Fiction and Foolishness

The Master had found me awaiting my death.  After I had witnessed him squeezing the sun I fled, seeking somewhere, anywhere, to hide from the terrible truth of his power, from the awful façade that I had once believed was reality. In my flight I had delved into the heart of the earth, into ever-narrower tunnels, until I had lodged myself into the tightest fissure I could find, far below the world, where the sun could not reach me. Maddened with fear, I sought nothing more than to disappear, eschewing even base self preservation. For weeks I sat in the dark unmoving, my once powerful body transformed into a desiccated wreck by thirst and cold. Death would come for me soon, or so I hoped.  The Master had found me first. He had sauntered into my stone tomb with a nonchalance of a man on a light evening’s constitutional. He brought no light with him yet I could see him perfectly, as if it was my mind seeing him rather than my eyes. As he sat next to my fissure I tried to get away ...

When I came to the Master I found him sitting on the shore. Feet idly kicking about a tidal pool, he was watching a swarm of green turtle hatchlings crawl their way towards the sea. Seagulls and other birds circled about, screeching their frustration as the Master threw shells at them, hitting each bird which attempted to descend upon the hatchlings with unerring accuracy. He did not turn when I prostrated myself beside him. The sun hung low in the sky like an overripe orange, turning the sea to burning copper in its wake “So you’ve returned,” he said, stunning a seagull with a particularly well-aimed chonch, “I always figured you for a fool. What do you want this time?”  “Master,” I said, not removing my my forehead from the itching sand, “I have long dwelled on your last lecture, and on the meaning of terror. I now understand that despite my many deeds, I had never been brave. Tell me, what does true courage mean?” He snorted. “Even an infant knows that to be courageous is to do....

In his right hand he had a glass Caerloch 21 year-old Single Barrel, likely the last in all of existence. In his left he held Nihility, reality's end. He took a sip from the glass in his right. Nihility burned with endless cold hunger in his left. It was his one thousandth and eighty-seventh birthday. He sat on a grassy hill, back leaned against an ancient olive tree, feet propped on a rock. The olive's dun leaves were stirred by a warm southerly wind, which was fortunate, as no wind could come from any other direction. In every direction but south, the void of unbeing consumed reality, toothless mouths gnawing at atoms. Nihility trembled at the sight, but he shushed the dread spear with a rigorous shake, and it sullenly quieted down.  He really wasn't sure why the spear was so impatient. The end has come, and soon it would return to the nothingness from which he summoned it all those years ago. The world will join it there to keep it company. Some of the world's most a...

  Seven months ago. Two weeks following the Fields of Slaughter. Elsewhere.   Aranasius, last god of the Firebrand Pantheon, had lost his beard.  This wasn’t to say it got burned or sheared or simply yanked away - Aranasius’ beard, like all of his hair, was a living creature, and it has gone missing. It was a sorry situation to be sure- what was the god of hair and beards worth if he didn’t even have a beard! He was a minor god in any case, but without half of his Mantel, he might as well be a glorified demigod! He was staring at himself in a mirror framed with liquid mercury, horrified at seeing his chin for the first time in a thousand years. Surely it didn’t use to be this weak, right? Oh, there was no end to his troubles! Take for example the fact that his entire family, brothers and sisters, mother and father, were all dead. But that was a secondary concern all things considered.  “Nasi? Nasi, Nelor has called for a general assembly! Would you get out of th...