The Creators Ch. 19

She blinked away more dark tears. "I don't know."

"Think!" I hissed. "What do we know about her? She is an Earth Former's astral projection; she sired a child with the Life Giver and created the Heat Bringer."

"Did she?" Julia asked. "Why would fire come from rock and life? Fire is hatred. Hatred is fire. Life and earth are creations, but fire is the destroyer. What did the seraph write in Hatred's bible? On the second day, God created Hatred, for all that is Joy turns to dust in the end. The seraph can change the evolution of Sentients. The seraph can change the power of Creators."

"That doesn't make sense!"

"Does it not?" she prompted softly. "Her hatred echoes through eternity. It manifests itself as a counter to creation; an enemy of life and earth. But there is one element of creation missing, Justina. Why would Joy be fire? If the seraph must travel through the realm of her daughter to come to this plane—the realm of Hatred and fire—then why does she emerge from the water?"

"The Water Dancer!" I gasped. "The second day in the Maternal Bible is the creation of water!"

"Is it any wonder why she could not find refuge in my mind? She could find sameness with Willowbud. She could find love with Diamond. But me? I am just Hatred to her."

"Julia," I said urgently, squeezing her hands tightly. "There is a secret we don't know yet! She has a bible in her center! What does it say?!"

"Why would she have a bible in her center?" Julia sniffled. "The Holy Mother put the bibles there, and she would not need to pacify one of her angels."

"She's not an ang..." I trailed off, and a frown creased my lips. "She's not a Sentient. There is no bible in her center. On the third day, God created Wrath. On the second day, God created Hatred. On the first day... On the first day... who did God create on the first day?! Corruption is the most ancient one! Who put the goddamned bibles in there if... if... if..."

"Justina, why are you shaking?"

"The Maternal Path is the most ancient text known to man," I whispered. "Who is the author?"

"God, of course."

I swallowed at the knot that had formed in my throat, but it wouldn't budge. A thought played through my head, cycling tortuously on repeat, getting louder and louder until the inside of my skull pounded with it. The love in my holy mother's words. The love in MY holy mother's words. THE LOVE IN MY HOLY MOTHER'S WORDS. THE LOVE IN MY HOLY MOTHER'S WORDS.

"In the beginning, there were but two," I whispered. "The Holy Mother walked upon the earth, and the demon walked below it. The Maternal Bible, Chapter Four, page four. On the second day, the Holy Mother created water... the Holy Mother found great joy in the creation... She deigned that all newborns should be baptized with water, for it was the essence of life and new growth, and the holiest and most precious element that she created. For water could quench the fires of hatred, and water could make passable the divisions of canyons that separated her people... Between life and rock, water was the unifier. Chapter two, page two. On the first day, The Holy Mother created life... she birthed those that would carry her likeness... there were others that she birthed as well... These were the succubus and the incubus, twins of lust who shared the sin of their father. Chapter One, page one. A thousand years they are as one, like conjoined twins of the sun. Forever they will live as one, like two lovers in the sun. Shining from creation's birth, to hold a tether to the earth." I looked up at Julia, and barely spoke, "The love in my holy mother's words. Julia, who wrote the most ancient book?"

Julia stared blankly back at me. "The most ancient one."

The tears fell from her dead eyes as the sclera lightened to white.

CORRUPTION

The door was open. The black memories filtered out and wisped into the air like acrid smoke. I watched from my back, unable to move any longer. I could no longer feel my arms or legs, and my chest was gripped by a terrible chill. It dug its sharp fingernails into my lungs and heart, draining them of life. It was happening quickly now. The jungle around me began to recede. The wildflowers and thorned vines sank into the dark soil and provided richness for the grass and lilies to sprout. The snakes coiled upon themselves and went limp in the mud, and the bunnies reemerged from their hibernation to taste the honeysuckle once more. Xaya stared down at me, her eyes clearing and focusing, the intelligence returning to them. Behind her, the ancient wall she had once erected began to grow from the earth, dividing itself from the realm of my mother.

I turned my eyes away from her and looked at the astral sun. The perpetual eclipse seemed to wink at me as if telling a cosmic joke, but only Petranumen would ever know the punchline, and I wasn't her. I took my last rattling breath, and in that moment of finale, all I felt was terror. No peace, no resolution, not even a sensation of melancholy nostalgia. Just terror, and the inability to act upon it. The world began to dim. The sun darkened, the sky faded, and the last thing I saw before the end, was the outline of the monolithic iron box looming over me.

