The Creators: Epilogue

Epilogue

Prelude: Aftermath

ASTRID

At some point in their training, every valkyrie had to participate in the most tedious exercise imaginable: orienteering. Generally, this was done during the winter months when the foliage was sparse, allowing for geological formations to be seen more clearly. Like all tasks of my youth, I treated my orienteering session as a direct challenge to my pride, and so I forced myself to become an expert navigator of the land around the Gratoran Wall. I knew exactly how far every rock formation was from every other and could chart the entire Gratoran Desert all the way to Hektinar's ruins. Julia and Willowbud's battle in the desert had destroyed many of these geological markers, but not all of them. That was how I knew I was currently two hundred miles west of Breyta. I had been in a dark cave beneath the volcano only a second ago. How I had ended up here was a mystery, but

why

I had ended up here was extremely evident.

I groaned, and squinted against the glaring noon sun. The Gratoran Wall was so far away that it was an azure sliver, and only the tallest mountains could be discerned from the horizon. Willowbud's mountain now stood like a great central spire of the wall, and would've been the most prominent feature on earth were it not for the thing that dwarfed it.

I didn't have the words to describe what I saw, other than that it was a big fucking tree. It was so gargantuan that the radian of the trunk closest to me appeared in clear detail, but the curved edges were so far from my perspective that they were blurred with distance. It stood where Breyta had once been, was a hundred miles in diameter at the base, and had roots that snaked for countless miles along the Gratoran Wall and into the desert. One such root was buried in the sand right before my feet. Here, it was only about twenty feet thick, but its girth widened the closer it got to its parent trunk until the root itself was taller than most of the mountains around it. I couldn't say how high the tree was, because I couldn't see its top. It shot straight up into the sky, then became translucent, then disappeared entirely. No Life Giver could ever have dreamed of making such a thing. The Creators were gods, yes, but even their most magnificent creations were limited by the earth itself. This tree was not of this earth, and neither was the God who made it.

"Hey, Astrid," Justina said, lying in the dune next to me. I only knew that it was her from her voice. Her black hair was now a shimmering white, her eyes were glowing orbs without pupils or irises, and energy moved in shapeless patterns across her bronze flesh. Sometimes the patterns almost looked like fire, fauna or water; sometimes they almost looked like the patterns that used to decorate me, but they were never static. I looked down at my body and saw that I was healed. My arms and legs were whole, the scores of scars were gone, and my wings were intact.

I turned back to Justina. "I thought you were an atheist?"

She snorted. "I'm not God, Astrid. I'm an idea. If anything, everyone else is God."

"Did everyone else make

that?

" I said, pointing to the bisected horizon.

"Love made that," she smiled. "I know it sounds sappy, but love is the bridge of existence."

"I never pegged you for a romantic."

"I'm not," she chuckled, shaking her head. "Lucky for me, all the groundwork for this relationship was laid down by someone else."

I frowned at her. "It's Petranumen, isn't it?"

She nodded.

I was quiet for a moment. "Justina, I'm not sure how to feel about that."

"Me neither," she sighed, burring her lips. "There's so much of her that I don't like. She's irrational, impulsive, and emotional beyond control."

"She's analytical, strategic, and views emotions as equations," drawled a human woman on the other side of me. Her hair was white, her glowing eyes were without pupils or irises, and her youthful alabaster flesh swam with myriad patterns. She relaxed in the sand as if enjoying a day on the beach, and simply stared at the horizon.

"I never believed that opposites attract," Justina pontificated. "Differences sow division. You can only compromise so much before you compromise yourself."

"Love is a journey," Petranumen replied musically. "If the pieces fit perfectly, then there's no room for growth. They will separate as easily as they were put together."

"I just need time to think alone."

"Thinking alone is mental masturbation."

"I'm not even twenty years old, and I am fated to be with only one soul for eternity. Don't I get to choose?"

"I'm older than recorded time and have wandered through countless souls. What does choice matter if there's only one answer?"

"If I could just--"

"I'm right here!" I snapped.

Justina gave me a confused look. "Yeah, I know you're--oh, hi Petra. I didn't realize you were here."

I blinked at Justina. "You were talking to her."

