In the fullness before yet there were any kingdoms nor lords to rule them, all was all and nothing else.
Before there yet were any gods of the sky or even a sky at all, there was one who came first. When all that was first became divided, it was into Demise and all things else. All things would, and must, change, and it was Demise who first saw this.
She looked upon the blank, unchanging excess of all things, and she grew bored.
So Demise reached into herself and from the womb of her being she pulled forth a new thing, the first child. This child she called Time, and she told him to bring forth something to amuse her.
“But mother,” he said, “in the fullness of all things there is nowhere to go, nothing to bring, and all things are already here.”
“Idiot child.” Demise gnashed at her child’s foolishness, and in response she took hold of all things and torn it in two, destroying one half and leaving it empty void. This void was to be the sky, and the remainder of all things was to be the earth.
“Find me something interesting among what is left.” Tired from the great effort of clearing away the sky, Demise fell to earth and watched Time as he went.
He gathered up bits and pieces of the earth and brought them together into harmonious patterns, and they became bright and beautiful creations. He could not reach into his being and bring forth a child like his mother, but he could create from what already existed.
He brought this bright, beautiful thing to his mother, excited to show her what he had made. She took one look at it and laughed. Taking the beautiful thing from her child, she brought it to her mouth and devoured it.
Time was dismayed by this act of destruction, but Demise took great pleasure in it. “Bring me more, my child.”
So he returned to the earth and gathered more things together into another bright and beautiful creation. This second creation he made even greater than the first, and he shouted in his excitement. “Won’t she love this?”
Demise, still watching her child work, saw this as the moment for her to act, and she took his latest creation and devoured it as well.
“Mother, why do you devour everything I create? Why…” Much as he brought things together into beautiful patterns, he decided to create a word to reflect this horrid act. “Why do you kill?“
“Fullness is the absence of change. Nothing can grow, nothing emerges. So I created you, my child, to farm this earth and grow what I will kill.”
Time cast his eyes downward and returned to his work. In time, he once more brought the remnant of things together into a shining whole, something still greater than his first two creations, such that the very sight of it made him shake with joy.
If he could create something beautiful enough, would even Mother Demise hesitate to destroy it?
But it was not so; no matter how hard he worked, no matter the glory of his creations, there was no thing too resplendent the Demise would not take it.
His spirit was truly leaden with despair, and Demise found even this amusing for a time. His work became rote and heartless, each new creation more dim and uninspiring for the knowledge that it would soon be taken away.
“I grow bored of killing your simple creations, my child. I am going to sleep, wake me if ever you create something interesting again.”
And so Demise crawled down beneath the earth, the roteness of existence boring her to sleep.
Time continued to create, for there was nothing else on earth to do, but his ennui had not withdrawn; for would his mother not awaken eventually and take it all away again?
Such was his thoughts for a time. But cunning struck him: while his mother sleeps, she could not watch his work and snatch it away just as he makes it.
Nothing was too beautiful she would not kill it. But what if he created something she could not kill?
So Time began to work with renewed determination and gathered all of the things on earth into something far bigger, far brighter, far greater, than any work he had shaped before.
It was so shiny he could scarcely look at it; but Demise’s mouth was wide, and her gut large, and so he still knew she could devour it if she saw it.
But then he looked up, into the great void Demise had cleared away. So he took this shining thing and threw it as hard as he could, until it was so far away in the void that nothing could reach it.
Time was lonely now that his creation was so far away, so he endeavored to make more of them. Shiny thing after shiny thing he made, some of them brighter than others, but all of them thrown away into the unreachable expanses of the void. He grew fond of these creations, and bestowed upon them a name: stars.
Time’s masterwork was such that even in placing stars in the sky he made it so that they formed still greater patterns among themselves. When his work was done, he had painted a majestic, sparkling expanse.
Yet his loneliness had grown with each star he threw away, even if the distance was for their own protection. So for the last star he made, he could not bear to part with it, and kept it on earth with him, adding more and more until it shined brighter than any of the stars.
Its radiance was such that it woke Demise from her slumber beneath the earth.
“My child, what have you done?”
Time was quick, and on hearing her voice he made to hide his last creation. But the sun was too bright to be hidden.
