The Touch of Heaven

Chapter 11

X

Once more, Hell comes flooding in.

I'm quite used to its presence, now. It's only the fourth time I've connected, but still, I feel like I've known this place for a comfortable eternity. Everything is, once again, solid, an enveloping cloud of darkness shrouding most of the area. I do what the Preceptor told me to do in this situation; I simply command myself to stop believing I was bound by gravity and let myself soar like a great bald eagle over the shadow. I let myself stop believing the world existed in a form I could perceive only on Earth – and the darkness simply peels away into non-existence as the world becomes a formless mesh of colors, every single one a shade incomprehensible to the human eye. A euphoric feeling comes over me and I feel myself drift through the glowing void to meet where I assume the Preceptor is.

He's not there.

I try looking out into the void. My eyes become a million – subconscious reality warping, there – and spread out all across the void. He's not anywhere. I sigh to myself. Where the f**k is that goat bastard?

I feel another presence suddenly make itself known in the void. It's not something like a thought-form, not like the Preceptor, or even anything as eldritch as the Never-becoming. I recognize what I'm feeling right away – it exists here the same way I do. It's a Shade. The Shade of someone on Earth, in fact – something projected from the real world into Hell.

"Hey," the Shade says to another, second presence suddenly coming into existence next to it. "I knew they were here. I knew they were."

"I told you we'd find them here, Dirgence," the other Shade says. "I recognized the tulpa that took them in."

I project my voice out to the Shades, understandably irritated. "Who the f**k is there? Where's the Preceptor?"

"Guess the old goat's just not in, yet!" one of the Shades – Dirgence, apparently – jeers. "You're with us, right now! That's all!"

I glare at the Shades. Since nothing in the void takes physical form, they simply appear as glitching, barely-there outlines of human beings, something that once again just resembles television static carved into a three-dimensional form. Dirgence seems to be the one in front – his voice resonates across the void with every word spoken. He's as loud as a megaphone in my face and just as annoying.

"Alright," I say, trying to remain unintimidated, "the hell do you want here? You're other immunes, aren't you?"

"Aye, girl," Dirgence says. "We're with something you might recognize that bloke Celia said was the Sect of the Broken Mind."

I float a bit back "How do you know.."

Then I realize. He'd just mind-read me. Another human has just mind-read me. I suddenly feel hideously violated as Dirgence laughs.

"Now you realize," Dirgence says, grinning as best he can without a visible mouth. "Aye, we've studied Mylotheia too. You're an amateur – a literal newbie to the practice. So welcome to the next class!" Dirgence seems to ponder to a moment. "Cryne, didn't the Preceptor say next session was scheduled to be a combative session? They haven't learned any of that."

I'm alarmed that he knew about that for about a second before, once again, I remember he'd read my mind as Cryne shrugs. "Yeah. Should we take the tulpa's place? I mean, we don't want to be intruding, but..."

Dirgence chuckles. "Eh. Maybe some live tutoring wouldn't hurt. Some techniques, right up and personal... that should make them learn quick!"

I blink. "Wait, what?" I say, alarmed.

Dirgence laughs and signals to me. "Well, hey, the Preceptor taught you how to read minds, didn't he? Didn't he? He didn't teach you that, did he? Drat. Oh well. Just try and copy and learn!"

Dirgence suddenly vanishes. Cryne does the same a second later.

I feel an overwhelming sense of panic go through me. Suddenly, I feel my being seized by a force beyond my immediate understanding and a wave of pain shoot through my stomach. I feel myself go flying and a second force repeat that through my stomach another time. I briefly find myself unable to think before I find myself flying through the void at a speed I can't comprehend.

I don't know jack-s**t in Mylotheia. How the hell am I supposed to respond to this? I huddle against myself, try to imagine myself on the other side of the void, and raise my head.

Exactly that's happened. Woo. Before there's anytime to celebrate, Dirgence and Cryne tail me and reappear around me.

"Come on, mate," Dirgence says, "try doing some of that s**t to us! Just look into our minds. Now imagine yourself grabbing it."

