The Demiurge [Closed]

[Birkaine]

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COMMAND RECOGNIZED, ACCESSING DATABASE ENTRIES 'UM14'

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Project: RATAN
Location: Voskov Institute of Technology and Science
Chief Researcher: Natalya Moralova
Objective: Study of metaphysical effects in plant growth
Status: Ongoing

Project: LOTOS
Location: Dankov Air Force Base
Chief Researcher: R. Melenko
Objective: Military application of the metaphysical within standard equipment
Status: Ongoing
[Access]

Project: BESKONECHNOST-IV
Location: Dadaev-Lubanov Institute
Chief Researcher: H. Ermenov
Objective: Research into metaphysical sources of renewable energy
Status: Ongoing
[Access]

Project: TORA
Location: High Altitude Geophysical Research Facility "GELA"
Chief Researcher: E. Stalnoserdsky
Objective: Research of experimental proof for Rottenkopf-Kirilenko Resonance in high-energy Scalar-Metaphysical interaction.
Status: On Hold
[Access]

PROJECT: GOGOL
Location: ZVEZDA-R, Molniya-4 orbit.
Chief Researcher: CLASSIFIED
Objective: Mapping of ionospheric metaphysical conduits, triggering and observation of a Lad'Nel quantum 4-dimensional depth-shunt.
Status: Satellite construction phase 1C, complete
[Access]

PROJECT: MEDVEVKA-AREL
Location: CLASSIFIED
Chief Researcher: CLASSIFIED
Objective: Weaponization of Scalar Neuroenergetics.
Status: FAILED
[Access]

PROJECT: GOLIAT-II
Location: CLASSIFIED
Chief Researcher: CLASSIFIED
Objective: Study into subliminal planetwide propagation of metaphysical/neuroelectric interaction phase-shift.
Status: Pending approval
[Access]

PROJECT: Chronophasia
Location: REM-D Incoherent Scalar Emitter
Chief Researcher: P. Bereznyak
Objective: Research into alternate metaphysical energy sources for PROJECT SOFIA
Status: Catastrophic failure

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SUMERKY-E/YW/UM14/Chronophasia> Open/Last_Entry
: Opening


The Luciellans may say what they say, but in the end Light, in absence of eyes, illuminates nothing. Objects, colors are form are not inherent to the universe, they are created ex nihilio by the act of seeing. Even as the universe and its events do exist disconnected of their arbitrary interpretations, their fundamental meaning, their archaeus, is given to them by the mind. We are thus in fact the architects of the universe.

Thus our job -and by extention, science itself- has never been one of understanding, it's been interpretation. There are doubters who argue that the recent influence of the 'metaphysical arts' into many branches of our organization heeds as the harbinger of a new dark age of obscurantism. Their argument is merely supported by how little do we know about the very methods we employ in our renewed research, they say that no knowledge can come out of anything that is in itself understood and that our organization and humanity as a whole are suffering the biggest step back since the fall of the Old Empire. Though such a conclusion requires one important premise: that we have been understanding what we've been studying before, which in turn depends on another premise: that the universe is finite, a limited ammount of information spread out over the objects contained within. With such a mindset it is easy to defend the purely scientific explanation of reality or arguing that technology can only advance so far until it hits a roof where every possible machine and technological advancement has been built; as the Mu does.

That was the ideology of our organization as well until the recent set of events at the Glubina Ionosphering Heating Facility have shown me the light of a higher (if not total, for nothing is total) truth. The universe is indeed infinite, and the very foundations of our organization must change as a result.

Half of infinity is still infinity. Likewise for a fourth of infinity, or a millionth. In an infinite universe every fraction contained within it hides infinity in itself, lest we encounter the mathematical paradox of an infinity created out of a finite set. Thus every object, however small, hides within itself as much endlessness as the Gods themselves. Lest we dedicate an infinite ammount of time to studying a single zeroth of the universe, we will never achieve our goals. We must advance with what we have or we will find ourselves confronted with an universe beyond the understanding of science, spirituality, magic and mathematics.

Our purpose has now been revealed as the mere simplification of the infinite, the guilty imposing of a meaning upon the heavenly infinite. I bid my people follow, and like all good equations, they follow; for full endowment of purpose, they do submit - in turn, they resign me to a role that is infinite: Inhuman, impossible, and unaccountable. But I can no longer stand the sleepless nights... I think I am learning to love the Demiurge.

Bereznyak

---

REM-D Ionospheric Heating Facility
Glubina Oblast
Birkaine

Whatever had happened in the supposed 'Ionosphere Heating Facility' had left it largely unusable, riddled with bullet holes, equipment crushed and on fire. The marks of heavy vehicles crisscrossed the more open yards of the installation and led to the run-over gates where various security guards had been shot to death. The bodies only piled up more and more the deeper the search teams got into the installations. The smell of gunpowder and the many casings on the floor betrayed the lack of any supernatural component to the latest catastrophe to hit the Ministry of Science; it was obviously the result of man's irrevocable violence. The core of the installation, the vast array of vertical antennae that were now mostly damaged or completely collapsed, was completely covered in blood and bloated, nameless bodies of the Ministry of Science's paramilitary defenders and, strangely enough, the Air Force. Sophistication and tactics had been thrown out the window; the fight had been something animalistic as the shredded remains of men and women could attest. The whole staff of the installation had been killed, as well as what appeared to be most of the attackers. Only ruins remained, scoured by recovery teams and forensic investigators.

Standing in the middle of all the white HAZMAT suits that were photographing the gruesome scene and, once done, scrubbing off the remains, a man remained motionless, observing the scene with a calculating yet abyssaly empty gaze. The color in his skin and the warmth of his breath had never come back to him ever since the incident that had started it all, the grand effort, the Magnum Opus. Defining him as a dead man walking would have been wrong, he was still very much alive, or at least he was in the traditional biologicist sense. Those operating in the mystical arts would find him more than dead, they would find him to be a bone-chilling, walking vortex of nothingness. He was no more human than the armored car he had arrived in, no more human than his ravenesque black suit. He was, by all means, a biological robot, a standalone mortal coil that had lost its metaphysical essence. He was the epicenter, the Alpha and the Omega of Birkaine's foray into the unknown and its guiding hand, he was Dr. Ruslan Anatolevsky Oktyabrsky, and he was not pleased.

