Let There Be Light: Sc.00 [PROLOGUE]


                                            >Around you is nothing but nothing.

                                            >Calling it black is tempting, but it’s hardly even that; it cannot bring itself to be an absence of light, because that requires a contrast with something, or implies the existence of light.

                                            >It’s more like if you just hadn’t opened your eyes.

                                            >You look down at your body.

                                            >There’s nothing to illuminate it, but you know it’s there. The idea of your physical form brings about an awareness that it is there, and suddenly you can see it.

                                            >So there’s at least a you and a not-you, here.

                                            >You don’t feel like you’re falling, and that’s good enough for your instincts, so you intuit a set of cardinal directions based on your orientation. Your head is up, your feet are down, and all else from there.

                                            >In front of you is a thing.

                                            >It wasn’t there before, you don’t think, but can you be sure?

                                            >It glows a soft orange light, like a dying ember trapped in crystal.

                                            >It must have been there, it’s creating the light that is allowing you to see your body.

                                            >Right?

                                            >No, no, it IS a dying ember trapped in crystal.

                                            >It may not have been that a moment ago, but it is that now.

                                            >Something in the void stirs.

                                            >No, not a thing, the void has nothing but the Ember, but it's a weight on your mind.

                                            >You can only tell it's there because it makes you feel

                                            >Fear.

                                            >It's angry, angry at you. How you know that you don’t know. You didn’t feel anything but confusion until just now, when you recognized the Ember for what it is-

                                            >There. Definitely anger. Stronger now. But it's not purposeless anger. There's more to it.

                                            >It's offended.

                                            >And it must know your fear, because it is also… triumphant.

                                            >”Yes, yes! And I have every reason to be! You returned, just as I knew you would!”

                                            >Something out there moves.

                                            >So there is a thing after all.

                                            >The ember only illuminates you; you can't see anything more. But you felt it. The thing out there with its lilting yet hard-edged voice definitely has a presence.

                                            >”Returned to see what you’ve wrought.”

                                            >Sight.

                                            >You have to be able to see this thing, before it kills you.

                                            >You reach out for the ember in its crystalline prison.

                                            >It’s too far, but you can move forward simply as an act of will. You do it instinctively.

                                            >Just before you touch it, however, darkness swirls around it, whisking it away, obscuring it, plunging you back into the void.

                                            >Where it brushed your finger is a finger no more. No pain, no blood, just nothing. Your right index finger is now missing everything after the last knuckle, as if it never existed.

                                            >But if you can see that, then-

                                            >The Ember is still there, just further away.

                                            >Little comfort, flanked as it is now by two enormous yellow eyes. Red irises, framing serpentine slit pupils glaring.

                                            >They’re simultaneously little larger than yours and impossibly, infinitely massive. Staring down/up/at/through you with scorn and hatred and smug victory.

                                            >The little ember trapped between them, suddenly meaning so much to you.

                                            >”Oh, do you recognize it? That I had not foreseen. How tragic.”

                                            >You open your mouth to speak.

                                            >Only a croak escapes, at first.

                                            >The eyes incline forward in anticipation.

                                            “Light.”

                                            >The eyes recline back again, and the Ember moves with them, stuck between. “No, no light here. Just us. Thoughts transcending nonexistence. Abstractions surviving the death of the real. Ah, but that death was so long ago, wasn’t it?”

                                            >The Ember’s crystal prison wobbles, as if shaken.

                                            >”Long before the end finally came.”

                                            “But… I can see…”

                                            >”You don’t see, you think. What you think is. The formless void permits everything, but only to those able to exist within it. You are the void incarnate; formless, nameless, without identity or essence. A passerby through the remains of a shredded universe, stopping in for a brief hello and a little chat. As always.”

                                            “And you?”

                                            >”Why, for every guest there must be a host, of course! Where there is nothing may thrive one whose existence is the struggle against all imposition. The Counterforce, though the less enlightened thought me Chaos. You may call me Discord.”

                                            “Discord? A little on the nose, isn’t it?”

                                            >”Oh, absolutely. It’s the name you gave me.”

                                            “I… I don’t remember that. I just got here. I don’t remember anything.”

                                            >The looming eyes finally look away from you, turning ‘down’. “No, of course you don’t. You never do. This isn’t your realm, there’s no room for you here, nothing you can take with you. Not even your name. The eternally anonymous man.”

                                            >Much of the anger you felt projected at you is now gone. Not all if it, but enough for you to breathe again, or to think of breathing again and by that thought itself initiate the action.

                                            >You realize you’re shaking, and try to will yourself to stop. It doesn’t work, until you decide to forget that you were shaking. Then you do stop, because you never were.

                                            >”You get the hang of this place quick.”

                                            “I guess. Sorry, uh, Discord? I don’t know anything you’re talking about. But what you said before, about me stopping in? I do think I could use a little chat. If you’re willing.”

                                            >”As you can see, there is little to talk about.”

                                            “We could talk about, uh, you I guess.”

                                            >Discord laughs, without much humor. “Still little. Please forgive my apparent absence. I was much more… coherent, when you last saw me. You may not remember, but I do, and that is enough.”

                                            “If this place is just our thoughts, could you throw together something, I don’t know, comfortable?”

                                            >With a sigh, “I suppose.”

                                            >Motes of dust swirl out of the black around you, more and more, a seemingly endless stream of dark from dark.

                                            >They assume shapes that eventually become familiar. A chair, a table, walls, floor and ceiling. The shadows and ethereal form of a quaint log cabin comes into being, but looks eerie, sinister even, without any lighting giving it definition.

                                            “Can we get more light? Sunlight through the windows, maybe?”

                                            >”No sun. Out of respect for an old comrade. The corpse… The Ember, as you have assigned it, will do. Call it poetic.”

                                            >A chair beside you beckons. Across from it another, occupied by a smudge of a form, serpentine, with limbs that make your head hurt if you look too long at their mangled silhouettes. It’s crested by what you can only assume is a head due to the presence of those baleful eyes, the shape otherwise unrecognizable, or even impossible to contemplate.

                                            >When you sit down, it certainly feels for all intents and purposes like a chair. You can even feel your feet on the floor now, gravity apparently willed into existence.

                                            >The Ember sits on the table between you, now in a sealed up mason jar. It’s the only source of what passes for natural light, and just makes the strangeness of the setting even more so.

                                            “What is this place supposed to be?”

                                            >”A place of great meaning you cannot understand.”

                                            “Can you help me to?”

                                            >The serpent is silent for a long while, at least according to what passes for time reckoned by your internal sense of it. Maybe it’s just a few seconds.

                                            >”Maybe.”

                                            “Well, you keep saying this is my fault. I could at least know what I’m guilty of.”

                                            >”Yes. Context for your crimes. I can do that.”

                                            >The serpent leans forward, allowing some of the Ember’s illumination to reach it’s ‘head’

                                            >You wish it hadn’t.

                                            >”Come now, that’s no way to treat an old friend. And you always loved my stories.”

                                            >You close your eyes, but the image remains imprinted onto your retinas.

                                            “Just… just get on with it.”

                                            >”As we are here after the end, perhaps it would be best to start before the beginning...”