I look into Dirgence's mind. I see something I can reasonably describe as infinity to another human inside his mind; a blobbish liquid with infinite depth I think I can describe as Dirgence's essence or something. I picture myself grabbing that infinity with what I suppose is my mental hand and throwing it to the side with all of my effort. Dirgence's body suddenly goes flying across the void and far out of sight in a half-second.

Holy s**t. It's like I'd just thrown a baseball at supersonic speed.

Cryne suddenly seizes me. "Lesson learned. Here's your next."

I feel the next burst of pain explode in my lower gut. It's like my mind is being stabbed with a thick knife – somehow. I think I can feel something dribbling out of the wound she's made in my Shade like blood; dead thoughts, maybe. Anger rises up in me and I look into Cryne's mind, picturing myself doing the exact same to her. I concentrate all of my being at that one time into hurting her. Her Shade bends and breaks and shatters under my mental grasp – but as soon as she breaks, she just reforms behind me.

"Wonderful. Next lesson," she says.

Still recouping from the pain of being mentally stabbed, I feel Cryne force me across the void at a million miles per hour. I fly across the void the same way I flung Dirgence. My thoughts and everything in my mind jumble out of my focus and I struggle to retain the ability to stop. Eventually, I do, halting all of a sudden like a truck driving into a brick wall. Cryne's flying towards me and I imagine myself appearing behind her. The instant I open my eyes, I'm there, and Cryne stops herself.

"Alright!" I scream, utterly panicking at the moment, "I got the f*****g lesson! Enough! Christ, why are you attacking me?!"

Stupid question. I know.

"It's just our way of saying 'hi,' mate!" Dirgence says, appearing beside Cryne with his Shade-arms crossed. "We're chums, here! Chum of Celia is a chum of mine!"

I feel Dirgence mentally noogie me, and I force his mind out of mine, telepathically commanding him to piss off.

"Oh," Cryne says, her voice sultry on that line, "it appears you do learn fast. Maybe by accident."

I glare at Cryne. "What? The f**k did I do?"

"You broke out of Dirgence's grasp, seamlessly," Cryne says. "You were simply letting yourself be flung around until you actively concentrated on breaking our control."

"Wonderfully done, mate!" Dirgence praises.

I sigh. "Alright. Wonderful. Combat training is done, whatever."

"Aye," Dirgence says. "Just concentrate on grabbing an enemy's mind and mentally wishing yourself to hurt them. Manipulate them before they can manipulate you and struggling for control if you can't. It's a literal battle of wills – the one that breaks fastest is the one that loses."

"Will that work on a tulpa?" I say, curious. Dirgence bursts into laughter, his Shade distorting as he does. Cryne giggles and a vacant look of confusion comes over my face. "What? The f**k did I say that was funny?"

"Christ, mate, listen to yourself! 'Will that work on a tulpa?' A tulpa is f*****g teaching you and your first thought is on how to destroy it? Man!"

I scoff. "Yeah. You said this s**t is a tulpa war."

"You're gonna be fighting other Shades – not the tulpas themselves. At your level, a tulpa would f*****g destroy you."

I remain skeptical. "Aren't tulpas thought-forms? Created by us?"

"Created by you? An Earth-dweller?" Dirgence says, laughing harder and almost choking on it. "Oh, that's too good! The only reason we're even here in Hell is because our minds are a little bit more evolved than every other human's! You'd have to be literally as powerful as God to create life – so obviously, the things that dreamed all the tulpas up weren't us humans but the Gods in Heaven."

I blinked.

God – the one that had nearly destroyed all mankind by trying to break into Earth – wasn't the only one?

"I can sense your disbelief," Cryne says, either through reading my mind again or simply picking up on my instinct. "Did you believe there was only one God in Heaven? Preposterous. There are hundreds."

"Not that," I say, alerted, "I can believe there are more Gods. But one tried to break into Earth. Our f*****g world. We were nearly destroyed because some b***h down back on Earth broke the Boundary between Earth and Heaven."

Cryne seems to tilt her head. "Huh. Was that what that brief disruption all the way up in Heaven four Earth-months ago was?"

