Коллективное Творчество – Verse and Dimensions: Stories (страница 15)

Empiroxus would eventually resort to sacrificing his popularity and reputation as a well-respected SuperGod. From then onward, instead of entering tunnels that led to regions dense with SuperGods and beyond bubbles, Empiroxus would intentionally enter tunnels that led to less SuperGod-habitable, more hostile, and more dangerous areas less populated by SuperGods. Abstractil was not particularly happy with how poorly Empiroxus grew to handle confrontations from many SuperGods at once and greatly regretted not being there to support him, but Xenixel was quite satisfied. Other SuperGods would no longer associate with or bother Empiroxus—more SuperGods potentially leaving him alone and staying away from him would potentially speed up missions.

Empiroxus seemed to become much happier when he made the choice to use new routes and gets very ecstatic at the wonders of the Ecosystem, in direct contrast to how stressed he became near the areas of the Cohort more dense with Beyond bubbles and SuperGods. Though he retained his clear confidence and sociability among his remaining friends as well as his willingness to tell long stories about his great adventures and argue with Xenixel, he had a permanent sense of anxiety around large numbers of SuperGods and was very unwilling to travel directly through the Cohort, instead moving about the edges. This bit of information about Empiroxus was eventually given to Conceptilum and Matharin by Abstractil and the young pair tried their best to not bother Empiroxus with talk of traveling through crowded regions afterwards, despite Matharin's lack of empathy.

On one of Empiroxus's journeys to collect the rare element phi that was nearby a logical desert, he eventually found out that a SuperGod that seemed as strong as himself lived in a small Beyond bubble nearby said desert. This SuperGod's name was Peralitus.

Peralitus had heard of Xenixel's Council and had longed to be within its ranks for a long while. However, Peralitus had an astoundingly poor understanding of tunnels and the inscripverses that encoded directions to the Cohort and had been unable to their bubble. Apparently, nobody had taught him how to actually make sense of them after all this metatime. That, or he had been taught but completely forgot everything he ever learned or never paid attention to anyone who might have taught him. Empiroxus was truly dumbfounded at the sheer incompetence of this SuperGod and thought that if Peralitus had been omnipotent^2 or less, he surely would have quickly succumbed to the chaos that surrounded him. When discussing the Council, Peralitus seemed to have a strange fixation on authority and leadership. Empiroxus felt uncomfortable about this and could not empathize with Peralitus whatsoever. At this point, Empiroxus found it appropriate to tell a story on how it was not always appropriate to follow orders blindly. However, Peralitus grew incredibly impatient, told Empiroxus to shut up, and demanded that he know what a Council member was doing all the way out near the logical desert. Empiroxus thought of Matharin’s comments on how tall tales can potentially be ineffective to entities that would mean harm, but Empiroxus figured that it was probably too quick to judge if Peralitus was malicious this soon.

When Empiroxus explained that Xenixel had ordered him to gather and collect phi, Peralitus grew incredibly willing to help as clearly neither SuperGod would want to let the strong and confident leader of the Council down. When Empiroxus explained how the structure of the CouncilGods was really like—with Xenixel as the leader and Matharin as second only by technicality and Abstractil as the real leader by practicality, Peralitus still seemed absurdly fascinated with the idea of potentially ruling Beyond alongside Xenixel and seemed to completely miss any point Empiroxus tried to get across. Empiroxus remarked about how bright Peralitus was, which resulted in Peralitus bawling about how “intelligent and capable” he actually was. In his fit, Peralitus completely destroyed several nearby monocosms—leaving Empiroxus to consider himself lucky that he wasn’t actually caught off guard and in the place of the monocosms. Empiroxus, now completely ditching benefit of the doubt and apologizing that Peralitus had an archverse for a brain, asked Peralitus to at least help collect some phi if he wanted even a chance at becoming a Council member and the younger SuperGod complied. Empiroxus imagined that Peralitus would not get along too well with the omniscient^3 Matharin—a SuperGod who was “officially” second-in-command, though the position did not matter to her very much as she couldn’t care any less about ruling over others.

Empiroxus grew to be very distrustful of Peralitus and disliked his sycophantic nature. After all, what was a being if they had no real identity of their own and blindly did what others tell them to do without independent thought of their own? To Empiroxus, said being was misguided and did things improperly. In Empiroxus’s opinion, Peralitus desperately needed to learn a lot and had to go through lots of extensive training before he could even come close to being an official Council member.

