A lurid green fire crossed over from the Afterlife into Ashuru, having sensed spirits to be guided. Yet, when it appeared far above a burning forest, the ones it had meant to lead were…Where?
It pulsed and flickered. Ah, there!
But the presence was gone as soon as it had appeared. It bobbed up and down, repeating the exercise a few times. When no spirits detached from their vessels, it sent a signal to a few of its brethren. Then it wandered away, to the parts of burning forest where death
did occur as was proper.
A bright blue immaterial ball of flame appeared in front of a smoke-choked Tormenta, only for it to have its life essence strengthened, and take to the skies. A pitch black one throbbed before a burning tree which had been saved. A glacier white flame whirled above an ur-human encased in ice, curious about her spirit which was half here, half there, trapped in between.
When their task was done in the area, the collection of Ethereal Flames crossed back to their Creator’s realm. They gathered, weaving and vibrating at each other.
Yes, this was a confirmed Unknown. They hadn’t done this before, and even for the non-sentient, it may have been easier to come to a decision of this scale collectively. Together, they sent a signal to their Goddess.
Elsewhere…
Hm? Moren cocked her head to the side as she received a message via her Will-o’-wisps.
She had once again descended onto Ashuru, studying the aftermath of the destruction. Most recently, a new god had emerged with the Sun’s creation. The immense bright light had not been to her liking, and she had retreated within a nearby cave. There, she had finally uncovered the source of that haunting scream which had resounded as Ashuru was being torn apart. Those beautiful crystal roots Khthon had revealed to them telepathically were dying off. Yet, theirs was an existence so strange, they didn’t cross over into her realm – they merely ceased to be.
She was in the midst of pondering this dilemma when a bunch of Ethereal Flames relayed to her their experience.
That is strange indeed. Well done. A happy thrum resounded in response.
One of you, go to the area where this happened. So she said, and so it was. Moren focused on the one ghost light, and when she grasped its location, she simply…transported herself next to it.
Go now.As the Ethereal Flame returned to the Afterlife, the goddess took in the environment at her leisure. She was in a forest, one which had faced a terrible fire, one which should have consumed it whole.
Should have.Unbidden, her fingers clenched on the bark of a tree she had been inspecting, and some of her essence leaked into it. The tree decayed before her eyes, turning into a deadened husk as a small area around it withered as well.
Oops.Closing her eyes, she took a bracing inhale. The remaining foliage was thriving now, urged into expansion by the new Sun. She glanced around, seeing past the corporeal into the incorporeal. What she had suspected was confirmed – these spirits had been touched by Life itself. A godly intervention had prevented their souls to be severed from their bodies, and had preserved them.
Moren pursed her lips. She did not like this. However, she wasn’t the kind to punish the forest for the gift it had received from another. That would be nonsensical.
No, all she needed was to contact the god itself. Surely, they could come to an accord.
…
However, when she attempted to establish a mental contact, she got the distinct impression that the God of Life was preoccupied.
Oh, well. She could wait.
And so wait she did.
Until a tree creaked and splintered and split down the middle. And from inside the tree emerged a great form, as tall as three ur-humans, with soft fur that glowed with gentle starlight, impervious to the new light.
It was the god Moren had been waiting for – It was… Different, to say the least, to the others. On its back rode two young ur-humans, both of a bronzed skin tone and wearing gowns of the most vibrant leaves and vines, decorated with obsidian jewellery.
The tree closed itself back up after the great beast-god emerged, and at that point it stared at Moren, then turned sideways and leaned down to allow the riding ur-humans down.
It was them who regarded Moren with more than a sideways glance. Respectfully, they bowed their heads, and the first one to speak was the female twin.
“I am Sirele of the Boulder.”
“And I am Jiva of the Boulder.”
“There is no life without death,” Sirele said and clasped her hands in front of her chest, eyes closing gently, “That is what Saries, Mother of All, thinks.”
“There is no death without life,” Jiva added, clasping his hands behind his back, “This is what Saries the Beast-God knows. He wants to be your friend.”
Saries huffed and sat down. It looked anywhere but at Moren.
“She needs you,” Sirele opened her eyes and looked straight into Moren’s eyes. “To make it so that what is dead lives again.”
Moren calmly watched the trio from her perch atop the deadened tree.
“Then we are in agreement,” she said simply. Her voice was still as a midnight lake, quiet as the deepest reaches of earth, yet the sound carried to all.
That was when the two ur-humans’ well-practiced facade slipped just a bit – enough for them to recoil a bit from the unnatural sound.
