Hyperpunk Virgo 1: Dreams of Oblivion

The Dark Knight emerged from the portal a few seconds after the Child, and in spite of their haggardness- a sense of awe overcame them as they beheld the realm around them.

They stood upon the shores of a beach of iridescent sand and rock, looking over an ocean of still waters that stretched on into the horizon. Its surface still and unmoving upon the shores, reflecting the gigantic body of starlight above.

A sphere containing spheres containing spheres, arranged in an infinitely repeating and folding pattern of orbs that glowed with such starlight that it breached the expanse of darkness and the transparent branches of colours interlinking them.

The spiritual clines of the Well of Souls, the Astral Realms, formed into the roots of a fractel tree- breaching the divide to bridge the space between realms. Crowned above and below by the White-Gold of the Emphyrean and total darkness of the Abyss.

Beyond it they could see a distant sliver of silver beyond. A small dot, barely visible to the Dark Knight- but they could see it.

It felt like the Dark Knight was standing upon the surface of a moon, looking down upon a planet.

But the Knight knew it was greater than that. The scale was far larger.

They were looking out unto all of Reality from a place beyond it. From a Place that was not Physical or Meta-Physical. A place that was unreal, yet existed anyway.

Looking at it from so far away that universes seemed like mere stars. Their light drowning within the glistening shine of an infinite number of universes beside them. Entire Omniverses that looked like smaller moons within far greater bodies. Dimensions arranged beside dimensions.

The sheer scale and scope of it might have been terrifying. It should have been terrifying.

The Silent Devil and all who carried in the hearts the same despair that had once threatened to claim the Dark Knight long ago may have had more nihilistic opinions on such a Reality.

That it was all created without meaning and without purpose, that all life- all consciousness - that existed within such a reality existed as but an extant form of such absence of meaning.

But within the Dark Knight there lay hope, there lay spite, there lay a belief in themself that refused to break under the weight of despair and suffering.

The Dark Knight looked unto Reality in all its impossibly gargantuan glory and thought that it was beautifully absurd.

That they had once existed within it in one form or another seemed significant and the furthest thing from pointless.

The Dark Knight knew they had chosen a meaning and purpose. They had a reason to live in such a Reality... when they were alive within it.

The Dark Knight looked down towards the Child, finding they had sat down on the beach to stare out across the sea.

Taking a few steps forward, they plunged the tip of the sword into the sand and knelt down beside them.

Inspecting the earth beneath them, the Dark Knight grabbed a decently sized flat pebble- its surface black but shining with a kaleidoscopic glint- and cast it out with a flick of the wrist and a rough huff.

It flew out far. Far further than they intended to send it. The armours rotors and actuators giving them strength beyond that which their body once gave them.

But they no longer knew how strong their body was. They didn’t have a body to know.

All the same the pebble struck the surface of the water and bounced off, skimming across for perhaps 20 metres before falling beneath the waters surface. The pebbles journey creating ripples upon the mirrored surface that spread outwards.

Those that reached the shore as small waves broke upon the sand, those that spread out into their horizon rippled on and ever on to nowhere.

The Dark Knight didn’t know what to make of it. Noting however that the Child had watched them with peaked interested. And perhaps in emulation, the Child picked up a rock the same size as their head, straining under the weight to throw it out into the water with a feral shout of exertion.

It didn’t go far. Barely 7 metres. Though it impressed the Dark Knight to see such strength within the little one.

The rock hit the water with a splash, creating an audible *thunk* as thrown droplets of water pitter-pattered upon the surface of the sea, creating a wave that just as meaninglessly broke upon the shore and just as intrepidly spread forth unto the horizon.

The Dark Knight puffed out a short lived laugh of amusement as the child turned around to find another rock, and instead gasped in awe.

Following their gaze, the Dark Knight turned around, beholding the sight of a structure in the centre of the island half a mile from them.

A large hollow prism of stone that rose perhaps 50 feet into the air upon a large raised hexagonal platform. The space between the obsidian pillars containing a transparent veil that fluttered like a curtain, or perhaps more like the surface of a pond as a brisk wind blew over its surface. Within it, there was only a dense silver mist. Particles of diamond dust within, glistening, unmoving.

