Creation: Book 3: Strandbinder Complete!

He was still sitting in his stone chair several minutes after the event. The moment the blue energy had forcibly entered his body, several things had happened at once.

Walker felt himself grow. Not a large amount, but just enough so that the last vestiges of his pants and underwear had ripped. The final surrender of his clothes had left him seated in a fully nude fashion. He'd had the Item system produce a basic blanket to cover his unmentionables, while Zeus and his sons talked about what they'd seen happen.

What they didn't know was that, aside from his growth, the alpha protocol had recognized what had occurred. It had never before recognized anything to do with the soul before. Walker looked at the notification a second time.

Unknown changes occurring.

.....Scanning.....

.....

Godeater recognized.

Beginning the Godeater system.

In Walker's overlay, a new tab had popped up. During his entire time in the alpha protocol, he'd only really had three tabs. Systems, Assistants, and his personal abilities. Seeing a fourth appear so suddenly was a bit of a shock to him, and he hadn't clicked it since it first appeared. He asked for the three Primigenials to leave so he could look a bit deeper at this sudden finding, but Zeus shook his head.

"We need to talk about this."

"Talk about what?" Walker asked, feigning confusion.

"When an Awakened dies, that's it. We bury them and that is the end of their story."

Walker canted his head, "With all of the focus on it, you know I have to ask this question. What happens to their souls?"

"They dissipate." Ares added in, "Unawakened have condensed souls. That means their personality, their memories, everything about them that has built a foundation from the time of their birth, is located in one focused location." He touched his own chest, "Awakened are different. We've not only found our souls, but we actively use them for the purpose of power and growth." Ares closed his eyes.

"Our oaths bind us, our promises kept, through battles faced, let the echoes of valor our stories beget."

After Ares finished speaking, a red glow sufficed the air around them, before slowly draining back into the environment.

"What was that?" Walker couldn't help but ask.

Zeus spoke up, "It is a part of the history of the Awakened, and is connected to each of us. We're sure there is more after that, but we sadly do not know what it is," Zeus sighed, "My father had other pieces of it, but one of my great regrets is not obtaining it from him before he was slain."

"Why did you turn red though?" He asked Ares.

"That's the color of my soul, stupid." Ares said, the somber moment fading into the air with the last of the coloring, "Each of us that say the lines feel a connection with each other....wait..." he looked confused, "Say the lines yourself."

Walker had Ares repeat them again, then did his best to do the same, "Our oaths bind us, our promises kept, through battles faced, let the echoes of valor our stories beget."

He looked up and around, but his soul didn't show itself like the god of war's did. All three of the primigenials took a step back, "What are you?" Apollo asked.

Walker shrugged, "I'm just me." He noticed the continued odd looks on each of their faces, "Now, this has been all fun and games..."

"Wait" Zeus said with a raised hand, "this is important."

"And I'm sure it is, but I have a lot to do. Please take Triton out of here and bury him somewhere. To be honest with you, I don't care where you bury him, only that you do so headfirst."

Apollo tsked, "He was still a minor god of the Greek branch."

"He was still an asshole who deserves all that comes to him."

Zeus chewed on that for a moment, "I disagree with you Walker. We will not accord him full honors as a Primigenial, but we will bury him the standard way. I see that you have no interest in further speaking on your soul, so we will depart. Thank you, Creator." He said with a nod. Ares picked up the body, and the three left the room.

Walker could see Cagna standing just outside of the door, and begged for a few moments to himself. She acceded, but didn't look happy about it.

"Finally." Walker said with a sigh as he sat down. Ever since the Primordial collider event, things had been a little whacky with his soul and he couldn't get a hold on it. His size, his speed and strength, the weird stretchiness he suddenly had. He bit his lip, then finally clicked on the Godeater system.

Hello

Welcome to the Godeater system

As a supreme warrior, you've been granted access to the final stage for the Pinnacle

We would like to thank you for your continued work in balancing the origin

One captured soul detected

Please complete the refining of your soul to access further features

The writing was different than what he was used to. Rather than words on a screen, it came through as images which his mind then translated to writing. Like mental braille that forced him to see things he could just barely put words to. When it spoke of the Pinnacle, Walker saw not planets in a starry sky, but long fields of light floating in space. Lighted constructs could be glimpsed, and creatures great and small walked, ran, and flew across the intervening spaces. It only caused more questions to appear in his mind. What the fuck was the Pinnacle? Balancing the Origin?

