Chapter 171: 1 The Wall Realm

Elvira walked through her universe hand in hand with her husband, Gilles, the deity of shadows of the Four Realms and one of the eight Pillars. He looked about like an eager child, inspecting every inch of everything he possibly could. His enthusiasm was infectious, breaking through the fog that clouded her mind and emotions. If Elvira was honest with herself, she had not fully understood what she had just done until she had brought her husband here, and it was laid before her to see. She, like her Father before her, had , nascent though it was. And now she could share it with her family.“The density of the Bulwark is like nothing I have ever seen,” Gilles said with obvious fascination, tapping the bone-white walls as they floated outside of her Wall Realm. “You’re right, I think. Given a bit more time to settle, this should be able to withstand the rigors of the Void. We knew it was possible for a soul to resist being consumed by the Void, and we knew it was possible to push it back, and that stillness doesn’t agitate the Void nearly as much. The One World is a prime example with the way its atmosphere blends with the Void, making it so it is not nearly as disturbed as, say, the Primordial Chaos shell of the Four Realms used to be. But for a material to be able to outright resist the Void — not a soul, but inanimate material? I had not known it was fully possible.”

“Well, we’ll see,” Elvira said, laying a hand on the Bulwark, feeling it beneath her palm. It was neither cold nor warm, just…present. “It has yet to be tested.”

Gilles didn’t respond, buzzing with excitement as he scraped off a thin layer of the bulwark’s outer layer to examine it. Elvira winced at the feeling of her universe being manipulated by another, the new instincts within her — fresh and unknown — warring with what she had always known of Gilles’ nature. The Guardians stirred in the depths of her realm at the disturbance, but with a flex of her power they settled back down. She shot a little glare at them through the wall for reacting that way when she was here, but quickly refocused on Gilles.

He examined the thin strip closely, shadows swirling around his fingers as he played with it.

“It’s incredibly still,” he marveled. “Energetically, physically, spiritually, all the bits and pieces that make it up are so incredibly still. Nearly motionless. I would bet that this is a defensive measure, because the void reacts to creation and movement and life, and, this is just a guess, I’d hazard that this material mimics the stillness of the Void as a sort of camouflage. The Guardians are protectors, but this? The Bulwark is the key to it all.” Elvira hooked her arm around his, plucking the thin strip of material out of his hand and laying it back where he had taken it from, letting it meld back with the rest of itself. He shot her a sheepish smile, tightening his grip around her and looking up and around at the growing universe. It was longer than it was wide, by a long shot. Like a cylinder.

“I want to show you the rest,” she said, patting his arm. She led the way, looping around away from this part of the Bulwark, because here it was thickest, not as permeable as some of the other places. Though as the Origin Deity of this universe she could pass through the walls with ease, she wanted to abide mostly by the same laws that her Guardians and people and gods would abide by, setting an example for them.

So instead she headed to one of the few gateways into her universe. The Bulwark here was not necessarily thin, just different — permeable, allowing Guardians and energy and some other things out and through if necessary, so that the outside of the Bulwark could be tended to. Gilles oohed and ahhed at the noticeable change in the material, slipping out of her grip to examine it just as he had before. She left him to it, taking the chance to look up into the sky.

She had, quite frankly, been in a bit of a daze for the past stretch of time, to the point that she wasn’t even sure how much time had passed since she began creating her Wall Realm. She needed to take a moment and admire the other things in the sky. From where she stood she could see the interior shell of the One World, and the rhythmic fluctuations of Reika’s realm, even as far away as it was. But the closest of her siblings’ universes by far was a piece of Alexander’s.

Not the central hub, not the Heart, but one of those branching tubes that stretched out from it, letting pieces of whatever grew within the center move about, contained by that tube of Primordial Chaos. Bits of energy, the elements, even echoes of thoughts and ideas rushed by in that looping tube, before it connect to another, coming close to this section of her universe but not actually touching. It took some effort for her to peer through the tube itself, to see what was inside.

