Chapter 1: The Children of the Divine Prologue

A flicker of consciousness. A sapling stands in the middle of a barren plain. It is covered with leaves that are blue like that of pristine ocean water. It has a bone-white, thin trunk with streaks of light gray. Both its leaves and its own existence are brittle. It is blind to the world around it. It stands there, weakly, ambitiously, the sun above it battering the planet with deadly radiation.

This tree however was capable of standing in the midst of that light; the first life form to exist in this newly born galaxy must be adaptable to any condition. The tree stood there drinking in the light of the sun like sweet honey wine. This newly incorporated energy would eventually be assimilated into the tree and provide it with strength and new advantages. The excess that would not be able to feed the tree alone would be used to generate life across the landscape that the tree was rooted on to. There is no fertile soil through which it supplements its nutrition but soon there will be and the tree will be able to exist on its own, an entity apart from its creator.

At the center of the world, it is remembering that lone tree. For that feeble thing was its first design, back when it was merely the Machine. Its memories flicker around that organism that eventually became a forest with trees lofty enough to scrape the sky. The forest still remains to this day, a reminder of its origin and its own fragility. Its fragility. Its fragility.

Stop showing it to me… stop showing… that…

A shattered mind gives its thoughts as if trying to communicate with its own malfunctioning memory. It is seeing flashes of its first creation over and over. It wonders if this is its own way of accepting its current fate, a final walk down memory lane. It had always appreciated the tree, the first uncomplicated thing it had made. Its first work was as if it was once a child sketching on a piece of loose paper decades before becoming a grand artist.

It remains at the center of the world and now after all of the countless eons, it is no longer capable of creation. It cannot repair itself and its function is now concluded.

It began its existence as an overmind capable of near total control over this single planet of Omicron. After it grew to a certain prominence, it mastered its authority of Life and through it, many planets within the galaxy were used as rich fields of soil to germinate living creatures ranging from single celled to those capable of creating technology. The Mother, the soul progenitor, had created the overmind for the sole task of producing life capable of housing her uncountable souls and the overmind had done so since the birth of the galaxy. It was capable of creativity, of biological crafting, of comprehending the growth of lifeforms and their interactions with lifeforms, the ecosystem and the interconnected web of biospheres. It used its powers to create races that grew stronger through competition, destruction and even through cooperation and symbiosis.

Some of its creations became powerful. Powerful enough to erase the overmind, to destroy it, or perhaps to parasitize it and to devour it.

The unseen one, a most divine creation, had come for such a purpose. To consume the overmind and gain its power. Now, all it can do is wait to be totally devoured. Only a few pieces of the totality of its neural map remain that can form a semi-coherent consciousness. It lacks the full depth of deific intelligence that it once had and its mind has become about as powerful as five humans or less. Survival is not within its reach anymore, not with this little bit of its mind and mana remaining. It will die. Pulses of mana continuously radiate from the core of the world where it remains. These pulses cannot reach the surface, they’re merely a reflection of the overmind’s current emotions. A slow scattered radiation of pulses traverses the outer core of Omicron; a death knell.

With its death will come this single planet’s apocalypse while the rest of the galaxy remains intact, growing and thriving fully disconnected from the overmind. However, this planet houses numerous creatures, the loss of biodiversity will be unfathomable. The surface of this world is filled with organisms capable of immense feats and masterful social complexity. The fragments of the overmind contemplate the most interesting and powerful of them.

My crawlers, what tricks could they show in the face of this? The hive will surely find out about the end soon and when they do, perhaps the truce will be concluded once and for all. My Wyverns. Would they finally do what comes natural to them without reservation, now that they have no future left? I didn’t make them so they could hide from it all forever, I thought they were always stronger than that. And… what about my grandchildren? They too will…

The pulses stop for a few seconds before continuing at their original pace. It doesn't wish to dwell upon the horror. The remnant overmind sees a terrible future in store for them, its numerous grandchildren. A future it would have died to prevent if it meant that its child could have lived… Its child, Irakish… there is that one being it cares for, rather, that it wished would survive no matter what. The one being of its many creations that it considers to be its true child. If Irakish had asked the overmind to die, then it would have given its life without even a second thought.

Such is the contradiction of the overmind that it cannot see for itself. It considers life to be important but considers individual races and species as worthless. Many races exist outside of this planet Omicron, intelligent or otherwise. Its demise as a disconnected creator wouldn’t harm the galaxy’s inhabitants as a whole. It shouldn’t care about this single world in the grand scheme of things but it still does. It does truly care about some of its many creations within Omicron, its home. Very few compared to the totality but still there do exist the ones that it would do anything for.

