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????"I am a Primordial, something that was born from the source of life itself intended to watch over and guard the multiverse. Or at least, I should.. are you ready to see something beautiful?" Nate felt hesitation before he could take the outstretched hand, even if the Godkid didn't quite resemble a multi-tentacled eldritch horror like the kind of thing that had been chasing them in the school. What if this thing was fucking with them? Playing mindgames - he really didn't understand any of it, couldn't have understood even if he had really tried. It had helped them before, so there was at least a good chance it was telling the truth or at least what it thought- no, decided was the truth. But what would the Godkid consider beautiful? So far all he knew was that the least few hundred years of fundamentalists had been simultaneously proven right and wrong with their doomsday conspiracy theories and angel sightings.
Reluctant nonetheless, Nate finally pushed through his reservations and joined the others in their linked hands, pondering just what it was that had Britney so excited, that made it obvious she knew more than she let on. Light flared form behind them, he twisted around to get a view only for the floor to elude his weight, floating through to bear witness to a monolithic structure of light taking the form of... a tree? Stretching for miles, maybe continents in length. It reminded him of something he'd read about when idly looking up viking explorers and their beliefs. A vast tree which branched out into many realms...
"Yggdrasil," he involuntarily murmured, just barely aloud that the others might've heard it.
Yggdrasil. That was the name it had, if he recalled correctly. So far, if any kind of faith or religion had been debunked or disproven then this had just demonstrated that perhaps some of them were closer to the mark than others. They'd just been pulled through a portal to this place, from their world.
"Behold, the Godforce." Nate listened, making no comment. For this, he had no words - only a mass of formless questions and noises in his head, taking in the vastness of it. The Godkid was right, it was beautiful - or at least that word was the closest they'd ever get to describing it in human terms. Britney's voice was heard to utter the term 'Luminescence', though what she'd meant by that was unclear, unless she was referring to the light surrounding them. He listed as it casually explained why the universe existed, why they existed, that in essence it and its 'predecessors' were Gods in both the biblical and literal senses. Why they thought, felt - and why they had powers. Because of the 'Godforce'.
Questions steadily came in but, as for Nate, he could only watch and listen - this was beyond the help of phrases such as weird or mindfuck. Either this was real or it was all a bad dream, a really bad trip, or maybe, just maybe, he was still in the hospital bed, comatose, maybe hallucinating this whole thing. He ran a few fingers up the sleeve of his jacket and dug in hard, raking the skin until he felt himself wince and pull away. Flakes of skin were bedded under his nails, the pain real in contrast to the surreal nature of this experience, floating without weight before the norse vision of the universe.
"Do our powers come from memories and experiences?"
“…Is that why Scott ripped off the tattoo things of the people he killed? Because of the Godforce, and the glutton wanting it?”
Why did you allow for people like my mom to die? Like the guys at camp? Like Claire? Why have you just fucking watched while acting like we need to do all the work?
That last one from himself, no less, went unvoiced. A stupid question. It was a God, sure - but not their idea of the bearded, omnipotent asshole that Christian America had so eagerly latched onto.
Caela pressed on with a question about the Glutton, one he'd have probably asked if he'd not been beaten to the punch. "Why can’t you defeat the Glutton. Why do we have to do it? Why the fuck are we the ones who landed with these powers and shitty situation?”
It was disappointing to hear the Godkid tell them it couldn't. with each line of questioning, each answer they got was a riddle that unfolded into more questions and riddles with no plain solution in sight. Only the answer to why they had their powers, the nature of htem - that made sense, just a little more than the rest.
"Those who possess a powerful emotion inside themselves gain the potential to open their minds, hearts, bodies, and souls to the universe. To the Godforce. By doing so, they allow themselves to gain an ability that reflects them. Reflects their memories, experiences, and emotions. You all may have noticed that by now?" Ironically, it went through him. Nate didn't quite make the connection as to why his particular personality, his attitude to life meant he was able to stick his head through walls. Maybe he was a closeted voyeur, looking to get into some of that shower room peepshow action? He latched onto a select few words, "When the time is right, you can see a vision of the past-" and perhaps found some understanding. He wanted to walk away from it, at least - the past. Didn't want to be sat next to that bed, watching her connected to a machine as her automated breathing let out distinct rasps, a husk of what she was.