“Moving forward, there will be no denying Death,” this she directed at Saries, who huffed with a single wag of its tail.
“There may be rebirth, for renewal can emerge after demise. But what does not come to an end cannot have a beginning. So no more godly favours, no cheating of what must be,” she warned.
After a beat, she stated,
“I will show you what comes of life’s essence.” Mentally, she reached out to Saries, brushing its mind with her own, as gentle as a flake of snow landing atop its fur.
This is how it was. Following that announcement came the image of a slice of the world as she had seen it. As a copse of trees was felled, the light shining within dissipated into nothingness. A beast butchered gone. An ur-human burned, gone. A flower plucked, an insect at the end of its lifespan, a clam drying up. It didn’t matter who or what, all life had perished, gone forever. Saries whined at the image, ears falling flat against its head as it drew closer to Moren.
Now… She offered a glimpse into her realm, that death world where the memory of how Ashuru had originally been was better preserved…yet even in Afterlife, many changes had occurred. Moren showed it how initially dark and dull, it had gained the facsimile of colours as the remnants of life essence flooded into her realm. For a time, those spirits were preserved there, but inevitably, they all came to meet their end. Final and irrecoverable. The reign of absence absolute.
In the future, if we make it so. She depicted life as a tremendous deluge, so immense to call it a river would be an insult. It flowed toward its end, slow, steady, final. She showed how they could, with joined powers, redirect the tiniest of streams from that torrent towards Ashuru, letting it drink of what had been to seed the ground of what could be. A chance to revitalize the world, to let it have what it needed, to give it what it could take – but never above a certain threshold. It wouldn’t be an equivalent exchange; the vast majority of life would ultimately still disappear. However, it was at least a chance.
“I propose we cross into my realm. You must restrain your powers lest we cause yet another catastrophe.” In Saries’ mind she showed what they had both witnessed; foliage sprouting uncontrollably, only to die off again and again.
“Unless the two of you wish to remain with me henceforth, you will not be joining us,” she glanced at the ur-humans at that, the closest to a proper acknowledgment they had received.
As before, Sirele was the first to speak. “Y-Yes, thank you, we will stay.” She nodded, hands clasped still, but tighter than necessary. Jiva on the other hand lifted an arm up towards the sky, and a great gold-tipped Tormenta swooped down from the sky and perched itself on his forearm.
“Sarai will be with us, we’ll be okay,” he said, more to Saries than to Moren.
And then Saries stood on its hindpaws and leaned itself against the tree trunk, making it so its face was that much closer to Moren atop the dead tree.
The goddess extended a palm towards its snout, though she didn’t touch it.
“My realm is immaterial,” and so was her form.
“Can you take a less…fleshy shape?”And so Saries did, shedding its form to become more of a great shade instead, its only distinguishable features being a pair of slanted, glowing eyes. Moren dipped her chin at the response, proclaiming,
“Then we shall go.” As her palm reached for the shade, she warned,
“This may be unpleasant.” For the both of them.
And it was. Saries came willingly, but to bring the whole of Life itself into her realm, all while keeping Afterlife stable was a great undertaking – the greatest one she had taken so far, certainly, perhaps greater than she ever would.
As the pair traversed the dimension, she found herself having to keep a tight grip on her fellow god, to prevent it from wandering off at the slightest sign of anything new. The world of the dead was a mirror of old Ashuru; black sands, dark skies, seas like spilled ink. But small lights had gathered in vast quantities. The forests especially were teeming, coated in the dimmest of greens. Moren saw they had expanded, spreading wide and sprouting tall, a result of all that plant life dying off.
The souls of flora and fauna alike were swirling here and there, the shapes they had known in life the outlines of their spirits, running or remaining still as their fading memories dictated. At their passing, the ghostly dead drew nearer, and would have swarmed them had it not been for Moren’s active deterring via an aura of Death. Oh, but how eager they were at the presence of Life! They sought it, drawn to it as desperately as moths were to flame. It didn’t help that Saries itself instinctively pulled against her grip to try and connect with the dead. It wasn’t serious in its attempts to escape, and the situation instead reminded Moren of the mortals who’d keep beasts as pets, leashing them with ropes.
From spectral prairies, to half-shaped mountains, hills, and ravines, to the seemingly bottomless seas, they journeyed far and wide. In the end, Moren led Saries to the echo of the Hollow Tree which had taken root in her realm.
“This one was your retreat in Ashuru, was it not? I borrowed it for a bit, and it is thriving still. With my gift, it became one of the Anchors of the Afterlife, so it has a form here as well,” she explained, releasing her grip on the shade of Saries long enough for the god to approach the Hollow Tree.
