I am God LSLCCF

Beneath the Lava Mountain, the Glass Temple of Black Rock City

The six witch doctors were rushed off their feet, crossing and recrossing the temple as they shifted and cleared away odds and ends of every description.

Some of them even carried things the size of small hills entirely on their own, looking for all the world like circus acrobats, picking their way with care for fear of colliding with one another.

"Make way!" one of the witch doctors called out.

"Do not let it knock into anything."

"Have a care!"

The witch doctors were not alone. The Mythology Spirit Vellen was there among them.

He too drifted about like a balloon, bobbing along at the very front as though showing the witch doctors the way.

In one corner stood a mushroom person topped with a huge "hat," their body swaying back and forth like a noodle, though no wind at all could be felt inside the temple.

Refracted light surged through every corner of the main hall, yet a small patch of shadow lay beneath the altar, and in it stood a chair with a tall, latticed back and armrests.

Hila sat in that chair, wholly absorbed in the mirror she held in her hands.

In some ways the Spirit's Magic Mirror resembled Shelly's glass tank, but the glass tank looked down from high above, taking in the whole world and all living things at a glance.

Through the mirror, though, every story unfolded from the vantage of a single life, be it one of the snake people, the winged people, the lizard people, a magical beast or some kind of animal, or even a wing demon flying across the sky.

It looked as though one were watching the world together with some single life, passing together through the cycle of years, dwelling together with them in this vast, boundless world that seemed to have no edge at all.

Only, the mirror was eternal.

The lives within the mirror slipped away without anyone ever noticing, and even before the mirror had caught sight of them, they were already gone.

Perhaps that was exactly why Hila so loved to hold the mirror.

After everything had vanished, only the Dream Starry Sea still held the record of what they had once been, and only this mirror could know their past.

Their joys and sorrows. Their partings and reunions.

What Hila's mirror reflected was the shape of the lizard person Anu, from snake people to lizard people to a black dragon.

As she watched the conversation between the two final Anus, Hila abruptly sat up straight.

Her face was full of sorrow, full of a wistful melancholy.

"Time. What a terrifying thing it is!"

Hila could not help lifting her head, and asked God Yinsai.

"Is everyone changed by the passing of the years?"

"Does everyone come at last to a day when they no longer know the self they used to be?"

The Creator Yinsai crossed the temple, strolling as if at leisure beneath the wide panes of glass that lined its edges.

The glass let the world outside shine through, and gave back a faint reflection of the scene within.

Yin Shen heard the question, and could not help a soft laugh.

"If it is me you are asking about, then the years changed me long ago."

Yin Shen looked at the spirit, who had craned her neck to watch him with curiosity.

"Hila, when I first came into this world, I was not what I am now."

"When I came, this world had nothing in it at all."

"I feared solitude. I feared going back to the eternal dark, back to that place outside of time. And so I created a great many things."

All this Hila already knew, though she herself had not yet been born at the time.

"You created Redlichia and Shelly. You created the trilobite men and the Ruhe beasts, the ancestral fish, and the countless creatures of the deep sea."

God Yinsai nodded.

"It is a pity. No matter how much I create, there are some things that can never be found again."

"It is a little like this. Something out of your childhood memory breaks, and years later, once you are grown, you come by a new one in its place."

"But in the end it is not the same. The new thing cannot stand in the place of the old, and nothing else in the world can make you feel that You have gone back to the past."

Something flickered faintly in Hila's eyes.

"And afterward?"

What she wanted to ask, it seemed, was whether He still felt lonely after all that time.

Yin Shen said, "Afterward, I grew used to it."

"Used to the solitude, used to the dark. In time I even came to take some pleasure in it."

"I came to think that the place beyond time and the universe was not so bad after all. There is nothing there one must think of, nothing one must weigh. There is only the waiting."

Hila got to her feet. She looked almost afraid.

Afraid that one day Yin Shen would go back beyond the sky, go back to somewhere outside this world entirely, and never come back again.

Yin Shen went on all the same.

"And yet at times I still think of this place. I think of the things that happened here."

