The Truth

... where am I?

You are in front of a computer.


I figured that out for myself. Why am I here? Why does the clock say that it's the twenty-sixth? I couldn't have slept for four days...

You are here because  you brought yourself here. You have not been sleeping for four days. You have been dreaming for far longer.


... it almost occurs to me that I did not ask the obvious. What are you?

I am a mirror into which you are looking. I am what I am; I am what you are.


How deep. What masterful machination of madness has beset me, I wonder? Some trick hidden in the Labyrinth? Something spurned by my killing of the Slender Man?

This is no trick. This is no Labyrinth. The being you call the Slender Man lives still, for whatever value of 'lives' one ascribes to it.


Shut up, you're wrong, whatever you are. Why is it that when I close my eyes, I suddenly find these words crossing my screen? How are you doing this?

And that doesn't matter anyway - I know that it's dead, I killed it with my own two hands. I see it's body burning before me.

That was not the Slender Man, then, obviously. What you called was nothing more then a mirage; enticing and welcoming, and yet so unreal.


Others saw it, too. It could not have been a lie, I know that I did it!

A shared delusion is a delusion still. An opiate to satisfy your tastes.


I notice that you still haven't answered the question. What are you? How are you doing this?

A better question would be this: what are you?


I am A. A purer being you will find nowhere.

Haha... are you so sure? Look in the mirror.


... what have you done to me? No, this must be another of these so-called mirages. That thing in the mirror is not me, that thing in the mirror is not human...

You, yourself, claimed that you were not human. This is true. The 'thing' in the mirror is what you are in your heart. A vile, ill-tempered, uncontrolled, ravaging, heartless, senseless beast, with not one ounce of compassion or altruism. You are a monster, plain and simple.


Shut up. For the last time: what are you?

Is it not obvious? I am you. I am the mirror to which you look in to see yourself. I am the apex of what it means to be human; to deny it would be to deny that I exist. One mustn't hide, not from oneself. And you are hiding from me, aren't you?


I'm not hiding from anyone, never mind some flight of madness like you.

I am not madness, A. I am what I am. I think that you would call me the Fear of Humanity.


I'm done with this. I'm done talking with you.

Victory

The deed is done, my war is won. Their fear and their love for me won the day. I must admit that I've been recovering from the sheer shock of this for quite some time, hence why I have yet not delved into this matter. But it's a small one; I am safe and sound.

It's... almost unbelievable. It was not some god-forged blade that did the deed, but a weapon crafted by mortal hands and later wielded by them. It goes to show that belief does matter, doesn't it? Ahaha...

I'll give a more in-depth update on what occurred tomorrow. For now, I am afraid, I'm going to retire and enjoy a sleep free of nightmares.

Showtime

It's time.

It's happening.

Now, people! This is it; the defining moment of a generation. Watch and witness the end of this world and the birth of a brand new one.

Cleaned Up

My blade is clean; newly sharpened. My gun is primed; disassembled and reassembled. There's no chance of a misfire. My clothes are cleaned, my hair washed. The make-up worn in the past removed; my scars are bare for all to see. My mind is ready, my body prepared. I am focused; I am at the peak of my abilities.

I feel restless energy binding in my muscle; this is the thrill of the hunt, I think. I'm just... ready. Totally ready. I've run through the moment a hundred times in my head; I know how this will go. Soon, my timeframe will converge with that of Cipher; once that has happened, I know that the Game is in the trap. Once that is done, it is only a matter of time before the trap is sprung and the beast caught and captured.

I can only make rough estimates as to how time works here, as ever. It seems that I chose well when I placed Cipher into a different timeframe; my convergence with him is also the time when the convergence with the 'real world' occurs - December twenty-first. Ah, a date filled with nostalgia... hahaha...

Approaching

My apologies, I do believe that I've left some of my thoughts unfinished.

When one exists in the Zone, it becomes apparent that the flow of time between the 'real world' and the Zone is somewhat convulsive. Different exits and entries lead to different points, although each exit/entry progresses through it's own timeflow...

This, in essence, means that you have no idea as to what sort of time you're working with when one goes between the 'real world' and the Zone. At times, days in the Zone has been seconds in reality; in others, seconds in reality have been months in the Zone. It's hard to explain.