"Yeah, dumbass," I say, briefly realizing me, Charles, and the other runaways were the only ones on Earth who technically knew what all that was. "Chayne Summers. She tried to use my goddamned mind as a tool to break the Boundary and used that energy to become a god."

"Oh," Cryne says. "Then... that means you must have stopped that Ascension, huh?"

I stopped. "Ascension?"

"That's how Gods are made, silly," Cryne giggles, as if it's common knowledge. "There is a concept in many religions about something called enlightenment – Buddhist philosophy, in particular, that dictates those who get spiritual knowledge are freed from the chain in reality known as the rebirth cycle. It exists – those special few, immune or not, who can learn to totally comprehend the existence of Heaven and Hell vanish from your reality and enter Ascension. They become Gods in Heaven – beings in perfect tandem with their mind and capable of manipulating and commanding reality itself to their nigh-omnipotent will. They are eldritch horrors to your humans – a far cry to that which they used to be."

I ponder. So people – through sheer cleansing of the mind – could actually become godlike beings?

"So that means," Cryne begun, "if one God tried to get back into Earth... oh dear. Perhaps it must have missed its measly existence – something it soon learns to forget after Ascension – on Earth. Oh dear."

"Yeah," I say. "If it got in, everything on Earth would have been wiped out. You suckers included."

"And an earth-borne human tried to control your Shade?..." Dirgence says. "Christ, man. They've... They've gotten too good, now. They don't realize it, but they've gotten good."

"We stopped the Ascension," I say, "or at least my friend did. Something went on in Heaven that they described to me in really weird terms that lead to Chayne's death. Chayne went into Heaven, physically."

"So one bloody non-immune human sent their Shade into Hell and another flat-out transformed instead of just going insane and being ripped to shreds..." Dirgence began.

"...despite not being able to comprehend Heaven," Cryne finished. "Oh, dear, Tango. That means your friend – and by what impossible miracle, that other you describe – are Ascension-capable."

I shrug. "So, what? You say there are hundreds of Gods," I say. "Ergo, hundreds of people that are capable of Ascension. It's not that unlikely a coincidence."

I think to myself as I speak. With my newfound knowledge on Shades every immune had, I wondered if this Ascension bullshit was why Chayne and Mint were able to do that s**t too without being immune.

"There's only supposed to be about one every few decades," Cryne says. "Two Ascension-capable beings in the same place at the same time – that's impossible!"

"Welp," I say, "that's what f*****g happened. My friend's Ascension-capable. Chayne was too. How the f**k does that explain how they're able to send their Shades into Heaven – or, I guess in Chayne's case, physically standing Heaven's energies – despite not being immune to its energies?"

"Simple," Cryne says. "They just kind of subconsciously or even unconsciously throw their own Shades into Heaven, as a sort of defense mechanism. Their bodies and minds are still susceptible to Heaven's energies while conscious, though – hence why they can still get infected by the Phantom. They're capable of enlightenment and fully uprooting that subconscious immunity to understand Heaven's energies. That's how they Ascend – their mind evolves to adapt to Heaven and Hell's energies in an instant and their body stops existing in Earth and starts existing in Heaven. That's Ascension."

"You really are a goddamn newbie, man," Dirgence laughs again. "Otherwise, we wouldn't have to explain all this s**t to you, man. But, seriously, a God trying to get back into Earth is... sort of bad news, Unprecedented, actually. Right before the bloody war, too."

"Listen," Cryne suddenly says. "Celia came to you recently, right? You and her need to get to the Sect of the Broken Mind's location in Texas as quick as you can. The war's approaching. You can't continue going on where you are now."

I scowl. "f**k no, man. I've got friends here. People I care about and will stand by no matter f*****g what. I'm not leaving them to whatever in Hell is coming to Haven."

Cryne and Dirgence exchange a glance. "That's what you told Celia too, huh?" Dirgence says.

"You bet your ass it is," I say. "Hekk might be coming but no way am I going down without a fight."

"You'll want to reconsider," Cryne says. "You really will. When the war begins, that stuff'll be happening all over the world."

