Chapter 295 – Annihilation / Death

Iris disappeared not long after Luna did. 

Like Luna, Iris appeared amongst nothingness, but she wasn’t alone. 

Annihilation stood before her. He was overbearing, overwhelming, pressuring Iris with every bit of his existence. She felt like she would be obliterated if he continued the way he was going

But despite every one of her instincts and senses ringing out with alarm and fear, she shot a twisted smile back at the Archon. 

Annihilation, a cyclops with six arms, four of them armed with shattered blades. The embodiment of utter destruction and obliteration, a being that stood for no sense of order or structure. The closest thing to true Chaos, even more so than Death. 

She snarled. 

“What are you going to do, wipe me out? Go ahead then! Enjoy another eternity as nothing more than a floating corpse! I’d be fine knowing my inconsequential death would cripple an Archon for that much longer.”

“...Good enough.”

The massive cyclops suddenly disappeared, reappearing in a much smaller form that stood on par with Iris. 

The pressure disappeared, yet there was still a lingering tremble within her soul. But it was as if she didn’t feel it as she stood as an equal to the Archon. 

The cyclops seemed calm, but if Iris knew anything, it was that this Archon before her was the exact opposite of calm. It was the closest incarnation of Chaos itself. Back in the main universe, while she was comprehending Annihilation, she got a mere taste of what it meant to become such a being. 

“Arrogance, stubbornness, rage, yet very little greed…”

The cyclops stared at her with its one eye. It didn’t have any other features besides that eye. 

She found it creepy when the cyclops’ eye suddenly curved in a smile or sneer. 

“Do you think I am afraid of your threat? Do you think I fear living an eternity as a corpse? I am Adonios! I've lived for countless eternities! I exist upon Time itself! I fear nothing! Not even the one who reduced the Archons to a state of Ruin! And you, little girl, have no idea what fear even is. If you did, then you wouldn’t attempt to instill it in me with pitiful threats.”

“Whatever. Will you get on with this or what?”

Iris gazed back at the furious cyclops, Adonios, with a mundane frown. 

And he narrowed his eyes. 

“I still sense courage within you.”

Iris tilted her head. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. 

“It’s a bad thing.”

The cyclops read her mind. And then, he disappeared. 

*Shing!*

*Splat!*

Suddenly, Iris found a shattered blade buried in her chest. It pierced through her body and soul, tearing everything apart, magical or physical. 

Her body was raised, hung on the blade, and so small before that massive cyclops. 

His voice snarled in her mind. 

“Is that fear, I see? Anyone can mask fear with their face, but I see through you. Without fear there is no courage. You should have neither. But you do. You’re trying so hard to keep yourself together.”

Iris’ body sunk further down the blade, every movement sending unbearable agony and despair through her mind. 

Her soul was actually being destroyed. She could see her body decompose, turning into motes of nothing, and floating off into the endless darkness around her. 

He was killing her. 

“A soul comes from Life, a body from Creation. Don’t worry, I’m doing you a favor. I’m going to fill you with Annihilation. And every sense of Order within you, every structure, every rule your existence has been bound by, will be wiped away. You’ll be nothing more than a mass of unending destruction and ruin, the purest form of annihilation. The only question is, will your ego remain?”

Iris continued to be obliterated, her body exploding, her soul collapsing and rotting with the cosmic winds of entropy. 

“Will you remain to witness yourself as an Archon, or will you fail, your existence disappearing even among all the sands of Time?”

The cyclops’ eye grinned with glee. 

“I’m excited to find out!”

*Slice!*

The rest of his swords came down, and with that, Iris was reduced to nothing. 

She disappeared, the energy comprising her body drifting away into the void. And soon, the Archon could see nothing.

She had been utterly destroyed. 

The cyclops retreated, the glee being wiped from his visage. 

At that time though, he turned around, laying eyes upon another figure. 

His eye narrowed. 

“So you’re the new Death?”

“Iris.”

The figure, shrouded in darkness, or perhaps not truly there at all, spoke one word to the cyclops. 

Hearing that word, the cyclops laughed. 

“Yea? What about her?!”

“...Good.”

With that, the figure truly vanished. 

“Hey, dipshit.”

Then, the cyclops turned around. 

