The Legends of Anigma: Ethiel Archer | ONC 2023

PART XXVI

As soon as Ethiel tried to think of an answer, he felt like an insignificant nothing in an infinite everything. Who was he in that world, he thought. Was a name that can be replicated his identity? What was so special about him that gave significance to his existence or was his existence just another insignificance with no purpose in its essence?

Did anything he do or ever did even have some important impact in the fabric of reality which was itself illusionary? But if the whole of creation was made of everyone and everything, then with such logic and perspective, those everyone and everything were, in the same way, nothing. Then was the whole world nothing? Was life itself nothing? He knew, though, world and life was something and had meaning; he himself had said that a while ago. The world was all there ever was and all that was ever going to be.

Then what was it that mattered, he wondered. Was it the people who preserved the reality as they knew it? The ones called legends? Were they the only ones that mattered? Was everyone and everything else merely of little importance or maybe none?

The thoughts in his head became a stern storm stirring sufferance and it was starting to be insufferable.

His surroundings became unexistent to him and his eyes closed as he suddenly into the deep memories forgotten with the passage of time. It felt like the eye of the storm, calm and peaceful.

"Ethiel, why are you sad?" His mother's soft, calm, and consoling voice asked.

His little self sighed dully and looked out the window.

"I don't know, mom... But sometimes... I look at all the world... at those great people... I wonder if I will ever be as great as them... let alone greater..."

Alice sat beside him and cupped her hand on his head. "Oh my son, why doubt yourself?"

"This whole world... it's so big... I feel like a grain of sand in a beach..."

"Aren't we all? Even those great people." She pulled him close and hugged him.

"Yeah, but... it feels like they matter more..."

"You know what? You may not know it but you are already great. You are lovely, and you are very special. You do matter. You matter as much as them. They're not more than you and you can't be more than them. Remember Ethiel, this world, everyone and everything in it, each soul and each grain of sand are one and the same. When seen superficially, we may feel sometimes that we are separate, less significant, and all such things. But when seen at the core, at the very essence, when felt with out heart, you will realise that we all are one, just a different expression — or, you may say, a thought — of the universe, of the source. We all have a purpose and these purposes are interlinked even when they seem contradictory. It may be hard to understand right now but even if one of us was to be taken out of this cycle and clock of creation prematurely, the whole world balance will be greatly disturbed. So the truth is, regardless of the superficial implications, all of us are important and so is everything, even the smallest grain of sand. Alright?"

He nodded, not feeling sad anymore.

"And there is more thing you need to know. I don't know about the world, but you matter more than everything to me. You are my world, my everything, my Ethiel Archer." She gently and lovingly kissed his head.

It was a blissful moment.

Ethiel’s eyes presently opened, and his mental storm had cleared. The scattered dots connected at last in his head. He looked at the spirit, the existential crisis in him evaporated into thin air.

"I don't really know who I am." He said, and just as he did, he heard Tifa gasp behind him. "But I do have an idea of who I am," he continued, "Maybe I am a son trying to bring back his mother. I am a brother trying to be the parents of my little sister. Maybe I am just an incomplete, inconsolable boy craving to be complete and consoled. But more importantly, I am a soul searching for my happiness and peace in this life full of satisfactions and sufferings. I am all that I can bring to this world and will bring. I am my purpose. I am my aspirations, my actions and words, my legacy that shall echo endlessly, and the impact and consequences of all that. I am just another significant gear of decieving insignificance in this clock of creation and life, in this nothing that means everything. That's what I am, I am my mom's Ethiel Archer."

"Well answered." The cave spirit nodded. "Not the absolute truth but it shall suffice." It raised its hands and snapped its fingers.

A surge of divine light rippled from the snap and radiated throughout the chamber. The ceiling had become high as a mountain and a huge white gem hovered in its center shedding a stream of spreading light. The crystal walls moved far away and lost their glow. About them, thousands of structures resembling the base of pyramid levitated.

"This is the last trail of the Cave of Truth. I have placed the true fragment of the Pyramid of Lomeyin amongst these thousands of perfectly identical replicas. You are free to examine them if so you wish, and choose the one you conclude as the original, but beware, you only get to choose once. Simply intending to examine any of it will bring it to you."

"Oh God..." Ethiel was tired of draining his head.

"Let the trial commence."