The Creators: Book Three

Chapter One

Sand and Water

Prelude: Iron Box

CORRUPTION

Diamond's garden was filled with bright flowers and delightful shrubbery, soft leaves and smooth branches, not a single thorn upon the stems. Even the roses were docile. Though the astral sun above was perpetually eclipsed, there wasn't a single dark spot in her garden. The shadows were gentle, and bioluminescent mushrooms illuminated the areas where the sun didn't touch. The expansive lawn was occupied with astral bunnies, chipmunks, and prairie dogs who gallivanted about, frolicking without a care, nibbling on the honeysuckle and clovers that were plentiful in the bountiful prairies and fields.

I sang to myself as I skipped gayly along the cobblestone path. I pirouetted and giggled, summersaulted and tittered, then recommenced my carefree promenade, bouncing from heel to toe, vaulting into the air and grinning broadly at the sky. Like a child imitating her mother, I had taken on Diamond's mannerisms. As far as I was concerned, she was my mother.

I ceased my ecstatic promenade when I reached Diamond's box. It was a new feature to her garden, a rusted grey monolith sitting in the center of her lush realm. The edges were jagged and brutal, the frame was reinforced, and the door was wrapped with heavy-gauge chains secured by an intricate lock. Though it appeared as iron and chain, it was made of love. As Julia lay dying upon the ground, Diamond made a terrible choice. She knew well the fate she was damning the world to, but the weight of the world could not tip the balance, and so she created this box within her mind, and stowed away a secret she could not trust herself to keep. Though they were her memories, they were not memories that had been formed in her garden; they had been taken here by someone else. The memories of this so-called 'Petranumen' carried a truth that would destroy Julia, for Julia had defined herself by a lie. Diamond entrusted me with the keeping of this secret, and with my solemn promise, our meld was made. It was a tenuous proposition for me, for I could not control the information Julia learned, but it seemed there were very few in the world who knew of this secret, and in that regard, I would do my best. Silencing people was ultimately a very simple task.

I took my responsibility as caretaker of Diamond's mind very seriously. I spent most of the time after my birth cleaning up the derelict remains of some dead woman called 'Passion.' I organized them into an enormous pile of crumbled architecture and decayed art, and then sifted through their contents. There was quite a bit of information within these ruins. Information about Tethered Ones, Sentients, planes of existence, and mankind's history. I deduced that I must be this 'Corruption,' the most ancient of Sentients, and so I gave myself that title. Still, it felt wrong. Sentients seemed to be unfeeling machinations of thought, but certainly, I felt a great multitude of things. I read through the last of Passion's dead memories, and cringed horribly when I felt the great depth of pain her final moments caused my mother. I placed my hand upon the rubble, and turned the marble structures into dripping edifices of black. My mother would never feel that pain again. Satisfied with my work, I turned around, and assessed the rolling hills and quaint flowerbeds of Diamond's garden. It was certainly a delightful vision, but it felt... artificial.

I caught one of the little bunnies, and it didn't even bare its teeth. It just snuggled into my black arms, and awaited my hand to stroke it.

"What is wrong with you?" I asked the bunny. "Do you not see that I am a predator, and that you are a soft little ball of fat covered in fur?"

The bunny clicked contentedly, and rolled in my arms to expose its belly to me.

I sighed, and set the stupid thing down in the grass. I clearly had my work cut out for me.

"Snakes," I mused, and a pair of king cobras were birthed from me. They emerged from between my legs, slithered up my torso, and wrapped my body sensually before giving me a deadly little kiss on the throat. I extended my hands into the grass, and the male and female cobras coiled about opposite arms, inspected the green foliage, then disappeared into the underbrush.