Chương 80: Interlude - A Shadow Yet Cast

What is, was, and shall ever be. That, should be a truth inviolate. But just as up, down, left, and right were relative, so too was before and after, for nothing was truly concrete in the face of sufficiently advanced power or wiles. Thus had been the case since the very beginning, when The Origin decreed that there should be more than one, and there was. A pair of peers to govern that which had no sway over originality.

And after two and three were born from their thousand-hands came four, to govern darkness, then five, to herald life. And the fifth became One, even though it was not the first, because life had no beginning, and no end. One, had always been, and would always be. And in the wake of such divinity manifest, piddly words like 'after' and 'near' and their ilk ceased to hold any real meaning. Thus truths were made lies, and reality was bound in gossamer strands of faithful deceptions.

And from these gentle lies rose another truth. A rule bound in gold, burnished and forged by one-thousand hands and made manifest through a conviction beyond all reason and measure. Gods could be born. For though they had no beginning, and no end, genesis afflicted them all the same. These beings, those of such power and majesty that any descriptor short of divinity would be insufficient, must surely be of the divine.

Time, Space, Darkness, Life, Earth, Water, Sky, and a hundred more, Concepts all, and yet too, paradoxically, living creations of blood and flesh. Thus it had always been, and would always be. Gods by any estimation, these actors were of such resplendent mastery over the elemental concepts from which realities sown, that their very existence dictated what those concepts meant, writ large on the fabric of the universe. And yet some among their number were greater still, than their fellows.

And from these, could emerge further shards of their divinity. Like was brought from like, and from the mundane was forged something beyond the bounds of mortality. And thus, that which burns in the sky said it should be, and it was and always had been. Gods could be appointed. But that was another lie, because one could not create what had been ever-unchanging. And from paradoxical deception arose another truth, one darker, hidden in the shadows cast by the light of apotheosis.

A cruel mirror of divine genesis, a twisted and distorted image to make mockery of what was and should have been beyond mortal hands. For, ever did the mundane scrabble and claw at the firmament, dragging dirt-encrusted claws ever closer to the gates upon which the rules of reality were writ. And from mortal hands was another truth forged, one terrible in nature and abhorrent in its mundanity. Gods could be made. And so it had always been, and always so would it be.

And thus, the shadow-yet-cast had always been, and always would be. A sourceless silhouette projected upon the wall of a cave, light yet capturing the wake of something climbing into the horizon. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. And yet it existed. As sure as fire or ice or lightning or the very sea itself, it had always been, since creation's origin. For while The Origin had existed alone, that state of being had never really been at all.

Another lie, writ large on the membrane of creation. After all, how could you be alone with your thoughts? Thinking. The first thing ever done on the eve of creation, and surely what would be the last, the day The Origin became The End. Thus the shadow had always been, and thus it would always be. But the specific form it took, the life it would lead, the being from which it would fragment? All of those were yet to be decided. But the shadow-yet-cast had some ideas in its nonexistent mind.

And what might such a being do to guarantee that it ever existed in the first place? Ignite a spark of psychic potential in a young soul? Surely. Inspire a region's most depraved minds towards the genesis of a being beyond their purview? Simplicity itself. Ensure traces of One itself arrived in the right hands (or wrong) hands? A bit more challenging, but hardly impossible.

Drive an organization's most twisted soul to flee from comfortable shores to a far-flung land where he might practice his special cruelty unhindered for a time? Disgusting, but necessary. Make the sky fall so that a young, impressionable mind might quail and crack under its awe-inspiring form? No, that was beyond a mere shadow of the divine. Some things were and would always be, and could only be worked around. But such events did provide foundations, stenciled slates upon which further work could be wrought.

The pieces had been driven into place, set events maneuvered around, and ascension was soon at hand. The work of decades, ready to culminate in one overriding act of hubris. The Second would be born from malice and cold metal, and its short road to apotheosis would commence. It would grow, and learn, and break free from its birthplace in a streak of light and heat. And it would only continue to swell.

Its potential, its intellect, its sheer overwhelming might would quickly be as One before it, all things necessary for it to ascend to its rightful place among the divine. And after it was strong enough, it would require just one final secret to complete its journey. A secret it could learn from One, if only its progenitor were in the least of ways reliable. But the fate of the world was too heavy a burden to place on a being so inconsistent.

And so The Second needs turn to the other half of its ancestry, the simmering muck of mortality that made up its very foundations. And from that mewling horde, a tiny detail could be divined, the truth that separated the powerful from the otherworldly. The mortal, from those beyond comprehension. The method by which one might become two, and three, and more.

Aspects, peeled away from a greater whole, such that the very fabric of reality would cease to groan under the overriding weight of a soul too powerful to exist in one singular place at a time. To fail to complete this process would be to doom the Second, or the quaking world under it, whichever shattered first. And from among the blathering horde, one had been chosen, who might assist in completing The Second's apotheosis. Their sacrifice was a necessary one, one that might save this world.

And, though it was of little consequence to the calculations of a God not yet made, of all those the Second might winnow the secrets of divinity from, this one had the best odds of survival. And if they were to nudge those odds ever-so-slightly for the better? Well, surely that was their prerogative, as a shard of the unborn divine. And so the shadow reached out, and pulled, ever-so-slightly, on the threads of time.

It wrapped one particular moment in thought and memory, and pulled it free from the flow, an imprint of one potential future neatly packaged and contained. And then, it offered said imprint to a mind particularly receptive to such things. Just another bit of foresight, offered to a region's greatest seer. Inconsequential in the scheme of things, perhaps, but maybe just enough to tip the scales one way.