"So they did achieve their goals..." The man said, bitterly looking down at the dead bodies. "They had the key to our evolution at their fingertips, and they fell for a bunch of thugs..."

"Yes, sir, it appears so." One of the men to his side replied, completely sealed in a white rubber HAZMAT suit wrapped in blue tape around some spots, with a black gasmask protruding from his face. The same description applied equally for all the Ministry of Science personnel around him, in a scene that reeked of inhumanity, that made it seem that it took place in a completely different universe than one where there could be such things as emotional warmth or hope.

"No one was supposed to know of this." Oktyabrsky said in a stone-cold voice. "No one, but Bereznyak and a handful of others... Dr. Bereznyak must have been the one who brought the militias here... whatever he saw after the night before the incident, it must have gotten the better of him. Could have he found it, after all?"

"Dr. Oktyabrsky." One of the soldiers in HAZMAT suits interrupted Oktyabrsky's mumbling monologue as he ran up to him. "We found a survivor."

The soldier led Oktyabrsky through the ruined buildings that were now dotted with decontamination crews, military forensics, cleanup teams and a heavily armed security detail. He had seen that scene many times before. The military standing guard atop of the broken remains of science's forays into the unknown. Every error eroded the confidence in the Ministry of Science and Oktyabrsky himself, but he knew that in the long term that confidence would be unneeded. He knew that there would be no long term. Either for the nation that funneled a seemingly endless supply of capital to his research or to him. The point of no return had long been crossed, thousands of men, women and children dead. A city in ruins. The visions passed by his mind quickly, eliciting no emotion, merely analysis, until he remembered her. She Who Knows, calling his name. Propast.

He was snapped out of his sensorial spiral by the bruised and bloodied face of the scientist in front of him wearing a hospital gown after the cleanup crews had stripped her off her clothes to burn them. She had a coffee in her hands, shrouding her in steam admist the freezing air of the REM-D parking lot where the many vans and tents of the decon crews had been set up. She was slowly rubbing the tips of her fingers against the cup of coffee that she did not seem intending on drinking anytime soon. She seemed mesmerized, if anything, staring in utter disconfort at the bubbles gliding on the surface of her coffee like she was staring at a pile of corpses. Whatever her eyes touched only brought her disgust. The screeching, jagged surface of the porcelain that hid aberration under a pretense of white smoothness; her wrinkled and corrupt fingertips punctuated by the opaque and crusty surfaces of her nails; her hands, irrevocably bloated and deformed by the pulsating masses of her veins. Everything seemed now swarmed in a speckly shroud of disease. The man in front of her, dressed in his geometrical black suit, with the pasty white skin and a complete lack of hair appeared no less amorphous or morbid to her than anything else she had already laid eyes on.

"If I had to guess I would say you are Doctor Oktyabrsky." She said, not looking up to him from her hunched position flanked by two IVs of serum.

"And you know why I'm here for."

"I have nothing to tell you."

"You've seen it."

"It..."

"That which is." Oktyabrsky was unfazed by the words he spoke, unlike the former scientist, who brought her knees up and curled up in a fetal position.

"And now I will not be able to look at anything else, for I know I and everything belong to It." She said with a trembling voice. "I will not be able to come back to my friends, my life, my own sons after gazing upon It. I don't want to."

"I can arrange a termination." He said, checking his watch while he decided at what time should the woman die as if he was deciding on which groceries to buy. "But you will tell me what you saw and how it ceased to be in posession of this installation first."

"I am, now?"

"For you see, the world of the divine is a dangerous one." Oktyabrsky added while searching through his coat. After a couple seconds he took out a satellite phone with a prominent antenna and dialed a number he had been handed down by a brief investigation on a particular Estainian. "Not that it's ever stopped us, but every now and then even progress itself needs a crutch."

[Estainia]

Imperium Romanum - The Ides of March, 44 BC

Some people escape to tropical islands, some people go hunting, some people fish, others build models; and then there are some people who decided that the natural order of things should be splintered into tiny little pieces. The Eternal City rose around him, the marble seemed newer; was newer, beautiful and vibrant in its shades of orange and white, gray and purple and red and gold. Rome, The Center of the World; the beating heart of the world's only current superpower; the place where all roads led, where they all started, where they all ended. The great city of Rome rose up like a titan from the faceless, formless plains of Italia as it had done so for literal hundreds of years, it was an ancient city home to an ancient race of conquerors. He however, the being that sat there in Tempilio du Pluto was not a warrior; nor was he a priest, nor a politician, though he was a Patrician. The robes of his home though, they felt odd and alien around him; he'd been so used to wearing heavy wool in the unnaturally cold area that was Russo-Spain to the north that he wasn't used to this, the thin cottons and satin and silk of Rome.

In his discomfort he watched the most powerful man in the world as he argued with his wife for the final time, he heard as she begged him not to go into that building there in the distance that towered over all the rest; its ionic columns dominating the Roman skyline, seconded only to the vast temple complexes along its sides, such was the Forum; such was the grand building in the distance that was the Senate. Some small part of him desired to go into that distant building, some part of him that wanted to break and smash and slaughter those conspirators therein that would kill the man across the road from him in a short time. The man across the road was Gaius Julius Caesar; and he was now, and would be forever one of the most famous men of Antiquity; he changed Rome like no other, he singlehandedly killed Democracy in its infancy. "So once mor---" Then the ringing started; the satilitical phone should not under normal means been able to reach him here in such the distance away from all such technology, but there was nothing normal about him to begin with so who was it to assume his communications were any different?

"Yes?"

"Before anything, let me inform you that organizational bureaucracy or rivalry will benefit no one as the matter I wish to speak to you about concerns the paramount interests of us both." The Birkanian Russian was unexpected; in a time dominated by Vulgar and Classical Latin; when no other men spoke a different language. Cornelius blinked twice and drew breath before he finally answered.

"Suffice to say you have my immediate attention, in such a case. Do go on." He drew himself up from his position on the stairs of the ancient, yet new temple as Caesar walked into the alcove of the Senate at the end of the road; there were no screams as movies would say in the far future, there were no glutral outcries from the Dictator of Rome; each blow was taken in stride by the strongest of men.

