Prologue
"All the world's indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another's audience
Outside the gilded cage"
~Rush, "Limelight"
At the edge of the world, where civilization is but a distant memory and the seas are as blue as they were in the days of old, it is said that there is an island where all the laws of nature, indeed creation itself, are subject to the whims of a single figure. A place where each and every creature is studied, and declared fit to live by a potential it will never see in its life time. It is this place, where no less then perfection is expected of every living being, that a single girl, no older the clothes upon her back, acts as god, deeming who was fit to live, and who to die.
And so life went on this little island for years, the strong given the right to live, and the weak culled for a crime they would never understand. And the purpose of it all? The creation of a world of perfection, where all life brimmed with the vigor of a bloodline stronger then steel, and that was carefully guided by a single, pale hand. Indeed this island was but dress rehearsal for something far greater, for the girl's power, the ability to judge the destiny of all things, grew stronger by the day.
And soon, the verdant haven she had chosen to test her theories would serve as an example for the rest of the world. The strong would no longer rule over the weak, rather there would be no weakness. Not in her perfect world. The strong live, the weak die. For this is the only objective truth in all the world, the girl often though, and any who disagreed, they were weak, for hers was the only way.
"Soon..." The girl spoke aloud on a particular day in the fall of a year she had long ago lost track of as she focused quietly, taking in her mind's eye the destiny of every living thing on her tiny sea-locked home.
A few feet from her a swarm of ants chewed apart a large beetle. This brought a smile to the girl's face, the ants would someday give birth to a creature of immense power and authority. Though it would be millions of years in the future, it was now, in the present, that the seeds must be sown to a create such a world. Meanwhile, a flock of gulls flew overhead, nearly effortlessly riding the cool sea breezes that swept across the island in the early afternoon. They to would provide useful tool, for in a hundred thousand years their line would give rise to an entirely new being that could rule over the island as humans did the mainland.
And so she went on and on for all times, assessing the worth of every creature in her dominion with her strange power, leaving those who's potential glowed like the sun to their own devices, and the rest? She would rise from her trance, and for hours on end, personally destroy any who committed the sin of being a genetic dead end, those who, in time, would lead to nothing of worth. Natural order carried out in days instead of millennia, all in the name of the creation of a singular vision of the world. Her vision...it was the only true way.
Or so she thought. One day, in the clear of a cloudless morning, a visitor arrived on a boat of wood and steel. A man of great authority and stature, word of the unnatural plotting that had been inflicted upon the little island had reached his ears weeks ago and by the will of many upon the mainland, it was decided such a thing must come to an end before the horror of the girl's judgment was inflicted upon any more poor souls.
Approaching the young girl, who was still deep in meditation upon the fates of the islands inhabitant's, the older man issued a powerful and bellowing ultimatum.
"Cease this vile plot at once!" He spoke from the deepest part of his soul. "Or I will be forced to stop you."
Despite her trance, the girl merely smirked at the threat, for she could see the strength of the man's soul. In a thousand years his bloodline would come to an abrupt end as predisposition to heart disease finally claimed the last of his decedents. In other words...he was weak.
"I only seek a perfect world." She nearly sang. "Is that really so wrong?"
The man gave the girl a nasty look, she was just as delusional as the stories had said. There was no reasoning with someone like this.
Breathing carefully, the man called upon his own strange power, summoning to his side a stone giant of great power who carried in one hand an even greater blade. With a second command, the giant reared back, roaring as it did like a great beast, and brought its blade down upon the head of the girl, who still smiled and made no effort to defend herself, so large was her ego.
"You possess an interesting power. But it will do you no good, for interfering with my truth, you will die." The girl sang with a smile as the blade cut through the air at such a speed that it whistled like a reed on a windy spring day. She was sure she would survive the assault, she always had. No matter how strong, how fast, how intense, all those who had come for her in the past could not so much as touch her glorious visage, let alone cut it. He would fail, she thought, and would suffer the same fate as the half-eaten beetle at her feet.
As the giant's blade finally fell upon the girl's still smiling face, a great light erupted from her skull, brighter then the sun at noon and twice as intense, burning her very soul. And, after a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, what had been one, was now two...
Or so the legend goes.