The Roughest Gems Shine Brightest

"What did you find? Was it something bad? You look unwell, Ka'an."

Reed quickly shook his head and said, "No, I'm fine.... It's just that, well..." His eyes were still stuck on the final part of the old note.

He sighed and said, "The note's unfortunately illegible." As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he decisively crushed the note in his hand and set it aflame. It was too late. 

Before Lu'um could even react, Reed had turned the note into ashes. It was gone.

She appeared shocked and even somewhat distraught that Reed had obliterated the note, but he purposefully ignored her reaction. He simply shrugged his shoulders and said, "Don't cry over spilled milk, sweet-cheeks. It probably wasn't a love letter for you anyways."

Bingo. The play had worked like a charm, much to his dismay.

She coldly gazed at Reed as if he were less than dirt and said, "....Follow me."

Reed groaned internally; he knew what this would entail but counted it as an acceptable loss. Living in the doghouse sucked, but it couldn't be helped this time. The damned note opened a can of worms that'd gnaw at him forever. How in the goddammed hell did he leave a note from himself from before he was here, let alone born given the note's age? 

It was one thing for other people to mess with him but now even he was messing with himself across time.

Never thought I'd ever have to pay something from the past in a literal sense, though. Goddamnit. If it isn't one thing it's something else...

He took the ring necklace and hurriedly tied it around his neck as he chased after Lu'um's fleeting figure. He'd think about the note later, after taking care of business. After passing through a series of altars, they arrived at the top of the Crystal Palace.

Atop the magnificent palace was an obsidian pillar of considerable size. It peacefully hovered in place despite being several stories tall.

It was an eerie thing; something about it made Reed feel unwell. He felt that among all the things he'd seen in this city, none had exhibited the aura the pillar possessed.

It was assuredly made by men, he knew that. But even so, it still felt unnatural. It felt disgusting even looking at it for too long. 

 "Don't stare at it too much; this is the Guiding Nail, the tool we use to go outside. For the sake of brevity, think of it as a literal nail we use to pierce the walls of reality back into the universe. It's not something that normal eyes are designed to gaze upon. It is a forbidden thing that normally would have never been built in the first place."

"Then why did you create such a thing? Can't we just use an Altar to get back home?" said Reed. He averted his eyes away from the grotesque construct and looked at the ground instead. 

Lu'um shook her head and said, "No, the acting of warping cannot bridge the Gap of Nonexistence that lies between Citlai and the universe. Have you never wondered why you were never able to leave the confines of Mulia? It is the same principle; Mulia, too, is separate from reality as long as the Heavenly Aegis remains active. It is impossible to cross the Empty Gap, even with the assistance of Anima. The Guiding Nails are a necessary evil, as much as we'd like to see them destroyed..."

They walked over the pillar and stood in front of it, albeit at a distance. The closer one got, the stronger the feeling of unease one felt. Even spacetime seemed to painfully curve and twist near the immediate vicinity of the terrible pillar. 

"Think of the Guiding Nail as a permanent wound we've left on reality itself. It creates an eternal bridge between two points that we can traverse at any time. The technology used to create the Coffins we rode into Sotephor City was based on an inoperable Guiding Nail they found, or rather, something we'd mistakenly left behind when we abandoned the continent." 

When they got close enough, Lu'um said, "Stay behind me and follow my path, Ka'an. Do NOT stray away from my path, am I clear? The mangled stretch of spacetime ahead of us is dangerous even to the likes of us. A single misstep is all it'll take for you to die a final death." 

Reed nodded slowly and inched himself right behind her, as if he'd become her shadow. He focused all of his attention on her footsteps as they traversed the godforsaken minefield one step at a time. Footstep by footstep, they walked forward in a seemingly random path as they approached the pillar. It was a snaking path that eventually led them to the base of the pillar, where the aura was the strongest. 

The word 'reality' did not mean much in for those near the obsidian pillar. It was nothing more than an empty word. The scenery from afar had warped to the point that it'd become unrecognizable. Reed looked upon the world and saw confusing, unmade-shapes twisted in ways that should not have been possible. Even the surrounding Anima seemed to writhe in anguish.

The threads of reality had come undone. It was only then that he finally realized why the Guiding Nails were considered a necessary evil. They defiled nature in a manner that could not be forgiven.

