Heziyn and Musa.

Pazia, Vah and Tal.

All of them were approaching the wall of the storm.

A storm unlike any other.

Both groups were tossed back and forth across the ocean and while Pazia desperately tried holding onto his boat, Heziyn desperately tried keeping Musa from flying off.

I bit my teeth as all this happened.

As their lives teetered on the edge of oblivion.

This was it.

The moment wherein the boundary between life and death narrowed.

That which I feared oh so greatly.

The two groups eventually, after days of travel, reached the wall and since the storm had a counter clockwise rotation, Pazia’s group was pushed to the west while Heziyn and Musa were pushed to the east all while being drawn inward.

At this point both Musa and Tal were unconscious from hunger and the violent motions their boats made.

As for Pazia, Vah and Heziyn, they weren’t faring ant better.

Days upon days of struggling against the storm and fatigue and hunger after Pazia’s supplies finished. And as for Musa and Heziyn, she sacrificed herself by drip feeding him Life Energy since they didn’t have any supplies to begin with.

The valiantly fought against the storm in a battle which they could never hope to win.

Pazia was the first to succumb.

He lost grip of the boat just as it arrived at my equator.

Heziyn was second.

She flew off the boat leaving Musa alone in the wall of wind and water.

Vah’s eyes quaked as she tightly clung to Tal.

She then raised her tired eyes before calling out to me as she cried.

“Oh, Great Father’s Aviyv, Great Mother Sav’ta… please… save my daughter.” She prayed with tired eyes.

I wanted to reach out to her.

To help her.

But…

No.

There was no excuse or reason.

I just wanted to but, in my desire to see if they could make it, even if the chances were almost non existent, I waited up until it was too late.

Pazia was barely managing to keep his head above the water as he floated a few kilometres away from the storm and Heziyn… was dead.

I thought that if these people could triumph against the odds then so could I but they barely managed to get here with my help all that time ago so how much further could they go without me.

Maybe part of me wanted the same for myself.

I wanted the secret to true immortality and maybe I wanted- no, hoped that someone somewhere would give it to me.

I wanted someone to save me.

But I hadn’t gotten any of that and so I thought that maybe it would be best if they, the humanoids, learnt not to depend on me but…

I saw no point in this anymore.

Why couldn’t I help them?

Even if it catapulted them several millions of years into the future in terms of advancement as a civilization.

Why couldn’t I save them and try to create a utopia for them?

I took a deep breath before turning to the two boats and, using Gravity Magic, I pulled them into the eye of the storm which was as silent as a windless day.

I then entered my doll made my way to the shore of the Island of Tablets where I saw a sight that filled my chest with pain but, for the first time, I accepted instead of tucking it aside.

In one of the boats was an unconscious Musa who I gently picked up using Gravity Magic.

In the other was Vah and Tal although Vah had just died.

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However, what brought me the most pain was that the Life Energy of both children was fading. Not only that, it had passed the point of no return.

I took both of them into the Temple of Tablets and gently placed them on the floor where I sat by their side.

I wanted to help them but giving them Life Energy was pointless at this stage.

I also hadn’t learnt how to transfer souls so I was left with no other choice but to watch as they died.

As their Life Energy grew weaker and weaker, I thought to the only other instance I knew where a soul was successfully transferred.

The only other time where one soul faded only to reappear somewhere else, in a different form but with the same memories.

My reincarnation.

My brows then intensely furrowed and I slowed my perception of time to where a millisecond was like an hour.

In this time I thought about how reincarnation possibly worked. Something which I had already thought about countless times before but my goal was to think about what little I knew.

Things had souls.

Even inanimate things, although I had yet to see any examples apart from myself.

Something in the universe distributed these souls and, given that the first law which states that everything is a shard of the First Will, then every soul that will ever be or ever was came from a single thing.

The universe consisted of trillions upon trillions of things and trillions among these had souls which were all part of a stream of continuous will.

This was all my speculation but I had to go with something.

When a soul left its vessel, it simply returned to the stream and flowed into a new vessel as either completely new life or a reincarnate.

So… even if the odds were unimaginably slim, there was a chance that I could create a new organism just as a soul left one body. That soul would then flow into the newly birthed life but this all hinged on if my speculation about the linear flow of souls was correct.

I nodded to myself before crossing my legs and creating a copy of the sperm and egg cells in my body.

