The Creators Ch. 19

"I am sorry," she mumbled. "I was just trying to put my book in your center." She rubbed her arm and gave me a woeful look. "I thought... you know... it would be a good thing to have. I didn't mean to scare you. It's all my fault."

"What?" I hissed.

Corruption stepped into the light. "You left your gate open. Or someone did. It was probably her. Don't blame her though; it's really me who's to blame. I just... I know I should've asked. It was really rude of me to come in here without your permission. I didn't want you to see me. I didn't want to see that pitying look on your face as you watch me slink around like a worm. I know it's my fault. I deserve your disgust."

"Who..." I stepped closer, narrowing my eyes at her, "...who are you?"

"Nobody," she muttered, hanging her head in shame. "Please don't look at me. I know I'm in no place to make requests, but please, I beg you, don't look at me."

I paused, and ran my eyes over her, studying her demeanor, her expression, her face and body that were so familiar, yet so different. "Guilt," I whispered.

She nodded, unable to meet my gaze.

"How are you..." I stepped forward again, closing the distance between us, "...how are you... you're... you're... are you?"

She shook her head, still looking at the floor.

"Do you know who I am?"

She nodded.

"What's my name?"

"Serenity. Silence. Angela." She dared to peek at me. "We've met before."

"In Willowbud's temple," I whispered. "You showed me this place, didn't you? Forever they will live as one, like two lovers in the sun?"

"Yes."

"You're..." I searched for anything but what was obvious, but I could find no other explanation, "...you're Corruption. You're the real Corruption."

"I'm not her anymore. I'm nothing now. I'm just the memories of a dead woman."

I blinked at her, then fell into my chair, and stared through the window in disbelief. Questions swirled in my mind, each one bringing about more questions until they piled up behind my mouth, making me unable to vocalize a single one until my lips finally moved to form words.

"What happened to Diamond?"

Guilt hugged herself and hummed, her throat edging with a panicked sob. "She killed me."

"What?!"

"I deserved it," Guilt whined, tears brimming her eyes. "After everything I've done, oh, did I deserve it!"

"Tell me!" I yelled, suddenly frantic. "Tell me what you did! Tell me who you are—who you were!"

"No!" she screamed, clutching at her head. "No! Can't tell! Can't tell! The secret has killed so many already! Millions! Billions! Oh my god, ALL OF THEM!"

"TELL ME!" I shrieked, jumping from the chair, seizing the stupid woman by her shoulders. "TELL ME! TELL ME! TELL—" I pitched forward, and vomited. Black bile burned my nose and throat and spilled out onto the floor. There was still so much of it. I heaved and gagged, tears flowing from my eyes until every last bit was puddled between my hands. A grey hand appeared before my face, a handkerchief in the fingers. I took it from her and wiped my lips.

"Thanks," I muttered.

"Don't thank me," she said, "it was my fault that it happened."

"What are you..." I trailed off, and looked at the black puddle, "...of course."

"You shouldn't touch me again," Guilt said, taking a step back. "No one should touch me. I should've just stayed in my dark corner where I belong!"

"Stop," I said gently, holding out my hand to her, "please stop. I just want to hear your story is all. Tell it to me whenever you're ready. I didn't mean to get angry with you."

"I cannot," she hissed, "and I deserve your anger."

I looked her over and donned the most judgmental expression I could muster. "That's right, you do deserve it. And you know you have to tell me your story; it's your punishment. It's what you owe me after all that you've done."

She opened her mouth, then shut it. "I am not a fool, Angela Sorensen. Well, perhaps I am. Perhaps I am the greatest fool there is, but I know you are trying to trick me. I cannot give you this knowledge. This knowledge will destroy you, as it has destroyed everyone else."

"Do you know what's happening down there?" I growled.

She nodded. "It's all my—"

"Of course it's your fault!" I snapped. "And it's only going to get worse if you don't tell me what you know!"

Again, she parted her lips to speak, and again, she closed them and shook her head. "There is no salvation in this truth. All those who know it are dead or mad."

"That's why I need it," I hissed.

Guilt looked out the window and gazed at the brightest star in the sky. "You think this truth will destroy her, and you are right," she looked back at me. "But she is doing what I should have done eons ago. I didn't have the strength. I am so weak."

"Tell it to me," I begged behind a whisper, "please!"

