The day began as it always did - with the blaring of an alarm.
In Saugatuck, on the western coast of Michigan, there was a little apartment building. In that building there was a small one bedroom, kitchen and living room being one room, one bathroom apartment that was now filled with the droning beeps of an alarm and the clattering of a phone falling onto the ground. A loud groan permeates through the apartment, the creaking of bed springs following shortly after. A pale hand slams down onto an old digital clock on a bedside table, and with a yawn the man speaks up - “I’m up, I’m up. Shut up, please.”
Robert drags himself from bed, half-awake and basically naked, and starts to stomp around his apartment. Out of his bedroom, into his bathroom. Steam filled the apartment since he left the door wide open and he showered in under five minutes. With a quick hop and a step now, woken up by scalding hot water he forgot to make colder, Robert steps into his bedroom once more and flips open his closet. He starts to smack his lips together, making odd noises as he pulls out shirts and pants, inspecting each one closely. He sniffs a pair and nearly retches. This was what he got for doing laundry once a week. He needed to change that habit or he was going to vomit into a pair of pants one of these days.
After a thorough ten minute inspection Robert has finally put on a pair of pants, socks and a shirt that he finds acceptable - he makes sure the collar is clean against his neck, his work shirt is buttoned up, and he has on a fitting black tie. He strode into his living room and up to the balcony of his tiny domicile and stared out at the small town outside. He sighed, meeting the poignant stare of his reflection. He sniffed, and spoke quietly. “Today’s another day, it’ll be fine. Smile, Robbie." He smiled weakly.
Suitcase in hand, hair slicked back with gel, he strode out of his front door and quickly bustled through the hallways. An old lady was sitting outside of her apartment and absentmindedly petting a cat while rocking back and forth in her chair, and waved at Robert as he approached. “Hello, Rob! You have a good day at work, dear.” Robert nodded, “You too, Mrs. MacNamara.” He pat her on the shoulder as he made his way past her, and she gave out a jittering chuckle and shook her head.
Robert was out the front doors of the apartment complex in a matter of moments, and he strode past the young lady sitting on the steps of the apartment. She snorted, “Might wanna move a little faster, slow-ass. Unless you wanna be late again.” Robert barked out a hoarse, sharp and singular laugh in response. “Love you too, Tina.”
Tina gave out a hollow giggle and dusted off her cigarette, watching the form of Robert grow smaller as he walked further and further down the street. With a languid start she stood up and started to pace after him, with a pep in her step. “Hold up, dude!” He kept walking but angled his head to look at her as she strode up. She spoke up first when he went to open his mouth, “Gas station’s this way. You up for me taggin' along?" Robert shrugged noncommittally, and commented quietly. "Makes the morning different."
Robert's march was the same as it always was, even with the guest appearance of Tina making his morning something else - for the last four years he’d walked the same street, since he was twenty-one. He worked in a cubicle ‘downtown’, which was basically a ten minute walk from his apartment. His briefcase carried a number of jumbled papers that he had to take care of outside of work for no pay. He did it without any idea of pay, just because he was asked. He knew his boss Keith from school - he’d be paid back in paid days off and free booze. It was nice and simple.
Robert was on the corner of Hoffman and Griffith, impatiently tapping his shoe as he stared up at the just barely red picture of a hand. Tina stood next to him, lazily dragging on her cancer-stick. She turned to regard Rob, and then turned to stare back at the light. Ignoring her, all Robert could think of was how they should replace these lights. And how they could make the time for them to change just a bit shorter. He groaned, she snorted. “Give ‘em another ten years, dude, and they'll fix the lights. Oh, and they'll get the street, too. Don’t worry.” He gave out another low laugh, “Yeah, that’d be the day, right? My kids are gonna see the same lights, and that road ain't getting fixed until we're all dead.” Absent-mindedly he walked across the street as the hand turned to a walking figure, with Tina following shortly after, fiddling with her pack of cigarettes. Neither were paying attention to traffic until they heard a horn.
Their gaze snapped to his right, Robbie's eyes went wide, and Tina’s mouth opened to scream as several tons of plastic and steel rolled over them like they were a pair of speed bumps. It all went dark shortly after. The semi-truck skidded to a stop just over the now crumpled up forms of Robert and Tina, and the portly man inside hopped out. Screaming for help and for someone to call 9-1-1, he immediately ran up to Robert and tried to get a pulse. Nothing. He went to follow up with Tina and got similar results.
Dozens of people had gathered by now, yelling at one another - several were on their phones, attempting to dial help. Many more had their phones up, lights on; recording the events. Some just stared and gawked, acting as silent observers over the tragedy that happened once in a blue moon. People crowded around the pair in the middle of the street. Robert's body was shaken frantically by the panicking driver, and a woman fumbled with her bag to try and find something to stop Tina’s bleeding. The crowd only grew larger with the sounds of a police siren.
When the ambulance arrived both Robert and Tina were long gone - dead on impact. The two were lifted into the back of an ambulance, and the whole of the world went dark.
-
There is a whisper in the cosmos. The fabric of the world bends to the near breaking point, strands of the immaterial weave bend and fold. The world shudders, drawing sharp inhaling breaths in its waking moments. The death of two has dragged the attention of powers beyond the pale, and through the ineffable empty between the gates of the Highest Heaven and the Void Itself, there sit a thousand pairs of eyes locked intently on two shimmering lights. The first time the Heavens had congregated in such a way in a long, long time.