"She means she didn't realize I was

here,

" Petranumen chuckled, and ran her fingers through the sand. "When you spend so much time in your own head, you tend to vocalize your thoughts."

"When you spend so much time in someone else's head,

you

tend to vocalize

their

thoughts," Justina scowled across from me. "You're going to have to learn how to communicate without sounding like a manipulative bitch."

"I am sorry, Love," she actually blushed. "I am terribly unpracticed in normal conversation."

"Hey um... Petranumen?" I asked softly.

She looked up from the patterns she was drawing in the sand and seemed a little ashamed to meet my gaze. "Yes, Astrid?"

I rolled to my side. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you since we met at Tentigo."

She looked at me unsurely. "You may ask me anything."

"Ever since you touched me, I've had this mark on my hand. What does it mean?"

She frowned and inspected my hand. "I do not leave a physical mark. Are you sure you didn't just--oh, goddamnit--"

And I punched the bitch so hard that her face caved like a pumpkin. Her brains splattered out like confetti, my knuckles exited the back of her skull, and her head ended up as a gory bracelet on my forearm.

"I supposed I deserved that," said another Petranumen growing from the root of the tree. "I can't believe I was deceived by a valkyrie."

"You'll be getting quite a lot of that for a while," Justina sighed.

"You could explain to them why I did what I did."

"Everyone knows why you did it."

"The story we tell--"

"--will be the truth. Not what could have been, not what should have been. What happened, and nothing else." Justina leveled Petranumen with a glare.

Petranumen knitted her fingers and bowed her head. "They will hate me, Justina. Everything I did, I did for our parents, and they will hate me forever for it."

"The only people who will hate you are those you've personally wronged. To everyone else, you're like a hurricane. There's a long and detailed history of hurricanes--we even name the worst ones--but nobody goes around hating the wind."

A hopeful smile crossed her face. "That is good to hear."

"Don't worry; I'll still hate you," I said around a mouthful of human meat, "By the way, you're delicious."

"Enjoy it," she said with an irreverent wave. "Have sex with it, defecate in it, make a skin costume and wear it to parties. I've been melded to thousands of sadistic psychopaths. There's nothing you can do to shock me."

I grinned bloodily. "I just wanted lunch."

She smirked back at me. "We'll see each other again, Astrid, and much sooner than both of us would like." Then she vanished.

"So..." I said, smacking my lips, "...are you ready to tell me what the fuck is going on?"

Justina pointed to the tree. "That's a bridge that connects all three planes of existence. Petranumen and I had to bind to make it. It ensures that there's an afterlife in the astral plane."

I took a hunk of Petranumen's shoulder. "Neat."

"It is indeed, neat," Justina frowned. "Astrid, there's so much I need to tell you, but I'm not sure if I should."

"Excuse me?"

"It's not that you don't have the right to know--you have every right--but..." she chewed on her lip. "...maybe the living shouldn't hear the truth. Maybe that's a story they should learn after they pass."

"Why?"

She brought her knees to her chest and huddled into herself. I couldn't remember a time when she'd ever assumed a confident posture.

"I never believed in God or the afterlife," she muttered contemplatively. "Mom was passively religious, and I remember one night I asked how she could believe in such absurdities when there was no evidence. She told me that she believed precisely because there

was no evidence

. Her rationale was that if there is an afterlife and we all knew about it, then why would we bother living? Did your wife die? Drink poison, you'll see her in a second. Behind on your rent? Jump off a bridge. Got a bad itch? Fuck it, stab yourself in the throat." She looked up at me with a disturbed expression. "I understand her reasoning now."

"You're worried about people killing themselves?"

"I'm worried that they won't even care about living. Why bother growing old? Why bother applying yourself, or striving through hardships, or discovering new things?" She rested her head in her hands, and let out a long sigh. "If I can give them everything, then they will have nothing."

"You've had this power for five minutes, and you're already at this state?" I tore off a hunk of breast meat. "You haven't even started yet!"

"I could do so much damage with good intentions." She chewed on her lip. "It is impossible to erase history in one fell swoop, but it can be mortally wounded. Julia and Corruption achieved that. There are still records out there that she missed, hidden in tombs and forgotten libraries, but the survivors won't use those ancient pages for knowledge; they'll use them for firewood. Corruption is gone from mankind's mind, but hunger will still make him just as savage. This civilization is dead."