Despite there being a bunch of stuff within the tube it was, however, relatively . To her eyes, it was lacking the diversity she knew for a fact Alexander desired in his universe. That was why he had enjoyed relaxing and watching the Spirit River flow by, it had been full of

A part of her wanted to go help him, to go explore his universe and to show him hers. That was true of all of her siblings though. She wanted to go see, to investigate and explore…but just like her and her Wall Realm, she wasn’t certain they were ready for that. Hers was not ready to be shown. Her house at the moment was just a shell, the exterior was all nice and painted and done up, but the interior had much work to be done. There was something to be said, though, about showing off the shell of a house, getting thoughts and ideas about what could be made…actually, that was a good idea. Maybe she should do that.

Later, though.

“Elvira,” Gilles called, drawing her back to him, and her universe. “Do you see this? It is the same material, but instead of all of the molecules existing as a solid, all of the bits and bobs inspiring stillness, it is almost like a gel. So it can part if you push against it, allowing just a bit more movement than everything else but still having the same effect as the rest of the Bulwark.” Her wings flared a little bit as she moved over to him, smiling indulgently. The time to show her siblings and let them give their advice, their thoughts on the matter, would come later. Right now, she was going to hear her husband’s thoughts.

She led the way, pushing through the entrance. The Bulwark parted before them, exactly as Gilles had said; like a gel, like honey, she would even say. It offered no resistance to her, the material sliding right off because she had expressed her desire to enter and her universe would never say no to her. But it was a touch more difficult for Gilles, the material clinging to him, tugging at his robes and hair, only parting because she had made it her express will that he could enter. The Authority hummed in her chest, so strange and foreign feeling yet already turning invisible to her mind’s eye, not quite ready to be seen by her yet. It was settling in her chest and continued to fill cracks that had been formed when she surrendered… what had she surrendered? She couldn’t recall.

Then they emerged into the central area, the rooms, the folded dimensions that comprised the safe interior of the Bulwark. Guardians, six of them, stood just inside the entrance, pure white, with little gray eyes set into their featureless faces. Their bodies were covered in a armor, or so it appeared. In truth the armor, which looked like plate engraved with designs of various creatures and animals and plants and elements, was a literal piece of their being. Like chitin, on a bug. The only non-natural part of their armor was a minor change Elvira had worked; the armor had been interwoven with pieces of the Bulwark to keep them safe from the void as well, though they were in no way, shape, or form nearly as sturdy as the Bulwark itself. That was the cost of giving them motion and autonomy, sturdiness.

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Gilles circled around the Guardians, looking them up and down, muttering about free will and purpose, which these things nominally had. They had been designed for one purpose, and as such she wasn’t even sure they qualified as living beings — more like automatons, those SystemGuardians Curie had created. She let him mutter and talk and examine the Guardians, explaining her own point of view on them, before moving on.

Together she and her husband wandered the folded dimensions of the interior. Like she said, everything was a little bare at the moment. Each separate room tended to be filled with either nothing, the raw ingredients of creation, or individual elements, as she experimented with what she liked. Gilles found a room filled with nothing but shadows amusing. This room was pure dark, unlike the other rooms, which were illuminated by the light that shone from the interior of the Bulwark itself, filtering through the thin walls between the separate dimensions. She had purposefully twisted this room, to experiment with pure shadows and darkness, and to let her husband play with it.

Unlike the darkness and shadows of the Four Realms, which bent and twisted to Gilles’ will as freely as breathing, the darkness and shadows of her universe did not.

The Wall Realm did not respond to Gilles. It acknowledged his presence, but did not let him manipulate it. That was a problem. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth as she observed Gilles moving his hand through the shadows, the darkness responding more to his presence than his will and power, like mud and water swirling around his fingers simply because he was passing through it. She would have to do something about that. In fact, she had already made a plan to.

“Was this a room you made for me? All dark and secretive…is this to be my laboratory?” Gilles teased, seeming to enjoy that the shadows did not respond to him.

“No. I just wanted to see what would happen when I made a place like this, though this can be your laboratory if you want. It’s close to the center, after all. Like I said before, the Bulwark realm is not very big yet, still growing, so there’s not a whole bunch to explore yet, nor many rooms to choose from.” She explained. There were maybe, what, two hundred small dimensions so far? She hadn’t been in a universe this small since the Four Realms were first created.

Gilles chuckled a little. “Maybe I will, but we need to solve the other thing first. The Realm itself doesn’t seem to like me. Similarly, it’s so strange to think that we were missing this entire flavor of darkness.” He reached out and grabbed a strand of shadow, or tried to, only to have it slip through his fingers. He smiled, and ran a hand through his hair, already deep in thought.

