Side Story: Myth 1

Mmm—

I stretched out my arms and legs. The sun is very warm today. The golden rays showing down on my body feel nice, but they also make me drowsy. A lot of things pop into my mind when I’m feeling fuzzy like this.

Yes, this is the perfect weather for sharing stories from the past. I’m referring to the stories from so long ago that the world calls them myths now. I’ve been alive for a very, very long time, and I know all the stories that no one else knows because of it. Shall I tell you one such story since you’re listening before me now?

Who am I, you ask? Please hear me out. You will come to naturally understand who I am as you listen to my story. And now, shall we start?

~~*~~

I was the first soul to be born in this world. There existed an incredible amount of energy in the world when I became self-aware and was born as a soul. There was nothing else besides the energy and me. The energy only continued to increase, perhaps because that was its nature.

I spent a long time alone. Was I lonely, you ask? Perish the thought. The future that I saw with my power was filled with such beautiful and diverse scenes that I could not understand at the time, and I knew that there would be countless beings living and breathing around me when that future came to pass. And so, I was able to wait.

The energy was very special. It is not an exaggeration to say that it had the power to make everything possible. The energy continued spawning endlessly, and some of the energy was born as astral bodies. But where there is life, there is also death. The astral bodies occasionally returned to being energy.

But one day, a lot of astral bodies gathered around me and combined to form four very large essences. The four essences wriggled as they absorbed the energy around them. They were not self-aware, but they continuously produced matter that contained a balance of water, fire, earth, and wind —particles. And wow, there was matter now!

Time passed and passed. But I remained the only being in chaos that could think for myself.

Badump, badump.

The energy only continued to expand within the chaos as time went by. The four essences, which had not awakened to egos yet, continued producing particles, and there was still more than enough energy to go around even though they absorbed a lot in the process. Chaos continued to expand like a balloon ready to pop because there was so much energy around.

Badump, badump.

Sometimes, the chaos within the void oozed like mud, and sometimes it scattered like misty fog. It is impossible to fully understand what chaos is. All that I can say for certain……is that it is a mixture of everything —matter, astral bodies, energy—, and everything that repeated the cycle of life and death within the chaos continued to expand it.

And, there was a certain unidentifiable force at work within the chaos that pulled all of its elements together. The mysterious force had a tight grasp on the chaos so that it wouldn’t disperse into the void.

Badump, badump.

The chaos continued to pulse violently for a long, long time. The energy, which convected alongside the particles and astral bodies within the chaos, rose to the surface and stuck out of the chaos like countless horns before sinking back down again.  Sometimes, the chaos reached out to the sides like it was trying to swallow the void whole, closed in on itself, and filled itself back with more chaos. This process repeated endlessly.

Then, one day, I suddenly felt extremely stuffy. I suddenly wanted to str—etch out as far as I possibly could! And the four essences wriggling around me suddenly stopped eating the energy and expanded like they were about to explode!

They vibrated as they entwinned against each other and became as one giant horn. The pierced their way out of the chaos and fell out of it with a plop. The four essences, which were massive and took up the most space within the chaos and were also the most unusual beings inside of it, had eventually grown strong enough to liberate themselves.

The four essences’, which ate the energy that seeped out from the hole they had made in the chaos like fog, bodies grew more distinct. Ah, soon enough, new beings had been born!

They greeted me warmly. They called themselves earth, water, fire, and wind. They had the power to use energy to produce the physical elements they each controlled. They split into four —rip— and individually spread out to wrap themselves around different parts of the chaos.

The earth went south, the wind went east, the water went north, and the fire went west. A rocky mountain range formed, with earth as its foundation and with the help of fire and wind, to the south where the earth had gone; a mass of fertile soil formed, with wind as its foundation and with the help of water and earth, to the east where the wind had gone; a field of sea and ice formed, with water as its foundation and with the help of fire and wind, to the north where the water had gone; and a vast desert of sand formed, with fire as its foundation and with the help of earth and water, to the west where the fire had gone.

Ahh, at last!

I called out to them anxiously when they, who had broken apart from each other, finally gathered back together again on the other side of the hole they had made as they escaped.

Please come back and take me outside too!

