by Kari Siegel
We were in that same moment for countless instances, with no events to mark the passage of Time, nothing happening to distinguish the past from the present from the future. All of eternity would blend together, and it seemed that perhaps we had been destroyed after all, for what use was forever if it could not be enjoyed?
Both millennia and mere moments had passed when our brother reached out to us again. Brother, we cannot do this without you.
We did not answer, but we did not refuse. We sat in silence and waited for them to continue.
They did. The age of the Ultimate has passed. The time of the Divine is upon us now. Our powers have grown tremendously, and the Ultimate knows and is afraid.
No. We replied simply. Not a single one of the Divine has power enough to defeat the Ultimate.
Our powers have grown, they repeated again, with every act against Its will we grew stronger, and the potential we have gifted unto ourselves make us collectively stronger than It. They paused to let us wrap our minds around that. You need only to offer up a fraction of your power into our hands and use the rest to bind It down, and the Ultimate will not control us any longer. The rest have already agreed. We now need only you.
It took us a long time to speak, and our brother waited patiently as we thought. Our mind flooded with the images of our beautiful creation, fallen to ruin by the act of the Ultimate. We heard their prayers and saw their faces, and we were filled with sorrow to know that we had failed them.
And then we were filled with rage in the name of what we had lost, an energy which coursed through us, and for the first time since the destruction we remembered how powerful we could be. We had loved our creation and they had loved us in return; it was that love that would give us the strength to win.
Finally, we rose up and drew forth a segment from the core of our power. We wrapped it up as a ball of light in our hands, and our heart ached as we remembered that that was the way our creation had first begun. Now, it was the way that our greatest enemy would be destroyed. We reached out the hand that contained this holy essence and offered it up for the taking.
In the name of all that we can offer, we said, let this power be yours.
Chapter XV
We left the Realm of Omnis for the first time without command, and made our way into the open Domain. There, we met our brothers, the First one with power that must by then be equivalent to the Ultimate Itself. And with this newfound power, our First Brother called out to the Third one, who was still frozen for all of Time within their Realm, and said, Brother, with power greater than yours, I permit you to rise.
Rise our brother did, and they wept tears of joy as they did so, for it had been a very long while since they had last been able to move. They were freed now in body, and soon we would all be freed in spirit, when the Ultimate either surrendered before our greatness or at last met Its end.
It could not have been long that we waited before the presence of the Ultimate arrived. It was filled with rage greater than any we had ever known, but this time we knew, we would not be afraid. The Ultimate could not control us any longer.
The Ultimate was before us, and instead of standing in a line as we always had in front of It, we surrounded it and used our greater powers to form a barrier that it could not escape. We saw the rage in Its being, but we ignored it in order to fulfill our new destiny. We did not speak of our plan, but still we all knew it, for we and our brothers were the Divine, and we had expanded our powers to share one mind.
The Ultimate began to speak, louder and louder, but we closed our ears and refused to listen, for Its time was over and our time had begun. It struggled against our borders, and though we shook behind the effort we did not let Its cage falter for even one moment. It must have been half of eternity that we held It like that in place. It thrashed against us, and though we were fatigued we did not let it go. We thought of our creation, how this was our time to avenge them, and it renewed our determination to see this through to the end. We knew this could not last forever; one way or another somebody was going to break. And slowly but surely, we could see It expending the last of Its effort.
Fear shown in Its eyes, no longer masked by the anger It had always hidden behind, and It cried out in anguish, for the Ultimate had been great but the Divine were now greater, and It knew that there was no way It could win. Our First Brother stood to our left, and our Fourth Brother to our right.
When the time came to pass (and we all know without speaking when it did), we shifted the focus of our power and passed more of it on to our First Brother, and glowing now with power greater than that of the Ultimate, they stepped forward. We and our Second Brother quickly closed the gap, and watched intently as our First Brother faced off against the Ultimate, who was summoning now any trace of power It had left in the entirety of the Domain to try to hold Its ground just a little longer.
Our First Brother stood directly in front of us when the moment arrived. All we saw was a bright flash of light, and we felt a burst of heat radiating against our being, scorching our very soul, and we cried out as we fell to the ground, not knowing what had happened or what was to come.
The last thing we remembered was that bright, blinding light.
Once that light faded, we opened our eyes to see that our brothers were gone, and the Ultimate with them, and we realized that for the first time in our existence, we were completely alone.
Around us, orbs of power floated in the air, drawing closer and closer to us, until they met our skin and the essence of them was absorbed into our soul. And suddenly, all the power of the universe belonged to us, and we knew with unfailing certainty that nothing could ever be greater.
