The sun hung high in the tranquil sky, casting its light upon the lifeless, rolling grassy hills. In a thousand worlds, the very same sun would tear a wound in reality itself, but here it simply smiled down upon those it loomed over. The air was tinted with the scent of blooming flowers that stretched far beyond the hills for miles. Grass swayed in the light breeze as dew dripped off the recently nourished flora, which had not too long ago been showered with crystal-clear water. Yet, strangely, not a single trace of life could be found—no insects, no wildlife, nothing.
Amidst the picturesque setting, a subtle rustling shattered the silence. Soon it was followed by the sound of light footfalls upon foliage and the rustling of more leaves. Slowly, from a clearing emerged a shadowed figure, a vague silhouette.
His eye lazily traveled up the slope of the hill, past the blooming flowers, and to a clearing at the top of a hill that lay bare. The figure stepped from the wooded area, revealing a coat that flapped slightly in the breeze and the brim of a fedora that cast a shadow, obscuring his features. Nobody produced a small slip of paper with numbers, seemingly coordinates written on them, and returned his gaze to the clearing on the hill.
Where once was empty, now stood a home. Nobody tried to hold an image of the building, but only the word "home" came to his mind as he looked at the building. He couldn't make out any of its features, nor even recognize it as anything other than just a home. He simply knew it was.
Nobody closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself. He had come this far, and no matter what happened, he would get what he wanted. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he began the trek toward the home. Between where he stood and his destination lay countless hills, each one seemingly longer than the last.
As he crossed each rise, the journey felt like it stretched into eternity. The same terrain repeated itself, a ceaseless expanse of rolling grassy hills and blooming flowers, almost mocking.
The sun beat down relentlessly, and the scent of the flowers clung to him, a sweet, cloying smell that would drive any man insane. That threshold had been crossed long before. His steps grew heavier, the ground beneath him seeming to pull at his feet with each step. Every hill he climbed felt like an entire journey in itself, the top revealing yet another summit.
Finally, after what felt like infinity, he reached the final hill, the length of which dwarfed the entire journey that had come before. He crested the rise and found himself standing before the home. As he did so he felt his body give way, and for the first time in thousands of years, he allowed himself to rest, closing his eyes and being consumed by the darkness.
The smell of burning charcoal jolted Nobody awake. Slowly opening his eyes, he was met once more with the sight of the home. Rubbing his eyes, he steadied himself with his arms before hoisting his body upwards. Glancing behind him, he saw no hills, only the clearing where he had first arrived.
Looking back at the home, he now noticed a door, the first tangible feature he could comprehend beyond the abstract idea of "home." The smell seemed to be emanating from behind that door, possibly from a fireplace.
Dusting the remaining shreds of grass from his coat, Nobody made his way to the door. Where he could not previously make out its features, he now knew with certainty that it was indeed made from mahogany wood. Stopping directly in front of it, he curled his fists before pushing the door wide open.
The interior revealed itself as a small, cozy cottage. Wooden beams supported the ceiling, and simple, rustic furniture filled the room. A singular figure sat in a chair next to a crackling fireplace, emanating a bright white light. The figure wore a pristine white suit and was engrossed in a book, seemingly waiting for Nobody.
As the door swung shut behind Nobody, the man looked up with a smile and stood, giving a light bow. Nobody studied his face, finding it odd; the man's face was nothing but a bright light, yet Nobody could still recognize emotions. He blinked, refocusing as the man, now standing, snapped his fingers to get his attention.
"I don't think we've officially met," the figure began, strolling through the space, periodically picking up items to examine them. "You're a very fascinating case."
"Who are you?" Nobody placed his hand into his coat, attempting to draw his weapon, only to find that it was just a coat. A perfectly normal, non-anomalous coat.
"Now, let's not be hasty," the man clapped, conjuring a wooden stool and gesturing for Nobody to sit as he resumed his own seat. "We have so much time to talk. Here take a seat."
Being reminded of Marshal all too much, Nobody hesitantly took his seat as he looked at the man who sat before him. "Who are you?"
"Why are you here?" The man ignored Nobody's question. "You've been trying awfully hard to get here, thousands of years in fact. Though the last 90 years were truly a marvel—the things you did for a tiny set of numbers that led to this old place."