"I am Dr. Ruslan Oktyabrsky, and, if you allow me the benefit of brevity, the reason I call you is another misfortunate incident of our metaphysical research project; a situation which I do not doubt is within your capacity to solve." So he was a servant now? He almost smirked, yet he knew Oktyabrsky had this number for only one reason; when shit hit the fan there was organizational bullshit to go through, when this phone rang; Heaven shifted in fear.


"Pleasure, Doctor Oktyabrksy, I'm assuming that if you're talking to me; then sending anyone lesser is of paramount to suicide. What did you lose?" Cornelius almost subconsciously switched over to the vulgarity that was Russian even when it was mixed with a Romance language.

"What we lost is inconsequential, what matters is what we found. The seed of your weeping goddess, though it ultimately proved to be too much for my staff, who have taken the entity away from the installation by force." He didn't think such a thing was possible anymore but in that single moment Cornelius's heart stopped dead, not proverbially, literally.

In the next second his throat was dry without explanation and he choked out his words. "In my business I don't doubt you, mere statistics on those lost, you found Him, though? Interesting, and where, you said stolen, stolen away to where; and by what?" To say he was intrigued was an understatement, it was nothing short of a desire of...revenge, some deeper darker part of his soul that gnawed at him; thousand year words boiling over in the next second in his ancient mind. Yet in the end something else won out, that shined through that darkness, he knew that wrought and worry, he knew that feeling of loss on the same level, almost...

"Stolen by one of my own men if my information is truthful. Its current location is still being looked upon, but that for one is a task to which my organization is up to size. You are required for more trascending matters, mainly its identification. At this point I do not wish to cut corners, if we have truly stumbled upon That Which Is, I will not let that matter in the hands of unreliable equipment" The Birkanian's voice brought him out of that stupor, coming back down he smirked ruefully; suddenly glad his own organization knew what loyalty was; then again it helped he didn't consider them equipment or expendable resources...most of the time.

"Completely understandable, of course. Certainly a matter above mere scientific equipment; no matter how advanced or technomantic. If you can find a location; I can be of direct assistance, of course." He sighed mentally as he watched down the road the Senators leave the hall; their bloodied deed behind them, the cowards.

"I already have a location. Meet me in my position, I am sure it is within your abilities to find me."

"Of course, I'll be there immediately." He moved from his position on the stairs and retreated inward of the temple, the Romans didn't seem to notice him, his countrymen ignorant to his existence; as though he wasn't even there; a mere image or afterthought to the equation.

"Be discrete with your arrival, I have enough evidence that there are important people over here who wish ill on the endeavours of our organization, as well as That Which Is." He frowned considerably hearing thus, it honestly depressed him a bit.

"No need to worry, the bright flashes of light are pure theatrics, not actually required." Cornelius vanished from where he was, in time and space and all its intricate layers; he left Ancient Rome as though he were never there, no scarring to the timeline, no unexpected changes to the future. In a mere second later he appeared again, the stink of modern Birkaine rising around him and the change in the mana flow; the pulsating beat of the natural order became less; crushed and suppressed beneath the unrelenting hand of man.

He counted himself lucky that he was unseen when he landed, in that next second he paused though, before he reached out to the...Thing in front of him that resembled man; yet was certainly not, at least not any more. It was hollow and empty; driven by thought and sheer willpower, there was no essence in It any longer, as dead as anything and yet still alive.

"Doctor Ruslan, I presume." ...

[Birkaine]

Code: Select all

///:SUMERKY-E/YW/UM14/Chronophasia> Open/Entry001
:Opening
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/:Attempting data recovery erc_purge
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NO DATA

...

My name is Doctor Leon Pavlovsky Bereznyak, I have been here since the beggining. My life's work has been to untangle the mysteries hidden within the physical, metaphysical and the others. To fulfill the prophecy, and in turn become a linchpin for a new era... circumstances have changed.
I have sacrificed my very life to reveal these secrets. The experiments we have conducted over the years have taken their toll on my mortal coil... science has at last failed me, as I am unable to heal by body. But my mind is still active, and it shall serve me to the end. I have done what I have done so that my work will not be in vain. It shall live through the ages and I shall be remembered through it.

But I take credit only for what I have achieved here, deep in the ranks of this organization...

...My work is vast.

/SIGNAL LOST


REM-D Ionospheric Heating Facility
Glubina Oblast
Birkaine

In a welcome that was probably already familiar to Cornelius, half a dozen firearms of all sizes rose up against him as soon as he came into view of Oktyabrsky. What was unusual this time was the weilders of said firearms, who, while not nearly as much of empty vacuum of life energy as Oktyabrsky, did not posess human auras either. Their auras appeared muted, restrained, filtered until they were just a distant, vague echo in Cornelius' perception, with a few cracks in their shroud, such as eye lenses, the jointsbetween their suits, gloves and boots; and the air filters that covered their faces. While he had seen far worse, this latest batch of men -or creatures- to confront him at gunpoint were unusual in that they were otherwise completely normal humans despite their unsettling aural appearance. However, even these strange men, who appeared to have their souls either contained in their suits or partly sucked out, appeared to Cornelius like the Seraphim themselves compared to the sensorial black hole that was Dr. Oktyabrsky, a being that not only lacked a soul in every sense of the word, but that seemed to draw Cornelius' own essence in the abyss. He rose his hand, causing all the muzzles of the rifles to go down in unison. In the same movement, he shook hands with Cornelius, filling his hand with a glacial chill that seemed entirely unrelated to temperature and instead deeper - a cold of the soul.

"Stand down." He adressed his troops. "If he wanted you dead you would not be pointing rifles at him."

Contrasting directly and in an equal magnitude to Cornelius' ethereal presence, Oktyabrsky was a void lagoon of absolute aural silence. His guards felt like extremely soft murmurs timidly pouring out from the small openings in the suits that completely hid what was below, unsettling and grating on account of their undecypherableness and elusiveness to Cornelius inquiry, too soft traces of human soul to properly focus on them. However, when inspecting them, Cornelius realized that there was something behind them, a background aura, even softer than that of the assorted Birkanian armed guards and scientists, even softer than nothingness itself. While the souls the closest to him had all the characteristics -the imperfections- of humankind; individual ethereal essences separated from one another, subconsciously and unknowingly sculpted by the innermost thoughts and desires, or even the mood. What hid behind them was not an individual, it appeared to share more in common with an actual noise, a faint reveberation echoing on both the material plane and beyond, bringing with it an ephemeral taste of harmony. It was a distant, angelic choral voice maintaining a tone that wasn't heard in the ears but in the middle of the chest. The voice of a single atom, and yet it permeated all levels of existence in ways that would strain the Gods, bathing eternity with the black and gold tints of its tremulous, inner chant. Becoming one moment and eternity. A point where all straight lines converged. The Fruit of Life.

