[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/NvKc3OR.png[/img]

The Beginning of the End[/center]

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Upon a throne there rested a withered husk, once mighty, but now with flesh yellowed, wrinkled, and sagging. His throne had become his sarcophagus, his palace a tomb and his house of eternity. The thunderous pounding of footsteps reverberated through the stale and dusty room, rousing the sleeper from his sepulchral reverie. But even now, the god did not seem alarmed. Never was he surprised, for he claimed to have already seen all things. So it was with something resembling expectancy in his eyes that he looked to the visitor and whispered through the tongue of the mind, [i]‘Did I not foretell this day? Your efforts were admirable, A̴̢̡͠͠ḿ̡҉̵ṕ̡͝͠ḩ̵̀̕͟ì̶̶͞b̶̛̕̕҉ò̸̵̡͟l͏̕e̢̕s͏̶҉̵ , but your toil ultimately in vain.’[/i]

The visitor never stopped his advance, calmly walking past row after row of golden pillars down a great hallway leading to the dias and the throne atop it. Nothing remained of the once-magnificent rug beneath his feet save for a few fraying gilded threads.

[i]‘Mortals are like the brazen wicks of so many candles; fickle, bound to fade away. On rare occasions one might be truly great and spread, and create a great inferno, but in the end there will be only ash all the same. They are flawed by nature, and can never grow to be greater than the sum of the might and labor that you put into the making of their wax, dousing of their wick, molding of their form...it, like all things, is bound to one day end, for not even gods have vigor enough to carry on for perpetuity.

‘And did I not warn you that when the toil became too great, as I see it now has, that you would release yourself of the burden and finally abandon your fruitless labor? You can look down now and see for yourself: with the last of us departed, all heavenly and guiding voices are of necessity silent; the fruits of the land rot; the soil turns barren, and the very air sickens in sullen stagnation. In this manner does old age come upon the world, as it already has upon us. In this last age to come, darkness will be preferred to light, and death will be thought more profitable than life; no one will raise his eyes to heaven; the dead shall far outnumber the living, and finally there will remain nobody at all upon the mortal plane. Wind and weather shall persist, in a fashion and for a time, and aided by such forces ruin and disorder will claim the world. Only the remnants of temples and obelisks shall remain to tell of us and our acts, yet in due time even the stones are destined to become dust and then nothing remember. The world will return to Chaos, as if we had never existed, and none shall have been any better off for all the years that you had delayed what was inevitable.

‘That is why I counseled you to cease your rebellion; warring against Destiny is as foolish a task as one might expect to be conjured in the mind of a madman, and yet you did so and always insisted upon your sanity to the contrast of all your peers’ supposed madness. Do you accept now what I posited so long ago--that the only purpose of life is to seek your own inward perfection, and to prepare for death? Immortality is unattainable. Accept this wisdom and grow from it, and I suppose that your labors shall have then at least borne some small fruit, late as it was.’[/i]

The visitor was mounting the steps to the dias, nearly upon the throned god now. He climbed, and stopped only when he loomed directly over the decrepit god. He narrowed his one eye, and asked, [color=lightblue][b]“And when the winds stop blowing, and we move and think no more, and the world slips back into its primordial state of Chaos, what is to come then?”[/b][/color]

[i]‘Perhaps there will be another tiny spark that spawns a great blaze, and for a time, there will be a new cosmos and a new world, and the wheel shall have turned once again until that fire burns out.’[/i]

Ả̶̢̬̻m̸̲͆̆p̷̰͕̠̔̚h̸̻̜̞͑̓͠ḯ̷̠̦̗̎b̷̯͓̐͐̾o̶̙͔̖̓̌l̶͍̉̎͜͠è̴̥̒ͅs̴͕̳̏̆͜ allowed the hint of a triumphant smile to etch its way onto his stoic face. [color=lightblue][b]“I think so, too. But you misinterpret my intentions, O Wise One; I would live through the long night to see this next dawn, for I have yet to abandon my greatest burden--the burning desire for eternity.”[/b][/color]

A frown might have appeared on the decrepit one’s face if his muscles still had the vigor to move. Instead, he conveyed his frustration and displeasure through telepathy. [i]‘Do you not listen? Are you blind, even now, to the fact that immortality is impossible? That there is no way to sustain yourself long enough to see that day, no guarantee that it will even com-’[/i]

[color=lightblue][b]“I will MAKE a way! A new world will arise, for I shall be the Architect of its making, even if I must labor until the ages of ages and expend every last ounce of my strength...and of yours.”[/b][/color]

He raised a massive fist and struck the God of Gods dead with a single blow to the head. From the corpse of his oldest friend he drained every last ounce of power and might, all that could sustain him, until withered flesh became as paper and then as dust, and bones no more than sand. And then he collapsed, somehow wearier for it. In the days past, he had done the same to each and every one of his fellows, and to what remained of the dying world’s mortal life. Now he was truly alone, sitting upon his former master’s stone throne.

His body still felt weak even after all of that. But his willpower was strong, stronger than it had ever been before. Stronger than the foundations of the earth, than words could describe, than the imagination could grasp.

The true work hadn’t even begun.