Chapter 704: An Unlikely Bond
In a bleak and empty dark void, a lone baby floated in stasis among the nothingness.
There was no noise within this place, as almost all sound was eaten by the boundless domain.
Just as Bashenga had designed it.
Though there was the minor issue of him lacking the soothing noise of the screaming damned to really get him settled in to his surroundings.
He hadn’t learned how to work a smartphone yet, otherwise he’d know that he could quickly put on some kind of Halloween ASMR and really get that back home feeling he was missing.
But for now, he was fine.
Everything was perfect.
“This is so cool!!”
Almost perfect.
One of Bashenga’s eyes flashed open and his ire was immediately telegraphed.
Glancing to his far right, he could see a door open and light pouring in from outside.
Two individuals were standing just inside of the doorway; one adult, and one child.
“Your room is so big!”
Courtney swan dived into the boundless space with no fear of death and began floating around like a child from neverland.
“YAHOOO! I’M FLYINGGG!!”
If Abaddon saw what was going on, he would be heartbroken.
He had always wanted to be the first to teach Courtney to fly.
Bashenga righted himself as Courtney flew all around him.
“…What are you doing he-“
“YIPPEEEEE!!!!”
“…”
While Bashenga watched his sister float around, the other visitor came towards him and it was one whom he least expected.
“You seem to have grown used to your infantile new form. Was your earlier displeasure just brash bluster?” Izanami asked.
Bashenga snorted.
“Hardly. Mother has seen fit to lock me inside of this state for a period of time that remains unknown to me at present.”
“That does in fact sound like her.” Izanami nodded.
“An evil woman if ever I have seen one… and there are ten others just as bad as her.”
Little Bash shuddered at the mere memory. Earlier, a parade of women had come in to submerge him in cheek kisses and take photos of his embarrassing outfit.
They called him childish names and sniffed him like a pack of wolves.
…It was maddening.
“I feel as if I have known you already for quite a while.” Izanami suddenly said.
Bash looked at her oddly for a moment.
Bits and pieces of memory bubbled up into his mind and he looked at Izanami in a slightly different light.
“…The memories I have of you, and the ones that father has shared with me are egregiously different.
No longer are you wailing tears of blood and cursing that ex-husband of yours for days on end as you kill humans by the thousands everyday.
Instead you are the beloved ‘Grandest-Great-Grandmother’ of the Tathamet family and as harmless as a housefly.” he mocked. “How low you have sunken.”
Izanami didn’t seem bothered by his words in the slightest and even shrugged in disinterest.
“What can I say..? The land in between is… transformative. I find little reasons to be vengeful here. I can focus on more than just the wrongdoings that were committed against me.”
Bashenga sneered.
“You love him. Unbelievable.”
“You are new here, so you have yet to learn much. You won’t find many women around him who do not.”
“And yet he is unaware of this?”
“Abaddon is sexuality. He is not love. It is quite easy for him to overlook the feelings of others as simple attraction, given that everyone finds him irresistible.”
“Ugh… All of this sentiment exhausts me horribly.” Bash went back to his previous horizontal position and closed his eyes.
He waived his hand dismissively at Izanami as he rolled over.
“Take the little one with you and leave. You both are disturbing the rest that I so desperately need…”
Izanami had never rolled her eyes before, but she was beginning to feel the urge to do so now.
“Baby Bashy~ Baby Bashy~”
Bashenga opened his eyes in annoyance and stared that the five year old floating above his face in wonder.
“So cuteee!” Courtney cooed.
“…Child, you will back away from me this instant.”
“Nuh-uh! You can’t tell me what to do, I am your big sister!” Courtney folded her arms and nodded in satisfaction.
“You most certainly are not.”
“Am too!”
“Before the ball of gas had formed that rotates around your home planet full of miserable little homo sapiens, I was already awake and pondering the meaning of my own profound existence.”
“…Nuh-uh!”
A vein bulged in Bashenga’s forehead.
“I am older than you can even begin to imagine!”
“No you’re not, you were just born yesterday!”
“That is not even remotely true!”
“Is too!”
“It is not!”
‘Is too!”
“It is not!”
Izanami cracked a very small, barely noticeable smile.
“How adorable.”