"Ruslan Oktyabrsky" The scientist interrupted while the soldiers returned to their tasks and assigned posts, keeping quite a lot of suspicion on. "You're early as expected. A welcome turn of events, as unreliability has already costed us too much"

"It's hard not to notice that" The Russo Spanish sage replied just as several helicopters flew overhead, monitoring the situation. Over the years in the various cases he and his affiliates had worked with Birkanians, the black helicopters of the Ministry of Science became quite a recurring sight, flying over the epicenters of the disaster areas of the Ministry of Science, carrying heavy loads of monitoring equipment to record fluctuations in several ambient conditions, which somehow led to a vague guess on what was happening.

"You've seen nothing of importance" Oktyabrsky spread his arms slightly, subtly gesturing at the wreckage of the installation's upper layer. "This is just assets. Equipment can be rebuilt, new specialists can be hired or failing that case educated. We have lost people before and we will lose people again. What we truly lost here may be irreplaceable in the whole universe."

"Expendable resources, no need to attempt to be human around me of all beings. You've lost something literally unique to the universe; now do you want it retrieved?" Cornelius asked the man as he began following him to a large grey building that had been badly hit by the shootout and what appeared to have been several anti-tank projectiles. Several burned civilian and military vehicles were scattered all around, alongside cleanup crews disinfecting the area. Accompained by a quartet of the HAZMAT suit-wearing guards, the two men walked by several rows of white body bags amongst which several military forensics personnel walked, filling out tags identifying the victims. Several scientists of a much lower hierarchy approached Cornelius, offering him one of their suits. By the way the folded jumpsuit further obscured their auras, Cornelius deducted that the reason everyone's souls were so clouded from perception was the suits themselves, likely a recent invention to shield them from slight metaphysical effects. Cornelius rejected the suit with a brief gesture. "Unnecessary trinkets."

"Yes, I want it retrieved" Oktyabrsky replied as they approached the frontal entrance of the fortified building, walls blackened but otherwise undamaged by a fuel fire, peppered with bullet holes. Its doors were open but blocked by a large, yellow tent-like structure, likely a decontamination chamber and checkpoint, which the two men entered through the heavily-guarded airlock on its front. They were locked inside a small chamber for some seconds in which they were sprayed with a light disinfectant aerosol. "But the first phase of retrieval is identification."

From the airlock they advanced into the bunker-like interior of the building, that actually held a large freight elevator that had been damaged beyond operation, flanked by several medical tents where the silhouettes of madmen convulsed and shook against the restraints of their beds, all under the watch of scientists and armed guards ready to pull the trigger should anything get out of hand. The interior of the building was cold to the point where ice was covering the walls and other metallic surfaces, frozen statically above a ground-hugging cloud of evaporating liquid nitrogen. Oktyabrsky led Cornelius to a second elevator that began descending upon the command of one of the soldiers, shattering the frozen moisture that had covered it with a loud screech and several banging noises as the elevator began sliding down diagonally through the large cargo shaft meant for the much larger cargo elevator that was jammed. However, on the way down Cornelius could hardly think about the cleanup crews or the medics or the sparkling broken screens or cables that lined the walls of the elevator shaft, but rather how the aural chorus seemed to gain strenght the lower the elevator went. Another tonal voice joined the first one, harmonizing with the first one, followed by a third. The lingering etheral afterimage gradually passed from being just a simple one-note sensation to acquiring texture, flavor, color, polarization, and hundreds of other qualities that escaped the mind of mortals, lightening up the elevator shaft while it gradually became darker and darker, plunging into the bottom where lights had short-circuited.

"I was unfortunately not in capacity of getting to inspect it directly due to other projects consuming my time, thus I rely on you to tell me what it is." The Birkanian spoke, making steam blow out of his mouth. The geiger counters carried by the soldiers began beeping softly. "It was entangled into materiality about a week ago, culminating a process of several years after its pinpointing in the 9RRK particle accelerator. It used to be a lithium electron." He added and paused, perhaps to emphatize how the divine had chosen to manifest itself in almost nothing, while the elevator continued its steady pace. Everything acquired a purple tint from the many UV lights that were being shined on the walls. "The man in charge of the manifestation of the entity was a very capable colleague of mine, Doctor Pavlovski Bereznyak, who has not been found amongst the dead, leading me to the equally unfortunate conclusions that his body was either damaged beyond identification, that he was abducted or that he was part of the assault in this installation."

By the time the pitch of the geiger counters ceased increasing and the elevator violently shook its occupants because of its brisk, sudden halt, Cornelius was already busy examining the seemingly endless layering of energy that echoed and amplified itself in the tunnel, very subtly reducing the sharp cold of the air, the metallic screeching of the elevator's hydraulics or the stabbing brightness of the UV reflectors and the pools of blood they illuminated in the uninhabited first floor. They dropped a grain of sand into every single one of the infinitude of unpleasant feelings Cornelius or everyone else felt, bringing them further away from something negative into being something... else. Cornelius couldn't quite tell what was the afterimage turning those sensations into, it was too subtle, leaving it uncertain as to where the epicenter of the strange vortex of reality revision was truly That Which Is (as Oktyabrsky and the dynastic few with knowledge of The Sect called it) or wheter the Birkanians had unleashed something far worse than Propast this time. A demon or monster, a temptation clouded in a veil of harmony.