“Idiot child. Is this all you made for me? I will not be amused by snuffing out a single one of your lights.”
Time’s voice shook, but he dared say, “Mother, I made more than just a single light.” And he pointed up to the sky. “Do you like my stars?”
“What is the use of putting them so far out of reach? I cannot kill them from here.”
“Can you not learn to be be amused without destroying?”
“My child, I am the demise of all things. I was here before the sky was void, and I know there is nothing but boredom to be found in fullness where nothing can change and die.”
“Perhaps it would be more amusing if you would change. Or even die!”
Demise stared at him with vast eyes. “Is this how you dare speak to your mother? I created you, and I can kill you just as well.”
But when Demise advanced on Time, his last creation, the sun brightest of all, moved to protect him.
“I will start with your foolish light.”
Demise tried to devour its radiance, but Time had achieved success in his first plan, and she could not easily destroy this sun. After a great struggle, she spat out the light, and it flew up, hiding the stars with its brightness.
“I never wish to see you again, idiot child. You have plotted against and betrayed your mother, and for this you will be punished. Go. Run to the ends of the earth. If you ever stop moving I will swallow you up and you will know the fate all of your creations.”
Cast out by his mother, Time shuddered, a despair engulfing him. But the earth began to open up beneath him, so he knew he better move.
Time roamed the world as the winds, always marching forever, never stopping, and watched as the earth swallowed and then spit back up the sun, nevering fully extinguishing its light.
Demise had devoured all things — was it a matter of time before the triumph of his last creation was also dust?
So as he wandered he began to sow the seeds of something new. Never able to stop — for if he dallied, the earth would shudder and quake with Demise’s fury — he could never again work something as magnificent as the sun or stars.
So he made small, flourishing things. They eagerly accepted the light of his greatest creation, worshipful, a continuous thanks for protecting him from the wrath of his mother.
At times he was able to tend to these flourishing things, slaking the earth so that they might grow, but he could never stay for long lest the earth open up and swallow him.
When Demise saw that flourishing green was overtaking the earth, her fury erupted into flames like an imitation of that sun she was growing so familiar with. She burned away the greenery with great consuming flames, leaving nothing but ashes.
Still Time continued to pour adown water to extinguish the flames, and grow more green.
So Demise perverted these rains, made them black and acidic to melt away the green.
So Time made them fold up their leaves, and endure the black storms.
Enraged, Demise erupted once more, smoking pouring out from the earth to engulf the plants.
But Time, still traveling as the winds, blew away the smoke again and again.
So finally Demise reached inside of herself to rip forth another child from her womb. One smaller, more obediant then time. She called her Ruin.
And she sets Ruin to chase after Time, to snatch away everything he tries to create. To let rot and decay overtake that which is green.
Time is harried and distraught, chased by Ruin, and no longer can he take the moments to care for and hone his creations.
Abandoned, the flourishing things quarrel and conflict, growing taller than one another and spreading their leaves to block and grasp more of the sun’s light. And seeing how ruin takes them, turning them to rotting husks, some get an idea, and turn away from the light entirely. They begin to devour one another.
Thus following Ruin’s ways, the plants become the beasts of the earth, and they kill and devour each other, such that Demise need no longer even do so herself, and her amused laughter rung throughout the world.
Demise had settled deep below, even as she continues to swallow the sun and spit it back out. She felt the birth of every creature as a terrible itch, and as plants and beasts fall down and return to the earth, it is as if that great itch were finally scratched.
Demise could feel as the beasts struggle against each other, how each one that dies next was stronger than the last. And yet they die all the same. It pleased her that nothing is beyond her grasp. She would wittle down the sun one day, and then she would crawl up and snuff out the stars too. She was the truth that all things will and must change; she is the demise incipient at the beginning of all things.
And as the sun was swallowed and spit up again and again, a hundred, a thousand, a million times, she felt something was wrong.
She felt the itches of new life, and always there are deaths which scratch away some of them. But some itches have been there for tens of thousands of swallows, and still linger. These beasts had grown very strong indeed. But still Demise slumbered beneath the earth. She was there before the sky was empty, and nothing would not return to her. She could wait for some fat beasts to die.
They did not die.
