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The Beauty of Endings
What happens when a story ends? Do all the characters miraculously live happily ever after? Are all the evil people punished while the good people watch them from on high, laughing? Does everybody stand in a slowly darkening room, staring at each other with dimming eyes and trying to speak words of comfort in fading voices, actors in a play that have no purpose outside of their stage?
I never expected any of that to happen. I began crafting worlds so that I could find out exactly what did, because I really hadn't any idea. My original plan was to create something, let it run its course, and observe.
But I made the mistake of all artists, and fell in love with the thing I had made. I loved the form above the purpose, the shape above the idea. I wanted it to last forever, forgetting that transience is the first part of beauty.
And I wanted my heroes to do what I wanted them to do.
That was a bad mistake on my part--seeing my main characters as extensions of myself. I had spent so much time crafting them, giving them lives and personalities, that they could not possibly have been me. But I was young then, and foolish. I could not see that eventually all children must stand alone.
Children...what a funny name to use for them. They certainly didn't feel like my children. Not at first.
Hawk, Noiman, Anna, Zunda, Ichirota, Rose...failures. Too complacent, too sheltered, too lazy to be heroes at all. I kept them, if only because I could never bring myself to throw things away. I'm a bit of a packrat that way.
Rao was a far better creation, but still a mistake. I know that now. He was too sullen, too proud, to really be a part of the world. How foolish that I expected him to change after a scant few years in Hell. A man who only fights his inner demons--and, in the end, that's all his benighted Phantom Zone really was--was not the sort of man I wanted to observe.
So, I made Sword. He was to have been a hero of the highest order, the lost child who found himself in the heat of battle. He would have been beloved by the people--my people. I would have made him ruler of all he surveyed. I would have given him everything.
But he wouldn't change. No matter how long or how hard he fought, he was the center of his own universe, caring for no other. I began to fear that I had made the same mistakes that I had with Rao. To his credit, Sword was at least curious about my world, if only so he could find a way out. I began giving him reasons to care further.
I introduced Nigel, partly as a device to make Sword more outgoing and partly as a backup in case Sword failed entirely. He failed on both counts--he neither changed the hero nor replaced him. I should consider him another failure, yet I don't. Perhaps it's because the minor characters liked him so much.
Soon after that, Sword began to willfully test my patience. I have long prided myself on being fair and rational, but being confronted with his arrogance quickly grew tiresome. To make matters worse, he wasn't advancing the plot. I began toying with forcing him to the endgame early. Merely to help the story along, mind you.
But a good author always listens to his creations. Sword mentioned, in an offhand way, that he'd like to see more women around. I made some quick adjustments to my fourth backup hero, and Pyro became Pyra. Although I usually despise romances, I was getting desperate to make Sword react to something. Pyra, however, was far too concerned with her own goals to be a suitable love interest. Given her skills, I should have known that she would be the one to find the truth about me first.
I put off dealing with the sudden self-awareness of the heroes and tried to introduce some other female characters. Sex has, after all, always been an effective distraction. I created Lady, deliberately using her to compliment Sword's personality and making her immune to whatever verbal barbs he might throw at her. I nearly tore the pages from my book in rage when she traipsed off to sate her own whims, refusing to even meet Sword. Worse, Sword had begun throwing all his energy into attacking me, deaf to the pleas of what friends he had left.
In desperation, I created Marion, plucking her from the depths of my own inner world. She was a woman with no personality, no will. She could have been anything Sword wanted her to be, if only he had ordered her.
Then she began to grow. Another would-be hero had defied my carefully laid plans.
My tolerance was at an end. Sword's childish taunts rang in my ears, and the diverging paths of the other heroes mocked me without a word. It was true--I wrote this world into being, but in the end, I had no control over it.
I decided to regain the control I had lost. I began to torture my characters.
Depriving them of food and water was only to soften them up. I was hard at work for weeks, crafting entire islands filled with pain and suffering. A private little hell for the six foolish creatures that dared to defy their maker. It would have been a fitting end, a good end, to my story. And at the glorious climax, when Sword came crawling to me, whimpering for forgiveness, I would laugh, and laugh, and laugh...
After my planning was done, I returned to the book to see how the weeks of starvation had gone. Sword was standing in the town square, surrounded by the crumpled bodies of the other heroes. With the last of his strength, he raised his voice to me, not in prayer...but in challenge.
I accepted, creating a sprawling labyrinth and filling it with the most vicious monsters I could imagine. Sword made it through, cutting down the creatures in his path, with only the beasts he had tamed over his journeys to aid him. Finally, weary but still defiant, he stood before the guardian of the dungeon.
I poured every last bit of malice that I had towards Sword into the creation of this monster. It was a creature of boundless hate...one that might fight forever if it meant that Sword would eventually die. It was strong, merciless, calculating ... invincible.
The demon tore into him, wounding him again and again, yet Sword fought on. The ragged beasts that had been by his side through the entire ordeal crumpled and fell, and still he fought. The demon fell and rose over and over, in different forms, stronger every time, and still he fought. The demon matched him, blow for blow, beginning to taint him with the very darkness that made up its soul, and still he fought.
Finally, I thought I had won. Sword stood, shivering in pain, his strength ebbing awayby the second, his allies long dead and anything that could help him gone.
I bade the creature stop its attack, thinking that Sword would beg my forgiveness. He looked up at the demon, smiled and said:
"Is that the best you can do?"
And he struck, throwing what little strength he had left into the killing blow.
I knew then that I could keep him prisoner no more.
I broke up my land, and sent all of the characters back to the parts of my mind
they had come from. I did not follow them; there would have been no point. They scattered, and I have no way of knowing where they are now, unless I were to make them again.
And that, I fear, would take far too much time for me.
I am old, far older than I was when I began to write. I can feel my memories scatter and unravel by the day. I can no longer trust myself to live safely in this world, let alone to craft a new one. Many people have called me domineering, but no man can say that I create responsibilities I cannot safely fulfill.
I know that my story will end very soon.
I think that, in the end, I found my answer after all. When a story ends, everybody dies. It doesn't matter how or when, the great deeds they did or the horrible depths they sank to. Even if they float through the void forever until Time itself is no more, they will eventually die. It is not a pleasant answer. Still, I can find nothing to call it false.
All the people I created, wandering in their worlds and going about their own lives, will die when I do. And in their place, silence and darkness, or whatever passes for Heaven or Hell. And yet, out of all the thousands of beings I created, I fear most for six heroes who once defied me.
I didn't have to make them at all. I could have filled my world with Zundas and Ichirotas and Roses, little people with little dreams who were content with whatever little adventures came their way. It is inspiring to know that I was capable of making beings who wanted more.
It is...humbling, to know that I created somebody greater than myself.
I fear for them, as the Night approaches. Where are they now? Will they try to fight the darkness? Do they have loved ones that they will stay by and comfort?
What will Sword do?
It...pains me, to think that he cannot win such a fight. Perhaps it was cruel of me, to bring such a man into the world. But it is too late, now. I pray that he has at least come to terms with his own mortality.
I can feel my eyesight begin to fade. So it's already begun. My book, alone and unfinished, lies on my desk. Perhaps, long after I am gone, somebody will pick it up, and...
No. I must never wish for what cannot be. My world has no power to draw anybody in. Not without me. I can barely breathe now.
Farewell, Sword. If you can forgive a foolish old man for bringing you into a world you would eventually have to leave...I suppose I'll never know anyway.
Perhaps I will meet my own author now.
It will be beautiful.