It had arrived, dear Reader. This was an inevitability you would understand later. The records at the end of existence had spoken about it. The day everything changed. How survival became a landslide. How humanity had been truly tested. How there were many that believed that the worst was over. You haven't seen a burning sky, have you? Blessed you are most truly so. For this was something that had never been seen before and would never be seen again. Be glad if you have lived your life without seeing it.
Many have tried to forget the pain. But like all things eventually even the fall of everything would be forgotten too. Hold dear and cherish all around you for nothing was forever. Everything fell away. Even this account would be swallowed by the darkness. Give thanks. And thus farewell.
Behind the celestial tapestry, behind the grand design of the road and upon the golden city, they said that everything deserved to be slain in favour of the new age. It was expected.
Like all great children's tales, what happened, contained truth within the myth. It was reverent yet mournful. This was not condemnation, but the observed and inevitable fall of everything. It was possible for a message to be right and for the messenger to be wrong.
There were cases. There was noise too. Noise that would go away with more data. But what could one do when the bulk of their own moon had been demolished in a show of calamity.
Any man who ran from his past always forfeited his future. So at the end of existence it was decided that all needed to know about it. About the fall of everything. Show them the past. Show them what was stolen. Tell the story. Tell the toll.
Fear not. Life over death. Truth over lies. Light over darkness. Many things were easy to understand. The time had come to see what had been created and what had been destroyed.
Picture the end. Picture how it came. Like light ceasing in a home and with that, the darkness that came like an avalanche. It was full of horror and hope. The doom that came to their worlds at the darkest ages in human history.
It would have it all. It did have it all. Conspiracies. Aliens. Gods. Monsters. Madmen. Heroes. Glory. And the ultimate rebellion against everything that sought the genesis of that end.
The fall of everything would evolve around the sixth of the seven days, when the shattered remains of their moon would be falling on their heads long after a century had passed.
And on the seventh day, like a fabric to be torn to shreds and a stone to be cloven in pieces, all that they knew would be hewn. That Locusts the size of horses bearing the faces of men would pound across their worlds. That the bodies of soldiers and civilians would be torn apart. That their planets would burn. That they would hang by loose threads of denatured orbits. Worlds would be displaced and forever lost from their sun and there would be worlds that would fall into their sun. After which that very sun would be slain. The fall of everything brought about many questions.
Imagine what it could have been to live in a time like that? Make no mistake, humanity fought back against their extinction.
That in that forever war, there was only darkness for them and only death for their people. That the end was only the beginning. The snake, eating its own tail. And the war in heaven represented the breaking of that cycle. The snake finally deciding, to close its mouth.
The armies of heaven had marched across the incident, flanking their generals as they left no stone unturned and would arrive with the thunderous clap of their feet in the distance. Madness and mastery in the form of angels, all with wings of sabre and scimitar, donning dread helmets of different manifestations. They would fall upon the faces of choking worlds, spewing their atmosphere and forgetting their gravity. The Angels would bring with them weapons that contained the ability to unravel matter. Engines that could undo and unwind everything. Furnaces that held the very flames of indescribable heat itself. That they would be led by a New god crowned with stars and flanked by four armed Angels atop even bigger monsters that didn't resemble any of God's creatures. All this would be done to greet the armies of humanity in Armageddon. In the war in heaven.
It was foretold that the end of the incident would come not in chaos and fire but in silence. But it wasn't that. No it wasn't. It was many things, all at once. The illusion of being sure of when everything began to deteriorate before the bare feet of the ancients stepped on the ground.
Nothing ever changed. Yet everything did change. And—like the river that flowed from the past into the future that they all called the present—it was wise to hold the belief that everything would change again.
***
Some called it the universe but like everything created, it was a question-mark left for anyone to apply meaning to. The infinite fabric of darkness didn't even have a name. It was a black curtain onto itself. But the New gods referred to it simply as the incident. Upon the fabric was the Reolan star system, it was like a woven tapestry of blackness with different coloured planets. Weaved into the gaps were dots of stars. But those gaps also had ugliness. The flowering glory of most civilisations branched off into dead-ends, rather than dynasties. Such was the arc of existence itself. Though this star system was home to the descendants of a mighty odyssey, whose sole purpose was to remake themselves. The twenty-one planets each and everyone, terraformed along with their geographies to produce stunning cradles of culture each with an atmosphere that appeared to be an amalgam of copper, red, purple and pink.
