The Creators: Epilogue

"There needs to be some kind of system."

Petranumen waved at the vast rotating universe. "This is the system. Change it however you want, but the one thing I will never agree to are laws. I know how much you need things to be in control, but the mind should always be uncaged."

Justina stayed quiet for a long time. "We need angels."

"What?"

"I am going to give some of my power to people whose judgment I trust, and you are going to do the same."

"Why?"

"Because people aren't just wild animals, Petra!" Justina growled. "And even wild animals have a hierarchy! You won't let me rule, fine, but I won't let you turn the afterlife into pure anarchy! Some people thrive in disorder, some people thrive in order, and some people need to figure out what works for them. So, we need... realms."

Petranumen's lip curled. "I did not spend my entire existence trying to unite this plane just to divide it again."

"It will divide itself. People sort themselves naturally, and if they're left to their own devices, they'll sort themselves to extremity. Imagine living forever in misery because you have nowhere else to go."

"It's not too hard for me to imagine," Petranumen muttered, "but I do not see how angels ruling realms solve the problem."

"We create broad divisions to avoid narrow tribes. Realms of order and realms of disorder. Realms of virtue and realms of sin." Justina drew a circle before her and quartered it. "Virtuous disorder and order on one side; sinful disorder and order on the other."

"Freedom and Chaos; Heaven and Hell. Unity through separation..." Petranumen shook her head and laughed. "You are a marvel, Vitanimus. I forget how wise you can... sorry."

"That's OK," Justina smiled.

Petranumen blushed and adjusted her hair nervously. "Well," she cleared her throat, "we have four broad ethe and serendipitously, we have four ex-Creators."

"I didn't fucking volunteer!" I growled from behind them.

They looked back at me like they both forgot I was there.

"Hmm..." Justina mused, studying me, "...disorderly virtue, or disorderly sin?"

"Most certainly Chaos," Petranumen smirked at me.

"I'm retired," I growled. "I just want to sit on a porch somewhere, and drink a goddamned beer!"

"It sounds to me like you don't care what anyone else does at all," Justina chuckled. "Sort of like an absentee brothel owner. Chaos it is."

And with that, my flesh illuminated in white light, and I became patterned with symbols of debauchery. Women and men in various stages of lust, poker chips and roulette wheels, daggers, and brass knuckles all swam in flux about my caramel skin like energetic tattoos. I hated that I liked how it looked.

"OK, that's one for me," Justina said and turned to Petranumen. "I'm going to find Brandon. You've got Diamond and Julia."

"I sincerely doubt they'll be happy to see me."

"No one's happy to see you," I grumbled.

Justina gave me an irritated look that I didn't at all deserve. "On second thought, we'll go together."

"Before you do anything, you should talk to our parents," Petranumen pointed down the bridge at the multitude of dead. "They've been waiting for some answers."

"I suppose you're right," Justina said, and a rapid stream of copies flew out of her. She must've partitioned herself a million different times in a second, for the number of Justinas matched the number of dead standing on the bridge. They floated across the expanse and addressed each soul individually. The original Justina--if there even was an 'original'--floated off by herself, and began micromanaging the orbits of the comets and moons that floated about the bridge. Petranumen watched her paramour like she'd be lost if her eyes left her.

"So, Humpty-Dumpty's back together again," I growled at her. "The mask, the mind, and the soul; just exactly who the fuck are you?"

"To you, Willowbud?" she asked. "To you, I'm the devil herself, and I doubt I'll ever be anything else."

"And what am I to you? Just another idiot in a long list of idiots?"

She took her eyes off Justina and looked at me. "When Julia bound with me, all my scars were healed. All, but two." She touched the mark on her ribs, then the marks on her lips. "I didn't even remember you when we met in Depression, but our connection had transcended memory. When Julia tried to pass my gift to you, you couldn't take it in. It wasn't astral power that let you resist me--Guilt herself couldn't resist me at that point. I had all the astral power in the world, and yet, you and Justina resisted me. So you are special to me, Willowbud, because these scars you've left aren't just here," she pointed to the spiritual plane, "they are there too."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" I snarled.

"I don't know," she said, "but it means very much to me."

