“So you’re a god then.” Her words were labored as the weight of reality crashed into her like a boundless ocean.
“A god? That word is far too crude to encapsulate what I am. But if it helps you comprehend what I am, I’ll allow you to call me that.” The man walked around her. His feet never hit the ground, nor did his eyes shift from her face. He was like a phantom, flickering in and out of reality.
“I’ve never needed a god before.” Though she felt terror smother her heart, she wouldn’t back down. Everything in her life was from her own doing and her own strength.
“Why is that, Octavia?” The man kept circling her. The sharp edge of his gaze cut into the deepest parts of her, exposing everything she was and ever had been.
As the pressure emanating from the god suffocated her, Octavia searched for the right answer. Every moment of her life flashed before her eyes as memories surfaced. From the time she failed her first test to the time she bombed her first job interview. Every moment of weakness and every failure rose unbidden, filling her with shame. All of it was her, but it didn’t matter. She rose above it all.
“Gods are for the weak.” The words blew into the air and carried with them her conviction. Did that god really expect her to drop to her knees in worship? No, that wasn’t her, that could never be
The man’s grin grew even wider. “You know, I’ve always been there. Even before the system came to this universe. Even before the system was created.” He came to a halt in front of her. His voice was gentle as a spring breeze, yet it boomed like thunder. The man’s fingers reached out and grasped onto her hood, pulling it down, revealing her face.
His eyes bore into her, taking in every crevice and every mark that covered her flesh. “At the moment of your conception, to the moments that defined you. I was at your shoulder when you took your first steps, and I was there when you took your cap at your graduation. Even when your father was lowered into the earth, for nature to reclaim its due.”
Octavia’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the man. Anger burned beneath her skin like a furnace, melting the icy fear that had gripped her heart. She didn’t understand why she was so angry at whatever this being was. It burned in her chest like a raging sun.
“I’ve had my eyes on you for a long time now, just waiting for the system to come into your universe. Every secret that defines you, every action that has made you. I am just an observer, ever present, and ever patient.” He took another step back, and his hands rose into the air.
Octavia went to speak but found the words stuck in her throat. She wanted to scream, to rage against this man who claimed to be a god; to rage against the words he spoke, and how he had supposedly been there at every moment of her life. How dare he. How could something so strong be so complacent?
“I see it in your eyes, your conviction and your rage. That is good.” The nameless man dropped his arms and walked back towards Octavia. “I do not want your supplication, Octavia of Earth, nor do I want your faith.”
“Then what do you want?” Octavia hissed through her teeth as she tried to regain control of muscles. She was scared, but she was also angry. Angry at this man for all the wrongs that had been dealt. Angry because it made her feel helpless at the lack of agency in her own life.
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“I’m a simple being. I tend to nature. The trees grow with naught but a touch. The air shifts when I command it, and planets tremble when I walk on them. My wants are just as simple. Just be you and become my herald.” The man’s voice rippled through the air as he extended a hand with the nature fragment resting in the center.
"I refuse,” Octavia said defiantly. She didn’t know this being, her pride wouldn’t allow for her to bend a knee. To her, true growth came only through oneself and not from some outside force.
The man's grin grew impossibly wide as he extended his hand further towards her with eternal slowness.. “Do you believe in fate, Octavia?”
Octavia wanted to reach out and smack his hand away, but the pressure he radiated forced its way into her muscles, freezing her in place. “No.” Octavia wanted to speak more, but the weight she was suffering from had forced all of the air from her lungs.
The man’s grin turned into a crooked smile as his hand traveled forward, painfully slow, and yet blindingly fast. The fragment of nature touched Octavia’s duster, sinking through the fabric as though it had never existed. Pain blossomed as her heart came to a sudden stop. The world twisted as her vision started to glitch.
“Fate is naught but quantum states, ever shifting and unknowable to most. Yet, to those who know, it flows as easily as water with an outcome cast in stone.” The man’s face split wider, impossibly so as roots spread under his flesh, twisting his words as he spoke. The brown in his eyes became more vivid as they began to glow, slowly turning into pools of magma. “You were to take this fragment at any rate. I was simply impatient and had decided to come visit you in person..When you wake, you will forget that this conversation ever occurred.” Light fell away from the man, leaving only the glowing contours of the gods’ face. Fire bubbled beneath his skin, and vines crept up around his legs, twisting amongst each other like serpents.
Fear grew in Octavia’s chest as it tightened. She was frozen in time, locked in the eternal gaze of something so far above her she was nothing but an atom on the beaches of eternity. Yet even as she faded into unconsciousness, a kernel of defiance burned in her heart like a raging star. “I’m not weak.” Octavia’s words billowed from chapped lips like fog as she plummeted to the ground.
“No, you’re not.” The man smiled and grabbed her shoulder like a father reaching for a child. “Your heart is filled with rage. It is not so unfocused to be that of a volcano. No, it’s like a star, burning forever in space. It’s focused, yet explosive. It’s driven yet contained. Therefore, your first affinity will be Solar. Learn it well, and perhaps you may learn how to tame the anger that burns within your heart."
Octavia’s lips parted as her words died at conception. Fire flowed through her veins, searing everything it touched. Her skin hurt just as badly as her bones. The heat that filled her was akin to that of the desert sun. It was dry; it was inescapable and complete.
“Rest now Octavia of Earth. When you hit your first milestone I will find you once again my dearest Herald. In the meantime, try to stay alive.” The last thing that Octavia saw as the darkness was coming to claim her was the wide orbs of the god staring down at her. His face had fallen away and revealed the sky behind it. Eyes the size of galaxies stared down at her. Worlds burned under his gaze, yet life seemed to bloom. Destruction was the same as creation flowing endlessly in one cycle.
It was at this moment that Octavia realized just how endless this being was. Words in a thousand languages whispered a thousand titles melding into a symphony that spanned eternity.
”Lord of the cycle.”
”Master of Nature.”
”Herald of destruction.”
”Life Bringer.”
”End Bringer.”
”Eternal.”
”Rhassa.”
”Pre-existential.”
”He-who-exists.”
”She-who-ends.”
”Ouroboros.”
The words slammed into her ears as blood trailed down her face. As she stared into the currents of eternity, something stirred behind that gaze, something that dwarfed even that of the god sized face that stared down at her. There were no words that could encompass the thing that shifted just beyond the veil of reality. It was like a shadow that flittered under the sea, rushing towards her. Octavia realized as her thoughts scattered to the wind that this face that spanned the sky was but a shadow, and the avatar she conversed with was naught but a fragment. Her breath escaped her lips as she fell back into the darkness, staring into the depths of what no mortal nor god should ever witness, losing herself to the flow of time.
