The Creators Ch. 13

"You're right, Xaya, I can't do it alone," I said, and grew a plant from my hand that formed the shapes of Julia and Diamond. "While I remake mankind's plane of thought, they will remake the plane of flesh. Diamond will breathe my gift into the lungs of the masses, and the Destroyer will render their kingdoms to ash. Within a generation, the very language they speak will be lost, and their minds will be liberated from the slave of abstractions."

Xaya blinked at me. "You are mad."

"I assure you that I am not. Even if Diamond couldn't understand your soliloquy, I was listening very carefully."

"Your madness is but a denial of your fate. Every mortal must learn to accept death!"

"This death is unnatural. Life is not supposed to end when the body does!"

"You know nothing of life!"

I looked about her great realm, then back to her. "Which of these self-indulgent plants encapsulates life's purpose?"

She twisted her lips.

"How many thousands of years have you had to ponder that idea, Wisdom, and yet you still haven't found the answer. Well, I have it." I gestured behind me, toward the path of wild foliage that I'd paved with my feet, twisted and snarled, growing in a million different directions and reaching toward the sky. "That is life. Do you see how they grow into whatever form chaos allows them? Do you see how they reach ever toward the sky? And why? To flourish, to become magnificent, to bask in the euphoria of their triumph, and then to rebecome soil, and live again." I gestured to the world around us. "Look at these lies you have made. From the root of one simple and pure thought, you have branched a fabrication so intricate that it reaches to the heavens."

"These ideas are so complex that even my mind cannot wholly fathom them."

"No, it is mankind that has become so complex that these ideas that were so simple—greed, hate, joy, sorrow, passion, wrath, wisdom—have become so abstract that they have lost all meaning. Don't you see? You in all your wisdom cannot grasp a simple idea because you have confused knowing with understanding. Mankind knows much, and understands nothing. I will show them their error. I will bring us back to truth."

"Do not pretend your madness is anything but desperate self-preservation!"

"Do not pretend I am just another existential mortal facing her doom! Do you not know who you are speaking to?!"

She glared at me, her slit pupils narrowing. "And what will you have of me, God?"

I extended my hand to hers, and opened my fingers. "I would have you."

"Why?"

"Julia exists in the plane of flesh, but I exist in the plane of thought. My bind with her is connected through my meld with Diamond. If they are cut, I will be untethered, and without a realm of my own, I will die. I can't keep sending Diamond out to personally neutralize every Tethered One; it would take a lifetime. Someone needs to keep her from opening her box while I'm away. There isn't a mind more powerful than yours other than my own."

Xaya looked down at my outstretched hand, then back to my eyes. "What will I become?"

"Nobody," I smiled, and stepped into the space between us.

"Stay back!" she hissed.

Before she could slip away, I grazed my fingers across her tummy. Her pupils dilated, her breath caught, and her posture drooped languidly. The orgasmic euphoria rose in her eyes, spilling from them with tears of ecstasy. Her knees wobbled, then caved, and she dropped before me, panting heavily and rubbing her thighs together.

"What..." she moaned, "...what... what will happen to my people?"

"They're not your people," I whispered, entangling one of my fingers in her serpentine hair. "They're nobody's. They're nobody. Become nobody with them."

The beautiful astral projection assessed me with her dispassionate stare, her snakelike dreads coiling interdependently upon her head, framing her fair and smooth face, tickling the subtle blush of her cheeks. She tried so hard to fight me, but I gave her the truth, and the truth was undeniable. Her lush green lips parted, the corners smiled in trepidatious lust and surrendered desire, and she tilted her head upwards. We kissed below the astral sun, and as our bodies pressed, her eyes turned black. We fell languidly to the astral floor as thorny bushes sprouted from the manicured grass, and the great egg-shaped trees became entangled with vines. The vines snaked up her trees of wisdom, constricted the trunks, and choked the life from them. One by one, they groaned and toppled, crashing like thunder in the astral plane as their caretaker bucked and heaved, becoming wilder with each grind of her hips until the elegant creature she had been was gone, and in her place was a beast of instinctive grace.

