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Return home, I whisper into the minds of every soldier. The war is ended now. You have lost enough.
And one by one, the soldiers begin gathering their weapons, their wounded, and their dead, then they disperse from the fields and the sands, back to the homes they came from, a slow but steady exodus.
And once again, I am alone in the quiet. And the weight of my actions heaps upon me. Not sadness, not that human of an emotion. But quiet. Stillness. I am done. I have ended my siblings, the fellow members of my pantheon. What shall I do next?
I feel it before I see it, the peaceful light shining over me. The Being so enormous, I feel engulfed by it and yet equal all the same.
All and yet one.
“Well?” it asks, flowing toward me. “It is done.”
“Yes,” I say. “They are ended. But why could you not end them yourselves?”
This is the question that has plagued me since I accepted the Being’s existence. Its benevolence.
It shakes the universes that are its head. “We are the natural order. We are the divine hand. We are all things—even you. That which you undertake, we undertake.”
“I am your process,” I say, finally understanding. “I am your balancing.”
“That is the nature of the Angoro.” The Being peers at me. “Well, then, have you decided? Shall we end this world or remake it?”
I consider my options, ponder them well. It takes me centuries and it takes me a moment. “We were all. And yet one,” I say.
“That is the order of things,” the Being agrees.
“We are all of us gods. And we are all part of the divine order.”
“Indeed.”
“Even them.” I look down at my friends, who are carrying my body out of the chamber. At all the armies, throwing down their weapons.
The gods are gone. And everything is chaos. The dead, the wounded—suffering. So much suffering now. It resounds into the universe, a symphony of pain.
“Even them,” the Being reaffirms, its eyes gazing back at my friends, who are currently heading toward the garden.
It already understands my intent, but then, it always has.
“I wish to share my divinity,” I say. “I wish for them to ascend as well.”
“All of them?”
“No.” I look down at my friends, seeking to understand. Who among them should ascend, and who should remain?
And then it occurs to me: that is not my decision to make. Everything is a choice. That is where my predecessors strayed.
But I will not make the same mistakes.
I orient down. “I will ask them,” I say, looking at my friends. “But first, I have one final thing to do.”
39
Mother’s corpse seems peaceful in the darkness. Now that she’s no longer inhabited by Etzli, her hair has returned to its original form and coils around her. She looks asleep again, but I know she’s not. This isn’t Mother; it’s an empty vessel, one that holds nothing of her anymore. And yet, the sight of it carries such weight, an iceberg in the Northern regions splinters under its heft.
As I flow down toward it, a presence touches mine. Bala.
The god of the pathways is here, Myter, as always, by his side. “Is it difficult,” he asks curiously, “to detach yourself from mortal longings?”
“I suppose,” I reply. “I am newly re-formed; much of me is still mortal. And I do not wish to destroy that part of myself. I wish to always remain this way.”