My eyes widen.

The apocalypse. The world was still doomed.

"Wait, what!?" I shriek.

"Yeah," Dirgence says, resignedly. "World can't stop what's gonna happen because they can't comprehend what's gonna happen. They're gonna be wiped out – everyone except the immune."

"Can't be helped," Cryne says, matter-of-factually.

I twitch. "Yes it f*****g-"

Once again, I woke up.

I groan and look at the clock. It was 7:48 AM – I'd only gotten just over two hours of sleep – and I felt like s**t. We'd driven into Haven just when the sun was starting to peak up over the New Jersey horizon; the drive had taken much longer than I'd anticipated. We'd been accosted by the guard and arrested soon after for violating the law against driving out of the borders. Me and Miles were quickly released when the situation became clear and all charges were dropped against Mint when they explained the situation. Celia, on the other hand – especially with her kidnapping in mind (which she'd gleefully admitted to as if it were no big deal) – wasn't getting off so easily and was taken into custody to be sentenced at a later date. Mint and Miles had been tested and samples of their blood had been taken. Thankfully, neither of them showed any signs of infection, so we'd been let go for the time being – although we were all put on watch. Hopefully, nothing like this would happen again. Regardless, me and Mint had just gone back to our apartment and crashed the moment we'd gotten in. The frantic rescue, aftermath, and chase had all occurred over a few hours. I looked out the window. The sun wasn't up yet and a fresh fall of snow was drifting from the black sky, a sight I found myself hooked to until Mint shuffled around on the opposite bed. I looked at them. They were awake. Their normally-straight hair was ruffled and their glasses were off, and they seemed tired. I sat up to indicate I was up and Mint quietly acknowledged me.

"Morning, Tango," they said, sounding significantly more weary than they usually did. It was sort of an unnerving contrast. "Couldn't sleep well?"

I shook my head as Mint yawned and put their specs on, sitting up themselves and brushing off their comforter. They were still in their nightclothes, a dark-blue tank top and some polka-dotted blue pajama bottoms a size too big. It was a damn rarity to see them in that wear considering what times we got up and went to sleep at, honestly. "Haven't been able to get to sleep the whole night," they said. "Been awake ever since we got back. Haven't been able to get to sleep with all this stuff in mind. I'm just... worried, I guess."

I didn't make any responding gestures for a while, just quietly looking down and considering their words. They were in their right to be concerned. I was, too, and the more I worried about that, the more I worried about the impending threat of Hell and the war. I still didn't fully understand what was going on. Maybe Celia would be able to enlighten me a bit.

Mint eventually got off their bed and sat themselves next to me, looking at me with their tired little blue eyes. "You feeling alright?" I nodded in response, and a small smile born of some minute comfort raised itself on Mint's face. "That's good. You know, not a day goes by when I don't want to talk to you normally. Voice to voice. I miss that weird little communicator Red Clover gave you."

I thought back to the weird-ass communicator Harlow gave me back in Paradise, with the little cord that put itself in my f*****g neck. He never bothered to explain how it worked. The magic of convenience, maybe. I did my best to laugh and Mint playfully nudged me.

"Come on. You miss being able to talk. You had a nice voice. Weird through the communicator, but you had a nice voice," they said. "I liked being able to just... normally talk with you. Communication barriers aren't fun, Tango."

I shrugged and just kind of frowned. It was true. Being able to do little else but cough, flail my arm, make snarky faces, and occasionally just spend a lifetime writing out a single sentence with my crappy left hand on the notebook wasn't exactly the best in terms of communicating. I hadn't bothered learning any sort of specialized sign language with one arm; I was sure it existed and Lavender had once just suggested learning the sign alphabet so I could just spell out words, but that would be a hassle. Communication was stiff on my end and I was still jealous of Mint of getting to Ash first. I figured I would have torn the asshole's throat out; he deserved it. He really, really deserved it.