Back in the physical plane, Xaya accepted the breath that Diamond forced into her lungs, and breathed my gift into Voda. One by one, the creatures of that underwater city were infected with me, and they turned upon each other. They stole, raped and murdered. They lit fires and exploded bombs. The streets ran thick with blood, and it rained from the towers on the ceiling to splatter the chaos below. I saw it through Xaya's eyes, and smiled around her lips. It was so... beautiful.

Part Two: Gratora

JULIA

It had taken me a day to fly from the smoldering tomb of Drastin to the fertile foothills of the dwarven princedoms. The waters of the Drastin Bay became the amber fields of Drastinar, and the amber flatlands slowly became greener and livelier in topography until nothing was beneath me but lush rolling countryside, quaint townships and castles nestled between high pastures and arboreal forests. There were hundreds of the little nations contoured comfortably into the terrain, and I wondered idly as I passed over the great expanse of green, if I had flown over my ancestral home. The foothills seemed to go on endlessly beneath me, but I saw their pinnacle ever in the distance.

The Gratoran Wall stretched from horizon to horizon, a great unfathomable uplift that connected the mountains of an ancient chain. The verticality of the formation was almost impossible to comprehend. Even from my dizzying height in the sky, I was still below the top of the wall, though I could barely make out Breyta. The great black volcano was the second-highest mountain on the spine of Balamora, and had the most impressive profile of any mountain on the range. It was a dark cone on the far northern horizon, perfectly symmetrical with a severe gradient to its slope. I could clearly make out Iona, the highest peak on Balamora, its magnificent outline towering ten-thousand feet over the top of the Gratoran wall. The mountain sloped gradually from its precipice, then dropped suddenly down into the cutout of Droktin's Pass. That was where I landed.

I'd never been to Droktin's Pass before. Good Mother, I'd never even been outside of my home estate until Lucilla dragged me to Terondia, but of all the wonders I'd seen since leaving that place, this was by far the strangest. While Gratora had created her wall from a great uplift in the mountains, Droktin had carved an immense hallway through the landscape without any pretense for naturalness. The walls were so smooth they seemed to be polished, and they displayed millions upon millions of years of geological layers like that of a carved cake.

Clouds floated through the hall, and though it rained here, the earth beneath me was barren even after so many centuries. And so it stood as a petrified edifice of hatred and power, a jagged reminder of what destruction could be wrought from so-called Creators. I touched my hand to the smooth wall, and looked up. Iona towered above me, beyond resplendent, a beauty of such majesty that it brought tears to my eyes. This was true creation. On this clear day, I could see straight to its peak, but even without the haze of clouds and a perfect angle of the sun, the height was so dizzying that the black rock became blue with distance, and the pure white snowcap seemed to become translucent in the thin air. I could've stood beneath it for an eternity, and never fully comprehended its enormity.

"I am but a speck," I whispered, and touched my forehead to the smooth rock. "Thank you, Good Mother above, for giving me this moment of humility."

I fell to my knees, and wept, but I did not weep in pain or anguish, but in euphoria. Only three days ago, I had been so lost. I had walked through the glassy plateau of perdition, and when I was at my lowest, when my faith was the most tested, I had failed. I had forsaken the Holy Mother in my darkest moment when I should've sought her light, and I became a faithless wretch, a beast without purpose looking only for the most satisfactory way to die. I was undeserving of humanity, much less mercy, but the Holy Mother is all that is good, and she took me into her bosom once more. She showed me the light. She showed me the way. It was not the first time she had forgiven me.

"Everything that's happened to me, everything I've done, it was all to prepare me for this. I'd thought God had no purpose for me, I'd thought she'd abandoned me in the ashes of my home, but that was just my first step on her path. Night Eyes is my destiny, Lucilla; I was made for her. She has rekindled my faith, and shown me that I am still on the Maternal Path."

I had spoken those words to my beloved, and I had known them to be true, but at the time, I did not yet realize the full breadth of the Holy Mother's plan for me. I was not yet enlightened, not yet worthy to have such knowledge. Night Eyes was not my destiny, but just a test for me to pass before I could reach my true destiny. Corruption was not the tool of Satan; Corruption was my destiny. How could I not have seen it? How had I been so blind? Night Eyes was not the deliverer of temptation, but the thief of God's gift, the unworthy beholder of the Holy Mother's Sentient messenger to the world. What I had mistaken as the devil's temptation was actually God's holy truth. I had been so arrogant to assume God's plan, but in her infinite wisdom, God had made my arrogance a part of her test. For in my foolhardy quest to save Willowbud—the inconsequential little rat that she was—I disobeyed Arbitrus Gen's mission, and so spared Corruption. Perhaps my mind had been led astray, but my heart was true. I had shown compassion to the sinner as the Holy Mother would have wanted, and I had spared Night Eyes, and in so doing, I freed Corruption from Willowbud's unworthy fingers.