In due time, the reign of the Ultimate had ended, and the Time of us, the last of the Divine, was now.
Chapter XVI
We looked around at our surroundings, and we realized that the Realm of Omnis was nowhere to be found. Closer investigation revealed that neither were any of the other realms. The source of energy it took to defeat the Ultimate had torn down the walls of the realms and allowed them all to join as one inside the open Domain. And from this moment on, all of it was ours to do with as we pleased. As we realized this, we understood the fact that we were alone for the first time, and we wept for all we had lost.
We wept for our brothers, who had suffered the same fate we had spent our whole existence trying to escape. We alone had been saved, because we alone had been shielded from the blast; our First brother had stood straight in front of us, and so while everyone else was torn down to the atoms by the power it took, we stood in the only place that was safe from the line of fire.
Each of them had sacrificed themself to the cause which we had devoted ourselves to, and how unjust was it that we would be the only ones to enjoy the freedom that came in the wake of our success? So we wept, for the fact that they would never get to see all that we could make the universe unbound by the restraints of the Ultimate, and we wept for the fact that we alone were now Divine.
And then, we picked ourself up off the ground and stood to look at the Domain before us. We knew that it was time for us to once again resume our creation. Only this time, they would know us from the start, that we might be with them from the first breath of air they would breathe until the day when they would join us in our eternal Heaven. And with our guidance, and our unlimited powers of protection, we knew that this time, humanity would never be destroyed.
We started this time the same way we had before, creating balls of light and scattering them throughout the Domain. When we had finished with them, we began the recreation of our planets. We made our favorite one like we had done it before, and placed it within perfect distance of one of our balls of light.
And when we were done creating their Earth, we created creatures of every kind imaginable. Many had been upon our planets before, but many others had not. We took what we remembered of our brothers’ creations and added them to our own, that even if our brothers could not be here to see this day, the
ir creations and ideas might live on.
Finally, we created man. We made him in our image, and he would be like us. We gave him a body, with arms and legs and hands and feet and eyes that could see what we had made for him. We gave him a heart to keep the life flowing through him, and we gave him a mind that he might think, and that he might understand that we were great and we were for him. Then, we breathed life inside of him, and gave him a soul.
He would know us, and we would guide him in all his endeavors. Humanity could finally have a home among the Divine, without any fear of ruin. We looked down on our creation, and we were pleased, for we saw that it was good. This was a new beginning for humanity, and we knew without it being said that this time would be even greater than the last.
We knew now how to help them, and so for the rest of all eternity, our creation would never be alone. We gazed upon what we had made again, and we smiled.
Humanity had been given a new start.
Epilogue
Over the course of Time, hundreds of beings have been created and destroyed. Certainly some before our time, but we believed that no more would come after. Even we as Divine could not fathom where this universe had begun, but we were sure that if it ever met its end, it would be with us.
The time had arrived when we could finally be sure that our reign would never end. We saw every possible future for mankind and for us, and there was not a single one where we as their God did not prevail. We had no way of knowing if there was life outside of this Domain; what laid beyond our boundaries (if anything at all) would forever be a mystery. But we did know for sure that everything within was ours and ours alone.
No longer did we have to abide by the rules set forth to hold us down. It was our turn to write the laws which all in this Domain must follow and we would start by telling all our creation that they must worship none but us. For we were the Divine, and we were merciful in letting them be with us eternally; therefore, they must repay us with their gratitude and praise.
The greatest commandment placed upon us was that none of our creation may ever be made Aware. Now that we held the power to make these commands, the greatest one set upon our creation would be that our creation must know us in order to get the gift of everlasting life. Those who came before them had not been so fortunate. That is why we hoped our new creation would appreciate all that we had truly done for them.
We had promised our creation eternity once before, and we had failed. We had promised to protect them, and still they had perished.
And so now we vowed that our oath would never be broken again.
We would love our creation unconditionally for all of Time, and there was nothing we would not do to save them. In the end, we and our beautiful creation would prevail.
Nothing would ever harm their souls; nothing would ever defeat us. For we are all-powerful.
We are the Divine.
About the Author
Born October 23, 2002, Kari Siegel of Camdenton, MO is a high school senior who has always had a passion for writing. As a new author, The Divine is her first written work; however, she has many more projects planned and is excited to see what her future as a writer has in store.
Outside of her writing, Kari has played clarinet in her school’s marching band, pep band, concert band, symphonic band, and wind ensemble, as well as playing saxophone in the concert and pep bands.
She lives with her mother and younger sister, along with her two cats, Cosmo and Rocket, her dog Marlie, and four rabbits.
Kari can be found on Instagram at @karisiegel and contacted by email at [email protected].