Each of them killed many smaller beasts, and some even fought amongst themselves. Some of these long-lived beasts did die and returned to her beneath the earth, but the strongest of the beasts paradoxically did not fight each other, and none of the weakest could challenge them.
She ventured out into the world disguised as one of them, to see what was the meaning of this.
She found that for each of these great beasts there were thousands like bugs that knelt before them, serving as if each were a part of the great beasts’ own body, and offering little resistance when one made to devour them by the dozens.
She appeared before one of these bugs in the star-lit darkness when she was most powerful, having swallowed the sun.
“Why do you kneel and serve and offer yourself up before those great beasts?”
Confused, the bug replies, “They are the gods of he sky and we worship their undying power.”
“What of the demise of all things? She who was here before the sky was void, of whose womb both Time and Ruin were born — the end which nothing escapes, not even the fattest of beasts. Is she not greater than any of these ‘gods’?”
“Demise and may claim the weakest of things, but the greatest of the gods have not died and never will.”
“And you worship them for that?”
“They fly through the sky like the sun and lift mountains on their backs. They call the wind and rains, and make things beautiful like the stars. Would you not worship that?”
“Demise swallows the sun each day, and quakes with the power to knock away all things built upon it, like so many sand grains piled atop one another. She makes the rain black like poison and turns the air to choking smog. She was there before the sky was empty, and will one day crawl up to blot out the stars. Why not worship that?”
The bug thought for a moment. “Is she more strong, for all the power that wanes and weakens with each day? Is she more beautiful, for all the luster lost and flowers turned to withering? Is she more wise, for all the great songs and philosophies forgotten? She has devoured plant and beast and thing for a million falls and rises of the sun, but is she any less empty now than the day all things began?”
Demise’s rage reached a boiling pitch, and a heat erupts from the earth where she stands. Now the bug realized to whom she was speaking. “And yet,” she started. “You will still fall into my embrace in the end, while your gods still exult in their immortality. You and the ones who reared you and the ones you will rear in turn will toil from the rise to the fall of the sun for season after season. You rejoice in all the power your gods wield, but it is not your power and they do not wield it for you.”
“That is all true,” they said in a demure tone, unwilling to anger the sole god of the earth further.
“Perhaps I am empty. Perhaps I only destroy, gaining nothing for myself but momentary amusement. I will never create something that sparkles like this foolish night sky, but I am the demise of all things, and I was here before the sky was void. Every thing upon this earth returns to me, even those beasts that call themselves gods. That is power. If you were to scorch their wings off, and bring them the death they’ve so skittishly avoided, would that not be glorious? Would you not the right to call yourself a god then, and have thousands worship you?”
“The greatest gods do not fight one another, lest their battles scar the whole world.”
“Then they have grown soft in their peace. Shall we not remind them the fear of death, together? Shall you not follow me, and know true freedom?”
“What would you have me do, Mother Demise?”
“Bring me the death of every god, and I will reward you with glory even your great beasts could not conceive of. Slash open your flesh, and pour your life onto the earth; kneel for me, and I will grant you the power you need to do this.”
The bug had the natural implements to do this, and after many relunctant attempts, they attained the fervor necessary to draw a wound, and fell to the ground as their life drains out.
The earth once more erupts — into the bug, fire from the veins of the earth surging upward and endowing such heat that they glow.
“Go, my servant. Wield the fire that burns every living thing, and reduces all to ash. Challenge them to battle, ignite their temples while they hang from their throne-boughs. Return them to the earth.”
The bug’s eyes were burning bright, and painful wimpers tell how the heat felt. But they open their mouth, and spit forth a burning gout.
Demise returned to her slumber deep beneath just as she was forced to spit out the sun. She was soothed by the flow of lesser plants and beasts returning to the earth, but turns attention to those lingering itches, waiting to see the work of her servant.
An old beast dies — not the oldest, but certainly one who’d lived intolerably long. Good. Perhaps this would work out; she’d grown so used to the beasts doing the work of killing each other herself. It was better when you didn’t do it yourself.
Then she felt her daughter call out to her.
“What do you need, Ruin?”
“Do you have a new child? I see now the fall of things even I could not bring down. Have I disappointed you?”
“The beasts of the earth follow your design, do they not? They are your children, if anyone’s. I simply taught one how the earth burns. With that knowledge… I suppose it does what all beasts do.”
