UMBRA

With every action comes a series of uncountable reactions. Micro-consequences that echo outwards into the universe, permeating ad infinitum rippling back and forth across reality. These titanic waves of intent, formed from even an action so mere as deciding what one might have for lunch, arch out into the wider cosmos as a whole, and begin to merge, like to like. Every action holds a basis in circumstances and themes, all of which begin to twist together; two instances of the same tone merging to create one larger, richer sound. The fact is there are a lot of sentient beings in the infinite universes. And each one takes an action every single moment of every single day, they steal, the cheat they lie, they kill, they give, they kiss, they love, they sacrifice, they live… they die. Each ripple of intent, of emotion, of choice, of will fold together into a network of pulsing veins of power. And when that power reaches a tipping point, when so many decisions are made in the same vein, when that vein of power is so great it becomes an embodiment of itself, the purest form of its represented concept… a god is born.

It is a strange thing to become sentient. To go from being nothing, that feels nothing, and sees nothing, another stone in a pond, to suddenly being an individual to whom the world has just popped in around. No, it isn’t quite like that. The world was always there. It was more like a eureka moment, an instance of profound realization, where everything suddenly just… made sense. Suddenly the whole world had… context. Everything had meaning, there were directions, there were objects, there were properties to those objects, like temperature and density. There… there was a sky. It was all so… beautiful, complex in ways I could scarcely understand. I could watch it unfold on itself, from sub-microscopic electrons zipping around their nuclei, to universes, sliding past each other amidst the ether. It was truly breathtaking. And there was me… I existed, I was a part of this majestic tapestry of reality, another piece of this pure complexity…. Except I wasn’t complex. I wasn’t like the cricket in the grass, its tiny biology, infinitely complex, built upon infinitely complex cells, built on infinitely complex molecules, built on infinitely complex atoms. I was just… one thing. I was simple, unchanging. I was darkness. And that’s all I would ever be. And with that, mere moments after I was born, I cried. I cried and cried and cried. The shadows pooling around my form, swallowing the grass, turning it into as much of a void as I was, I would never be like them, I would never be beautiful, all I could ever be, was nothingness, the swallowing void, the darkness, the hunger. I was so alone. I needed someone, anyone. If I couldn’t be interesting, maybe I could meet someone who was, maybe I could learn to be like them, maybe I could become someone, something. I pushed my mind out into the wider multiverse, searching for someone, anyone who might understand, who might share some of their infinite beauty with me, who might make me something worth existing alongside them. And I found someone, someone scared, and alone, and angry, someone who made a promise they knew they would never keep, someone who with no other hope, cast their hatred futilely into the void, futilely into me, someone… who I could help, and maybe If I helped them… they would help me. So, I accepted their promise, and I doubled it. Carving their venom into my heart, their fear would be mine, their anger would be mine, their hatred would be mine, their joy and pain would be mine, and I would be theirs, we would become beautiful together, me and her. Then… she died.

I felt the moment her soul fled her body. I sat there in the field; such a simple word for something so broad, vast and beautiful; in the middle of my pool of nothingness. I needed to bring her back. But I couldn’t why couldn’t I? I was a goddess for crying out loud! I should be able to bring someone back from the dead if I wished. Well, the answer immediately dropped into my head as soon as I wanted it. Death, life and souls were all under the purview of the goddess Mortella. As soon as I wondered where I might find Mortella, the answer popped into my head again. Why was information popping into my head? And of course, that question too answered itself. Omniscience, all gods and goddesses had it, it was an ability that gave you any information you wanted. Like Google without any effort. I dropped into my void, using it to traverse the heavens, as I immediately began pulling as much information from my omniscience as possible. Simple thigs, complex things, strange things, unintuitive things, the intuition behind them, and even the two words in the English language that did, in fact, rhyme with orange.

I emerged from the darkness into a massive sunlit gazebo, the arches revealing the gorgeous vistas surrounding it. I glanced at them, and immediately ignored them. They weren’t beautiful. They were imitations of real beauty, but there was in fact, nothing there, just nature and beauty, some water, some earth, that was just about it. There were no animals, living their lives, fighting for survival, watching their children grow, the trees were unchanging, they had no scars in their bark from an overzealous woodpecker, no strange bends as they desperately reached for the sun, their source of light and life, struggling to reach for it, and not to be shadowed in a life where shadows meant death. A light that if they could someday reach, would kill them instantly. No, this forest was just an imitation, a farce, a fabrication. I found its mere existence offensive. Like if someone murdered your pet and bought you a stuffed animal from Walmart as a replacement. The strangest thing I noticed was the food. On a long table in the middle of the gazebo, there was food, a lot of food. Why was there food? Only gods lived here, and none of us needed to eat. I approached the food curiously; my eye caught a slice of cake. It was beautiful, the cake was black, with frosting that looked like the night sky, twinkling stars caught in a facsimile of the true majesty of the sky. I frowned and grabbed the slice, already plated with a fork, and looked around. There were many gods here, all of which were as simple and uninteresting as I. I looked at one, and all I saw was wood. He was the god of wood, and every aspect of him was wood. I sighed. Then I saw… her. I immediately recognized Mortella, a person I had never met before, and she was… interesting. She wasn’t quite as beautiful as the mortals, but she was… different. She wasn’t like all the other gods. I reflexively tried to get an answer from omniscience, and… failed. Omniscience hadn’t given me an answer. That felt oddly… wrong. No matter, I could ask the person directly.