Contrary to Elvira’s expectations, Gilles was not disappointed that the shadows did not respond to him, which was good, in its own way. She smiled fondly at her intellectual of a husband, especially as he continued to rattle on about flavors of shadow, how different it was, how it didn’t respond, and if there might be other flavors of shadow that didn’t respond to him. She, privately, wondered if it had more to do with Authority, than it did the multiversal concept of a shadow.

Even in the One World the shadows had responded to him some, but she attributed that to Father having some of the universe’s Authority. So how did she get the Bulwark realm to recognize Gilles not only as a member of the household — not a guest, but an actual member of the household — but to also respond to him? She did not think sharing Authority was a good idea. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she was unsure if Gilles could even handle that, or if it would even be good for the realm, or for her, pregnant as she was. Ripping part of her own soul off so soon after she had surrendered… what had she surrendered? She didn’t remember.

Either way, she wasn’t sure it would be good for anybody to share Authority like that so early on in her career as an Origin Deity. But she thought there might be a way to get around it. And funnily enough, it was the Guardians who had given her this idea. They had authority — not capital-A Authority, but regular authority. The Will of the Wall Realm recognized them as things with power and purpose. So all she had to do was figure out how to get the Will to recognize Gilles as somebody with power and purpose, and a place in the universe.

It should be simple enough, once she actually sat down to explain it to the Will.

“I think,” Gilles said slowly, “you should start with making the baby’s room first.” Her own smile grew wider, one hand drifting to her swollen belly. She wrapped her wings around his shoulders, pulling him tight.

“I agree,” she said, putting her worries and thoughts out of her mind as they left the dark dimension and continued to wander the others. “But to do that, we need to decide on our room first.” Gilles chuckled and shifted a little so he could give her a dry look, complete with a playful little smile.

“Oh? You’ve just created a universe and now one of your first acts is to try to drag me to bed?” he teased. She did not glare. She did not. But she did give him a little smug smile and squeezed his arm.

“Hush, you. You’re impossible,” she chuckled, and together they wandered a bit further, Elvira already planning and cataloging what she needed to do to prepare this universe for her child and her husband.

***

Watching Elvira and Gilles flirt and explore her Realm had given me something to do. I bounced little Amari Ren on my hip, tickling the little one’s nose with the tip of a finger covered in soft white energy. The Oshun stood beside me, taking a break from creating the [System], which was very nearly complete. She had thought it complete earlier, but bugs kept popping up, as they always did when you stress-test things. So now she had stepped away so we could spend time with our child together.

The little one burbled and slapped away my hand, reaching out with pudgy fingers to hook into my mouth and pull with childish strength. “Ow,” I said around their fingers, gently prying their hand away. “Be nice,” I told them, setting them down so they could toddle forward on unsteady legs toward their mother.

“The little one is growing far slower than I expected, than I think anyone expected,” Inesa said, the goddess of light having welcomed us into her garden for a play-date. Her own child, Sequoia, climbed onto her back, the green-haired girl looked nearly ten or eleven now, despite being much older.

“Little Ren is the child of two origin deities, and already has a bit of Authority,” the Oshun said sweetly, welcoming the little one into her arms as they toddled to her and lifting them up. They giggled and flailed wildly, happy to be raised into the air. “Of course they will grow slower, that’s just how it’s going to be. But I would bet that they are a little bit smarter than you are thinking, not quite the tiny child they appear.” She poked Ren’s belly, drawing a little giggle out of them, and I smiled, folding my hands into the sleeves of my robes.

There was only a little bit of time before the next meeting between Origin Deities, at which point the Oshun would leave to go find somebody who could actually help them overcome the damage they had endured. So it was good to give little Amari Ren some time with their mother before she had to go — ideally not for too long, though, since her presence in the one world was a stabilizing one.

“Yeah, but they're still just a baby,” Sequoia said, the little green-haired girl leaping from her mother’s shoulders to run over to me, grabbing my robes and peering at Ren. “I’ve grown much, much more in that same time.”

I laid a hand on her head, ruffling her hair, the happy-go-lucky girl laughing and ducking out of my reach, darting back to her mother’s side and glaring at me from behind her back, expecting me to give chase. Another day I would have. But not today. Today was about Ren, and I knelt beside the Oshun and played with our child.