But, he didn't have time for more questions right now. To start to get some answers to his already burdened checklist, he needed to move forward. The fourth item on his list had arrived earlier than expected. Walker only had to take a single step to finish the second stage of his soulwork. He figured now was as good a time as any.

His nerves shivered at the thought of screwing things up, with his mind recalling Echidna's words about the consequences of failure shooting through him. But, in those same memories, he found how his successes had come to be. It wasn't dumb luck, as he'd kept thinking in the back of his mind. It was taking a chance. Risks and rewards. It was pushing at the boundaries of what was possible. All of his most recent victories in the protocol, the ones that had pushed his planning and world forward the most, were all done naturally and without thought. Be it the Foundation Stone, the Primordial collider, or the moment he applied the temporal strand directly to his body, it came down to one thing. Instinct. Not thought, but something else. He recognized that now.

Walker resolved to start trusting himself more, as Virgil had pointed out. No more doubts or second guessing. It wasn't about control, but about innate reactions to incidents that would take him further. He thought back to the war he'd fought in not so long ago. He'd survived through instinct then too.

The Creator sat up in his chair and reached out, grabbing the edges of his soul. He easily stretched it up and over the front of his head. Because he now had some enhanced malleability, rather than just stopping it there, he mentally pushed his invisible muscles to grab the other sides as well. In the past, he'd had the ability to hold one muscle perfectly, while a second could be used with a weak grasp. Now, he had no issue using three or even four without pushing himself too hard. It should have been difficult, it should have been painful, but it wasn't. It felt like this was always meant to happen, and his soul had just been waiting for him to reach this stage all of this time. He felt the need, the compulsion, to complete the final step in one move rather than the two it should've taken. An instinct.

He took it.

Feeling it was in the right place and sensing that these two spots were exactly where it needed to be, he snapped it down on both sides, pressing gently instead of the hard snaps in the past. No pulse shot out as his soul finally encapsulated his entire body, but a cascading set of pulses did fire in toward the center. Walker gritted his teeth as he felt his nerves, muscles, skin and bones light on fire. He clenched his jaw as hard as he could, attempting to alleviate the feeling of pressure that was squeezing the life out of him. His hands on the chair below him began to squeeze so tightly that the stone sides started to cave in. Powder and pieces of stone flew in all directions as he crushed it into nothing, his arms sweeping through and continuing their journey as his throne of stone became nothing but fragments and powder. Falling on his back and screaming into the ceiling, he sensed his skin slithering and moving, like snakes dragging themselves over his epidermis.

Opening his eyes for a moment was a mistake, as the world took on a film of red. The liquids in his body began to boil, and he could feel it drain from his ears, eyes, and nose. The slow moving syrupy drag burned his already inflamed skin, causing his screaming to reach a new height.

As his soul continued its voyage, ravaging his body, Walker could feel as each part of his body reached the beginnings of the final stage. He felt his soul compress his feet first, pressing down and wrapping around them tightly. His calves and thighs were next, building a crescendo of pressure as the power continued unabated. It felt like the first time he snapped each part of his soul all over again, with audible bangs firing inside of him at any given moment. Walker punched the floor next to him as his hips completed, creating a small crater where seamless stone could be viewed only a moment before.

The transformation mercilessly continued dragging itself across him, and he began to feel unbelievable pain streaking through his mind. As if a hundred headaches had held a meeting and decided now was the time to punish him for his weaknesses. Walker's vision blacked out, and a scene appeared in front of him as the detonations in his chest reached his neck and beyond.

He saw his oath from months ago replay for him from his own perspective. He was looking at a much smaller Virgil with a resolute posture in his bearing, righteousness blazing in his eyes..

We must hold ourselves to a higher ideal, a better version of what we are now.

I choose to be not all-powerful, or all-knowing, but to learn from the experiences that are forthcoming, and grant mercy to those who have erred and need another chance to find themselves, deep within.

