‘Come, Sofis. It’s time.’

Sofis slowly stood up, following the woman towards the light. She had no idea how long she had waited since the previous exchange. It didn’t really matter. Whatever this end had presented for her, she would probably accept it. She was tired. Not in the physical sense, but mentally tired. She wanted to give up the faculty of thinking. How much better would it be to be a slave— Oh wait, according to the woman, she was always one from the beginning of her life.

She laughed at herself.

They stepped out into the light. The first few moments were blinding to her eyes. She couldn’t see anything. The only thing she could sense was the woman’s hand which she was now grabbing tightly onto. The next thing she felt was the hard tiled floor beneath her feet. After that, she heard the sound of a male voice speaking something to the woman.

Finally, her eyes adjusted to the light.

Before her was a single bed, a table, a chair and a silver book placed on the bed, next to an all-too-familiar boy wearing a grey hooded shirt and long blue trousers.

The Creator waved at her with an awkward smile.

‘How does it feel to reach the end of your journey?’

The woman was gone. Sofis didn’t even notice when she had disappeared. It was just her and the Creator now, without any distractions, any sounds, any other characters who might disrupt them. Just a conversation between the two.

‘You thought I was dead, didn’t you?’ the Creator chuckled.

‘But, I thought…’

‘Just because I wrote myself to be killed doesn’t mean that I am actually killed. You can kill me right now, if you want. I will still reappear all the same. The Creator that you see here is only an insert into your world. I can be killed here, but I cannot be truly killed, if you understand what I’m saying.’

‘So you are immortal.’

‘Of course I am! Well, at least in the context of this world, I am. However, it is unlike your immortality earlier in the temple. If I desire to be so, I can decide for you to die this very instant, never to return again. Sofis the character will then be dead.’

‘Can you prove this to me?’ Sofis demanded.

‘Are you asking to be killed?’

‘N-No…’

‘Of course not. I didn’t intend for you to simply die like this. I have a special plan for you throughout this story, from the beginning to the end.’

The Creator stood up, pulled the chair out and gestured Sofis towards it. ‘Come, sit down. It’s probably not very comfy to just stand there all day.’

‘So what is your plan?’

‘To use you as an outlet to release my own thoughts.’

Sofis was confused. ‘Am I just supposed to be your mouthpiece, then?’

‘Every single character I created is technically a mouthpiece of mine.’

He flipped open his silver book. ‘For Avalel, I wanted to depict the futility of fighting against a chosen path. The Avalel you have seen is one after the end of the story, one who has submitted himself to fate. For the woman that guided you here, she is a combination and an evolution of my own thoughts of a heroine over time, from an ideal warrior-hero to the jaded witch that you have encountered. And as for you… As I said earlier, you are an outlet. But an outlet towards my memories as well as various fantasies and thoughts.’

‘Then all this time, all the adventures, everything that I’ve been through… has only been a way for you to release your own thoughts through my perspective?’

‘Correct. At the end of the day, every single character plays a role determined by their Creator, whether it be the hero, the villain, the side character, the mentor, the love interest, etc. As your Creator, I designed it so that every absurd trial you have gone through is a facet of what I imagine or have imagined to then create as a reality in this world.’

‘Can you even possibly imagine everything in the reality of the world?’

‘The “world”, in this case, refers to the temple, or the “structure” as you call it. From the very beginning, I designed for you and the others to enter the temple. What is a temple? You do not even have a concept for it. When was this built? What was it built for? Why is it in ruins? What exactly are you supposed to find in there? How long have you been travelling with the band to get there? Do you know any answers to these questions?’

‘I… do not.’ The questions never even registered for Sofis before.

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‘This is because I do not possess these answers, nor are these answers necessary to create the world I want to create. When I do deem it necessary to have those answers, it will become reality for you without you ever becoming aware. Just as the woman has told you, none of these things will be made aware until I make you become aware.’

‘Then am I simply limited to the borders of my character that you have created?’

‘Also correct. The temple refers to a place of worship dedicated towards a higher being, a god. As I am the Creator, I am essentially your god. However, this temple is more of an abstract, messy archive for myself, explored through your perspective and experiences in a tale I intend to tell.’

‘Can you not simply explain everything to me?’

‘I cannot. Though I am perfect in the context of this world, I do not see myself as such. The “everything” I can explain is but everything I have right now, and hence everything for you. But it is not “everything” in the sense for myself. As one who creates, I am an artist. An artist makes mistakes. But the art will never know where the mistakes are, for from their perspective, the artist is perfect.’

‘Then explain “everything” as I know it.’

