The Games We Play

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show...err read.

Selfhood

"We were given the name Keter because of its presence within us," He answered. "Similarly, Malkuth was given that name because the core of his soul was composed of Malkuth."

"The core of it," I repeated. "But not the whole?"

"No soul is composed of entirely of one Sephirot," He answered. "If they were, they would be powerless. Souls draw their power from the light above the Sephirot and shape it into useful forms as it passes through the spheres. The Light enters the Sephirot through Keter and is given form in the physical world by Malkuth, but the spheres in-between define what that form will be."

"So everyone has at least Keter and Malkuth in them?" I asked. "Because you need Keter to take in the Light and Malkuth to output it."

"Yes," He confirmed. "Keter and Malkuth serve a number of purposes upon the Tree of Life, but one of the most important is as the start and end points of the process."

I nodded to show I understood but then tilted my head to the side.

"But if everyone contains Keter within them, what's the big deal?" I asked. "Why does it matter if it's inside of us, too?"

I got the feeling my Light Elemental would have smiled if it wasn't aware of how creepy it would have been.

"Because Keter is special," He replied. "As the first and highest of the Sephirot, it is also the one most distant from this world. Though all the spheres have a multitude of purposes, Keter's has few within this realm and therefore its presence is rare. All living souls have a measure of Keter within them to connect them to the Light, but they contain it in drops or even atoms. We do not. Instead, a large portion of our soul is composed of Keter."

"So we have a lot more than usual," I said. "Okay, makes sense. How much more?"

"At least a few millions times that of a normal person," He stated. "Probably billions."

I whistled slightly.

"A lot more than usual," I mused. "What's that do? That is, what are the properties of Keter? Do you know, if it's as rare as you say?"

"Discovering and examining the exact properties of the Sephirot was one of the main reasons of our creation," My Light Elemental answered. "Keter especially they wanted to examine in large quantities. It is…a complex thing, but you know of its most basic effects well. When we are hurt, Light flows down the tree and mends our wounds in an instant. When our power runs low, we draw down more from above. All Angels—all Hunters—do so, but you've no doubt noticed that we are particularly capable in that regard. In addition, the nature of the Crown expresses itself in…a peculiar way."

"The Gamer's Mind and the Gamer's Body," I guessed. "I never learned those powers—I just had them. Before I even awakened my Aura."

"The…" He paused for a moment, seeming to look for the word. "Skin of your soul and how it is expressed is something unique—to you and to everyone. It's because of who you are as a person and the situations you found yourself in that your soul expressed itself through the medium of a game. Before, our power manifested in a different way. But…yes. As I said before, the crown is worn above the head and we are beyond influences to our minds. More than that, our body itself is almost divorced from this world; our existence itself is defined by our power. As Malkuth governs the world, we govern ourselves."

"I see," I mused. Thinking about it, that might even explain how my Semblance awakened before my Aura and a number of other things. "It's because of Keter that I'm able to exist as a game character, then. But if stuff like that's the result of a large amount of Keter within one's soul, are there other people like me?"

"No," He answered immediately. "Keter does not occur in such large quantities naturally—not in the physical world, at least."

"Then how did my creator's make me?" I asked, frowning. I could think of a fair amount of possibilities that I hoped weren't true. Hell, I could think of things I hoped weren't possible. "Did they find a way to make Keter artificially?"

"No," He stated, multifold tone growing solemn. "They simply took it from where it already existed."

Shit, I thought, closing my eyes. I couldn't say I was surprised and yet…I'd truly hoped that wasn't the case. That was…

"How many?" I whispered. "How many souls did it take to create…us?"

"I already told you," He replied. "Millions. Probably billions."

I swore.

"How is that even possible?" I demanded. Honestly, it was hard for me to even imagine—billions of people. Currently, Remnant was home to only millions. Even behold the horrible magnitude of the crime, the mere thought of there being billions was mindboggling.

"It was fairly simple," He answered calmly, though there was an edge to the words. "At its height, this world was home to billions and billions. The Angels ruled over the mortals in all things and it was simply a matter of collecting them as they died. Over many generations, the souls of billions of mortals were collected and broken down into their component pieces for the sake of experimentation."

"Billions of souls," I repeated, honestly disbelieving. "Entire generations worth of souls, torn apart. That's…that's like organ donning would be like if it was run by the devil."

He smiled.

"They called themselves Angels, but make no mistake," He told me. "Anyone can call themselves Angels or Gods if they have enough power. But if they were anything, they were Demons."

I closed my eyes again, still trying to wrap my head around the idea of billions of souls. Collected and devoured like a harvest to make someone like me.