“I could serve you better than some meager beast, Mother. If you’d give me the chance..?”
“See that Time does not get crafty. I don’t like those lances of light he’s been making in the clouds. Too bright. Pull them down to the earth, out of his grasp, will you?”
“As you wish, Mother Demise.”
Years pass, and it now seems her little servant has died, and come to rot with her beneath the earth. As it should be; but it taught the art of the earth’s fires to others, and they to others still, until the bugs are killing gods by the dozens. Weak ones, not even disturbing those greatest of all who chose not to fight.
Slumber calls to her — but then, she feels the bugs too calling her name.
“O Mother Demise, heed our call.”
“What is it, you bugs? No, I suppose you’re more than that now. Hunters. You’ve earned the title.”
“The gods now hide away from our challenges, and bar our entry to their temples. They are scared of us now, but in their fear, deprive us of chance to turn them to ash as you would wish. What would you have us do, Mother Demise? Have we failed you?”
“Worse. You’ve bored me. If the gods are so effectively countering you, you’ve become too predictable. Do more than challenge them, if they will not fight you in the open, sneak into their temples. Find them when they hang asleep. Strike from the shadows, and let them know nowhere is safe.”
“But your blessed earth-flame crackles with rage and banishes the darkness. How can we ever achieve this with the tools you have given us?”
“Open your mouth.”
Confusion, but after a moment the hunter complies obediantly.
Demise leans forth, and spits blackly into the open mouth.
“Go forth, and lure the gods to you like cunning spiders. This is the venom of the earth, with which I devour all things. Bite them, coat your weapons with it, and spit upon them. Watch their flesh bubble and melt.”
“As you command, earth-mother.”
“Do not call me again until all the gods are rotting in my embrace.”
Demise descended to sleep anew, but once more she is interrupted.
“Reminds you of Time, doesn’t it?”
“Child, I created you so that I wouldn’t need to be reminded of Time.”
“The tools, I mean. You’re giving them each of the means you used to unravel Time’s flourishing creation.”
“These beasts are hardly equal to one of my children.”
“Of course. That’s why it’s left to the hunters. But those bugs weren’t slaved to the gods becase they were the gods’ superior. Even if they wield the power of the earth… why rely on weak tools?”
“You question me, Ruin?”
“The gods are hardly equal to one of your children,” she echoed. “So clearly one of them would be more than able to handle them, and let their beloved mother sleep at ease.”
“And leave Time alone? Get back to it, child. I don’t want the idiot child to know a moment’s peace.”
Demise returns to the earth. Gods die, one by one, and generations of striving hunters go with them. They refine her arts; flames melting even the stone of the earth or galing the air with force; poison augmented with that of other beasts, or thickened to fly like rocks from slings. But more than that, her arts were perverted: flames used to heat homes, play games, and she sees some hunters sucking the poison out of one wounded.
It did remind her of Time. Smarming child, putting these thoughts in her head.
The thought didn’t summon her, because some years passed now before Ruin disturbed her mother anew.
“Mother,” she called. “Mother Demise, Time has taught them.”
“What are you bothering me over now?” she replies, mind slowed from sleep.
“The lances of light that split the sky. He’s taught the hunters to wield it. Perhaps he thinks this will win him back favor. I could set easily his arrogance straight. Let me kill the gods and hunters both, and his conniving will be nothing.”
“What do I care if the beasts of the earth have a new way to kill each other?”
“It’s Time‘s work!”
“And so is the sun and all those flourishing things that feed upon its light. Yet they have proved amply entertaining. I punish Time not for what he did, I punish for what he tried to do, and because it amuses me to do so. Begone, my child, before I decide it no longer amuses me to love you.”
Ruin nearly returns to the chase then, but dithers one moment more. “The hunters were calling your name again. I intercepted them. They’ll keep doing it. Time’s stupid light tricks does nothing earth’s flame cannot, and the gods have grown wise to the trickery they use to inflict earth’s venom. They will demand more toys to play with… should they not be punished for this?”
“Do not think to tell me whom to punish, smarming child. Begone.”
Ruin is swift on the trail of Time.
Demise does not return immediately to sleep. Instead, she casts her awareness to encampments and strongholds the hunters keep in their campagin against the gods.