His doubts did not manage to outlast the moment in which he stepped forward from the elevator before Oktyabrsky and the guards, and stood in front of the tremendously thick nuclear blast doors that had been jammed open, leaving in plain view the concentric circles of technological equipment spiralling around the nucleus of the aura, each row having their defects -stains, scratches, microscopic manufacture imperfections- gradually undrawn, getting more and more perfect to his eyes as they were located closer to the center of the huge hangar-like room. PEace and tranquility didn't emanate from the room, they absorbed the senses. In the middle of the room, in the direction all the equipment pointed at, it seemed that a volume the size of a golf ball would contain motherly love, a smaller area the size of a marble would encase in itself the peace alluded by returning visitors of the afterlife, a pinhead would hold Nirvana, an atom held perfection and infinitely deeper, in a zero-dimensional point, something beyond the realms of Gods and Men would lay; That Which Is Forbidden, the Shem Hamephorash, The Aleph, The Omniarcheus tangentially alluded by the cultures of old and new, for any actual mention of it was beyond the work of tongues.

Yet it was not there.

What Cornelius felt instead in the lingering aura -that had now exploded into a full angelic choir from a single isolated voice- were two unusual feelings buried deep in the ethereal presence, two emotions forming two elemental halves of a miragesque ring suspended in the middle of the light; an imperfection that was perfection in itself, the mark of Gods. Pursuing each other in an infinite spiral yet at the same time touching each other at their deepest, Knowledge and Sorrow were forever united. Obsidian and Quicksilver. Sofia and Irene. Even deeper in the labyrinthine metaphysical intrincacies of the afterimage, something monstrous.

It was then that Cornelius realized that the rumored Sofianist heresiarchal myths, those so despised that language had been created with an inability of telling them, were true.

[Estainia]

Every imaginable hue of ethereal color flashed across his eyes in seconds, ebbing, flowing, destroying and rebirthing in a single second. As though all the angels of every heaven in existence in one united force had indeed cried out with all their glory and then just as suddenly, extinguished. Every epicenter of religious thought and canonation sought this exact moment; Luciellans had a simple word for it: Bliss. He was aware in those seconds that followed that when he looked elsewhere the world seemed, filthier; as though covered in a permanent scum of some sort; he chuckled darkly at the thought, ancient wards and incantations activated on levels that Irene herself and few if any others understood.

"Bad, bad boy...Getting yourself caught." He thought in such concealed quarters that Gods themselves could not hear him. He remained silent for the longest time; minutes bled by, the imperfection of Time unraveling as he examined every level of divine reality that lingered around him; it was beautiful beyond even his expansive vocabulary, he watched in his mindseye as the physical world was undone under more and more careful examination, cracking and buckling, giving way to its raw and primal visages; furthering the look of disgust that everything outside of that divine radiance held in it...

In contrast to the men all around; exception given to Oktyabrsky; who shielded themselves, for good measure from the ever lasting effects therein; he merely gazed and wondered; scholastic mind marveled, yet ancient logic far too advanced; combined with even older magics to prevent the spiral into Bliss that others experienced even in the mere afterglow.

"I am marveled you found it..." Cornelius was honest there, of all people, it would be the "scientific" magically inapt and incapable Ministry of Science to capture It. "Behold the glory of Heaven itself; Bliss, Nirvana, whatever name its given by men; the Divine you lost is a physical conduit of its existence." The Necromancer snapped his fingers, crackling blackened energy running over his fingers; refined and perfected; it came undone before his very eyes, a field test in the lingering aura; the black fire crept up his arm before it suddenly, and violently dissipated; unable to sustain form any longer; he was impressed though, it lasted a solid minute; more than enough.

"It's funny, really; something so rock-dumb surviving a being so intelligent that even I am a schoolchild in comparison; indeed, that even all men are schoolchildren." He sighed, the breath suddenly as ragged as his other motions, aware there in that tomb of 'happiness' that attempted to steal precious precious things away that men took for granted; the insurmountable age that was clinging to his bones. "The glory of the Demiurge, Child of Sofia and Irene."

He turned and looked away from the construct that lingered, dying down from his mind as he tore eyes from it, and he would not admit it but that in and of itself was somewhat difficult; such a feeling was tempting, but he had anchors in more than one way that kept him away from Bliss. "If that is what you are dealing with..." Cornelius sighed before he drew out the cracked and battered phone from his suit; no robes, infinite time to change in those few seconds that he had come from Ancient Rome to here. The splintering buttons pushing and the miserably loud, imperfect and agonizing ringing filling his ears, how he got reception down here wasn't a miracle; they could guess it wasn't normal. "Hello darling; feel like something fun?" His voice took on a tone of happiness, not forced or impressed upon by the Bliss; but of its own astral joy. "Oh I'll tell you when you get here of course." He chuckled some before he hung up and stared at the soulless Birkanian.

"Now then; do you want specifics?"

[Birkaine]

The Demiurge. A name last pronounced in dusty centuries by heretical whispers and nebulous incantations, and never in eternity spoken with the enthrusiasm of the mage. The Demiurge. Such was the word where the potent name of a God converged. A hidden God without temples to quench its wrath or coerce its mercy by the way of the sacrifice. A God referred to only by excerpts from blasphemous texts of times long gone by, eluding the sustained inquisition of archaeologists and theologists of modern times with its elaborate cover-up. No choirs of angels sang the name of The Demiurge, only the homogeneous void of silence that had just been shattered, revealing an old people's dark secret, the Emissary of Bliss.
What little of its record had survived to modern era was mostly fruit of passing Hesiodian mentions of a mysterious sect of luminaries hidden amongst the amorphous and changing tribes of northern barbarians, corroborated by Herodotus into obscure belief. Little other mention existed of the lost philosophers. An inscription on an Azadi monument, an ancient scroll rumored to be held by the Russo Spanish Knights of Salcava La Nueva, a single referential line on early editions of Il Milione. All of them vague, nearing nonexistance but all of them converging (or made to converge by the minds of their readers) in the naming them the 'People of The Sect' or 'The People of The Secret', an instance where civilization and culture had hidden under the rags of barbarism after a forgotten calamity. A lack of a moral or ethical center had allowed them to blend easily into any culture they came across; as a proof they had never been persecuted. Yet given their widespread permeation of the civilizations of the world, it could be said that they were also the victims and victimizers of every major massacre in history. It did little to them to walk under the banner of every nation in the globe. The only thing they held in common was The Secret, although tales persisted that The Secret once posessed a tradition, a language and a cosmogonical myth attached to it. Before The Secret became corrupted and undrawn by the passing of the generations until its current state, it was said it spoke of ancient Gods and civilizations of the whole globe, speaking of what The Sect had originally been and their purpose on Earth, explaining the ease with which they blended into the cultures (barbarian or otherwise) of the world by showcasing a dead cosmopolitanism as its cultural core. A culture where all cultures converged, the sum of traditions of the world flourishing in a city of marble. Yet even in such a mystically open-minded and tolerant, a book had met the flames. A book that held a mystery so terrible that it strained the articulations of language into the abominable, something not meant to be written or read by men. Myths spoke in the ancient records of heresiarchs and sorcerers, long lost to anyone outside The Secret, that in the cursed pages of the few tomes of that book that had escaped the pyre The Demiurge hid.