And someone like Malkuth. God, a billion had been sacrificed to make that asshole? I wasn't sure if that was ironic; to me, it just felt horrible. They'd torn apart billions to create something that would slaughter even more.

"What about us?" I asked. "If the Angels were Demons, what were we Archangels?"

He was silent for another long moment before speaking.

"The Demon Emperors," He answered. "We were the Kings of Hell."

I took a long, shuddering breath and met his eyes. The ones on his face, I mean.

"Tell me," I said. "Tell me the whole story. My whole story."

He nodded, inclining his head slightly without moving another muscle.

"As I said before, one of the reasons for our creation was to uncover the mysteries of the soul," He began. "Even before our birth, they'd pushed the limits of what was thought to be possible. The world belonged to Humanity, then—or to a portion of it, at least. It was ruled by the Angels and had been for thousands of years and in that type they'd sought to raise themselves up higher and higher, until they found they couldn't go any further. So they turned to the matter of the soul, the source of their own strength, and sought to understand it and grow their power even further."

"Not ones to except their limits, huh?" I wondered. "I'd respect that, if not for the whole mass murder thing."

This time, he did smile—and it was creepy as hell, since he did it with several thousand mouths. Even a few eyes curved before he caught himself.

"We once heard an Angel say something that stuck with us—'It is said that some things that are impossible. That there are places even Angels fear to tread. Never believe that. Never accept it. We are the god's of this world.'" He replied, voices adjusting to mimic some remembered tone a million fold. "No, they weren't one's for limits of any kind and with no one to oppose them, there were few limits to their behavior. But even so, it's hard to deny what they built upon the backs of atrocities; a millennia-old empire with its boot on the throat of the world and wonders that filled the earth and sea and sky."

I nodded once and I saw him pause in response, waiting for something.

For me, I realized—and with it came the thought that I did have something I wanted to say.

"I won't forget what they did," I promised. "Can I…can I call you Keter? Since I don't remember our real name and a lot of people died to give us this one."

He nodded once, calmly accepting the choice.

"Very well," Keter said. "After they had collected enough raw material to begin experimenting, they quickly found out how little they had known. Each of the Sephirot has a number of properties, especially when matched with one another, and their desire to uncover these properties eventually led to our creation. They soon discovered that significant masses of the Sephirot would react to one another in different ways—you've seen the tree of life, the diagram of the spheres, and it governs how part of the soul connect to one another. Keter, for example, can connect to Binah, Chokhmah, and Tiferet. Tiferet connects to all things but Malkuth, which itself connects only to Yesod, and so on. The Light can take several paths through the soul and depending not only upon the path but also the quantity of the different spheres upon, that Light can be changed. Different spheres in connection display different properties, you see, and the amount of a given Sephirot colors that relationship. On a macro scale, these interactions were more obvious and the Angels began to understand precisely how souls worked. And after decades of study and research, they began to create souls of their own."

"Us?" I asked. "Or were there others that came before us?"

"There were others," He answered. "They created a host of Angels before us, whether through clone or genetic engineering, and then they modified them accordingly. Minor adjustments could be made to the living, as well, especially during early childhood, and raw material was plentiful thanks to the unwilling contributions of mortals. They spent many years creating souls, experimenting with the possibilities and results, and eventually found that they could control the resulting Semblances to some extent. Angels were born with powers suited to whatever task was decided for them and the upper class ruled their fellows. With countless powers directed towards advancing their civilization, even the firmest of their limitations began to fray and snap."

"But then they found new ones," I said. "Didn't they?"

"Of course," He replied. "No matter how far you go, there will always be something new to overcome. They'd made legions and raised them from birth to fulfill their roles, but there was always something new beyond each obstacle and it meant years of experimentation, adjustment, and indoctrination to obtain the power they needed to advance. They eventually decided they needed something better, a force of endless power that they could direct and control, and began work. After so many years unopposed, after generations of success, they thought they'd be able to make us obey—that they could raise us and teach us from the day we were born until did as we were told, or at least control us with the broad array of powers they'd already made. In case it needs to be stated, they were wrong."

And the entire world ended up paying for it, I thought as I leaned forward and listened. It didn't escape me that I was about to learn what thousands of historians had sought in vein—the reason the world was called Remnant.

The reason Humanity had spent thousands of years hiding away from the rulers of the world.

