216, 2/2

The daughter, in her curiosity, asked the mother, “Where do universes come from?”

The mother, in her ageless wisdom, asked, “Where do you think they come from?”

“You made this one, so this is why I asked you.”

“And you’re the fully-formed product of that one time I held a hand with a guard, so your guess is as good as mine.”

“… Universes come from hand holding?”

“No, dear. Little inquisitive girls come from a Queen wondering what it would have been like to have a husband who is not her husband.” The mother said, “I have very little idea of where universes come from, for I have no idea how I made this universe either. Go ask your father.”

“Which one?”

“Whichever; both are your father.”

And so the daughter went to the guardhouse, because the king was always busy.

“Father? Where do universes come from?”

The guardian father asked, “Didn’t you ask your mother?”

“She said to ask you.”

“Your mother knows more than I, but where do you think universes come from?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe from something being put where it ought not be put?”

The guardian father laughed. “That is often true! But not the whole truth. Either way, I only know where kids come from; not universes. Your brother the prince is a lot more generative than I, and he made himself happen when I handed the king his crown. Go ask the prince.”

And so the daughter went to the prince’s art studio.

The prince was in a creative mood today, so the daughter watched as paint struck canvas, and people came into being. The prince had yet to make a universe, and yet he was still the most generative force in the kingdom because he never stopped trying to make another universe. So far all he really made were people.

The daughter watched a baker come into being, along with the baker’s oven and a loaf of bread. Looking past the edge of that painting, the daughter saw wheat fields, for one cannot have bread without wheat, and without farmers. In a single painting, the prince made a whole small industry, which, when placed next to the other paintings in the studio, would slot into all the other industries that the prince had already made. When the painting proved good and wholesome with all the other paintings, the prince might even decide to break the frame and let the painting into this universe.

The prince did not do any of that right now, though, for he was fully in the flow. He moved on to the next painting. This next masterpiece became a fisher, who fished the streams, and by that fishing the fisher brought those streams into being.

And now, the prince put the baker painting and the fisher painting next to each other. This, then, was the testing. The streams went by the wheat fields, and both were enhanced by that joining, though the fields were enhanced more than the streams.

The daughter watched as the prince watched his paintings become the kingdom on the other side of the frame.

She watched the river dry up, due to too many farms. And soon, the river was gone. The fisher was dead. The fish were dead. The farms were fine, though; they had even grown in the consumption of the rivers. But now the river was dry, and the farms retreated. The baker thrived for a time, building a kingdom of bread, but then they fell back onto hard times, and now they were back to making simple bread for their neighbors

The prince looked at his painting of a fisher, now a desolate thing of skeletons and muck on a riverbed. He took it off the wall, and painted it again.

This time it was a painting of a raging river, wide as a world. When he hung it beside the painting of the baker, the baker was swept out to sea, along with all the farms.

The painter clicked his tongue. “Overdid it that time.”

“Maybe the river should have been wider, and not so much whitewater,” offered the peeping daughter.

The prince rounded on the daughter. “What are you doing here— You messed up my paintings! Get out of my studio!”

The daughter, indignant, put her fists to her hips. “I didn’t do a thing to you or yours! I only watched!”

“Your presence was enough! It was enough! Get out of here!”

“Answer a question and I will.”

“I agree! State your question and then begone!”

“Where do universes come from?”

“From wherever there is a clean canvas and a will to create! Now get out of my studio!”

“… Wait. That doesn’t help me at all. Why does—”

“Too bad!”

The prince had grabbed a painting from the bin—

Suddenly the daughter was in the middle of a road, on a street she did not know, in a land that was not her home. She looked up at the sky and saw a square of canvas with a painted image of the prince’s face vanishing into the blue. The prince called out silent curses against interlopers, and about how some lessons never get learned.

The daughter looked around.

“That fucker trapped me in a painting.”

It was a kingdom of normal make. Nothing too strange about it. At least the prince had been nice enough to throw her into something that resembled home. Not like that time he had shoved her into a world that was a beehive. Whatever! She could get out of this.

And so she did.