"I want to come back and look upon it again. It matters to me."

"I have grown used to searching for an anchor point within my solitude, so that I do not drift off course in the long passage of the years."

"In truth, I am no different from most of the people of this world."

"I have only lived somewhat longer. Lived too long. Far, far too long."

His power was eternal, His form undying.

Yet He too had been changed in the course of the years, assimilated by time all the same.

Of all the races of the living, the one best able to resist the erosion of the years was perhaps the spirits alone.

But if one spoke of a being that had truly crossed through time and changed not at all...

All at once Yin Shen's gaze went to a certain presence in the corner.

In the corner a little girl sat on the ground before the glass, both legs sprawled wide without a care in the world. She had a stool and never liked to sit in it. She preferred the ground, the stone steps, the altar, and she was just as happy lying down.

A mushroom person kept close at the girl's side.

Shelly had an exploding candy in her hand and was itching to eat another, though she hesitated again and again, reaching up to touch her own hair.

All at once she felt a gaze on her from somewhere far off.

Candy still in hand, Shelly put on a "wise" look and stared back at Yin Shen with her big round eyes.

"What are You staring at me for?"

At a loss, Shelly glanced down at the candy in her hand.

Then she remembered something she had done once before. God Yinsai must suspect her of trying the same old trick again, she thought, and she gave a sheepish, silly little laugh.

"Hehe, this one isn't for you. Not this time."

Yin Shen watched her like that, and for some reason the corner of his mouth curved up, just slightly.

"It is nothing."

"It is only that there are times when I envy you very much, Shelly."

Shelly could not understand what God Yinsai had to envy her for.

Envy her for having candy to eat?

Even if she gave Him some, He wouldn't eat it anyway.

Since she couldn't work it out, Shelly stopped trying and turned her attention back to her candy.

The spirits' exploding candy was an interesting thing. It worked by no ordinary sort of stimulant that made the hair burst outward.

Instead it planted the idea that one's hair was about to burst outward, then turned that very idea into reality, so that one's own power blew one's own hair apart.

This was the power of dreams, and it was the power of the spirits as well.

It was for exactly this reason that the candy worked on even the Life Sovereign all the same, so long as she did not deliberately resist this power, resist the very idea of it.

This amounted to nothing more than her own power turned upon herself.

Shelly had no wish to see her own hair burst apart, so she turned to the mushroom person beside her and grinned wide.

"Open wide!"

The mushroom person seemed to know exactly what Shelly meant, and began trembling at once, clutching their huge hat tight.

"Waaaah!"

"Great master, I have no hair."

Shelly considered the mushroom person's "big hat," and had to admit they had a point.

She sized up the mushroom's "big hat."

"So it won't work without hair?"

The mushroom person looked utterly pitiful.

"It might blow my hat clean off."

Shelly took in the mushroom person's broad "big hat," and the mimicry world tucked away inside it, and shook her head at once.

"Hm?"

"Nope. That won't do at all."

"We can't go blowing up my glass tank!"

Which was to say, the mushroom person themselves getting blown up was perfectly fine.

Shelly gave up in the end and put the candy away, meaning to try it again once no one was around.

Just then several of the witch doctors gathered and came to stand behind Hila, the Dream Sovereign, now that she was on her feet.

The witch doctor called Skull stepped forward, bowed, and said, "Lady Hila, shall we carry Your chair away?"

Hila turned to look, and saw that the temple had been emptied out little by little without her noticing, until nothing was left but the chair she sat in.

Once the witch doctors had carried the chair away, everything in the Glass Temple was as it had been before they ever came.

Today they were making ready to leave this place.

When the time came to go, Shelly had no wish to walk, so the mushroom person shifted into another form.

A white horseshoe crab. Shelly sat herself straight down on its back.

Riding as if upon a cloud, she went floating slowly out of the temple, and floating on into the cabin of the craft.

Inside the God's Mount, as Yin Shen twisted the hatch open, the vehicle, which had until then taken the form of a flying craft, began to change.

Slowly it became a plain and ancient balloon boat, woven out of huge, thick vines.

