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Chapter 37: Past-man

It wasn't so bad in our home.

We didn't need to worry about hunger, thirst, or death.
The darkness we were born into didn't bother us.

We were at ease in this dark and very gentle place.

However, more and more of our young ones were visiting an outsider, a man.

He told us stories about him being the reason we were trapped in this dark void by him, the weapon of the gods, as he called himself.
We were an idea, canned by the ones above, so he claimed.

None of us knew what he was talking about.
As far as we knew, we were born here.
Thanks to the way our world worked, we aged incredibly slowly and at some point we stopped aging all together.

It was as if this place was preparing us for something.

During the many years of our peaceful lives in the void, more young ones were born and found themselves entranced by the nonsensical stories of the sole man in our world.

Soon the young grew older and proclaimed themselves to be wiser than anyone else who existed before them and swiftly proceeded with slaughtering the ancient ones among us.
Their own kind, murdered in the name of some god in order to escape our "prison", as they called it.

This was our world.
Why would we want to leave?

After our eldest and powerful were slain by the new generation, the man rose up and spoke to us.

He told us of a world with endless fields of grass, a bright blue sky, calming gusts of wind that would soothe the soul and delicious meals everyday.

The young nodded after every word he spat out of his talking orifice.
They were manipulated.

Just for that, for a story made up by a man, they took lives.
For empty promises.

Many years afterwards we were still "trapped".
Throughout all this time, the man kept buttering up the ones he had corrupted to believe his sweet sounding words of a world of light.

The corrupted couldn't accept that they made a mistake and doubled down to kill anyone who dared to go against them.
We asked the man what it would take to pass over to the other world. He only ever told us that "the time-man will come-man when every-man one-man of you-man believes that it will-man."

I didn't know what he said at the time and dismissed his ramblings.

The corrupted new generation started to spread a religion.
The religion of the masters that would lead the way out.
They believed that if everyone became a believer, we would be saved from this "hell".

The only hell in our world was the one they created themselves.

This place was our home and they ruined it. The way I saw it, I should have taken them out.
We would have peace once more.

Not once have I believed a word they said.

But then it happened.

I found myself in a room of pure white.
There a formless blue dust cloud talked to me and only me.

It told me "if you prove you are worthy, I will bring back the peace you desire."

I knew exactly what to do without this formless entity having to tell me.
It was as if it placed a mission straight into my mind.

Was this the master the new generation had spoken of?

All of them had placed their hopes on the word of one man.

Who would fault me for doing the same for a dust cloud?
I had chosen my master and acted accordingly.

I built an army out of the children that were still pure.
Pure of any falsehoods that man was spreading.