The Creators: Epilogue

"What do you mean?"

Petranumen looked up at the realms of disorder above us. "When I was with Willowbud, she cared very much about her reputation, but she let Astrid have all the glory. She enjoys throwing people to the mob and seeing how they grow, so her realm is made for those who truly want to understand who they are in relation to others. I never spent any time in Brandon's mind, but his ethos is clear. He doesn't care what anyone does, just so long as they don't hurt anyone else. The point I'm making is that these realms of disorder are about the people within them, and the realms of order will be about the person who rules them. Your mother doesn't want people to love her; she wants them to follow her. You detested this in her, so you did whatever you could to throw a wrench in it, but you never really assumed leadership. I wonder what would've happened if you had?"

"Petranumen, what are you saying?"

She smiled and squeezed my shoulder. "Of all the Creators, you are the most like me. I wanted everyone to love me. When I wrote the Maternal Path, I made myself the benevolent and kind Holy Mother, and Vitanimus the wicked devil of temptation, but I was the one who loved humanity for all its darkness, and he was the one who wanted to change it. Your mother has a vision for how a heavenly society should be, but God is distant and judgmental. The devil is loved by all her followers."

Petranumen placed the light into my hand, and my body illuminated with patterns. Chains, shackles, ropes, and blades all moved about me in a knotwork of elegant torture. It felt... wrong.

"This isn't me," I muttered. "I don't want to hurt people."

"Then how will you ever love them?" Petranumen laughed, and then she was gone.

JULIA

I was naked. I hadn't donned clothing in months, but this was the first time I felt truly naked. The black veil I'd worn as armor was gone, and beneath it was not flesh, but the exposed fat and organs of a flayed woman salted by the memories of what I'd done. But the worst part of it all, somehow, was that I had been right. I had been fighting for the kingdom of heaven, and now it was here. Only, I was not the harbinger of the rapture. After all this time, I was just another vessel.

"There are millions of people on that bridge," Lucilla whispered to me, holding me from behind. "To them, you were the rapture. You came down with your fire, and you sent them to heaven."

"What about the rest?" I whispered. We were in a dark cave at the edge of some vast paradisial field. Outside, the wind swept the wheat across the convex plane of heaven, an image that looked like an ocean of gold billowing gently in a great basin, but I would not see it. I belonged in this cave.

"What about the rest? Hmm..." Lucilla mused, "...well, they're fucking dead, Julia, so who gives a fuck?"

"Is that how you see it?!" I hissed. "I promised them paradise and then stole everything from them!"

"And what do they know of it? Do you think they feel cheated? They feel nothing. They're not here to tell you you're evil. The only people who are here, are the ones who see that your promise was true, and they love you."

"I didn't do it for their love!" I snarled. "I did it because I thought I was RIGHT!"

"And you were right--to them. The only person you need to convince now is you."

"Convince myself of a lie?" I snorted. "I suppose I've been doing that my whole fucking life."

"I don't think the Maternal Bible was a lie. I think... I think it was just a different kind of truth."

"No, no, no. There is only what happened and what is. There is nothing else." I pulled my knees closer to myself. "I understand that now."

"And what happened? You were taken by the soul of the Holy Mother, you brought her to the Holy Father, the planes were united, and heaven was created. You did the very thing--"

"THAT'S NOT HOW IT HAPPENED!" I screamed. "I killed my parents, I killed Passion, I killed billions, I KILLED MY DAUGHTER!" I caught my breath in my throat. "And after all that killing, what did I do? I crawled away in my mind like a coward while the others brought the bridge together. I nearly ruined everything, and all those people I betrayed had to save us." I buried my face in my hands. "You were right to leave me on that mountain, Lucilla. You should've left me there forever."

She let out a long breath into my hair. "Julia... I'm done sugarcoating this for you. You are quite possibly the worst person that has ever lived. You twist your sense of morality so that it seems selfless without realizing that it is the most selfish thing imaginable. You've gotten so good at it that you can adjust it for literally every situation and make yourself seem like the martyr. And do you know why you do it? Because it allows you to justify yourself. Because if you feel like it's not selfish, then it must be good!"

"You're right!" I sobbed.