Mint got a little closer and rested their head on my shoulder with a content smile, easing my own nerves a bit. "I like being with you, Tango. I like seeing you smile. When you're happy, I'm happy. When you're sad, I'm sad. I don't like any moment I'm not with you." They paused for a bit and looked up at me, their hand still on my shoulder but their expression suddenly concerned. "You care about me, right? I just..."

Before they could go any further on that, I hooked my arm around them and pulled them into a tight hug to get the point across. I honestly don't think I cared for anyone more than I did for Mint.

Mint giggled a bit, although their voice was a bit shaky, and they embraced me in turn. "T-Thanks, Tango. It's just... I've been worried for the future, I guess. I mean... your dad's going to be flying in soon, isn't he? It's been four months and we haven't heard anything. They must've discovered something by now."

I nodded, Mint still in my grasp. Mint gave a quiet, tenuous sigh as they looked back at me. "And when he flies in to pick you up... I'll be without you for the first time since I woke up in Paradise."

I'd realized that a while ago. It wasn't a comforting prospect. And God, some part of me dreaded the fact I'd have to confront Mom on everything that had happened and what she'd allowed. Remorseful or not, she'd still been involved however loosely with a project that had killed almost everyone who had applied to it. I wonder if she knew about what Chayne had done yet. Maybe they'd gone the good old way and covered it up like what had happened to me; that was probably why I hadn't heard anything about it.

"I'm just sort of dreading it, Tango," they said. "I mean... I've got the others. And God, I'll value their company. I'll make my time here in Haven worth it. Just stay safe, alright? And come back to me. Please."

I looked Mint in the eyes. They were a fascinating case. Their smiling, droopy-eyed face spoke all at once of a layer of trouble that had been haggling them for a while now and a measure of simple innocence that just wanted me to be happy. They were give and no take; they considered my company its own reward. They were stupidly nice. They really were. I honestly couldn't ask for a better friend at this point in time.

I nodded, as surely as I could. Mint smiled, the trouble that was eating away at them vanishing – or at least becoming less apparent – and they pulled me into another tight embrace. "...Thank you, Tango. Thank you for being here for me."

I wish I could've just said the exact same to them, right then in there. I didn't really want to admit it, but I just sort of hated myself at the current moment. I'd been little more in the tool in the past for a dozen different purposes, used and abused by my father, Ash, Chayne, the Association, my life stolen from me because, what, I had some special bullshit in my system? f**k off. I wasn't much more than dead-weight anymore. Mint was the one thing that made me feel a little bit more than that. By f*****g hell, that was something I wanted to clutch onto for as long as I could.

We stopped hugging after a little bit and Mint cleared their throat, standing off the bed. "I can't get to sleep and I don't think I will for a while. Guess I'll just take a nap later today. Want anything from the kitchen?"

I stood up, pocketing my notebook. No use sitting here and trying to go back to sleep. I wasn't tired anymore and I had a thousand things to think about. All of those nagging thoughts would prod at me like little imps with their shitty, pin-sized pitchforks and keep me awake until I just wanted to slam my head against a wall to clear my head. A nice bowl of Froot Loops would be wonderful. Mint told me they'd gone to the store during the little period I'd been gone, so that was excellent. Mint quickly seemed to pick up the hint that I wanted to join them and we walked into the kitchen together. The silence swallowing the kitchen was eerie, but nothing really unnatural. Certainly beat sunlight in your face. Mint walked to the fridge and the freezer and pulled out some cans of root beer and some vanilla ice cream. Of course they wanted to make a float. Of course they did. I was still surprised they were as skinny as they were; the one-hundredth mug of one of those things should've at least put a bit of flab on their gawky little frame. Maybe it was just development issues. Probably worked to their favor as an androgynous individual; they were even flatter than me. Mint slid the jug of milk down the counter to me as I grabbed out the box of Froot Loops from the upper cupboard, an elated grin coming over my face as Toucan Sam came into view. I crudely opened the box and the plastic bag inside with my teeth, poured a large serving into a bowl, and filled it with milk, carrying my usual breakfast to the table by the side of the kitchen and mashing up the Froot Loops with the milk to moisten it. I couldn't eat my Froot Loops unless they were soggy as f**k; another weird trait, I guess. Mint finished preparing their float and started off to the couch, sipping their float and turning on the television. I quietly watched them boot up LazyTown for the hundredth time as I sat at the table. My Froot Loops, to my glee, moistened up fast, and I started eating as the LazyTown theme played.