This was a sin, without a doubt. 

"Close your eyes, Ka'an, and do NOT open them until I tell you to, am I clear? On the count of three, we're going to touch the pillar together, okay?" said Lu'um. She grabbed one of Reed's hands and closed her eyes in preparation. Reed immediately followed suit and shut his eyes with all his strength. It was time to go back home.

Lu'um took a deep breath and said, "One... Two.... Three!" 

The last thing he heard was the sound of her voice as it morphed into something resembling an elongated scream as it melded with everything else. That was when his torment began.

An eternity had been condensed within the span of a zeptosecond, maybe even less than that. 

The empty, white plains of creation laid bare before him. They were unwritten, free of sin.

The crushing pressure of becoming one in infinity was unbearable beyond belief. He felt himself unraveling at the seams of his very being. He was losing himself piece-by-piece as every millennium passed and there was nothing he could do about it.

He struggled fiercely for aeons against the infinitude of the white plains and screamed in despair. Nevertheless, the journey to the other side of nothing continued. 

Time passed until time itself lost meaning. He had completely unraveled. He was no longer himself.

A deep thrum slowly pitched up until it became recognizable over a course of a hundred lifetimes. 

".....Nnn ....Opeee... Eyy... Hu.... Kaaa...aann..... Opeeen.... Your.... Eyeeesssss..." 

He opened his eyes with great difficulty and inspected his surroundings. Tiny rays of light slipped in through the broken roof and illuminated the dingy, abandoned room. The pitter-patter of the rain could be faintly heard outside along with the distant booming sound of thunder. An unsettling aura was stuck on Reed that reeked of the abyss from beyond reality.

"Welcome back, Ka'an. It's been an eternity since we've last met, right? And yet, it has only been.... less than four seconds since we've left Citlai, give or take." She touched Reed's chest and summoned a small, golden bell out of the air with her other hand.

She rung the small bell and quietly said, "Begone, unholy thing. You were made by nothing, shall be unmade by nothing, and return back into nothing." The bell produced a sonorous chime and the purity it beckoned forth drove the malignant aura on Reed away but not before a grating, condescending laugh crept over the room in response. 

Lu'um ignored the blatant provocation. She knew better than to take the bait. Instead, she gazed past one of the room's ruined walls and said, "It looks like we've landed around thirty kilometers away from the outpost we're supposed to reach. We got lucky this time."

Reed pitifully groaned as he cradled his head and muttered, "Arghh... You what now? What? My head feels like it's going to explode....." He wanted nothing more than to never use another guiding nail for as long as he lived. He'd rather just die than suffer that unspeakable torment for another second. 

It would be a violation of all that is good and right to make any man experience such a horrendous thing. Some acts are unequivocally wrong — this is one of them.

What he saw out beyond the bastion of logic and reason was a deliberate rejection of the concept of order and stability. It was a domain of formless design based upon an eldritch perspective not native to anything within the realms of men.

The whispers he heard could not have been concocted by anything even remotely sane. Even now, the sibylline truths that had been thrust upon him lingered like the dark clouds that shrouded the sky above him...

Man should not have chanced upon the inhuman knowledge required to build those terrible things. God must have surely made a grave mistake for Man to have been granted understanding such evil.

Lu'um noticed the dangerous shimmer in Reed's eyes and snapped her fingers loudly in front of his face, startling him out of his deep reverie. She grabbed his face and forced him to look at her, demanding his complete attention.  

"Forget anything you might have heard back there, Ka'an. Do NOT fall for any of the lies you've heard. A fate worse than death awaits those who chase the lure of the power beyond the veil."

"You. Will. Lose. Everything." She stressed every single word in her sentence slowly to make sure that she was clearly understood. She needed to make the fact explicitly clear to him. 

Especially him, of all people. 

Suffice to say, Reed wanted nothing to do with whatever existed in the wretched emptiness outside of reality. He'd never associate with whatever existed outside the sphere of rationality and law. Only madmen, fools, and the most broken of souls would ever fall for the power offered from the Outside.

The journey toward the outpost was surprisingly quiet, even though the turbulence in the Anima around the area continued to increase for every kilometer they got closer to it. Every now and then, a massive surge in Anima like an enormous tidal wave would sweep past them and disturb the endless cloud wall in the sky, churning up fiercer and fiercer storms like never before. 