"No, fuck you!" Lucilla growled. "This is exactly what I'm talking about! Even now you're wallowing in your self-serving misery! For who? Who are you sacrificing for, Julia?! You, you, you, YOU! If we peel back all the layers of bullshit, what do we find?! It wasn't that you killed your parents; it was that you giggled afterward. That's what has haunted you. Not the act of murdering your fucking parents! No, it was how you felt about it! And so what did you do? You latched onto a story written by someone just as delusional as you. Intentions supersede actions, faith supersedes fact, and you can commit any atrocity you want as long as you feel the proper emotion. Hell, you didn't even feel bad about it in the end; you finally thought your genocide was in the reward stage of your martyrdom."

"So then what do you want from me?!" I snarled, snot dripping on my lips. "My daughter hates me, my god abandoned me, I have no one, so tell me why you're still here!"

"You want to know?!" she snarled back. "I'll fucking tell you why Julia. Because I'm your biggest fucking project. I'm the sinner you could spend your life trying to fix. I was the one you could look down on! And I'd leave right now if I could convince myself that you're as evil as I know you are, but you bound with me and you stayed with me so I know even under EVERYTHING, YOU REALLY LOVE ME!" She took a near-hysteric breath, and let it out through my hair. "I'm not a good person either, Julia," she whispered. "I laughed when you killed Passion, I wanted to drown Diamond in the river the first time I met her, but somehow, someway, all that pseudo-moralistic bullshit you preach got to me, and it made me better. So it never fucking mattered to me what was true. All that mattered to me is what was real, and what you and I have is real. Your God is gone, Julia. I'm the only one who gives a fuck about you anymore."

"Then what do you want from me?" I whispered again. "What do I do, Lucilla?"

She paused for a long time. "I don't know. Just stay with me."

"I have a few suggestions," Justina said from the mouth of the cave.

I curled into Lucilla's protective hold.

"Leave us alone, Justina," Lucilla said firmly.

Justina rolled her eyes and created a projection of energy in front of us. It was a box made of rows and columns of symbols I didn't recognize. There must've been millions of them.

"This is a behavior matrix," Justina explained. "Specifically, this is your behavior matrix, Julia. It can be used to predict what you will do, how you will do it, and when you will do it. It can do all of this because this matrix explains why you will do it. This is what Vitanimus used to predict your life, and you followed it to perfection. So here it is, Julia: your Maternal Path." She selected a symbol at the very bottom corner. "And this is the end. It happened earlier this morning when you died at ten-thirty-one."

Justina brought her hands together, and the entire matrix collapsed. "You made every choice, but you did not get to choose who you are. None of us do. Our experiences shape us, but we are born unique. And so, your path was charted, and the universe conformed around it. What if we change the path?"

She opened her hands, and the matrix appeared again. She selected a symbol in one of the upper columns and changed it. All of the symbols to the right and down changed with it. "In this universe, your father isn't a drunk, and so you don't kill your parents. You learn of your powers when a blizzard caves your house in at the age of nine. Your parents are freezing to death, but you're fine. You don't understand why, but you know you have to do something. The stress triggers your powers, and you save them. Knowing that the emperor will find you eventually, your parents pack their meager belongings, and you all head south to Grundinar. Your mother teaches you how to find inner peace through the Maternal Path, and you learn how to control your powers. Your family settles in a remote human village at the southern tip of Grundinar. You grow up in seclusion and secrecy. When you're of age, you join the sisterhood of the Maternal Order."

She selected another symbol, and it spun beneath her palm.

"The world plays out much the same. Brandon, Angela, my mother, and I travel to Drastin. We meet Willowbud, Astrid, and Corruption. Brandon and Willowbud start a relationship, but you don't come to interrupt it. A year later, Willowbud catches Brandon making a body for his sister, and she murders him. Angela becomes Silence. My mother and I attempt to flee, but Astrid hunts us down and butchers us. In the east, Princess Lucilla Flitari is executed by her father for failing to produce a Heat Bringer from the seven hundred elves. All of the elven girls are put to the torch, and all of them die screaming before the horrified populous. A rebellion breaks out, and the elven empire dissolves in a day. The emperor's head is paraded through the palace that night. In Arbortus, arch-matriarch Flora Autumnsong dies of old age. Diamond incubates in Passion's womb, and Passion waits, wondering why you haven't come like the incubus said you would."