And at last the name had reached the ears of one of the members of The Sect, after the passing of time had washed away its terrible meaning, leaving only a nominal shell behind. Oktyabrsky pondered the name, he let his mind savor it, think of the implications. Why was it up to him and his organization to unearth the deity? Was the virginity of The Secret depending solely on the advancement of technology and metaphysics to the point where they could bring That Which Is, The God of The Material, to its full representation? Was it merely a matter of quantitative advancement instead of a qualitative divine revelation? Or had the cosmos and its enigmatic intrincacies dictated that The Demiurge be unearthed in this era? The last option seemed the most verosimile to Oktyabrsky, who was otherwise a man of science and conviction.

In the wanderings of his mind, the abduction of The Demiurge had lost all of its importance.

"The Fruit of Knowledge." He vocalized one of the many alternative names of the deity, oblivious to the fact that something being referred by so many things other than its real name hid secrets. Several electronic devices attached to the belts of the soldiers who accompained him began beeping. "At last, Sofia's legacy..."

"Doctor Oktyabrsky, we've exceeded the maximum safe exposure." One of the soldiers broke the meditation of the two antonymal sages, scientist and mage. "We need to go back to the surface."

"Return, I will be back to the top floors soon." Oktyabrsky replied, signalling them off with a gesture of his hand. "My work here is not done. And don't send more people down here after you, we are contaminating the scene enough as it is."

"Understood Doctor Oktyabrsky, we'll tell the perimeter units to seal the airlock and establish zero tolerance quarantine as soon as you come out." The soldiers saluted and rapidly hushed away back to the elevator, which creaked to life and brought the men away back into the floating nitrogenate mist with a continuous, deep mechanical noise buzz. Even after just a couple minutes and protected by the mysterious metaphysical damper suits, the soldiers could not help but feel a vague, shifting melancholy, already yearning the bottom of the elevator shaft once more, where Bliss awaited in the walls, in the air.

"So we are indeed dealing with it." The doctor resumed "It's an elegant respite to know that I did not underestimate the gravity of the situation, as no ammends are required to our plan of action which could cost us valuable time. The Demiurge is beyond our control and requires immediate attention, I already have people searching this country for its current location, though I expect you to find it earlier."

Oktyabrsky then noticed that Cornelius was making a call, something he had certainly not expected. He was the one supposed to be making calls requesting reinforcements, not Cornelius, who he believed was already powerful enough to accomplish things by himself. He pondered. Had he actually underestimated the gravity of the situation to the point where more attention was required even by Cornelius himself? Maybe there were things he knew that even The Sect had lost to memory, which would have filled Oktyabrsky with fear were it not for his current inability. If what was known was so terrible, how fearsome could be what had been forgotten?

"Given how the more people know of this situation the more sensitive it gets, may I ask you who are you calling to assist you in assisting us?" He asked.

[Estainia]

"A proclaimed expert in assisted-suicide, master alchemist, necromancer, etc." Cornelius said evenly as he tucked the phone back into his jacket's internal pocket. The Necromancer drew several phials from nowhere seemingly, they had a sort of ethereal glow to them among the glow already present in the room; immediately he opened them as one with a flick of his hand, gathering the remaining aura of the Demiurge like a peasant with a bucket that collected water.

"These are Vessels; no I don't mean mundane pots; as you can note there are four. I am gifting two of these to the Ministry of Science, any substance in existence, aura, natural, scientific or entirely otherworldly can be collected in them so simply as opening them. The other two I will keep for further study, naturally." When he finished this task and resealed the phials he elaborated on his earlier statement. "In essence I contacted myself; albeit different and unique in her own right." Cornelius idly peeled at the blast doors as though they were made of puddy, dropping the now molten steel, essence and then some into another phial that was filled with an odd blackness which almost immediately took on a bluish hue through the crystal, not glass.

"She should be here any second, it's not hard for us to locate one another, if you know anything about the fabled First Triune, our connection is similar." He examined the room with the same eye he had examined the aura, dissecting it down to atoms proverbially and nearly literally, he hadn't used that...skillset to see the scrolls of life in a very very long time. "I do not take you to be a stupid man, Doctor. Did you truly think for a moment that such an installation could hold It?" He turned around done with his examination for the moment; the room in the end was just a room and it would hold nothing more in terms of information to be given.

The normally dramatic bright white flash of light that came a few seconds later was more subdued, as though beaten into submission, it crackled with voids in it, dark blotches of anti-color in an otherwise pristine and perfect shade of ethereal white. The person, being, whatever it was that stepped out of the light was by moral accounts, stunning; her long auburn hair flowed freely as though it were liquid copper; her youthful visage an image of feminine perfection. She had the same, or were they different; dark violet eyes that Cornelius had, violent and seeing beyond seeing. In contrast to the sapphire blue suit that the other necromancer wore; she herself was adorned in something simple; and completely ironic; the white summer-dress went down to her ankles, thin straps across her shoulders holding it up, not that her rather...haughty chest didn't help that any.

"Doctor Ruslan Oktyabrsky, Cornelia Aurora." Cornelius tucked his hands out of his pockets as he drew the equally ethereal and oddly auric (and in physicality as well) similar woman into an embrace; who returned it. "Cornelia, one of the many heads of the Ministry of Science."

Cornelia turned and examined Oktyabrsky with a gleam of amusement in her eyes, judging him almost immediately before she chuckled darkly. "How did you get rid of the moral compass?" ...

[Birkaine]

Code: Select all

 ///:SUMERKY-E/YW/UM14/Chronophasia> Open/Entry004
    :Opening
    -FILE CORRUPT-
    /:Attempting data recovery erc_purge
    //:Data recovery complete (32%)


NO DATA

...

