Realms Beyond the Furthest Star

"Do you accept Freedom as the ultimate divinity?"

Previously: Devi takes Astra into the Mythos.

○ Opening Era: Spring, 2026, Brooklyn

Elyrus kept his scorpion stinger fingers wrapped around the Woman’s throat. The creature bared his leopard teeth at her, but his eyes became uneasy as his creator chanted:

In the chasm where the threads of time fray, 
In the void where madness holds sway, 
I call to thee, beyond the night, 
Whose twisted form escapes all sight.

The walls of the lotus chamber seemed to distort and pulse. Elyrus glanced around with a low growl, his butterfly wings twitching anxiously. Devi stretched one hand into the air and continued:

You who gaze with eyes unseen, 
Who strides where legs have never been, 
Born of shadows, eater of light, 
Heed my voice through endless night!

A helix of resplendent shadow spiraled up Devi’s arm. Bubbles convexed out of the concave walls, as if the floral skin had grown pustules. More swellings budded out across the floor. Something seemed to push against their surfaces.

O you who might be but never are, 
From realms beyond the furthest star, 
From the void where reason snaps and bends, 
Where chaos reigns and all life ends, 

I summon you to this astral ground, 
Outsider––to my voice be bou––!

Devi’s voice stuck in her throat as dozens of small mandibles sprouted out from her mouth. Each of Devi’s arms split into dozens more; they dangled outward like patches of reeds.

Astra-The-Girl screamed as the bubbles across the walls and floor burst. Flower-sheathed tentacles unfurled out of them and snaked across the chamber. Several of the limbs seized Elyrus and the other creature, Jakob. Elyrus struggled as he was pulled away from the Woman. He attempted to claw the appendages back. But the tentacles crept inside the orifices of the two creatures. They began to shiver as if from a fever. Then their surfaces transformed into lotus skin. 

The ends of several tentacles grew nostrils that oriented toward the Woman. They sniffed the Woman with interest. Another tentacle became pencil thin so as it enter her ear and tickle her brain.

And then the Woman felt its thoughts, which were more like a constellation of stars sparkling to one another like morse code across the void. The Outsider had never met a human like the Woman before. She was so outside of human convention…yet willing to be wielded for a singular purpose. Yes, it was true that the Woman was sought after by its enemy, the Instrumentalist, but perhaps the Woman could be turned. Torn apart and put back together. She’d let that happen to her before. Why not again?

The Woman struggled against its tentacles. Had the Woman been in possession of the ruby, a better solution might have occurred to her – perhaps to imagine a plant-eating bacteria infecting the floral substance from which the tentacles sprung. It would have made the tentacle in her ear turn grey and wither and die. But the Girl still had the ruby, so the Woman merely turned her head, bit off its tip, and spat it out. When imagination failed, animal instincts prevailed.

Help us! yelled the Girl across the chamber.

So you’ll betray me until you need my protection? the Woman shouted back.

Take the Ruby! the Girl tossed it with her free hand toward the Woman. 

The filaments sprouting from Devi’s arms shot out and seized it. An array of tentacles lifted Devi’s body into the air. She held the glowing ruby aloft. And then the mandibles sticking out from her mouth grew mouths of their own. They spoke in unison: We want to give this back to you, Astra. But we want something else for you first.

What? asked the Woman.

We can see you. You’re constantly on the edge of unraveling. We like that. We want you to go all the way. Can you do that for us?

Yes, the Woman spoke truthfully. In fact, she had waited her entire life to loosen her grasp on the circuit-board-like masterpiece of her own mind…to let it fall apart. She yearned to unravel. More than anything Astra yearned to un-be.

Then do you accept Freedom as the ultimate divinity? asked the Outsider.

I do, said the Woman. Beyond your imagination.

She meant it in its most literal sense. These psychofauna that pervaded Devi’s mind – this Outsider, the Heathen, and this greater egregore that they represented, “Freedom” – none of them understood the true nature of freedom. They were mockeries of it, cultural constructions of a miracle that was beyond construction. Freedom could not be a god because freedom was not a thing. It had no color, texture, or form. It could not be imagined or conceptualized. Freedom was the pregnant space of awareness itself, from which all possibility sprung.

The Woman did not have time to save someone like Devi. But this truth, at the very least, was something she did had time to show, for the expanse of freedom was timeless – it was the wellspring of time, accessible in any instant.

Astra did not need her ruby to fight imagination with imagination. She needed only to invoke the great Mind out which images were composed.

Astra felt the Outsider’s panic as the lotus chamber that it had made its body began to fade. It tried and failed to cling to this form, to possess it. An ironic behavior for a servant of so-called freedom, the Woman thought. The truth of freedom was that nothing could be possessed. 

The space of imagination itself became sharp and clear while the stuff of imagination revealed itself to have been blurry all along, like low resolution computer graphics. The imagery shimmered, as if its pixels were made of mist, and then it disappeared. 

Both Astras and Devi found themselves back in the taxi cab.

But the lesson went further.

Awareness increased its resolution and beheld itself as the cab and as both Astras and Devi. Then these things too slipped away, like grains of sand that continuously poured forth in the shape of a vehicle and two people. Astras and Devi were realized purely as flows of mind. And then even these flows faded, and the background of greater Mind became foreground. It was here that the Woman allowed herself to return to remember why she kept herself alive. This endless, formless expanse.

Amidst this endless expanse there were three hazy clumps. The clumps was afraid. They wanted to continue existing. They wanted to fulfill their reasons for being. The Woman wanted to save the world. The Girl wanted to be loved. And Devi wanted to be a creator – but now Devi could see that she was no different than her creations. She could be re-created or smeared out of existence by greater forces. She was afraid.

 And so Mind twisted itself like a clown twisting a balloon to form the images of animals. And then the Girl, the Woman, and Devi did become animals. Bodies. And from the bodily instinct to self-preserve there grew minds. Finally there grew an entire reality to reinforce the existence of those minds. And so the cab reemerged. Both Astras found themselves in one body with Devi sitting across from them.

For a moment, both Astras were one. Gently, they passed their two hands through Devi’s hair to find the strap that threaded through it. Devi did not protest as Astra removed her devil mask.

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Next release: Crowley is a free man!