Walker saw himself killing Triton just a moment ago. A flash of pain shot through him, fork tines stabbing into his brain.

It isn't enough to just survive the Alpha Protocol.

He saw his Founders running and training. Watched his meetings with them where he didn't really attempt to get to know them, just asked a few simple questions, named them, and shoved them out. Another stab struck his mind.

More of these moments since his Oath came forward unbidden. He watched his early restriction of the starter monsters, where Rimi became quite upset. He saw himself limiting Neus in his work with the Territory system, and Cagna in her chair, staring at the sky. He saw his own flightyness, his problematic focus of shifting from one goal to the next without checking in on his people, asking about them, caring for them. He watched from the outside as he became colder, and harder. His treatment of Dionysus and his false attempt at calming himself with breathing exercises thereafter. His initial terrifying of Cagna, and the bandaid hug provided. He knew now, in reflection, that the hug was given through the selfishness of needing to continue moving forward. Of progressing for progress's sake. Of using her as a tool, rather than friend and family.

I choose, now, to become a Creator who feels for his people.

Lucy looking up at him with joy for having her arm replaced. Walker looked down at her as a problem that was a fixed.

I choose to be not all-powerful, or all-knowing, but to learn from the experiences that are forthcoming, and grant mercy to those who have erred and need another chance to find themselves, deep within.

Walker saw the moment he decided he needed to "act" like a Creator. Like a God.

Nothing and no one should be judged by a singular moment, but by the moments that come together to form a picture of who you are.

Images of himself shot through, bringing with it all of his choices in the protocol until now. For a brief pause in pain, he recognized what was happening. The first movement forced him to look at his past, to see who he was and how he had come to be, mistakes and all. All of his errors had been thrown at him in a cascading vision of who he was in the past. In this movement, it showed who he currently was, and how well he had held up his oath thus far. With each violation, or as close as he had come to making them, he was being punished for doing so. Triton's death continued to hammer him time and again, and he was silently grateful that he had completed the second stage before more time had gone by.

As he became accustomed to the pain, as much as a person could for something stabbing their brain every few seconds, he had fleeting thoughts on all of the animals and creatures he had shot into space and their ultimately quick deaths. His oath hadn't been impacted by those, and he wasn't sure why.

There were some good moments. His times with Athena, which he relished viewing even from an outside perspective. The arguments he'd held with his assistants from time to time, debates that lasted far longer than they needed to as he just enjoyed the fight. But ultimately, he found himself violating the spirit of his oath, rather than the exact wording. It was a troubling realization.

He sensed that the shaping of his mind was completing its final step, a phase he didn't know or understand. Echidna and the other Primigenials, no matter how he asked, wouldn't tell him what happened when you first entered the transformative stage. Like the odd oath Ares showed him not so long ago, the old Earth gods continued to have large secrets that only they held.

Walker felt as the last blast fired, accompanied by a hazy image of a subsystem assistant he'd never met, then it was blissfully over. He opened his eyes, and everything was darkness except for one thing that commanded his attention. The Tree of the Gods sat in front of him, its odd striated bark stretching unimaginably high into space. Rather than the branches he had grown used to seeing, each held thrones on differing foundations.

The first branch was made of clouds, and all of its thrones were glaringly empty. The second branch above it was formed of snow and Ice, with the three vacated thrones. He understood that the first branch had to be empty because all of the Greeks had already been expelled from their green prison. That'd make the snow and ice branch the Nordic one. Five grand seats followed the empty spots, each with a sitting occupant. The empty thrones looked just as expected, large chairs representing grandeur and power, but the thrones of those seated sparked and pulsed with different elements and colors. The first throne that followed showed a giant of a man, sitting with a palm out holding his chin as he stared into the unknown. His seat threw out pulses of green filled with images of leaves and rocks.

The two Nordic gods that followed sat in thrones that sent out pulses of light and darkness, constantly contrasting while the man and woman's faces were both held in what Walker could only describe as tranquil.

Looking up, the next branch was formed of Water, a lazy river streaming over the side, ever more arriving from an unseeable source. The first throne could have been built from the sun itself, the blinding light splashing upon the rest of his branch. The man sitting there wore a headdress in the shape of a Falcon, and as Walker looked at him, the Egyptian prime looked down and met his eyes.