“I have shown you a part of this realm, but it is infinite, as it is an imitation of Ashuru. What would you like now?” She had her own ideas on how to go about bringing rebirth, but this was her project as much as Saries’.
The shade of Saries stared at Moren for a long, awkward moment. At least, until it wavered and shifted. The great shade condensed, it became smaller, and out of the shade came a slightly less undefined form, one that mirrored, unstably so, Moren’s own.
It was translucent, had the wrong kinds of ears and way too much volume around its head, but it was an attempt. For the first time, Saries walked – actually, floated – on two legs.
The shade had no mouth so when a noise came from it, it came from the air itself. And it was an ugly noise.
“Lai-hf” It said, the pronunciation was wrong and the tempo even worse. It was a mixture of Moren’s own voice and the deep rumble of a beast. “Lyfhe” It tried again. “Lyfe!” And again. “Sahr-Ees help. Kut houle. Lyfe leak back. Lyfe!” It almost looked like the shade was hopping and pacing.
Moren considered this proposal at length.
It would leak, true, she communicated telepathically, testing if it would be easier for Saries to respond that way.
But uncontrollably so. Instead I suggest…we forge a connection. As ideas formed in her mind, she shared them with her god-sibling. Intangible currents carried throughout the Afterlife, given a path to pour through into Ashuru in small quantities, emerging as rain or sprouting as unseen sources from which life would spring anew. Or perhaps streaks of starlight crossing the heavens, life trailing in their wake. A veil of shadow where the dead crossed over, and may or may not come into a new beginning. The essence of life spreading through the Hollow Tree’s roots in the Afterlife, into its physical being on Ashuru, the tree emerging as a Tree of Rebirth. Saries returning to Ashuru, Moren forming a link with it, weaving a web of possibility between them. At the end, the sense of a questioning was posed to Saries.
II
Once upon a time, the Hallowed Tree had served as an anchor, a special place that was located in the same place, mirrored, in both the realm below and the realm above. For the wayward souls of the realm above, the place served as a waypoint and allowed people to get their bearings – as much as it was possible in the strange terrain, anyway. But that was all it was, a waypoint. Not a path, not a tunnel, not a
real connection between the realms.
But this wasn’t the case anymore.
Because Saries and Moren had been working tirelessly for a long time now. They digged deep under the sand, so deep that the boundaries between the realms blended and faded, and at that point, where the two realms almost touched one another, where the roots of the Hallowed Tree hovered close to each other in their respective realms, the two gods reached through the boundary and sewed the roots together. The metaphysical touched the physical, the spiritual joining to the material strand by strand.
It was an unrefined way to go about things, Moren thought, but it was at the very least much cleaner than Saries’ original idea of simply tearing the veil between realms wide open.
Saries dug vigorously, immaterial paws shoveling ethereal black sand, tunneling so deep it reached the boundary between Moren’s realm and the physical world. Small tears were punctured into the veil between one world and the other, but they were easily controlled and sealed back up due to their small size, and so there was no spiritual leakage even as the two gods worked.
Neither of them had realized how large the Hallowed Tree had grown until they’d begun this project. To track down and connect every one of its roots took what felt like forever, and the roots reached so far and wide that it wouldn’t surprise Moren if most of the world below had been touched by the tree on some level.
Finally, after an indeterminate period of tireless work, the deed had been completed. The moment that Saries tore the last hole in the veil and crudely mashed the mirrored roots together, a pulse went through the realm. And with that pulse came a surge of energy.
Countless little spirits had begun to flow through the root system, perhaps in search of something new or out of simple curiosity – and that wasn’t all. Not only were spirits traveling through the root system in Moren’s realm, there were also spirits down in the mortal realm trying to reach Moren’s realm through the root system.
But there was a problem – Saries’ rough, rushed work left much to be desired, and it wasn’t long until a great number of root connections tore and became dead ends. And so the spirits that travelled through the roots suddenly did not know where to go, and some got lost and gave in to despair and turned towards their darker tendencies and started to prey on their fellow spirits. And even if no evil spirits were around to damage them, many simply got lost in the root system for so long that they evaporated into nothingness.
This was not ideal. A path that only one out of a hundred million could successfully tread was no path at all. Restarting work from scratch on connecting every single root was out of the question, so perhaps what the spirits needed was stronger guidance.
Moren looked at Saries, and Saries looked back. Blood would work well enough, Moren thought.
