The Creators: Epilogue

"I know," she hissed, a tear streaking down her cheek. "But I'll always be on the other side. It will take a long time, maybe longer than time itself, but maybe someday, we can find each other in the middle."

I stared at her for a long time. I stared into those featureless eyes that silently begged for me to forget, and I understood why she kept some of herself from me. It was plain as the tears that cascaded down her face. Loneliness. If there was one thing that encapsulated Petranumen, it was not Corruption or Guilt, but Loneliness. I could see the eons of isolation painting the tracks that streaked her cheeks, and though her face was radiant and youthful, I could see the lines of despair that cracked just beneath its surface. They were so beautiful to me, for I understood them. Somewhere in the vacuity of my memory, there was a being older than recorded time who had withered away in isolation, who had found new life again and again only to waste it in the pursuit of the unknown, never realizing the great breadth of solitude behind his birth and beyond his death. Content with his misery, for he knew that at the end of it all, was her. Yes, I understood why she kept some of herself from me. For if we were one, then we would be only, and only was so lonely.

I smiled at Petra and crawled across the bed. She broke down in my arms, and I laid a kiss atop her head. I rocked her gently into the night as my projections worked busily across the bridge of our minds, ferrying our parents into the brave new plane of existence. When the moment came, she looked up at me, and my kiss traced across her brow, down her nose, and to her lips. She moved upon me, and I opened myself. She moved inside of me, and I accepted her for everything she was, and everything she was not.

Part Two: Freedom and Heaven

ANGELA

There had been a time when I didn't think of Freedom as my brother's realm. I was his twin and his bound lover, so naturally, I was owed half his shit. For centuries, I had attempted to micromanage every aspect of the paradisial realm, and he simply let me do as I pleased without seeming to care much. If I wanted a cocaine cove, he'd give me one. If I wanted a methamphetamine mountain, it was mine for the snorting. I could have anything I wanted from him, but I could not have it all. I came to the slow and melancholy realization that this place he had built wasn't meant for the having, and neither was he. This place was transient and wonderful, and that meant it was unobtainable, just like him. He still loved me deeply, and I still loved him, but after a millennium of living together in paradise, it was simply time to be apart.

"Where will you go?" Brandon asked me. We were in our favorite mountaintop valley, lying in the grass, enjoying a sublime joint that hit with the smoothness of air. A giant mushroom taller than the mountain it was sprouted from provided an expansive umbrella to shade us from the realm's sun, and its tiny spores glinted pleasantly in the midmorning light.

"Angela?" Brandon asked.

I blinked myself back to lucidity. "I don't know," I mused, sucking in sweet smoke. "Where do you think I should go?"

He took a hit from the joint and watched his daughters spar each other on the hillock below. Bianca and Arya had been standing in line when the planes remerged, and they had both died pregnant. Brandon gave me the honor of midwifing so that I could feel like part of his new family, but in truth, I would never be more than Aunt Angela to little Mary and Josephine Sorensen. I would never be a mother at all. Bianca and Arya were never possessive of their daughters, and indeed, I was the one who took their virginities when they were of age. It was just like when we were in Ofan, so unsurprisingly the young women had sex with their parents, each other, then everyone else. They were one of the few people who had never known a mortal life, and so they were natural to this place of strange wonders. I thought they were rather spoiled--and I was more than happy to spoil them--but there was something inherently alien about how carefree they were, and it began to bother me. It began to bother me that everyone here was so carefree, but it never bothered Brandon.

"Where oh where should Angela go?" Brandon mused airily, spinning the joint between his fingers. "Diamond hasn't visited here in a while. Perhaps you should visit her?"

I snorted. "Fuck that."

"Hmm... to Chaos then?" he mused, giving me a wry look. "I don't even want to think about what you'd become there."

"A sex-slave, a torture-toy, and then cannibal food," I shivered. "Remember the story Willowbud told us about what happened to Petra."

"I remember Petra speaking very fondly of her memories," Brandon chuckled, "but she's a bit... different."

I snorted. "A bit different. She's Diamond's second-favorite client. Fucking masochistic freak."

"Who would've thought that a woman who was once Corruption and Guilt would enjoy vacationing in places like Chaos and Hell?" He gave me that goddamned wizened look again. "Now that you're leaving, you can quit pretending that you don't like her."

