Humanity continued to grow, unimpeded with the death of the beast. Their numbers exploded in the following centuries, expanding into a vast empire ruled by none other than Gilded, who had inherited his father’s throne directly following the last battle. A mighty unity of man was formed, and together they achieved miracles, heralding a new age of technology and growth. It was the early years of Humanity, and they thrived. Strangely enough, in those years, the children of Adam and the strongest of the second generation, for the most part, faded into the background, becoming figures of myth and legend. Sometimes I wonder where they went…
The beasts, now sever of the blood that had empowered them, were powerless to stop humanity Finally free of them, Humanity spread across the land like a wildfire, transforming the land as they went. In the wake of their passage, cities sprung up, proud castles piercing the skies, and farmland spread, giving birth to a variety of hearty crops. Technology sprung out of the minds of the eccentric, transforming life into a strange hybrid of automatons and men.
In the center of it all, the Stronghold still stood, though it had been renamed to Cunabla, the cradle of man. The temple of Adam’s children still stood strong in the center, though it had been more than a century since they had graced it with their presence. Still, it radiated power and meaning to all who dared approach it, and it had quickly become a holy site for the growing kingdom of man. Next to the temple, another building stood, and although it lacked the power and detail of the temple, it was majestic in its own right, with blue walls and patterned floors. On the second floor, in a massive throne room, Gilded sat on a throne of stone, reminiscent of his fathers. Threads of his path, of his unity spilled out of him with power that belittled his now wrinkled skin and gray hair. Centuries after the final battle, he was the last of the second generation to remain, and I could tell he couldn't resist the wheel of time for much longer.
I had watched as they grew, and as they died. It was mesmerizing, watching the minutiae of their lives, the seemingly arbitrary truths they held dear, and the eternal principles they cast aside. Watching them adopt new practices and cast aside old ones. It was strange. Their souls were mere embers compared to their ancestors, and yet they still shone, with flashes of brilliant and flares of rage both.
I let myself sink back into them, tracing their lives tenderly, carefully so as not to influence their paths. They were a beautiful, complicated mess, and I learned so much from watching them, refining my creations in their images. Occasionally, I would even don my mortal skin, and wander among them, pretending, for precious moments, that I was one of them.
That I was not alone.
I do not know how long I spent wandering among them, perhaps years, perhaps decades. I saw wondrous things, men and women fighting and loving. Acts of impulse and care both. Women raising children, and men working alongside automatons.
But in the end, they were fundamentally different from me, and our differences only brought me sorrow, so I retreated to my abode far above.
More years passed, and Gilded got weaker and weaker as time pressed more and more of its burden upon him. Soon, almost 300 years after the last battle, he gave in, passing the throne onto his son, Charles, and burning the last of himself to stabilize the kingdom in those transitory years.
I felt Micheal reach out from the stars to help his son pass on, helping him pressing his path into the world, ever so subtly warping the world in his image.
The funeral trumpets blared loudly on that day, sending the kingdom of man into mourning. I mourned with them. Gilded had been a worthy man, even if he had failed to reach the heavens in the end.
Micheal appeared before me the next day. Or rather he called me before him. I gathered my diffuse essence, and manifested myself in my entirety before him. I did not insult him by containing myself within a mortal form, no, Micheal alone was worthy of gazing upon my true self. I understood how I appeared to mortal eyes, a humanoid figure of infinity and power, swirling with hidden currents, a man-shaped window into something greater. To him I would be even more, my essence clear to his azure eyes. My physical presence annihilated space itself, leaving us suspended in True Void outside of the universe.
Micheal looked around curiously, not at all afraid of the void. His physical form looked the same as it always had, a young man with pitch-black hair and azure eyes, a black crown atop his brow, and a golden mantle streaming out behind him, but his aura told a different story.
A story of a king. A man who could command the star to kneel before him at a whim,
A man on the brink of ascension.
A god in the making.
“Where are we?” he asked curiously.
“The void.” I replied. “This is where I awoke. The universe floats within it.”
“It's marvelous” he whispered, reaching out a hand to caress the absolute absence of everything. It tried to unmake him as well, urging him to join it in its nothingness, but he warded off its attempts with a brush of his will.
I let him enjoy being free of the universe and its laws for a time.
Let him float in the absence of everything, on the greatest canvas to ever exist.
Finally, he looked back at me. “Is this what birthed you?”
“No” I answered automatically, before hesitating for a second to gather my thoughts. “I… awoke in the void. But I was not wrought of it. I am from… somewhere else.”
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“You don’t remember?”
“Sometimes… I have flashbacks. Times when memory feels close… but no, I do not remember. All I remember is waking, and a faint feeling something was wrong. That there should be something where there was nothing. So I spoke light into an empty void, and I created something from nothing.” I motioned to the universe.
