The next few weeks were a whirlwind, and then things only got crazier. World War Three level crazier. Yeah, you heard that right. We went to war with China and a number of other nations who had invaded their neighbors. It was a bit personal for me, since they’d invaded Japan and interrupted one of the mangas I’d gotten into since my return.
The war ended less than a month after it started. Which isn’t exactly surprising, considering the Night Witches I’d built had proved even more effective than expected, completely crippling the Chinese navy in less than six hours. Yeah, SIX HOURS. Not bad for twelve fighters, though they thought we had dozens more, since they were so fast.
The US began regulating magic, leaning on my knowledge of what was possible to help decide on policy. Meanwhile, I was working on rebuilding the world and providing everyone I could with free, nearly limitless energy.
I did good work, and in the process, made a ton of money, which I immediately used to make no-interest loans to countries that needed it. At some point, for my work, someone nominated me for sainthood, which only failed despite my popularity because I pointed out that I needed to be dead to be eligible, and that wasn’t gonna happen anytime soon.
Or ever, since Samantha had provided me with a Sun Orchid as part of my attempts to give Kira a new body. Through a lab accident that I’m sure wasn’t an accident, somehow I caused everyone in the building at the time to become immortal, which meant Aurora, Kira, me and our infant daughter Lyriana, though I suspect the latter was never mortal to begin with. More on that later.
Almost twenty years after I returned, Earth was invaded by aliens. I always suspected that Lamashtu had pointed them in our direction because of how pissed at me she was, but could never prove it. Either way, it was one of humanity’s darkest hours. We fought and eventually won, but only by the skin of our teeth.
Meanwhile, they’d harvested billions of humans to use as CPUs for their computers since they were too afraid of AI to use proper computers. Of course, they were proved right since Juiz was the cause of their downfall.
Well, I helped. We reconfigured the telepathic interface to hack into their communication signal, and then flooded their minds with the collective memes of the human race. We played Trololo over the speakers of every human vehicle that took part in taking them down while their shields were disabled by Juiz.
That more or less united the survivors. They wanted me to be in charge, which I refused. I helped the world build a new government, which I asked to add an amendment to their constitution forbidding me from holding national political office explicitly.
Of course, the war had revealed my secret identity as the mage who had fought Merlin, so I lied about how I knew the information from Rhoslyn, which I attributed to a diary. That made my guardian angel happy, since it kept the information of past lives a secret for a while longer.
The truth of the twelve came to light when BasedFishGoat died – at the ripe old age of one thousand twenty three thanks to my new longevity treatment – and became the first of what were called “The Transcended”, souls that had evolved enough to become nearly like gods, though not quite. Basically, he was the first Q, which I know is a reference no one who could be reading this now would ever get.
In time, others joined him. Kira and I were the last, though Kira’s fate was much stranger, though I get ahead of myself.
Aurora and I remained together through millions of years. Whoever says love can’t last through eterntiy is lying. It almost never does, but I love her even more than I did when we were first wed. Ask me again in another ten million years.
We’ve had thousands of children in that time, and while we loved all of them, only a few were remarkable in the historical sense. So let’s start with the first. Lyriana, our first born child and the only Great Old One to come from Earthling stock.
Yeah, our eldest daughter is basically Cthulhu. That was the gift Samantha gave. She’s undying and her mind is alien, defined most by an apparent hunger for new experiences. She’s still more or less human – despite being able to survive literally any environment, from the depths of space to the heart of a star – so you won’t lose any sanity points just by hanging out with her, but unless you’re billions of years old and some kind of semi-god, then I wouldn’t suggest reading her mind. You might see some of the things she’s seen, and they might drive you mad.
All in all, though, she’s still a good kid. And I mean that. She’s done a lot of good for the universe, but she’s permanently nineteen, with the maturity that comes with that age. Try as I might, I have trouble getting her to understand long term consequences.
For instance, there was this one time she almost created the Tyranid swarm. Her reasons were good. Her younger brother had screwed something up – more on that in a moment – and she was trying to fix it. But they would have ultimately been a much worse problem.
So now, I do what I can to distract her so she doesn’t do something similar.
