, the Incarnates would hear. It was a sign. A barefaced invitation.

The Game had begun.