CHAPTER 18: In which the Universe Egg is opened by whistling on a flute.
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BAHAMUT

Ambrosia and her family all rode on my back again. I had gotten used to their weight, and it was refreshing to get out of my cave, now and then, but I had been in the middle of a nap when they called me this time. Oh well, no matter. They typically were gone for periods of time after I dropped them off, and aside from the angel and the demon (who never called me), I would have plenty of time after they were dead to catch up on my sleep. Besides, I had taken a dragon-nap in the nine years that they had not been doing any major quests, and they had for the most part resorted to boats and teleportation pads to get about. Now that we were headed to what could be the end of all of their quests, I felt honored to be part of their journey. These humans were pretty interesting.

I had met Ambrosia near the end of her original journey, just before she met Lilith. Being a dragon, I sometimes remembered the ripples of time, so I knew of one point where Nevras broke up with her, and he had a long chat with me before turning around and going back tho her. But that reality didn't happen. Instead, she decided to extend her quest, dragging me along to places in an obvious effort to stall and spend more time with her man. It didn't bother me though, because I was willing to keep a secret.

Ambrosia was an oddity, despite the time I had spent with her an her friends. She seemed to be simultaneously moody and very emotionally restrained. She seemed to lose the ability to shut away her feelings though, once she had the Tao ability. Ambrosia seemed frightened of her own emotions, but using her powers was slowly getting her used to how such things felt. The Tao ability was so sensitive to her mood that unless she was perfectly in balance, it would not work. I couldn't imagine what it was like to have that sort of burden, where the slightest bit of sadness could destroy you. But she seemed adjusted now, and was friendly to her daughter and more intimate with her husband, in a way I had not seen for years. She had returned this power before, but I sincerely hoped she kept this power after this quest was over. Deadpan Ambrosia was calmer, but this Ambrosia seemed to be a sweeter person. She seemed more honest somehow.

All of this I thought as we flew toward what Ambrosia called the Universe Egg. But after I got there, I no longer thought about such things. I no longer thought about anything, for upon the Egg were fixated all of thoughts. You see, the object was pretty hard to ignore. It was starkly beautiful and yet conveyed a sense of wrongness.

The Universe Egg was noticed over the course of the last nine years (although many people believed the Presence had always been there) along with other strange new astronomical developments, such as real stars, the Presence, and the change of the shape of Earth. It floated at seeming random in the sky, far nearer than the sun, the moon, or the Presence and just above the level where most birds could reach it. Which was probably for the best, as it seemed as though the Egg was a perpetual source of light and of several types of energy. This should be impossible, since the very laws of conventional science stated that something that steadily gave off energy should also gradually lose it at the same rate. While the Egg did appear black enough to absorb light, it also constantly shimmered with as much light as a miniature sun. Even more astonishing was the sort of light that it gave off, as well as how it transmitted this. It gave off warmth but not heat. That is to say that on this cold day buffeted by winds and high altitude it was about as warm near the Egg as a spring day would be, and yet the light was not intense enough to hurt the eyes, despite glowing for miles around itself. Rather than ultraviolet light, it scattered light in the visible spectrum, spinning it in spirals, sine waves, and other interesting patterns while the center appeared as contrast in black as clouds passed around it. The Egg also proved to be its own reflection, casting an negative afterimage, so we originally saw a perfectly white Egg, and I flew toward that only to find that this one was not solid. We had seen it before, but much of what they saw and described to you, and what I saw are completely different. Human eyes cannot see certain shades of black or red, so the Egg probably looked white to them. And humans are nearsighted, so they probably couldn't see the squirming forms just inside the shell. It must be nice to have such blissful ignorance, but as a dragon, despite being a legendary one, I was terrified. This thing should not exist.

Just outside the Egg, I noticed the barrier from before. Or rather, I couldn't so much see it as I could see the way the air reacted around it, in the same way that a fire that burns cleanly enough creates motes of heat that cast shadows and create ripples but does not show up directly to human eyes. Until we attacked it, until we crashed into it, it was so perfectly transparent that even my eyes couldn't tell where it was.