Still sprawled on the back of the white horseshoe crab and refusing to climb down, Shelly propped her chin in her hands and swung her legs.

"This shape isn't much to look at."

Hila, though, recognized what set today's form apart.

"Today it is a throwback. Many years ago, at the very beginning, this is exactly what it looked like."

Shelly still held onto a few memories from before, of the spirit's hot air balloon boat in its very earliest form. She had once towed it along everywhere she went, flying back and forth above the God-Given Land.

Shelly gestured broadly as she spoke.

"That's not it at all! I remember it from before. It was just a hot air balloon with one basket, and three people standing in it was a squeeze."

Hila said, "That was earlier."

The throwback hot air balloon boat sailed off into the distance, trailing layer upon layer of colored light.

In this era there were only two continents. One was the primordial continent, where the whole world lay joined in a single mass.

The other was Ruhe Beast Island, made by the Mother of Life.

That colored light was spreading its way toward the sea, toward that other continent.

The Blood Kingdom of the Deep Sea

The sky above a kingdom that had once known only red and black had lately begun to show strange sights.

Under the red crystal dome that covered the whole kingdom, layer upon layer of cloud drifted by. Mist, in truth.

The clouds behaved strangely. One moment they poured down rain, the next they came hailing.

Pass through that white layer of mist and cloud, then through the swirling passage beyond it, and one came to the divine kingdom within the Dream Realm.

That place was the Divine Technique Kingdom.

On the steps of the Blood Kingdom stood a little child with soft, short blue hair, her face turned up to the sky.

She never stirred, yet the moment a thought moved in her mind, the clouds in the sky moved along with it.

If she wanted rain, the sky rained. If she wanted hail, the sky hailed.

She could even control the temperature of the whole Blood Kingdom in a single thought, could make this place as hot as high summer, could turn it into the bitter cold of deep winter.

The little child could already speak, and in the Wisdom Language, no less. With eyes of icy blue she watched the changes in the cloud, the water, and the ice.

"Water in the sky is cloud. When it falls, it's rain. When it gathers into the land, it's lakes and rivers and seas."

Just then another voice carried out from within the Temple of Truth.

"Water is the source of life as well. All things begin in water."

The child could already walk, and she spun around at once and ran back into the Temple of Truth.

She ran toward the divine being in the temple, shouting at the top of her voice.

"Sister!"

The sister she called for was the Scarlet Goddess, seated upon the Flesh and Blood Throne.

Vivien watched Anli come running toward her, and told her, "At the dawn of the years, when the world was newly opened."

"The Creator descended upon this world, and brought life and wisdom with Him."

"Our ancestor, the King of Wisdom Redlichia, came walking out of the sea. He was the first being ever born into this world, and close behind him came the Mother of Life."

"He walked out of the ocean at the dawn of time, and turned to face the one who had created him."

"And he cried out the very first word this world ever knew."

Vivien looked into Anli's eyes and told her that word.

"God!"

Anli's eyes were full of curiosity about the world, about everything in it.

"Why did he cry out that word?"

Vivien came down from above and stood before Anli.

"Because 'God' is one syllable out of God Yinsai's own name. So say the myths of the God-Given Age, and so say the records the second King of Wisdom, Yesael, left behind."

"God Yinsai is not even His true name. Not even the King of Wisdom could speak His true name aloud, and so it became the name by which the Creator is known in this world."

Anli asked Vivien, "Does no one know God Yinsai's true name?"

Vivien shook her head.

"No one knows it. No one has ever been able to speak it."

Anli asked again, "Why?"

Vivien took Anli by the hand and led her along as she spoke, walking on until at last they stood before that tall stretch of rock wall.

Painted on the rock wall in rich, vivid colors was the genealogy chart of the creator gods, the three gods standing beneath the Eternal Star.

At the far end of that endless light, at the very bottom of the chart, two saints knelt.

They knelt upon the ground in postures of utmost devotion, receiving the light of the Eternal Star, gazing up in reverence at the three gods of Wisdom, Life, and Dreams.

