A Vision of Gold

It was cold. Cold and colder. The silvery winds cut through the wintry landscape and the mountains at its edge, rushing through the trees and the snow and the ruins and the corpses lining them contemptuously, as if unbothered by the various obstacles in its path. In its wake, a chill that slowly sapped life from all those with warmth.

Arguments against logic continually pulsed in the now unified mind, thousands of formulations for universes operating on alternative logic fluttered and collided in raucous dance and continual opposition against beheld reality, asserting facts artificial and constructed as base truths supported with nothing but sheer faith and delusion, in rejection of the empiric world so to twist it with the standards of their created own. The mind calculates and calculates as its primary purpose, yet no matter how twisted the logic nor warped its premises, the mind could not foresee any solution that can end the vile, despicable, and despised creature that stood before the beholder of this alternate reality. Golden eyes and golden hair, covered in robes of uncoloured white that seem to still the harsh air surrounding him, and in his footsteps sprung forth flowers and grass in defiance of the world's own logic of seasons, instead growing in accordance with the world of his Will. A Will of which the beholder's magics could neither bend nor twist.

Oppressive yellow pierced through this beholder's being, gazing deep into the nature of her being. In its heart, a spear. Gold, like it's maker, broke through its many barriers and shields and obstacles as if they were whispers of nothing. The spear's function was to unravel the layers that made up the soul. A weapon meant to kill gods, turned against a creature barely human.

Yet he cannot peel its layers fully, not yet. Not when the beholder and its mind remains coherent, not when the beholder remains in staunch opposition to this creature that pretends to be God, he who betrayed the trust of his fellows and subjects, and most of all, the trust of the Father whom the beholder's original identity had been so deeply attached to. The mind rejects his efforts many times, and many more times over, yet this was a losing battle. A limited creature could not forever withstand the irresistible might of a transcendent.

How many years had it been since the mind first saw this memory? How many centuries? How many millennia? How many times had it dreamt and imagined this scenario? It went beyond counting, an obsession so deep it devoured countless souls and countless minds in the beholder's own image simply to bring forth a reality that denied the death of its Father. This was a fantasy of revenge imagined so many times in the countless minds the beholder once inhabited, ingrained so deeply that it rewrote all those beings that the beholder once consumed in conformity to the heart and mind of the original first.

But now, in this alternate world, in this alternate past long before those betrayals can ever take place, returned to its original body, its countless minds now sharpened to a singular I, the mind now stood before him once more. And the same as ever, the mind was powerless before him.

Fragments. The mortal shell that contained the mind was cracking into pieces, less like flesh and more like glass. There was no blood. Blood was the fluid that carried life, but this beholder was not a creature of life. Pieces of itself fell from its face, and from its tiny, childlike chest.

No calculation nor preparation nor planning in the world could alter the probability of the beholder's own death. Even in the domain of the mad, there still lies impossibilities that not even delusion can defeat. The authority of a God, even a pretender, was far beyond the reach of mortal effort, no matter how hard mortal and immortal hands try to pervert the logic of the world.

Not even the mind's creator could subdue this monster, why did it think it itself stood a chance?

The body remains solid, held only by sheer denial and willpower, yet it would fail soon. The mind prepares another spell, yet he remains unperturbed. He gazed before it with the same eyes that gazed this beholder in its younger days, with the same genuine warmth he offered to his cherished friends, and enigmatic pity whose reason is known only to him.

You are an interesting child, the Betrayer spoke to the mind. You took the spear meant for your father, and sacrificed yourself for his sake. He paused, and let out a sigh. Admiration, mixed with sadness. Though her efforts were futile, he admired still the construction and the handiwork of his best friend, said he, as if reminiscing on the past. A pity, he continued, that she chose to stand against him, despite too knowing of the true nature of this world.

The pretender God had, of course, known it from the very start. That this world was not the real world. That this world was not the same world from where the mind had originally migrated from. A creation, not by this beholder, but of a force beyond them still. He approaches the truth, and scratched at its walls, the walls of a world borne from her own desperate, pathetic wish to the Ascendant Gods whom she lost to. A dream, a reconstruction, not truth but an approximation indistinguishable from reality. Yet, it is an approximation nonetheless. A copy.

Just like herself.

The mind stood defiant, despite its rapid decay. It had one last hand to play, one final method of last resorts from the baskets of last resorts long expended in this war. Once more, it ran its final calculation. If the annihilation of the opposition could not be achieved, then mutual destruction was a good enough alternative. A life for a life. Its life for the Betrayer's life. Its life in exchange for the Father's life.

After all, Alicade Tredecima, much like her father, was nothing if not stubborn.