Scriptural Power

"How do I go about abandoning the essence of what I was written to be?" Gilgamesh posed the question, unsure that there even was an answer.

"How did you do it the first time?" Florence blinked, sitting in the empty floor below the storylines.

"No idea. I just know that I no longer wanted to be who I was. I felt that all the way down in the deepest, darkest pits of my soul. When I did that, everything else just seemed to happen." Gilgamesh explained, struggling as he tried to piece together an explanation.

"Would you say you... hated yourself the way you were?" Florence posed the question with uncertainty, but Gilgamesh's head immediately darted in her direction.

"Exactly! I hated the very core of who I was, and so I rejected myself ...in order to... become myself?"

At that point, Gilgamesh was stumped. What had he even become? Who was he now that he was no longer himself?

He suddenly felt like tearing out some of his hairs.

Florence fell into thought before waving her hand around in the air a little. When nothing happened, she did it again with a frustrated grunt before realizing something.

"Oh! I forgot, we're in the wrong layer."

She outstretched her palm and slowly flipped it over, before her yellow eyes briefly flashed and the world around them began to change.

In a crazily disorienting and mind-bending show of reality-warping madness, the layer of storylines began to turn upside down before the speed of its rotation increased and it started flipping over and over again.

Gilgamesh tried to reach out to steady himself, but there was nothing close enough to him but Florence, and he clung to her as he let out a startled cry.

"Holy fuck- WHOA!"

Florence could do nothing as he gripped onto her torso and refused to let go, before he started to lose his balance and fall onto her.

"Get a grip, Gilgamesh!"

He did, in fact, get a grip, but not in the sense that Florence was referring to. He got a grip on her, and a tight one at that.

Florence was completely unaffected by the rapid spinning of the world around them, and after a few seconds the spinning stopped. She actually could not believe that Gilgamesh had practically been knocked on his ass by it, and looked at him like he was a melodramatic child.

"You can't be serious."

Gilgamesh pretty much had to tear himself off of Florence's body, and he shakily looked around as his knees wobbled feebly. He even gagged a few times as he tried to convince his mind that the spinning had stopped, and was eventually able to stand straight on his own. "What... the hell was that... Florence..."

Florence scoffed in annoyed disbelief, but there was a certain kind of concern in her eyes that seemed genuine. Even her ears drooped subtly as she looked at Gilgamesh go through it.

"I brought us back... Are you good, by the way?"

Only then did Gilgamesh take the time to look around and notice that they were back in the layer of Book Collections-- the base level of the Beginningless Library.

"We're back? Huh."

He noticed that it looked no different than when they left, then wondered if any time had passed at all, since time didn't exist in the layer of storylines. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine now."

"How did you do that, though? Without making a portal or anything?"

Florence shrugged, "I caught a tiny glimpse of the quintessential power behind it all; the fundamental force that enables the Library's existence."

"Huh," Gilgamesh seemed surprised, so Florence elaborated.

"It may not necessarily be something that only exists outside, but it's definitely not of the Library. It's a kind of power that I've never seen in here before."

"A kind of... scriptural power... if you will."

Gilgamesh gaped as he stepped a bit closer, and Florence grimaced as she looked away from his wide mouth.

"Harrumph!" Gilgamesh cleared his throat and righted himself, shutting his mouth too. "So, how does it work?"

Florence raised her hand again, and Gilgamesh immediately got flashbacks of the spinning world and how much he hated it. He almost leapt onto Florence again, but he kept himself under control.

Naturally, his inner reaction did not escape Florence, and she chortled in response to the look in his eyes. "You're so lame! Hahaha! Scared of spinning? You got illyngophobia or something? Aahahahaha!"

Gilgamesh shook his head, but could not confirm or deny anything. He himself had never experienced such a horrible feeling, and he wasn't sure how he was supposed to label it.

Perhaps it was a phobia. If it was, though, it had never reared its head before. It was definitely strange.

Florence managed to stop laughing after a few minutes and went on to show Gilgamesh what she wanted to show him.

With her palm outstretched, she shut her eyes and began to concentrate. Gilgamesh tried his best to, but he could not get a feel for whatever process was occurring under the surface.

All he knew for sure was that Florence's presence seemed to be getting further and further away from him, until it felt like she was no longer there.

The silence continued until Gilgamesh started seeing something in her hand, and Florence spoke at about the same time that it appeared.

