The Death of a Universe
The gods hung in space like mighty beacons of light and energy. Each one a mostly rectangular titan of stone or metal. Some were dark and mossy like rock in a cave, others reflected the light of a thousands stars as it struck carapaces of gold or burnished steel. Some were dark and sharp-edged like knapped obsidian, while some were craggy like a poorly cut sculpture. These great inanimate beings were the gods of the universe and from them all power and energy flowed.
These gods were not deities of war or death, they were artisans and protectors. There were many of them and they circled each galaxy and solar system in slow, wide, orbits. Each shift in their heavenly trajectories kept the worlds they circled supplied with energy and light. At the far edges of the universe the mightiest of these gods stood still, unmoving sentinels keeping the chaos beyond their border at bay and funneling the morass of raw, limitless energy inwards towards their smaller and weaker brethren who in turn forged it into matter usable by the worlds and races in their care.
These gods were silent and unknowable but they were not uncaring guardians. They communed with the races in their care, after a fashion. A spark of insight, the genius hidden behind insanity and obsession, strange lights in the sky that formed patterns understood only by a chosen few, these were the methods they used to shepherd the tiny creatures that populated their universe. The gods delighted in their creations, and looked on happily from on high as life in their universe became fruitful and multiplied.
Time had no meaning, for life had no end in this Utopian universe. Worlds spun in their orbits, and the gods in turn orbited those worlds and galaxies as they had since sentience first found them. Chaos forever lapped at the edges of the universe and the mightiest of the gods were forever absorbing it and turning to useful purpose. There was no limit to their power or what they could provide for the worlds under their care.
What was asked for was given, without condition or reservation, and the gods smiled silently and invisibly on high. But there are those who forever seek more power, though they can only do so much with it. But even these individuals or worlds of these individuals delighted the gods and they would not deny them anymore than they would deny the requests of others. Power was asked for and power was granted, and it was turned against the gods.
It only took one world, one race of creatures self-centered enough to believe that they should never have to ask for what they wanted, a race that believed they should forever be able to take what they wanted. They started with the gods themselves. A small one, oblong like an obelisk of unmarked white stone. They had no name for him and he had no name for himself. They dragged him from the sky with beams of force fueled by the power he had granted them, they had the power of a god at their disposal. They had had it before, but now they could take it and had no need to ask it of him any longer.
The white obelisk's absence was noticed, but nothing was to be done. They could not harm a god, let alone kill it. Buried in the soil of their planet he could still convert and direct the flows of energy and matter from his brothers and sisters. Only the great gods at the edges of the universe could discern the difference and only they truly understood what it meant.
The universe guarded by these gods was a great latticework of flowing energy. Each strand maintaining a law of physics or giving life to a star, or signing the death warrant of an aberrant creature birthed from an unexpected interaction of energies. The great gods had placed their tinier brethren with great deliberation and purpose and now their masterpiece was misshapen and the lines of energy blanketing the cosmos were turned askew.
To reorder the alignment of their brothers and sisters scattered across the universe was no mean feat, even for beings that fed on raw chaos. Cosmic energies were left uncontrolled, stars burned out, worlds died in the dark and cold of space while others burned as their suns devoured them and fed on the mass. Even the gods were flung about as the cosmos were reordered, some impacting upon each other in the great void of space.
For the great gods to shift their lesser siblings and the power at their disposal they must turn their attention from the chaos they held in check, and that was the downfall of the universe, this one at least. When the great ones turned their attention from chaos, chaos bled into their universe like a tide of ravening flame. Chaos surged into the universe surrounding lesser gods and cutting them off from the great ones, disrupting the flows of energy throughout the universe.
Worlds burned, even stars burned, the very void of space lit afire as chaos found cracks in the defense of the great ones and burned down everything they had worked to give life to. Chaos found the weakest of the gods, poured itself within them and tore them apart, they could not face the full force of raw energy that the great ones could. They died, the youngest and weakest of the gods died and those silent sentinels finally cried out. It was a keening that frayed the strands of time and space and gave birth to rents in the very fabric of the universe. Great gaping maws that were a void so absolute that it could not be described or seen, only felt.
These empty voids tore apart gods and chaos just as easily as they devoured the worlds in their path. As the gods died chaos broke down the borders of the universe and swarmed in, destroying that which had not been already devoured. As the tide of raw energy burned through the galaxies it filled the tears in space, for chaos was as limitless as the voids were empty.