I sat at the table across from the goddess of death. I was about to ask a question, but I paused…. I got a feeling deep in my core of pure darkness; It recoiled slightly from the being in front of me, pulling away as if in fear. Like and abused, cages animal huddling to the far corner as its tormentor approached. It was at that moment I realized. Mortella could kill me, I didn’t know how, but apparently, she was capable of killing another god. That shouldn’t be possible, gods can’t be killed, we’re immortal… right? I looked around the gazebo and only now noticed that we were in the middle of a wide circle, every table adjacent to us was completely unoccupied. They were all afraid. Fascinating. I leaned forwards looking at the death goddess. She looked like a weird hybrid between a librarian and a biker. Her clothes were neat and well-tailored, but she also wore a studded leather jacket, she had a pair of prim glasses on her face, glasses that had shaded lenses. She was tapping away at a tablet in her hands while occasionally reaching over to a plate of fried wantons, grabbing one with a pair of chopsticks, and eating it. Anyways I needed answers. “How do you kill other gods?” I asked. The goddess didn’t look up from her tablet, just spoke… with her mouth still full.

“Same way you do whatever it is you do,” she said. then she glanced at me. “Darkness? Oh, Lumina will have a field day with that. So, however you make a sunny beach shadier,” that middle part she muttered as if to herself. “Yeah, but like how does it work? How do you make an immortal god… not immortal?” “Gods aren’t true immortals. Anything that can die, will die. It’s just a matter of time. If something is immortal, except for if it stubs its toe against a solid gold brick in a graveyard under the light of a full moon, eventually, no matter how unlikely the scenario, that being will stub its toe against a gold brick in a graveyard under the light of a full moon.” I nodded. Then realized the implications of that statement. Someday… Mortella, would kill me. Hmm… I suppose that didn’t really matter. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I might as well ignore it. Although there was the possibility, she’d revealed that particular bit of information as a veiled threat intending to drive me off. Ignoring that as well I re-asked my question. “That’s nice and all but explain the process that you use to make a god dead,” I said. Mortella, for once, lowered her tablet, and looked me dead in the eyes. Well, I assumed she did, I couldn’t see her eyes through her glasses, but with all the other movements it made sense.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“You’re new,” she said. It wasn’t really a question, but I answered it anyways. “Yes, I became sentient (I checked omniscience) approximately two hours, eight minutes, and fifty-three seconds ago.” Mortella ate another wanton. “Look, I’m very busy right now, so if you don’t need anything, septillions of mortals die every nanosecond and each one needs my direct attention,” she said. “Wait. I… I actually do need something.” Mortella, having returned to whatever it was she was doing on her tablet of all important death stuff, arched an eyebrow. “What’s that?” I took a deep breath… this was going to be hard. “I need someone brought back from the dead. And I know you’re the goddess of death, and that’s (“Sure”) Probably…” I trailed off. “Wait what? It’s that easy?” “Yep, just two conditions.” I gulped, here it was, this is where she tells me to track down some magic artifact, long shattered into a quarter to half a dozen McGuffin pieces and hidden away in dungeons filled to the brim with compounding puzzle design all to save my princess… wait what’s her name? Cheshire! Wait really? Like the cat from Alice in Wonderland? Or, that one type of cheese? Or, that place in England where the cheese is from? Didn’t matter. Why is Mortella looking at me like an idiot? Oh right, she had two conditions. When is she going to say them. She already said them, didn’t she. “Hey… uh… Mortella, could you repeat that, I got distracted thinking about cheese.” Mortella looked at me blankly for several seconds. “You’re an omniscient being, you should have sufficient mental bandwidth to never get distracted thinking about… cheese, you also should never get so distracted you lose track of a conversation for long enough that you forget something, and lastly you should be able to check your eidetic memory for any information you may have missed.” Oh… Actually, it was here. I rewound my mind and replayed what she’d said. “I need another plate of wantons, and for you to leave me alone.” I frowned. The wantons were easy, but Mortella was the most interesting deity I’d met so far, there was no way I could just leave. A portal appeared under a plate of freshly made wantons on the long table. They fell through the void and landed with a ping against the table in front of the goddess. “I can do this much, but there’s no way I’m leaving, I still have so many questions!” I said. Mortella sighed. “For one, why are you so willing to bring someone back from the dead? It’s not like it was hard to go to the table and get you another plate.” Mortella just shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I bring someone back? Cheshire didn’t die that long ago, so I can just scoop her soul up out of the ether and drop her in a new body. So long as she dies again, it makes no difference to me.” “Okay, I guess that makes sense, but wait, how do you know who I want?” Mortella didn’t answer, just stared at me. “Right… omniscience.” “Yes, omniscience,” Mortella said. She reached into the ether and plucked something out. “Here you go,” she said, handing me a glowing blue-purple crystal. “That is Cheshire’s soul, you may want to bring her back in a safe environment and explain what’s going on before putting her back in the mortal plane.” And with that Mortella returned to whatever it was she was doing.