The capital planet, Reola, displayed lush blue with traces of white splashing across its surface. The planets of the Reolan Imperium orbited a star blazing in the epicentre with brilliance and enough gravity to swallow them as they danced around it in an elliptical orbit. Each a locus in the grand Imperium and the Sun Emperor's vision.
Below the atmosphere of Reola over the glacial valleys and snowy mountains. Across the Ocannis sea, there was a small town, Danequell. It was a town laced with technology and agriculture. Home to bluebirds. Over wide fields of grain and solar farms, giant silver spiders about ten meters tall coated with solar panels and auto regulators ensured optimal plant and livestock progress. Each of the numerous robots were piloted with lab grown copies of prepubescent human brains. All trained to uphold their functions. They are but children still innocent to the grim realities of their existence, playing a game in which they are two clear sides; Sun and Self. Across from them, a girl's guttural scream scattered abruptly through their silent task. The screams and cries threatened to tear this state of innocence apart, awakening man to the reality of his true nature, in which good and evil lose all semblance of meaning. Incapable of taking initiative out of their cages. They logged it as a mild distraction and continued with their tasks, while ignoring the cries for help. Offering emphasis that such simplicity is exclusive to the realm of children.
***
There was no greater goal in life than in trying to achieve the impossible. The day that should have been good. Taslin had dressed in his smart black suit and tie. Yet he was on his back, staring at a cloudy sky. Overhead an orchestra of bluebirds passed by like a gentle sea wave. He turned to his left to watch the web weavers, huge robotic silver white spiders that tended to cattle and crops. Through teary eyes he coughed blood and continued to watch them from his supine position on the interlocking brick path with mud and dirt at its side. Taslin had been overwhelmed by the other kids. He always wanted to believe that he could achieve success without soiling his hands. So enamored he was by his clean hands. That he could be good. He now learned the hard way as he lay facing the beautiful skies of Danequell surrounded by the lush forest path while his face was assaulted numerous times by kicks and punches. His blood had been spat out somewhere near his head. He had stood up to a group of boys and girls terrorizing a frail young alien girl. A Malanni; humanoid extraterrestrial with light green complexion. And this was his punishment. He didn't even see the blow that stupefied him while he lectured on virtue to the handsome boys and girls. He had wept calmly and prayed to the Sun for it to end but it didn't, his only comfort was that the girl he stood up for ran for safety. Better he than she.
From where he laid, Taslin saw humans but very little humanity and only when he was about to embrace his demise did it all stop.
It was finally over and his tyrants had left him confused, beaten and fortunate to be alive after the torture. His body ached and stung. He looked to his right hand and saw it bruised and lacerated from the stomp it had taken. It was a red quivering mess with white bone exposed past dark skin. It burned.
They sneered as they departed, united in their mockery of him. He had always been idealistic and righteous. Not anymore. There was no justice. Well not as he had conceived of it. And so he came to understand—that it was not hardship—but the fear of dying to which he first succumbed. So the Organism within him was born.
Taslin rose from the ground, his black suit a husk of its former glory. There were six in total; four boys and two girls. They were dressed in white togas belonging to the same secondary school. The hair of the boys were cut short while the girls had theirs in braids.
All dark skinned descendants from the Reolan warrior stock for the Imperium.
Their leader, Naomi Gelic-Zord was a catlike petite girl with stark white eyes and rectangular pupils. The strongest and the first to fall as he slammed the side of her skull with a brick and dove left to his side for two of the boys named Olarrick and Ziytosa, the former a fat boy while the latter was a tall boy with a silver tattoo on his face. He knew their names because she ordered them out loud to hold him down while they taught their lesson. That those that stood up to them while they enforced their darkness will be crushed. That Karma couldn't find them and they were right. They had failed though because the lesson hadn't been learnt.
Taslin took hold of the fat boy's neck and pounded his face to a pulp while he placed his left leg behind his own as if braiding it then tipped them both over. Something in Taslin's body responded before anything else could as he rolled over quickly and leaped to kick the head of Ziytosa who was rushing to ambush him, it connected as the tall boy cried out. Taslin couldn't stop now and ran fast towards Volcanis, a grey eyed boy. The son of a Reolan soldier.