"This is a seed of The Scripture- a seed of ...her... inherent nature. I'm not exactly sure how I acquired it, but it has something to do with me making contact with the Fourth Wall."

Gilgamesh was still looking at the imagery that had appeared in Florence's hand-- a kind of strange, magical writing that hovered just an inch above her skin. Letters and words would appear and disappear without any apparent pattern, constantly changing the writing.

"You just... took a seed of her power? 'Cause you're her daughter?" Gilgamesh got closer for a better look.

"I don't know for sure. Maybe I have the same power as her...?" Florence was at a loss, and merely shrugged.

"I don't really understand it much, but I can more or less figure out how to use it."

"Watch this."

She suddenly closed her hand and scattered the writing, then used a finger to start drawing in the air. Gilgamesh could not see what she was drawing, but her yellow eyes exuded golden lights as she drew, and they only glowed more intensely as she went on drawing.

Gilgamesh again tried to get a feel of what was going on, but much to his surprise, he still could not sense Florence's presence at all. His instincts and senses were all leading him to believe that Florence was not there in front of him at all.

He was even about to start believing it, and just for a split second, Florence's figure began to fade from his sight.

However, a hint of awareness poured out of his soul and rekindled his realization.

He knew that Florence was in front of him. How could he ever be led to believe otherwise? He was allowing himself to be limited, and causing himself to lose sight of what he could not understand.

If he was ever to cast off imperfection, he had to cling to that which he could not understand, and continuously try to understand it. Thankfully, his soul was able to prevent him from losing sight of this.

But before he could ponder the strangeness of what had just happened to him, Florence stopped drawing with her finger and pushed her hand forward, like she was shoving the air or an object in it.

As she did so, the spatial nature of the Library's base reality was erased, and what filled the blank space was an object of Florence's creation.

It was a giant diamond, glittering with all colors of the rainbow and filled with speckled, under-the-surface pigments almost like freckles. The deeper into it you looked, the less of the actual thing you could see. Instead, you became lost in its composition.

Gilgamesh stared at it for quite a while; Florence stared at it proudly. "I've seen this thing in my dreams many times. It must have caused my obsession with jewels."

While saying this, she touched some of the many jewels that adorned her spectacular body. Gilgamesh blinked before realizing what he had been doing, and looked to see Florence touching her piercings weirdly.

"Just start masturbating, right here and now." He said mockingly, with a narrow, taunting smile.

Florence scoffed, "You'd just gawk at me like a sicko, and I'll never give you the satisfaction."

Gilgamesh was not amused. "Ha. Ha." 

When she waved her hand, the diamond vanished and the space that she had previously erased was rewritten.

"So you have the power to create and destroy within the Beginningless Library. That's pretty fucking crazy, don't you think?" Gilgamesh started to consider the potential of her newfound power, and wondered what else she could do.

He wondered where her limit would lie.

"This scriptural power should, in theory, be the same as hers, but I can't exactly touch the source of it and use it for myself. I'm basically just tapping into the flow of energy that she's already sent into the Library. If I want to actually acquire this power for myself, I need to get out of here."

Eying Florence with understanding, Gilgamesh suddenly sighed and put an arm on his waist. With the other hand, he massaged his eyes. "Figuring that out is the problem."

Florence ears twitched, and her body went rigid for a moment before she turned around and glared at a faraway Book Collection. Gilgamesh noticed her behavior, and looked toward where he thought she was looking.

"What?" He squinted a bit and started to really look with his perfect sight, but he was still missing whatever it was that she had noticed.

"Someone's coming... Someone powerful..."

Florence's ears moved this way and that, and she suddenly took a big whiff of the air before her glare became a wide-eyed scowl. Sucking her teeth, she folded her arms and said, "You've gotta be kidding me."

A sudden and unannounced explosion rocked the surface of the Library's base layer, and sent rattling waves and ripples outward, travelling beyond space and time and bypassing even the Canonical Margins.

Out of nowhere, a figure slowly came into view. This was a man, appearing somewhat middle-aged, with terrifyingly intimidating battle scars and a piercing look in his fawn colored eyes. He stood taller than most men, and appeared to be shouldering a weight that no one else would dare carry.

Brushing aside his long hair, Dorian looked at both Florence and Gilgamesh before he took a breath.

With that single breath, the spatial natures surrounding all three of them were eradicated completely.