Dancing through and between stars, coiling around one another like twin meteors, they make their way across the tapestry of the sky in moments. What would be eons takes naught but the blink of an eye, and soon the twin meteors have become a singular comet - a twin-tailed comet of change, sweeping over the vast blue sky of a world below. Its continents are strange and foreign, the world scarred and changed by history long since past. Many millions of eyes cast their gaze up to the morning sky and watch as this comet slides through the pale. Scholars scratch at clay tablets and mark down with ink on papyrus sheets, cataloging a fate of change.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Within the astral domain, in the apex pyramids of the sky, sits a singular figure - a woman wreathed in rags, her eyes hidden by a singular strip of thick woolen cloth that blinds her. She is sat upon a warbling image of some sort of chair, a vague memory of something one of her children had once made - inspired by one of the Humans below. She casts her gaze to the right, her eyesight cutting through the immaterial weave of the transcendent beyond; the walls cave upon her weak demands, and the clouds part to show her what she so wishes to see.
Her gray feet touch down on soft stonework, and she walks through a monolithic hall covered in statues and frayed tapestries depicting eras of Gods and Godlings, of wars and majesty long since forgotten and yet to come. Tapestries woven by Fate, by an eon of foresight. The woman stops just short of another figure, a man draped in a heavy sheet that depicts the night sky. It was cast over his shoulders, acting as a shawl. His face is thin like that of a malnourished waif, and his face is covered in a scraggly beard that speaks of no attempt to trim or shave. His hair cascades down his head in curls, and his skin is gray much like the woman’s. His eyes shine brightly, a pure white with no irises, and between his gnarled and calloused fingers he dexterously is weaving yet another tapestry. To look upon him is to think of a base beast, not a man. The woman clears her throat, and he speaks. “You come so soon, Ator. I don't take this is a social visit, is it, dearest one?"
Ator clasps her hands before herself and walks up to the side of the shawled man, and whispers softly to him. “I felt it, Wheel. The changing of fate. Two souls have entered this world that were not made by my hands, and you did not stop them. They should be within their own barriers, with their own Gods. They do not belong here."
The Wheel laughs, a grating noise. To Humans this Godly figure was what he was so named - an actual Wheel, a figure of reincarnation. The tapestry on the wall before him depicted such. Yet, in the realm of Gods and spirits and that of the heavenly beyond, he took a form he felt more fitting - a man who did not pretend to be what he was not. A smart beast, not some master of the world. He spoke again, loud. “They will change things, Ator. Is that not what you wish for? Change?”
Ator frowned, “They should in their own afterlife.” The Wheel nods, “And yet they are not.”
Ator sighs, taking a seat down next to him. “So I may not persuade you to send them home?”
The Wheel ignores her for a time, still weaving his tapestry - one thread after another, the needle marking his progress with every pre-planned strike. “No. You may not.”
“Then may I so suggest where they go?” To this the Wheel lifted his head up to regard Ator, as if to ask if she truly just spoke those words. He hummed, his fingers having not stopped weaving. His humming came to a final, silent stop. A few moments pass. “You may, Ator, you may. Where do you believe the two should go? I have yet to decide.”
Ator smiled, and gave out a light laugh. A warm one, and one that made the Wheel smile. She loved to see that she could still do such a thing, make the only being that could ever stand against her truly smile and enjoy her presence. “One of the Godserpents had passed a century and some ago, his soul having long since been trapped within his own corpse. His worshipers believe that he is hibernating. We should not upset such an idea.” The Wheel bobbed his head.
“Then that shall be done. The man will become of scales and claws, and the woman will become of flesh and sinew again. May they find purpose within a world not of their own.”
Ator’s response was to stand and turn her back to the Wheel, making way to leave. “May they. Keep a keen eye on them, Fate.” With those last words she left the monolith, and darkness fell again on the empty halls. She had brought the Sun’s majesty with her, and left with it the same.
The Wheel stared down at his tapestry, that of a dragon facing off against a horde of men on horseback, lances gleaming in the sunlight. By the Dragon’s feet was a horde of men dressed in furs and leathers, with masks of bone. He choked out a laugh. “As always, your Majesty.”
-
The twin-tailed comet streaks through the sky, leaving a burning fire in its wake - pure white flame cutting through the sky like a hot knife through butter. It leaves the world in a frenzy.
Deep in the steppe, on wind blasted plains nestled between tall mountains and grand pine forests, sits a valley. Within that valley is a smattering of huts and yurts, all of which are covered in people. They look up to the sky, to the comet, and watch as a singular figure among them is sprinting down the street followed by a group of men dressed in bronze armor bearing the skulls of wyverns as helmets. The figure at their front is a woman in her early fifties, with hair like pepper and salt, dressed in flowing robes made of fur and leather. Her feet carry her quickly over wood-boarded tracks, past gawking children and adults who watch in curiosity.
The whole of the village was following behind her and the warriors now as they walked the thousand steps up to the temple built into the side of the mountain at the far back of the valley. For the first time in a century and two decades the fires had come back on by no man's hands; no, they came on through magic, signaling what their people had been waiting generations for. Istolenonys was awake.
The woman walked up to the great wooden doors that barred her passage into his resting room.
She whistled and motioned to the warriors that shadowed her, deliberately ignoring the gawking crowd of a hundred and more that were excited yelling the name of their God. She kept a serious face, her features tightly knitted together. When the doors parted, the hallway grew warmer. She strode through the crack in the door and froze the instant she entered the room.
Staring directly at her was the wide open eye of the great dragon, making her blood run cold. Darkness fell on the room as the doors behind her slammed shut.
---
And so the Wheel keeps on turning;
and the World burns evermore.