The Creators Ch 21

Chapter Twenty-One: The Broken Bridge

Prelude: To Build a Bridge, page one

My daughter is dead and it is my fault. I thought the tether could withstand the blood corona sliver, but I did not realize she needed to don the guise of Hatred to bear it. I will forever remember the expression on her face as she crossed the window. Such confusion. Fitting that it is the last thing I ever saw with my waking eyes. Petranumen's dagger was my deserved final moment. Fitting that it was Hatred herself who had forged it.

Now I am here, in this place of impermanence. Dead, but not yet gone. The last remnant of my daughter's tether remains on this side of the astral sun and it holds me here for as long as I can bear it before I walk across the bridge. I never realized there were two sides to the astral plane, but it makes perfect sense. One side to face the physical plane and hold the thoughts of the living; one side to face the spiritual plane and hold the thoughts of the dead. They come here; translucent astral figures carrying the light of their spirits within their core. They leave their minds like corpses at the foot of the bridge and then float across as spheres of light. As I watch them promenade with such certainty and conviction, I am bothered by the question that has haunted us Elementals to the point of insanity: are we the light that crosses the bridge, or the corpse it leaves behind? There are still so many mysteries to the nature of existence. I suppose I now have time to understand them. Now, all I have is time.

Part One: Faith and Truth

Thirty Days Left

CORRUPTION

I was in an iron maiden. Unable to move, unable to think my own thoughts, unable to even see beyond the eyes of my cage. Oh god, how had Petranumen endured this?! What madness compelled her to seek such a prison? Melded to a mind of no astral cognition, a slave to the neurons and synapses which relayed with the binarism of a machine! It was impossible to differentiate my thoughts from Julia's, impossible to separate my center from hers, impossible to know where she began and I ended! The power I gained from our direct connection was infinitely greater than it was through Diamond, but it was just energy, joules with no sense of purpose, a hurricane blindly tearing through an ocean. I was bound and melded with love. Bound by barbed wire that cut into the flesh; melded like conjoined twins stitched together from cadavers.

What did I want?

Who was I?

Remember. Remember. There is only one way to escape now. There is only one evil. Fix the broken bridge. Set them free.

Burn it down. Set them free.

Burn it down. Set them free.

Burn it down. Set them free.

WILLLOWBUD

"Get her arm!" I screamed.

Astrid was shrieking. She thrashed in the torment of her flesh, trying to flap her one wing, grasp with no hands, kick with no feet. I frantically rushed to her every need, attended to one wound, then the next, then the next, but oh god, there were so many! Blood spurted from her jagged amputations, splattering the walls, the floor, and me, and she screeched and bellowed as if realizing the horror anew with every second.

"Hold her down!" I bellowed to Justina, but Justina wasn't even there. She huddled in the corner, her eyes blue and grey, and she just stared blankly at the corpse in front of her. Bianca smashed her fists upon Brandon's chest over and over, screaming and begging for his heart to start again. Angela curled upon herself, flinching with every strike by the Ofanian until her body was shaking with tension.

"Bianca!" I screamed, but she didn't hear me. She breathed into Brandon's lungs, then pummeled his chest, again and again, blubbering and wailing with each strike.

Angela quivered until she could no longer. She burst out with a sob and screamed, "GET UP! GET UP, GET UP,

GET UP!

" Her last scream grated against her throat and she wailed into the earth, curled in a fetal ball beside her brother, and whimpered, "don't go. Don't leave me alone."

Astrid scrambled out from beneath me and clambered in a pool of her own blood to find the skies. I tackled her and stifled her screams with my hands and she buried her fangs into my palm. She didn't even know me. Whipping around on her muscular torso, she sought to trap me in her hold, but she had no hands to grip me. I ripped my hand away and her shrieks grated against the walls of the cave once more.

"SHUT UP!" I screamed, stuffing her mouth with my forearm. She wasn't interested in it anymore. She threw me off her and I smacked my head against the wall. A concussive bell blared in my skull, my vision swam, my thoughts became muddied, the voices became discordant. I watched Astrid struggle on her stumps for the entrance, slip on her blood, batter her chin and face into the rock, her one wing flapping madly. Bianca's desperate bellows rang out as she pounded her fists against Brandon's hollowed chest and Angela's tortured whimpering carried a soft melody over it all.

