from The Ascendant – 5 – In Summation
Along with the Quinspace Ascendant was what appeared to be a lion or giant cat conjoined with a dog or wolf, a giant bug or spider with many more legs and eyes, an eagle or bat with two sets of wings and a large beak, and a whale or a shark with huge gills and rows and rows of teeth.
from Vol V, Resurrection Intro.
Anes idolizes Anansi’s powers. He is as big as a mountain and he can siphon attention across long distances of the universe because he can influence the minds of beings of A-space and work his way into their dreams. He does this by accessing the mental realm, the realm of existence accessible to all sentient minds of the universe with concentration that represents the collective conscious energies that permeate space. The mental realm is like the boundary between the Quinspace and A-space; it requires access to both simultaneously and the result is an environment that is malleable to the whims of the inhabitants, depending on their savvy and control in the realm.
from Vol V, Resurrection Epil.
He left the gifts that he had given to Anes to whatever fate befell them in the stiff world, and he chuckled that the spiders he had created with aspects of his siblings’ powers could create chaos among the beings there. It would complicate the machinations of the stiff world beings with the horns who occupied the Quinspace, the Ascendant, Anansi knew, though he was not fully aware why they intervened as they did on Earth. He would find out and he would expose their plans to his siblings and the other Quinspace beings who still cared about their conflict.
from Vol VI, Diode Annual Issue 2
“I’m something like the spider and the deer you two robbed for your powers. Only I’m a much bigger deal. Koyu is a child of a child of mine no doubt. I’m here because the Ascendant sent someone here who wants to destroy this place and if she does, she will be one step closer to ending existence as we know it. You know this woman. Anansi, the big spider, is a liar, but he told the truth about this woman. We found out that the Ascendant want to reset reality so us beings of the Quinspace no longer exist. And I can’t have that. So if you two could stop her here, I would very greatly appreciate it.”
– 1 – The Odd Couple
Coyotl and Anansi are fighting in the mental realm. They had been there watching the human woman zip across the seemingly infinite space of the realm, and when she was halfway done, they understood what she was doing.
“It’s real!” Anansi exclaimed. “That’s what the horned stiff-world beings were up to.”
“You don’t mean that she’s searching for the path beyond?” Coyotl said incredulously. “That’s a story that the old, battle weary minds of the First Wave cooked up when they were bored. Can we even die? I’ve been alive so long.”
“Haven’t we been alive for so long? But time passes so strangely, who can even keep track. You call your parent The First Wave? That’s so science fiction-ey, did you get that from the stiff world?”
“It’s fitting,” Coyotl said, “the Kazi of Eel have cool names for everything.”
“You do love those Red Mountains don’t you,” Anansi said. He chuckled as Coyotl seemed to blush. “Don’t worry, we’ve all enjoyed the pleasures of the Red Mountains every now and then. I should make a trip, it’s been so long.”
“You know what the Kazi call her? The Alia. She’s on a quest to bring light to the universe.”
“No she isn’t,” Anansi said with disdain. “That’s stiff world nonsense. Our parents, or excuse me, the First Wave, say that specific movements in this realm can grant access to the creator of their creator. They say if you can speak with the creator, you can become a master of time and exist forever.”
“Dumb,” Coyotl said. “Why would we need to do that?”
“Think about it dummy, if you can master time, you can be young forever and avoid the final death that none can avoid at the end of the life of the universe. And you conveniently forget that the First Wave are dead. We can live a long time, but not forever.”
Coyotl shrugged. “So what is she doing? Resetting time for the Ascendant?”
“Yes, to erase their greatest enemies. I told you, they are ending this war once and for all.”
“It’s hardly even a war anymore. You can’t even really call it that.”
“We have to do something,” Anansi says.
So Coyotl caught up to the Alia on the green planet because he was better adept at traversing the mental realm than Anansi, and the Alia was moving at a speed that was almost undetectable. When his intervention there proved fruitless, he returned to Anansi who was very angry and the two have been fighting ever since. The fight is spectacular, they launch elaborate weapons at one another on a battlefield that they create together, an amalgamation of both their psyches, and eventually they forget why they started their battle and are just enjoying the sport of it.
“Stop!” Anansi yells. “This is fun, but we need to stop the Alia.”
“Really? It won’t be this much fun. Fine, but we need others because I imagine we’ll look for flimsy excuses to fight and it’ll just slow us down.”
Just as he says it, they realize that the Alia isn’t moving anymore, and in fact, she is nowhere to be found in the mental realm.
“Uh-oh,” Anansi says. “How long were we fighting?”
Coyotl is doubled over with laughter.
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