BRANDON

I had been drifting listlessly through a white void. Now I was in a beautiful alpine valley. The sky was a deep summer blue, and though it was midday, there was no sun. The spiritual plane gave light to this beautiful paradisial hideaway and shimmered off the long thin line that bisected the sky. The bridge must've been somewhere in space, for its diameter had been reduced to a needle's width by distance. I guessed the world now surrounded it, for the landscape around me sloped away like the inner walls of a great cylinder. I had to guess, for I could not see the other side, but what I could see was breathtaking. The mountains that created this secluded valley were part of a chain that was several times longer than the Gratoran Wall, for I could see them continuing up the bow of the world until they disappeared into the haze of distance. Even from this mountaintop perspective, I could only view perhaps a single radian arc of the circumference, but that arc was a thousand miles. This enormity was indescribable. There were moons within it, each of them several hundred miles across, and they were clothed in seas and foliage. Comets raced across the bridge and burned away in the atmosphere, catching the persistent light of the spiritual plane which was so far away that it appeared smaller than the sun.

"Holy shit," I whispered. "Justina."

"Yeah..." Angela gasped.

We just stared up at it for a long time. The wind rustled through the valley of wildflowers, and the bees buzzed docilely amongst them. I could feel a pair of eyes looking at me, and I turned to see Angela had stopped looking up. She seemed hungry.

A second later, I was on my back, her tongue was in my mouth, and her tight heat was sucking me into her as her hips pounded me into the ground. Sweat ran down her smooth flesh like dew as she grunted and gasped her feminine tenors into my ear, each note a symphony of exertion. Her succulent cheeks clapped behind her in a fervent rhythm, her breasts molded into my chest to join our combative nipples, and her fingers knitted into my hair to pull my face into hers, to taste the sweet desperation of her love.

After an hour, I was sapped of all bodily fluids. I collapsed into the grass next to my satisfied sister, and let out a long slow breath of pure bliss.

"Bravo!" cheered the applauding almighty God, which would've once been a sentence fit for my most vain fantasies.

"You could've joined in," Angela said between heaving breaths.

"Seemed like a private moment," Justina replied from her viewing perch atop the hill.

"You and I have private moments?" Angela laughed.

"You do now."

I propped myself up on my elbows. "She's watching us, isn't she?"

"Where ever I am, she is."

"Ew," Angela sniffed.

Justina scowled at my sister. "You don't have to like her, but try to keep an open mind."

"I think I'll keep my mind welded shut around that snooping bitch."

"Angela," Justina growled, "I am asking you as your best friend."

"Don't bother, Love," Petranumen sighed behind us. "This one has always mistaken having open legs for an open mind."

We whipped our heads around to see her lounging in the grass.

"YOU!" Angela snarled.

Petranumen casually twirled a flower. "One would think that a woman who fucks her brother wouldn't be too judgmental."

"Oh, I'm judgmental, is that it?!" Angela jumped to her feet. "I'm so sorry for judging you! How unfair of me!"

Petranumen sniffed the flower. "Although despite her close-mindedness, I found her realm quite inviting. All of the other Tethered Ones used their immense intelligence to create nearly impenetrable locks on their gates; Angela had a wooden latch."

"Angela," I said softly as her face turned red, "don't take the bait."

"And when I walked into that cute little realm," Petranumen pontificated with a smile, leveling her eyes on my sister, "I was surprised to see that the woman known as 'Serenity' had nothing in her mind but petty jealousy and a long list of terrible comebacks." She tossed the flower to my sister's feet. "Well, Angela? After all those hypothetical arguments you won in the mirror, surely you have something clever to say, but I suppose it was easy to win against such a weak opponent."

Angela burst into flames with a shriek of rage, and I decided that the best course of action was to think myself into the shape of a snake, and quietly slither away from the situation.

"You can't be hurt unless you want to be hurt," Justina said when I coiled next to her. "Everyone has control over their own minds here. You don't need to run away."

"Am I about to hear a lecture on avoiding confrontation?" I asked, watching Angela launch a firestorm at Petranumen, who promptly donned sunglasses and a bikini, and began spinning in the flames like a tanning rotisserie chicken.

"You and Angela could both use that lecture for opposite reasons," Justina sighed.

"Why is Petranumen doing this?"

"Because Angela is my best friend and I'll be spending a lot of time with her." Justina plucked a flower from the ground and examined it disinterestedly as Angela's wrathful screams sounded in the background. "I told Petranumen the best way to make amends with Angela was to piss her off as much as possible."

