by Kari Siegel
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Kari Siegel
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
Published through BookBaby Publishing
Cover design made using postermywall.com
ISBN 978-1-0983406-8-1
For permissions contact:
[email protected]
Table of Contents
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Epilogue
About the Author
Foreword
In this fantasy tale of Divine entities, readers may come across paradoxical ideas, such as the omniscience of the Divine paralleled with the fact that even they do not know what is to come, or the ‘unlimited power’ that is limited after all. Contradictions can be found in concepts of free will versus Divine intervention. This, along with the mixture of singular and plural pronouns even within a single word (such as ‘ourself,’ which is seen several times throughout) is meant to give a more abstract meaning to the higher understanding of the Divine that we as humanity cannot comprehend. The more contradictions you find in this writing, perhaps the more you will realize that they make sense after all.
Prologue
Over the course of the centuries, hundreds of worlds have been created and destroyed. Perhaps some before our time, and certainly many more to come. Who knows if anything will come after our time is done, or if our time will ever end? We like to believe that we are here to stay, but even the Divine can never be certain. The Ultimate is unpredictable, and with nothing but a single word, It could destroy us, and our creations, and all 4 of our brothers.
Conceivably, there could be many more of us. But here in this Domain, the Ultimate has created 5 of us; one to rule over each of the Realms. We shall never know what lies beyond, for we are scarce permitted to leave our Realm. Only when summoned are we to enter into the open Domain, and never outside. So it will remain a mystery for all of Time, whether we and our brothers are alone in this Universe, or if there are more that lie in the Domains beyond.
Frankly, we have little reason to care. We were given the power to create worlds, to make beings for us to rule over as long as we lasted, us and our brothers each in our own Realm. We had only a few rules, given to us by the Ultimate Itself; and save that, we had unlimited control. We could create as much as we wanted, so long as we never expanded our boundaries past the essence of our realm. We could give our creations life, and we could take it away as well.
It was all we could do to hope everything would not be taken from us.
Chapter I
The first thing we remembered was a bright, blinding light.
Once that cleared up, we saw a being of great power, with four others just like us surrounding It, and somehow we knew Its name: The Ultimate.
It did not speak, but we knew what It was saying.
I have created you to rule the Realms of my Domain. You shall have power over all you wish to make. Nothing but I shall be greater. I have granted you the power to form worlds from nothing. You are both Life and Death. You are the Beginning and the End. You are Courage and Fear, Love and Hate, Light and Darkness. You are Infinite Powers contained within one Form. You are The Divine.
We knelt before It, and thanked It for this gift, for we and our brothers knew this was the proper thing to do.
We were given only a few rules by the Ultimate.
1.The Ultimate’s word was law. We could not go against any command given by the Ultimate, nor were we to question what It asked of us or request that It alter Its decision.
2.We were never to leave our Realm unless exclusively invited into the Domain by the Ultimate Itself.
3.We could create as much as we wanted within the limits of our Realm, but never try to extend beyond that.
4.We were never to speak directly to any of the other Divine, nor share our names with them.
5.We could never let our creations become Aware. This was the most sacred law. They were to live out their lives unknowing about us, our brothers, or the Ultimate. They could form theories about their own origins, but under no circumstances were we to let any of them truly know.
The failure to comply with any one of these rules would result in punishment as seen fit by the Ultimate.
The Ultimate gave us names as It assigned us to our realms. We did not hear the names that were given to our brothers, for the Ultimate did not wish for us to hear. We were the final Divine to be named, and we were alone with the Ultimate.
At last, we felt Its great power flowing over us, and It said, You are the Fifth Brother. I sense within you great power, and I give to you the Realm of Omnis. You are The All.
A rush of light shot out from the power of The Ultimate, and when it faded, the chamber we had been in was gone. In its place was vast emptiness, a great nothing for us to fashion as we wished. The darkness was ebbing into our vision, and so the first thing we created was light.
We conjured it up from nowhere, and it was everywhere. The light seeped in from every corner of existence, enveloping us alone, for there was not yet anything else. It covered everything, and crept its way into our eyes—
—too bright. With all this light, nothing else would ever be seen. We reached out a single hand, and separated out the light from the darkness. We raised our other hand and rolled the light between the two, creating balls of heat and light. We formed billions of them, and scattered them throughout the realm, twinkling specks on an otherwise black canvas. We made them of many sizes, and with them we created patterns and pictures for our creation to enjoy.