It was a tale of blood and gore and killing tyrants and wooing maidens and a magical trip through an orchard that was a kingdom, and then down into the crystal caverns and up to the highest peak of the sun. In that ageless time the painted world had long since turned real for the daughter, but sometimes she could see the seam of the fabric of the canvas, here and there. When she cared to, she searched out those seams, looking for a way out, but when she loved the world, she stayed longer than she should have, which was at least as long as she needed to see the mortals live and die, and to live and die with them. Finally, though, something changed, and the daughter wanted out.

She searched so long for a good seam; one that could actually take her out.

And then, she found it.

A cut.

Finally, a cut!

She stepped through that cut—

“Oh! Hello, daughter,” said the king, her other father. “You have come back to us. Welcome back.”

There were too many things to say and not enough time to say them, but those thoughts vanished in the wake of true life anyway. And so the daughter who had been the princess, the queen, the beggar, the brother, the killer, the mother, the monster, simply said, “Hello, father.”

“How long was the journey this time?”

“An age and a day. The prince was nice this time. I took your advice and I didn’t actually interrupt his painting, so that helped. How long has it been here?”

“An age and a day; the normal amount of time. Did you find out how universes are made?”

“Not at all! I did learn how to swing a sword again. That was fun.”

The king smiled, saying, “I would have thought you would have figured out universe creation by now. The prince has been making them all this time and he’s only a few ages older than you.”

“… Those are real universes? I thought they were paintings?”

With a knowing grin, the king asked, “How have you tried to make a universe so far?”

“Ugh!” the daughter said, her frustration on full display. “I tried touching hands with a cute boy. I tried putting a crown on a queen. I tried painting a world on a canvas made of magic, with paints made from Reality. It’s so easy for all of you, but not for me!”

The king nodded. “Keep trying. I’m sure you’ll get it eventually. Try going for a walk in a distant land, and seeing if a change of perspective helps. And if nothing else… Have you tried bringing together two things that simply shouldn’t work? That’s often enough to start a universe rolling.”

“Tell me again how you made this universe, father?”

“I found a spot in the light of Endless Summer and introduced a change; a darkness, if you want to call it that. You can’t really control the outcome that way, but I like it better that way.”

“… Huh. I haven’t tried that yet. Maybe I’ll do the opposite, though. Where would I find a deep enough darkness, though?”

“Ask your brother for a black painting. But don’t interrupt his painting, or he might trap you in another world. Wait for his tea time, instead.”

And that is what she did.

The daughter waited for an age and a day, peeping on the prince, looking for a time when the prince was not painting. Eventually it happened. The prince came out of his studio to take tea on the grassy hill with one of his paintings he had broken wide and brought into this world, fully.

The new introduction to the kingdom was an old woman, hunched with age and with eyes so bleak they could not see. But the prince had gifted her glasses made of perfect paint, and the woman could see everything.

She saw the daughter in the bushes. With a cheerful tone, she asked, “Oh oh! Who is that?”

The prince saw the daughter. “That’s the daughter.”

“Your sister?”

The prince scowled. And then he relented. “Maybe? Sure. Why not.” He called out, “Sister! Stop hiding in the bushes and come out and say hello.”

The daughter, who was a sister sometimes, came out of the bushes. “Hello… Brother? Sure. Why not.” She turned to the old woman. “Hello, old woman. May I have your name?”

The old woman cackled. “No you may not, fairy girl. Why were you hiding in the bushes?”

“I was waiting to ask my brother, the prince, for a black painting, so that I might try creating something out of darkness like our father did when he did the opposite.”

The prince scowled. “He didn’t make this universe out of light. He made it out of a dream. But since light did not exist, then he made that, too.” He waved a hand, saying, “I’m not talking with you. I’m talking with this old woman. You want a black painting. Go get one; I care not which. I made a million of them.” He gestured to the studio.

The daughter gleefully scampered off into the depths of the studio, leaving behind the prince and the old woman, as the two of them began to speak of such useless things like magic and order.

The trip into the studio took an age and a day.

