The Brink of Creation

Chapter 6 - The Wanderer

"Are we going to die?"

The Paladin's last whisper to her friends was short-lived. It had turned to utterless fathoms, warping into the mists of fractured distance. She was suddenly alone. She drew her shortsword, The Reflector, and wielded it, baring her teeth beneath her corundum helmet, crouching against an imagined adversary. Her feet stood not on ground – rather, a walkway – a path of breathing stones. The stones whisked past her feet as if they hurtled like the myths her father spoke of, the ones about meteor showers hurtling across the night sky. Yes, the path breathed like meteor showers, an alternate show of light and darkness.

It was silent, and yet so petrifyingly loud. Her mind raced. Where are my friends?

The path turned to quiet cobble, and grass grew betwixt the pebbles. It was gentle and breezy, a wondrous spring day. Her home.

"The one without honor."

The Paladin spun, her sword still drawn, to face the accuser.

Herself.

She could not have been more than six years old, but there she was, The Paladin – before she had received her title, that is – and she held in front of her a thin willow branch, flourishing it against her older self.

"Defend yourself!" The little girl swung her flimsy branch towards The Paladin. The Paladin rose her sword to parry her swing, and quartz struck quartz as sparks flew from the striking blades. No longer fighting a little girl, The Paladin's heart fell to see herself, unscarred, in unclouded armor, and no face-covering chainmail. The Paladin's younger, bolder self yelled and struck at her older self, who barely dodged the ferocious attack. Tears flung from her face as she winced at the sight of her former days.

"Please, stop doing this, whoever you are," The Paladin gritted her teeth in rage as she kicked her opponent backwards.

"The one without honor speaks." The younger self stated adamantly, standing her ground, tall and proud. A contrast from The Paladin, who shuddered in a crouched, feral stance.

"And who does she speak to?" The Paladin fearfully addressed her younger self.

"Who I am does not matter. Who are you?" The younger self crashed her sword against The Paladin, who dodged again and swung upwards, slicing into her younger self's cheek. A mirror of her own scar. The Paladin turned her back from her younger self, unable to bear the memory.

"There is no 'you' left in me. I don't know who I am anymore."

A voice spoke, calmer and sweeter. "Then may you have lack of yourself, to the point of affliction. In the times you most wish to be yourself again, you must wish for others to be whole instead, that you may be emptied of yourself. Only then will you truly learn who you are."

The Paladin felt a kind but dreadful presence wash over her. It was soft and sincere, but unbalanced. She replied to the voice, knowing it was standing behind her. "Who are you?"

"I am Selflessness."

The meteor shower resumed, and the path broke away, revealing an abyssal hall, which stretched to endless endings. This was the birthplace of all and the inelegant severing. The Brink of Creation – The Tempestuous Schism, all one and the same. It echoed for eternity through the weatherings of its bonds. Its height boundless, it stood apart from the Empty Spaces which lay below. The darkness gnawed outside it, but the Schism was all that remained of that fateful war. Straining against the two worlds to keep them together, the Schism braced underneath The Paladin's feet, a pathway between Light and Life.

The Paladin stepped towards the other side of the humming tunnel. A figure, radiantly glowing with the brilliance of a thousand thousand golden crystals, striking fear and awe into her heart, stepped just beyond it. Was that The Scientist?