I did have a few more questions, but for the time being I thought it best to leave the grumpy death goddess alone, so I stood…. Actually… one more question. “Hey, Ella? (“Please don’t call me Ella, like we’re friends.”) There’s something different about you from everyone else, what is that?” Mortella’s gaze slid to mine, and she sighed. “You know, if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, I can just take that soul back.” I sat back down. “I said I wasn’t willing to go through with that part, and since you’ve given me the soul, we’ve agreed the wantons alone are fine,” I said, smirking triumphantly. Mortella gave me a deadpan look then sighed once again, the tablet in her hands evaporating. As she leaned back in her seat. “Listen, I’m not a big fan of gods. Your kind are self-obsessed, narcissistic, spoiled children with far more power than any being should have. Yet, you are far too simple to understand the true depth of the worlds you trapse around in. Playing games, with the lives of countless mortals, while you yourselves are just conglomerations of power so vast, and pure it started to think for itself. We don’t get along, we can’t get along, I don’t mind helping out every now and then, if it’s something minor like bringing someone back, but that is just so that you all won’t be desperately trying to rob the ether of the souls of the dead. We’ve been through that before, and this is the result of those times,” Mortella said, gesturing to the pavilion, or more precisely, to the large vacancy around her. “So, with that in mind, do you understand why I’m not interested in your friendship? Why I’m not inclined… to….”

I trailed off in the middle of the little speech that I’d given, time and time again, to every new god and goddess since so long ago, I barely cared to fathom. There had been many reactions to this speech, usually chagrin, sometimes anger, but this… this was new. This new goddess of darkness… was crying. This struck me as odd, seeing as gods didn’t cry. Don’t get me wrong, they could absolutely cry, as they could do just about anything else, the thing was they were generally too proud, to focused on their own image to let themselves be infamized through their own feelings. Sure, they occasionally hammed it up to make themselves more sympathetic, but… this was different, these weren’t crocodile tears, this was genuine. I could tell, when a god truly wept, you could feel it; feel it in the base of their power, in this case, I could see the void itself, a dark place of eternal nothingness, shuddering as it too, wept. I let out a sigh for the umpteenth time in this conversation, although this time was not out of frustration. I released all my annoyance in a puff of air and stepped to the other side of the table, moving briefly through the fourth dimension to cross the space without actually bumping into the table itself. I sat down next to the fledgling goddess and placed a hand on her back. And I pulled.

We sat in a room, a room I had been in for countless eons and technically never. It was a small room, including a comfy couch, my desk and a large glass window providing the glowing illumination from the flow of the time stream itself. There were no other gods that could access this room, save for my parents. And here, the little goddess of darkness could cry in peace. I sat with her and waited as she fought for control of her tears. “I’m sorry,” I said. “No, no, I’m sorry, it’s fine, it’s just…. You’re right.” My eyes widened slightly at that; gods generally never acknowledged their faults. “I’m not interesting, I’m just a clump of darkness that for some reason can talk. And that’s all I’ll ever be. If I ever lose too much power, if there isn’t enough darkness, I’ll be gone forever. I’m not like them, not like the mortals. They’re so beautiful, so interesting. From the intricacies of their societies to the composition of their cells, they are so fascinating. If you cut a piece of hair from one, you could look at it and see thousands of individual flakes of keratin, not a single one the same as another, strands of DNA, a molecule so complex it is completely unique for each and every living thing on the planet. If you cut a piece of hair from me, it would just… dissipate, return to the darkness from which it was made, revel me for the simplistic nothingness I am,” Umbra said, looking down at her hands, letting them fade, melt back into the void. “I’ll never be like them. All I can do is pretend, pretend and hope that they won’t notice… but you already know… and you already don’t want anything to do with me, and why would you? Even a bacterium is more complex than….” I wrapped my arms around her. I personally didn’t like hugs, or even giving hugs, they made me uncomfortable, I just didn’t like people getting close to me, but even so, I understood that they make people more comfortable, and that this little goddess could probably use one right about now. I did owe it to her after all.