"But you're going to help them."

"No," she muttered, scanning the horizon. "I control the bridge of existence, and I will make sure the planes never mix again. There will never be another Creator, Sentient, or Tethered One. There won't be clairvoyants who can see past this plane, nor will there be gemstones sent from above. That age is over, and those who remember it will only recount it through song around a bonfire. It will become a myth, then legend, then folktale, then a children's story. Eventually, it will all be forgotten."

I pointed to the tree. "You're going to have a hell of a time explaining that."

"Actually, you are," she smirked. "You're the only one who can see it. You're the last one with an ounce of Creator power left on earth, and when I leave, you won't see it again. But by all means, tell every passerby that there's an enormous tree that transcends planes of existence. Hell, get enough people to buy into it, and you can start your own religion." She snorted. "They'd follow you too. I remembered how the crowd worshipped you in the Pit. You could carve your name into eternity right now if you wanted."

"Hmm," I grunted, ripping out one of Petranumen's ribs, "I could rule the world, couldn't I?"

"Is that what you want?"

"Would you help me?"

She smiled and shook her head.

I looked at her slyly. "But would you stop me?"

She studied me with those blank eyes of hers. "You are a good woman, Astrid, but you are a warrior to the bone. If you have no one to serve, you will become self-serving, and the glory you crave will lead to tyranny. You'll succeed, but the civilization you will build will be brutal." She extended her hand and touched my belly. "And the life you bring to the world will snuff yours out before a roaring crowd."

I looked at the hand on my belly, and a big grin formed across my face. "Is that prophecy or poetry, Justina?"

"You're not that complicated an equation, Astrid."

I placed my hand over hers. "If that is to be my fate, then I think I'll name her... 'Tera.'"

She pulled her hand away. "That's a good name," she whispered, and I wasn't sure if I could see tears in those glowing eyes of hers. She stood up, brushed the sand from her body, and walked over to the root of the tree.

"Will I see you again?" I called after her.

"Not in this life," she replied over her shoulder.

"Wait!"

She stopped and turned around. "I know what you're about to ask me, and I'm not going to tell you. If she is waiting for you or if she is gone is immaterial. The knowledge would change you. You are alive, and she would want you to

live.

"

And with that, she was gone, and so was the tree. It felt like a monumental moment in history, the final words written in some grand epic, but I didn't feel any great loss. I felt an odd sense of hope. The world was uncivilized, brutal, and primal, but also virginal. The churches, the cities, the great veins of roads that connected kingdoms like arteries to organs were all gone. The fields had been burnt, the livestock had been sent into the wilds, and the silos had collapsed into heaps of rotting grain. Before me, the desert wind swept through the bowls and peaks of dunes, picking the sand up and casting it into the air. It created a veil of the world that browned the blue skies, desaturated the horizon, and painted the sun scarlet. I pushed my hand into the sand, and my fingers wrapped around the familiar grip of my sword. It felt good and heavy. I stood up and marveled at the way my toes felt in the coarse hot granules. My legs felt good and strong. I opened my wings and cried out in glee when I felt the sharp winds grate through my feathers. Yes, yes, yes! My eyes fell upon Willowbud's unnamed mountain, and a wide grin crept across my fanged mouth. It would carry my name. There was no greater tower with which to survey my kingdom. I could see the whole of Balamora from that peak.

I ran my hand across my belly and sang a lullaby to my daughter.

"The wings of war are out the door; they've left their feathers on the floor! Keep your eyes on the horizon and you will see Skyborne soar!"

Part One: The Wheel and the Axel

WILLOWBUD

I wiped a tear from my eye and smiled. "That'a girl, Astrid."

"The barbarian queen;" Justina mused, "the first step in any great civilization."

"Do you truly think it will be any different up here?" Petranumen chuckled. It was going to take me a long time before I could hear that voice and not have a chill run up my spine. It was going to take me a long time to process everything.

The astral plane had changed completely. Corruption had thoroughly destroyed most of it, and it was only by the grace of Julia's dying thoughts that mankind retained its sentience. Still, there was nothing left; and I meant

nothing.