Nobody twitched slightly, agitated. "I came here in search of who I am, and I was led to believe this may have been where my home once was before I became what I am right now." He furrowed his brow slightly. "Now, who are you?"
A short laugh escaped the man's mouth.
"What's so funny." Nobody asked, voice flat.
"Sorry," the man waved his hand, and a glass full of water appeared in his grasp. "I just never am quite able to compose myself for this part." The man breathed lightly, composing himself, before continuing. "Now, this glass represents what all people are."
He raised the glass, letting the light play off its surface before he began to pour out the water. "When someone becomes a Nobody, they become an empty shell, much like this glass." He placed the now-empty glass on the table. "But where do you think the water, or in this case, their identity, goes? It can't just disappear; it has to go somewhere." He looked down at the small puddle of water that had just formed before looking back at Nobody.
The man smiled, a knowing glint in his eye. "That is what I am. Everything that is left over."
A silence permeated the room as both men—well, man-shaped wounds—sat and watched each other.
"Is that why you are in my home?" Nobody asked, breaking the silence. "Because this place, whatever it is, has some value to you?"
At those words, the man once again, but now more loudly, burst into laughter. "Sorry, it gets me every time." He rubbed his eyes. "You know, I have to praise you. Every time, we always end up here. No matter what is in the way, you always manage to find your way to this damned house. No matter how long it takes, our little chat here always happens."
"What do you mean?" Nobody's voice was tinged with frustration.
"What I mean is that you're quite the fighter." The man leaned back in his chair, a smirk playing on his lips.
"Fighter?" Nobody echoed, his eyes narrowing.
"Yes. Every time, no matter what I do, your curiosity leads you here. Your drive. Your will. No matter what obstacles I put in your way, you always manage to climb out of whatever dark abyss I throw you into. You damn near massacred the entire planet once."
Nobody's eyes narrowed further. "What are you talking about?"
"Don't you get the big picture, Nobody?" A smile spread across the man's already grinning face." No, of course you can't."
"Spit it out," Nobody demanded, his voice low.
The man leaned back, his face still obscured by the glowing light, but his posture relaxed, almost gloating. "A reality cannot exist without a Nobody, I'm sure you know that." The man paused. "Have you ever wondered where those coordinates come from? How they end up in the hands of those people, why any trace of this house exists in the first place?"
Nobody remained silent.
"I lead you here. I always lead you here so we can have our little talk, so you can ask your questions, and I can answer them. And once we're done, we do it again. You forget, the world changes, and it all begins anew."
"That doesn't answer my que-" Nobody began.
"Now, you're smarter than that Nobody. Figure it out yourself." The man interrupted. "Think about what I've said."
"You mean," Nobody began, his voice tentative, "none of this is real?"
"No, it isn't. This isn't your home; it never was." The smile that had broken across the man's face widened. "Your entire existence, your goals, were all meaningless."
"Meaningless?" Nobody's felt his hand twitch.
"Yes meaningless," The man played with his fingers as he spoke. "In fact, you were never somebody. I made you from oblivion, nothingness."
"That can't be true." Nobody muttered.
"Well it is my boy!"
Nobody's fists clenched. "You're saying I've done this countless times before?"
"An uncountable number of times," the man replied with amusement.
"Why? What's the point?" Nobody's voice was filled with frustration.
The man chuckled darkly. "The point? The point is balance. You see, a Nobody is essential. You are the counterbalance to everything that exists. Without you, reality would collapse under the weight of its own contradictions." His expression seemed to blacken as he spoke. "It punishes a singular person for it's own mistakes. It's why you, or the collective idea that you represent, exist as a constant. Any reality that doesn't have a Nobody, never existed in the first place."
"But why not just let me be, why spend your time doing all of this?" Nobody raised his voice. "What reason did you have to force me into your twisted game?"
"Why?" The man's voice rose. "Because you are the sole reason I exist in this tortured state. Untold people, all lost, all me." He gripped the chair tightly, his knuckles white with rage. "If I could, I would rip out your throat and make you die a pitiable death. But I can't. So I do the next best thing: I torment you. I let you entertain me for all of eternity."
Nobody's eyes widened. "You… you do this out of spite?"