After we had finished with our lights (we did not know how long it took, and it truly doesn’t matter; for Time is merely relative when you have eternity), we moved on to create land, planets where our life could exist. We created hundreds upon thousands of planets, and scattered them among the galaxies we had created.
When we had finished with our planets, we chose the best one. Our favorite one. The one to which we would devote our time, where we would create our own form of life. We would create them in our image, and we would call them man. And to give company to man, we would make other creatures to live on this planet with them, and man would name them as he saw fit.
We positioned the planet around one of our light sources, and we set it off to spin in circles, around the light and around itself, to give them day, and night, and seasons. And, of course, Time, because our creations did not possess our understanding, and needed a constant way to mark the passage of their lives.
We took this planet, and we gave it life. We made plants on the land, and we put others in the waters of the sea. We created animals of every shape and form, and positioned them across the globe. And lastly, we created man.
We formed him in our likeness, and he was like us. We gave him a body, with arms and legs and hands and feet and black hair and golden eyes. We gave him a heart to keep the life flowing through him, and we gave him a mind that he might think, in the limited understanding we had supplied unto him. Then, we breathed life insid
e of him, and gave him a soul.
With our very hands we wove for him the threads of possibility, gave him the choice to make his own life through the different paths we would offer unto him. There were millions of ways he could have chosen to go, and we would watch to see down which one he would travel.
We looked down on our creation with content; we were happy with what we had made. We gifted our man with knowledge, and he called himself Noah. He lived in harmony with all the creatures of the world, and gave them names of their own. Still… something seemed to be missing. Noah lacked someone of his own kind. We thought, It is not good for our man to be alone. And so we created woman.
We formed her from the air that Noah breathed, gave a piece of his soul into her creation. And so she was his, and we breathed life into her and gave her with that a soul of her own.
Noah looked upon her, and gave her her own name. “Kora. A companion.”
And Noah was no longer alone. He never would be alone for the rest of his days. Him and Kora would be together for all their days, and with them, we created new life. From the love that the two of them shared, Kora conceived a child. And though that child had yet to be born, we already knew the name Noah would bestow upon him: Ashur.
And after that, they would give life unto a daughter, who they would call Emily, and another son who would be named Nathan. And when they were grown, we wished for them to have companions of their own, and so we created for them Rachel, Damien, and June.
Noah was 137 when the life left his body. Kora wept loudly, and her children and their children with them. And for the first time, we felt despair, for we had brought this pain upon our beautiful creation.
We molded a cavern out of nothing, and placed it along one edge of our realm. And when Noah’s soul left his body, we lay him there, in a state of eternal rest. Kora and her children begged in torment to some entity they weren’t sure was there, pleading that they might once again see Noah in an ‘afterlife,’ if such a thing existed. And oh, how we longed to let them. We wished only to bring them into our kingdom, to live for the rest of time with us in everlasting joy and life. But alas, we could not, for to do so would be to make them Aware, and to make them Aware would be to defy the Ultimate.
And so we put their souls into an endless slumber, and kept them in our Cavern of Death. Each time one of them died, a great cry would rise up from the Earth, and it hurt us to see. Still, the pain grew less and less, for we could not feel it forever. So along with the pain of death, we gave them the joy of love and life, and had them do with that what they would.
Chapter II
Our creation continued to multiply, up until the point when we no longer needed to use the dust of the Earth to make any more. It seemed only a matter of time before there were a million of them, though in their time, it had been hundreds of years.
We watched our creation spread throughout the whole surface of the Earth, and we looked down on them. All we could do was view from afar as they made their own choices for their lives, some of them good, and some of them bad. And all the time, we wished only to let them know us, to guide them, and to let them be with us. But we could not.
We did not know what would happen if we were to let them become Aware. All we knew was that the Ultimate had given us very few restrictions, and we could not directly disobey the little that It had asked of us.
We watched our men and women live and choose their lives. We enjoyed them and we loved them, but we could not get close to them. (We desired to let them know us, but… No. We could not defy the Ultimate. Even to have such a thought filled us with shame). Then one day, we witnessed the most horrible sin we could have imagined them to commit, and we were distraught, for how had our creation gone so wrong?
Man was advancing quickly, and we were proud of the knowledge they had for we had given it to them for this purpose. They created new technologies and developed their own sciences and ways to interpret the world we had given to them, and we were glad to see how they thrived.
But then, in one day for them, one miniscule moment of eternity for us, their inventions took a turn we had been hoping they would avoid. Man began creating weapons, and poisons, and things intended to kill. And we despaired, for man had been meant to live in harmony with his brothers and sisters.