The next I need to mention is her brother, Corven. He was born tens of thousands of years later, and had what was quite possibly the universe’s greatest emo phase ever, barring perhaps only Zon Kuthon. Yeah. We tried to help him, but he continued down a completely nihilistic path until one day he surprised even us.
You see, he lured Urgathoa, the goddess of undeath, to a remote planet. I’m not sure how. But I do know that what he did next was cause the system’s star to go supernova, killing the goddess. He then stole her power and used it to create an army of the dead to snuff out all life throughout the cosmos.
Sometimes I wonder if I should have hugged him more when he was little or something.
When we discovered what he’d done, Aurora led humanity’s forces against him. Meanwhile, I discovered that Lyriana was also trying to stop him in her own way. So I was forced to take the Rangers – now a multi-galactic peacekeeping force – to destroy her creation. To her credit, she wasn’t upset when I explained why I needed to destroy them. She just apologized, admitting she hadn’t thought about the possible outcomes. Kind of like Geo, that child. His whole cult thing didn’t turn out well for him, though that’s a story for another time.
Aurora fought our son in a climactic battle on a dying world. They fought for three days. When the sun rose on the third day, she finally managed to defeat him, cutting down our beloved child. He died in her arms, and in that moment, by wife gained the gift of godhood herself. She gained the domains of Life, and Protection, as well as others.
We mourned for a long time over his loss, but eventually carried on with our lives. In time, other children were born. Which leads to the third and final child of historical note. Well, they were twins, Avril and Henri – I was going through a French naming phase – and they were the only children I gave birth to. Yeah, me. My wife’s a goddess, you think we couldn’t swap genders or something?
Anyway, Henri screwed up, making a deal with a devil. And, as these things go, it took his soul. Avril, my dear little Hellrazer, didn’t take that well. She traveled the worlds of the Kingdom of Humanity, gathering forces. Eventually, she created a grand army and impressive fleet, which she simply called “The Grand Crusade”.
Then she took that force, and invaded Hell. Eventually they were pushed back, but not before they burned roughly eighty percent of Hell to the ground. Yeah, you heard that right. THEY. BURNED. HELL.
The Crusade, having made their point, then began traveling the cosmos, torching all fiendish incursions, from Hell Worlds to Wound Worlds – entire planets consumed by the World Wounds like that Golarion once suffered. The only thing that stopped them was Rovagug getting free.
Before I talk about that, let me tell you about the Children of Earth, as we came to be known. You see, our technology was not only more advanced than anything else in the galaxy, it was so utterly different in some ways as to seem impossible to other races. We were the only race to use proper Warp Drive, while others used hyperspace and gate technology, for instance. We were also the only race to use Zero Point energy. Of course, the latter is probably the reason for the former.
We were generally peaceful, but when we got serious, it was terrifying. The Children of Earth were also known as The Lords of War for our unstoppable fleets and terrifying soldiers. So it was that when Rovagug got free, we were the second line of defense against him.
No, I don’t know how he got free. Some suspect Asmodeus set him free as retaliation for the Crusade, though his cage might have gotten damaged when Golarion disappeared from the universe for a time, and he worked himself free.
No matter how it happened, the other gods banded together against him. Perhaps, had those few who abstained pitched in, he could have been destroyed. But they didn’t. And most of the remaining gods perished in the climactic battle that nearly tore the universe apart.
In a desperate, last ditch effort, our god, backed by Aurora and a fleet of human ships, managed not to kill Rovagug, but move him to another galaxy far from our own, locking his ability to teleport himself. If he wanted to get to us, he would have to fly through space. That would buy us time.
And we needed to buy time to prepare. Our god had died in the effort and Aurora nearly died with him. But there was an ancient prophecy. “In the flow of time, I see that one day, the God of Destruction will loose himself from his prison. The other gods of the cosmos will try to defeat him, but they will fail, due to a lack of trust and infighting. If that happens, it will remain up to the Children of Earth, whose only hope lay with harnessing the Fires of Creation. If they succeed, they may indeed stop Destruction’s rampage, but at great cost.”