Finally, a thousand kilometers into the studio, after passing through halls of black painting after black painting, and journeying into the other areas when she grew bored of the black, the daughter found something that she was not approved to take. But she wanted it. A man, trapped behind a painting’s surface, contained by a frame of metal. He wore a strange suit like a full-winter getup, but with a faceplate made of glass. He hovered on a field of void, alone in his universe of stars and vacuum, looking as bright as the stars themselves.

Without knowing she had been looking for it, the daughter had found her light. She stole that painting, grasping its metal frame tight, bringing it with her as she delved deep into the studio, looking for the perfect black expanse.

And then she found it.

The perfect black painting.

It spanned a kilometer in every direction, from top to bottom to back and forward through time. It was a pool thick with nothing. It was a universe of tendrils and eyes and teeth, but everything was black, and nothing was made of teeth and eyes and tendrils at all. It was simply black. The perfect black.

The daughter suddenly realized why she had grabbed the painting of the man in the weird suit. She would need an especially hardy source of light to survive this perfect black, and that is why she had taken this hardy-looking man. He could probably survive in that environment.

Oftentimes, when the prince threw the daughter into a painting, she did not survive until she transformed herself a good ten or thousand times. That was why the suited man called to her. She needed a survivor, and she had found one. With the introduction of this man into this darkness, perhaps when she joined them she wouldn’t need to go through a thousand iterations of her own self to grow accustomed to this new universe. She would have a leg up!

And the man might even survive this, too!

Like holding an egg above the black, the daughter grasped the two sides of the metal-framed painting, and with a great breaking, she introduced light into darkness.

And the universe began.

– – – –

Erick wasn’t sure what to make of the ‘True Telling’ of the Old Cosmology, as told by two Carnage dragons and one ephemeral fairy. The visuals were great, and a bunch of those lightwards still hung out everywhere in the atrium. Erick recognized those lightwards as lightwards now, but as Ar’Cosmos had been telling the story, Erick had felt like he was really there, and it was only upon looking back at the moment that he realized that he had witnessed a tale.

So. Fae Magic.

No matter how many times Erick asked Fairy Moon not to pull weird shit, she always did.

It was probably best for his mental sanity and continued relationship with Ar’Cosmos that he rolled with the punches, but at the same time, he needed to be sure to always tell Fairy Moon not to do that shit, or else she would get comfortable rolling over him like she always seemed to do. Erick did not feel that Fairy Moon had gone against his orders this time— not exactly, anyway. This was the Feast, after all.

And yet, there would likely come a time when the equilibrium of ‘don’t do that’ and ‘I’m doing it anyway’ will veer way too far to Fairy Moon’s side of the equation. She hadn’t crossed that line tonight, but maybe soon she would? Erick had no idea.

Erick found himself suddenly dreading that day, just as much as he dreaded Fairy Moon ensorcelling his mind once again.

Whelp!

There was a solution to that. Erick had to become a full Wizard. He had been slacking on that requirement of his life for a while now, but, to be fair to himself and all the rest of the world, he had been doing a lot of good work. And it wasn’t like he had been slacking off on keeping the world intact and moving forward. But the equilibrium between ‘I need to be stronger’ and ‘I need to be productive today’ was now veered toward the first option, thanks to this little display of a ‘True Telling’.

Three seconds had passed since the end of Ar’Cosmos’s Telling.

A few Shades looked concerned, though Fallopolis was the only one with a clearly-readable expression.

Ambivalence— No. Wait.

Dismissiveness.

Fallopolis did not care for the interpretation of events laid before her. As Erick glanced around the room, his mana sense sweeping far and fast, Aisha looked distrusting and Zolan looked similarly distrusting, but with an edge of ‘what the fuck is Volaro doing’. According to what Zolan had told Erick about what this ‘True Telling’ might say, this story was not too far out of expectations.

Five seconds had passed, and no one had said anything. Volaro was looking uncomfortable up there on the stage while Bright Smile was reevaluating her life choices, and Fairy Moon…

Fairy Moon was rapidly beginning to wonder why she wasn’t getting any applause.

Erick decided to speak before anyone else did. “Your Telling is appreciated. Is that how Fairy used to be?”