She opens up the earth near them, and vents dark smoke to drift free, floating in and tainting the air they breathe.
Let them choke. And if they do not choke, they shall learn the art of the earth’s breath.
Still Demise did not slumber, curious what will happen next.
Ruin was right; the hunters were desperate for new tactics. And they understood, it seems, what she told them with the smog attack.
They turn the earth’s breath upon the enemy, suffocating them inside their impenetrable defenses. Again, the hunters refine her arts far beyond what she was too… empty, to achieve. They make storms and tornadoes to loose upon the gods. She is troubled by the way it meshes so well with Time’s damnable light-lances.
She slept now, no longer amused to watch the war too closely. The scratches of new deaths was soothing enough, a lulling rhythm.
The great beasts were dying now, at wonderful pace. Not the greatest, not the one who seems to be king among gods, wielding explosive light far too like what Time last wrought. But the inevitable conclusion at least seemed manifest, the outcome of her hunters versus these ‘immortal’ gods.
But the greatest among them soar truly high above the rest. The four arts the hunters wield, and all the refinements they achieved, could not compare to the annihilation the the greatest beast of the earth inflicted. She liked that result, even if she did not like how bright it came.
And she certainly didn’t like his refusal to return to the earth. Would she have to step in herself?
But something intervenes first.
It’s her overeager child, Ruin, shirking her duties to teach the hunters the fourth art of the earth: wielding not just the earth itself, but what lies within it — rot, decay incarnate.
Impudient child — but the beasts were made after her child’s design. If she did not punish Time for his meddling in this affair… she could very well punish Ruin for this anyway, because she simply did what amused her.
But she’s most amused by the failure. With earth’s roots, they tear apart some of the underground temples the gods retreated to in wake of the earth’s breath. But the greatest of those beasts? His annihiliation was unstopped.
So she would have to step in herself.
“Speak, O vespers, and say that I shall endure forever.”
“You will not.” Demise did not care to what other beast they had been addressing — were there powers to the gods themselves turned to as their slaves turned onto them? But she would outlast and devour them all.
Like that, she destroyed the greatest of the gods, and it was a simple affair, because it was natural; all beasts belonged to the earth, even if this one thought it appropriate to fly high in the void, dreadfully near that blasted sun.
“Is that all, Mother Demise?”
She gave the barest sign she was listening to the hunters who dared to invoke her.
“You promised, so many generations ago, when the first of our kind took in the earth’s power and agreed to slay the gods of the sky, that success would bring us a great, unconceivable reward.”
Did she care to note they were incapable of it in the end — did they think they had some part in her killing?
She only said, “Are the gods dead? Down to the last?”
“Their kind breeds, and new members of their kind are born every day.”
Four simple words. “So end them all.”
“And when it is all done, earth-mother? All the bats dead even in their wombs?” The hunter knelt, as if that would offset their monumental hubris. “Is there a sixth art you would bestow upon us, one to exceed all the rest?”
“If you succeed in killing all those who thought they could escape their demise…” She waited a long moment, which was not long at all to her, the one who was there before the sky was empty. “Then I shall grant you this: you will have my blessing to rule over all that lies between the earth and sky, so long as you never outlive your allocated time, and return to me without reservation.”
“Is… is that it, Mother Demise?” The hunter waited, and then looked to another member of their kind. “Which, if you may enlighten us, would you say is the most fit to rule over us all?”
Demise pondered this. She had, so long ago, told that first hunter that with the earth’s power she would be like a god. But Demise was tired of gods, and beasts who dared do more than kill and die when it was their time.
Her voice erupted from the earth, her last declaration to her first servants. “My children… if you show me which of the arts of the earth alone is strongest — when one of you stands triumphant over all the others… will there be any doubt who is fit to rule?”
She descended one last time into the depths of the earth where all plants and beasts and things will one day join her. She knows with this last command given there could be no peace among the hunters, and their foolishness will entertain her for quite a while.
(And it is a good thing, too. For if she who is the demise of all things were to grow bored with our performance here, between the earth and sky? Would she not awaken once more, swallow the sun one final time, bring both Time and Ruin to a halt, and make the whole of the earth heave and rise, at last tearing out those starry morsels so long withheld from her?)
Snuggly Serials 