Surprisingly, it was the new kid, Cyrus who broke through that collective awe, that degree of wisdom and understanding to ask the Godkid about the Glutton once again, its features crinkling into something he could only describe as consternation. "... The Glutton craves creation itself." Not that it settled for being the eldritch horror seeking only to devour their group before, it would consume everything? And from showing up out of nowhere - it felt like they were getting into biblical levels again.
"It was no being created by my predecessors, it just... appeared and devoured everything, but there is something I must show you all..."
All of it blacked out, only for the space around them to fill with a mass of light, each connected to one another by a glowing thread."When my predecessors made creation, they created countless alternate universes... infinite worlds you might say,"
A vast tree which branched out into many realms...
"And it was beautiful... but now there are only a tiny fraction left."
By the thousands, the lights died out, until but a few remained. Nate had expected the Godkid to at least say something, but it hadn't slipped his notice that Britney had been pointing each one of them out and naming them. "-Shimmer, Glint, Spark, Gleam, Shade, Halo, Shine, Illuminate, Flash, Halo, Beacon, Flare, Torch, and Ray." Definitely involved, definitely in some illuminati conspiracy shit beyond understanding.
"What happened?" Justin had asked, receiving an answer which explained the God's saddened demeanour.
"The Glutton consumed them all."
Nate couldn't even think the phrase shit without beating himself over the head with a brick that it was an understatement. They were supposed to stop this thing, something that not even the Godkid or what came before it had managed to do. Was this a fucking joke? "How.." he began to form the words, but couldn't. Others spoke up for him, or at least he pretended they were when in fact they were probably just asking for their own sakes.
He felt like an ant going up against a tank, except an ant could be on the tank and go unnoticed. If it was killed by the tank, it would've just been as collateral damage, nothing more. Crushed and rolled over. The Glutton was after them and had already taken people with it for lunch. As the Godkid told them, they couldn't kill it and neither would anyone or anything else be up for the job. They couldn't stop it either, or at least not as Penny had asked. But it was leading them along, so that meant something, right?
"Eons ago, in the last stand of the people of Glint, the Glutton was weakened to the point where it was sealed inside of the mountain that overlooks the town," The Child started off. Midway through, Nate had echoed "Glint" aloud in a quizical tone, "Sealed behind three seals crafted from the Godforce, where it should have remained dormant for all eternity - but something damaged the seals and allows it to not only awaken but exert its dark will through the cracks." Cracks? Was that why he always felt uneasy when looking at the mountain, especially at night? Was that why there were so many rumours about people going missing around it? But now, they had a way to stop this thing - that energised him just a little bit more, a hopeful expression faintly creasing his features.
"It's not an easy task, you all have to bath yourselves in the raw Godforce... and the only way you could do that is by entering the mountain. But, you must also enter it with clear, open, minds, and with a clear understanding of the universe at large. With no doubts, with nothing holding you back. Or else the raw emotion, the raw memories, overwhelm your minds and break them." Nate's expression dissipated. No pressure then, he thought, then blinked as the view before them changed to that of their hometown. Decayed, in ruin - snow-blanketed corpses littering the frozen streets as others pressed through, shivering with torches, axes, knives, hunting rifles and pistols desperately clutched in their grasp. He saw a cruiser from the local sheriff's office crumpled against a fallen street pole, the driver's frozen husk slumped against the wheel. No distinction was required, he recognised it even from this distance.
And then the colour bled from his sight, and he saw that for each living figure were a dozen silhouettes. Nate felt the cold, biting at his face and fingertips.
"Do you understand? Will you do it for not just the town you live in, but what's left of the universe?"
"Okay..." Nate broke the silence and let slip a nervous chuckle, "No pressure, right? Just the Scooby gang here versus the closest thing to Cthulu-Satan the universe has ever known, what could go wrong?" He glanced towards the others, shrugging with his hands up before shifting his attention back towards the Godchild. "Y'know, I gotta ask. If we die - where do we go? You're the closest thing we've have to God, right? Am I gonna be fighting with Tupac and Elvis in fucking Valhalla if the Glutton takes me off the buffet plate or... like if-.. if our minds, thoughts and powers are made from this energy, we don't just disappear when we die, right?"