Using our powerful technology, we threw everything we could think at him. We caused an entire galaxy’s stars to simultaneously supernova, harnessing their energy to make a powerful beam that threatened to tear reality itself asunder. We also tried making a powerful gun capable of firing supermassive black holes – the kind that are usually found at the heart of a galaxy – at FTL speed.
We hit him with each, and they only slowed him down for a few decades while he repaired the damage to his body. We hit him with both – that’s two galaxies we sacrificed just to TRY to stop him – and it only bought us a mere century.
In the end, he made it back to our galaxy. Star by star, the lights in the sky began to blink out – FTL sensors, obviously – and we knew he was coming. He was making a near beeline for Earth, stopping only to take out whatever was within his grasp. Our fleets hounded him, like gnats biting at a great beast.
He reached the solar system and found the remaining might of Earth’s fleet’s waiting for him with Kira in command, along with Aurora, Lyriana and Samantha standing against him beside the eleven transcended beings. And they fought merely to buy me time.
I stood on the bridge of the great space station between Earth and Mars, ready for our destruction, knowing that no matter what happened today, the fate of the universe was sealed. Either we failed and everything would die, or we’d succeed and everything would die, Rovagug along with us.
I activated a device that would allow my words to reach every living being throughout the universe. “To everyone, everywhere. The gods have failed to stop the coming destruction. The Children of Earth have failed to stop the coming destruction. So it comes that we make the greatest sacrifice, our existence and the existence of all of you for the vague hope that the peoples of the next universe will be spared our same fate. I’m sorry.” Then I began to sing, a song forgotten to all but a few. It seemed fitting that I would usher the end of existence with music from a game.
“War born of strife, these trials persuade us not
Words without sound, these lies betray our thoughts
Mired by a plague of doubt, the Land, she mourns
Judgement binds all we hold to a memory of scorn
Tell us why, given Life, we are meant to die, helpless in our cries?”
“Kyle, you have to do it now!” Kira said through telepathy. “He’s figured out what we’re doing and he’s heading straight for you! I’ll buy you all the time I can!”
“Samantha, do it now,” I said, giving the signal for my old friend to drag my wife and eldest daughter to a demiplane shielded against what would come. Aurora would be angry with me, but I had to keep them both safe. Then I activated the device, Rovagug mere seconds from me.
Time froze for a mere moment, and then, in mere moments, the entire universe collapsed into a microsingularity centered at my location. The device we had created had caused the entire universe to return to the primordial state, like it was before the Big Bang.
Surrounding the burning primordial singularity stood twelve beings, the Transcended. I had taken my place beside them. Kira was nowhere to be seen.
A small number of gods had survived by being on other planes, but we were all that remained of life in the material plane, which now consisted of a single, very hot point – the Fires of Creation.
“It is done,” Virgo said.
“We have prevailed,” Cancer agreed.
“But the cost,” Aquarius lamented.
“Those who will live in the new universe will honor their sacrifice,” Sagittarius said.
“We must not celebrate early,” Capricorn cautioned.
“Yes, we thought him defeated twice before,” Taurus agreed.
“Surely he could not have survived,” Leo argued.
“We have surely bested him,” Aries agreed.
“Then why do I feel uneasy?” Pisces asked.
“Yes, I sense a darkness within,” Libra added.
“Then what can we do?” Scorpio asked.
“We haven’t used the Fires of Creation yet,” I said.
“Explain, Gemini,” Libra said to me.
“We’ve destroyed the universe. That is his power, destruction. We can only finally end him with a powerful act of creation.”
“What do you have in mind?” Aquarius asked.
“Genesis,” I said.
The others exchanged glances. “Agreed. We must end the equilibrium, so that the universe may be born anew,” Virgo said. “But how?”
“He must do it,” Samantha said, having appeared by my side. “His twin has become intertwined with the protouniverse, and will become its consciousness. He need only speak the words and the universe will begin anew. And I will join her forever, the Dreamer, as Azathoth was before me.”
Kira was the universe now? “You’re sure?” I asked.
“It was how it was meant to be. Do it now, before the dark god manages to regain consciousness.”
“I will remember this always,” I said as I hugged her. Then I spoke the words.
“Let there be light.”
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