EASTERN CORNERIAN SHORES, WORLD D
DAY 04, CYCLE "14"
Y'SHTOLA
She'd been walking for hours when she was forced to stop. There was nowhere left to walk. She had at last arrived at the sea, and the sight of it made her stomach churn and her tail stand on end. She had observed some terrifying things between the ruins and the shore, and she was at long last forced to confront them all in one wretched moment.
There were no stars here. No moons. No sun. How the world was lit was beyond her ken, but it was not by any celestial bodies. The sky was absolutely empty. Neither cloud nor squall drifted in the heavens. For that matter, there was no wind. A stale scent lingered over all the world; the smell of a land long since dried, withered, and rotted.
Indeed, the land beneath her feet could not be considered anything but brittle. Even seemingly jagged stones crumbled to powder in her hands. More than once she had stumbled for placing her feet on ground deceptively less solid than it appeared. And everywhere it was barren! No grass grew upon it, nor did any creature crawl across the face of the land. There were no signs of trees, or bushes, and even the dried up streambeds showed no indication that life had ever there been.
And it was cold. Naturally, it must be cold, as nothing in the sky warmed the world, but at the same time, it was a cold beyond normalcy. It did not freeze anything, but it chilled to the bone. It was a clammy, dead cold. No, perhaps cold was the wrong word for it. It was not cold, it was the absence of heat. The warmth had gone out of the world, in whatever horrific cataclysm it was that had brought the world to its grave.
Staring out into the sea, there was no real reason to question, nor to wonder, what had cost the world its life's blood. The planet had bled to death. The ocean that stretched out before her was black as blood long since spilled from a body. It made no waves, but rested placid upon the face of the world. It stank, but it was not the salt and brine of an ocean, but rather the metallic stench of blood. Here, at last, she found signs of life. The shore was littered with the bones of a thousand beasts. Anything which ever had swum in this sea had died in the torrential burst of blood, and in time their flesh had rotted, and naught remained now but bones to tell the tale.
Y'shtola sank to her knees and began to cry. The anger and bitterness she had felt toward Aya for all the stupid things she'd said were forgotten at the sight of those bones. Before this she had hoped, even at the sight of the city ruins, that this world had never known life of any kind. But now she could not deny it. Things had lived here, and now they were dead.
The whole world was dead. And if the sky above was any indication, it was alone as well. There was no one out there, and there was nothing here. It was a dead world, and if Cosmos' words were true, this was the fate in store for all worlds, when Chaos left this one. Chaos would break free of this place and ravage all worlds of their life, and leave them thus.
If He had not already. The sky was empty, black, and ravenous in appearance. What if Cosmos was wrong? What if Chaos had already destroyed the world? What if She KNEW and had only lied to give them hope? What then, could be done? Nothing. Nothing could be done. Y'Shtola's bones would not long from now join the menagerie here found, but no one would ever come to see them. She was the last witness, and now that all had gone their seperate ways, all would die alone, just as she most surely would.
"Woman," said a man behind her, "Why weepest thou?"
Y'shtola turned slowly, and saw the red-robed figure of The Scholar. Depressed as she was, she could not find it in herself to feel fear or anger at his sight. This man would be but bones beside her, too.
The Scholar gazed past her, to the bones upon the ground, and offered a paternal sigh. "I have no skeleton, you know." He walked past her as he gave his little speech. "When I died, a demon came, and separated my brain from my skull, and took it into himself. This has not happened yet, will not happen here, and may not happen ever. But this is the tale they told me in the world below.
"And I thought to myself: how could God do this? How could God allow some monster to just waltz in, steal my brain and slaughter my only grandson? What merciful God would sit idly by and let such a thing happen? And I concluded foolishly that there was no such thing as God."
Y'shtola only stared at the bones. Numbed by their countless multitude, she could not find it in herself to respond. She could only listen to what she thought she knew he would say.
"I was wrong, though, my dear friend. There IS a God." The Scholar motioned to the South East, far across the sea. "But God is not good. God is not love. God is a feeble old man, who reigned over us incompetently at best. God is a thief, who, seeing the beautiful, natural glory of the worlds, sought to take credit for Himself. And in His wake a thousand thousand fools followed. Do you know who killed this world? God did. Do you know who created Chaos? God did. Do you know who brought you here, to serve as a sacrifice to His whims? God did.
"God is your enemy, my friend, not I. God, who once wore the wretched, accursed name of Cid, sought to take the infinite for Himself, and so this world died, and all others will die, too, unless we act to stop Him. Oh yes, my friend, your home still exists, and I can get you there, but only if you promise to aid me. What do you say, then, friend? Will you not join me, in the fight against God? The fight for freedom? The fight to save your worlds from this terrible fate? For God used this world until He bled it dry. Will you not help this humble scholar in his quest to spare the rest from this terrible fate?"
Y'shtola gazed out into the dark, putrid sea. Her mind slowly crawled across the lands she had walked to reach this place. The journey she had taken to come to this tragic conclusion. She stared until her eyes hurt, and her heart hurt more. What if what the Scholar said was true? What if out there there was a world, and she could protect it?
Was the Scholar any more trustworthy than Cosmos? Was he any less terrifying than this world? Could she take a gamble on this enigmatic benefactor, who spoke of a God who had caused all this danger, or was he speaking in riddles to beguile her, and turn her to his whim, as surely as Cosmos had? Both spoke in promises of saving worlds, but neither gave anything truly concrete.
She turned her eyes to his, though, and wondered. Cosmos had been beautiful, as a Goddess surely must. Her hair had been of gold, her skin purest pale, her eyes the deepest blue, her raiment above the brightness of the sun. But this Scholar was not so. Though his robes were garish red, and his nose bulbous, eyebrows bushy, hair stringy, his appearance somewhere between an aged man and a man yet of youth, there was undeniably something grandfatherly about him. His eyes were intelligent, and his smile kind.
The Scholar was no God, she concluded, but a man. A man who did not seem so evil to her eyes, nor foreign as Cosmos had been. Just a man, who seemed to genuinely want to help her. A man, she dared consider, she might actually be able to trust.
"Friend," she at last said, drying her eyes, "What must we do?"