I flicked his nose. "This is Freedom; that means I get to hold onto my petty grudges as long as I damn-well please."

He smirked at me. "And I get to make fun of you for them."

I had a retort lined up, but I decided not to fire it off. Brandon would just chuckle self-deprecatingly, I would laugh with him, we would snuggle and fuck, and repeat it all tomorrow. Before I knew it, another decade would pass, and nothing would change. Instead, I just sighed and took another hit from my joint.

"You don't need to leave, you know," he said, and extended his hands out at the vast horizons that curved below and above us. "Go out. Make some new friends until they become a family of your own, and get lost in the wildlands with them."

I rolled my eyes. "Goddamn it, Brandon, you're the fucking angel of this place. How can I get lost when every grain of sand is you?"

He nodded conciliatorily. "Well, you're too much of a pussy to go to Chaos or Hell--"

"Fuck you."

"--and you don't want to stay here," he snickered. "So I guess that leaves you just one option."

LUCILLA

Heaven was... well, heaven. It was a place of bottomless mimosas, bottomless buffets, and bottomless angels. The skies were always pleasantly blue and adorned with great puffy clouds, the fields were always lush green without a brown blade of grass, and the cities were pristine metropolises of shining marble with intricate towering architecture that reached to the... well, heavens. I was atop one such spire, bathing in an infinity pool of milk and rose petals above the clouds, sipping my twelfth mimosa of the morning and enjoying just how well the angel between my legs could hold his breath.

"Ah, Julian One," I sighed airily and squeezed my thighs about his head, "do you think I should go to the market today? I haven't been out of the palace in years, and I find myself becoming a bit too domesticated."

Some air bubbles came up from the milky surface in response.

"Yes," I sighed again, "I suppose you're right. I deserve to take another month or so off. Perhaps a year. Lower, Julian One. That's the spot. That right... there."

"Would you like another mimosa, My Lady?" the other Julian attending me asked.

I looked up at the gorgeous black nymph and pondered what I really wanted from him. "Hmm... where is Julian Five?"

"Right here, My Lady," the slender human male said beside me, smiling with those kindly apple cheeks.

I tapped my lips contemplatively. "Julian Two, please attend to Julian Five. He looks swollen, and it would please me to watch you drain him."

Julian Five grinned and sauntered seductively over to Julia Two. The pair of Adonis angels descended into the baroque loveseat at the perimeter of the pool and began engaging in the most beautiful homo-erotica that could be imagined. I indulged in the sights and sounds and decided that being masculine was a pleasing idea today. I changed my gender beneath the milky surface, and Julian One gracefully adapted.

"My Lady, you have a visitor," Julian Ten announced.

I waved annoyedly at the statuesque orc. "Another time, Ten."

The orc walked over to me and plopped his enormous frame into the pool beside me. "It's me, Lucilla," he said with a very feminine voice.

I rolled my eyes. "They're all you, Julia. What do you want?"

My beloved had taken the form she was most natural in with me. It was the body she'd had after leaving Passion's womb, complete with my favorite toy betwixt her juicy pale thighs. She only ever wore that body when she--or rather her soul--was personally with me. Her millions upon millions of projections were busily attending to everyone else in heaven, but only a select few of us actually met with the angel herself, and I was the most select of them all. I had the big shiny ring to prove it.

"I said you have a visitor," she said. Beneath the milky surface, her male projection seemed to try to suck the oxygen from my stem. It made it so hard to concentrate.

I raised a brow to her. "You're not my visitor?" I looked past her toward the expansive villa threshold. "Tell whoever it is that I'm busy."

"Do you think I would bother showing up here myself just to deliver a message?" she raised her brow at me. "I can't tell this visitor to go away."

"Ah, I see." I chewed on my lip and pondered what was to come. There were only two people who could deny Julia, and one of them would never be so rude as to interrupt me. The other one took quite a bit of pleasure in it, and in truth, so did I. While Justina was still a very good friend of mine, the two of us simply didn't have much in common. I hated Petranumen with every fiber of my being, which naturally meant she had become like a sister to me. It galled me how goddamned personable she was.

I glanced over at Julia. "What's the score?"

She groaned. "This again?"

"You know why she came here." I flicked her cock and giggled. "And don't act like you don't love it. You spend all your time doting upon everyone. Isn't it nice to be worshipped like the god you are? Now," I ran my finger up her engorging length, "what's the score?"