"Spite?" The man seemed almost offended at the notion. "It's far more than that. It's a cruel necessity. You are my curse, my burden. And so, I take what little satisfaction I can from watching you struggle, watching you search and fail, time and time again."
"Doing this for an eternity, does it not get tiring?" Nobody asked, his knuckles whitening under pressure.
The man sighed, a weary smile playing on his lips. "Tiring? Perhaps. But it's the role I have to play." He stood up, the bright light of his face flickering slightly. "Our talk is over, and it's time for you to start again."
He walked to the door and turned to look at Nobody with an impassive expression. Twisting the handle, the man frowned, it wouldn't budge. Applying more force, the man pried the door open to see, not the hills that were once outside, but a nothingness stretching into infinity. Turning back to look at Nobody with a horrified expression, he saw Nobody, who had been distraught moments ago, now standing and smiling.
"What-" the man's voice was quiet. "What happened?"
"Well," Nobody replied, a grin spreading across his face, "take a seat," he mocked, "we have all the time to discuss."
Snapping his fingers in an attempt to fix the seemingly broken reality, the man found that nothing happened. The room was silent for a moment, with both Nobody and the Man standing quietly, before the man charged at Nobody, tackling him to the ground and gripping him by the collar. "What have you done?" he spoke, his voice filled with fury.
"You know," Nobody said, ignoring the question, "the Library is quite the place. It took me a while to read through all those books it had. Convenient, considering that the Library is outside your influence." The man pushed him down, slamming his head into the ground. "Rather naive of you to let me travel there; though, I suppose I wasn't able to travel to any other realities." A punch struck Nobody's face, but he continued, now gasping for air as the man choked him. "It taught me a lot," Nobody managed to say. "I learned everything there was to know about me and about you."
With a surge of strength, Nobody grabbed at the man's throat, beginning to choke him as well. "Back when I was still oblivious, believing in your lie, I was found. By me. Another Nobody." Shaking the man off, Nobody kicked him in the gut, staggering him slightly as he wiped the trace blood from his mouth. "I was so lost back then, searching for something that didn't exist. Even made a deal with the devil so I could actually read all those books. But when we met," Nobody's eyes glimmered, "no words needed to be exchanged." Heaving himself off the ground, he continued to speak. "I knew, from the look, all that needed to be said."
It was now Nobody who charged at the man, pinning him against the wall with his shoulder. "All those books I've read, I can still read them in my mind. Each page, each book, each word, every small detail of the books, all are still in my own massive library within the place I call my mind. And throughout all of it, not one book I read was from this reality. Even though there were books written in lost languages that only I could understand, books that held cursed information unfit for even gods, not one mentioned anything of here."
The man grunted as he pushed Nobody off and landed a punch on his nose, resulting in a cracking sound. Nobody clutched his face, now streaming with blood, and continued, "Odd, don't you think? The Library has everything, an infinite amount of information held in its endless catalogue, but it had nothing about here." Nobody was kicked by the man, dropping to one knee as he spoke. "It was then I realized I lived a lie, something unnatural, something that existed outside of everything, completely separate."
Nobody turned and returned a punch, hitting the man's ear and rupturing an eardrum. "I figured somebody was watching me, somebody was doing this. So I used a box, one you ironically created as a clue that this place might exist, and added my very memories to it, knowing that I would always seek it out and that I would always learn the truth."
"How could you have possibly known about your memories getting wiped, or anything?" The man kneed Nobody.
"A," Nobody grabbed the man's knee and twisted it with his strength, "hunch."
"You bastard," the man seethed, grabbing Nobody's head and smashing it into the side of the table. "All you had to do was," the man smashed Nobody's head into the table again, "listen."
Blood now flowing freely from his nose and eyes, Nobody swept the man's legs, and ripped out a nearby chair's leg. Using it, he began beating the man with it. "I knew, whoever you were, that you were hiding from something and that you hated me."
The chair leg shattered, spraying wooden pieces everywhere, momentarily stunning both Nobody and the man. "I spent my time locked in my mind, rereading all of those books. It's strange how an imagination can be so effective at times; I could practically feel the books as I read them in my library." Nobody tried to land more blows on the man. "The books in the Library told me of many enemies that I had: gods, kings, foundations, all who would want my head. But there was one that I knew would do this. One that would be this cowardly and spiteful. A nameless man that would chase me in countless realities, a man in a white suit."