Vivien looked up at the Eternal Star at the very top of the rock wall, and told Anli.

"Because in the moment you speak the Creator's true name aloud, you touch the Eternal Star itself."

"We cannot so much as touch the sun, still less that eternity which stands above time and years alike."

Vivien held Anli's hand as they stood beneath the rock wall, looking up at the sacred painted chart, and told her what this genealogy chart of the creator gods meant.

"The Eternal Star is none other than the Creator Yinsai, who made all things and brought all things into being!"

"The Supreme Three Gods of Authority!"

"The King of Wisdom, Redlichia, our ancestor, the origin of all wisdom."

"The Mother of Life, Shelly, the great being who created life."

"The Dream Sovereign, Hila, ruler of the Dream Realm, and the final resting place of all spirits."

Little by little, Vivien told Anli all of the past. Every word she spoke was a legacy handed down, the oldest secret this world had ever known.

In the space of a few sentences, the little child came to understand the origin of this world, and this world's true shape.

Anli looked up at the genealogy chart on the rock wall, and her eyes went straight to the Eternal Star, whose sacred light spilled out to cover the whole face of the wall. Faintly, beneath that light, she made out the outline of a form taking shape, a God's Form.

That was the very first God's Form, the great shape every deity imitated.

"Why does everyone else have a shape, and the Creator has none at all?"

"There's just a star painted here, and an outline you can't make out at all."

Vivien told her, "God's Form is a god made manifest in the mortal world, a projection cast down beneath the light of a star. It is the only shape of the Creator this world can ever hope to see."

Anli's mind worked unusually fast, and she caught the blind spot at once.

"Then how do we know the Creator has an Eternal Star form at all?"

Vivien told Anli, "It is said the Supreme Three Gods have looked upon it. And so has the one who was once the Dream Realm Ferryman and is now the God of Desire and Alchemy, Iva."

"Only a being who holds mythical rank may glimpse so much as a thread of the Creator's outline, and keep some fragment of the memory afterward."

"And the true source of our knowledge of this secret is the record King Yesael left behind."

"When the second King of Wisdom, Yesael, first came before the Creator, he beheld the Creator's Eternal Star form with his own eyes."

"And yet I have seen the oldest of the stone carvings myself, those left behind from King Yesael's own age."

"Even King Yesael saw nothing but the light the star cast down, and from that alone could only guess at the shape of the Eternal Star behind it."

"In the oldest carvings, in the oldest chapters of all, there is no record anywhere of the Creator's true shape."

Anli scratched her head.

"So really, has anyone ever seen the Creator at all?"

"All we see is a shadow. An outline."

"Then who's to prove the Creator really exists?"

Vivien gripped Anli's hand tight, and told her with the utmost seriousness.

"Because we ourselves are the Creator's proof in this world."

"Only because God Yinsai descended into this world does this world hold anything at all."

"Were He to depart, all of it would cease to be."

As punishment for asking such a question, Vivien left Anli there beneath the rock wall, to study that genealogy chart of the creator gods on her own.

Anli stood beneath the rock wall with her head craned back at the very top of the mural, trying every way she could think of to make out the divine shape beneath that shimmering light, to make out just what the Eternal Star truly looked like.

"I can't see a thing!"

No one knew what technique had gone into painting this mural. The star's light looked hazy and yet somehow real, and the whole rock wall really did seem to be glowing.

Stare up at it long enough, one felt, and one might really see that towering divine form, and the Eternal Star itself.

But Anli craned her head back until her neck ached, and still saw nothing at all.

Sacred, and towering.

Real, and yet beyond all reach.

Just as she rubbed at her eyes, the light upon the rock wall suddenly began to flow.

The painting on the rock wall was changing.

Beneath the shifting light, colors surged and swirled without end.

Head still tilted back, Anli felt as if her eyes were playing tricks on her. She watched the shadows of the Supreme Three Gods on the genealogy chart of the creator gods grow from three into four.

She rubbed hard at her eyes again, and found it wasn't her eyes at all. There really were four now.

"Ah!"

"There's four of them now!"