Fairy Moon had been waiting for someone to say something, but Erick’s words had not been her preferred place to start. “That is how Fairy is. Our True Telling was told with an intent to inform.”

Fallopolis said, “My God was and is not some painting in some fairy art studio.”

Fairy Moon scowled at Fallopolis. “Of course not! Causes are not cessations of creation. They are merely the beginning; a birth! And this story is True in the Telling. The prince painted open a portal into a land of only Darkness, and he also painted Xoat the traveler. It was the daughter who brought those two paths together and thus created the universe.”

Fallopolis complained, “The Old Cosmology was not created on the whims of a fairy.”

Fairy Moon blinked a few times, not understanding how Fallopolis could be so uncomprehending—

Quilatalap said, “The fae see creation as something different than we would see creation, Fallopolis. It does not mean that it is wrong. She is simply looking at the backside of a coin while all we can see is the front.”

Fairy Moon scowled, saying, “The damnable damner of souls is correct. All of you all have putrid perspectives, but I don’t hold it against you!” She added, “Not nearly as much as I might.”

To forestall any other anger from spilling out into this festival for the Dark, Erick spoke up, “Your Telling is appreciated, Fairy Moon, Bright Smile, Volaro. But since Fairy Moon is a million years old and as old as the Old Cosmology… Where were you when this all happened? I was kinda hoping to get that particular story.”

That was the main thing that Zolan had not been able to answer when he was explaining what this True Telling might look like.

“Oh!” Fairy Moon brightened. “I was the king.”

A collective pause.

Even Bright Smile and Volaro stared at Fairy Moon. They had not expected that. No one had expected that. Fairy Moon had never answered this question before, and Zolan had not expected her to answer it, if Erick decided to ask.

Erick continued, “What happened after your daughter made the Old Cosmology?”

“Oh? Oh no. Not my daughter, as you would qualify this quality. ‘The Daughter’. Or just ‘the daughter’. Still my daughter, too, though… It’s not important for you to understand that nuance now, so let’s get right to the ‘First Telling’, too, but from my perspective; That will answer most other questions quite well.”

Fairy Moon raised an arm, and the air above the atrium shattered into another place and time, myth and legend reorganizing all around everyone as the King took her throne in a great hall of some mythical kingdom somewhere…

– – – –

Erick and every other mortal member of the Feast stood to the left side of the atrium, each of them wearing something new, either robes of hunting leathers or armor. Each of them looked like a member of a court which had reported for duty in an emergency, without anyone having had time to change into something more respectable. A few things stood out on their side of the gathering. Quilatalap stood in a barbarian’s loincloth, which was very much too small for him. He wasn’t the only one wearing something scandalous, for Aisha wore little more than a skimpy sheer dress. Quilatalap briefly looked down at himself, and then ignored what Fairy Moon had done to him, while Aisha tried and failed to transform her body back into real clothes, or at least that’s what it seemed like she was trying and failing to accomplish. With a quick bit of deduction, Erick guessed that everyone Fairy Moon disliked personally was now wearing as little as possible, in some sort of embarrassment tactic. Erick wore normal, nice robes. Zolan wore booty shorts and a crop top…

Well. He had the body for it, and he wasn’t embarrassed at all. So… Whatever? Whatever.

Whatever the case, the atrium was divided in half by a long pink and green carpet ending at a bright white dais, where a throne of wood and crystal stood resplendent. All the members of the Feast were on the left side, standing near enough to each other. Volaro and Bright Smile were also on the mortal side of the gathering. Their part in this play was now to watch, it seemed, and not to participate.

The other side of the gathering held a whole lot of strange people indeed. Long ears. Angled faces. Large eyes and lithe bodies. Most of the tall, beautiful people wore normal courtier clothes; fancy noble stuff. There were also quite a few short stocky people wearing metals for clothes, and then there were the very small people in extraordinarily gaudy clothes made of jewels. A few people looked like elementals, and a few people looked like shadelings, but that was probably completely incorrect, for surface similarities did not mean deeper similarities existed at all.

