The Thoughts of a Dead God

At the bottom of a massive pit, in the shadow of a great Machine, a lone figure lay sleeping. An insignificant speck on a world swallowed by death.

“Don’t let it happen.”

Dolon jerked awake. Five days had passed since the Harbingers had arrived at the Machine. And scarcely more than twice that since she had followed them here, to the end of all things. Would she have come, if she had had any notion then what would be required of her?

She reached out and scooped up a handful of dust, letting it fall through her fingers to the ground about her. Empty. Hollow. Dead. Like Dolon herself. Far beyond emotionless, she felt nothing. An absolute lack of existence. Her God was dead and Dolon lay upon Her very corpse.

“Don’t let it happen.”

Dolon could ignore it no longer. She rose, entering the Machine and traversing its long passages. The night was quiet, and her mind returned to those minutes she had stood with her companions before the trapped entity. Still she could hear its anguished cries and feel its hopeless struggles. And in that moment, standing before it, Dolon knew beyond doubt that it was the thing that had killed her God.

She moved from passage to passage, and as she walked, time stretched out and away. The many ages of Veylantia played before her eyes. She saw the moment when the Land came to be. Heard Her soothing call. Felt Her pride as humanity crawled out of the primordial and stood upon two legs. History played out with each step Dolon took.

“Don’t let it happen.”

Dolon staggered under the weight of it. She struggled to hold the fate of the world upon shoulders too weak to carry it. When the words had first come to her, when she had first embraced them, Dolon had accepted her destiny and become a vessel of the Land. In the wake of these heady thoughts, she was afraid. Tempted to spread wings and flee from this task.

And yet, if she did, then what? She could still see that moment when the entity had broken Her. When its mindless thrashings had torn a great hole in the sky. A darkness that would consume everything.

She needed to destroy this future.

Energy washed over Dolon, enveloping her. She had come at last to the chamber where the entity slumbered. She felt trapped, helpless, like the creature before her. What could one person hope to do? The nerves in her body were numb, and she could feel her mind shutting down.

She looked upon that which had killed her God and wanted to hate it. She wanted to scream at it, but she could not. What was this thing that had been held here for so long? Instead of hatred, Dolon pitied it. Pitied it for its long suffering. Pitied it for its pain. Cold stone brushed her back as she collapsed against the wall, sliding to the ground.

“Don’t let it happen.”

“I cannot stop it!” Dolon yelled. “You ask too much!” She curled up, wrapping her hands about her knees, and joined the entity in waiting for death.

From the entity, something that was not quite a hand reached out to her. It wrapped around her, sheltering her like a father protecting his child. Words that were not words blossomed in her mind and she looked out through its eyes to great sweeping vistas. Worlds beyond her own filled with strange people. And beyond these to dimensions unlike any she had known. Hope returned to her, buoying her, restoring her.

“Don’t let it happen.”

And this time she could not tell if the words were her own, those of her God, or of the despondent creature before her. In truth, it did not matter. And so she made a choice.

Dolon began drawing in the ethera which suffused this place. Pulling into herself all of it, all that could be, all that ever would be. It filled her, causing her skin to tingle. She felt it course through her veins, soft at first, but then with increasing intensity until it was as if she were being pierced with a thousand needles. Still, Dolon drew more ethera into herself.

The entity rose up, spreading out to reveal its full magnificence. It expanded and puffed up and out. From it, long strands of ethera pulsed, and Dolon drew these to herself. Her body filled to bursting until light began to spill from her every pore. Pain unlike anything she had imagined filled her. And then she felt nothing as her body burst into a billion tiny motes of light which threatened to scatter and wink out.

“Don’t let it happen.”

Dolon screamed with a mouth she no longer had. This could not be her end. Desperately, she grappled with the light that was now her body and willed it to hold. And it did. What had been motes of light solidified into a shining figure. Ethera continued to pulse into Dolon as if she were a bottomless reservoir.

The entity began to fade even as Dolon’s light grew until, at last, it sputtered and vanished into nothing. Still Dolon’s light continued to grow until it reached an intensity akin to a sun.

“Don’t let it happen.”

At that command, reality bent. Had she spoken those words? Dolon’s awareness traveled down and away, spiraling out into a realm of both minutiae and magnitude. Further and further she went, leaving the Machine and her companions behind, before finally abandoning even the physical. She became other. Ethereal. And there she spread out, encompassing all that would ever be.

“Don’t let it happen.”

In that place she traveled a million pathways searching for the fulcrum upon which this future might be ended. On and on she quested until at last one pathway opened before her. For one fleeting moment she turned her awareness back to the physical. Veylantia was broken. Her friends were dying. The black spot consumed everything. She could fix this. She would fix this, even if it meant her being stretched to the end of everything.

“Don’t let it happen,” her God cried to her.

“I will not,” Dolon said aloud.

And everything changed.