I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 488: The Giant Hand That Molded a Star

The west of the Land of Light was for the most part unsettled wilderness, land where almost no foot had ever fallen. Dense jungle covered it, dotted everywhere with the lairs of monstrous beasts, and any number of active volcanoes could still be seen smoking.

A streak of white light spun across the sky and dropped out of the heavens onto the shore.

The light resolved into a winged figure in human shape, gazing out toward the far side of the sea.

Confusion filled the newcomer's eyes.

"How could that meteor have flown a distance such as this?"

Sky Messenger Lomier had nearly crossed most of the Land of Light in search of it. That distance alone was nothing like normal, and he could not work out how that meteor could have flown so impossibly far.

A part of him hesitated.

"Do I go on after it, or do I turn back?"

Even the winged people carried some nameless fear of the sea.

But in the end, Lomier decided to press on and take one more look. If he truly could not find it, he would return to report to the Sacred Mountain of Light.

White wings spread wide, and the sky messenger flew on into the depths of the sea.

He held to the direction he had fixed on and flew on and on, but never once did he feel the meteor's power again, that strong pull.

Just as the thought of turning back began to rise in him, he blundered without meaning to into an unknown domain.

Lomier pulled up out of his headlong flight at once, beating his wings to hover in midair, confusion written in his eyes.

"What is happening here?"

He had realized, in the instant just past, that the sun was gone from overhead.

He now stood in a dark domain with no visible end.

Overhead lay a sea of stars, the Milky Way. In the distance rose ridge after ridge of towering mountains, their ridgelines giving off a deep, cold glow.

"The sun has vanished?"

Startled, he fell back a short distance without meaning to, and in just that short distance sunlight fell once more across his snow-white wings.

Understanding struck him. He stood at the very boundary between light and dark and reached a hand into the darkness.

His hand simply vanished.

He tried again and again, until he was certain of it. Something stood before him, a barrier vast beyond all measure, or a domain, or something else entirely.

A step forward and a step back were like standing in two different worlds.

Forward lay the deep of the night sky. Back lay clear skies above a sea of clouds.

He had no way of knowing that this was the domain of the Ruhe Great God's Star of Death.

"What manner of place is this?"

Never had Lomier imagined the world could hold a place like this, and he hung there in the sky, turning it over for a long while.

In the end, Lomier went in anyway. He had chased that meteor for so long. He could not simply retreat now, not without even trying, not at the very last moment.

Besides, he was certain he had found the right place. The meteor must have fallen right here.

Lomier flew into that fantastical night sky, heading toward the range of mountains rising and falling before him.

As he flew, he gazed off into the distance.

"There is a city upon that mountain!"

"Could people once have lived here?"

"That such a place should lie west of the Land of Light, and that we never once knew of it."

The sky messenger stared at the very heart of that starlit mountain range, at the outline of the ancient city, but as he flew on, he pitched suddenly out of the sky.

Lomier's wings beat fast as he looked down, his whole face changing.

"There is something."

"Something below is dragging me down toward the earth?"

All at once it came to him. This was the very power of that meteor.

Before, though, it had pulled them up toward the sky. Now it pulled him down toward the earth.

The sky messenger flailed his wings, flying in a drunken stagger, lower and lower.

Before long, he touched the ground, his wings beating uselessly at the air.

Now Lomier could only struggle along the ground on foot. No matter what he tried, he could not get back into the air.

Crack!

With that sharp crack, Lomier crashed to the ground, and found he could not even crawl back up.

Even now, Lomier had not yet shown any sign of panic. He supposed he must have entered the meteor's range of influence, which meant he had found it after all.

Whatever it was, it was not a living thing, at least not one that would come out and kill him.

If he could just stay calm and find a way, he should be able to break free.

With great effort he reached a hand toward his own chest, as if to draw out some item, but at that moment a rumbling came from far off.

A massive mound of earth rose up from beneath the ground, climbing higher and higher.

As the mound rose, the gravity pressing down on Lomier grew heavier and heavier, until he was slammed flat against the ground once more, unable even to move his hand.

It was a Child of the Star of Death.

Now Lomier truly panicked, as something dawned on him all at once.

"No."

"It is alive?"

As the creature drew nearer the surface, its warped force field tore the ground apart, bending and layering the air and the light together.

Lomier called up his own power. Warped white light took shape as a Seal Spirit, wrapping itself around him, its outstretched wings folding in to shield him.

But before the Seal Spirit's wings could close, the Child of the Star of Death's force field shattered its spirit-form in an instant, and Lomier's seal imprint dissolved into scattered points of white light.

Lomier lay flat on the ground, watching the mound before him rise higher and higher.

His eyes trembled, his fingers shook, and his face turned ashen white.

That terrible force field looked ready to crush Lomier into a mass of pulp, to leave him dead beneath this beautiful, deep night sky.

