UnderLie- How The Remnant Was Woken
The thing you have to realize is that the identity of the first Destroyer itself doesn’t matter. It’s name, it’s motivation, even the way it kills worlds, don’t directly affect the story. Despite being the first, it’s still only one of many Destroyers whose actions leave behind the fragmented data that ends up shaping the UnderLie AU. -and this story isn’t about the destroyers, its about what continues on after they’ve thrown the worst they have at it. The parts that refuse to die.
-and of course the Remnant.
Still, it was the first. -and in that twisted sense of retribution karma sometimes offers, it was instrumental in the creation of the world, simply for the reason that it was determined to destroy it. It forced the Remnant into realizing its own existence, as the world around it refused to die. As it- no, as they- realized that they were what kept the world from dying.
So the funny thing is? If it had just left the world alone after the first time it was destroyed, if it had just been satisfied with the mass destruction it had enacted, and not become furious over the fact that some small part of it remained, then that probably would have been the end of it. Instead, it’s insistence that any trace of what it despised be wiped away, was the very thing that woke the Remnant.
Nothing makes a creature more willing to fight for its existence, than having someone try to destroy it. Nothing makes them more determined to keep what’s important, than having someone else try to take it away.
- anyway that’s the premise. So let’s run with it.
… Most of the world lay in ruin. Not much was left to prove this had been a place with busy people living intricate lives, with families, secrets, hopes and dreams, the same as anyone else. Honestly, not much remained to show there had ever been anything here at all- now it was just scars in the fabric of the Multiverse, with strips of rent and broken code sputtering dully in the vast emptiness of the anti-void.
The Destroyer was nothing if not thorough.
Which might be why, passing through the same place some length of time later, the sight of something still existing where there should be nothing, made it stop in its tracks. It was mostly just a little patch of shadow, some intact debris, and a shapeless form that might once have been a person, but it gouged at the Destroyer’s pride, it’s sense of right, and left it with one unshakable certainty. This wasn’t acceptable. It needed to be fixed, by being better broken.
Again, that’s kind of what’s funny. It was just a tiny patch left of an entire world, a little broken shadow, no more. -and it would have stayed that way, probably forever, if the Destroyer had just kept walking. But it didn’t. Instead, as Destroyer’s do, it went out of its way to erase the last tiny trace of what it had decided didn’t deserve to be.
So, with whatever means it used to such end, it rent again at that tiny place in space-time, that shadow image of a world now gone, and shattered it completely. Splintered fabrics of code, whispering off into the empty nothing of eternity, gone forever.
-except not. Except that said reality bent, twisted, and in the end? -it refused. The world came back together, just that same stubborn tiny bit, with that same broken shape, without feature, distinction, or proof of who they ever might have been. It remained.
So it was destroyed again - that was what the Destroyed did after all. Whether chosen purpose, or the duty designated by its creators, the extent of its existence was shaped by the drive to destroy what didn’t belong, what it didn’t accept, didn’t want… in the end, what it thought couldn’t be allowed to continue.
…and when it reformed again? -destroyed it again. -and again. -and again.
Because though broken, small, and pointless as this tiny trace of reality might be, each time the Destroyer tried harder, and each time its efforts seem to have less effect, until it stood exhausted, against an enemy that would not give ground, despite being… nothing.
Angry, confounded, it asked the question, “How are you still here?! How do you still remain?!”
At which point, for the first time, that shapeless form of the darkness, shifted. Shifted, turned, and regarded their attacker- and spoke their first words.
“I do not remain… I sustain.” Not challenge, but realization, the understanding that this small pocket of reality about them continued to exist, because they WANTED it to.
…and they did want it to. They wanted it to exist. So they would take what was broken, they would gather the pieces that were left, and they would put it back together. So that’s how the Remnant awoke. That’s where it came from, or at least that’s where it started. Because it was told that something it cared about didn’t deserve to exist, didn’t deserve to be cared for, that it wasn’t good enough. That’s what made the remnant decide to stand up, and start picking up the pieces.
Because it was tired of listening. Because the Destroyer was wrong. So the Remnant was going to do something about it.
yousharknotpass
jacobvanloon
dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
pixelskylines
kaledo-art
romaincrisis
dededos
origamiaround
turnnoffyourmind
