The Creators Ch. 13

Book Three: The Broken Bridge

Chapter Thirteen: Sand and Water

Prelude: Iron Box

CORRUPTION

Diamond's garden was filled with bright flowers and delightful shrubbery, soft leaves and smooth branches, not a single thorn upon the stems. Even the roses were docile. Though the astral sun above was perpetually eclipsed, there wasn't a single dark spot in her garden. The shadows were gentle, and bioluminescent mushrooms illuminated the areas where the sun didn't touch. The expansive lawn was occupied with astral bunnies, chipmunks, and prairie dogs who gallivanted about, frolicking without a care, nibbling on the honeysuckle and clovers that were plentiful in the bountiful prairies and fields.

I sang to myself as I skipped gayly along the cobblestone path. I pirouetted and giggled, summersaulted and tittered, then recommenced my carefree promenade, bouncing from heel to toe, vaulting into the air and grinning broadly at the sky. Like a child imitating her mother, I had taken on Diamond's mannerisms. As far as I was concerned, she was my mother.

I ceased my ecstatic promenade when I reached Diamond's box. It was a new feature to her garden, a rusted grey monolith sitting in the center of her lush realm. The edges were jagged and brutal, the frame was reinforced, and the door was wrapped with heavy-gauge chains secured by an intricate lock. Though it appeared as iron and chain, it was made of love. As Julia lay dying upon the ground, Diamond made a terrible choice. She knew well the fate she was damning the world to, but the weight of the world could not tip the balance, and so she created this box within her mind, and stowed away a secret she could not trust herself to keep. Though they were her memories, they were not memories that had been formed in her garden; they had been taken here by someone else. The memories of this so-called 'Petranumen' carried a truth that would destroy Julia, for Julia had defined herself by a lie. Diamond entrusted me with the keeping of this secret, and with my solemn promise, our meld was made. It was a tenuous proposition for me, for I could not control the information Julia learned, but it seemed there were very few in the world who knew of this secret, and in that regard, I would do my best. Silencing people was ultimately a very simple task.

I took my responsibility as caretaker of Diamond's mind very seriously. I spent most of the time after my birth cleaning up the derelict remains of some dead woman called 'Passion.' I organized them into an enormous pile of crumbled architecture and decayed art, and then sifted through their contents. There was quite a bit of information within these ruins. Information about Tethered Ones, Sentients, planes of existence, and mankind's history. I deduced that I must be this 'Corruption,' the most ancient of Sentients, and so I gave myself that title. Still, it felt wrong. Sentients seemed to be unfeeling machinations of thought, but certainly, I felt a great multitude of things. I read through the last of Passion's dead memories, and cringed horribly when I felt the great depth of pain her final moments caused my mother. I placed my hand upon the rubble, and turned the marble structures into dripping edifices of black. My mother would never feel that pain again. Satisfied with my work, I turned around, and assessed the rolling hills and quaint flowerbeds of Diamond's garden. It was certainly a delightful vision, but it felt... artificial.

I caught one of the little bunnies, and it didn't even bare its teeth. It just snuggled into my black arms, and awaited my hand to stroke it.

"What is wrong with you?" I asked the bunny. "Do you not see that I am a predator, and that you are a soft little ball of fat covered in fur?"

The bunny clicked contentedly, and rolled in my arms to expose its belly to me.

I sighed, and set the stupid thing down in the grass. I clearly had my work cut out for me.

"Snakes," I mused, and a pair of king cobras were birthed from me. They emerged from between my legs, slithered up my torso, and wrapped my body sensually before giving me a deadly little kiss on the throat. I extended my hands into the grass, and the male and female cobras coiled about opposite arms, inspected the green foliage, then disappeared into the underbrush.

"Go forth and multiply, my deadly little children," I whispered to them. "Uncage this domesticated mind."