She rolled her eyes, and a scoreboard descended from the vaulted ceiling. The Temptation Game 2.0, was the heading. Light of Julia's Life: 7,669. Homewrecking Cunt: 7,669.

"She's really made a comeback in recent centuries," I mused, working my jaw excitedly. "All that time she's spent in Hell improved her BDSM game."

"You were up by five-hundred just a decade ago. Maybe you should... you know... broaden your horizons."

I splashed her annoyedly. "Why are you always trying to kick me out?"

She splashed me back. "I'm just trying to improve your game. Your pussy's getting stale."

I almost slapped her for that, but I stopped myself when I realized that Julia fucking Gendian of all people had almost successfully manipulated me. "No, no, no," I chuckled, and slid out of the milky bath, leading my sucking servant out with me, "I'm not going to be kicked out of my own kingdom like some bum on her mom's couch. This place isn't Heaven without me in it."

She snorted. "Because you do so much here."

I took her by the chin and grinned against those lush red lips. "This place isn't Heaven for you without me in it, and I'm going to show you why. Send the homewrecking cunt in."

Another thing I begrudgingly loved about Petra was that she knew how to make an entrance. The villa doors burst open, a flock of doves materialized before rays of the sun, and the goddess walked in with a host of fawning Julias, Julianas, and Julians all clamoring for her attention. She paid them no heed, of course, and strutted in with her broad hips swaggering extravagantly, her arms outstretched as if the entire universe was privileged to behold her. But of the universe, she cared naught, for her glowing featureless eyes were centered challengingly upon me, and the cruel curve to her lush lips bespoke a dictionary of inviting insults. I licked mine back at her.

WILLOWBUD

I glanced into the physical world and watched Astrid dance in the arena, spinning like a top so that her black wings were a blur as she sent waves after waves of her opponents to the afterlife. Even after a thousand years, the gladiator queen of earth had no equal, but that wouldn't last forever. I drew my perspective to the lone figure in the royal box. Her wings were white like her mother's had once been, but her skin was my rich caramel, and her ivory horns and ashen hair were from me as well. That wasn't all that she'd inherited. While Tera couldn't yet match her mother in the arena, the first-ever "male" valkyrie was making up for it by filling every maiden's belly in the empire. I would never have guessed my greatest lasting legacy would be ten thousand grandchildren. Mankind was going to be a lot more genderfluid in the future. Personkind. But the propagator of my mutant genetics wasn't interested in that legacy. Her keen eyes studied her mother's every move, scrutinized her every stance, dissected her every tactic. I supposed it would be a Skyborne-Autumnsong tradition for daughters to kill their mothers, but she still had a long way to go.

"Your daughter is quite extraordinary," Diamond mused as she shifted her checkers piece across the board. "Though I think she takes after her father more than her mother."

"You mean that she takes after Night Eyes." I shifted my piece in opposition.

"I think she's wonderful," Diamond smiled.

"You would."

The layman would never guess by looking at her that Diamond Gendian was evil incarnate. She had roses in her scarlet hair, a modest sundress draped over her narrow shoulders, and a face of pure innocence. The layman would never guess the depthless horrors she was capable of, but I was not the layman. I also had an innocent face. There was a stark difference between us, however. Whereas I got quite the kick out of watching the dissidents of the afterlife inflict their worst upon each other, Diamond didn't think of the tortures she performed as "torture." In her mind, she was a healer, and that was what made her so uniquely and deliciously wicked.

"Should we have another debate on the nature of morality?" she muttered and jumped one of my pieces. "I always found it strange that you and I would differ on this subject."

I slid one of my pieces diagonally to hers. "How many people are you currently skinning alive over a fire right now?"

She shifted a piece to block me. "Fifty-five-thousand-twenty-nine," she replied casually, "but I generally boil them first."

"So you're clearly not coming from a place of bias."

She smiled sweetly. "They all asked me to do it, and I obliged my lovers. Evil doesn't come from pain or despair," she waved her hand around us, "it comes from other people."

"Oh, so I'm the evil one then?"

She pushed a piece to my side of the board. "King me. I never said you were evil. I have always maintained that evil no longer exists now that death is defeated, but if it does exist, it exists in this place."

I sneered at her. "It certainly does now that you're here."