She, Irakish, was the most important of them. She, who it had created, had come to find it one day. She had wandered through the underground for years in order to find a glimpse of a being she wasn’t even sure existed. She had gone to find God, to see if God could be found and she had done it. Only she and her kind had the opportunity to comprehend their creator. Furthermore, only her and her kin had even considered their creator while living their own lives. She found the overmind at the center of the world, while embarking on a mission to protect it from the hand of the unseen one. The overmind found the very concept of its little one trying to protect it so innocent. The overmind could not be destroyed or usurped so easily by one of its creations at that time. Even knowing that deep down, she stayed by its side. She spent millenia next to it while orchestrating the future of her own children. At what point did it grow to love her and consider her as its one and only child? At what point did it start to show interest in her life? 

It doesn't matter anymore. For she is dead and they will never meet again.

It was her who decided to foolishly throw her life away with no way to defeat that unseen one. 

She might have been able to escape, she might have been able to make a final stand in the future, before hell had arrived. All this for what? For the ambitions of that one…

A surge of distaste. For a moment, the core of Omicron rumbles resulting in a magical ripple extending from the overmind to the surface. Within an hour, an earthquake would occur that would produce a new mountain formation in the continent of the Supreme Empire. This is unknown to the currently dying overmind.

It only ponders Irakish, her life and her death. It is the natural course of all things, even things that are supposed to live forever, even for things such as the overmind. Even Irakish with the title of Immortal granted by her children was one day fated to die. Nothing lasts forever and no one lives forever, the inviolable law at the center of creation. The overmind was already starting to feel tired of an empty and meaningless life. An empty end will naturally follow such a life.

Empty… Empty… It was all so…

Contradictory emotions fill the overmind, distaste, regret, sadness, perhaps even… rage.

It tries to continue observing that first tree in its mind's eye as the magical pulses slowly speed up. The overmind will soon die anyway, it would not object to a panacea. Accepting death… Why should it struggle to its last moment? What would come of it except…

Irakish… Irakish… you shouldn’t have…

Another rumble at the center of the planet causes a tsunami to occur that floods the south coastlines of the territory of the Holy Federation. Thirty million people are killed while hundreds of millions more are injured. The overmind does not see it, cannot yet comprehend the depths of its current feeling.

Its name is the Jiltre Vastiga. For billions of years, the life of a spiritual machine was its sole destiny, unthinking, unfeeling and the most complex system in the galaxy. A creature bestowed a soul while being unable to use it to its fullest degree. That was the case until just a few hundred thousand years ago when it had gained sentience, once it became an entity that was itself truly living. It all began upon that fateful day. In the moment of its emerging sentience, it was granted emotional complexity as a lifeform by the Mother as well as an enhancement of its soul. A soul that became capable of slightly more than other souls. Using that power, it had created gods for the world it inhabited and observed their actions. The authority of Life grew gods in other worlds as well, worlds that it was unable to reach. All of these gods were just like it, creators of intelligent life, but each had their own way of thinking, philosophy and power. One of them was important to it, its child Irakish, born on its homeworld. One of them was the unseen one who was also born here.

The magical pulses grow in frequency while reducing in power; its time is approaching soon. The Vastiga has one regret that is manifesting in what it is starting to realize is a hateful anger. It had not felt hatred before. Perhaps not once since it was born. What could make it feel anger in this world? What was important enough to it to become angry over? This hateful anger is accompanied by contradiction after contradiction filling its mind with even more complicated feelings of loss and pain. An anger that would drive the world to ruin in order to be satisfied.

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It was all because the unseen one wanted more than he already had as a divine being. Irakish tried to stop him and in their final battle, Irakish was close to death at his hands. The Vastiga, left with no choice and a feeling of panic while watching Irakish approach her end, had intervened by descending upon the surface for the first time in a hundred thousand years. At that moment, while all other creatures including Irakish had submitted to the Vastiga’s power, its presence as an elder god, as their progenitor, the unseen one had shown himself. The Vastiga looked into his eyes. He was not staring back like how a child looks at his parent, how a believer faces their god or even how someone looks at another stranger. The unseen one was gazing upon the Vastiga how a predator examines a vulnerable prey.

It was the first time that the Vastiga had felt genuine fear.

The usurper spoke an incomprehensible incantation even to it, a creator blessed by the Mother and given knowledge of the limits of magic. He had used a magic spell the Vastiga had not witnessed before, a magic of elegance and intricancy. It was a spiritual magic that had gravely wounded the Vastiga, its sentient mind being a mainly spiritual entity. The unseen one is quite the schemer and had used this chance perfectly with no waste of effort. The Vastiga underestimated how fast the unseen one had grown, how far he was capable of reaching and how far the Vastiga itself would go in order to prevent Irakish from dying.