"It's my fault," she wept silently, "I killed him, I killed him, I killed him, I--" Her eyes turned purple. Justina didn't seem to know where she was. She blinked back to reality, then she dumbly got to her feet and touched Bianca on the shoulder. Bianca wilted atop Brandon with a sob, then went still. As the Ofanian's breaths became slow and even with sleep, the succubus gently rolled her off the dead Life Giver and dragged the corpse out from beneath her.

"I'm sorry, Angela," she whimpered and tossed the god's body before the manic vampire. Astrid's head whipped around; her frenzied animal eyes focused on the kill. She didn't even recognize the human before her. She plunged her fangs into Brandon's throat and drank until there was nothing left of the man but sockets, teeth, and cartilage. Her shattered amputations became fleshed stumps, her jagged punctures closed, and the sloughed flesh of her back transformed into a tapestry of scars. Astrid's humanity came back to her in the last moment of her consciousness and when she saw what she had done, she let out a whimper before the shock mercifully took her to sleep.

I watched all of this through the fog of my concussive state, ebbing in and out of realization, letting the horrors wash over me. When a moment of clarity came, I was presented with my cousin's visage staring down at me.

"Willowbud," her voice was dead.

I blinked up at her. "What?"

"Where's Gloria's bag?"

I raised my finger to the corner of the cave. Justina opened the sack, pulled something out, and presented it to me. It was luminous and blue and it took me a few blinks to realize she was holding a mushroom.

"No," I whispered.

"You have to," she said, pressing the mushroom into my hand. "There's something you have to see. I'll take you there; you'll be safe."

"It's not safe! Diamond--"

"Diamond is dead." Justina closed my hand around the mushroom and held it tightly.

"What are you talking about? How do you know?"

She just shook her head. "I don't know," she whispered. "You can't tether someone to a person. It's not possible. None of this makes sense, but sense doesn't matter anymore." She closed her eyes and tears ran down her cheeks. "You have to come with me now. You have to see."

I opened my mouth and slid the mushroom inside.

I was in a small town. It would've been beautiful, but it was all grey. The rolling hills, the cottage, the babbling stream, the woman in the rocking chair. Corruption. I wheeled around and made to run for the gate, but something like iron held me in place. Justina's grip was indomitable and she kept me there.

"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING--"

"Shut up!" she snapped and twisted me around. "Look!"

I struggled desperately to free myself, but I was helpless here and for some reason, she was herculean. She forced my head up by the hair and made me stare down my demon. Corruption looked wholly unsure of herself. She shrugged insecurely and struggled to make eye contact with me. It was only when the panic left me that I realized her color was wrong, her patterns were gone and her grey eyes were dead like a doll's.

"Hello, old friend," she said with a shaking voice. This was not like the other one; this one knew me. I could see the recognition, the history we shared painted across her regretful façade. She squirmed in her chair, then got on shaking legs and plodded over to me with the utmost trepidation. I snarled when she got too close and she jolted and took two scrambling steps back.

"Who the fuck are you?!" I hissed. "

I don't know

you!

"

"You know me, Willowbud," she said with a willowy voice. "We know each other very well."

"You're not her! You're not..." I trailed off and narrowed my eyes. "

You're mistaking me for my memory,

" I echoed Corruption's words. "You're... you're Guilt."

She nodded.

"You're the one I know," I whispered, my voice shaking, "but you're.... you're...

you're dead.

"

Again, she nodded.

"That d-d-doesn't..." I stuttered, "...you... you... you don't get to die!"

I didn't know why grief balled in my throat. I didn't understand why the revelation struck me to the core. I couldn't understand why I dropped to my knees and wept like I never had before.

"You..." I pointed a shaking finger at Guilt, "...you don't get to just leave me!

You don't get to change!

I didn't get to change!

"

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Sorry?" I laughed through my tears. "You're sorry? It was all a mistake then, right?

I was just a fucking accident?! YOU WERE MY MOTHER!

YOU SAVED ME! YOU DON'T GET TO WALK AWAY FROM ME!