The Dark Knight realised immediately what they were looking at. The knowledge emerging from the depths of their fading spirit to rock them to the core.

The Dark Knight and the Child had arrived upon the Edge of Creation. At Oblivion’s Gate.

They stood up and began on the trek towards the archway, hearing the Child rush to their side to follow them.

The Dark Knight still had the wherewithal to know that the Salvation of their Spirit lay beyond the veil of Oblivion. All that lived in Mortalis that had a soul would one day fade into the Astral Realms. But there awaited no peace or paradise on the other side.

At best awaited a life not too dissimilar to that which one had lived before. Living as an echo of themselves or as but a small part of a larger amalgamated whole in one of the cities of the Underworld.

At worst lay the pulverisation of the self. In the Depths of the Abyss or in the High Heavens above. Becoming part of a horde of sub-sentient monsters guided by the will of a Devil, or as co-dependant thrall utterly devoted to the High Father.

The Dark Knight had escaped all such fates until this point. But it was through Oblivion, through the total obliteration of the self, that some form of peace would be found. Where Salvation could be granted.

If the Child so chose it, they would find such Salvation there too.

As the Dark Knight got closer and closer they felt the warmth within grow and grow.

A feeling akin to coming home from a long journey emerged from the depths.

From wars that had at once given them meaning and purpose, yet taken so much from them.

From the haze they saw flashes of memory.

A boathouse hidden from the rest of the world, upon a ridge overlooking a cove with a white sand beach and shallow blue waters.

Around the front of the house, sprawling outward upon the ridge, was a garden of Black Roses that glowed an ethereal blue in the evening twilight.

That the domain was morbidly decorated with skulls of all sorts didn’t phase them. It was quite the opposite. They remembered a sense of comfort being in the gaze of skulls resting upon pedestals and cairns, their eyes alight with a green glow.

As they walked towards the archway they could see in their minds eye themself walking up the cobbled path, brushing their free hand over the petals of the roses before crossing the bridge built over a babbling little stream- raising up the slope towards the doorway in the same moment they reached the foot of the stairs up the hexagonal dais.

On reaching the summit, the Dark Knight could swear they were able to hear music. The gentle strumming of an electric guitar backed with drums.

It was just loud enough to drown out the sounds of the whispers that echoed from the Prism.

The Dark Knight slowed their gait in growing hesitation as they approached the Threshold. The metres counting down. The memory of standing at the doorstep of that house arising from the fog. A door of blackened wood, tinted black glass and a door knocker made from the skull of an angel, gripping a fireball copper striker in its mouth.

The Dark Knight stopped at the edge, glancing down to their side to find that the Child was no longer at there.

They looked back to see the Child standing still some 5 metres behind them. Looking at the veil with anxiousness. With fear.

The Dark Knight stood still and regarded them for the moment. Only to turn back to the veil.

They would not lead the child into Oblivion. The Child needed to choose for themself what they would do.

But the Dark Knight felt drawn to the veil. Their hazy memories and their senses telling them that beyond it there awaited someone... no, not just someone.

Her.

“...Lyra”; rasped out the Dark Knight. Her name not coming from the fog but from their phantom hearts.

Her face flashed before their eyes. The Dark Knight swore they could see her within the prism. Beyond the veil. Her earth-kissed brown hair and her warm smile. Eyes that were spheres of white and yet shone with such life.

The coldest blood ran through their veins yet in their hearts there burned a fire.

They didn’t know what lay beyond the veil, but they believed Lyra was there.

And that was enough reason for them to step up close and reach their arm through the veil, letting it vanish into the mist just to see what would happen.

It was like submerging their hand into something lighter than water. It felt cold, but not unbearably so.

Walking along the edge to the left most support, the Dark Knight wrapped their arm around and tried to poke it out through the next archway. But nothing came out. They could still feel their arm but there was nothing emerging from the other side.

Their curiosity satisfied. The Dark Knight lowered their gaze, seeing Lyra standing before them. Reaching for them. Calling them home.

