Billions of siege engines lit up the blackest of skies like a celestial heaven, their glittering golden illuminations seen by all. One could have looked up and been mistaken in viewing great beauty in that sight, not realizing the devastating power that each one of those crafts held. The Cherubim had done their work well and singing could be heard throughout all of the remaining Infinite.
He stood in between the spaces of the letters of a liquid alphabet that had not yet been breathed into creation and sighed.
“Do you fear obliteration?” asked the burning entity who floated beside him.
“I fear pointlessness,” the other replied.
Once he had fought a righteous battle, but nothing he had seen on the field of war raged like what trembled inside his heart. It not only had been necessary, but commanded of him and he was loyal. He had never questioned the Shinning Above, never looked away from the Silver Place where The One had taken the throne. The Realms must be protected at all cost, the Cradle preserved.
Over the Nulgari Sea of Infinity, he watched as the ageless beings many had called “Angels” drove their war chariots deeper into the purged dimensions. Giant machines of chaos, known as the Logross, were being powered up by caged infant universes. This was the edge of existence, the place where the Genesis Equation folded back onto itself.
This was where gods and monsters had come to make a final stand against The Absolute.
The End Of All Things had come early, and those in positions of power had no intention of letting go. The Genocide of the Material would not go lightly. All the ancient ones had been roused from their slumbers, the youth quickly taught the ways of warriors. No, the apocalypse would not be a simple matter.
“Yes, I can see how you would have such a concern about being irrelevant,” commented the ancient thing caught up in green flames.
“Did you have a name once?” the other asked, truly interested.
“I was the caretaker of all wisdom throughout the Realms. A being of knowledge, a librarian of sorts. Now, I must take arms and become a warrior for all of that,” he mused. “My name is an mathematical algorithm inconceivable by most of the lower divine.”
“We are all kin now against the End Of Times,” the other said. “I believe in us and what we do here.”
“I do not have faith, only fact to rely on.”
“And what does that logic tell you?” the other asked.
“That the literal End is upon us,” spoke the fiery one as he glided away.
Moving perpendicular through the Space-Time Continuum, it rolled. This was something beyond such feeble words as “Evil” or even “Chaos.” It was more than a “Void,” more than an “Abyss.” Even the Antithetical Ones cowered before this. It was The Absolute, the Everending.
It drew up swiftly, cascading through the dimensional barrier with a force never before seen. All the attempts that had been made to by-pass, to reason, to strong arm or use trickery... all had failed. The Absolute was given warning, if you break into reality, you will face the greatest Armada of the Divine ever assembled since the Moment of Creation.
But they came, the Army of the Everending. He watched as the Seraphim took flight, their wings crackling with golden flame. Colors never before seen in the existence of these realities came bursting to life as the Logross fired. From the eyes of prophets gathered from a hundred million different faiths, their truths spilled like lightening. Great beasts that had been locked away after failed experiments on far off worlds crashed into the enemy. Gods that heard prayer once to incalculable times fought back to back, allies in this time of the greatest need.
And still the Everending came.
Soldiers of Darkness stood firm beside Warriors of Light, angels reaching out to their fallen brethren and vice versa. And yet, neither could stop The Absolute. It waded through them, conquering and calling no quarter. The Cherubim driven Siege engine were piloted straight into their foe, its advance unceasing. The Logross, the most terrifying weapons in all of creation, crushed beneath waves of the enemy.
The other glided higher up and looked at the war that encompassed all of everything that was and he knew it was time. He among all of them, knew how to defeat this. He among all of them, knew the subtle secret hidden in reality.
The others among the Pantheon had laughed and mocked him for his time among the mortals. They said he had too much invested in them, believed in them too greatly. All of the great deities and denizens of the Realms who were being slain and Erased From The Book before him, they had called him a fool. But he knew...
Raising his arms out he called upon the might of them, the passion of them, the lunacy of them. He called upon their descendants and their ancestors. He called upon the spirit of humanity itself.
“Come to me, my Children. My Brothers and Sisters, Mothers and Fathers. Come to me, my Global Village, it is your time,” the other whispered as tears spilled down his glowing face.
And they came in force. Every single human soul to have ever walked or would walk the Earth appeared solidified upon the Nulgari Sea of Infinity. These small creatures pushed past the gods, past the monsters and took on the Everending as one. Eternal and omniscient beings watched in shock as these feeble, weak things dove into the Final Enemy, taking to it a battle unlike anything it had prepared for.
For their gods, they fought. For their existence and for their world. They fought because it was their right. Earth was The Cradle, as he had always known, and these little fleshlings were to usher in a new breed of Divinity.
It was not sheer numbers, it was not a mass of flesh, hair, blood and bone. It was the heroic and the horrific. It was the honor-bound and the gruesome. It was the full capacity that humanity has to offer in all its glories and its abominations. That man has within it such a vast range of possibilities, such extreme qualities of being, this The Absolute could not grasp.
The other slowly fell back down from his point high above, weaken and near collapse. As he drifted he saw his children destroy enough of The Everending that it called itself into retreat. As things grew dim, he saw the gods and monster, angels and demons all weep and cheer as the humans of time completed their attack, defeating their foe.
He had succeeded. It was a New Time, the Eighth Age. Mankind would be the next race of The Divine.
The burning one caught him, a halo of flaming jade tears circling his head. “Your faith has overcome, my friend. Fear not, your irrelevance.”
The other smiled and closed his eyes.
(from the collection, “Fragments Of Ruin”)
© BRIAN FATAH STEELE, 2010
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