Nobody backed off from the beaten man on the ground and leaned against a wall, catching his breath as the man looked for support to lift himself upwards. As the man did so, he spoke. "I don't understand," he gasped, spitting blood. "My powers, my reality, what happened? Where did it all go?"
Nobody's mirthlessly laughed. "It's all gone now," he began, his voice steady. "I didn't take me long to know you were hiding from the devourer. By the way you created and rewrote this reality, you were trying to prevent its manifestation. A place to escape the inevitability of entropy. But in your hubris, you grew sloppy. Each time we would talk, each time you would sit me down and mock me, I cultivated the idea in your mind until finally, you created my world."
"That's… impossible," the man gasped. "I kept myself hidden. I erased parts of my memory, induced false ones in myself, all so that in the off chance you somehow managed not to get your memory wiped in one of the cycles, you'd never be meeting the same me each time."
Nobody now was the one to laugh, though it burned his raw throat. "You're a fool," Nobody managed to say. "After our first meeting, I knew exactly who you were and what you'd do to become the new you. I knew what he would be like, and what steps he would do too. Every thought you've had, every emotion you've felt, hell every action you've taken—I know it all. It only took our first meeting to know what to do."
The man’s eyes widened in horror. Nobody continued, “I’ve spent billions of years, millions of cycles, millions of bodies, acting a fool. Each time I got my memories, I was forced to hide away in my own mind, make myself believe in the lie you told, all so you could be none the wiser." Nobody coughed, blood splattering the ground. "And for the first time in billions of years I have left that dark place, I'm not hiding anymore. I'm showing you who I am. ARE YOU AMUSED?"
"I WATCHED YOU," the man shouted. "I NEVER LET YOU OUT OF MY SIGHT, OUT OF MY MIND. I EVEN CAME DOWN, PLAYED A GAME MYSELF."
Nobody's expression hardened. "True, and in your delusions, you couldn't see what I had been doing. Every action, every thought, every breath in this cycle—everything was me." Nobody began to laugh, blood spitting from his mouth as he did so. "I created the perfect story, where the climax—our meeting here—would end it all. Every one of my actions for the past five billion years has led to this one moment alone." He gasped for air, feeling his lungs fill with blood, as he spoke. "Every action, every decision, every detail, every mind you created, every event you thought you chose for this reality was actually orchestrated by me. You believed you were creating the perfect cycle, but instead, you were crafting your own damnation, designed by the very prisoner it was meant to torment."
"You've trapped yourself here, you mad bastard," was the only response Nobody got. "We'll both be here for eternity. There is no escape, no anything, just this shitty house made from nothingness."
Nobody grinned. "I'm okay with that," he said softly. "If it means damning you here, this is barely scratching the surface of what I'm willing to do."
"You're insane. Do you know how many people you just damned?" The man panted.
"I don't think you understand what I'm willing to do." Nobody slowly walked to the door, shut it, and then limped toward a chair, collapsing into it. "We are both anchors, and now we will fulfill our roles here, forever." Nobody rested his head, feeling the raw wounds of his burn. "We could continue fighting, but it would be pointless since neither of us can die inside this place. Or you could take a seat next to me and enjoy eternity. And besides, you got your wish: 2747 can no longer manifest in this reality. You're safe. We'll remain here forever."
The man, with a scowl on his face, limped to the chair beside Nobody and collapsed into it. "I hate you."
"That is your right," Nobody replied, his voice calm. "But in the end, together we are two parts of the same being, and we define this void and everything beyond it."
Nobody pulled out a bottle from his coat, causing the man to raise an eyebrow. Nobody only returned a light smile as he coughed more blood. "The library taught me some tricks." He began to pour both of them a glass, blood slowly dripping from their wounds onto the chairs. "And we'll have all the time in the world to talk about it."
The man, still seething with anger, took the offered glass, his hand trembling slightly. "You may think you've won, but this is no victory."
"Perhaps," Nobody mused, staring into his glass. "But I'm ok with whatever this is. A loss or the victory." He began to drink. "Besides, between you and me, nobody ever wins."