They waged war on each other, nation against nation, man against man, and the beautiful landscape we had given them was being destroyed, blown apart by the bombs they dropped, stained with the blood of every man, woman, and child who perished in this time.
And we were angry.
We had created this world for them. We had given them to breathe the very air they were now polluting with their smoke and gunshots and poisoned gases. We had perfected to keep them alive the blood which they now spilled so wastefully on the ground and in the rivers. We had given them the gift of peace and companionship, which they were now rejecting out of conflict with their fellow man. We had given them all life, and now they thought they had the right to take that life away?
So we were angry, more so than we had ever been, more so than when they argued, and more so than when they fought, since this was a new type of fighting that was killing our precious creations. Everything we had ever made had been for them. During life, we gave them blessing after blessing after blessing, to make their lives worth living in. They had brought this pain upon themselves. They could choose to bring back their peace, but they instead chose to stray further from the happiness they wanted.
When they died, and their souls broke free from the bodies we had given them, we could have chosen to cast them from our Realm. We could have sent them into the great abyss beyond, into the emptiness that lay in the outskirts of this Domain, and let the Ultimate do with them as he would. But instead we had given them a place of their own to contain their spirits, in a peaceful sleep for all of time.
And how did they repay all of this? They turned on one another, taking for granted all we had done outside their knowing, and focused all their energy on hate and fear and madness.
We shouted in rage, and we turned the force of our power onto their planet, lifting our hands against them, only our subconscious love for them (still present even in our anger) holding us back from demolishing them and all the galaxies we had made.
We caused the winds to blow around them, tearing down the trees of the world, and the buildings they had created. The clouds and air swirled, great funnels of howling wind to wreak havoc on them. They brought entire cities to the ground, and along with them we struck their remains with lightning, echoed by a roaring thunder. Fires sprung up from what was left, and burned it until all that was left was ashes.
It was a disaster such as had never been seen in all their time, and we hoped would never come to pass again. We had hoped they would choose the better path, but we had been wrong. Now they would pay the consequences. If they wanted their world to be in such a state, then by all means we would leave nothing untouched.
And then we dropped our hands, and the world went still. Our great storm had wiped out thousands of people, and they all cried out in sorrow. “Oh, God, why? Why could you have let this happen to us?” They asked, day after day. And we pitied them, for they were man and they were not as wise as we were, and we loved them.
So we bestowed unto them the courage and the strength to carry on, and rebuild their world from the ruin we had left it in. The world became temporarily united, differences forgotten, to restore the Earth to its former glory. Nation worked with nation, and for a while, everything was well.
And for a while, we were pleased.
Chapter III
It was not very often that the Ultimate called us into the Domain. So on the occasion that It did, we knew not what to expect. We temporarily looked away from our creation (although we didn’t miss a moment of their existence) and made our way to the Domain of the Ultimate. The Realm of Omnis faded from our sight as we teleported through the great expanse and found ourself standing before the Ultimate.
As we stood before It, we saw in our vision the forms of our brothers alongside us. In unison, we sank to our knees and bowed our heads in Its mighty presence. The power of the Ultimate radiated out over us as we sat in patience to hear what It had to say.
It was both forever and only an instant before It spoke. It has been long since we were together. Its voice resonated inside our minds, though It said not a word out loud. And yet, I have been watching over you as you worked. Each of you has been working diligently, and you have each come far from the void I first granted unto you.
We kissed the ground before Its feet and murmured our thanks, and beside us our brothers were doing the same. We did not look towards them, but we could see them nonetheless. Once more, silence befell us where we rested, not a sound breaking the still air that was surrounding us.
Finally, more words were emitted from the form of the Ultimate. I know that you remember, as well as I, the day that I first spoke you into existence. For you are the Divine, and you never forget anything that has happened or ever will happen. Our brothers and we nodded in silent acknowledgement of that fact that this was true, although It did not need our agreement, for It was the Ultimate and It was great. Any word It spoke would become as truth if it were willed by Its power to be that way.
On that day, It continued, I gave you infinite powers second only to mine, and a Realm to rule over as large as you could ever have desired. I gave you everything, with only a few stipulations to accompany the best gift you could ever receive. After a pause, It asked, I know that you remember these laws that I presented you with.
We remembered these laws well; they were always at the forefront of our mind, the foundation upon which our creations could be built. To forget them would be impossible, for how could we forget the only things which we were not allowed to do?
I had faith in the Divine to abide pleasantly by my simple requests, and you had done well. Its gaze flowed over all of us, individually and at once. All but one of you.