And Lucilla. Oh, Lucilla. How I had loved her, but I had always known that the Holy Mother looked down upon that love with disapproval. In her infinite grace, the Holy Mother allowed me precious years to grow and love with Lucilla, and now it was so clear to me that Lucilla was the herald of my revelation, the tool by which the Holy Mother taught me her lessons. For Lucilla taught me bravery, patience, friendship and love, and then in her final act, she taught me the Holy Mother's most important lesson: retribution. Lucilla was a whore who gave her purity and sanctity to any man who so desired it, and she died a whore's death just like she deserved. The pain I felt upon her passing was greater than anything I had ever known, but I now realized that the Holy Mother was teaching me one more lesson. That I was an imperfect vessel, that I had impure thoughts and wicked desires, and that I had to be punished for them. That terrible pain was wrought by the cleansing of my soul, for all the abhorrent love Lucilla had infected me with was etched deep into me, and like a cancer, its extraction was agonizing.

And there, at my lowest of lows, when I had abandoned the light of God and everything I once held dear, the Holy Mother showed me her capacity for mercy. She did not punish me for my blasphemy, but forgave me for my weakness, and rewarded me with the greatest gift ever bestowed upon any mortal that walked this earth. Diamond came to me on the brink of death, and she delivered to my lips, the word of god. Corruption. And upon receiving that word, God showed me her miracle. For the Holy Mother would not allow her divine message to ever be carried again by an unworthy host; not Willowbud, nor even me, but Diamond. Diamond, who was as pure a soul as there ever was; Diamond, whose beautiful mind was an empty vessel hand-crafted by God to hold the immense weight of her enlightenment. We bound with each other, and though her flesh remained unmarked, I knew it was only because the Holy Mother would not allow her perfect vessel to be claimed by anyone but her.

"Forgive me, Holy Mother above!" I cried exultantly. "Forgive me for the envy I now feel for my own daughter!"

I did not wish to feel it, but I felt it acutely now. Diamond had never believed in the word of the Maternal Path, and even after she carried the enlightenment within her mind, she besmirched it with a smile upon her face. It was a mystery of the heavens that a nonbeliever would carry such a gift, but I did not question it. I would never question the Holy Mother ever again. And with that solemn vow, I also vowed to never question myself again. For though I did not carry the Sentient, I had been inundated with the enlightenment, my soul possessed of it, my mind enraptured by it. Diamond was the vessel to carry her enlightenment, but I was her flame. I would do her bidding, and bring this world of darkness into the light.

I opened my hand, and a black flame erupted from my palm. Though it was so dark that it absorbed the very sunlight, its aura was more luminous than my white light had ever been, and it bathed the world around me in monochromatic hues. I was reminded of that day Night Eyes had brought me into her room with Astrid; at the time, I had thought I was in hell, for there was only the contrasting shades of white and black in that windowless pit. I smiled to myself. It had been a premonition, for both Willowbud and Astrid had met their infernal ends in that hole the Earth Former had burrowed to escape me, and that hole became the tomb for her own wretched damned soul. Even with a mortal blow struck across my back, even in the depths of my despair and blasphemy, I had still enacted my holy purpose. I had cleansed the sinners.

I would cleanse all of the sinners.

I would purify this world in black flame.

Upon walking out of Droktin's Pass, I was greeted by the sight of the Gratoran Desert. Never before had I seen such vast nothing. It was an uninterrupted expanse of dunes that stretched from the northern to southern horizon, and all the way to the west. The sand was piled against the Gratoran wall in great sloping mounds like amber waves perpetually crashing against shoreline cliffs. The wind whistled ominously, carrying sounds from faraway places and distorting them in the dry acoustics. Even the sky was different on this side of the wall. The aqueous blue that had prevailed over the lush dwarven foothills was now a sterile and pale hue, and obstructed everything in its perpetual haze. Where before I could see for hundreds of miles down the wall, now I could barely see for one. The sun which had once glowed vibrant and yellow now glared white through the desolate skies, and the air was filled with coarse dust and sand that grated against my naked flesh. I took a deep breath of the dry air, and made my first step.

