Book Burning

CHAPTER 35 (120YY-12045 Champions Era / 20YY-2045 AD) – I

Mass hysteria abounded as the seismic phenomena redounded to all of humanity surrounded by apocalyptic prophecies once again propounded. The greatest backslide in cultural and scientific progress in human history was taking place as all the gains made since The Enlightenment were pissed away into the sinkhole – the sinkhole that came to represent a toilet for humanity’s future and the asshole spewing out humanity’s wasted future. New religions were spawned. Rationality was abandoned. Demagogues of all persuasions led their followers back to a primal state of intellect that had largely been discarded. Mass movements yearned for the epochs of old without possessing the survival skills necessary to survive the journey back in time.

So severe was the degradation surrounding the Champions that they themselves were weakened, for the global population began to decline for the first time in centuries, thus robbing the Champions of energy to draw upon, batteries from which to recharge. Undeterred, both Champions reconfigured and rearranged the symbols that came to them from studying the Championship lineages embedded within the Vicars Salamander texts. Painstakingly, methodically, patiently, they stayed focused on their mutual tasks as the world burned around them. Having identified that there was an underlying message within the history, the race was on to piece it all together.

The symbols represented nearly impossible-to-articulate ideas, which themselves were manifestations of the particular circumstances and powers of the previous Champions. A story had been told for twelve thousand years: one told through actions and consequences. Every significant event was another piece of the puzzle, a variable in the world’s longest math equation, one whose answer would be the grand Theory of Everything – at least for the Championship context. Not even Victor Strife had known of this embedded messaging. He, along with many before him, had simply attempted to chronicle the Champions of history. It was the Avrils, in their years of hiding at the behest of Udef meticulously copying the histories physically and digitally, who began to recognize the patterns. Two Avrils: two minds, working as one. The computational power of modern day technologies melding with the artistic impulsivity of ye olden times. Though they had not been able to comprehend what lay within, it was their insights that led them to the momentous decision to hand the histories over to the Champions of Light and Dark. If the outcome was what they had hoped, then humanity may yet survive the Championship battle.

It took Aricame and Cai-Ream years to decipher the meaning that it had taken the Vicars Salamander their entire existence to compile. July 16, 2045, it all came together. One power, one ability, to unify everything that had occurred before. That was the key to ending the struggle of opposites. Duality turned monality, as they had envisioned during their psychic connection. Each Champion, still beholden (if only slightly) to their human vessels, found opposing applications of the insight. Aricame took the rational route; Cai-Ream the emotional.

The entire planet went dark.

Deduction-Induction
Essence inherent in existence
Essence inherent in your presence
Absence unveils its impermanence
Absence seems to make a lot more sense