Justina drew a path down a row of symbols. "Three years pass. Astrid is killed in the Pit by a man named 'Skull.' Willowbud doesn't really care. The long-term effects of Corruption are beginning to take their toll on her, and now that her adult brain is fully developed, it begins to rot. She becomes a reclusive drug addict and an alcoholic. She never once reveals her powers, as no one has ever compelled her to. She still follows her father's cautionary words even after all this time, though the deeper truth is that she never really cared about being a Creator. A year later, she dies of an overdose. Somewhere in the astral plane, Petranumen's realm collapses into Guilt."

Justina highlighted another symbol. "And here you are, Julia, now in your mid-twenties. The other Creators are dead, and no one even knew they existed. Meanwhile, you've been living a life of peace and normalcy in the abbot. Every day passes just like every other. Ten years go by, and your youth is fading. Ten more years go by, and you've achieved the status of 'Mother Gendian.' Twenty years pass. You're now the Mother Superior of the Grundinar archdiocese. The king himself often seeks your religious council, and you've presided over weddings and funerals of the most powerful people in the world. Twenty more years pass. You're too old to perform your duties, and you step down. Another twenty years, and you're in hospice. You're so wracked with dementia that you don't even remember who you are. Your power has faded so much that you couldn't even light a candle, but you never used it anyway. You die surrounded by sisters of the Maternal Order, and they put you to the pyre the next day. Your flesh burns for the first and last time."

Justina collapsed the matrix and looked at me. "By all metrics, you were a good woman in this reality, Julia. You never lusted, raped, tortured, or killed. You tended to the sick, you performed sacrament, and you gave all glory to God, confident that you would be rewarded for your sacrifice in heaven. You were not. There is no heaven in this universe. Everyone you did not kill in this universe died anyway, and nothing was waiting for them after. All the generations that followed lived, died, and vanished into nothingness. Billions upon billions--orders of magnitude more than you would ever kill--all of them lost forever. All because Julia Gendian was a good woman."

"They say that good is the enemy of great," the Holy Mother mused, lounging against the mouth of the cave. "What good is goodness if it gets in the way of greatness? I always said there's only one evil, but perhaps I was wrong."

Justina looked back at the Holy Mother, nodded, then vanished. The Holy Mother stood up from the threshold and beckoned to us. "Come into the light. I need to show you something."

Lucilla stood up behind me and pulled me to my feet. We walked hand in hand to the entrance and were bathed in the heavenly light.

"Do you see that?" The Holy Mother asked, pointing to the arc of the world above us. "That is the realm of Freedom. And there," she pointed diagonally to a place too far to see, "that is the realm of Chaos. And there," she pointed to the arc of the world across from us, though it was also too far to see, "that is the realm of Hell. This will be the realm of Heaven, and it needs a god." She turned and smiled at me. "All your life, you've envisioned it. The truth is what we make of it; Julia, it always was with us. It was why I bound to you." She put her hand on my chest, and light poured from it. "Go fulfill my promise," she whispered, "oh Holy Mother."

JUSTINA

I collapsed into bed and let out a long breath.

"Holy shit, this is exhausting," I muttered into my hands. "If I knew I'd have to keep playing therapist to those drama-queens after I was dead, maybe I would've let the bridge collapse."

"I actually find it rather invigorating," Petra chuckled, crawling into bed next to me. "Though I almost fell asleep when you gave that math presentation to Julia."

"It was all bullshit anyway," I snorted. "Julia becomes a murderous psychopath in every reality except the one where she's miscarried."

"Yes, and giving a man as complacent as Brandon any kind of long-term responsibility is a recipe for disaster." Petra lit up a cigarette and sighed when the smoke billowed out. "The only one I truly have any faith in is Diamond. We could've chosen different people. To say our angels are flawed would be a gross understatement."

"Everyone's flawed, and no one else has experience wielding that kind of power." I took the cigarette from Petra's hands. "You promote the stock-boy to a manager and it gets to his head. Imagine promoting a nobody to godhood."

