[SOLS] 2nd Anniversary ‘The Moon and the Stars’ Episode 3 Interlude: ‘Genesis’

  s1nful

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  681,254 views 5th May 20XX

  silent playthrough as usual for folks who dont play the game but still want the story

  oh god here we go. thought day 2 was dropping bombshells, huh? boy are we not prepared for the rest of this event

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  INTERLUDE - Genesis

  Summary of previous events

  A year has passed since Belle acknowledged Estelle and Luna as her daughters. One day, after playing with Luna and asking about her dreams, she proposes the two sisters study to enter Nindo, but Estelle is hesitant. After making a visit to the top of Yrd’ll, Estelle found comfort after seeing a vision of her parents from beyond the Milky Way, and resolved herself to become a healer.

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  GENESIS

  ‘In the beginning, there was only the infinite nihil.

  And amidst the void, breath was drawn, and the candle lit.

  And from the infinite light, the Word was spoken.

  ‘Let there be light.’

  Thus the Nothing unravelled, and Word became flesh.

  Nothing split in twain, becoming light and dark.

  And from the newborn world, starlight burst forth.’

  Late at night, Belle sat in her study, tinkering with the impossible contraption on her work bench.

  A sphere of interlocking golden rings spun around and orbited a golden core wildly, shooting arcane sparks that grinded against countless gears and inscriptions as they blurred from view, their speed making them undecipherable.

  The clockwork and machinery seemed to disappear into itself, colliding with its own fragments and tumbling into the fourth dimension.

  The machine buzzed and whirred, coming to life as it floated off the desk.

  Belle hovered her hand over it, pulling it up with an unseen magnetic force.

  The light intensified, creating waves of force that blew apart the papers on a nearby desk.

  A bright white light smothered the room, clawing through the walls before enveloping the entire manor, radiating all the way out across the Yrd’ll Mountains.

  If one looked upon it from Arden, they would have been blinded, like they were staring into the sun.

  In the palm of Belle’s hand, a star had been born.

  A heretical, sacrilegious act of divine creation, a supplanting of the world’s fundamental reality with the childish vision of Belle’s dreams.

  “Alright, part one, using Fire mana to artificially cast Genesis, success… next up… twist and bind. Split the star into five dimensions across six planes. Unravel, not by Revelation, but by Ein Sof.”

  Belle breathed out, and uttered the incantation for her spell.

  “Qliphoth.”

  And the star disappeared.

  “...Success. Helios Engine, stable, online…”

  Belle stared at the machine in her hand.

  Right inside its golden core, where the starlight used to be, was a tiny black pinhole, barely wider than a grain of sand, puncturing through the fabric of reality.

  Looking upon the machine, its fantastical clockwork and mechanisms, no longer made sense. Gears disappeared in and out of view, hopping in and out of a miniature mist resembling the veil of stars at night. Rings unravelled into loose threads and strings that rotated unto infinity, disappearing into nowhere before reappearing everywhere.

  Belle brought her palm closer to it.

  “Testing. The final principle… the endless transformation of energy.”

  The machine lit up as it was infused by energy, unstable flickers of lightning scattering across the room, singing the walls and frying the scrolls.

  “Samsara.”

  She breathed out.

  The fire and lightning retreated, drawn back into the depths of the machine’s core.

  Nothing happened.

  And then slowly, several seconds later, a tiny prick of light started to emanate from the black pinhole at the contraption’s heart.

  Belle looked down at the book beneath her, and flipped through its pages.

  “Mana input… 0.9983… mana output… 1.0017… mana retained… 0.9994. Overall efficiency in energy generation, 100.11%.”

  She sat in silence for over a minute, simply admiring the readings before her.

  She flicked her wrist, letting the machine deactivate and clatter to the desk uselessly.

  A low chuckle echoed across the room.

  The Helios Engine was a viable design.

  She had done the impossible; she had found a way to generate infinite energy.

  And she had done so without needing the use of the energy of the Void, instead, she just used the element of Fire and years of careful calculations and theorems to carefully recreate its Spells and emanations.

  She had bypassed the insanity that came with the use of Nirvana.

  She recreated a star without its energy, replicating Genesis.

  And by using a concentrated needle of pure heat, focused through the Helios Engine’s impossible lens, she had copied Ein Sof, and pierced the veil between the planes and dimensions.