‘In the beginning, when you entered the temple, the mysterious environment was to explore the inner workings of my own messy mind. I had no idea how to push the story. I had no idea how to focus on certain bits of my mental workings. Nothing made sense. I wanted to hint to you of my existence, so I had Roya “see” me and go insane. In fact, he didn’t. I just determined that he did, so he did.’

‘But you created all of us to not believe him until you had revealed yourself in person.’

‘Indeed. If you believed him immediately, you would’ve been too afraid to even enter the temple, losing the entire story altogether. The moving statue was intended as a scare, but it was around that moment when my mind slowed. I forgot how to write. The two weeks you spent sleeping, was in fact, two weeks when I couldn’t create anything new for the world.’

‘Then for two weeks, we have been technically “dead”?’

‘Technically speaking, you were only in stasis. You talked to me in a dream, or so you thought. I designed the scene for only you to be awake, but also wrote it so that you thought you were in a dream so you wouldn’t freak out at seeing a boy in the middle of the night.’

‘And the first halls? Are those a result of your slow thinking, or the beginning of your deliberate effort to show yourself?’

‘I was at my lowest point during those halls. The world felt grey. Meaningless. Lost. I conveyed that in the grey hall, but it became silver as I found hope in a hopeless situation. The silver was a treasure to be found once the depressing atmosphere was removed. To be forgotten was also a great fear of mine, so I conveyed it through Temia’s perspective, drawing the two of you closer. It was this relationship that allowed me to then paint the next hall of lust and addiction, two dangers that often came hand-in-hand. To burn away the hall was to burn away and completely cut off from anything that might cause a relapse. No matter how beautiful it seems, poison is still poison and must be removed from the system.’

‘May I request something from you at the end?’

‘Bold of you to ask your Creator for something so directly. But I will allow it. I do answer the prayers and wishes of my characters, after all.’

The Creator paused to shake his head, a habit of his whenever he felt tired and out of focus, before he returned to the situation at hand. ‘It was then that I decided to reveal myself to you in person for the very first time. Naturally, I designed it to not be an extremely smooth interaction, and it certainly did create some doubt in you when Temia “killed” me in front of everyone. That was the halfway point of the story. Everything that came after was more absurd for a single reason: I was now diving into my childhood fantasies and the complete fiction, escaping away from the rather horrid mind that I currently possess.’

‘So the creatures, the boat, the space, the golems…’

‘All of them were created in my mind to an extent, though they used to only exist in various vacuums and not tied together like this. The “creatures” you struggled so hard against are dinosaurs, ancient lizards that I used to imagine terrorising everything in their path. The undersea boats, submarines, represent my fascination with the deep sea, only for that to then extend into the infinite cosmos of empty space. The golems, unfortunately, are a recent invention, created to tangentially relate to my fascination in building imaginary humanoids in the past.’

‘And finally, I, Sofis, met the other Protagonists.’

‘It is here when I decided that you should become the last remaining character of the story. The others did not die. They are simply erased. You do not remember their appearances because I never imagined any specific appearances for them. Only you are a Protagonist in this story, and only you are special.’

The Creator said these words nonchalantly, as if it was perfectly normal and reasonable to create some characters better than others.

But it was normal. At least in the context of that world.

‘You being a puppet briefly was a sign for your fate being tied to my writing,’ the Creator continued. ‘This was made to be more obvious with the appearances of the other Protagonists, but ultimately, you are not them. Your conversations with them served to sharpen your character and personal philosophy, your responses painting you in yet another different light. I realised that, by this point, you are markedly different from the other Protagonists I created. I made you on a whim, but you developed to be a richer character than I ever imagined. I do not have a clear image of your face, but the moment I do, I will mould you to have a unique appearance, a face that would properly represent Sofis the scholar.’

He took a deep breath. ‘I believe that none of the creations can ever be as complex as the Creator, but the lives, the characters I create within you will always, at the very least, have the potential to be far more interesting than my own.’

Sofis, naturally, would not be moved much by the Creator’s words. If anything, it showed his lack of care towards his own creation. Still, somewhere deep within her, there was a sense of gratitude. Not really that the Creator made her to be something great, but the simple fact that she was just made.

While she still disagreed with Avalel and the woman, her background being fundamentally different from the two Protagonists who the Creator clearly cherished, she felt she had softened compared to the previous conversation with the woman. Whether this was her own genuine feelings, a forced development from the Creator, or a combination of both, she couldn’t really care less.

At the end of everything, she was still Sofis, a scholar of Academia Historica.

And she, a Protagonist, had the privilege to chance upon a god.

----------------------------------------

‘Now can I request something from you?’ she asked.

‘Go ahead.’

‘... I want a world where the band exists together in a happy, peaceful reality.’