The Edge of the World
The next time Number Two gained consciousness, he was lying on the edge of a cliff. Looking down, he could barely make out the violent waves of water crashing into the jagged summit of the mountainside.
Looking up, there was a blazing sun in the middle of the pitch black, starry sky. He was on an inverted mountain, in front of a temple gate upon which these words were inscribed: The Temple of Reality Anchoring and All Beginnings.
Once Number Two got up and entered through the gates, an indescribable wind swept over him and transformed the vestiges of his clothes into a baggy yellow robe of a monk. He was walking through a semi-transparent sea of wandering ghosts until a huge stone stele blocked his path.
Number Two jumped up in excitement as he absorbed the words carved onto the tall gray stone and proclaimed, "Praise Mother Sky! I am merely one of the nine trillion people in this reality who has a set of aspirations. Only by separating myself from reality can I be cut off from the infinite amount of definitions for the meaning of life. Oh! Why didn't I think about this?
No theory which tries to summarize the collective of humanity can stand absolute. Oh, Mother Sky, how are you so powerful that you lord over a constantly changing and unpredictable whole of humanity.
Give me the clarity for which I seek ardently. Give me a clue! Anything, the tiniest hint or the smallest signal. Guide me, you who I cannot understand or have proof of existence. I have learned from your writings on this stone. You have merely separated a slice of the void and turned it into one of the nine planes where reality governs all laws and incites all anarchy."
All the spirits nodded in content after hearing this declaration, the winds chimed victoriously, and the sun seemed to burst in an even greater luminosity. The stone stele which once impeded his path crumbled into fine dust. Number Two eagerly continued trekking up the uneven steps of the path.
In the distance, he saw the faint outline of a quaint temple. He kept on walking for one day, one week, one month, one year, one decade, and one century, however, the temple was still as far as it was from the start.
Number Two moaned, "I am wrong, so devastatingly wrong. The path which Mother Sky taught me to take was the path of no end. I must find a way to resolve this path in order to reach the destination which I seek."
His laughter resounded in the lonely mountainous path as he declared, "I at long last understand!" Turning back from the direction of the temple he ran without abandon for ten years straight, free from all his worries and controlled by Mother Sky for his running became an unconscious action so familiar to him that it was easier than breathing.
Number Two took no breaks during this time and when he reached the temple gate which he had entered at first after being transported there by the black vortex, he laughed in triumph.
"Oh thank you Mother Sky for pointing me toward the right path of unlimited breakthroughs and success! Reality anchoring, reality anchoring. What does that mean? I know now. I am that anchor which the ancients sought to obtain. Oh, Mother Sky! I cannot bargain with you but I plead you to allow me to experience the worship a King feels and I will devote my being to you."
Staring at the cliff where all water flowed backward and all laws were inverted into chaos, he ran off the cliff straight into the raging ocean.