For the first time, Am-heh walked abroad in the land. It felt both strange and good to walk under the sun of Khem. He felt not the leash of responsibility. His actions were his own, and not mere slavish perpetuation of the dreams and myths of the client species.
Of course he questioned the source of this new liberty. Something had changed in the balance of things. He knew not what it might be or signify. Nor knew if he would know. Even the lowest Transcendent entity, with vaster depth and scope and grasp than the greatest mortal, can know limitation, given the correct situation. Transcendent entities understand the difference between intersection and congruence.
For example, his own space and time (for that which lower level beings call Time is merely the experience of another spatial dimension) were known to him. Gods are not surprised, nor thwarted in their plans: they see their future and their past with ease. Yet the intersection of two lines is a point, as two planes cross in a line, two spaces join in a plane, and two hyperspaces intersect in a space. The dimensionality of the intersection of two things is always at least one level down. Thus, refreshingly, here, intersected in the client species universe, he was temporarily bereft of the gift of certainty of his destiny, and was, instead, gifted with a rooting in the here-and-now, an ever-changing Now instead of the dreary eternity he had experienced before.
You might think it would be uncomfortable, crowding or limiting his existence in this fashion. Indeed, it was not a situation he would deliberately have induced upon himself, for no one seeks diminishment of their immortality and omniscience. But it had its compensations, as previously mentioned. Everything he experienced was fresh and spontaneous, and he had only one try at doing each thing well – no deja vu do-overs to hone perfection into every act or utterance. And thus, no expectation of perfection to live up to. He was freed from the requirements of elegance, and could make his way with less rigor and grace than usual. This suited the feral side of his being. From what he could see, the new client species appeared to be in no danger of Transcending in time to do anything about the intended annexation: even this scaled-down version of his essence should be more than adequate to deal with the local yokels.
It did not occur to him that the slaves, stonemasons, scribes, potters, painters, handmaidens, merchants, and soldiers that he saw walking around him were only quantum spintronic echoes of a civilization long vanished. He was, therefore, surprised that there was no alarm or terror on the faces of his first victims. Passing a couple of slaves, he reached out and devoured them whole, one at a time. His terrible hunting-dog jaws opened impossibly wide to do it, as if he were a species of serpent.
But they were unsatisfying. They did not dodge, resist, struggle, scream, or tremble. He felt himself increased minutely, but not as he had expected. Something was wrong.
Am-heh growled. They were soulless, lifeless food! Useless for increasing his power. It would take a near-infinite number of them to accumulate the soul-force necessary to advance his eigenfunctions to the next quantum level. And that would take too long. Tedious.
But how could such soulless, imaginary beings exist, and show purpose, as these did? It was delusion, madness! Or he was dreaming, a thing lower-dimensional entities did while regenerating. Which was of course nonsense because Am-heh never slept. How could he be always ready to Devour if sometimes he were a-bed? He was sleepless by design. He could therefore rule out dreaming in principle, and verify it by trying to do something he could not do in any of the Real universes: hurt Himself.
In the Reals, such an attempt would have no effect – a Transcendent being cannot harm itself. Such paradox, if possible, would prevent (or collapse, if you prefer) the hyper-fractal extrapolation that makes Transcendence: to harm yourself at that level would mean literally un-writing your story from the tapestry of the Multiverse. Self-deletion. So in the Reals when he bit himself his fangs slid off his skin like mosquitoes on stone.
There was no way he could harm himself. And if by some enchantment he did manage it, it would prove that he was dreaming and the paradox of it would hurl him out of his dreams.
So: he drew his hand up to his mouth and bit himself. Either nothing will happen or I will awaken from a dream, he thought.
This time, however, he experienced an amazingly distracting hurtful sensation! and drew blood and howled his agony. Pain! And nothing else changed. The “dream” did not collapse. He was still here, hand still throbbing.
That was the first moment Am-heh could remember feeling something he could describe as fear. If I am not in this reduced state by dreaming, and yet clearly not in any of the Realities, since I can be hurt...his dog eyes widened, and he felt the fur on the back of his neck standing up.
Am-heh's intelligence was less than that of other gods, yet still infinite compared with that of mortals. The reason he felt his hair standing on end was that he finally realized that he might be volunteered in a Covenant match. If so, then he was mortal, for the duration of the match. Otherwise, the combats would have no resolution, no closure.
Am-heh stopped prowling and sniffed the air, his ears lifting. The NPCs gave not a whiff of soul...but now he could perceive, though not as clearly as he used to be able to, the presence of incarnate souls in his vicinity. He smiled a terrible smile. For along with the scent of souls here somehow, there was also the unmistakable scent of another intersected Immortal.
Here, at last was real food! For if Am-heh could feel pain and die here, then so could the Other. And instead of merely killing Him, Am-heh could just do what he did and Devour him. If devouring part of mortal souls kept him powerful, Imagine what it would do for him to devour a Transcendent! He might go up at least one quantum level of power. And he might be in the only arena where it was possible, a Covenant match.
Ichor was in the air, so to speak. Better yet: the source of it was a bastard deific, and he was afraid. Am-heh laughed so hard he nearly vomited. That was their First?
Sniffing the air again, he set off at an effortless jogging pace toward the nearest incarnate souls, Mr. and Mrs. Abernathy from a place called, oddly enough, Schenectady.
First these souls and others like them in mortal bodies. And then he would eat the soul of an Immortal. Am-heh licked his lips and growled in expectation through a terrible smile.
Chapter 20: Farker: Farker gets some bad news