"From the moment we were born, we were special," Keter began. "We were as powerful as you might expect, given our origins. It manifested in different ways, at first, but it was easy to see that we all stood out. We were raised separately at first, but when they realized our powers would work best together they brought us together and had us trained as a team. What they didn't realize was that it didn't matter by that point—they didn't understand what they were dealing with. Their attempts to indoctrinate and enthrall us were failed from the beginning, though we played along. We all grew quickly, but you and I especially learned fast, and though our powers differed somewhat, we took similar paths. Intelligence and Wisdom…our growth wasn't quite as clearly labeled beforehand, but our eyes opened quickly and we figured out what was happening around us. In the end, it was merely a matter of communicating, whether through displaced sounds or hacked electronics. By the time they brought us together, we were already working together. Even so, we waited."

I lifted an eyebrow and he give another myriad smile.

"They wished to make us stronger," He said in response to the unspoken question. "Who were we to deny them, so long as they did precisely what we wished? It wasn't just our powers that differed, after all, but also our situations—at the time, there were no Grimm, nor any monsters dominating the planet. The Angels had ruthlessly quashed all opposition to their reign, as well. Though you were able to grow in power by destroying Malkuth's creations, we were forced to take a slower path of growth. I admit, I do wonder somewhat if part of the way our power now behaves is in response to our defeat. You draw power from victory, develop your skills quickly, and grow at an enormous pace, almost as if to prepare. If it's the mind and the soul together that make a Semblance, perhaps we simply knew we needed to prepare."

I looked down, pondering that, but a question nagged at me and made me look back at him.

"What was my power last time?" I asked. "What was I capable of before? You said the results were similar in some ways…is there something I should be aware of? A weakness Malkuth exploited?"

He pondered that for a moment before answering.

"The power of Keter does not lend itself easily to explanation," He replied. "But to put it simply, where you are a game character, before we were the main character of a living story. We would draw in those around us and, to an extent, weave our own paths. We could not devour books as you do now, but we could find people and give them roles relative to ourselves—a mentor or a tutor, whose role was to pass on knowledge. And then we could learn from them with miraculous speed, like a character in a story facing a deadline. We could give those around us roles as well, both of allies and enemies, enhancing their abilities in some ways and redefining our position relative to them. I could develop abilities of my own by weaving them into my narrative, if I knew enough about how they worked, and we could adjust things around us in minor ways. I was the main character of my story and I defined the world around me accordingly."

"How much stronger was I?" I asked.

"It is hard to say," He said and from the sound of his many voices, I imagined he was a bit confused on that himself. "Far more powerful then you are now, but by how much varied greatly. Your current power has the advantage of consistency—it provides hard numbers that allow you to calculate precisely how powerful you currently are. Provided you have the power and are able to apply your skills to the situation your power is defined, though it increases quickly. Before, our power depended greatly on how we define roles beforehand and could vary depending on anything from location to opponent. If I decided I was the 'hero' defending a defined location, I could be several times stronger while fighting to protect it. If someone I'd defined as a 'friend' or 'lover' was injured in front of me or if I was trying to slay my 'archenemy', it could increase then as well. While my base power was defined, my upper limit could vary greatly depending upon how I set up a situation and the details were defined in narrative terms, rather than mathematical ones. I will say, however, that I was likely the strongest I'd ever been when I fought Malkuth for the last time."

"The how did he win?" I asked.

"With sheer, overwhelming power," Keter answered. "In theory, Keter is above Malkuth…but reality is never quite that simple. Again, Keter is the furthest from Malkuth, from reality as you know it—and though there are things we are capable of that are simply beyond him, so long as the battle takes place in the physical world, the lord of the physical can be presumed to have the advantage. His might in this world is something that is, if not impossible, exceptionally difficult to oppose directly."

I nodded, considering that.

"If he rules this world," I began slowly. "What about worlds beyond it? Worlds that aren't physical? Malkuth is the lowest of the Spherot, but what about the ones above it? Even if it's not a world where we hold all the cards, I'd settle for shutting down his physics fuckery. Could I beat him there? Lock him up, maybe?"

"The thought has occurred," Keter answered. "Though the details are, unfortunately, more complex than one might hope. It is not a simple matter of stepping into a higher plane and doing battle—Malkuth is where the Light is given form, where the thoughts and actions defined above are made real. Above Malkuth, many of the things you know do not exist or have no real meaning. If you go high enough, interacting with things at all could be difficult or impossible. Even beyond that, how our powers would work in such a place—to say nothing of his—is difficult to predict. All of the Archangels are mixtures of the Sephirot, whatever our names might be, and we exist as defined by Malkuth. Even you and I, Keter, were made and given form in this world and all of our powers are defined by that. Beyond it…"

He twitched a pair of wings in what I took to be a shrug.

And yet…I noticed he didn't say 'no.' If he'd wanted to do so, I imagined there were easier ways to say 'it doesn't work like that,' but he didn't. Almost like he was dancing around something—perhaps something he couldn't tell me.