  And through use of all three, and the impossible phenomena that was enabled by the crossing of dimensions, she had recreated Anitya, recycling energy into energy.

  Perpetual motion, in the palm of her hands.

  It was possible without needing the corruption of the Void…

  Belle frowned.

  No, that wasn’t quite right.

  It was possible, but not viable.

  This thing she had been working on for the past six years, the Helios Engine, would be more than capable as a personal battery, letting her never have to use a speck of her own mana supply ever again, but could it power a city?

  Could it power a planet? A star?

  Simply using the element of Fire to bastardise the Void’s Spells, even if it was one of her proudest feats, would not be enough to create the Paradox Engine that would power Arden, let alone one day take the entirety of Manusyara to the stars.

  Scaling it up simply was not practical.

  Creating a hole in reality the size of a grain of sand was complex and taxing enough. Given the exponentially scaling amount of energy creating a larger one would require, there wouldn’t be enough Fire mana on the planet to create an artificial star large enough to power Arden even if she burned down the Hinanhoro and drained all the energy from its roots.

  Even if she made a hundred Helios Engines – and it was questionable that the materials even existed for five more – and set them all to operate at maximum capacity, she would die long before they gathered enough energy to start up the Paradox Engine.

  ‘Samsara’ and ‘Qliphoth’, they were viable principles, and her masterpieces as far as spells went, but if she wanted to go any further, they wouldn’t be enough.

  She would need the full power of the Void.

  Belle sighed, leaning to the side to grab her Symphonia Sonata, flipping it all the way to its most recent pages.

  Two sisters smiled at the viewer, one with golden hair and lavender eyes, and the other with a familiar messy, sandy blonde head and yellow eyes.

  Estelle and Luna, the little girls she had come to call ‘daughters’.

  She smiled, brushing over their painted figures with her thumb.

  They had started studying to become witches recently.

  They were sure to go far in life.

  Luna was a bona fide genius. Maybe not on a miraculous, nigh-impossible level like herself, but it was doubtful the little girl had a need for such unreasonable intellect. She didn’t dream of being a lab worker, researcher, pioneer or inventor like herself, but rather, dreamed of becoming a fairy-tale hero, and she certainly had the talent, ambition and resilience to become such.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  As for Estelle, well… she was a bit on the slower side when it came to magical theory, but for someone who wanted to become a healer, that was much less important than her knowledge of people and their bodies, minds and hearts.

  She could definitely see her older daughter becoming a beloved figure amongst the people of the world. She had all the makings of every famous healer who came before her; that unreasonable stubbornness, comprised of equal parts paradoxical selfishness and selflessness, the endless wanderlust and appreciation of the world and all of its life, and an unquenchable yearning for connection and stories.

  They would grow up well, and surely one day engrave their names into every history book written after their passing.

  But it would be a dangerous path.

  For Estelle, especially.

  There was ‘something’ trapped in her.

  Something unknown, that attracted dangerous forces beyond human comprehension.

  The Void was trying to call out to her.

  If she wanted to be a witch, if she wanted to travel the world as a wandering doctor, then contact with dangerous magic was inevitable, doubly so if it was actively trying to consume her.

  One day, she would have to come face to face with the Void. It was simply inevitable. The Void moved in mysterious ways, at times almost seeming to have a consciousness by itself. That was why people had first thought the Thing from Beyond existed. She sought to prove otherwise, that there was a natural explanation for it all.

  But now, faced with the inexplicable reaction the Void had to Estelle, that was no longer a certainty.

  Belle had put aside the thought of resuming her research on the Void, of unravelling the last of its great mysteries.

  The thought of accidentally losing her daughter to her own research terrified her.

  She could not let a stray activation of the Ein Sof ritual underneath the workshop pull her into the beyond. She could not let the tendrils of Void energy from Nirvana brush upon her skin and travel through her nerves to consume whatever it was looking for in her mind.

  The ‘Thing from Beyond’... she still didn’t know exactly if it was real, but there was certainly something out there she didn’t still understand about the Void, and it threatened to take the two people most precious to her away.

  But it seemed now that there was no other way forward.

  She couldn’t let that fear control her.

  She had to unravel the last of the Void’s great mysteries. Complete knowledge and understanding of its terrors and its goals, what it was that it hungered for in Estelle’s mind and what consuming that would accomplish…

  That was the only way to ensure Estelle could live a full, happy life. That was the only way her daughter would know how to protect herself against that force. Simply trying to hide her from it wouldn’t be enough. The Void and the ambiguity of the Thing's existence… one day, they would certainly try to take her daughter.

