THE PRIMAL
I floated through the nothingness, surrounded by darkness.
I had a distinct feeling I’d heard voices.Hisvoice. Talking to me. Telling me stories. Pleading with me as a glimmer of light appeared in the dark. But then, the pain came. I remembered that. Intense, searing pain accompanied by suffocating dread that snuffed out the light.
I…
I didsomethingto stop it.
But I couldn’t recall what the voices told me, what had caused the pain, or what I’d done.
Now, I drifted.
Wherever I was, there was no sensation of pleasure or pain. No feelings of fear or excitement, hate or love. It was as if I had been emptied of all emotion and purpose. Whatever my identity had once been, it no longer held any significance.
I was a part of the nothingness that surrounded me, and stayed like that until a light flashed, sending out streaks of silver that pierced the darkness. A pinprick of sapphire-blue appeared as the light faded, growing brighter. Bolts of stunning emerald spun from its center and twisted around the blue. Warm, rich brown followed, curling itself around the blue and green. And in the center of it all was the beginning ofeverything.
It started with an explosion that left behind small, pulsing lights of raw energy—pure essence.
That energy rippled outward, molding barren lands and mountains where nothing had existed before, and all those small, pulsing lights twinkling in the skies above were stars. Bright, brilliant stars that began to fall, descending upon lands no longer barren. They crashed into the earth where great winged creatures ruled, and in other lands separated by vast bodies of water to the west and east. Those stars embedded themselves deep within the ground, where trees sprouted from the land above them, nourished and grown by the star’s essence below. As the trees grew strong, so did the stars hidden beneath, each nurturing each other until they rose from the earth.
As I saw them with eyes that mirrored their beginnings and features and skins that seemed to change on a whim, I heard their names whispered through all the realms, through all time. Gods. Benevolent guardians. Wrathful prosecutors. The watchers of man. Elementals. The Fair Folk. Fates. The first gods. The Great Creators.
The Ancient Ones.
And I saw their wars, first with the great winged beasts that ruled the lands, and then with their creations.
Because they had begun to dream of what was to come.
Ten of the Ancients.
The dreamers.
The protectors.
I saw their flesh turn to fire as they burned off their essence to create the first Primals and understood why. They were desperate to ensure the balance of power remained untainted because their dreams had warned them of what would happen if it didn’t. A faint warmth sparked inside me and spread as creationchanged. Gods were birthed from Primal unions—gods that would one day Ascend to Primalhood.
And those ten Ancients dreamed. They saw what was coming.
The beginning of the end.
AndIsaw that the end started with its very own beginning. The birth of a young god, born of two Primals and Ascended into Primalhood.
The true Primal of Life.
His insatiable thirst for life and curiosity led to the first being of duality, strengthening the truce between those who walked the land, and the winged beasts who owned the sky.
But I saw what the Primal could not. He hadn’t created them in the ways of the Ancients. He’d given the beasts a choice. And from that singular act, something unexpected happened. For the fierce beasts felt beyond the physical, and that quality was passed on to the first being of duality.
Free will.
And free will led to choice. And from choice, emotion was born.
The warmth surged into heat as I saw the Primal of Life digging into soil soaked with a mixture of the blood of the very first draken and his. And I knew he’d spent centuries tending to the fragile life he was cultivating with his breath and will. I saw him lift a babe from the soil, their eyes a shining crimson that turned into a brilliant blue, then shifted into a mosaic of all the colors in existence before settling on a soft brown as he gazed upon the Primal. And I knew what was unknown to the Primal. That the free will from the winged beasts, which had been passed on to the draken, had then been bestowed upon the mortal.
But the ten who dreamed knew.
Even as they marveled at the tiny life he held. Even as they rejoiced, full of awe and pride, they knew it was the beginning of the end.