DIAMOND

It felt like someone was peeling away a layer of my brain. Agony split my head, fever drummed in my temples, but I could only sit there stupidly and stare with a slack jaw at the checkers board.

"Diamond?" a man queried softly. His voice seemed to come from another world, and it took me a few seconds to recognize that it came from the emaciated figure lying across from me. Brandon. And... Diamond was my name; yes, that was me, and I was playing a game. I looked back down at the checkers board. I had only one piece left, and he had two. Where had my king gone? There was only one place my piece could move, and it was against the side of the board, trapping it. Why did I have to move it there? What were the rules again? I place my finger atop the piece and moved it backward.

"You can't move like that," he said and pushed my piece back.

"Why not?" I mumbled.

"Because you can't go that way if you're not a king. You can only go forward."

I looked up at him confusedly. For some reason there were tears in my eyes, and I could not comprehend why I was drowning in such sorrow. "Why can't I go back?" I hissed.

"Because that's not how the game works," Brandon replied, and set his hand on mine. I looked up at him. Though his face was like a skull, he still managed a smile full of warmth. "You are going to lose, Diamond. It's all over, but that's OK. You can always play another game."

JULIA

I felt the vacancy of the hole Lucilla had left inside me. I felt the crushing realization of everything I'd done to the world, and to my daughter. But most of all, I felt the emptiness. There was a place in me that had been filled with love and hope, and that love and hope were named God. Corruption had infected it, filled it to the brim with her bile, and left it to rot inside me. But that rot was still something, and now, I was hollow. The emptiness gnawed within me, consuming what was left, taking my hatred, my grief, and my jealousy. Soon, there would be nothing at all.

"Do you really believe that is the truth?" I asked Justina. My voice was even and dead, seeming to come from somewhere else.

"Why else would she be leaving you?" Justina asked back. "Your bind is built on a lie. There is no other evidence you need."

I stared at my hands. The last markings were fading, leaving only the barest imprint on my flesh. The emptiness ate through my chest and guts, burrowing through parts of me that existed in another plane of existence; not this one, nor the next, but the place where my true self dwelt in the annals of God. In the empty halls of nothing. It was too much. It was far too much. A person who surrendered to depression could at least find solace at the end of a rope, but there was no solace here. There was nothing waiting for me at the end of the rope. Darkness. Oblivion. Nothing. I was alone. I had always been alone.

"It's a lie," I whispered.

Justina took my face in her hands. "Just because it's not true, doesn't make it a lie," she said softly. "If there is one thing I've learned in my stupid pursuit of knowledge, it is that facts and truth are not the same."

I looked up at her. "Then what is truth?"

"Love," she hissed, and tears cascaded down her cheeks. "It confounds me to no end, but that is what truth is! That is why you wore her markings on her flesh! Because ever since you were a child, you have loved the Holy Mother."

I blinked away a heavy tear. It splashed onto my chest and rolled before my heart. That was the only place left on my body that bore the patterns, and even those were fading.

"Love," I whispered, and looked up at Justina. "Truth."

She nodded and sniffled.

A smile broached my lips. "Faith."

CORRUPTION

The door slammed shut.

Interlude Two: New Earth

ANGELA

The astral plane had changed drastically. The jungle had faded away, giving space for nonsensical chaos. We walked through the palm lines of a giant hand, then the hand closed upon us and became a cave where the stalagmites sprouted batwings and flew into a red ocean. The red ocean flooded the cave, and I had to clutch Guilt's hand to keep from being washed away. The moment I made contact with her lifeless flesh, I became so consumed with regret that I immediately let go to resign myself to the fate I deserved, but she held me fast and dragged me through the madness as if she knew the way. By the time we reached her gate, the chaos had calmed, and the jungle had returned. She let go of my hand, and the nauseating pit of guilt in my stomach vanished.

"I am sorry that you had to endure my touch," she muttered as she inspected her gate. "No one should ever have to suffer through that, but you are not tethered, and the insanity would have taken you."

"Thanks."