The mightiest of the gods had fallen, those that had turned from chaos to reorder the universe had fallen prey to the forces they were supposed to hold in check. When one god fell, those around it were soon destroyed as well, for the great ones were shieldmates and each one guarded the flank of those next to it. Once a few had fallen, the energies of the gods grew strained and they could not hold chaos at bay. It tore them asunder, scoured them clean of matter and thought, and retook the power the gods had absorbed from chaos.
The smallest of the gods had fared no better. Perhaps the mightiest could have fended off the rents in space, but the weakest were devoured with almost no effort. Meanwhile, chaos split them apart as easily as the voids devoured them. The universe was a maelstrom of chaos and life-eating voids, stars and worlds, the very laws of physics and matter themselves were gone. They had no bearing on a plane plagued by the dual paradox of yawning emptiness and limitless chaos.
Only the middle gods were left in this bleak place. They were too large and powerful for chaos to split apart and were just powerful enough to escape the sucking maws of the void, if they were lucky. They were destroyed in droves yes, but many were able to pit the energies of chaos against the voids and so maintain their existence, hurtling through space seeking only survival and barely maintaining that. They were quicker than the great ones, but harder to destroy than the small gods that chaos had so easily split apart.
Eventually luck runs out and odds turn against even the creators of the universe. The middle gods died. Chaos was limitless energy, limitless matter, endlessly self-perpetuating and the voids grew as the gods died, but the gods were finite in number and the voids could be filled. Chaos was blanketing what had once been a universe of order and life and not even the voids could stop it. Eventually it was only chaos and one god.
He had not been the weakest or the strongest or the fastest of the middle gods, merely the one that had managed to survive. He was not even a full god, just a mere fragment of one. He had been larger, but pieces of the pitted grey stone he was made of had been torn free by the voids or burnt from his flesh by the flames of chaos. He was more a beast than god, hurtling to and fro in the endless expanse of chaos, never daring to pause, only fleeing the sentience of that endless sea.
Pain and loneliness had driven him mad. He was not a peaceful and loving god or a protector of worlds any longer, he was a fearful hunted thing that could only cry out in that wailing cry that tore holes in the universe. Chaos gnawed at the edges of his being, it could not split him apart, but it could kill him by inches as it had his brothers. Every endless second of his travels brought him closer to death. He was the last of the gods and he was utterly consumed by fear and madness.
He cried out in that awful, keening wail. He cried out and the universe split apart around him and the seas of chaos lessened. He was a mad thing, a mindless fleeing beast, but he possessed cunning enough to understand that even the endlessness of chaos must pause to fill a void before it could turns its focus back to him. He was still alone in the sea of chaos but each time a new void was born the hungry presence that was chaos must turn away from him to fill the void.
The mad, and perhaps dying, god halted its flight and felt chaos gnawing at it as its screams lessened. Little bits and pieces of it broke away and discorporated into flickers of energy. Then the god screamed, not in fear or pain, but in rage. Space around the small god ripped and tore as he fed on the chaos eating him and used it to fuel his warcry.
In one instant the last protector of the universe become a creature of war and death and his screams killed the universe. When the cry finally ended, for it had gone on unceasingly for eons, the god was alone in the emptiness of space. His cries had given birth to a void so absolute that it had destroyed the universe, emptied it of life. Somehow the voids had filled themselves with chaos, and that had in turn exhausted the once supposedly limitlessness of chaos.
The god spun in the emptiness of space, his pain and fear and madness ebbing, and gazed out at the utter destruction he'd wrought. He'd destroyed the universe and there was nothing he could do to undo that destruction. Gods were mighty, even ones of his size, but without the presence of chaos to further empower him he could create nothing. At least nothing on scale with what his larger brethren had crafted and set him to protect.
All he could do was float there in silence, a crooked, bleeding stone in a sea of emptiness marking the grave of the universe. As he floated there, thought left him and his sight dimmed, he was growing as cold and quiet himself as the space around him. The mind of the abused god stilled, consumed by guilt and loss his consciousness fell away and he was merely a giant stone, bereft of life and power.
That was how the universe died, killed in one final blow by the last of its protectors. Chaos was limitless though, and even though he had turned the universe into a bleak void with his cries, chaos could not truly be destroyed, only dimmed for a time. It was in this fashion that a new universe was born, a beacon of light on a horizon far from the hibernating god, a pinpoint of chaos in the dark expanse of the tomb of the universe.
(Spoiler Alert: The dead universe is the one found within Calindrel's blade and that sleeping god is found by a quartet of Eldarine that go by the names Kern Yew'nose of the Saevoi, Prase Me'kal of the Conteog, Jahd Rah'vayn of the Everseon, and Enthet E'seth of the Lacerat, the main characters of the story I was writing that was saved as Unbegun.doc).
Music: Catch Hell Blues - The White Stripes
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