With all the obfuscation of thought stripped away, the structure of the three planes became obvious. For the first time, I could understand why they were even called 'planes.' Before me, the physical plane was laid out. The land, the seas, and the great space beyond all occupied an expanse that was infinitely tall, wide, and deep, but it stopped at the threshold of the astral plane. The only real-world description I could make was that it was like looking into the ocean from above; the water was endless and depthless, but it had a surface, and so it was planar. I turned around and saw the same phenomenon with the spiritual plane. It was a great energetic sphere that swirled in the abyss, but it stopped at the foot of the bridge. The rickety planks that once preceded it were gone, replaced with the enormous trunk of the tree that pierced the sphere's center and spanned the great void of the astral plane. Gone were the constellations and cosmos of imagination; gone were the earth and all the realms of thought. The only thing that remained of the astral plane at all was the bridge itself.

Justina tapped her lips contemplatively. "The astral plane is a blank slate. We could make it anything we want."

"

We

shouldn't make anything of it at all," Petranumen drawled, sliding a sleek arm around Justina's waist. "It belongs to them."

And there they were. Standing upon the enormous tree like ants upon a log, the dead walked with astral bodies that were wholly sheathed in flesh. No longer did they stare sightlessly at the destination beyond, but looked around at the great void with confusion. It was featureless and directionless, and the only force that seemed to govern it was a loose conception of gravity that pulled everything toward the core of the trunk.

"We can't just let them create it," Justina muttered. "There needs to be a design. It needs to make sense, or it will become inhospitable randomness like before." She gave Petranumen a look. "The very first thing you did when you bound with Julia was give order to the chaos between realms."

"A set of base rules then," Petranumen conceded. "A sense of scale, and place." She studied the bridge. "Right now, this acts as the ground, and everything else acts as the sky. This bridge is fixed and finite; it is the only thing we cannot change, but everything else is interpretable. Hmm..." she shifted her weight from hip to hip, "...so many possibilities that will have so many consequences. It's rather daunting. You know what? You make it."

Justina looked sharply at Petranumen. "You don't want to help?"

Petranumen grinned back and slid her hand from Justina's waist to her hip. "It's all yours."

"Really?"

"You're the architect."

Justina actually squealed. She spun on her toes and clasped her hands together like a princess who'd been given a new horse. Her tail wagged happily, her calves flexed to place her on her toes, and her hips shimmied like they couldn't contain the energy within her. I wanted to grab her, rip her away from Petranumen and slap some sense into her. How could she be so giddy over a gift given by

HER?!

But I stayed that compulsion because I knew that I was wrong. Corruption was Petranumen, but Petranumen was not Corruption. It was a very bitter reality to swallow, and every time I saw Justina look at Petranumen with that love, I couldn't help but taste betrayal.

"I have a design in mind," Justina said, her voice tight with anticipation. She spun on her toes again and stared giddily upward with her hands clasped. "Tell me what you think of it!"

I was standing inside an inverted universe. It was like a tunnel, only to call it a tunnel would be to diminish its scale. Moons, comets, and other celestial bodies orbited the bridge in a vast expanse of space, and beyond the reaches of the cosmos, was the world itself. Continents, oceans, and biomes of every variety surrounded me. They were so far away that I could not discern their topography, and the atmosphere that encapsulated them was but a thin veneer before the darkness. The universe rotated slowly about the great axis of the bridge, and the brilliant spiritual sun shined its light upon it all.

"You like it?" Justina asked as if it was a personal gift to Petranumen.

"It's amazing," Petranumen whispered. "It is beyond description."

"It's a good first step," Justina conceded modestly. "I still need to establish rules of governance and--"

"No," Petranumen said with surprising firmness.

"What?"

"You are the architect; nothing more."

Justina scowled. "Oh, so you're the queen then, huh?"

"There is no queen. There are no laws, rules, or even guidelines."

"No laws?! Petranumen, do you have any idea what these people will do to each other?!"

"And...?" she asked. "They can't die. Everyone has autonomy over their minds, and even you and I can't take that from them." She pulled Justina close. "You are beyond brilliant, but you are so young. You have not seen mankind as I have. There is only one evil, and we have conquered it. Now all the wickedness of man is just... playfulness."