Literary: Homecoming
In the beginning, there was only the Maker, and the Darkness.
The Darkness was empty and quiet – no voice, no breath, no life.
The Maker did not like this, and gave the Darkness a little light.
The spark gave the Darkness a semblance of life, causing it to twist and churn, as if something was struggling to break free.
For an eternity, all it did was move – not a moment of stillness, restless in all of its existence.
Until finally, it shattered.
As it shattered, the First Sound was born – a sound that heralded the birth of Creation. It raced across all of the Dark, spreading word of what is to come, and what the rest of eternity shall be.
Along with the First Sound came the First Light – the light of Creation, bringing life and change to the roiling Dark.
The First Light dove into the Darkness, further splintering the heaving mass into greater pieces. These pieces, guided by the Maker’s hands, transformed – some pieces merely by themselves, others mixed with the Light’s radiance.
From the shards untouched by the Light, the Maker created a Tapestry – a Tapestry that shall hold everything, where all things will have their place – where everything shall belong. It was expansive, overtaking the Darkness that was its source and parent. It stretched to the farthest reaches of reality, before continuing to grow for all the eternities to come, becoming a bed for the Maker’s creations.
But first, the Tapestry must be filled. With the pieces born from both Dark and Light, the Maker formed seeds. As these seeds were placed on the tapestry, reality bent and curved around them. Stray splinters of Light and Dark coalesced around these seeds, forming worlds upon worlds, monuments to the Maker’s will.
That was only the second step.
The remaining pieces of the fractured Light were further bent and molded to His will, their radiance given new purpose – to give life upon these seed-worlds and to be beacons throughout the Tapestry of His will.
As the rays of the Light spread across the Tapestry, the seed-worlds were changing. The very cores that granted their names woke up, using the fractured Light and Dark to give birth to a new piece to the story: Life.
Life, the Maker found, was good.
From the seeds of each world, Life took hold. It further molded the newborn worlds, each tailored to the Maker’s will – some grew towering spires of earth, or had plunging canyons leading to the depths of the earth. Some gained vast, world-spanning oceans, while some only had few, sporadic pools. Some grew vegetation, with both sprawling forests and sparse fields. And some gave birth to animals, mobile life-forms designed to populate the worlds.
And yet, after all of these have formed, only then did the Maker’s greatest creations come to existence. From the soil and waters of the worlds, they were given form. From the veins of the animals and vegetation, they were given blood. And from the Maker’s breath, they were given life. Thus, Mankind was born.
With that Life, they were also gifted with their own wills – wills that they fostered, giving them their own drives to live. While they may be the Maker’s creations, they were also His children. They inherited His drive for creation – they invented technology, mastered the lands, and created civilizations. All of this, He looked over with pride.
It wasn’t meant to last.
Like children growing with their parents, some wished to be by themselves, confident in their abilities. They argued with the Maker, insisting that as His children, they would have to leave His care, so that they could be more like themselves, and not under His shadow. In the end, His children splintered: those who wished to stay with Him and those who left, bringing their seed-worlds with them.
The Maker grieved for the loss, but Life had to go on. His children who stayed behind further flourished, their seed-worlds growing and spreading across the Tapestry, creating more and more seed-worlds along the way, in turn allowing the Tapestry to grow to hold everything in it.
And when it seemed that they finally reached their peak, their threshold heightened – under their constant care and advancements, the seeds of each world cracked, breaking free what truly grew within: Souls.
These World-Souls left their still-whole bodies behind, before becoming living embodiments of all that was made for the worlds, from the worlds. Some bore the image of metal and stone, born from the various inventions its humans created. Some bore the image of vegetation, born from the efforts of Mankind to create life. Some were raging seas, others tranquil oceans. Some were docile animals, some were proud beasts. They were all different, yet at their essence, the same – worlds given Life, given form, guided by the Maker’s will and raised by His children’s hands.
With these World-Souls, the Maker was tempted to rest – He knew that Creation was in the right hands, that He can rely on His children when the time Has Come. However, He couldn’t – not now, when some of His children left Him. In the farthest corners on the Tapestry, He can still sense and see them, but barely. He knew that the time to confront them over their actions is approaching fast – and He can only pray for their safety.
Somewhere in the universe, a world lay dreaming.
It was plagued by nightmares, tormented by the actions of the people it laid host to.
Eternity hasn’t been kind to it – when the Betrayers left the Old One, they took their worlds with them. Because of their anger towards their Father, they twisted their worlds, torturing them as they forcefully took the treasures and minerals it held, yielding machines for war and conquest, in a bid for power against the Maker.
And yet, in their hate-filled haze, they realized that not all of them are fit to conquer the Known Worlds – that only few of them have what it takes to rule. And so, in their jealousy against one another, they used what would have been weapons against their Father into weapons against each other. One final show of might before the universe shall bow.
Even now, this world is at war. It can only lay silent, weeping as its people poisoned and plagued it – what was once a verdant world made to be a host for life was now an ashen battlefield, wrapped in a cloak of smog and adorned in the bones of the fallen.
It was a world forced to fight its brethren.
It was a world on the brink of death.
Finally, respite came.
First, it was a tremor, running through the entire world, ignored as yet another effect of the Long War. Then, the cracks appeared, splitting entire continents into pieces – truly, the work of the enemy. The people only noticed when the wailing started – a wail made only by the tormented, when there is nothing left to do but scream. It carried the weight of longing, of sorrow, of fury. It was the wail of the damned.
It was the last thing they ever heard.
Just like the Darkness that helped in its birth, the world shattered. The little people could only watch as the world beneath them exploded, sending chunks of its battered shell flying in all conceivable directions. It was a flurry of light and shadow, with a raging fire at the center of it all, burning with a hatred born from the actions of the humans it once hosted.
FATHER! HELP ME!
The World-Soul finally awoke.
Unlike its healthier brethren, this one unwittingly slew its old body, along with the humans that abused it. The Soul’s form has been twisted, bent and shattered from the pain it had suffered. It was monstrous, it was imperfect. It was grieving, and it was angry.
The Betrayers from the nearby enslaved worlds were horrified at the Thing rising in their midst. Only then did they wish that they haven’t left the Maker – who else can protect them from their own mistakes?
The dying World-Soul saw its brethren suffering like it did – how they have been tormented for the greed and envy of the beings they hosted. They were deeper entrenched in petty wars, their silent screams loud enough in the echoing corners of the universe. What more can they do, than hope for a swift end?
The World-Soul can think of doing nothing else but to flee, to get away from the people that once caused it pain. So it went, crawling away with its broken limbs, unable to do anything else but leave behind its siblings, trapped in a waking nightmare.
And yet . . .
Out there, in the vast expanse of the universe, the World-Soul heard it.
A voice.
His voice.
My child . . . what have they done to you?
The World-Soul smiled and wept to itself, as it crawled into the open arms of its Maker.
I am home . . . Father.