Reed and Lu'um silently picked up their pace and hurried towards the skyscraper at an even greater pace than before. The lack of Infested near the outskirts, the Anima storms, and the fact that they had not been able to locate anyone else in the vicinity was enough for them to put the pieces together with certainty. Something was wrong. Nothing was around, be it friend or foe. 

"What do you think could have happened? We were only gone for the span of a second; this shouldn't have been possible, right? It doesn't make sense; wasn't this district is supposed to be relatively clear?" Reed felt the thrum of his beating heart in his ears like a mad drum as a multitude of terrible thoughts rushed through his mind.

Fear has a vicious way of creeping into vulnerable hearts and can make smart people do stupid things. Reed knew that it was beyond stupid to let his emotions control him, but he couldn't hold himself back anymore...

"I don't know... This is extremely strange; I never detected this Anima storm before I left for Citlai. Where could have it come from? It doesn't make sense..... We should be care— Ka'an!!" 

An azure streak of light shot off into the distance at a monstrous speed, leaving a massive wake of Anima behind it that chaotically swept past the surrounding area. Lu'um felt a headache coming up and muttered, "Great.... I should have kept a tighter leash on him," and hurriedly chased after his fleeting figure.

The last thing she needed was for him to barge into the jaws of death like an imbecile. Only heaven knew how many times she'd had to put the fires he'd started before...

Reed pierced through the ruined city like a silver bullet as he barreled through all manner of buildings like they were made out of dust. Normally, he would've had to creep around the labyrinthian maze that was the inner district to reach the outpost which was at the heart of the abandoned metropolis, but time was of the essence. Speed over subtlety, so to speak. 

His style wasn't elegant, sly, or skillful in the slightest. He was akin to a human missile one a linear path to the city as he tore through everything that got in his way. Old panes of weathered glass shattered for kilometers because of the chaotic wake of Anima he'd left behind. Ancient buildings shook wildly as he shot through them easily. Reed knew that he was essentially broadcasting his position to everything in the city for dozens of kilometers, but he didn't care. 

Reed's mindset was grounded on a single idea —  Act now, think later — that ran contrary to everything his mind was telling him to do. His body simply acted on its own behalf before he even realized it, as if it wanted to willingly throw itself into peril. He felt that the mark on his chest was getting hotter the closer he got to the outpost, to the point that it hurt as if he were being branded. It hurt like hell but it also strangely calmed his worries.

The scorching heat it radiated slowly eased up until it felt comfortable, even pleasurable to experience. A delightful current of warmth spread across his body and he found himself enveloped by a power not his own. His shackles had been removed, much to his astonishment. A burst of speed propelled him forward even faster than before, almost outrageously so.

Reed even flinched out of fear over how fast he'd become all of a sudden as he winked through the cityscape like a flash of light. In practically no time at all, he'd tumbled through over a hundred buildings during his flight through the inner city to the outpost, destroying them all. A wake of destruction trailed behind him the shape of his Anima wake, that now resembled a storm. He'd become a natural disaster in his own right. 

He, in fact, did not even arrive at the outpost when he reached it — he passed right through it. Like an azure meteor from hell, Reed ripped through the skyscraper and crashed a couple hundred meters away from it during his landing. Although he was overjoyed with his new threshold of power, he was also frightened of the potential contained within it. He found himself unable to even decelerate properly now as he hurtled wildly like an actual meteor. 

An enormous explosion shook the silent city as it reverberated across without stopping. A massive cloud of smoke and flaming debris shot up into the sky like a beacon for all to see for kilometers. 

When Reed saw what he'd caused, a part of him wanted to die from embarrassment. He slowly peeked out of his crater and saw dozens of gleaming eyes staring at him atop the skyscraper where the outpost was and he ducked back down, out of sight. 

They were safe, after all. He felt immense relief, but at the same time knew that he'd royally messed up this time. Most of all, he knew that Lu'um was definitely going to have some words to say about what he'd caused this time. He shuddered at the thought of it and crept deeper into his crater.

He contemplated all of the possible scenarios and wondered if, perhaps, nothing might happen this time around. It wouldn't be too much to ask of the Lady of Fate to give him a freebie, right?

Reed looked up at the bleak sky and let out a small, empty laugh as he clenched his fists.

Ahh shit, here we go again...