  Belle flipped back through the book, going all the way back to her early days as a researcher, all the way to when she was first beginning to get interested in extraplanar anomalies and the Void as viable avenues to bring the Paradox Engine to life.

  There was an old idea once proposed among the theoretical research portion of the magical world.

  The ‘Symmetry of Six’. An explanation for the way the world aligned itself, and a possible method of deriving information about the unknown corners of the world which they had only known to exist in implication.

  It was reasonable, probable even, but in the end, it was fruitless. Nothing came out of it, because trying to dig further into it, at some point, required interaction with the Void.

  And no one was willing to do that but herself.

  She looked at the diagrams before her, each of them containing exactly six aspects of particular fundamental ideas behind the reality they all lived in.

  She focused on the central three on the pages, drawn larger than the rest.

  There was where the idea first originated for the original ‘Symmetry of Six’.

  There were known to be six energies in the world.

  The first diagram was of a cross, each of its ends pointing towards a cardinal direction, with a large hexagon drawn at its centre, connecting the four rods.

  There were the four proper Elements, known to resonate with mana.

  Water of the North, Earth of the West, Fire of the South, Wind of the East.

  And at the world’s centre, along the third-dimensional axis, they were aligned by the physical world in which everyone existed. There was no proper name given to this aspect, but people colloquially referred to it as ‘the Physical element’.

  And along the diagram’s borders was a thick, black pencil shading, representing an ‘other’ invading force, creeping in from the fourth dimension.

  The last of the six fundamental forces was the Void, described as ‘the element of Null’.

  Belle’s eyes shifted to the next diagram.

  A simple depiction of a sunrise laid there, and once again, four spokes jutted out from it.

  There was the world in which they existed; the plane of Manusyara, represented by the horizon.

  And connected to Manusyara were four other realms.

  This was where most research had died. Trying to interact with these other 'Realms', and the inability to find the implicit sixth without using the Void, was nigh impossible.

  Really, she had Selenia to thank for most of the discoveries relating to this particular ‘symmetry’. Her findings, particularly those in the most recent paper Belle had only just recently read, relating to the Black Moon, its extraplanar origins, and its unique resonance with Water mana were particularly enlightening and emboldening.

  As for the other three… well, she had some ideas, but nothing concrete.

  The Realm that resonated with Fire was the one she was most confident on, but also simultaneously, it was the most perplexing.

  She could not determine whether it was related to Sol and the land of Calybcor, or if it had something to do with the forgotten, mythical forces of the Seven Legions.

  But that was not where her interest lied.

  Unlike the other witches and wizards, she was stupid enough to risk interaction with the Void, and as such, was able to confirm the existence of the ‘Sixth Realm’, confirming the viability and applicability of the ‘Symmetry of Six’ as a universal principle.

  And finally… that brought her to her actual main topic of interest.

  The Spells of the Void.

  Unlike the other Elements, which all flowed freely and could be manifested in any form or shape that the user wished, even being brought to life through abstract concepts and constructs of thought and emotion, the Void was known to be uniquely rigid despite its madness.

  It had a very limited amount of manifestations, though that was not to say they were not all uniquely terrifying and dangerous.

  Rather, it was that very terrifying nature and its otherworldly origins that had restricted its manifestations so heavily.

  The energy of the Void did not exist in this Realm, not naturally.

  To call upon it, one had to break the seals and gather the necessary prerequisites, and only then, after a dangerous ritual and its accompanying name and incantation, could they utilise one of the Void’s functions in the form of its few Spells.

  The final diagram on the grimoire’s page resembled the first; it was a simple intersection of two perpendicular lines, forming a cross.

  But instead of being a two dimensional figure facing the viewer, it was rotated slightly, letting the third dimension of the drawing come into view.

  Instead of the hexagon at the centre representing the physical world, there was instead a third line, crossing through the centre of the cross from behind, with each of its ends marked as the fifth and sixth aspects.

  Belle’s finger traced along the line that went from north to south.

  First, before any of the other Spells could be cast, there was ‘Nirvana’. One had to offer their heart to the void, detach themselves from their mortal coil, liberate themselves from sanity, and ‘blow out the candle’. Then only after the cessation of their heart, would the energy of the Void rush in to fill the emptiness, allowing them access to the other Spells.