"Do not ever be grateful to me, Serenity; I am only deserving of disgust."

"Yeah, whatever," I replied, and looked around at the dark jungle that surrounded us. "What the hell happened?"

Guilt tilted her head and looked up at the brightest star in the sky. "She is bound with love and melded with truth. If the love learns of the truth, the bond will be broken, and if the bond is broken, the meld will shatter. A meld is an agreement. The parasite must give something to the host, or the host will reject it. The Untethered One wished to hide the truth from her mother, for her mother is in love with a lie. It is a love very few people understand. It is not the love of romance, but the love of need." Guilt looked at me. "You understand that kind of love, Serenity. The Destroyer learned the truth, but not the whole of it. Corruption is not Petranumen. I am. It was that smallest of discrepancies that saved the bondage of their souls, and gave the Destroyer the denial she needed to fill the void of truth with faith."

"Uh... how about you reiterate that without being so fucking confusing. That all sounded super important."

Guilt opened her gate and gestured me inside. "I am obfuscating the truth on purpose. I have told you that I do not wish you to learn it. Come, I will take you back."

"Can't you just fucking tell me?"

Guilt's eyes wandered skyward once more. "She is weakened right now, but she will be strong again soon. If she sees you with me, she will risk everything to stop you."

"Oh?" I mused and looked up at the brightest star. "Hey!" I shouted and waved my arms. "Hey, asshole! I'm gonna find out all your dirty secrets! You better come down and stop me!"

"What are you doing?"

"Evening the odds for Willowbud," I growled, and flapped violently at the air. "Hey, did you hear me, bitch?! I'm gonna tell all the cool kids what a fucking loser you are!"

"I know I am a failure," Guilt muttered woefully.

"Not you! I mean—well, yeah you, I guess, but..." I waved at the sky for a few more seconds, then dropped my arms, and sighed. "Whatever. Just take me into your rape dungeon."

"This is not—"

"Let's just go."

I walked beneath the threshold. Gargoyles and grotesques of iron-faced women stared down at me; all of their faces shunned away as if I'd just discovered their most intimate sources of shame. I passed underneath them with Guilt behind me, and I entered blackness. There was no beam of light as Diamond had described in her adventures, though I supposed the realm of Corruption was long gone from this place. The darkness was complete, so thick that it seemed to add weight to the air before me. Only the ethereal light from my body gave illumination to this place, for Guilt's figure was naught but the opaque black that surrounded us. In the dim light of my aura, I saw her extend a finger forward, and with no other option, I followed the direction I was given.

We walked in silence, our footsteps echoing interminably in the void, becoming lower with distance until they were booming in the deep caverns of the abyss. We walked until a figure of stone stood before us, and there we stopped. The figure was crouched upon the floor, holding a book in her hands. Her auburn hair was casually tossed around her black antlers, and her mauve eyes were blinking in my light.

"Diamond?" I asked.

"She is a memory," Guilt said beside me. "One of the last I have. Come, we must—"

"Did you really think I was gonna do what you said?!" I snorted and turned back to the memory.

"I will expel you from my realm if you do not abide by our agreement. Please do not test me."

I glared at her over my shoulder. "We can make a deal."

"We already have a deal."

"You can have me."

Guilt paused and cocked her head. "What do you mean?"

"Right now the score is two gods plus a crazy astral bitch versus two gods with no crazy astral bitch—not counting me; I'm clearly the best crazy astral bitch, but unfortunately I can't hurt Corruption. You can. If I get my body back, you can hop in and meld with me."

She stared at me for a long time, expressionless and studious. "You do not know what you are sentencing yourself to. I cannot do it."

"Oh, yes you can. I know what you Sentient sluts want. You can't resist this big swinging brain I've got hanging between my ears."

Though her face remained impassive, there was a strange light to her eyes. It was the only time I'd ever seen anything akin to life in them. It wasn't hope, nor avarice, nor need... it was like a hunger, and it terrified me.

"We have a deal," she said softly.

I shuddered and gulped. "Alright, but only after I get back to earth. Now, tell me what's going on with Diamond here."

"A picture is worth a thousand words, but a memory is worth a million."

"Can you just fucking—"

"Watch."

I glowered at my soon-to-be master and looked back at the memory.