The woman with a vulgar mouth and mind sneered at him. 

“You suck at killing people.”

“Killing? Hahahaha!!”

The cyclops broke out into roarous laughter. 

Then, he brandished his swords. 

“Annihilation can’t die! Annihilation brings Creation to ruin, and Life cannot exist without Creation.”

“Which means Annihilation brings Death to Life?”

“And Creation brings Life to Death.

The Archon finished the thought, and then, he jumped toward Iris. 

Her form changed in that instant, turning into a massive fox that was twisted yet faintly recognizable. 

It wasn’t a material form. The fox wasn’t even the form of her soul. 

Now existing within her was nothing. The thing that kept her existence together was her mere ego that manipulated the Annihilation that had been infused within her. 

Annihilation and his successor clashed. 

“You will learn about Annihilation and Death! You will become both of these things! I will bring Death to you through Annihilation, and you will relish in the eternal nothingness until you learn.”

“Learn what?”

“Learn what it means to bring Ruin upon an Archon!”

*Slice!*

The cyclops’ blades chopped through Iris, and under their impossible power, she vanished into nothing. 

But then, she reappeared. 

“Damn!”

Coming out of her fox form, the womanly Iris collapsed upon herself, obviously in great distress, yet seething with rage. 

The Cyclops sneered. 

“How does eternal nothingness feel? An eternity can also be finite. Time is strange, isn’t it? For your sake, don’t lose your ego through the countless eternities you will experience.”

*Splat!*

The cyclops thrust his shattered blades into Iris once more, reducing her to nothing. 

Iris reappeared again. She looked even worse than before. 

And yet, Annihilation kept destroying her. 

Ten times. 

A hundred times. 

A million times. 

A trillion times. 

Each time she was destroyed, Iris would disappear for a brief moment. But that brief moment was an eternity, an experience of infinite time, whatever that seemed to mean. 

Each time she came back, Iris’ ego was reduced further and further. She turned primal, archaic, reduced to an animalistic, wrathful being. 

Each time she was destroyed, Iris attempted to fight. She tried to learn what it meant to bring ruin upon an Archon. How did you kill such a being?

Until finally, she didn’t care anymore. 

Instead, the only thought that moved her being was of battling that cyclops. 

And wiping him from existence. 

Annihilate him. 

Bring Death upon him. 

Until she could no longer even remember his existence. 

The truest form of destruction and death. 

She sought nothing, except for true Annihilation, and true Death. 

And the cyclops, finally revealing his true nature, eternally brought complete annihilation upon Iris. There was no remorse, not the slightest hint of anticipation, and not a care for why. 

He was Annihilation. 

What else was there to do, except annihilate anything and everything?

He would do so, forever if he was able. 

But he could not do so forever. She wouldn’t allow him to. 

Only the cyclops noticed when killing Iris that she was annihilated in not an instant, but in two instants. 

Time was something that bound everything, even Annihilation. Thus, changes could be detected through the Time it took to do things. 

It was why he was able to notice that slight deviation. The slightest, almost impossible change in duration. 

It was so inconsequential, but it signified that Iris would not be killed forever. 

Now, the Time he would be able to carry out his purpose, to indulge in Annihilaiton, was limited. 

But that didn’t matter to him. 

He cared about nothing more than annihilating the little girl in front of him. 

Constantly. 

Until he no longer could. 

Until he himself was annihilated instead. 

He anticipated the day, his end, when he would cease to exist in this broken universe. 

For him, it was the thought he relished the most. 

……….

……

The Paradox of Death. 

Something beyond nothing. 

It was an odd state of existence where one touched upon the most primordial foundation of reality. 

Nobody came out of Death, let alone true nothingess. At the same time, it was thought to be impossible to reach true nothingness. 

After all, nobody remembered those who vanished from existence. It could be said that it had never happened. 

Or perhaps it really was impossible for it to happen. 

The reason they could only do these things in this broken universe. 

Luna could become Order in a place without Order. 

Iris could become Chaos in a place without Chaos. 

And Alice could become the Paradox in a place without the Paradox. 

A fractured reality filled with the inanimate Archons. 

Alice herself drifted through this reality. 