"

"I'm already gone," she said sadly, not feeling a thing that I felt, not understanding a single one of the memories she carried. An effigy. An encyclopedia of my most intimate depths spelled out in lifeless practical words. No drawl to beckon the darkness of my soul, no compassionate whisper to caress my scars. There had been someone out there who carried my burden, understood it, and loved it for all that it was. Now I was alone, and I wept for her passing. I had loved her; I had loved her with my hatred.

"Willowbud?" Justina asked softly.

I wiped the snot from my nose and staggered to my feet. The gate to this place was open, and its master strode in. Angela carried an iron box in her hands. She set it down before Guilt, and the Sentient opened it. The black memories flew out, twisted and abstract, but Guilt made them sensical with her touch, turning them grey. Then, we saw. We saw every memory, secret, and plan Corruption had made in Diamond's mind. We saw what she was going to do next, and there was nothing we could do to stop it.

JULIA

Burn it down. Set them free.

Tears of ecstasy flowed from my eyes. I was one with God. Our souls bound, our thoughts suffused, our very beings entwined forever. I had not found the end of the Maternal Path; I had forged a new one.

Burn it down. Set them free.

I looked at Diamond's corpse; her white eyes staring sightlessly to the sky, a tear running down her cheek, her lips poised as if to ask me, "why?" My final test, my final step on the Maternal Path; kill the deceiver; kill my daughter and become one with God.

Burn it down. Set them free.

There was a second heartbeat in my mind. Drumming, drumming, drumming; a pressure that needed to be released, a compulsion--no, a message. I did not have impulses; I had purpose.

Burn it down. Set them free.

My body raged with energy the likes of which I'd never felt before. The power of God at my fingertips, in my blood, in my heart that pounded relentlessly against my temples, veiling my vision a pulsing monochrome of the deepest blacks. I realized I was holding my breath, so I exhaled. The blackness flowed from me boundlessly, billowing out in a great cloud that obscured the stars. The patterns on my flesh darkened with the release, and the orgasmic sensations that wracked my core would've brought me to my knees were it not for the power that let me resist it.

Burn it down. Set them free.

"I hear you," I whispered.

Rockets erupted from my feet, melting the sand beneath me, incinerating the corpse of the deceiver. The surrounding dunes drained into the epicenter and joined the molten darkness whose depths penetrated the very mantle of the earth. I shot into the sky with speeds I had never known, breaching the clouds in seconds. The shockwaves boomed beneath me and sent sandstorm tsunamis across the desert that crashed against the twisted remnants of the Gratoran Wall as I was propelled skyward, beyond the cumulus and altocumulus shelves, beyond even the window of the stratosphere. I didn't stop until I could see the stars without the tint of the earth's azure. I had never been so high. Even the great triangular mountain Willowbud had made now looked like a figure of some topographical map whose surface curved away, all of it beneath the shimmer of a blue membrane. It was a breathless sight and indeed, I was breathless, but despite the thinness of the air, I did not suffocate. The one I was bound to fed me her life, and with our minds and souls stitched together, there was no barrier between her power and mine. She did not need to breathe the air where she was from, and so I did not need to either.

I took a moment to marvel at the beauty of this world. I could see the dwarven princedoms, the vast fields of Drastinar, the hilly kingdoms of Grundinar and Bulsinar, and even the arboreal wall of Arbortus. As the sun crested the horizon's curve, it illuminated the great arc of the world in a brilliant glow, touching the tips of the elvish mountains where I had taken my first steps upon the Maternal Path. How far I had come.

"Burn it down," I whispered. "Set them free."

I dropped back to earth. The desert gave way to the spine of Balamora, then the lush hills of the princedoms. The dawn had not yet touched this part of the world and so the pockets of light were revealed to me. There were thousands of them; towns and villages nestled between the stout castles, all twinkling in defiance of the night. In defiance of God. I opened my hands and formed a ball of black energy. It did not grow beyond the encasement of my fingers, but burned hotter, becoming so energetic that its mere mass created orbitals of the clouds around me. They swirled in a hurricanic force, and I was the eye watching from above, building and building until the cosmos itself was drawn to my center, sending bolts of lightning to add their minuscule energy to mine. The star in my hands didn't cease its growth until a ping of fear came from within. It was enough. There needed to be survivors.