Micheal shifted his attention to it, taking it in. From outside it appeared to be but a small bubble floating in an endless sea. An ember in the eternal night.
“It's beautiful” he breathed softly, reaching out to run a hand along its membrane.
It felt good to finally have someone recognize my creation.
For a time we stood in contemplative silence. I do not know how long, for time is a foreign concept to the void, but eventually, I was forced to interrupt the peaceful silence.
“Micheal,” I began, “Why have you called me?”
He sighed, and turned to face me.
“I wanted to say goodbye”
“Goodbye?”
“Yes, goodbye. I’m tired. I plan on passing on soon.”
I paused for a second, stunned. “No. You can’t pass on now. You’re so close. Just a tiny bit more…”
He shook his head. “I know what is needed to cross that final barrier. It is not a price I can pay.”
“It is not a price, Micheal, but an elevation. Mortality is a blight upon the true. Cast it aside, and join me in divinity.”
“My mortality defined me, shaped me, made me. I… I cannot sever it anymore. It is too ingrained in my essence.”
“Micheal” I said urgently, perhaps a bit desperately, “You could be a god. Create your own universe.” I indicated the tiny bubble containing all of creation. “You could have it all.”
“And for what? I see how lonely you are.” he replied tiredly. “My siblings are dead. My children are dead. My time has passed.”
“They still live, Micheal. Just…” I trailed off as I saw him frown.
“Don’t start.” he interrupted, a trace of anger in his voice. “My siblings are dead. Their souls have gone to the golden sea. The traces of their paths, and the ways they have bent the universe in their image are not them. Merely their corpses.”
Seeing as that would not work, I changed tactics.
“What of humanity? With Gilded’s death it's unlikely they will maintain this golden age. Charles cannot hold them together. War and death will return to the lands of men.”
Micheal sighed tiredly. “So be it. They must find their own paths.”
“Micheal, you cann-”
“Grandfather!” he interrupted, his voice containing the authority that defined him. “I have made my decision!”
While I was reeling from how he addressed me, feeling both warmth creeping into me at the familiar title, and ice at the thought of losing it, he lowered his voice, withdrew his authority, and spoke again, turning his head to the infinite black.
“I understand you are lonely, but I am tired. I just want to wander into the endless void, and quietly pass into the golden sea, where I can finally rest.”
He turned back to me, and his smile was at once heartbreaking and hopeful.
“I just want to rest.”
We stayed like that for a long time, just staring at each other, and with a dawning sadness, I realized I could not hold him back.
“Tell me” I finally managed to force out. “Tell me what you saw.”
“What did I see?”
“The day you ascended. During the last battle.”
Understanding lit up his face, and he nodded, eyes going distant as he recalled a long-ago time.
“I was dying. I remember it well. The pain, the fear, not only for myself, but for my family should I fall, and the struggle. I struggled like I never had before, and like I never have since. But Dargonth was too powerful, and without a beating heart, I lacked the leverage to match him. One moment, I was in the struggle of my life, the next I was in the shallows of the sea.”
He stretched out a finger, letting light shine from it, and began to draw faint lines of newly-created space in the void.
“I can’t even begin to describe the sea. It was everything. Infinite. An expanse of souls. Even you are nothing compared to it. It was mostly golden, with a few flecks of azure-hanging in space, looking like remnants of a bygone age.”
Memory stirred in me at the mention of the azure, and a flash of an endless sky appeared before me, an expanse of being. The sea was the same, I was sure, yet different.
I wondered what had changed.
“I was immediately aware of a simple fact, one so simple it was as if I had always known it. It was not my time. There was a sense of rejection, and I knew I could not linger for long. But in the time I lingered, everything was so crystal clear, the distilled truths of everything on display before my eyes. I dipped my hands into the water, and brought the golden liquid to my mouth. It tasted like soulstuff, pure and powerful. My exhaustion was washed away, and enlightenment filled me.”
He clenched his fist a light burst from it like a supernova, creating swaths of space before the void derived them once more.
“I wove my mantle right there and then, from the golden water. It was effortless, and took a mere second. When I was done, the last of the azure flecks drifted down, and settled upon it, bringing with it power of an identical nature, but with a few subtle differences I failed to identify.”
His mantle burst from his back, swirling around him like a tempest.
“Then I just… left. Returned to the world of the living. I’ve desired to go back ever since. And now… I think it is time.”
I said nothing, my mind racing with hints of memory just out of reach, and for a time he seemed content to accompany me silently, looking down upon the universe.
Then abruptly, he turned to me. “Goodbye, grandfather.”
I swallowed the storm of foreign emotion swirling within me. “Goodbye, grandson.”
Without further fanfare, he turned and struck out into the void.
Leaving me alone once more.
Perhaps forever.