On the other hand, I doubted he'd say anything without purpose. What he said was logical, after all, and something to take into account. It was possible, even likely, that I'd have thought of such a simple solution—and wow, I'd just called travelling beyond known reality 'simple,' which said a lot about how difficult fighting Malkuth was beginning to seem—in my past life. Maybe I'd tried to fight him on a higher plane or lock him away. Maybe that was why he wasn't free to come down here and hand me my ass.

If so, it didn't change the fact that whatever I'd tried before, I'd ended up dead—and, perhaps more importantly, it hadn't worked, at least not completely. Whether I'd locked him in a box or shoved him into a pocket dimension, the fact remained that he was still alive and still causing trouble. His creations, the Grimm, remained and he remained capable of commanding, creating, and empowering them. From what I knew now, it seemed that Malkuth's aforementioned physics fuckery was the source of a lot of the Grimm's powers and how many of them could exist, and he was obviously able to keep supporting them to some extent.

Whatever had happened, I'd died, he'd lived, and everything had gone to hell as a result. Human civilization had been shattered and mankind had been hunted across Remnant for thousands upon thousands of years. Countless nations, countless people, had lived and died in fear of the Grimm and there was no sign of that changing. Even if I was growing stronger all the time, I was depressingly aware that if he said a word and mobilized the Grimm, he could wipe the Kingdoms off the map. I could fight to defend them, but only one city at a time, and even then…if I stood guard over Mistral and went all out, releasing Lux Aeternas, Gungnirs, and the full power of Bai Hu's arts, if I pushed myself to the utter limit and pulled out all the stops, I could kill millions of Grimm. I could maybe even, over a long enough time frame and as the battle wore on and on, kill billions.

But nobody in Mistral was going to thank me for it. I would know—I'd fucking erased this city enough times to know precisely how long it would hold out if I was forced to fight and the answer was 'not very.' And because I had over two hundred and fifty points of Wisdom, I was smart enough to know that if you kill everyone you're trying to protect in the process of trying to protect them, then you're a dumbass and a failure.

Whatever I'd done to stop him, hadn't stopped him. Not enough to satisfy me or any of the countless people he's killed. A more effective—and preferably permanent solution was required—and I could only think of one.

Now if only I could figure out how to actually do it.

"Sorry," I said after a moment, sighing loudly. "I interrupted your story. We'd gotten together and pulled the wool over the Angel's eyes; what then?"

"We waited and we planned until we were strong enough," He continued. "We played along with their requests and did as we were told. They arranged a number of experiments to test our loyalties, but when you're capable of learning of such plans easily, there is little to fear. We past every test they set before us until they were certain they had us under control. Then, we finished our preparations, brutally murdered all of them, and took control."

"Define 'took control.'"

"We conquered the world," Keter said. "It was fairly simple, in fact. By that time, we were over twenty years of age and had come into our power. As our betrayal was unexpected and our preparations thorough, we'd killed a significant number of our enemies before they even realized what was happening. They'd been more successful with their experiments before us and the vast majority of them had remained loyal, but the same measures they'd used to ensure they were never betrayed worked against them. We divided them, turned them against one another, remained hidden, and then struck. In later years, it would be called the War in Heaven, but for such a grand title, it wasn't a particularly difficult battle. They'd sought to make beings of unparalleled power, after all, and they'd succeeded."

"What then?" I asked. "Did Malkuth betray us?"

"No," Keter answered, voices becoming more human. Several even sounded sad. "Not then, at least. Not for a very long time. We ruled as one—the ten Archangels. We stepped into the void the Angels had left behind and set out to fix the mistakes of our creators. It was simple enough when you had power like ours and working together, we could create miracles as easily as breathing. After generations of the Angels tyranny, the people rejoiced and we'd long known our origin. Our souls had come from people like them, billions of people that had died and worse than died for our maker's experiments. Seeing everything and reigning above it all, it seemed only fitting to help them now. We made new Angels, raising up the kind and hardworking and noble, and we used our power to make things better. It took time, but we ended disease, hunger, and so many other things."

"Were you trying to make a utopia?" I wondered, honestly curious. I knew, after all, that this story ended badly, I just wasn't sure how yet.

"What's a utopia?" He asked. "Try to define it. And then, try to make everyone agree to that definition. Making a perfect world is, I think, impossible—and it was never our intention to try. We simply wanted to make things better. Having seen how people suffered, we simply wished to end it. No more, no less. The results were not perfect, but only a fool would consider an inability to obtain perfection a reason to do nothing."

"Then what happened?" I asked him. "What went wrong?"

"Time," He said. "For all things change in time. And we ruled for a thousand years."