I then watched as the souls of the children faded and as they did, I drew the cell pairs closer and closer together.

Nanoseconds passed and my heart thumped powerfully as the Uyil Belts of the children vanished one by one and as their last strings disappeared, I allowed the cell pairs to meet.

My eyes then widened as I witnessed the conception of life.

The sperm entered the eggs and formed two new cells.

But… I couldn’t be sure if what I did worked.

I wouldn’t know until the two grew up and were able to speak but since both they and I were made of Glass, I didn’t know how long my pregnancy would last.

I turned to the two bodies in front of me and, after taking a deep breath, I stood up and took them outside.

I then used Gravity Magic to bring Heziyn and Vah’s bodies to the foot of the Temple where I buried them.

I looked at the horizon and saw that the storm would most likely persist for a few more weeks and so I entered the temple and made my way to the Chamber of Tablets where I sat against the Mega Crystal.

I looked down at my belly and gasped as the two cells divided and became more complex.

They were suspended in my hollow belly but I figured they’d need more appropriate placing and so I modified by belly and formed a womb around them which I filled with a mixture of Glass and water.

I then rested my head against the Mega Crystal and sighed.

My heart was still racing but it was from a new fear.

One I couldn’t quite recognize.

I tried distracting myself by thinking about every moment that had led to this one and for the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to think about my childhood.

Born on a planet that was probably millions of Kilometres away, I was, for as long as I can remember, hollow.

I was born into conflict, in a country that was caught in between a decades long proxy war between the powers that drove the world.

I don’t remember the exact circumstances of my birth but it seemed as though I, along with many other boys, were taken from our villages by a terrorist group known as the Jackals.

A group that was spread across several countries in Central Africa and secretly backed by various benefactors, private and government, eastern and western.

The group’s purpose was to keep the regions it occupied out of the hands of anyone its benefactors didn’t want, allowing them to gouge the regions for all they were worth.

Diamonds, gold, lithium, people, anything.

Our job, as child soldiers, was to keep the United Nations from sending large forces into the region.

After all, it wouldn’t be a good look for them if a region that was widely known to have child soldiers was cleared in an aggressive military effort.

We didn’t know any of this, however.

All we knew was violence and cruelty.

All of which was beaten into us until we either died or grew up to continue the cycle.

My group in particular was lead by a man named Simbi who worked directly under the elusive and mysterious leader of the Jackals.

Simbi ruled over a patch of Savannah known as the Red Wastes since the sand there had a slight red tint to it.

I wasn’t sure whether this was where I was born or where I just so happened to end up after being taken by Simbi’s men.

The other boys and I, pups all, lived in the outer parts of Simbi’s encampments.

He and the other Jackal leaders always made sure to stay mobile for obvious reasons but while he and his men slept in military issue tents and ate on stolen military supplies, we slept in thin blankets beneath the night sky and ate what scraps they left behind or food that had gone south.

They did it to harden us.

Or at least that’s what Simbi used to tell us whenever we cried.

A man was only ever worth as much as he could bear.

Men who could bite their teeth through enough pain could lift mountains, he said.

He promised us that if we suffered enough, if we worked hard enough, we would one day sit atop the mountains we once struggled to lift.

We carried these words deep in our hearts as we followed him across the Savannah and even as our bodies ached, we told ourselves it would be worth it if we just kept going because the alternative was a brutal death.

Any boy who tried running away would be captured and have their hands and feet beaten until they were flattened pieces of meat and bone.

They would then be given their wish and tossed into the Red Wastes.

They made us watch all this and it taught us one thing.

Don’t try to leave.

They didn’t even have to say anything or warn us.

We simply behaved or tried harder once corporal punishment was dealt.

If we behaved, we would be allowed to accompany Simbi on some of his raids.

He mostly targeted villages that were set to receive supplies via air drops.

Using the many connections the Jackals had, he could pinpoint when an aircraft would fly over the Red Wastes and intercept whatever packages it dropped.

But he never stopped at taking food from the villagers.

No, once the packages were secured, we would enter the village proper and take every young boy all while the men women and girls were rounded up by our seniors.

The women would then all be lined up before Simbi who would chose those he deemed the prettiest.

His men would then have their way with the others and not even the girls were spared.

Any men who dared move during all this we hacked to pieces all while we watched from behind with cold, heavy metal in our hands and tears in our eyes.