Mud stained his black suit as the blood that coloured his right hand. Taslin didn't feel his body as he crossed the sand and dirt to reach Volcanis.
Volcanis swung a haymaker but Taslin ducked below it and staggered to the side as he took a handful of sand. Volcanis will only triumph here if Taslin stopped but he won't, he will never stop as he threw sand into Volcanis's eyes. Blinding the hulk. Taslin raced forward and with his left hand, flattened like a knife went for Volcanis's throat in a blow that caused him to keel over.
Taslin turned and charged the other girl. He moved for Rionna, a tall and strong girl with orange eyes which flashed wide as she held up her arms to protect her face, she was slow as Taslin punched her and ran past as she screamed and coughed blood.
He was a sight to behold. Imagine this boy shaped in the image of a vengeful fire, his movement unparalleled.
The last boy was Nimrod, he was stunned by the speed and lethality with which Taslin exhibited as he dispatched them all before they could activate their augments. No. That wasn't it, it was the shock at watching a raging tornado rip apart any fantasy of strength he held about his peers. Nimrod turned to run but not before he was brought to his knees with a blow to the back of his head as he went limp. Taslin knew nothing about them and yet he hated them. Only results mattered. No one that wanted to fight anyone smaller than them—believed in fairness.
Karma was the invocation of cowardice and Taslin knew it now. It was a narrative they told themselves to silence and bury their bitter urge for justice. To cope through unfairness when they aren't strong enough to seek it themselves. People would say to their conscience, their families and friends in passive acceptance that 'they would reap what they sow'. Would they?—Taslin sighed—sometimes the karmic harvest arrived too late for comfort and most times it never came. After they are assuaged. They would watch the world spin around their star as though it was beholden to balance the scales. It was a whisper in the dark. Sounds of complaint to a universe that was sadly without a master. All forsaken by the Great Tailor. Whatever that meant. The fabric was here before it all. A black bug jar. Though the incident had become unmanageable since the Great Tailor abandoned it and in due time it would be hewn. But nothing came whether one served Sun or Self. Taslin had never seen karma undo the cunning of the cruel or trip a deceiver in the flow of speech. The wicked walked among them, strong, fat and laughing. Their sins rot exposed to the elements and no consequence followed.
Taslin now exuded amorphous nobility and had grown jaded. Sharp. Too sharp. Till he re-established himself above the heap. The hierarchy. Most people are bestowed suffering as children and believe that their efforts and whatever they put into the world will amount to nothing. If Taslin could see them, he would say they were wrong and that they had a choice. One that would determine if they withstood the test of time.
You could be innocent or you could be strong. He gathered all six of them and sat on the pile of groaning bodies. A throne to his descent into darkness. And with that path, came a lesson. He had an epiphany. Immediate justice was true justice.
Taslin basked in the pain, the sunshine and the now soft songs of birds within the trees. To know one's place in the system, ergo, was to know where one belonged and what path one's life should take. These webs and maps signified a dark truth; that so much in their lives was not chosen but simply appeared as given, as a gift they could not reject.
Taslin's still broke in tears. He wept for his innocence and the boy that he was that died here. Taslin didn't know it yet and he might never grow to understand that he like the others he sat on, were all players. Chess pieces on an infinite board where they were free to move as they liked; for the entertainment of nameless gods that grinned and laughed behind the celestial tapestry. Players on a stage. To stand and behold life—was to be eaten by time. Lost dreams. Everything was written and read in its own time within the incident, better known to Taslin as the universe. For all souls are the quill scattering ink in existence. Ink that was forever immortalized in paragraphs and chapters. Living essays that sang about the most beautiful stories. The story of life, the story of him. The story of Taslin. It was remarkable that people didn't go insane knowing the futility of their own existence. After they had looked into the abyss, after they had tasted the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, could they ever really go back to just—being? Taslin sighed and rose. Tears etched at his brown eyes. He understood now, he looked at his right hand and it was now trembling. Only then did he notice through teary eyes, the bluebird watching him from a tree branch. It caught his eyes. This one bluebird's eyes had a shine to them. It studied Taslin from afar. Taslin smiled at it. It was the reward of his pain. There had been no one like him and since.