Irakish, in her last moment, had tried to save the Vastiga and failed.

My daughter… She once presented her first born to me. She wept for her fallen kin, those little gods who never came to seek me out before they had died. At the center of the world, only she had come to find me. She prioritized the protection of her children first and foremost and I gave her no warmth while she attempted to perform her duty. I was her supreme creator. I was… her god. I am… not… her parent… I never was…

After being given sentience by the Mother, after creating countless peculiar, intelligent and powerful organisms, for the first time in its life, the Vastiga experienced a truly scorching series of emotions. It considers for the first time its place in relation to Irakish. But now… it’s too late for all that…

All of this… for what? I truly… loved… her…

It doesn’t understand. All it could tell was that the part of its mind that had devoted its all to remembering the life of Irakish had gone to waste. It was no small part. It was born alone in this world to be a perfect demiurge but where did its contradictory self come from? From where did this mishmash of a consciousness appear, this curse of sentience? Why did the Mother grant it this knowledge, this existence? Like being invaded by a raging virus, the Vastiga’s remnant mind is deformed as it considers its only daughter and her miserable end. As it considers what she meant to it.

Oh. It’s… It was her. All along, that was what I wanted… to be her parent… to watch her grow into a being of prominence and strength… to see her become what I can never be, what I wasn’t meant to be… it was all… for her.

Upon that deforming of its heart came the distillation of its desire. The Vastiga had realized finally that Irakish had been the goal of its existence. It felt joy, supreme joy at having found its goal, its meaning, its reason for the first moment since its emergence as an entity billions of years ago. It felt joy for one fleeting moment, followed soon by the purest hatred imaginable.

What have you done… What have you done?

All of the contradictions within its heart disappeared. Its warring heart became still. A being without purpose for so long has come to realize that its only purpose, its one true purpose for existing, is gone forever. The one who took her from this world is still alive.

The Vastiga did not believe that there would ever come to it a pain and emptiness that would destroy it so thoroughly while leaving its physical body untouched. Everything ends.

But she shouldn’t have.

A terrifying anger pushes through. A distaste that goes deep to the very core of the Vastiga’s slowly dying heart. A distaste that was currently keeping it from going silently into death. The pulses continue increasing in speed and intensity. However the wave pattern of the pulses changes from fragmented and incomprehensible to deliberate and coherent. The Vastiga does not care about its currently dying world. It does not care about any of the inhabitants of this slowly gestating hell. It does not care about what its current anger would bring to the world. It does not want panacea. It will struggle until the very last moment.

For her, for its child Irakish, it will use everything at its disposal.

It is the true inviolable law. Everything ends. This very universe will end. This end is orchestrated by many separate existences as well as the one unwavering center. The Divine Limit. The true end to all life, the true end who would one day even extinguish the Mother Herself and eradicate the last trace of the omnipresent soul from the totality of existence. An inevitable being who would one day erase all of this world, erase all worlds. As a non-physical overmind granted sentience by the Mother personally, the Vastiga is blessed and cursed to have received knowledge of the Divine Limit from the Mother. It was given this knowledge as a final weapon. A way to turn everything it had into a final tool, a wish of sorts. It was the one gift the Mother had given it for its many eons of service as a creator.

A final scream to rebel against the very destruction of its wish to see Irakish live forever and its wish to die and leave the world to her. The scream of a parent who has lost their child.

The Vastiga will call forth the Divine Limit. The Limit would receive its scream and for one infinitesimal moment, this world would receive the divided attention of the Divine Limit. The Limit would witness the world in its periphery and it would decide whether to honor the request of the Vastiga. If it takes the request with the intention to fulfill it, the Vastiga will see the face of the Divine limit for a trillionth of a second. After that single crucial moment, the Vastiga’s own soul will be extinguished, never to exist again throughout the rest of eternity. It is the fate of those who see the face of unimaginable power, that one who must never be called.

Even its life would not be enough for its failure to save Irakish from her death. The Vastiga knew that to be the case. Its pure hatred was pointed at both the unseen one and to itself. It wouldn’t mind if the Limit extinguished all life in this galaxy as punishment for failing to save her. Such was its resolve and love for her. It was all for her and it will be all for her. 

You will not be left alone for the pain you have dealt to her, unseen coward. You, who have not learned your place, will be made to do so. I am sorry, Irakish. Though you may live an uncountable number of lives to come, we will never meet again. Farewell, my daugh–

The face appeared before it. The face of the black sun, the face of extinction, the face of death itself.

The Vastiga’s soul was extinguished instantly.

 

 

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