novelzi Chapter 255 – Madness and Delusion
Chapter 255 – Madness and Delusion
Anassa fell through downwards through the sky. Black hair and crimson dress flapping through the wind, she looked down at the world. This Anassa had already lost control, it was obvious through the fact that her perfect hair was ruined. An Anassa that was in control of herself could be within the centre of Worldbreaking, and still look exactly as pristine as a Divine should look.
Another Anassa appeared next to the first. They looked at each other. This one was perfect, hair straight, stood on the air, the hem of her dress lifted upwards as if invisible maids were carrying it. The first Anassa disappeared and the second became the original.
Anassa looked down at the Jungle as she regained control of herself. She looked up at the sky. There was no Sun, it was merely an eternal blue ocean. That was merely confirmation that she had been whisked off to somewhere that wasn’t Arda. The real Anassa would have not let her clothes be ruined. She looked down at the Jungle as it started to growl at her. The winds and leaves rustling with a million different voices it had taken throughout its history. “How?”
“How is simple.” Anassa laughed mockingly from above. “I am a Divine. You are a plant.” The plants from below laughed up at Anassa. Oh? They were confident, where they? “Divinity has to be recognized to be given power.” Anassa cast her hands into the air. A dozen copies of the Goddess of Sorcery appeared, each one as perfect and as real as the first. “Your madness is merely a powerful curse.” A crimson moon appeared within the circle of Anassa’s as the day retreated to night. Did this plant really think it could try and fight Anassa in the realm of one’s soul? There was no one who knew Anassa better than Anassa did. “I revoke your Divinity.” Anassa revoke it because Anassa was Anassa. Because Godhood needed a Gatekeeper, and no one but Anassa had stepped up to the duty.
“HOW?!” The Jungle cried out again.
“If I say it is night. Then it is night.” The sky above Anassa beat in a pulse as the stars burned out to prove her point. This was a night worthy of Irinika herself! “If I say the moon will crash onto you.” Every Anassa in the air cast her hands down. “Then it will.” And it did.
Anassa watched her crimson moon, a perfect circle, slightly opaque like a shaded drawing, tear through the ground. Like a ball striking a theatre’s curtain, the entire surface of the world wrapped around the moon. All the mountains covered in green, all the ravines overflowing with plants, all of the Jungle, its roots crawling deep through the dwarven tunnels underneath the surface and its shoots regrowing through grey ash, wrapped around that moon as if it was a present being wrapped as a gift.
The moon started to shrink and shrink and shrink, until it became the size of a house, then a person, no larger than a blade of grass. A tiny pea could crush it. And then it vanished. A new Jungle revealed itself from the façade of the previous one. As if all Anassa had done was pull back one curtain to reveal another. It was a perfect copy of the Jungle that had stood there once. Just as Anassa could become several at once, the Jungle had abandoned one incarnation of itself to resurrect as another. “This is not your realm.” The million different voices cried out from the ground.
“Divinity is omnipresent.” Anassa shouted down. “There is no realm that is not mine.” The sky became filled with copies of herself. On Arda, there was a limit to her powers. Anassa had never hit it, but every Divine had a limit, it was simple common sense: truly omnipotent beings did not exist. In realms like this though, which existed as nothing more than mere figments of thought, in these farcical creations within one’s mind, then did limits truly exist? The only limit was the unbending boldness of one’s confidence.
And Anassa was confident indeed.
If this realm did not want to bow to her, then she would teach it to bow. As if guided by one will, every Anassa outstretched her palms downwards, and from every Anassa fell a beam of crimson that incinerated the leaves and woods below her. The trees all fell, reduced to ash, then the ash was reduced to nothing as Anassa’s beams scared their way across the surface. They dug through the ground, into the roots. They seared the entirety of the Jungle out of existence. And the Jungle underneath that. And the one that had come to replace the next one.
Anassa looked down upon the burning world. The red beams of crimson slowly started to give way as another Anassa appeared on the ground, on a tiny area that the beams had carved out and avoided, specifically for her to stand. “You cannot outlast me.” The Jungle whispered up to her. Anassa felt sweat burst out over her forehead.
It wasn’t her sweat. It was the Jungle imagining she was tired. Anassa could command sorceries infinitely, just as no-one ever got tired of breathing, the Goddess of Sorcery could never possibly tire of her own element. It was simply a matter of perspective. “You do not know who you are talking to.” Anassa whispered back as yet another layer of Jungle crumbled away.
The trees had it too good for too long. These quick deaths men got used to. She wasn’t working to defeat the Jungle, she was simply killing it an infinite amount of times. Tactics had to be changed. The red beams disappeared. The countless Anassa’s in the air looked up as the Jungle started to laugh. “Do we tire already woman?”
Another Anassa, perfect this time, refreshed as if she had just woken up from a timely nap, appeared. The sweating Anassa disappeared. “I have been kept in prison for twice as long as you existed.” Anassa said as she snapped her fingers. From above, a thousand needles rained down into the trees. They grew and twisted and tore the trees from within. “I am easily four times your age.” Anassa said. “You are a child compared to me.”
And just as a child could not ever compete against an adult, the Jungle could not ever compete with Anassa. It wasn’t a rationalization, nor was it a reason. It didn’t need to make sense. Anassa knew herself the logic was flawed, the Jungle was massive and unique. Who knew what the Jungle was even capable of? The plants claimed part of a continent to themselves.
Yet Anassa said the Jungle was a child, so it was. It had to be, because the reasoning didn’t need to matter. All that Anassa had to be sure of was that she would defeat these sentient trees.
The Jungle burst into crimson flames.
A dark man with a spear burst out from a burning tree to try and stab at Anassa. A beam from above incinerated him from existence. Anassa smiled smugly to herself as an arrow heading for the back of her head disappeared from existence as an Anassa snapped her fingers and split it into the base atomic components. If the Jungle was throwing its souls at her now, that meant she was having an effect.
More men came. More men were cut down. Clerics and Paladins and Kirinyaans and Ausans. Men from nations which no longer existed and beasts that had been stolen by the Jungle. Enormous spiders, twice the size of Anassa, leapt from the canopy. The Goddess of Sorcery and a hundred spikes burst out of the ground to tear them apart. Lions burst out of the undergrowth. They fell. Fish and crocodiles and birds. Great beasts and tamed horses, packs of wild dogs and swarms of insects. Sorcery felled them all.
And then Anassa saw them. The four great beasts. Fer had once said they were the first to fall to the Jungle. Anassa looked at that mountain-sized lion as it began to race at her. A lion? What was a lion? A mere cat. In this world of delusions, what could a cat do? A mere kitten? How tiny was an adorable kitten when compared to a Goddess?
A boot descended from the heavens and crushed that mountain-sized lion. Anassa licked her lips in glee as she looked at the next three. When all it took was a single reason, what could not be reasoned?