  Then there was ‘Anitya’, allowing for the endless recycling and transformation of energy. Fire became Water, Water became Earth, Earth became Wind, and all of it would become Null. Form was meaningless, all was impermanent, submit thine self to the eternal cycle of rebirth and transformation.

  That was the first axis of the Void’s functions; motion and stillness, transformation and rebirth, eternity and transience.

  Belle’s finger moved to the other line, tracing from east to west, like the path of the sun as day turned to night.

  On the east was ‘Genesis’. It was the most simple of the Spells, and its most conspicuous by far. It allowed for the creation of celestial starlight, beyond what simple ‘Fire’ was able to produce. The pure, concentrated energy of the universe itself at its beginning, as it burst forth from nothing and created the world.

  And opposing it, on the west, where day turned to night, was ‘Revelation’, by far the most destructive of the Spells, the most infamous of the group and the reason behind the Void’s dreadful reputation.

  To invoke ‘Revelation’ was to unravel the world itself. To tear matter apart into cosmic dust. It was to summon the nothingness in the form of a black hole, which greedily consumed all until it returned to nihil.

  That was the second axis; alpha and omega, light and dark, beginning and end. Genesis created, Revelation destroyed. One created all truth, and the other unravelled all lies.

  And finally, there was the fifth and final confirmed Spell.

  Belle’s finger lingered on the fifth point, which came from behind the cross.

  Ein Sof.

  The reason the Void was able to cross dimensions and planes, influencing the world from beyond the nothingness. It was why the force was so alien, eldritch and incomprehensible.

  This was the spell that broke the barriers between worlds, creating holes in time and space. It was this Spell that allowed for her invention of ‘teleportation’. It was an ancient invocation of this Spell, lost to history, that created the scars on Manusyara that let the Null energy seep into this Realm.

  And that was as far as her research got.

  She was unable to find any other Spells.

  Those were all that anyone had ever been able to observe or discover.

  But whereas others were content to just leave the matter there, not wishing to entangle themselves in the Void’s madness any longer, Belle knew there was still something else out there.

  There had to be a sixth Spell. Its implicit existence, confirmed by the similarity in its axioms with the ‘Symmetry of Six’, was undeniable. The fifth point, Ein Sof, could not stand alone. It was simply impossible.

  But no matter how hard she looked, no matter how much she read, she had never found evidence of its existence.

  Belle’s finger came to rest at the final, sixth point, which laid at the other end of the third axis, pulling the Void through into the realm of Manusyara.

  There was always something missing when it came to the Void.

  Even aside from the madness that invoking Nirvana required, the energy of the Void was inherently unstable. Merely taking it into your mind would fracture it across the Six Realms. Its level of corruption was simply inexplicable.

  Inexplicable, unless… the Void was not meant to be stable, not without the use of the final Spell.

  How were the anchors for Ein Sof supposed to be marked? There had to be a consciousness capable of marking both points across the gap between dimensions, capable of perceiving both ends as well as the barrier that separated them. Doing so manually with raw math and calculations was nigh impossible, taking almost a decade to do so on her own for just locations within the same Realm. And even then, she only got so far as marking a singular ‘home point’; the magic circle underneath her workshop.

  There was a broken link somewhere between Nirvana and Anitya. When it crossed over the centre, through the third axis of Ein Sof and the final Spell, something shattered, and that collapse of stability was what led to the irrecoverable mental corruption caused by the Void.

  And somewhere between Genesis and Revelation, there was a missing state. Between creation and destruction, there had to be a state of simple existence, where all things in the world simply were, where infinity was neither born nor destroyed, but simply existed.

  The final secret of the Void, the sixth Spell, which could mark both points of Ein Sof, which allowed the mind to comprehend the contradictory eternity and impermanence of the world, which marked the infinite expanse of all things that currently existed…

  “Ain Soph Aur…”

  Belle muttered the name of the theoretical final Spell, containing the principle of ‘an infinite consciousness’.

  That was the final piece of the puzzle.

  The last colour to add to the painting, which would unveil the truth of whether or not the Thing really existed.

  The final key, which had eluded her for her entire life, laid deep within the recesses of her daughter’s mind.

  She had to make sure that whatever was in there would never reach the wrong hands. The only way to keep her daughter safe was to unravel this final secret so she could understand how to control it.

  It was time to dust off her old research again.