The so-called 'Old Empire' is part of a misdirection campaign by our government to confuse the public regarding metaphysical-archaeological discoveries in Vojna Oblast. We certainly have an idea of what preceeded our nation, but the mysteries, and horrors we found there would not make for great historical records.


/SIGNAL LOST


N42 Highway
Vladimir Mountains
Birkaine

The continuous, deep noise of the many diesel engines at full power echoed across the wind-blasted peaks of the eternal Vladimir Mountains that bisected the vast nation of Birkaine. Below the snow-covered peaks that seemed unreachable, the scenery was a desolate one, rarely graced by any sort of life given the jagged, inhospitable walls of granite. Originally the rumored birthplace of the Birkanians, the Vladimir mountains were now largely desolated, the Birkanian people having moved on to greener pastures. It now acted as the geographical limit for the northern and southern areas of the nation, a large wall separating two synergistic but distinct cultures of Birkaine, the Klavan north and the Christian south. Birkanian history was not short of conflicts between the two halves, where each half tried to impose itself or secede from the other in a violent duality. It was the infamous and largely fatal crossing of the Vladimir mountains what had allowed the legendary Ivan Smertov to finally coalesce Birkaine as a nation; and the impregnable city of Vojnagrad was located in (and fortifiedby) the mountains.

Yet millenia of bloodshed and cultural separation faded like dust in the wind after one single vehicle passed through, heavily escorted by a varied group of armored personnel carriers and jeeps. The corruption and age of the rocky surfaces were polished away into a beautiful, marble-like splendor for many miles around the source of a heavenly light. Animals, houses, plants, men, were all given the brief gift of a different reality, a nobler reality not whipped or destroyed by its eternal age, where everything gained a spiritual light and splendor. Heaven on Earth. A light that felt itself in whoever looked at it not in luminosity but in beauty.
The source of the magestic, angelike light that woke up in everyone around it such profound, overwhelming feelings, was a sealed trailer that was once used to transport satellites from their points of assembly to the launch pads in southern Birkaine. There was not a single crack in the hermetically sealed trailer of the 18-wheeler, which did not prevent the light from pouring through, undeterred by the machinations of men or, on a larger scale, the limits of the material. The sanctity of the underground core of the REM-D facility was incomparable to that of the vehicle and the general area in which it moved. Oil-stained, snowy pavement was rendered more sacred than the holiest of manmade temples in a range of several kilometers for a brief moment of time.

While the effects of the forbidden God were notable in the areas that surrounded it, nowhere was it stronger than in the drivers and crewmembers of the vehicles, who sat in extreme proximity of the God, unaware of its effects on them that exposed them to something that was beyond even mythology. Thus, the Ministry of Science moved into the unknown, wheter it was consciously like Oktyabrsky or unconsciously -and far more deeply- like the men on the trucks.

His father had come from the south, from a winter in Nevezdaye's military hospital in 1951. Obese, severe-looking and bald. He wore the white shirt that had gotten burned into Bereznyak's memory, the eternal white shirt that his father wore in the few moments that were still clear to Bereznyak's memory. A walk in the park, an university graduation, the deathbed. He also wore grey cord pants and minimalistic but well-polished shoesproduct of either his humility or his desire to wear things that were too simple to break, something that had been characteristic of engineers like him. In wondering wheter to feel fear, gratitude or wheter to impose a scientific stoicism to feign indifference, Bereznyak had forgotten to express any emotion when he first saw him, and instead was now talking to him like he had always been there. On top of him, his father and the persons that had once been the drivers and bodyguards onboard the semi (which was now infinite), a group of men, women and creatures that seemingly extended onto eternity waited for him with a bit of anxiety. Many of them had their throats cut or crushed, some of them lacked their heads and walked like men walk in the shadows. They surrounded Bereznyak and his father, but an ancient terror prevented them from saying anything. One of the men made its way through the crowd, wearing the outfit of a soldier and peppered with ten or twelve fatal battle wounds. He stood tall with a square jaw, brown hair and a flattened nose flanked by two strong cheekbones. Bereznyak recognized him as his brother, victim of the ill-fated assault on Silent Line carried out by the 1516th Rifle Regiment and ultimately defeated by an ambush that had claimed his life. Bereznyak didn't show surprise at this either, and instead leaned forwards to get a closer look at the soldier's battered body. He stood up, the wheelchair was no longer there.

"What a shame to see such a great warrior broken by the hardships of the war he took such pride in." Bereznyak noted and extended his hand for a handshake. "But also what a satisfaction to know that those responsible purged their wrongdoings in the frontyard of the Victory Square!"

"If you mean Colonel Herzen and Vinogradov and those from the 31st Front, you should know I already forgave and thanked them." The bloodied soldier said with a slow, but calm tone. Bereznyak nodded in acknowledgement and gestured for his brother to not let him interrupt him. "But Pavlov, you never understood me, and it's no wonder. How would you understand me given how different our fates were? You, you ended up working in a scientific installation sheltered admist the mountains in a project that will be one of the most famous of the world, and will die under the shroud of a God; I ended up fighting for lands that remain to this day forgotten. My life was one of rifles and screams and victories in forgotten places. ¿What kind of a legacy is that? The only reason people remember me is because I died on a pasture, killed by men on horseback. I owe Herzen and Vinogradov such a bizarre death which I couldn't appreciate back then, but future generations refused to forget."

Bereznyak looked on to his brother with the calm analytic -and someone would say demeaning and objectifying- gaze of the scientists.

"You've always been too romantic" He said "Being famous in posterity isn't much better than being famous in the present, and it only takes money to achieve that."

"I know what you're thinking" His brother replied. "In 1979, fate, that wanted to look into who you were, offered you a man's death, in battle. You showed that you were not worthy of such a gift because fighting and blood scared you."

"Scared me?" He said "I, who look into the unknown?"

"I know you've done a couple achievements in the scientific." The soldier replied while their father relegated himself to a calm, observing stance. "But this is Birkaine, there's other greater achievements. Achievements called war, battle, victory."

Bereznyak simply looked at him.

"I didn't need to be brave. An achievement of mine, as you put it, was to allow that other men braver than me fought and died for me. Bravery is a matter of endurance; some endure more and some endure less, but sooner or later they all fall."