I let the orb float in my left hand, then reached in, and selected a small portion of it with my right. Clenching my fist tightly, I compressed the partition into the size of a marble and aimed for the princedom that defied the darkness with the most light. The princedom of Gen, as it were. I threw the little star at my ancestral home and waited. For a minute, nothing happened. Then the lights went out. A great black fireball the size of the one in Drastin took shape; two miles in diameter. It precluded a shockwave that washed across the hills, flattened the pocketed forests, and finally dissipated in the distant fields of Drastinar. A sense of satisfaction opened within me, confirming that I had done well. It was such a small emotion for her--something akin to dropping a puzzle piece into place--but that little affirmation was what I had been searching for my whole life. Clear and without obfuscation; a direct and intimate message from the only one I truly loved. No longer would I have to wonder upon her will; no longer would I have to question myself! With black tears of joy running down my cheeks, I sent marble after solar marble into the bowels of the dwarven princedoms, shaking the earth, creating a cacophony of thunder that sounded across the world.

I didn't stop until all the lights were out, and the rolling hills that swelled before the spine of Balamora were blanketed with smoke. Only then did I descend. Starting at the northern peninsula of the princedoms, I hovered a mile above the infernal pockmarked landscape and exhaled. God's gift flowed from my mouth in great billowing volumes, cascading down to the shattered hills, flowing through caves and hovels, filling every crack. It created a curtain of the sky and a blanket of the land, and with no need to inhale any longer, I simply perpetuated the darkness as I began my journey south. God was infinitely merciful, and so was I. As I covered the landscape with her gift, I took my flame back; quenching the firestorms that would've eaten every blade of grass, dispersing the infernal clouds of ash that would've turned summer to winter. When God's breath touched the lips of the few survivors, I felt their terror turn to euphoria, and my satisfaction was renewed from within. They would be her disciples and spread her word to those I had not touched.

No, not her word;

our word.

There was no she or me any longer. There was only us.

Forever they will live as one, like two lovers in the sun.

JUSTINA

Forever they will live as one, like two lovers in the sun. In the sun. IN THE SUN.

IN THE SUN.

My eyes fluttered open. I had been asleep for hours, but my mind was not rested. My dreams had been abstract and visceral, wrought from three perspectives, and only one of them was my own. It didn't help that the bag I'd been using for a pillow was harder than a board. The only comfort it provided at all was the familiar smell. I ran my hands along the texture and wondered why I couldn't weep for her. She had died only two days ago, and yet, it felt like a lifetime had passed. How many years had I aged in a matter of hours?

"Mom, what am I supposed to do without you?" I whispered silently to her. "Please show me the way."

But there would never be an answer from her. However, there was an answer from someone else; a shattered little sob that echoed in the reaches of my subconscious. Her thoughts were my thoughts, her emotions were my emotions. It was almost like it had been before, back during those innocent days on our way to Drastin. Almost, but for the interloper who wound herself like a snake between us and drank away the strength of the stronger one. I couldn't be the stronger one. I lifted my head from the board and faced the world. Grey light filtered in, casting a gentle glow upon Bianca and Astrid as they huddled against Brandon's skeletal corpse. Willowbud was standing in knee-deep snow at the mouth of the cave, and I wondered how high up on the Gratoran Wall we were. That was when I noticed the humid summer heat, and felt my stomach drop. I hoisted Mom's sack, stood upon shaky legs, wobbled to the mouth of the cave, and stepped through the ash-filled threshold.

"Oh my god," I gasped.

"That's what she is now," Willowbud muttered.

The hills of the dwarven princedoms were gone. They were now jagged craters that cascaded into each other, pocked with patches of grass or an errant tree. Beyond the wind-swept fields of Drastinar, there were scores of towering mushroom clouds that were bathed in the amber dawn light, stretching up into the stratosphere. Grundinar, Bulsinar, Terondia, and all the cities and towns in between. A pungent tinge of rot hung in the air, and I squinted my eyes to see that the entire kingdom of Arbortus was aflame. A great black haze hovered over the landscape, swirling between the columns of debris. It didn't move like smoke or mist but seemed to curl independently of itself, seeking out the lungs of those who still lived.

"We're high up enough that it won't reach us," Willowbud said. "Maybe it'll go away in a few days."