When Xenixel would immediately entrust the omnipotent^3 Peralitus with duties of the Council such as omniverse creation, yet keep Paradoxus and eventually Logixel—two SuperGods he saw as equally inexperienced as the younger Council member—confined within a monocosm with nothing to do, Empiroxus was furious. In Empiroxus’s opinion, the most fair thing to do was to have all of the inexperienced members as trial members until they were ready to officially become Council members. He was very outspoken about his issues with Xenixel’s decisions, but Xenixel refused to change his mind and Peralitus very delightfully accepted his new position. After all, if Peralitus was clearly this skilled enough to rise up the ranks this quickly, then surely he’d be second-in-command very soon.

Peralitus was indeed much stronger than the recently hatched and even the older Empiroxus and Abstractil. Peralitus was also far more willing to do any task than the two hatchlings put together, but in Empiroxus's opinion, raw strength and willingness to serve was not at all what should matter most to a good Council member such as himself or Abstractil.

Xenixel might be willing to entrust Peralitus with many duties upon arrival, but Empiroxus was not going to tolerate any nonsense from Peralitus. Flattery and appeals might work for Xenixel, but not Empiroxus. If Xenixel was not willing to educate Peralitus properly, then he and Abstractil will try to do their very best. Abstractil started to wonder if Empiroxus’s sheer determination to turn Peralitus “good” was even a good thing but she supposed that since Empiroxus was an excellent mentor for Conceptilum and Matharin, surely not much harm would possibly come from training this new Council member. However, unlike Matharin and Conceptilum, who were at least somewhat willing to listen to Empiroxus’s and Abstractil’s advice regardless of how much they respected them as SuperGods, Peralitus proved to be a much more difficult SuperGod. Peralitus always strived to perform tasks exactly as Xenixel does them—some of which Empiroxus found unnecessarily cruel and harmful to other entities—and when doing tasks any differently from Xenixel’s clear and concise instructions as Empiroxus or Abstractil would try to have him do, Peralitus often struggled and failed miserably.

Empiroxus had openly compared Peralitus to a hatchling or even a SuperGod egg in terms of skill and competence but was quick to retract his statements as they would be very disrespectful to Paradoxus, Logixel, and their unhatched siblings. Peralitus did not take kindly to Empiroxus’s insults and would often deliberately use Xenixel’s “flawless” practices in front of Empiroxus, causing even more conflict between the two SuperGods.

While Conceptilum and Matharin agreed somewhat with Empiroxus’s low opinion of Peralitus and found Empiroxus’s rants humourous, Abstractil found Empiroxus as unnecessarily harsh on the young SuperGod and requested that he treat Peralitus with more respect. But Empiroxus had never found Peralitus worthy of any respect and continued to try to get Peralitus to do things “properly” and tell him off when he did wrong, hoping that eventually, the younger SuperGod would see sense—but Peralitus apparently never did. When Abstractil eventually gave up trying to help Peralitus, Empiroxus took it as a “told you so” moment and went on to harshly berate Peralitus’s stubbornness and refusal to change his ways. Abstractil stated that Peralitus probably was not the only SuperGod whose stubbornness seemed to be an issue. Empiroxus was appalled at what his partner had said—how was he bad for standing up for what was right? Empiroxus asked Abstractil to elaborate at once and so she did. Abstractil had stated for the final time to Empiroxus that all of the past efforts to get Peralitus into doing things “the right way” had done nothing but hurt Peralitus and convince him further that Xenixel’s methods—the methods that brought him more satisfaction in his job—were more correct. Now that there was no turning back for Peralitus at this point, Abstractil had given up because there was just no way to convince Peralitus of anything. Abstractil did agree that Peralitus was incredibly problematic—there was no denying that at all. However, she thought how Empiroxus handled the situation was wrong and perhaps, had Empiroxus toned down his approaches, there would have been a better chance for Peralitus to improve. Empiroxus disagreed that he was any root cause of Peralitus’s point-of-no-return and argued, but Abstractil pointed out that she did not say that Empiroxus was the root cause at all—she was saying that Empiroxus might have been a factor. For all she knew, Peralitus’s pre-Council life was probably far greater a factor than anything. However, just because there might be a large problem did not mean that the smaller problems did not need to be addressed.