"Alright you bitch," the figure of Diamond sobbed, "let's see what lies you've told yourself!" She ripped open the book she had in her hands and began furiously flipping through the pages.

"It's not the lie I told myself," a drawling voice said from behind me. I turned around. Guilt was standing behind me—no, she was standing beside me. There was a woman who looked just like her standing behind me, but her hair was white, her flesh was peach, and her eyes burned with ivory light.

"It's the lie I told the world," she said softly, "I am the Holy Mother."

Diamond stared at the woman, then shrank back into the position she had been in before as if to reenact the scene for the next audience.

I blinked stupidly for a moment, then looked at Guilt. "Uh..." I droned for a moment, "...so... uh... well... um...."

She bowed her head in shame.

"Uh..." I droned a few more times, then swallowed. "So... yeah... I uh... I guess I can skip church on Sundays then, huh?"

She nodded and wiped away a tear.

"Cool-cool-cool," I said, shaking all over. "Hey, is it okay if I freak out for a little bit?"

"Take as long as you need."

Part Three: Truth or Faith

JUSTINA

The blackness had returned to Julia's patterns and eyes. She shuddered with the pleasure of it and bowed her head as her hips rolled lasciviously behind her.

"She tests me, she tests me, she tests me," she hissed as if in the throes of lust, bending her body in orgasmic delight with her hands shackled between the bars of her cage. Her crimson hair curtained her face as she ground her legs together, and moaned with more craven lechery than I ever had. "All these tests, all these tests, all these tests... and now I know why. Now I know why. Now I know why." Her hands clenched to fists, and she began to sob in ecstasy, her back heaving, her chest ballooning and caving with every breath. "Now I know why!" she whimpered.

"W-w-w-why?!" I stammered.

"In the beginning there were but two," she recited with a hiss. "The Holy Mother walked upon the earth, and the demon walked below it. She was virginal and pure of sin, and he was odious and filled to the brim. In the dark of the night, he crawled up the ladders of the cosmos and snuck past the seraphim. He found her alone in her chambers, and he gazed upon beauty he was never meant to behold. She awoke from her slumber, and because she was innocent and good, she smiled upon the demon. He had never felt such unfettered love before; he did not know what to do with it. In his confusion and rage, he forced his evil inside of her and fertilized the seed of man." She looked up at me from between her strands of hair, her black eyes manic and pouring with tears. "Hatred, Greed, and Sorrow; how had I not seen it? That is the seed of man, Justina. Vitanimus... you know him by a different name... and from that rape, what came forth? Life! The Life Giver, our father, our demon!"

"No, NO, NO!" I screamed. "We were so close, Julia! Stay with me! Stay—"

"Do not call me that," Julia hissed, pointing a quivering finger at me. "I am not Julia. I am not Sister Julia. I am Mother Julia, the head of all orders of angels, the womb that births Creators, the bride of GOD!"

She melted through her cage like it was butter, and pounced on me. I landed flat on my back, my head struck the wood, and my swimming vision was filled with a cute diamond-freckled face, her apple cheeks peeled back to expose her skeletal grin, her black eyes raging with euphoric mania.

"DON'T KILL ME!" I screamed.

"Kill you?" she snarled. "KILL YOU?! Oh, Justina, Justina, Justina; how could I kill the woman who has brought me more joy than I have ever known?" she stroked my face possessively, her fingers palsying uncontrollably. "You will stay with me, diminutive bird. You will be my console, my priestess, my squirming little whore. Oh, yes, yes, yes, it is clear to me now that the line of Autumnsong is a blessed one. The line of Autumnsong is... why, it is the Maternal Path itself! First Flora who besought God to her womb, then Willowbud who became the deliverer, then Tera who guided my righteousness, and finally, you!" She stroked the hair from my face, staring into my very soul with her smoldering lenses. "I see it all so clearly now. The devil knew the threat your line posed; he cursed Willowbud with transgenderism, he turned you and your mother into abominations, but God's truth still shown through!" She touched brows with me. "She tried to hide it from me, my beloved did. She was ashamed of what had been done to her—what had been done to us all, her children. The devil had corrupted even the holiest of her lines, but you, my messenger; you, the heretic and nonbeliever; you showed me the truth!"

"No," I whimpered, "I didn't."