“We're here,” I announced to Ambrosia, “You should probably play that Orihime Flute now.” It looked like she hadn't had many lessons. If the Orihime Flute had the ability to disrupt barriers, then it shouldn't matter what song she played, so we basically had her play C, Am, F, G in succession a few times. Then she followed it with a few other notes. After some practice, her hands made the motions, but she couldn't figure out how to how to make sound. Her palm was covering the holes. Aqorm was losing patience, “You're hopeless! Let me do it!” Nevras pushed her away, a dangerous thing to do on my back. “Here,” he adjusted her hands, “you were just covering it.” He held her tight while he showed her how to move her fingers better, and I could tell she was blushing.

It was awkward for her, but now she made a sound. She fingered through the notes slowly, stumbling a bit, and occasionally playing a wrong note. Even though she was obviously bad at this, I told her to keep playing. A steady and persistent tune was more important than playing any specific song, playing quickly, or even playing well. The barrier was wavering, and it would do so the more she played. Ironically, the more she played, the more visible and solid it looked. The translucent barrier became opaque, and then coated the Egg like an outer shell. The iridescent color shimmered and changed, now appearing as solid as glass. Was she doing the wrong thing?

Still she played. At this point, she didn't know what else to do. As she played more, she was beginning to have fun and sounded like she was getting better at it. And then something happened. As I said, the barrier was as rigid as glass. But glass has a way of becoming brittle. The barrier shattered, with much the same sound as glass.

In the inside of the barrier, gravity gave way. I was no longer needed as the group began to float freely, trying to organize their movements by making swimming motions. But I could tell they weren't getting anywhere. I reverted to my human form, a gigai with onyx hair and green eyes. And then stood upright in the air. “How did you do that?” the others asked. “It's easy,” explained. I would have thought everyone understood subjective gravity, but apparently it wasn't as commonplace where one travels by foot. “You just try to focus on thinking about solid ground, and it makes you walk as if there's ground,” I said as I walked on. While most of the others got this, Yazim Jianne allowed negative thoughts to intrude. He stood upright, but he was gradually beginning to sink into the surface. “Hold him!” I said to Selqui nearby, “Don't let him fall!” Selqui grabbed him, and held him tight, carrying him as she walked along.

In any case, one way or another, all of us made our way to the Egg in the center. We touched it simultaneously (agreeing silently that either we all made it in, or we all died), and if had a sort of sensation that was felt more than touched, almost like touching water in a dream that one is about to wake from. I would call the liquid sticky, but while its texture was similar to tar or honey, it did not appear to bond with solid objects. I cringed, and pulled my hand back. My hand exited the viscous black fluid with no ill effects, besides a sort of horror that strongly urged me never to touch it again. I pushed that aside, though my body was screaming at me, and told the others, “Relax, it should be safe to enter.” They didn’t want to either, but we managed.

The inside of the egg was a visceral sensation, to say the least. That outer barrier could best be compared to a shell, while the black substance was like amniotic fluid (of a some sort of fertile mutant chicken). Closing our eyes and holding our breath, all of us walked through the heavy layer of this stuff, not opening them until the creepy sensation passed. A thinner layer lay beyond it, and our group was drenched in blood. The gravity inside this Egg appeared to arc around the edges, so we were able to stand upright without thinking about it, but the blood ran along the ceiling to the other end of the Egg. We stood on a mix of skin and below that was probably muscle and tendon, followed by bones, there were bridges of bones and rivers of blood, and every now and then we would see a face or a random organ spliced together. It was an almost cancerous-looking mass of assorted parts. It was interesting to look at, until I saw muscles flex.

The area inside the Egg was roughly 50 times the area outside of it, massive enough as it was that it was about 500 ft tall and its width was on average about half that, while the inside was nearly a mile wide just in radius. It was surreal to see a “sky” like this tinged with layers of red and black, which intermittently rained buckets of blood that collected in lakes and rivers. In addition to terrain literally made from organs, in addition to a deep gorge between these chained-together islands which emptied into a pit of miasma, there were things here. The inside of the Egg appeared to be involved somehow in the creation of this world, so around fragments of anatomy from multiple living creatures there appeared to be component parts of such creations as souls, shadows, or the origins of atoms. I saw everything from genius loci to non-Newtonian fluids and liquid crystal to horrors of half-formed fetus and half-conceived ideas. I suspected it would get worse, the further we ventured within. As I was their ride home, and told them I would wait here. It had nothing to do with anything I saw inside the Egg. Nothing at all...

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