They, who had mixed back together again, heard my call and were sucked back inside the chaos again. But they did not merge back into the chaos. They passed through the chaos like steel piercing through a heart as they quickly approached me and grabbed hold of me.

Their powers focused intensely on me for a brief duration of time. Then, something special began to cover my soul. My body was a tiny seed. I grew more and more stifled as my existence continued to demonstrate my powers and I eventually broke through my shell and pushed out my roots.

At that very moment, the four beings surged back out the hole they had made. I sank my roots down deep inside the foundation they had created within the chaos, and I stretched out my long stalk to grow massively outside through the hole they had created.

Baaaang!

Then, once I was finished growing and had unfurled my colorful leaves, which carried the power of the four beings, they broke into pieces and fell into the void like an avalanche. All sorts of celestial bodies, like stars and planets, appeared in the void as a result. The celestial bodies began revolving, ever so slowly, around the chaos.

Among them, there were two celestial bodies that were especially worth noting. First, the sun —a star created from the fire and the wind that shrouded the world with its light— was formed. The sun, which carried an incredible amount of energy within it, burned hot. Then, in order to keep the world in balance, the water and the earth created a round and dark mass that radiated the cold —the moon.

The sun and the moon revolved in different orbits and gave unto the world day and night, vitality and rest.

A beautiful Paradise was born with me at its center where the four being had once banded together in this very first world that had been created. I spread my children, which I had self-conceived when I first came out into the world, across the ground. My children were born with new souls and new fragments of chaos. They were new life that took after me.

The various trees ate the rich nutrients in the soil and grew green. There were some trees that had flowers peeking out from between their green leaves, and there were also trees that were heavy with sweet and delicious fruit. The ground became a meadow as the green grass grew and covered it, and lovely flowers bloomed in between their blades. My children started from Paradise and spread out into the rest of the world.

Sometimes, the wind blew gently and tossed around the grasses, but sometimes, it blew so furiously that it plucked large trees out from their roots. Clear and clean rivers meandered here and there and eventually met to become one large ocean.

Life quenched its thirst on the days when it rained. Hot lava containing the fire flowed beneath the earth, which life maintained. Sometimes, the fire pierced though the mountains and exploded and mercilessly burned things up, but the earth hardened and decorated Paradise with colorful stones and metals, ultimately bringing about a warmth into Paradise.

We were the foundation of the world. We, who had unique egos, were so different from each other that we needed to call each other different names. And we already had those names.

They called themselves spirits, and the earth, the water, the fire, and the wind told me that their respective true names were Towe, Innis, Kagomyne, and Shweia.

And I told the spirits my name as well. My children were the flora, I was the world tree, and my true name…….

Haha. That’s a secret. Why don’t you try guessing what my name is?

The spirits and I decided to call this world the universe. The universe was the spirits, and the spirits were the universe. And so, the spirits decided that the universe would be their place of refuge. The entire world was the spiritual plane.

It was around then that the spirits began having trouble maintaining their large bodies or using huge amounts of their powers at once. The spirits and I were special beings that had no fragments of chaos of our own —we only had souls— and could think even without physical bodies. But we could not produce our own energy because we did not have fragments.

My roots were connected to the chaos. This was why I was okay. But that was not the case for the spirits, who were completely separated from it. I pulled up some energy through my roots and supplied it to the spirits, but it was only enough for them to maintain their souls —it was not enough to maintain their colossal bodies or use their powers at will.

One day, the spirits, who began sleeping for longer and longer periods of time, told me that they no longer felt the need to maintain their physical bodies.

But, without a body, it wasn’t possible to run around and play in Paradise. Paradise was composed entirely of physical matter, after all.

But you guys like to play,

I worried, and then they told me that they could split up their souls into smaller pieces and use only a tiny amount of energy to create tiny bodies and play around even without their original bodies. The smaller bodies were tiny, had less capacity for thought, and had limited powers, but they were still a part of them nonetheless and the spirits could still sufficiently have fun through them.

And so, the world was filled with a bunch of tiny spirits running around Paradise for some time. But the four spirits slowly began growing unconscious in the spiritual plane, where only they and I existed, and the smaller spirits began disappearing one by one. Still, their original forms were merely unconscious —not asleep—, so the smaller spirits stayed awake as they continued to play around Paradise.