"Yes..." Petra said slyly, plucking the cigarette from my lips, "...imagine that."

I rolled my eyes and looked out the window. My millions of projections were busy introducing the dead to the afterlife, answering their questions, and sorting them into realms. I looked forward to the day when I didn't have to tell them that their loved ones had died too soon. So many widows, widowers, orphans, and parents begging me with tearful eyes to bring them back, and me--the supposed God--having to explain to them that I couldn't. It was too much for my soul to take, so I let my partitioned mind do it.

"Petra," I asked, "do you believe in God?"

She clicked her tongue contemplatively. "If there is one, then he's probably asked himself that same question."

"Shit," I muttered, "I was thinking about praying, but I wouldn't want to bother him."

"That's why I diverted all mortal thoughts right into the volcanoes."

"If anyone invents something interesting, send me the details."

"That would require me to sort, which would require me to do work." She eased back into the bedding, and let out a plume of smoke. "I'm taking an epoch-long sabbatical."

"Oh, so I have to do everything?"

She pouted her lips. "But you're so good at it."

I chuckled and brushed my thumb along those lips. "I don't know why I love you."

"I'll show you." Her featureless eyes glinted impishly, and she wrapped her mouth around my thumb. I slid my fingers along her cheek and cupped her about the jaw, then slowly pulled my thumb from her pursed hold and laid it across her lips as though to silence her.

"Petra," I whispered, "I don't know why I love you."

She let out a sigh. "I was hoping I could delay this conversation until after the sex."

"I'm a succubus; it wouldn't have made a difference." I retracted my hand and sat upright in the bed across from her. She drew herself to her knees and laid her hands demurely in her lap. I could tell by her posture that she was uncomfortable, but I didn't need to see it to understand it. Our minds were joined across planes of existence, entwined by the binding of our very souls. It was a far deeper connection than Angela and I had ever shared. For all intents and purposes, Petranumen and I were a single mental entity--there was no need to have a conversation at all--and yet, we maintained a separation, and neither of us knew why.

"You first," she whispered.

I cleared my throat and arranged my thoughts. "Um... how do I put this... for the last three months, I have been walking a tightrope. The only way I could deal with the insanity in my life was to simply stare forward and keep on walking. Now, it's all over, but I'm not off the tightrope, and I'm afraid of what will happen if I finally look down. Petra..." I rubbed my shoulder, "...you are that tightrope. From the moment I met Willowbud in that brothel, to the moment we bound, you have been the source of my suffering."

"You have been the source of my suffering for far, far longer."

"I killed that part of me."

"No, you didn't. The part of you that made me suffer was the part I loved. The part you killed was a stranger to me. If we're being honest with each other--and we cannot lie any longer--then the truth is that I didn't leave my realm on some deluded mission to save the world from death. I did it because I could not withstand a minute of that solitude. I needed to find someone to love, and I found so many of them, but none of them loved me back. None, but Julia. That part wasn't in your plan, was it?"

I shook my head.

"I rejected what you had become. I rejected it millions of years ago when I put my knife in your throat."

"Petra, I'm just Justina now."

"When I first saw you at the dawn of sentience, you were just a man. Young and hopeful, unsure of yourself and your place in the world. That was who I loved. Just... you."

"And who are you to me?"

She shrugged, and I saw that her shoulders were trembling. Every part of her was tense with a fear she tried to hide behind her perspective, but I saw it so plainly. I felt it.

"You are walking a tightrope, Justina Autumnsong," she whispered with quivering lips. "If you look down, you will see your dead mother, your slaughtered friends, the world laid to ash, and the ruination of mankind. If you take even a moment to stare into that abyss, it will swallow you. It will rebecome you. I know this because I spent eternities standing atop that tightrope, stuck in a stasis of horror, staring down into the abyss of my guilt until it finally swallowed me. I could not take another step forward, for the past had ensnared me in Hatred."

"So then... what do I do?" I asked.

"Don't ever look down," she whispered, desperation edging her voice.

I took a deep breath and realized that my chest felt like it was being gripped from the inside. "Petra... if I don't look down, if I keep walking this tightrope... that's... that's like killing Vitanimus all over again, only it's me. It's Justina who I'm leaving behind in that abyss."