After trudging a hundred yards past the entrance, I came upon my first anomaly. It was difficult to discern what it was at first, but a quick blast of my fire blew the sand from it, revealing a large obsidian cube with a fist shot from its side. So, this was where Willowbud and Astrid had met. I said a silent prayer for their damned souls, then I melted the false miracle into a black puddle. As it soaked into the sands, I mused upon how the obsidian had gotten here. I glanced to the north, but I could not make out the profile of Breyta in such low visibility. Still, there was no other explanation. The volcano had erupted some thousand years ago, and had spread its rock far and wide across the desert. Perhaps it had happened even before the Gratoran Wall was built. I scooped up the last bit of molten obsidian before it sank into the sand, and cupped it in my palm.

If the valkyrie legends were true, this rock was formed from an ancient Heat Bringer, and in a way, that made it holy. Even as I held it, I could feel a connection with this stone that I felt with no other. This was rock born of heat and fire. I could mold it. I shaped the molten puddle in my hand, then pulled the heat from it. The crescent symbol of the Holy Mother appeared in my palm. I pulled a couple strands of my hair from my head, wound them together, then looped them through the crescent so that it could hang from my neck, and rest upon my heart. The weight of it was familiar upon my breast, and I recalled with melancholy, the gift Lucilla had given me. It was a trinket, a thing made by some vendor with no care at all, but it had meant something to me. Likely it had been blasphemous, and so I was now glad that it had melted with the rest of Drastin. This pendant created from the rock of Breyta would not melt so easily, and the lock of hair that secured it to my neck would never burn at all. As I mused upon the black coloration of the rock and the black coloration of the strange patterns that adorned my flesh, I began to wonder if black was the Holy Mother's color. It was something to ponder upon as I traversed the wildlands.

For two days, I walked through the Gratoran Desert. Though I could've easily flown over the treacherous terrain, I knew in my heart that the Holy Mother wanted me to walk. My bare feet pressed into the scorching sand, my shoulders were laden with the oppressive heat of the sun, and though I walked naked with my pale flesh exposed to the equatorial solar glare, I did not burn, and my feet did not singe. I never truly felt heat in all my life; only warmth, but the heat was not the only hazard of this place. As thirst parched my throat, I wondered idly if I should've waited for Diamond at Droktin's Pass.

But of course I wasn't to bring Diamond. The Holy Mother did not want me to traverse this vast wasteland in comfort; she wanted me to know the brutality of this land. Here was a forsaken land, a land that had been tamed through sheer will by Gratora, Hektin, Furok and Droktin, but even the combined might of four Creators could not keep it shackled for long. It was desolate and savage, the water so scarce that it was more precious than gold, the beasts so ferocious that they would make a male lion scream like a housecat. I had seen them in the night, those terrible shadows of many limbs, insect-like horrors scuttling in carapaces thicker than shields with spiny legs longer than horses. My black flame kept them at bay, but it also served to attract them. I would see their hellish shapes glinting in the monochromatic light, and they followed me from a safe distance, entranced by my torch until daybreak bid them to scuttle back into their holes.

I was staring at one such hole right now. The coolness on my feet told me that there was water in that hole, and if I torched the inside to secure my safety, I risked evaporating that precious fraction. The hole was about ten feet wide and only one inch high, which gave me some clue as to what manner of beast lived in there. It was no hole at all, really. It was a door. A trap door. Trapdoor spiders were ubiquitous in the Gratoran Desert, and the reason that caravanners never ventured off the beaten path. If an ox were to get too close to one of these doors, the arachnid within would burst from it with lightning speed, snatch the poor beast, and then drag it deep into the darkness below so that it could consume its prey alive, eating it from the belly out to preserve the meat while the living beast died in slow horrific agony in the merciless dark. I glanced down at my crotch, and frowned. Why in the Good Mother's name did that idea get me aroused?!