“”Thank you! / I am not!””
Courtney and Bashenga went from glancing at Izanami to staring at each other rather intensely all within the span of just a second.
“…”
“…”
“..”
“…What are your super powers?” Courtney finally asked.
“…Excuse me?”
Courtney flexed one of her imaginary guns and developed a haughty air.
“I’m invincible! That means that nothing can hurt me at all and I’m basically the strongest in the whole entire house!” Courtney gloated.
Bashenga scoffed.
“Such hubris never ceases to amuse. Once upon a time, I was filled with the wailing torment of those who were deemed so called invincible existences.
I satiated myself on their misery and lulled myself to sleep with the sounds of their descent into perilous madness.
Before the heavens even remembered the existence of the abyss, I was the deepest, blackest darknesses they had ever known.
I am unequalled. ‘Invincibility’ is a childish phrase to someone such as me.”
“…”
“…”
“…So you don’t have any powers anymore is what I’m hearing.” Courtney stared at her brother with a look full of pity.
Bashenga was being brought to such dangerous levels of irritation that his little baby body was likely to pop from the sudden influx of negative emotion.
“…Heed my words well, child.”
Bashenga started to float above Courtney’s head as his body began to glow from within.
Suddenly, the dark canvas of his domain was wiped away and replaced with an entire solar system of planets teeming with life.
“With my new birth I have ascended. I am Armageddon.”
The planets created by Bashenga’s demonstration were suddenly afflicted by the worst kinds of tragedies imaginable.
Meteors struck and demolished worlds to pieces.
Seismic quakes and tremors destabilized civilizations and caused planetary collapses.
Viruses were born that decayed and ate away all sentient organic tissue until nothing but soulless shells were left.
Scientific ‘accidents’ occurred that resulted in unsurvivable amounts of radiation flooding an entire planet.
Fires ravaged planets on such a devastatingly large scale that even those who were able to escape the heat suffocated when the oxygen burned out of the atmosphere.
“I am the metaphysical embodiment of the grand conclusion of all universes.
With a whisp of my breath I end entire realities, galaxies, dimensions, and the boundaries between them.
I am beyond your comprehension, child. I am the violent dismantling of all that you know and perceive, and even that which you cannot.”
Every planet behind Bashenga exploded into fiery chunks of debris, and finally the darkness returned to the space he called his bedroom.
He saw how Courtney blinked slowly at the sight of his display and he raised his nose up haughtily.
‘That’s right, child. Understand now the gravity of my existence when compared to your own and tremble in awe.’ He thought internally.
“My baby brother is so cool..!”
Bash nodded. “That’s right, I- Wait! I am not your baby brother!” He corrected.
Courtney held out her hands. “Can I hold you?”
“NO!”
Courtney grabbed him anyway.
And while Bashenga tried to worm his way out of her grip, Courtney nuzzled her face against his cheek.
“I always wanted a little brother… I promise that I will always take care of you and give you all of the hugs and candy you could ask for. And we’ll play lots and lots together too.”
Bash stopped trying to be free of Courtney for a moment so that he could stare at her incredulously.
“Is my vocabulary perhaps too advanced for you to understand the gravity of my words? I am beyond the need of your protection, I’ve no interest in confections of any kind, and I don’t desire to play with you!”
Courtney kissed Bash on his small jelly-like cheek and hugged him even tighter.
“I love you, new brother. You’re my third best friend in the whole universe.”
Bash had actually been rendered fully speechless.
He turned to Izanami with his jaw slack open and pointed to Courtney behind her back.
“…Is this one afflicted with a brain disability?”
Izanami showed tiny, infinitesimal signs of smiling once again. This was the most expressive she’d been in eons.
“No more than any other member of your family…. They are all unrelentingly kind, even to those who may have done nothing to deserve it.”
Bashenga was at a complete and utter loss for a response.
Izanami finally peeled Courtney away from her baby brother and gave him the freedom he was so desperately seeking earlier.
“Come along now, Courtney. We need to let your brother get his rest now so that he’ll have energy for tonight.”
“Oh, yea! Festival!” Courtney’s eyes lit up.
Bashenga tilted his head to the side to show his lack of understanding.
“Festival..?”
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