"Let it be that way" The soldier replied with an altive attitude "But I've lived and died and even today I do not know what fear is. And now I am going to get erased, to be given another fate and another face because even Birkaine's memory fades and twists. I don't know who the other will be, who will they do with me, but I know he will have no fear."

"I have enough with being myself" Bereznyak shrugged.

"The rocks also want to be rocks forever" His brother replied. "And they are so for centuries until they turn into dust. I thought the same way you did when I entered death, but here I learned many things. If you look closely, we are already both changing."

While Bereznyak didn't pay attention to his brother, or at least he feigned to pay attention, his father shifted lightly, and said a brief phrase as if he was thinking out loud.

"Maybe I'm not made for death, but this place and this discussion looks like a dream to me. And not my dream but someone else's dream, and that someone still hasn't born."

They didn't talk anymore, because in that exact moment someone called them.

---

All the missiles, eight large anti-tank, laser-guided munitions, hit with precision and ravaged the vehicles of the convoy with remorseless efficiency. Only wreckage remained, of both the vehicles and men. Guided by a specialized aircraft of the Ministry of Science, several unmanned aerial combat drones had located and fired upon the convoy of vehicles that carried and escorted the ancient artifact, destroying them all while remaining such a distance away that even the majestic light of The Demiurge was reduced to a faint glimmer in the distance, a single pixel in the consoles of the UCAV's operators that, sleepily and without a hint of interest, took sips of their coffees as they supervised that all the combat drones followed their designated waypoints.


REM-D Ionospheric Heating Facility
Glubina Oblast
Birkaine

"How did you get rid of the moral compass?"

"Enlightement gives you many rewards, some are more bitter than others." Oktyabrsky simply replied, giving Cornelia not much emotion in return.

He then turned to witness Cornelius' elaborate yet smooth procedures as he condensed the aura of The Demiurge into several vials, taking one of them with a simple machine-like move, placing it in a resealable plastic bag which he took from his suit before putting it back on his pocket. By now the pumping of liquid nitrogen into the damaged cooling assembly had ceased, removing most of the misty shroud that had just moments ago hovered near the surface of the installation. As Cornelius took away the aura of the Demiurge, the material seemed to return to its previous state, reduced to mere substance that reeked of corruption and imperfection, a change that everyone inside the room could feel regardless of their metaphysical affinity.

"The facility did a respectable job of containing it, owing in part to our basic understanding of the metaphisical and its inhibition by machinery, which is at the moment inactive, and owing in most part to the fact that the nature of the Demiurge appeared to be largely passive." He said in his unsettling monotone just as a cellphone began ringing, he searched in his pockets for it. "Incidentally it is not what was inside what has jeopardized our efforts but rather what was outside, more specifically Dr. Beresnyak, who seems to have been overinfluenced by It."

He brought the cellphone to his ear and listened closely, without muttering a word or gesturing and finally hung up without having said anything.

"It appears the military has made the repeated mistake of getting involved in this, and have used aircraft to destroy the convoy that carried Dr. Bereznyak and the artifact. While I do not believe that The Demiurge has been destroyed as a result, I do believe that this pushes the importance of your duties to critical levels now that it is alone in the mountains."

[Estainia]

REM-D Ionospheric Heating Facility
Glubina Oblast
Birkaine

Cornelius sighed at the news, not more or less. "Your military has an uncanny ability in stepping in extremely deep piles of shit it does not understand." He rarely, if ever cursed yet found it appropriate for that moment. "We can leave immediately of course but I feel that would be detrimental and 'jumping the gun' as Californians say. If my precognition isn't screwing with me again, it will not be alone for very long and while we are immortal, getting shot repeatedly still hurts and blacking out and waking up strapped to a table or worse is not appealing to me, at all."

"I know the lack of subtly your people have, and Novoferrograd would end up obliterated before the month is out if that were to happen." He grinned a sort of primal, all knowing grin at the thought. "We need to formulate a plan, and more importantly think about why who ever did this did it. Yes I understand perfectly we are pressed for time, however running blindly into anything leads only to senseless death; something your Ministry is all too skilled at and which I am the exact opposite of." The entire time that Cornelius was speaking the fairer of the two necromancer lords waltzed around the room completely at random, more often than not bumping into her counterpart who either didn't notice or pretended as such. When he'd finished she finally took a moment to stop and say her own piece. "Planning every move is boring.-" She clicked her tongue and began at rapid, faster than the human eye could blink, to trace ethereal lines in the air, glowing a hot sort of blue to them before she just...vanished, no arcane chanting, no methodical rythmic speaking.

"I---." Cornelius didn't need to see a flash, there was none, it was a matter of complex connection that he simply knew she was gone. "I'll be back, it was a pleasure meeting you of course, likely to return and all that." Cornelius repeated similar, yet not the same symbolics into the air in front of him across the span of a few seconds, his hands moving to the point they were a quick moving blur, though they could still be made out as what they were; in the next second he as well, ceased to be in appearnce.

---

In those next seconds all the theatrics of their normal entrances came to head, albeit for a tactical purpose, the blinding light surged forward from their point of origin as loud as it was bright, deafening as the thunder of a certain Nordic God. While this seemed theatrical it was purely to do the obvious, it was a magical flashbang grenade...times one million or so, give or take. Cornelia had appeared first, even if it was only by a few seconds her special mark was already on the area, which was to say anything that was still living and didn't look overly important to her or wasn't mentioned, and she could tell; was dead, and it wasn't just dead, it was gruesomely dismembered and tempest tossed to the four corners of creation.

Cornelius, was more methodical, he moved slowly and with purpose; two, brilliant beams of bright pink light went up from around him, blunt and forceful they slammed through, not into, the UAVs of the Birkanians, blinding them, burning out the cameras eyes but not otherwise harming the machines. Then he felt the helicopters; just as Cornelia danced over to and around him, grabbing hold of his hand the two literally waltzed for a moment before they simply concentrated, a small all important part of the metallic things, he restrained his wife from unleashing an onslaught of energies to massacre the poor men, rather a simple crushing of a single node in the tail rotor of one of the helicopters causing it to fail in its spinning before entirely stopping, that would certainly get their attention and while they'd probably die horribly when the thing hit the ground, at the very least they wouldn't have had their souls tortured by the less merciful of the duo.

"Now then." They turned, speaking in tandem with one another almost creepily. "That is one hell of a bright sight, isn't it?"