She shook her head with a note of finale. "It must be done. I knew it so long ago. I knew it, but I was too weak to stand up to those I loved. Now they are all dead, killed by my hand or by my weakness. Now the planes are fractured, and death conquers all. I must not stand in the way." She gently placed the bible on my shelf and stepped back carefully. "Fret naught, Silence, for my soul brings the Destroyer with her. You and I will not have to endure an eternity of a lifeless existence. Maybe there is nothing after we are snuffed out, but there is still peace in the void."

She turned around and dragged her feet through the door.

"Wait!" I yelled.

She looked over her shoulder.

"Do you still have a doorway to the plane below?"

She stared at me for a while and nodded.

Part Two: The Seraph's Lover

BRANDON

"...and she did say to her preceptors that their teachings were wrong, that the heresy they committed was so vile that hellfire would consume them for eternity, and so did those false prophets who... who..." I ceased my stammering sermon once I realized the choir had stopped its soprano solo. Helga floated listlessly in the water, her blistered eyes staring blankly at the sky, her roasted lips parted in an expression that belied terrible relief. I tried to close the book in my hands, but my fingers were shaking so horribly that it simply fell onto the boards of the stage. I tried to stand up, but my legs collapsed the moment my knees locked. Jade swooped me into her arms before I hit the floor, and as she pressed me to her, I began to weep uncontrollably.

"You performed honorably, Your Holiness," Jade whispered.

"Take me away from here!" I begged into her chest. "Please, Jade!"

"You know I can't," she said softly, no hint of remorse in her voice. She flew me from the infernal confines of the stockades, and for a few hopeful heartbeats, I waited on the Earth Former to take advantage of the moment, but Jade landed on the sands outside of Diamond's tent barely half a minute later and walked me into it. The beasts here were lecherous things, and it nearly reminded me of Ofan were it not for the pile of mutilated corpses in the corner. Jade carried me past the deadly orgy, and into a secluded room. When she closed the flap, all the commotion from outside was muted.

"Wha...?" Diamond groaned sleepily from her bed.

"You requested me to bring you the Life Giver," Jade said.

"Oh yeah," Diamond stretched languidly and patted the space beside her. "Put him here."

Jade set me next to the Water Dancer, then bowed deeply, and left. I watched the flap close behind her and succumbed to a feeling of sinking despair. I knew that the horrors I'd experienced out in the open would be child's play compared to what I would endure in here.

"Jeepers-creepers, you really kicked my butt yesterday," Diamond yawned, and rolled over so that she was flush with my body. "And I was trying to be nice to you."

"You corrupted my sister," I hissed.

"And...?" she asked, looking at me like I was stupid. "She still loved you, didn't she? So who cares? You know, if you had just gone along with it, none of this would've happened. Oh, Willowbud and Astrid would be dead—there was no way I could let them live—but you, Angela, Justina, Tera, the Ofanians, and the Ionans would all be alive. Now all of you are going to die, and it's all because of you."

I glared into her black eyes, seeing the silhouette of the thing behind them. "I know who you are. The face you wear doesn't matter; I can see through the mask."

Diamond reeled back, and punched me right in the eye. "You're talking to me, Brandon, not her!"

I clutched my battered ocular and laughed. "You couldn't resist bringing me to your bed, huh? Just like old times."

Diamond screamed, then jumped on top of me and rained her fists down on me. In my exhaustion, I could only feebly hold up my hands to take her punishment.

"I'm not her!" she screamed. "I'm me! I'm Diamond! She's not fricken important!" She struck my ribs with a note of finale, then grabbed my defending forearms, and peeled them away from my face. "Got it?"

Though one of my eyes was swelling shut, I could still see the faint outline of Corruption's astral figure through Diamond's body. She was scowling, though not at me.

"Ok, Diamond, you're not her," I said carefully. "You're right; she's not important. You do whatever you want regardless of what she wants, right?"

"That's right!" Diamond harrumphed.

"And what does she want?"

Diamond paused and cocked her head. "Hmm... mostly, she wants me to kill you right here and now. Painfully, but quickly; she hates you, but she's afraid of you. She also wants me to rip your pants off and ride you until sunset. Weird. She can't really decide which one she wants more."

"And what do you want to do with me?"

Diamond opened her mouth, then closed it. She frowned with indecision, then looked around the room until her eyes rested upon a cupboard. A smile crossed her face, and she leaped off me, opened the cupboard, and bulled out a long wooden box.