I looked up to see Petranumen passionately riding a mental projection of me. Angela was across from her, furiously fucking a mental projection of Joy's decapitated head.

"So they'll be good friends soon," Justina chuckled. "Anyway, I didn't just come down here to watch you and Angela have sex; that was half the reason. The other half was to offer you a job."

"A job?" I groaned. "There's work in the afterlife?"

"I'm actually leaning on your laziness," she smirked. "This quarter of the astral plane will belong to you. Make it the kind of afterlife you want. A bunch of hippies lounging around having stinky hippie sex and taking all the drugs. Their only idea of obligation is drum circle practice."

I gave her a sideways look. "What if that's not the kind of afterlife I want? What if I want to make great marble cities with pearly gates?"

"Sure. You'll have to plan out the plumbing, design the transportation system, hire administrators, manage a bureaucracy, create zoning ordinances--"

"I get the point. You're right." I scratched my head and looked around. "A quarter of the astral plane, huh? Just how many square miles is that?"

"About a billion."

"Cool. How many square miles is the earth?"

"Two-hundred million."

"So you're seeing the problem."

"I think you're just not seeing the solution," Justina said. "As one of my angels--"

"Angels?"

"Call yourself whatever you want. As one of my friends, the only limits you have are the ones you impose upon yourself. In this realm of Freedom, I don't see why there should be any."

"What if I refuse?"

She rested her hand over mine compassionately. "Then we can both just sit here for a moment and pretend you have a choice. There," she grinned, and patted my hand, "wasn't it fun to pretend?"

My brows went up. "Ok, God."

"See you around, Brandon," she winked and was gone. Petranumen also disappeared, and Angela ceased her simulation of defecating in Joy's mouth.

I looked down at my body to see it was tattooed with moving patterns of flora and fauna, and I let out a sigh. I just wanted a day off.

DIAMOND

Ever since I'd first looked up at the night sky, I'd wanted a telescope. Now I had two. They were my eyes. I was on a tropical island somewhere in the middle of a vast calm ocean. Lying in the soft white sand, I eased my hands behind my head, and just marveled at the sights above me. Thousands of comets and moons orbited the gargantuan bridge, and even with telescopic eyes, I could not see the ends of it. The spiritual realm was just a distant glow, and the physical realm was an infinite pane of glass with which to view the cosmos we'd left behind. I could see the other side of the world, however. What I saw were oceans more expansive than any on earth, and continents several times larger than Balamora. There were jungles, plains, forests, deserts, and every other biome imaginable, but what struck me as odd in this plane of oddities was that the world seemed to be partitioned into quarters along the plane of the bridge. There wasn't a wall that divided it, but the natural formations of the oceans and continents made an obvious division.

I focused my vision on the partition thousands of miles diagonal to me and saw millions of little white lights moving like lightning bugs across the landscapes. Where ever they went, they changed the work of God. The jungles became great forests of towering mushrooms taller than mountains, the plains became fields of marijuana, the deserts were made of cocaine, the rivers ran with beer, the lakes were dark with whisky, and the oceans were vast basins of fine wine. I was worried that Brandon would terraform the whole quadrant into a teenager's absurd fever-dream, but thankfully he scaled himself back. He returned much of the landscape to its natural beauty and scattered his delights across it. Instead of a forest of mountainous psychedelic mushrooms, the enormous fungi were spread out to canopy natural pine stands and jungles. Instead of oceans of wine, there were a few babbling streams beside quaint peninsulas and peaceful meadows. The cocaine sand was situated around oases instead of comprising the entire desert, and the beer ran down waterfalls instead of taking the entire river. A realm of Freedom needed to be explored so that one never knew what was right beyond the corner, and excess could become boring very fast. For a place to be paradise, it needed to be both familiar and bizarre. I postulated that it was Angela who had made him correct the world.

At some point, Brandon must've realized that there would be children there too, for he made islands of candy and vast jungle-gyms in the treetops. He created enormous cave networks filled with goodies and delights that the youth could scramble in until they were tired, at which point an exit would lead them to a peaceful meadow for relaxation and rejuvenation.