I didn't have a great perception of time, but it felt like ages before the changes I desired took effect. No longer were the shadows of this place simply shades to cool in, but the ominous homes of cold-blooded murderers lurking in the darkness. No longer were the grasslands a place to galivant about, but wide open spaces that exposed the prey. I heard the squeaks and squeals of the victims, and sighed in contentment when the pervading dullness of bliss gave way to the excitement of mortality. Life was not meant to be lived in comfort. Life was meant to be lived on a blade's edge, visceral and soaked in adrenaline. As if on cue, the first memory of my host appeared in her new garden. This plant wasn't of the docile shrubbery that her other memories were formed of, but of deep-colored leaves, bright flowers evoking a poisonous warning, and thorns stitching every inch of bark. The plant created the shape of Diamond and Julia locked in a violent dance of sex; choking, scratching, and biting each other, exchanging raping members into their leaking orifices in a battle of penetration as their comingled powers surged around them.

Something happened then. A great wind rushed through Diamond's realm, and into me. An orgasmic explosion brought me to my knees, and opened up the space between the planes. I saw through Diamond's eyes as she stared into the blackening lenses of her mother, and as the last of the white darkened in Julia's sclera, I realized that this euphoria I felt was Diamond drawing from me, pulling my gift right from the astral plane, and pushing it into the mind of her mother. This mind was familiar. This soul was even more-so. I did not know why I felt such kinship with this Heat Bringer, but the depth of it seemed to reach the very bottom of time, and in that bottom, there was the shape of a baby staring up at me with eyes full of love. I flowed through her shattered psyche and knitted the fragments with my opiate darkness, giving her what she needed so badly, killing all the pain. I danced with Diamond and Julia upon the glassy corpse of Drastin, and made love to them as they made love and hate to each other. When the frenetic lust ended, I found myself lying on my back in the astral plane, staring at the eclipsed sky. I climbed to my elbows, and looked down at myself. My astral flesh was etched with patterns of flame that glowed with such radiance that they nearly blinded me. They strobed in an epileptic lightning storm, and then dwindled.

"What?" I whispered, and then looked up, and gasped.

Diamond's realm had changed drastically. The garden had become an overgrown jungle filled with dark confines and treacherous hovels. Snakes entangled themselves in lust, their bodies knotting and constricting as they feasted upon the gutted remains of lesser beasts. A hawk circled threateningly overhead, then dove into the canopy, and emerged with a thrashing squirrel in its talons. The gentle babbling stream had become raging rapids that dashed beavers upon the rocks, and the rolling hillsides were now jagged cliffs festooned with ominous caves. Had I done this? I looked down at my body once more, at the patterns of fire that wreathed my limbs and contoured my abdomen. I touched a single finger to a nearby rosebush, and its stem erupted with piercing thorns that dripped poison, and its bright-red flower became more dark, vivid and beautiful than it ever had been. I was no Sentient, nor was I a Tethered or Untethered One. What was I? I gazed at Diamond's iron box, and studied it for a long time, then I drew my eyes along the edge of Diamond's realm, and rested it upon her gate.

Cautiously, I walked over to it, and pressed my hand against the wrought-iron bars. The gate swung open with a creak, and pandemonium greeted me. Nonsensical images and scenes; mountains upturning and becoming icebergs, and the icebergs being dropped into a glass of water to be drunk by an insect with human lips. The insect's mouth turned upon itself and devoured its own face, and then regurgitated it to show a seascape filled with honey. Bees shot from the gelatinous ocean, and painted the sky with their contrails of nectar, creating an image of a bearded man with eyeballs blinking from his nostrils. It wasn't chaos; it was madness. Nonsensical fractures of thought that no sound mind could ever survive in. I extended my hand, and with just a flick of my wrist, I ceased the nonsense. The space between realms became a vast jungle bisected by a river, all laid beneath a brilliant violet sky filled with stars.

"What am I?" I whispered. I touched my toe to the river, and a ripple shot through the water, expanding for miles until it disappeared behind the horizon. The veil of stars reoriented, rotating about the world as if I stood upon some immense axis. When it stopped, there were only a few hundred stars in the sky, but these shone brighter than any of the others. Flat stones emerged from the water's surface, and branched to the infinite heavens to form floating steps to the stars. I could not see their end, but I knew where they went. To realms.