At that moment, beams of light fell from the sky, one after another.

Six figures appeared beneath the mound, and a powerful force spread outward with them at its heart, sealing off the Child of the Star of Death's innate force field.

Lomier lay on the ground, unable to move at all.

All he could do was turn his face to watch one of the figures ahead of him.

The figure stood half turned toward him, a blazing radiance seeming to pour from its body, a power belonging to the divine unfurling and surging through the sky and the world.

"Who is that?"

"Who has saved me?"

Moments ago he had not been able to rise from the ground at all. Only now did Lomier break free of that terrible force and climb to his feet, gasping for breath.

Trembling all over, he knelt on the ground and lifted his head.

At last he saw the faces of those who had come.

The six who had descended beneath that night sky wore miracle vestments woven of Divine Weave, and on their backs was the emblem of God's Form, arms spread wide.

The six of them possessed God's Form themselves.

But in Lomier's transcendent sight, mythic power surged from these six beings. Their Mythic Domain blanketed the whole land, and it was this very Domain that had canceled out the power of that mature Child of the Star of Death.

Looking on, Lomier could faintly make out behind them the vision of a divine kingdom descending into the mortal world.

He caught a hazy glimpse of a vast, silver silhouette of God's Form, piercing through the dome of the sky and the sea of clouds, embracing the whole world. Within its body turned six enormous vortices, devouring power from beyond the divine kingdom.

But before he could make it out clearly, a figure stepped closer, looming over him, blocking his view of that shadow.

All at once Lomier understood what these beings that had saved him truly were.

"You... are gods?"

The ones who had come were witch doctors. Only the six of them together counted as a single myth. In some sense, they shared a single body, shared a single wisdom and a single divine kingdom. In this way, they could also be counted as six different forms and personas of one divine being.

At the foot of the towering peak, the witch doctors spoke together, as one voice.

"Sky messenger of the winged people, what brings you to this place?"

Six people spoke, and yet their voices overlapped completely into one, without the slightest discrepancy.

Lomier lowered his head. His mind was in complete disarray.

He had never imagined that chasing a meteor would lead him to stumble into some bounded realm, only to find himself now standing before gods.

"O gods, it was never my intent to trespass into your domain."

"I came in pursuit of a meteor, and I strayed in here by mistake."

The moment the witch doctors heard Lomier say this, they understood exactly what he meant by the meteor.

The Skull Witch Doctor said, "So it is the Gravity Stone you have come looking for."

The Torso Witch Doctor added, "That was no meteor, sky messenger of the winged people."

The Right Hand Witch Doctor went on, "That stone came flying from Ruhe Beast Island. A god reached out a hand from far away and plucked it across."

The Right Leg Witch Doctor finished, "A true meteor, now, should come down from beyond the heavens."

The witch doctors spoke one after another, telling Lomier the truth of it.

Lomier was struck dumb for a moment. He could not understand what these gods meant, could not understand why a group of gods would call some other being a god.

"A god?"

"Ruhe Beast Island?"

The only part of it he had truly understood was that one name, Ruhe Beast Island.

Ruhe Beast Island lay an unimaginable distance from the Land of Light, and yet these divine beings before him were telling him that some other being had reached out a hand and snatched a stone from clear across the other side of the world.

That single reaching hand had become the meteor they had all seen.

The witch doctors offered no explanation. Instead, they looked at Lomier with curiosity.

They could not see why this sky messenger had come rushing across so vast a distance, all to chase down that one "meteor."

"Sky messenger!"

"What do you want with a Gravity Stone?"

"All for one stone, and you do not even know what it does."

"And for that you crossed the whole of the Land of Light."

The witch doctors spoke one line apiece, a string of questions that sounded disjointed and yet somehow linked up perfectly.

Lomier answered earnestly, "That stone holds a tremendous power, a power that can draw whole mountains of rock up into the sky. We wish to find it, and with it raise the Sacred Mountain of Light into the heavens."

The witch doctors laughed, thinking this sky messenger before them hopelessly muddled.

"So you mean to raise a mountain into the sky with a Gravity Stone."

"Then it is a Floating Stone you ought to be looking for."

"No, that is not right. A Gravity Stone is needed as well."

"A Floating Stone's force field warps gravity and cancels it away entirely, and yet a place with no gravity at all will not serve either. So a Gravity Stone is needed still, to make the gravity and hold it steady."

"The god has said that the two are, in truth, one and the same power. Neither can do without the other."

The witch doctors went on speaking, one line after another, their words falling into Lomier's ears.

As they spoke, all six figures, radiant with mythic light and bearing a divine kingdom's descent into the mortal world, turned together before Lomier's eyes to look off into the distance, toward the very heart of the Star Night Mountain Range.

"It is about to begin."

The six voices merged once more, and they spoke to Lomier together, as one.