The feeling unnerved the Creator, who quickly looked up, and found branches reaching straight into the sky.

Some were made of a beautiful green stone, and others were built on the peak of a mountain, with two sharp slopes holding waiting occupants. As he looked up higher, the branches became more esoteric, with one showing bushes growing stars, rather than fruit, and yet another being made of roaming and stampeding animals, constantly moving the thrones as the occupants held their seats.

Each Primigenial was biding their time for a chance at arriving on Sonata. An opportunity to escape this prison that they'd had been entrapped in for so very long. Focusing his eyes, he could even spy some of the gods speaking down and up to each other, with one particularly energetic goddess on a black throne shaking a fist at another on a throne of dull gray metal.

It was a lot to take in, and Walker felt the burden settle onto his shoulders as he gained a piece of unexpected insight. These were his people just as much as the sapients and monsters of Symphony. They relied on him to help them. They needed him for an escape, and a chance at not just a new life, but life in general. When that thought pushed itself forward, and he nodded his head in acceptance, the vision of himself standing in front of the tree pushed back, shoving it into the distance.

A spark of light fell from the darkness in a lackadaisical fashion, smoothing sailing on unseen winds left and right, drifting, until it dropped right in front of him.

A flash expelled the darkness around him, and a woman appeared, with Walker's immediate area changing on her physical revelation.

They stood in a plain white area with lines of grout intersecting the room around them in consistently changing geometric shapes. Walker looked down at her, as she couldn't be much taller than three feet. As she looked up and had the same realization, she snapped her fingers.

A towering woman with a distinct lack of hair stood looking down at him, a smile ghosting across her face.

They looked at each other for a long period, neither breaking the silence. Walker spent the time counting the minutes, visualizing a ticking timer in his mind, while still maintaining eye contact. He'd long ago resolved to never lose this type of battle with another person, and his time teaching had trained him well in the art of silent watching.

Time crept by until even Walker wasn't sure how much had passed. Finally, the woman heaved a sigh with her massive shoulders and snapped her fingers again. She stood exactly his height as the purple-eyed woman said, "You're no fun."

Walker smiled in response, "Sorry about that."

She looked around, "Aren't you surprised to be here? Are you nervous?"

He shrugged, "Worst thing that could happen is I die. Either I do, or I don't. What is there to be nervous about?", he put his arms behind his back, "I once heard a quote from a wise man, "If there's a solution to the problem, why worry? If there's no solution to the problem, why worry?"

"I see."

"Besides-"

"There are worse things than dying, Godeater."

Walker wasn't surprised by the interruption, but he was surprised by the fact that she knew that specific word, "What do you mean?"

"Ah, so you don't deny it? Interesting," In a grand show, she put her arms behind her back, mimicking him, "I wonder. What did you call your religion?"

Not put off by her ignoring his question, he answered, "Shouldn't you know this from the stalker's watching my memories?"

"Enlighten me." She said with a smile.

"The Unending Summit."

"The Unending Summit, huh?" she said, tasting the name, "That's much better than some I've heard before, and much worse than others. Why not-." She said a series of words he didn't follow.

For the first time, his universal translator didn't help him out, "What was that? My translator wasn't working."

"That pesky thing wouldn't understand an Origin language."

"Origin?" He said, remembering what the system had stated earlier, "You know what the Origin is?"

"Hahahahahhaa." She laughed, pulling her arms from behind her back to cover her mouth, "You juniors. You all think you're so wise and smart. As if this tiny piece of the Omniverse is willing to give you power. Look, just look around!" She yelled, her personality doing a one-eighty as she spread her hands out to encompass the room, "There's nothing here! Nothing!"

"Please-"

"It's a blank slate!" She said, ignoring him, "It's empty! And I have to rely on you? A Godeater of all things?"

"Just explain-"

She shook her head, "No."

That put his back up, "At least tell me your-"

"No."

"Why are you-"

"No."

