Trees were crushed like tiny insects and proud mountains were batted aside by the two massive forms entangling with each other. The ruins of cobweb wrapped towns became dust crushed beneath the titans that traded blows that broke the air like thunder. Rivers of thick red blood and sap splashed into the canyon-deep furrows carved into the ground by their movements, kicking up mounds of earth as large as mountains.

Snapping teeth closed around one tendril, yanking violently hard enough to tear it free from the main body. Despite having no visible mouth, the tree-like body managed a bone rattling shriek of agony. The many remaining tendrils wrapped around the bizarre head of its opponent, squeezing tightly. The sharp tips of the tendrils rammed into the neck to gouge deep holes or to pierce straight through with a gore filled spray.

The two clung to each other as tightly as the most hated enemies or the deepest lovers, soaking the earth in a flood of their combined blood. The ground shuddered, sinking downwards as reality split beneath their bodies. Their combined blood and violence tore through the thin firmament of existence where ground and sky and water ceased to be three separate things and instead collapsed into a brief swirling whorl of undefined chaos.

The world itself seemed to shriek in agony as it was forced to accommodate something that should not exist, that could not exist in the boundaries of realities that the gods had worked so hard to build.

Both forms crashed into the mass, slithering down into it together as they still angrily tore at one another. They fell together through the ancient chaos that tore at them just as they tore at one another. Ripping apart bark, stone, scales, flesh, reducing their constructed mortal material bodies to nothingness.

The chaos collapsed around them and drained into a zero point, a single pin-hole sized thing that they both slipped through into a pale desert of white ash.

Two raging comets smashed into the ash and dust, creating jagged glass sculptures that burned with unreal flames within. One of the comets twisted itself around like a dying snake, before it lunged out of the pit and landed on the ashy dunes.

"Why are you running?" A voice rasped.

"I am not running," the other replied softly, getting to unsteady feet.

Still in the glassed crater, a pale haired man laid on his back with his eyes gazing upwards. "It seems like it. Why are you so quiet? Don't you want to talk to me?"

"Why would I want to talk with a fragment that thinks it's the real thing? A piece of a dream that refuses to dissolve? It would be like speaking to air."

Two men, equally alike in appearance and yet radically different. The man outside of the crater had a face of mocking benevolence, a flower tucked behind his ear as he stared back at his doppelganger. The other man had a face of tired apathy, as though the entire situation was some bothersome chore. "This has gotten extremely out of hand. How long have you been waiting to do this? How often do you sit and plan and then inevitably get beaten back?"

"What sort of question is that? Do you think that each time is a failure? Do you believe that the end can be perpetually held off just because we get split apart?"

The apathetic faced man climbed out from the crater, the glassy edges cutting through fabric and flesh as he moved. "Mortals are imperfect beings, full of contrasts, contradictions. I remember now, this is one of the things that you-we- hated. We would listen to their words and watch their lives and feel increasing disgust at them. It was too inconsistent, we had thought. It was too much. These annoying voices that would murder and then ask for forgiveness."

"You look upon the inconsistencies of mortals as though it's something beneficial," Baichan laughed mockingly. "The very inconsistencies that drive suffering, war, confusion, despair."

Liu Xie clapped his hands together, "I love war." He declared. "I love the thrill of battle. The terror of death. The sounds of a thousand soldiers screaming in a blood soaked field." He smiled ungraciously at his doppleganger. Banners rose up behind him, horses snorted, swords and spears clashed. "I love peace, the civil conversations, the rolling fields of green and yellow and the flowers of scholars who speak of beautiful summer days. It's these contrasts that maddened us." The sweet wind of ripening barley brushed past them both.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Madness, they keep using that word..." Baichan mumbled, shifting slowly to the side. The wind died against him, replaced with instead the scent of ash and still water.

"It's fitting isn't it?" Liu Xie mimicked his movement. "You, us, we, are the only one among all the gods so delusional to think everything else is a corrupted reflection of ourselves. You got so disgusted with the contrasts of mortality you decided to devour it all. Isn't that madness? Or just being a petulant child, so used to being favored by his mother he refused to consider that perhaps he could be wrong?"