Then, one day, I felt something strange in the chaos, where I had laid down my roots. The chaos, which I had penetrated, began to crack. It shattered like glass falling to the floor, and the larger pieces began crumbling into smaller ones. There was a soul embodied within each fragment.

The fragments were held together at the center of the chaos by an inexplicable force. I felt a sudden urge that told me I had to beat back the force and pull the fragments up and out from the chaos. It was something only I could do, and it was something that I must do.

I immediately used my roots to drag the fragments out into Paradise one by one.

The souls I pulled out from the chaos came into contact with Paradise, where the earth, the water, the fire, the wind, and I existed, and they formed their own balanced bodies so they could live in harmony with the world. How did they make their bodies, you ask?

They offered their energy —so vivid in color that the spirits were jolted wide awake— and borrowed the spirits’ powers to transform their fragments into beating hearts, and they used their hearts as the basis to create bodies that best suited their souls.

Warm blood circulated within them, they needed to drink water, they needed to eat fruit to satiate their hunger, they desired warmth, and they desired to fulfill their greed.

These were the being who were born from the foundations of their souls— the gods.

This was when the gods were born!

The first god who was born was a crimson god who would immediately become their leader. She, who had climbed up the world tree and into Paradise, created a slender body with long limbs for herself and called herself Roberstein. Then, she told me to call her ‘Ro’ because her name was on the longer side.

As the first god to be born, she had the largest fragment of chaos, so large that it could compare with the spirits or myself, among them all, and the energy —which was now called divine power— she carried was so blindingly beautiful.

She was the first intelligent lifeform to exist other than the spirits or myself, and the spirits showered their full love and attention unto her. The spirits, charmed by her intense and distinctive energy, rushed toward her and whispered their love to her.

An incredible number of gods were born after her. Some looked like animals, like rabbits, pigs, bears, and tigers, while others took the form of tiny insects, like ants, crickets, butterflies. There were gods who took the shapes of birds, like sparrows and eagles, fish, like carp and minnows, and even other amphibians and reptiles. But the most eye-catching among them all were the gods who looked like the crimson god and, like her, were born with incredible intellect.

Most gods with high intelligence had an organ called a brain in their bodies. The brain was an important hub. It was a vehicle for mental activity, you see. Gods who had a brain were both more intelligent and more emotional. Each and every one of their thoughts and feelings made the world more plentiful.

I was proud as I watched the gods rejoice over their birth. Most gods kept their fragments safe and surrounded by sturdy bones at the center of their bodies. Their fragments of chaos that deposited their divine power— their hearts, that is, beat. Each movement of life brought vitality to Paradise.

Now, the place where the chaos used to be was only filled with dead particles that could not produce divine power. Every fragment of chaos that could produce even a little bit of divine power had escaped out into Paradise to be born as a god, and no more gods could be born from the dead particles that were left behind.

The gods paid their respects to the place they had originated from that they had once called home. It was a place where a mysterious force was at work, the center of the world that tried to suck everything into itself.

The gods respected their place of origin, where only dead particles floated around, and called it the Great Chaos —Pandemonium. Then, they left their place of origin behind and enjoyed their lives in Paradise.

Creepy crawly—

Then, one day, I realized. That the dead particles that remained behind in Pandemonium had used their full might to merge together and form a soul.

The soul, which could not move, was trapped in the ice-cold darkness while the gods were laughing and clamoring. The dead soul, which had barely just managed to awaken its ego, slowly, ever so slowly, crawled up my roots while drinking what little divine power it received from me, and on the few occasions that it managed to create a body, it huddled in place with its gazed fixed to one spot.

The dead soul stared that the hole that the spirits had made on the other side of Paradise a long, long time ago. There were just three things the dead soul could see from that hole. The black sky, the light from the sun it could not see, and the moon, dyed gold from the sun’s rays.

~~*~~

Goodness, it’s gotten dark now. The sun is slowly sinking behind the hills. This was the first time I talked about the distant past, and I was having so much fun that I seem to have lost track of time. No wonder I was getting so sleepy…….

Night is a time for rest and sleep. So I must sleep now, yes?

I will continue my story after I wake. See you again.