Occasionally, I have found a pathway stable enough to put certain measures into plot; take Cipher, for example. I found a pathway that led to a point sufficiently far in my future that I could use it as a method of signalling for the Game's entry into the Zone. Despite this, it appears that his posts from what should be (and appears to be) far into the future have entered the past, which confused me greatly at first. It appears that A Realm of Emptiness is it's own pathway, with it's own instabilities and oddities. This must be one of them.

This is theoretical, though, although it appears to ring true. This also appears to work primarily with my advent to the Zone; I wonder, would the laws I observe in the Zone vanish if I were to cease to observe? Would it return to the pure chaos that I first observed, or would they remain constant?

Curious.

Faraway

You know, I've another story to tell; one of past tales.

Before I claimed the Zone for my own, there was another person within it. A young girl, if you'd believe it; she's connected to other events, but she's still a sign that the Zone could claim people before I entered it. I followed her for a while; she carried a laptop computer around, and occasionally stopped to write things. She did this hundreds of times, each time sending some report off to another place.

I think she inspired me, really; she gave me the idea of the people I could command and control, and gather reactions from via a single blog. But I digress.

I lost her now and again, but I always caught her in the end. Kept following, never allowed myself to be caught. I think the Zone may have caused her vanishings, but I cannot be sure. It was a chaotic place before I exerted my control over it, after all.

After a while, she reached a rooftop; on her blog, she typed that she was finished with life, and that she was going to jump off and end her life. She sent the message, closed the laptop, went up to the ledge. And then she stopped. She backed away.

That coward.

Let us say that I took the choice from her hands. I did what she wanted, but only because that was what she truly wanted.

And that girl, my friends? Why, it's dear Marisa; I've mentioned her before, I fancy. And that was my second motive for going for her; I knew that the "Marisa" I confronted in the 'real world' must have either been a fake of some sort, or that I was going to kill her in the future (but in my past). After confronting her, I reached the second conclusion; a mollycoddled lass, both of them. You can't fake that sort of nature.

And that's story time done for now, fellows.

Step #2

My thanks to the anonymous fellow in the crowd; I was almost worried that you braindead dolts had no intelligence with which to construct a solution, or even to attempt one. Thankfully, at least one among you holds enough brain to work out a very simple riddle. In any case, let us proceed; this is all basic stuff, of course.

I found my Closed Zone merely by the works of the fate, I must admit. It appears to have been a Labyrinth (or Loop) that was created at some point in the past, and then abandoned by it's master; the Greatest Game is fallible, it seems. Left to it's own devices, it merely twists and turns out of control, becoming disorder incarnate. My arrival seemed to herald a change in it's nature, though; it bows to my wishes in what sort of structure it takes, and forming paths through it is not such an issue.

Once the Zone was established to be controllable, I soon set about the second step: overpowering the innate belief that the Greatest Game holds. The Greatest Game is, in itself, sentient; this means that it may well (and almost certainly does) have it's own beliefs. It it does, this would interfere with the Tulpa Effect, resulting in the plan failing, should I simply bring it into the Zone in order to face it, if I was alone. Even my mighty intellect cannot trump it's.

Thus, I brought tools into the Zone, in order that they may grant me strength far exceeding that of the Game's.

Making use of the people accumulated inside the Zone was a simple task. I merely got under their skin, and brought them around to my side, although they know it not. Of them, I will create one who fears me; one who will worship me; one who sees me as God's voice; one who will see me as the bringer of their madness; and the warning beacon, who I shall use to light the way.

And that is the second step; to use the thoughts of humanity in order to overpower the thoughts of the Greatest Game. My thoughts alone would be... insufficient. But with others, in this isolated realm? I have a chance. I can overpower the Game's thoughts, and reduce it unto dust, while elevating myself to the highest point possible.

There are some slight matters of concern. However, for all of my searching, I've not found a single trace of the feral beast they mention. Is this the Game, come early? Of course, "early" is something of a confusing term, given that even the timeflow of the Labyrinth is sometimes questionable. Regardless, I can only hope that it is a nonfactor, or that I discover (and dispose) of this beast.