The little child with the soft blue hair leaned in close, staring hard at the extra shadow.

Behind the tall latticed chair of the Dream Sovereign, one of the Supreme Three Gods, stood a young man draped in a golden robe, leaning against the chair with a brilliant smile on his face.

All four figures bathed together in the light of the Eternal Star, receiving the kneeling worship of every trilobite man, represented there by the saints.

"Who's this one?"

"It was three before. Why are there four now?"

Anli never noticed that the light falling from high above had gathered into an outline just behind her as well, looking up together with her at the genealogy chart on the rock wall.

A voice came from behind the child and reached her ears.

"It is four."

In that very moment, the genealogy chart on the rock wall became at last the same as the one in the God-Given Land.

The little child frowned.

"Says who? My sister said it was three."

Anli turned around, and saw the most stunning, most unforgettable sight she would ever see in this life or any other, the most beautiful sight of all.

She saw the Eternal Star appear at the far edge of the sky, shining above every other star, shining above the whole river of time and the universe itself.

The child gazed up at the sky, and the silver light seemed to wrap itself entirely around her, and a boundless longing rose up in her heart, a longing to run straight toward the shadow of that Eternal Star.

Even knowing full well it could never be reached, she could not hold back the yearning and longing that rose from deep within her.

"Ah!"

"It's so pretty."

As the blue-haired child spoke, the mythical artifact pendant hanging around her neck poured out light in layer after layer, and behind her the shadow of a grown figure began to surface.

But unlike the child, this figure knelt upon the ground.

All at once, the child recognized it too.

That was the Eternal Star painted on the rock wall, the form of the Creator, Yinsai.

But the picture on that wall was only ever something the trilobite men had imagined for themselves, drawn from old myths and records, and it could not capture even one part in ten thousand of the truth, nor even one part in ten thousand of what every being who had ever laid eyes upon that Eternal Star must have felt in their heart.

She wanted only to go on looking at that Eternal Star like this forever, never once looking away.

But she had only laid eyes on it for the briefest of instants.

Already she felt herself on the point of being swallowed whole, her wisdom and her form about to melt and dissolve away beneath that light.

She thought of her sister, and told herself she must not let herself dissolve away like this.

At once she clapped both hands over her eyes and cried out in a child's own voice.

"Aah!"

"I can't look!"

"I mustn't look anymore!"

The outline beneath the star never once looked at Anli. He only gazed at the genealogy chart of the creator gods upon the rock wall, and it was this very figure that had corrected the error within that chart.

His expression turned all at once a little forlorn, and He said.

"He is my son, Polo. We are a family."

With those words spoken, the light beneath the rock wall faded away little by little, until everything had returned to normal.

But the mural, changed now, stayed just as it was.

Vivien heard Anli talking to herself alone beneath the rock wall, and came over to ask what was wrong.

Anli said to the mural, "A star!"

"A star came down from up there."

"The star changed the mural. It said there should be four people in it."

Anli told Vivien, "Sister, didn't you see it?"

"Just now, the star appeared."

Vivien went still, and followed Anli's gaze upward.

There, on the mural upon the rock wall, she saw the Eternal Star.

All at once, she understood something.

Overcome, she seized Anli by the hand and rushed outside, turning in an instant into a streak of red light that broke the surface of the sea.

She stood upon the surface of the sea, scanning the sky in every direction, as though searching for something.

At last, at the very far edge of the sky, she caught sight of a trail of colored light, drifting as it crossed through space.

She saw a hot air balloon boat, a hot air balloon boat in that same old, throwback shape.

It looked exactly like the one she had seen once, back when she was young.

It was a memory carved forever into her mind, and now it had surfaced once again.

Once more she remembered how it had been, she herself pulling a three-wheeled cart with her little sister across the vast, boundless earth, seeking the salvation of the supreme divine being, looking up in hope at the descent of God's own glory.

Vivien stood upon the sea, tears streaming without end from her eyes.

"God!"

"Thank You for Your mercy. Thank You for remembering us!"

"For remembering the trilobite men!"

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