"Let's play checkers!"

JUSTINA

Julia extracted her fists from her holes, the membranous sheaths clinging to her until they popped free, leaving the orifices yawning and ruby. She rolled onto her back and eyed me as she sucked her fingers clean one by one. Gone was any pretense of holy propriety; she could hardly claim it now. Her white robes were saturated with sweat and worse, her hair was disheveled and hung in strands about her apple cheeks and emerald eyes, and her ruby lips were smeared. One milky breast had managed to free itself, and the pert nipple stared at me as intently as her eyes did.

"What are your intentions with my daughter, whore?" she asked softly.

I gulped. "To not die."

She smiled thinly. "You're a very good survivalist. So was your mother. You two go about it differently, but the results are the same."

I tried not to look at the head on the shelf. "I sure hope not."

Julia actually laughed. It was a sweet laugh, like a mother's laugh, but I could hear the hatred corroding its soft edges. "You're funny. I see why Diamond likes you." She stood up, walked over to my cage, and opened it. I got on to my hands and knees and began to crawl back inside, only when I got there, it was already occupied. Julia nestled herself into the imprisoning confines and shut the latch behind her.

"Uh..." I droned stupidly.

She smiled bashfully. "I hope you don't mind. It looked so comfy in here." She held out her arms through the bars. "There's a pair of shackles in that chest over there. If you would please...."

I kept my gaze on Julia as I awkwardly walked to the chest. Upon opening it, I saw that it was filled with various torture devices. Reamers, calipers, needles, whips, flails, blades, and pinchers. I selected a pair of rusted iron shackles, then brought them to the Heat Bringer. At her beckoning smile, I cuffed her wrists outside of the cage.

"Ah," she sighed contentedly, and drooped against the bars in relaxation, "much better. Your mother often put me in a cage, you know. Not this cage, but one like it. She'd make me woof and beg like a dog, then she'd beat me like one too."

"Please don't talk about her."

Julia snorted. "You're hardly in a position to make requests."

"Don't talk about her."

Now she laughed. "You're in even less of a position to give me orders. Perhaps you're as crafty as the bitch who spawned you, but you can't carry the leash." She leered at me between the bars. "You're like me; much more suited for the cage. Sit down."

I promptly parked my ass on the floorboards. Julia scrutinized me from head to toe, her expression traversing between disgust and a strange interest. The latter disturbed me much more.

"After Diamond took control, I hated your mother, but I couldn't bring myself to kill her," Julia said. "Even after the seraph's gift was gone from her, I sought her guidance in a strange manner. She had a way of..." Julia furrowed her brow, trying to find the words, "...she had a way with sin. It was like she was the devil's ambassador to my court, and she exercised the demon in me. Truth be told, I was saddened to see she was dead."

"Ok," I muttered.

Julia just nodded as if I'd agreed with her. "There is a dichotomy to us all. The person we want to be, and the person we fear to be. These futures battle within ourselves, and if we ever wish to become the person we want to be, we must face who we fear to become. The Maternal Path is the righteous one, but the devil obfuscates it. Who we want to be and who we fear to become less clear. Tera made the path clear for me." Julia's eyes became dark. "Diamond shrouded it."

"Stop," I whispered, "I'm not your priestess."

She gave me a pitying smile. "God sent you to me for a reason. The mother dies, and the daughter takes her place. It's a very old sort of tale in the bible. You don't believe in the Holy Mother, do you?"

"I'm agnostic."

"You're a poor liar, is what you are," she snorted. "Your mother didn't believe either, and she fared well enough with me. Diamond openly ridicules the holy texts, and she's the one true prophet, apparently. If God is telling me anything, it is that I am to at least listen to the precepts of heretics. Whether or not I'm supposed to burn them alive afterward..." she tilted her head this way and that in a show of indecision, "...I'd say she leaves that up to me."

I shivered on the floor and huddled in my arms and legs. "What wisdom could I possibly give you?"

"The research you were conducting on Corruption; I understand you were the head of it."

"It was a collaborative effort. Diamond did most of the work."

"My daughter has told me what she can, and what she can is very little. Her mind was either fractured by what she endured, or she is hiding something from me."

"I don't know anything that she doesn't."

Julia nodded understandingly. "Then you're of no use to me."