There was fauna in this world, and it ranged from the normal to the bizarre. Deer, elk, beavers, and docile bears comingled with gentle behemoths and hybrids of every species. I saw a platypus the size of a city swim down the bay, and the sky was populated with flying whales. For the carnivorously inclined who were too lazy to hunt, Brandon introduced walking slabs of meat. For those who weren't so blood-thirsty, there were orchards, mangroves, and vast gardens everywhere. Every place someone walked in this world, they would have a need or desire attended to, but what was conspicuously missing from this place was any sign of civilization. No roads, bridges, or manmade shelters. This vast place was meant to be discovered by the traveler, and it would take countless lifetimes to find all of the wonders within.

I sighed in wonderment and turned my binocular vision to the quadrant directly above me. This was also a realm of disorder, but unlike Brandon's realm, this one was filled with sharp edges. The landscapes were brutal and savage. Vast deserts, dark forests, sheer cliffs, immense volcanoes, torrential oceans, and treacherous mountain passes. Like Brandon's realm, the land leant itself to epic openness and mysterious confines, but the wide sweeping plains were the hunting grounds of enormous dragons and colossuses, and the dark confines were traps for giant spiders and centipedes. Yes, there were many savage beasts in this realm, but the true monsters would be those who chose to live in it. While Brandon's realm likely had no rules at all, I suspected that Willowbud's actually had a few. No magical astral trickery, no limitless expression of the mind. In there, you would be as you were when you were alive, and just like when you were alive, there would only be one way out. I supposed in that regard, there would be certain freedoms one could enjoy in Willowbud's realm that could not be found in Brandon's. I understood why people would choose to go there. I understood it intimately.

"I'm glad I could give you that understanding," Petranumen said beside me, staring up with binoculars. "Much like that realm, you are one of contrast. One of the brightest and kindest minds I've ever known, and one of the vilest I've ever melded with."

My telescopic eyes retracted and I turned to her. "You know, when I was behind the astral sun and I'd forgotten everything about myself, I was happier than I'd been since this all started. But little by little, I remembered more of who I was. I could pretend to be the old me when I thought the universe was going to end; it was easy then. Now I'm staring at eternity, and I can't hide what you did to me."

She put down her binoculars and smiled wryly at me. "Ah yes, forgetting is such sweet freedom, is it not? I suppose I should thank you for tearing my mind right out of me."

I narrowed my eyes. "I'm not going to apologize for what I did to you. Mom was dying and there was only one way to save her."

She shrugged. "The universe put you in an impossible situation and you made an impossible choice. I've never blamed any of my parents for the choices they made."

"The universe," I snorted and kicked at the sand. "Well, where is the lady of the hour?"

"I'm also not apologizing," Justina said from my other side. "I accept no blame for Vitanimus, so I won't blame you for my mother or any of the... other things you did to me."

I tried to look at her, but I couldn't. "I still did it. All of it."

"I said I don't blame--"

"Please stop," I said, letting out a tense breath. "We are not blameless. None of us are."

"What do you want from me, Diamond? To forgive you or to ask for forgiveness?"

"Neither. We're even. When I first met you, I thought I saw someone just like me. A nerdy little sheltered girl who spent too much time with Mommy, but all of it was calculated. Maybe not by you, but because of you. All so that you could get me in a room alone and send me to the astral plane. All so that I wouldn't be there for Mom when she needed me. So yes, I took your mom from you, but you did the same. When I came back to Drastin, she wasn't my mom anymore."

"Diamond--"

"Please go," I whispered, closing my eyes. When I opened them, she was gone.

"I was surprised to find you alone," Petranumen said.

"Why is that a surprise?" I muttered. "Mom chose you over me twice. Who am I to everyone else? Just that gleeful little psycho."

"Lucilla--"

"Aunt Lucilla didn't see what I did!" A tear slipped down my cheek. "You're the only one who really knows me."

She put her hand on my shoulder, and I wilted into her embrace. I didn't want to weep into her chest, but I couldn't stop myself.

"You're wrong about your mother," Petranumen whispered. "She didn't change; that was who she always was. Lucilla did all the living and growing for the both of them, and without her, what was left? An orphaned child longing for her mother's breast, incapable of truly loving anyone else. That was the darkness I found in her. The darkness I found in you was quite different." She opened her hand, and a bright light illuminated from it. "Justina wants me to give this to you. She thinks you'll create a realm of virtue and order, but I don't think that's true."