Welcome to LazyTown, a place where you want to stay

You'll meet Robbie with his rotten plan

And Sportacus saving the day!

I sighed, playing with a cereal loop with my spoon, dunking it in and out of the milk and pretending it was a little person. Sportacus flipped around, Robbie tried on one of his terrible disguises that somehow fooled everyone regardless, Stephanie danced and spun around, and those creepy puppets sung and thrashed about. I could just imagine Robbie bursting out of the television and trying to make the entire town lazy with his nefarious, comical schemes. He sure wouldn't have to work hard with me. The Froot Loops didn't last long and I drank the bowl of milk, dumped the bowl and the spoon in the sink, and resigned myself to just staring at Toucan Sam's delightful little face. It reminded me of Paradise and waking up in that first, decrepit-ass room. It made me think about the Sam I'd brought from Paradise, who was in my room and on my nightstand, lounging in a tiny yellow rocking chair I'd found a while back. It just a shitty plastic toy that was nevertheless the exact size for Sam's disembodied head. I thought about the past and what Chayne and Ash had done to me. I thought about the future, about what Mom and Dad had found and the prospect of getting my chip removed. About the war.

I thought about who I'd be without the neurochip. It was a weird prospect, but I thought back to the files Harlow had written way back. Darby had been completely different, for starters; the Darby I knew was miles different from the murderer Billy was. Mint too. The file hadn't specified much, but when I'd asked Mint about the subject, they'd told me Chayne had quipped that they'd only signed onto the project for money – and didn't give a s**t about their father's presumed death. They'd still expressed an interest in one day getting their chip removed.

Would they change?

I suddenly heard the television flicker off and Mint pick the remote up. I peered across the kitchen wall. Mint's eyes were turned to the television and they look perturbed, or at the very least confused and unsettled.

"Uh... Tango, did you turn off the TV?" they asked. I shook my head in response, walking over and glancing at the television.

It was still on, but it wasn't showing LazyTown anymore. It wasn't on any particular channel and it was just showing a blank, black screen. It was clearly on, though, the little green dot at the bottom of it lit up and the screen clearly alight, if dim. The remote was on the arm of the couch, completely untouched. Mint exchanged a weird glance with me and paced over to the television, nervously holding up the remote and trying to turn the television off. Nothing happened when they pressed the button. The television stayed on and a dreadful feeling of emptiness suddenly welled up in my chest. Mint looked back at me. One look at them was all I needed to tell they were freaked out as s**t. The television suddenly started to flicker and Mint backed up, dropping the remote and putting their float down on the table. The screen started to fill up with static. No noise came out from the TV, still, even though I expected that harsh buzz to come from it whenever you hit a channel that was nothing but static. This was just there. There was no noise but my thumping heart. Just pure, undiluted, undisturbed emptiness. Like someone had just sucked up all the air in the room and left me and Mint in a vacuum. I briefly tore my gaze away from the static-filled screen, as hard as it was to do, and looked at the digital clock on our microwave which displayed the time in dark-green numbers. That, too, was gone. Blank. Like the microwave had been unplugged. I looked back at the screen.

I could feel something in it. I could feel something looking at me and Mint. I could feel it hammering at the other edge of the screen, stuck in some primitive digital dimension it longed to be free of, smashing and clawing at the screen in a desperate bid to escape our reality and glaring at me. It was a presence I couldn't fully comprehend. It was less a presence, less of an existence, and more of a desire. Just a sentient desire to be something.

Never-becoming.

The moment I thought of that word – gave it a name and a label, something to help it exist in our reality as something more than just an unformed thought – the static started to crawl out of the television.