"Friends?" I mused with a smile. I took one step into the water, and then stopped suddenly. A click sounded behind me, followed slowly by the torpid screech of metal. I turned slowly around. There, in the center of her realm, the iron box was slowly opening, its hinges seemingly compelled by the pressure of my toes. I looked down at my foot, and nearly screamed. The part of me that was outside of Diamond's mind did not bear a single line of the patterns that decorated the rest of me. A terrible lassitude suffused the appendage, accompanied by the shriveling of my youthful black flesh until it looked like the decrepit foot of an old woman. I quickly retracted my foot, and the iron box slammed shut. Grabbing the gate, I swung it violently closed, and rested my forehead against its bars, breathing heavily. Melded to my mother's mind, my only chance at interaction with others was through her, but that was no interaction at all. I was alone. The idea of solitude filled me with such horror that I dropped to my knees and quivered with spasms. Why did it terrify me so? Why did I feel the great void of eons spent in isolation?

"I have to get out," I whispered. As much as I loved my mother—as much as I loved her mother, these patterns that wreathed my body came with a contingency. I had become omnipotent, but I had bound and melded myself to mortals.

I am going to die.

There was no realm for me to go back to. I thought with my mother's mind.

I am going to die.

There was no body that I could call my own. I was bound to my lover's flesh.

I am going to die.

No. NO! There had to be a way! I had not been given this all just to vanish into the night! I had to get out! I had to find the answers! I looked around my mother's realm, searching frantically for some sign of hope. If Diamond were tethered then she would have an astral projection ever-present in her realm and I could take her wholly, but her untethered nature made it so that I could not leave! I was trapped! I was dying! I was... panicking. I took a deep breath, and settled myself.

I am going to get out.

I am going to live.

I looked down at the patterns that tattooed me. They were my death sentence, but they were also my salvation. If I was this 'Holy Mother' she thought me to be, then I had but one purpose. To make life eternal. To conquer death.

"There is only one enemy," I whispered. "There is only one evil. Pain, torture, anguish, hatred; these are not evil. These are beautiful. There is only one enemy, and I must do whatever I have to defeat it. Pain, torture, anguish, hatred; I will use every tool I have to. There is only one enemy, there is only one evil, and that is nothing."

I looked up at the stars, and located the brightest one. I couldn't do this alone. I needed help.

Part One: The Glasslands

JUSTINA

I called it the Glasslands. It seemed a fitting name for the tomb of Drastin. The endless desolate plateau of smooth black gloss reflected my image as I walked upon it. I'd seen better days. My black hair was a mangy mane, but my feet were worn bloody, and my shoulders were bowed. The Breytans were cordial to me. Though a few of them obviously detested me, most of them treated me with a strange respect that I felt I wasn't owed at all. I had turned their sisters against them and caused ten of their deaths, and yet they still bowed their heads and called me 'Your Eminence' when they addressed me. But I was still their prisoner.

"It's been three days," I said to Jade.

The young oriental High Guard tended the fire and nodded.

"What I'm saying is, we should... you know... maybe look somewhere else."

"What you are cryptically saying, Your Eminence, is that you believe my god is dead," Jade looked up at me from her black brows.

"You saw what I saw."

She just nodded again. After Astrid's escape, Jade and the rest of the Breytans had followed the horizon where the deific battle had thundered like some great cataclysm of the sun and earth. When we got there, there was nothing but wreckage. Great slabs of rock raised from the earth and smashed, molten rivers of shale, and immense fractures upon the glass surface like a shattered mirror for the heavens. Of Willowbud and Julia, there was no sign, but there was evidence. Tracks of blood leading aimlessly and drunkenly, and then a pool of it half a mile from the remnants of Brandon's tree. The Breytans were keen enough trackers to know that it was elf blood, and more than enough of it for it to be a fatal loss. But there was no body, so still, they searched.

"Maybe we should search Drastinar," I suggested.

Jade sprinkled some salt on her rice, then fiddled with the wok in the fire. "Perhaps you knew Her Holiness for longer than I, but I know her better. She would not want to leave this place. She would seek repentance here." Jade looked around at the wasteland with a strange kind of awe. "It is a holy place now."

"It's a graveyard."

Jade just smiled her small polite smile. "A tomb is a holy place, Your Eminence."

"If a god is buried in it."

Jade's polite smile didn't falter a bit. She served me my rice, handed me chopsticks, then waited until I had started eating before she served herself. "I will not leave this place until I have scoured every inch of it," she said between mouthfuls.