She tittered girlishly and brushed her scarlet hair behind her delightful antlers. When she withdrew her hand, it was still streaked with scarlet. Not her scarlet, however. Diamond had been here mind and soul for twenty years and hadn't even drawn a drop of her own blood.

"That's not true," she said, studying the gameboard. "I once pulled out a hangnail."

"Boo-hoo-hoo."

"They don't have hangnails in Freedom or Heaven."

"They don't have fingernails at all in Hell."

She smiled that small innocent smile. "Not for very long, no."

Of the four angels, Diamond was the only one who had visited every realm. Justina tried to keep us all unified, but there was nothing that held us together anymore. Now that the future was eternal, all of us were very keen to bury the past. In the last thousand years, the only relationship from my life I had actively maintained was with Brandon and Angela. I made it a point to visit them in Freedom once every few decades, though personally, I found the place rather boring after a while. Much like Chaos, it was a sandbox for humanity to play in, but it lacked all the broken glass and used needles that made sandboxes so much fun. I once invited Brandon to Chaos, and he came only as an astral projection so that he could passively observe. After ten minutes of my tour, he looked at me, and I could see by the expression on his face that he could not comprehend this realm, this facet of humanity, or me.

"That's why I've never invited him to Hell," Diamond sighed, pushing a piece diagonally to mine. "I don't think he'd be my friend anymore if he saw the things I do. He always fancied himself to be open-minded, but I think a millennium of living in his own world has narrowed his viewpoint."

I slid my piece to block her. "Kind of like your mom."

She gave me a pointed look. "Nothing like my mom."

"She's never even left her realm as a projection."

She jumped one of my pieces. "Brandon has never touched darkness. My mother has bathed in it."

"That doesn't mean she understands it."

"Do you truly think you understand your darkness, Willowbud?" Diamond queried with a suggestive look. "You don't actively participate in the Chaos you rule. You're a voyeur."

"I think I participated quite enough for one lifetime."

"If you say so."

"Is this another ploy to get me into your dungeon?"

"After inviting me into your cozy home, it's only polite for me to invite you into mine."

"Well, it wasn't much of a challenge for you, was it?" I snorted and gestured out the broken window where Diamond's death cult was waiting patiently for their queen.

Diamond smiled coyly. "You'd be surprised what a positive attitude and a winning smile will get you."

"I always knew the devil would be a motivational speaker."

"Cynicism and defeatism are why you always lose at checkers. You're worse than Aunt Lucilla, and she's usually in to her twentieth mimosa when she plays me."

I positioned a piece defensively. "How's your Auntie doing?"

"Spoiled silly, of course. Mom's trying to get her out of Heaven to expand her horizons."

"Awfully hypocritical of her."

"Here we go again."

"She fucking murdered me, Diamond."

Diamond raised a brow. "And...?"

I relented a nod. "Ok, that doesn't exactly put me in exclusive company."

"It's interesting that you're able to hold a grudge this long, all things considered."

"It's not a grudge," I sighed. "Look, I'm not saying that I won't see her; I'm just saying that I won't do it now. We have an eternity."

"A good procrastinator always adds one more day to eternity."

"You sound just like Justina."

"Not just Justina..." Diamond double-jumped me. "I know she comes here all the time, Willowbud. You must know how she feels."

I frowned. "She's never said anything to me."

"Justina tells you what she thinks; Petra shows you. You haven't been listening."

Justina never exerted her omnipotence over the realms, but she still maintained it over herself when she visited. She understood the necessity for places like Chaos and Hell, but she didn't try to understand them. Petranumen, on the other hand, traveled the afterlife like any other person. She absolutely loved Chaos, of course, and would often visit for years to get the "real human experience." That usually ended rather grotesquely for her. I would've thought that the master manipulator of darkness would be the queen of Chaos, but she reveled in being a victim of the worst atrocities. I kept my distance for her first few tours, but after seeing her become a ritual sacrifice to the "rot god" for the twenty-seventh life in a row, I finally broached our long-standing silence to ask her what the fuck she was getting out of this. She just smiled at me and said, "transcendence." Then she skipped gaily off to Hell. The greatest struggle of my mortal life was accepting that Corruption did not make me evil; she brought out the evil in me. The greatest struggle of my immortal life was accepting that Petranumen was... good. She loved everyone for all of their imperfections. She was quite possibly the best person I'd ever known, and she knew me very well. It wasn't long before we were close friends.