The Story of The Gardener
The story of The Gardener is an old tale, known by only the most ancient of beings. It is the story of the father of the Crowns, and of his nameless wife, who tried and failed to reach for greater heights than the right of their birth. The two Colossi, eternal and powerful beings that live to wander the endless ocean, unknowing of their own purpose or of anything besides each other, heard and seen by none but the Leviathans that prowl the depths of their home. The Colossi hold great strength, they have a supreme intellect and a true gift to wield the force of creation but with no scale to measure against, and the inability to sense creatures as small as the leviathans around them, they do not understand the gravity of their existence. Time has no measurement before the birth of the trees, but as unknowable eons pass, they come to understand the existence of another place, the place of residence of their creators, this place they call Arcadia.
Yearning for further meaning, for what is a life that knows nothing but itself, The Gardener and his wife draw upon their considerable wisdom, born of an age of shared solitude, to devise a means of using the power of the waters they wade through. They seek to empower themselves into a state high enough to cross the black expanse of nothing they stare into, to dwell with the creatures they’ve come to hold as their neglectful parents. They teach themselves how to communicate their intent to the ever-restless depths, and discover that using a series of geometrically specific shapes, they can force this power to move in such a way that it will bond with one of them, but only one. The Gardener refuses to leave his eternal partner in the dark, unending place they strive to escape from, so she accepts to be the ascendant, promising to pull him up after the ritual is complete.
As possibility flows through the hopeful Colossus, the dark expanse above starts to take shape in her teary eyes. To her husband she describes a massive place, full of creation and beauty, and of beings that rival her size looking down upon her. Never having known any but her husband, she cannot understand that the gaze cast upon her is full surprise and disdain, she ascends to Arcadia.
The giant watches his wife leave, he watches her turn around from above and offer her hand to him. He cannot see the Divine beings and she has turned away from them. The Gardener reaches out for his companion’s hand, but before they have the chance to touch again, the beings above start to shred her body, never before feeling pain her screams will haunt the gardener for the rest of his eternal life. Being unable to see what is destroying his only friend, he can only watch as her body turns to motes of light, spreading across the once-empty black sky. A voice erupts from the slowly expanding points of light, driving the giant to kneel “Filthy creature, for the crime of violating the sacred home of your ancestors, your partner has been sundered into the sparks you know gaze upon. I have crafted you a brother, Hell, who will hunt you for eternity, and your companion will ever expand so that wherever you may flee to, she will forever watch your torment. May you both repent.”
Under the light cast down by his sundered friend, the giant grieves with the power of a universe, the ocean churning under his massive body as he shakes. He grieves motionless for a time measured in crashes of waves of an unending sea, a glowing object approaches from afar. The condemned giant feels his brother moving toward him, but his shame and his regret hold his head low, and his tongue still. Even with the immense distance between the two, the behemoths tough hide burns from the heat that radiates from his brother, it is a confusing thing to experience for someone who has spent his life wandering a black ocean. The confusion compels him to lift his head, to witness the arrival of the new Colossus, and the sight of Hell forces the grief into the back of his mind, to be replaced by a raw fear.
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Hell stands a little taller than his older brother, he is a figure of breadth whose muscular body pulses with a dreadful, red power that flows down from inside the pitch black helm on his head. The liquid flames that course between the obsidian fibers of the muscles on his legs seem to lessen as he stops, still standing a great distance from his brother. The fires in his chest and arms flare as Hell takes a large breath, the pressure around him intensifying as he exhales pure white fire into his own hands, he starts to shape these flames into a bow of solidified light and heat. When he has fully shaped his bow, he looks up to The Gardener, his eyes shining with the same light his now dead sister held, as she gained the power to pierce the veil above, he spoke to his brother with a voice full of conviction. "My brother who has no name, I have not come here to console you. I know not why I now pursue you, only that it is my purpose and I apologize now for what is to come. You will regret whatever your transgression may be, and I will deliver to you the pain necessary to facilitate this regret, however I may never kill you, we are both eternal.” The Gardener made to speak, but that is not what Hell had come for, and before he had even opened his mouth, Hell reached toward the sky with an open hand. A spark above, formerly a member of the race of giants below, stretched down toward this outstretched hand. Elongated as it now was it had become an arrow, plucked from the heavens that had rejected it. The Gardener frothed with fury and started to rush toward his fiery brethren, but he hadn’t made it ten paces before he was struck in the shoulder with a piece of his sundered wife. So hard he was struck, he was taken off his feet into the water. His pain so blinding and the sorrow so maddening, he rose again to flee with all his strength, utilising the mastery over the forces of the sea to hasten his escape.
His love for his companion was enough to learn of all the sparks in the sky, their dance and all the wondrous shapes and forms they could take, but as time passed and he met the hunter again, and again, he noticed that the lights above had grown marginally less numerous. The number of his partners lights that were missing from the sky, was equal to the number of scars he had collected on his immortal body. When he learned this fact his rage was magnificent, he turned back to where he had come from to once again face Hell, he didn’t wait for long as Hell was always on his trail. He waited on his stomach, just underneath the waves as Hell approached, he had never faced Hell in confrontation before, so he was incautious of his waiting brother. But Hell was built for battle, so as The Gardener leapt out of the swell to attack him, He swung his bow down like a staff, to strike his shoulder with such force the eldest Colossus fell to one knee and had lost the use of his left arm. With Hell reaching up to draw another arrow from the sky, the giant on the ground’s rage was ignited again. He tackled his tormentor to the ground, using his titanic jaw to rip the hand clenching the spark from his junior’s arm, the scorching blood of the downed creature burning his face and mouth. With a piece of his tormentor and a part of his companion, he fled further into the endless ocean, running for longer than he has ever done a single task before, never turning back to watch for pursuit. Luckily for him, the damage he had done to Hell was significant enough to take a considerable time and amount of energy to heal from.
The fleeing giant ran until his collapse, and as he fell to lay on his side he wept. He wept for his folly and greed, why could he not be happy to have his lover by his side? He didn’t need to exist In a grander place, if he could just have his friend by his side again. Now was not the time to fall to his grief again, and hindsight serves only the future. He had spent long enough searching his mind for a way to reach his lost wife again, and now he had a part of a being capable of grasping her. Not only this, but he possessed a piece of her to use as a destination of sorts.
A path to reach his wife is what he needed, a ladder. The hand is a great base, but it is not tall enough, he needs to make it grow. Using the spark as a guide, and the hand of his brother as the material, he crafts the seed of the first structure that would be known as the trees of The Gardener.