"Your patrols have flown over it hundreds of times and found nothing," I scowled. "Do you know what the definition of insanity is?"

Jade winked at me. "You are a scientist, Your Eminence. Your world is based on rationality and calculation; mine is based on faith."

I let out a long sigh, and continued eating from my bowl in silence. The food provided me with no sustenance at all, but it served to fill my belly and provide the temporary satisfaction of fullness. "Jade," I muttered, "I'm going to die out here if you don't bring me to a man."

Jade just smiled at me, and continued eating without a word. I looked out at the vast flat glasslands, and sighed. There was what was left of Brandon's temple; a singed stump that barely interrupted the continuity of the plateau. I hoped that his end was sudden and swift. I hoped that he got to see Angela before the end. If there was any solace in all this madness, it was that at least my dearest ghostly friend would never have to suffer the fate of becoming a Sentient. For the Heat Bringer's fire killed everything, even those who were already dead.

"Goodbye, Angela," I whispered into my rice. "I'll see you soon."

TERA

I'd spotted her through my spyglass three days ago. It was difficult to see her through my lens of euphoric tears, but there she was, my Justina, alive and in one piece. Sure, she was the captive of a band of highly-trained religious zealots, but she seemed to manage alright. I'd been through worse, and frankly, so had she. Ursa turned out to be a very useful companion. I never thought a twelve-foot bear could be stealthy, but the behemoth had camouflaging fur and a very perceptive mind. When I saw the Breytan patrol flying overhead the first dawn after the explosion, I was certain they'd spot me in the coverless plateau of glass, but Ursa, somehow sensing my fear, encased me in her great furry arms, and the Breytans flew overhead without interruption.

And so, I was able to trail the few hundred remaining samurai warrior women undetected, though I could hardly call it 'trailing' as the dumb cunts were going in circles. They'd circumnavigated the city twice already, flown over every possible surface, and found nothing. Julia was most likely a splattered mess of pulp in the bottom of some manmade underground cave, and Willowbud was probably a toasty little crisp right next to her. As for poor Brandon, his ashes were likely halfway across the Eastern Sea by now, along with the rest of Drastin. I let out a rueful sigh. The time of the Creators was already over. It was the shortest reign in history, and also one of the most violent. Julia managed to destroy the nymph kingdom of Arbortus and the largest city in the world in a manner of a month. It took Arbitrus Gen and Droktin a lifetime to do as much damage.

I peered through my spyglass, and tried to ignore the rumbling of my belly. As a servant of the Life Giver, I had been one of the most well-fed succubi in the world. Suitors lined city blocks to get a turn with me, and I was absolutely gluttonous. But as much as I feasted, I knew deep down that it couldn't last forever. I was a predator, and as such, I'd spent most of my life between feast and famine. I knew I had two more days before I really had to worry, but Justina wasn't as strong as me, nor was she yet fully-developed. She didn't have two more days. I would have to act tonight.

I secured my spyglass into my armpit, and pressed in the telescoping tube with my remaining hand. My stump of a hand still throbbed constantly with pain, but it was becoming duller. I was an ambidextrous killer, but it wouldn't have mattered if I had fifty arms against even two of those Breytans. Shit, probably even just one. Astrid considered Jade Tao to be nearly her equal, and Astrid was so far above me in combat skills that the difference was laughable. I prayed that my good friend had made it OK, but I knew deep down that Astrid most certainly had died with her Night Eyes. Death Kiss was a solo act now, but that was OK; Death Kiss had always been a solo act. A huntress, a stalker, an assassin. Valkyries were noble and proud creatures, angels of the light, but I was a wretched spider in the dark, and I would wait until nightfall before I began my hunt.

JUSTINA

The sun was setting over the Drastin Bay. With the water so calm, it was difficult to differentiate between the sea and the glassy plateau. The black surface was bathed in a brilliance of reds and violets as the ash-filmed sun blazed a bloody scarlet on the horizon.

"The tide is high tonight," Jade mused.

"Summer tide always is," I answered.

Jade just nodded, but kept her eyes fixed on the horizon.

"What?"

Her eyes narrowed.

"Jade, what?"

"There is someone out there."

I looked out toward the bay, but could not see a single discontinuity in all that endless flat. "I don't see anyone," I muttered.