With a resolved sigh, the Dark Knight took a step forward. Prepared not for death, but for the end. To return to the dust from whence they had came.

A flash of purple erupted from within the prism, from within the silver, just as the Dark Knight’s helmet submerged into the veil.

They felt a force send them flying backwards. A power that felt unfathomably old yet bleeding new.

The Dark Knight hit the ground hard, the sword they had gripped in their left hand sent flying from their grasp. Their body engulfed with the purple flames that burned through the plating of the armour, the memetic metal melting away to the Dark Knights horror.

They scrambled back, attempting to roll, trying to suffocate the flames only for them to continue burning. The darkness within leaking out to be licked by the flames.

The Dark Knight cried out in pain as their insides burned. But they remembered burning before, remembered it horrifically well. This didn’t feel like the pain of burning to death. It felt like the inverse. It felt like they were burning alive.

They felt the meta-physical nebula they had become shift and fade away. Enduring the pain that rose up their hands- they found bones emerging from the parting darkness.

Bones that were slowly engulfed by re-atomising flesh. Layers of nerves, veins, muscle and sun-kissed skin.

The armour continued to melt as their body agonisingly reformed. They could feel the primordial magic permeate through them and into their blood, spreading from their arms and legs to their torso, up their neck and into their head.

The Dark Knight felt the flames flood their mind and soul. The fog lifting and a lifetime of memories and knowledge flooding back too swiftly. They had so little before and now there was too much for their mind to bare.

The Dark Knight felt a pressure grow within their skull in the same moment they felt their body ache. They could feel themself resonate, their spirit expanding, reaching out as if seeking some means of connection.

As the helmet melted away and the optical sensors vanished. They opened their own eyes for the first time in an eon, gritting their teeth and looking around, trying to find the small form of the Child and realising with concern they were now gone.

Having passed beyond the veil or having somehow disappeared into some other realm- the Dark Knight didn’t know. Neither did they have the wherewithal to fear for them in the moment.

The world began to spin as the pressure grew stronger. Flashes of memory continuing to pour forth from the disorganised maelstrom that was the Knights mind.

A city resting in a mountain valley. Populated with millions of people, walking their own various paths through life.

Its skyline of silver towers rising from the ground to ascend higher than the surrounding mountaintops, their spires shining in the evening twilight.

An ethereal glow from the tallest tower shining from a tholos, like the cupola of a lighthouse.

They saw the same city under blood red skies, the peak of the tallest tower having ruptured in an explosion of darklight and blasting a beam of malignant energy into the sky, diffusing into the atmosphere to fall down and contaminate the land.

They saw those same people who had lived in enduring hope and survived in hardened spite walk those same streets beneath those shining towers as Ghouls. Their skin rotten, their eyes dead, their veins glowing in the same malevolent shade of green that erupted from the tower. The same glow that burned within the metallic beasts of stalked the lands. Giant, monstrous wolves of platinum and gold and eyes of crystal.

They saw a Castle at the base of the Tower. They could see into a throne room. See the wretched being sitting upon the throne.

The decrepit, emaciated corpse of an old woman, wearing the tattered remains of a regal garb.

A Usurper in every sense of the term. A fell being that stole a body and stole a throne.

The Dark Knight felt the churn open up to claim them, sending them screaming from the Edge back unto Reality. They felt like their Spirit had become a comet sent flying at the speed of light through space. The parts of them that they had only just regained, melting and chipping off against the forces of re-entry.

Somewhere along the way they had closed their eyes tightly shut, enduring the heat, and the forces akin to a constant increasing acceleration.

The Dark Knight endured. Even as the sensation of spinning grew so violent they thought it would rip them apart.

But they kept spinning and twisting for what felt like an age.

All the while the Dark Knight held onto the memory of the house in the cove, of the city with silver towers overrun by the undead, of Lyra- refusing to let them be taken from them.

The Dark Knight hoped that where ever they emerged, there would be something left of them to piece back together.

It was the last thing they hoped before the name they had known themselves by had faded from recollection.

Until all that remained was darkness, the memory of Lyra and the sound of the silence roaring in rage.