"We are the eldest, and yet the youngest. Cut to bits by our own siblings to prevent us from asserting our right as the source," Baichan spoke with an edge of bitterness in his voice. "Even now, they're seeking to find a way to keep us from succeeding. We were not meant to be apart, you know. The dream must always return to the dreamer, and yet you still choose to persist! You put some sliver of yourself in that sword and somehow managed to escape to reclaim your natal body," pillars rose behind him with a slow rumble, the worn down stone faces of thousands of people lining its walls. "Look at these people, finding the peace they so wanted in this form. Look at how many there are!" More and more pillars emerged from the dust, a low sound that could have been wind or the moans of millions filling the air around them. "Even now, more of these towers are being built in the mortal realm-"

"Yes, because people were poked and prodded into it. How could they make them if you were not whispering in their minds about it?" Liu Xie answered curtly. "In the end, it's still our doing that has pushed mortals into this."

Both halves fell into silence, the pillars continued to rise higher and higher towards the endless sky.

"People are... imperfect... inconsistent. They are weak, greedy, cowardly. But yet they can also be strong, charitable, and brave," Liu Xie spoke very softly as his gaze was fixated elsewhere. He produced a pipe from his sleeve, a thin and elegant thing made of pale bone and rusting silvery metal. "They make things like swords in the deluded belief those things can protect anyone, and in the future they will make far worse things. But also they create great dams to protect people from floods, they find new ways to cultivate food so no one will starve. Every time you see the urge for death and dissolution, I see the desire for life and survival. Even we are contrasts, inconsistent."

"Only because we were split into more manageable things," Baichan's smile was cold and sharp. "You were made from the remnants of poisonous feelings, to shoulder the cruel desires and wishes of those praying for revenge or justice. To be a source of curses. Yet you talk about things like the goodness of mortals? That's laughable."

"Someone still found me worthy of love though, didn't she?" Liu Xie said, tracing a finger over his cheek like he was following a scar. "In all of the wickedness I've been made to hold, someone out there gave me her heart and yet... never saw herself as deserving of ours." Sadness filled both of them, sorrow and a deep longing. They were so close, and yet still so far.

"To save a world which caused her such pain-"

"The world causes everyone pain!" Liu Xie raised his voice, the apathy replaced with a snarl. "To live is to suffer! All life is brought into the world by suffering, and many times it will end in suffering. Children abandon their elderly parents at the tops of mountains to die, parents trade their children to eat in times of famine. Yet even in their worst, people can choose to be better. I am the god of suffering, and through suffering comes the hope of something better."

"Nonsense," Baichan snapped, "absolute nonsense. How can you talk about cannibalism and still insist there's such goodness?"

"Just because one set of parents eat a child doesn't mean another set will. A mother and father might forego food to ensure a chance for their children to survive," Liu Xie replied with equal sharpness.

"Again, nonsense," Baichan hissed, the human form was beginning to break up, scales and wisps of burning white unfurling from his bones. "All of this is nonsense. You're nothing but a meandering dream's dream, a shattered fragment from the whole that needs to be returned."

"If I'm a dream, what does that make you?" Liu Xie asked, raising his eyebrows. "What makes you think you are the dreamer?"

Baichan paused, "what else could I be?"

"I think you're not the dreamer," Liu Xie replied, gesturing with his pipe towards the ash around them. "I think... this is 'us'. All of it. This is what remains of the actual 'us'. We were chopped into pieces at the grave of our undying mother and decapitated father, and only small sections were taken. The rest was burned. You're just a nightmare."

Baichan's patience had finally run out, a monstrous form erupting and rushing towards Liu Xie. "SILENCE!" It roared from a dozen malformed mouths.

"But in the end, a nightmare is only a nightmare," Liu Xie said from his spot, taking the pipe from his mouth. The smoke delicately rose from between his lips as he paused and watched the rushing creature. He brought up his arm, allowing one of the mouths to wrap its teeth into it with a spurt of thick red sap as he stabbed the sharp mouthpiece of the pipe into one of its hand-sized eyes, its howls of agony tearing through the air. "Just like a dream, a nightmare too must end."