At the head of the gathering, Fairy Moon stood upon the dais, standing before her throne made of twisted wood and myriad glowing crystals. She looked completely unwilling to have an emotion, as she gazed down at the only person on the pink and green carpet, in the center of the gathering, facing Fairy Moon directly.

The woman kneeling upon the carpet was nondescript.

Erick tried to focus on her face, but he could not. Her face was not there. Her body shifted to be taller, or shorter, or more pointy-eared, or to have green skin or blue skin, to be wearing a dress, or to be wearing pants and a tunic. She was a shifter of uncountable possibility; that was Erick’s first impression. Erick realized that his impression might be wrong, that something else could be happening. Maybe the girl in the center was too painful a memory for Fairy Moon, and Fairy Moon would not conjure the girl correctly. No one else in the hall looked as myriad of form as this person…

Though some of the people on the other side of the gathering didn’t look wholly there, either, now that Erick knew what he was looking for. Faces a bit wrong. Hands a bit odd, with too-long fingers, or too many, or not enough. The lettering on clothes could change from one angle to the next—

Fairy Moon’s mask slipped as she stared down at the shifting girl. The Last Fairy was suddenly sad, with a heaviness to her face and a slump to her shoulders that Erick had seen before when Fairy Moon recalled old memories best left ignored—

And then the metaphorical mask went back on, as though it had never left. But Erick knew what he had seen.

Fairy Moon spoke to the gathering, “My People of my minor kingdom of the neverwas. The daughter of Our People has gone and done her expected duty, but in doing her duty, she has gone far, far beyond our expectations. Stand and inform your family of what you have done, daughter.”

The daughter rose from kneeling. She addressed the gathering, “I have finally birthed a True Universe.”

The fae side of the gathering gasped—

“Yes,” Fairy Moon said.

And then the king of neverwas raised her arm and opened the roof of the atrium, revealing the Darkness Beyond that enveloped the world, ever spreading, ever deepening. Only the throne room remained untouched, and only by the grace of the king. She only allowed this much of the Darkness to show itself, and it was enough. The Darkness moved inside that endless expanse as it was wont, but that movement slowed completely when a man in a space suit appeared in the center of the sky, so far away, like a distant star. The king focused the gathering on that pinprick of light that was a man, speeding up time just barely enough to get the gathering closer to the sight above.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

The man, Xoat, had struggled for a while, but now he just floated there in a slight fetal position. Tendrils of Darkness had wrapped around the man, poking at him. The man had lost his left arm somehow, and the man cradled that stump, as Darkness played in the globs of blood floating like spherical rubies in weightlessness. Erick glanced over to the other side of the sky, and saw the arm in the process of being flayed by tendrils of Darkness. White bones came apart in spirals of calcium and marrow. Muscles unspun. Blood separated into parts, and then separated further.

The king spoke, “Since we are so close to the creation, I am able to slow our perusal of this production long enough for us to come to a common cause.”

A man stepped out of the audience of fae, wearing overalls with paint splotches all over them, saying, “This should have been my production! The daughter has corrupted my work! And so, I will work to make this work better, since she is obviously incapable of knowing what she does at all! I cannot do this alone, and I will not forsake my own work, though. I will assist those who choose to assist.”

Fairy Moon asked, “Then we expand? We educate, colonize, and create?”

A woman wearing a thin crown of leaves stepped out of the air, onto the dais beside Fairy Moon, saying, “If we do not nurture with true knowing, then it could end up another mundane making. I wish for wishes and I mandate magic. We go forth, and be fruitful.”

Fairy Moon asked, “What sort of magic? What sort of making?”

The guard wrapped in time stepped from the air beside the dais, saying, “Fate is made and magic it shall be. We go in at the getting, and the getting is now. I call upon the four fated few, for we are already here at the hearkening.”

The sky of Darkness shifted.

The walls of the atrium fell away, revealing Darkness everywhere. The floor was the only thing that remained solid in all of creation, for like the guard said; they were already here. Every single person on the mortal side of the gathering looked concerned, and Erick was no exception. But the fae didn’t seem to care that they were already inside of the vast, consuming Darkness.

Fairy Moon asked, “Who shall be the four fated few?”

Three fae stepped forward.