My heart seized up. Mint was as still as a corpse. The mass of static undulated and twitched in place. It was the closest thing the Never-becoming could call a form; not solid mass, not gaseous, not liquid, not plasma, not a Bose-Einstein condensate, nothing that existed in three or two or one dimensions, or four or five or six or twelve, perhaps just zero-dimensional energies struggling to exist in any form and torturing itself in the process. It had no shape, no temperature, no mind, no will, just pure, blind instinct and a will to live in some form. It was purely incomprehensible to a mind that only knew solid reality; it was essentially literal nothing, trying to be something. The closest I could think of when I thought of "nothing" was just empty blackness or whiteness. But that, at least, was a color, something we could perceive. It was, at the least, an idea. Nothing was the lack of anything. But this nothing wanted into our reality; this nothing could still think and want and crave. That was the Necrosis. That was the Never-becoming. That was what was trying to make itself exist in our living room.

Looking at the Never-becoming, I felt as if I could see right past it, as if nothing was there at all. Appropriate, I'd add. But still, it was there, and it grew and poured out of the television like molasses in folding and coalescing amalgamations of static, forming and unforming into a wiggling mass of incorporeal static that strained my mind to think about. Time just stopped around us and reality itself distorted in the same way the weak spots in reality did, blurring the world around it and raping the universe in its desperate bid to live. I figured it wouldn't be long until our world rejected this stain upon it and forced it to vanish into non-existence, but until then, me and Mint had to bear witness to this nightmare. I was so focused and lost in it, so entranced by how it could exist, that I almost forgot it was moving towards us.

Moving towards Mint.

They weren't moving. They weren't even afraid anymore. This thing inspired no feeling but pure and utter confusion and Mint was struggling to process what they were looking at. One portion of static forced itself into a coil, something that vaguely looked like an appendage, and it reared that towards Mint. I suddenly recalled the hell that I'd experienced when the Preceptor had showed me the feeling the Never-becoming would bring upon someone's mind if they were to ever touch it.

Nothing. Endless nothing. A void of nothing that swallows and consumes, gnawing and hungry, rapacious, devouring anything that exists and all it can eat.

Mint simply wouldn't be able to take it.

I acted on blind instinct, dove in front of Mint, and pushed them out of the way before the appendage could make contact with them, causing them to fall to the floor with a startled yelp. The Never-becoming paused for a second, unsure of what to make in this sudden change in the environment. That was enough to give it a vulnerability I exploited.

Be gone, I mentally commanded.

Somehow, it worked. Whether it was Mylotheia somehow affecting the physical realm or the sheer fact I had an advantage in power over this writhing, pitiful mass of almost-nothing in front of me, the Never-becoming was drawn back into the television and stopped existing. I couldn't really say I killed it; I don't even think it was technically alive. The television blinked off.

I blinked. Everything has returned to normal.

Mint was on the ground, clutching their head in pain and confusion. They looked up at me, perplexed, shocked, and agitated.

"T-Tango? What was that for!?" they squeaked, as if the nightmarish, barely-existent abomination hadn't just been there.

Then I pieced it together. The idea of that Never-becoming had just stopped existing. I could remember it because of my evolved mind, but all memory of it had simply vanished from Mint's mind. From their perspective, I probably had just shoved them to the ground for no reason, whatsoever.

I suddenly felt like a douche.

Mint reared up to all fours and gave me a weird-ass look.

"You just... What was that for?" they said, not really angry but taken aback regardless.

I fumbled for a response, then darted over to the table by the television as Mint watched in confusion, taking out my notebook and writing down a brief response.

thought i saw something. got startled

Mint gave me a weird look when I showed them what I wrote and looked around. "Well... no one's here. Just us."

I nodded, and wrote "sorry" down in the notebook. Mint sighed and gave me a slight smile.

"Don't worry about it," they said. I gave a weak smile in response. That was another good thing about Mint; so long as they had a good reason to do so, they were forgiving as all get-out.

There was suddenly a loud bang from outside.

My heart sunk a little as Mint screamed and jumped a bit. Evidently, it wasn't over yet. I darted out to the nearest window and looked out into an endless world of black. No snow. No trees. No houses, cars, or people. No ground. No sky. No sun.

Everything was gone.