III
Moren and Saries returned to Ashuru, where the dog-god took its usual shape. They emerged next to the Hallowed Tree, for they had departed from its spiritual double. The goddess of death felt that her mark on the tree had grown stronger. To counterbalance that, perhaps out of jealousy or a desire to mark this realm of life as its own, Saries offered it its own mark. By urinating on it. At its own pace, the Tree expanded, until its influence would be present in all of Ashuru, whether mortals realized or not. It would be subtler the farther away from the center it spread, but undeniably present – countless mycelium networks would ensure full coverage.
Unfortunately, the Hallowed Tree at the moment was also the epicenter of the outbreak of lost spirits which had strayed from Moren’s realm and were stuck in the world of the living as haunting spirits. The more persistent – and malevolent – ghosts clung to their existence with vicious determination. These would come to be known as Wraiths, and they were not passive beings. They harassed the living by whatever means available to them: evoking fear and cold, producing disturbing noises, unleashing their very essence at others to harm them, even attempting possession. With a flare of her power, Moren dispersed them, but while some were destroyed, others fled her presence, scattering every which way.
When the two gods had the peace they desired, they each shed a drop of blood on the Hallowed Tree. Moren even deigned to take a physical form during the process. The manifestation of their godly essence landed on the tree in sync, carrying their intentions. The massive plant underwent another transformation; with both of their blessings as well as their essences, it became the Tree of Reincarnation.
It was half white, half black, and many colours in between, its trunk patterned, roots subtly vibrating, leaves broad and full and with a near-translucent shimmer to them. It was a beacon now, one which signaled the souls of the dead as they descended into the realm of the living. Its spirit had grown massive – an agglomerate of smaller spirits, whose edges were so blurred, they were no longer distinct entities. The Reincarnation Tree would live as long as existence permitted; even if its physical manifestation were destroyed, its spiritual presence resonated so strongly, it would be reborn anew. Even now, small bits of it were aging, slowly dying and passing away, yet they were replaced by ever new rivulets of essence. Left on its own, the tree would go through long-spanning cycles of rebirth: growing, aging, withering, only for a young sapling to grow in the place of the old. It was a Guide and a Vessel of rebirth; as long as life existed, so would it.
Moren repaired those few feeble passages leading from the Afterlife to Ashuru’s Tree of Reincarnation, stabilizing them. The paths turned, twisted, split off and misled, and they would be attacked by Wraiths, but the connection would hold. Even as the gods watched, souls started trickling in through. The Tree of Rebirth guided them into Ashuru, granting the world a chance to recover from catastrophes past and future. Enough life returned to make a difference, satisfying Saries. The majority dissipated into nothingness, satisfying Moren.
It wasn’t perfect – it would have to be observed and refined – but it was a start.
Actions:
Moren
Accidentally decays a tree and an area about a meter or two around.
Keeps the Afterlife stable as Saries crosses over into it.
With Saries: Reshapes Afterlife so that the representation of the Hallowed Tree in her realm is connected with the Hallowed Tree in Ashuru.
Prevents accidental leakage of essences while the connection is being forged.
Disperses the accidentally created Wraiths away from the Tree of Reincarnation.
With Saries: Transforms the Hallowed Tree into the Tree of Reincarnation by shedding a drop of blood on it.
Saries
With Moren: Reshapes Afterlife so that the representation of the Hallowed Tree in her realm is connected with the Hallowed Tree in Ashuru.
Blesses the Hallowed Tree with its Life essence, granting it the ability to spread throughout Ashuru, whether by its own power or by exerting its influence through mycelium networks.
With Moren: Transforms the Hallowed Tree into the Tree of Reincarnation by shedding a drop of blood on it.
Consequences:
The framework for reincarnation/rebirth is established.
Wraiths were accidentally created: some essences of the dead who couldn’t reach life stayed in the world of the living, turning malevolent and aggressive. They target those spirits attempting to pass from Afterlife to Ashuru. They also target the living, and harass them: invoking fear and cold, producing disturbing noise, damaging their life essence, trying to possess them.
At the moment, those who manage to reincarnate turn up in a familiar kind of existence, i. e. an ur-human as an ur-human, a plant as a plant, a beast as a beast. All remember most of their previous lives with great clarity, for better and worse. Those with sentience may be driven mad by it, be hailed as seers, or otherwise attempt to take advantage. For animals and plants, it can mean better adaptation, but it can also mean that what they used to know or how they used to function doesn’t work anymore, lessening their chance for survival.
Afterlife and Ashuru are irrevocably linked now, and it will be easier for one to influence the other. E.g. The Afterlife in the future may be more easily reached/interfered with even by a mortal (likely a mage) attempting to do so.
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