Walker continued his attempts, but no matter what he said, she just shook her head, said no, or didn't respond at all. He likened it to dealing with a petulant child who didn't get the flavor of ice cream she wanted. He considered force for only a moment, however, he chose not to go that route. Mostly because it likely wouldn't help his situation where he was trapped in a construct he didn't understand, but also because she hadn't attacked him. Just denied his answers. Eventually, he sat down and started to mentally go over what he'd seen during his third-stage visions.

On his fourth run-through, after he decided to start creating daily routines and triaged the issues he was facing, he noticed the bald woman sitting across from him.

"How long-"

"No."

Shrugging, he went back to working on his issues. He spent an hour going through his memories and trying to imprint everything he'd said to his sapients, that way it would be fresh and easily brought up. When he thought about it, the Founders needed to sleep, so that meant he wouldn't have to deal with them for anywhere between seven to eight hours a day. No, deal with them wasn't right. He had to stop thinking that way. He wouldn't get to spend time with them. There was power in words.

Diction maketh man.

Eight hours to work on backend systems and design future ones wasn't a lot of time. What would he even do with the Founders either way? They already had all of the trainers they needed. He didn't want to step in and mess up whatever programs the Assistants and Primigenials already had going.

He scratched his chin, considering his previous thoughts about "seeming" like a Creator. That part of the vision was right. Walker thought about why he'd decided that acting in such a way was the correct path. He had not had a perfect run in the alpha protocol. Acting like he knew everything wasn't going to magically make him a better Creator. Hubris was the downfall of many powerful men. Maybe his brain was getting in the way of things. Wasn't that why the council decided they needed less geni-.

The bald woman started to pulse, first blue, then black, before landing on green. As he watched, her eyes opened and the same colors could be seen flashing within her reflecting irises.

"I see." She said, finally standing up. "So you're not part of them after all."

"Who?"

"We passed down the term Evolvers to our progeny, so they would know it when they saw it." She said, finally giving him an answer.

"I've heard that word before from one of the Primigenials." Walker pointed out.

She snapped her fingers and the Tree of the Gods reappeared, "You mean these younglings? Yes. They'd be the 10th line if I'm not mistaken." Waving a hand, the tree zoomed in on the branch formed from the beautiful green stone he'd seen before. "These are particularly impulsive. That's what happens when you dilute the well."

"Dilute?"

"They really told you nothing, did they. it's not surprising with how the awakened grapevine works," She said with a shake of her head, "Let me guess. They only told you about the war, but not why it was started. They mentioned Alma in bits and pieces, starting your journey-"

"The soul."

"A soul." She corrected, "The original Awakened and the mother and father of us all."

"What?"

"One soul merged with another, long long ago. Alma and her brother, the original Awakened. They created something in the Origin. The beginning of all things soul-related. The well from which all Awakened came from. This part of the Omniverse-"

"Rendition 4AA"

She nodded, "Just so. It's only a small small piece of the greater whole. Your Alpha Protocol Council is small pickings, scumbags throwing entities into the grinder in the hope that they'll find something that allows them to claw back to their place in the Origin, and you don't have a lot of time."

Walker's head twitched a little at that, "What do you mean?"

"You've been touched kiddo," She said, appearing before him and flicking his forehead. A pulse of black, blue, and green came out, "You've gained a piece of the origin. The original gunk that powers everything in this section of the Evolvers multiverse. It came with requirements. Things that must be done for the inhabitant to survive." She looked up at the sky, "In the origin, when the war was still being fought through bloodshed rather than politics, the Evolvers created a series of warriors who fed on the awakened to empower themselves. Think about it, an evolver with their powerfully curated abilities, also having the strength and body of an empowered Awakened. But the strength came at a great cost."

She took two steps away as he asked, "What cost?"

"In the old times, a Godeater needed to feed on ten awakened, decently powerful ones at that, before the parasite they'd gained would be satiated enough to slumber."

"Parasite?"

She laughed, "Oh my yes. Only, you don't have the standard deal here. You took in an unregulated amount of Origin material, so much that even the old system has awakened in this rendition, as they call it." She bit her lip as she looked at him, "I'm afraid you won't need ten awakened to satisfy that monster."

"What will I need?" Walker asked.

"Thousands."