"I had theories!" I said hastily. "Ideas that the others rejected. Ideas that..." I paused, and looked nervously at Julia, "...ideas that Lucilla was afraid of for what they would mean to you."

Julia touched her brow to the bars of her cage. "Tell me them."

"Swear on the Holy Mother that you won't hurt me or Brandon."

She smiled darkly. "I swear on the Holy Mother that I will cook Brandon alive in front of you if you don't tell me."

I swallowed, and whispered, "Diamond told you about the bibles in the astral plane."

She nodded.

"Well, I had this idea that—it was actually mostly Angela's idea—but um... there are stories in the Maternal Path that line up with things Diamond found in the astral plane...."

CORRUPTION

I watched Angela enter her Serenity, and wondered if it would be such a terrible risk to invite her into Diamond's realm. There were no portals she could use to get back to earth, for her realm was not tethered to the plane below. I could explain myself to her freely, I could bare all my secrets with the knowledge that they would soon die with her. Perhaps she would understand me then. Perhaps she would see me not as the evil manipulator, but as the savior I truly was. Perhaps we would have a long and interesting conversation about the ways of the universe, about morality, life, and death. Perhaps we would share a laugh or two, and perhaps we would create a small friendship in the time we had. Perhaps something else would happen. I touched the scars on my lips and looked away. No. Conversations and philosophy were abstractions of the mind, and they would cease to exist once I made the worlds whole. Once mankind's mind was liberated, no one would ever again ponder the machinations of the cosmos, nor the patterns of nature around them. They would not wonder upon the miracles of the world, for they would not know curiosity beyond their primal states. Eat, sleep, fuck, kill; these were the things they would know. Yes, that was freedom. That was happiness. That was all life ever needed; sentience was a curse, right?

I tore myself away from the bars of Diamond's gate and walked about her mind. The thoughts that sprouted from her soil were worrying me more by the hour. She was beginning to defy me out of principle. When I had compelled her to kill Justina, she had refused. When I had tried to make her kill the Life Giver, she ignored me completely. Brandon was as good as dead, but he was not dead yet. Oh, how I wanted him to suffer! I did not desire any of earth's children to feel pain, but him... I wanted him to become pain, and I did not know why. I did not know why that hatred ran so deeply within me, and I did not know why another emotion ran parallel to it. I dared not ruminate on that other emotion I felt, that unspeakable sense of... home. It was an artifact of Petranumen, something that had been carved right into her very soul, and it vexed me that I had to carry it after she was gone. If I could just....

The sound of screeching metal cut through the realm. I turned slowly around and stared at the box. It had creaked open on its own. Cautiously, I walked over to it, scanning the area around me. Xaya lounged carelessly in her treetop, and the center of the realm was empty. There was no way for Diamond to come while I was still here. I stepped before the grey iron monolith and shut the door. The latch clicked with a low clang. The door was as sturdy as it had ever been, and the locks were well-oiled and engaged. I inspected it for a long time, then turned back around. A low creak sounded from behind me. I stopped and slowly looked over my shoulder. The door had cracked open once more, and there was rust on the paneling.

"No," I whispered. "That's impossible."

DIAMOND

I winced at a sudden headache. It was sharp like a migraine, and I had to knead my temples to make it go away.

"Something wrong?" Brandon asked, studying me. The Life Giver was so emaciated he looked to be half a century older than he was, but his blue eyes were sharp as ever, and he was kicking the absolute crap out of me in checkers.

"No," I grumbled, and moved a piece to oppose his.

He double-jumped me, dropped his piece on my back row, and sneered. "King me."

JULIA

Diamond had ensured me that she had told me everything she remembered about her journey through the astral plane. Either she had lied to me, or she had selectively forgotten. When I had pressed her about the things she remembered in Corruption's realm, she claimed to have a headache, and would not answer me further. I did not know why I hadn't questioned Tera. Perhaps I did not want to know, but now I was ravenous.

"...so... um... that was when Hatred... or, I'm sorry, it was before that happened that Hatred—"

"Stop, Justina," I said gently. "Collect yourself. Now tell me exactly what she said to my daughter."

Justina squirmed in place, and anxiously brushed her hair behind her ear. She struggled to hold eye contact with me, and often directed her gaze to the floor in front of her instead. "So..." she restarted, clearing her throat, "...Hatred gave a bastardization of the sun hymnal. You know, 'Forever they will live as one—"