Her ego maintained itself in some way as she occasionally popped back into the fabric of reality. When she did though, it didn’t feel… real. 

It felt like she was living another life. Like her self was a mere mirage in an endless stream of Time. 

She didn’t feel whole, like there was constantly something missing. 

That was until Iris paid her a visit. 

Alice distinctly recognized her, that little bundle of chaos. Alice could see her appear before her, though they couldn’t interact with each other. 

Alice just watched as Iris stuck around for a short while before being pulled back by an invisible rope. It was like she wasn’t allowed to stay in this paradoxical realm that Alice now resided in. 

But that visit was weirdly only one of many. 

Iris would pop in and out of Alice’s realm, constantly being thrown back down and yanked back up. It happened thousands of trillions of time. It was almost humorous. But Alice knew the truth. 

She realized what was happening Iris was being wiped from existence, was being killed, thrown into Death and reduced to nothing. But Alice was now the paradox of Death. The things that were supposedly reduced to nothing came to her Realm of Nothing. 

Iris died over and over, and it never stopped. 

And each time she died, she would experience an eternity. 

But how did someone experience something infinite a finite number of times?

Alice likened it to the time before a person was born. 

Before one came into existence, one was nothing. They simply did not yet exist. Some people thought that your soul resided in a void, not aware of the passage of time. 

You were eternally nothing until one day when you became something. 

So what did it mean for Iris to die?

It meant that she was being tossed into this eternal silence repeatedly, and she would have a certain amount of awareness of her state of nothingness. 

The lack of the passage of Time was similar to an infinite amount of Time. 

This was the perpetual state that Alice was in, however. She wasn’t going in and out of reality every few seconds like Iris. 

But, by watching Iris and surmising the occurrences that she witnessed, Alice came to an odd realization. 

Before Life, you were nothing. 

After Death, you became nothing once more. 

In that case…

Everything must enter this Realm of Nothing. 

Everything that ever has existed and ever will exist must reside within Nothing. 

This Realm of Nothing, where even Time was skewed and Twisted…

It was all founded upon Alice herself. 

And suddenly, with that epiphany, Alice’s eyes seemed to open. 

“Huh?”

She was in a white space, not the normal void of nothing she had thought she experience for so long. 

And in front of her…

“Would you look at that! Wait, does that mean you died? I’d say that’s unfortunate, but hey, you’re here.”

“You…”

Alice’s eyes widened in shock. 

A young man dressed in old school clothes. 

A seemingly naive smile on his face. 

“Dream?”

“Hello Alice. Didn’t think I’d see you like this.”

“...Wait.”

For a moment, Alice was overwhelmed with surprise and happiness. 

But she knew better than to simply believe what she was seeing in front of her. 

This was her Realm of Nothing. 

Dream didn’t give himself to nothingness in this broken universe. 

So she cautiously asked. 

“...Are you real?”

“I would think you know that answer best.”

He smiled at her. 

“Am I dead? Am I resting upon the lowest fabric of reality? Am I the incarnation of the information you remember about me? Are the words I’m saying just your projected thoughts? Perhaps I really am myself, and you’re conflicted about whether you’re deluding yourself with your desires. It’s hard to know what to think. Especially when you’ve become the Paradox of Death itself.”

“Would you have known that I was supposed to become it?”

“I could’ve found out from Sophia. After all, she left for Time, and there’s no telling just how much she’s come to know, or just how much she’s told me. So, how about you do this.”

Dream straightened his back, looking off into the distance. 

“Don’t trust that the one standing before you is truly me. Cast me out. Reject my existence upon Nothing. Purge me from your Reality. I do not only exist in your mind. I exist in the minds of Sophia, Luna, and Iris. The Universe itself has been graced with my existence. It remembers everything about me. So, purging me will do one of two things. Either I will truly cease to exist in this Totality, not even Nothing catering to me, or I will resurface and regain my self, no longer bound to Nothing as I might be now. Or, you don’t choose at all, and I remain bound for eternity, never recovering my existence in Time.”

He turned his head and smiled at her.

“It’s all up to you, Ms. Paradox. Don’t stress so much about deciding, though. I hear it's bad for your complexion.”

“...Uh-huh.”

Alice rolled her eyes and smiled. 

Then, she raised her hand.