"Sky messenger of the winged people, the Great God is about to show forth its true body. You must be gone from here at once."

Lomier had no idea what they meant.

"The Great God? What is a Great God?"

The witch doctors did not tell him what the Great God was. They only told him this.

"The moment the Great God opens its eyes, should you meet its gaze, or come too near to it, your very shape will be reversed past all undoing."

"Your spirituality will be eaten away along with it. Though you are a sky messenger who wields the Power of Spirituality, you would never find your way back to your own true face again."

"None may look directly upon a god's true form. Has your King of the Sky Messengers never told you so?"

The witch doctors raised a hand, and a powerful force shoved the sky messenger out of the Star Night Mountain Range, pushing him back out of the darkness and into the light once more, back beneath blue sky and open sea.

Everything before his eyes vanished, and only that overlapping voice went on echoing through Lomier's mind.

"Run, now!"

"Fly back to where you came from."

"Do not look back. Fly on, and do not stop."

All at once, an invisible wave came trembling through the air.

Hmmmm~

It was as though something had made a sound at a frequency no mortal ear could hear.

A fierce panic welled up in Lomier's heart in an instant. Fear devoured his mind and overwhelmed his reason.

"Run!"

"Get away from here. Get away from here."

"Get away from here, now."

"Danger."

In an instant, that feeling, that instinct, took control of his body.

There was no need for the witch doctors to say another word. He beat his wings wildly and flew off into the distance, as fast as he could possibly go.

---

Having sent off the little sky messenger who had blundered into the Star Night Mountain Range, the witch doctors withdrew their divine kingdom's domain at once, and the terrible gravity field returned to blanket the land.

The Child of the Star of Death slowly sank back into the earth, fading gradually from sight.

The six figures returned to the Pottery Temple and knelt beneath the Altar, as though welcoming the descent of some great being.

At that moment, the light of the God's Moon in the heavens poured down, bathing the pottery statue atop the Altar, and within that moonlight a human silhouette slowly began to take shape.

Inside the Pottery Temple, Shelly and Hila both turned to look toward that moonlight at once.

Hila broke into a smile.

"God has come."

Shelly cried out, thrilled, "God, come and look, quick! I'm about to lift the Big Meteor up into the sky!"

The silhouette in the moonlight resolved little by little into a black-haired man draped in a robe of pure white, and He opened His eyes slowly. They too were that same black.

Inside the temple, the Void's Mold Mother lay prostrate beneath the statue of God Yinsai, cast in white pottery, while Shelly sat atop the Altar, swinging her legs as she fiddled with her glass tank.

As God Yinsai descended, the Life Sovereign reached out a hand as well, aiming it at the Star Night Mountain Range within the world inside the tank.

In an instant, a shadow fell across the boundless heavens above, blotting out the sun.

The sky darkened at once, and darkness swallowed the whole of the Land of Light.

The power of that palm seized the vast Star Night Mountain Range, and the range let out a deep, rolling roar.

Then, bit by bit, that boundless mountain range could be seen tearing free of the earth, floating up toward the heights.

It only looked as though it were floating.

In truth, it was held fast in Shelly's hand, being torn from the earth and pulled out toward the boundless heavens beyond.

Hila stood beneath the Altar, watching the world inside the glass tank. She spoke to Shelly in a worried voice.

"Shelly, do be careful. Do not grab the wrong thing and pull the Land of Light up into the sky."

Shelly kept her hand outstretched, a terrible shadow of a demon god writhing behind her, endless shadow and power stretching all the way out beyond the heavens, stretching across the entire world.

She glared with concentration as she strained, answering Hila all the while.

"My eyes are really good! There's no way I'd grab the wrong one."

Then she added, "And if I did grab the wrong one, then it was the glass tank that got it wrong."

The Void's Mold Mother's body shuddered once, but even as she trembled, she did not dare let that tremor pass through to the glass tank.

Yin Shen, atop the Altar, watched quietly as Shelly drew the Star Night Mountain Range up into the heavens, watched it rise higher and higher, before He finally spoke.

"How high do you mean to lift it?"

"And how often do you intend to send it to Ruhe Beast Island?"

Shelly kept her grip on the Star Night Mountain Range even as she considered the question.

She thought it over for a moment before answering.

"I only have to lift the Big Meteor high enough that it won't fall back down. After that it can fly on its own, go wherever it wants."

"Once every few decades is plenty. The Big Meteor can swing in close to Ruhe Beast Island and make a meteor shower, and link its power up with the Eye of Mutation altar at the same time."

In a few short words, the birth of a star was settled, and settled with it the pattern of the heavens for countless years to come.

Even as they spoke, the Star Night Mountain Range had already risen level with the clouds.

This colossal shape, like a five-pointed star, shone with a light of its own, casting starlight across the whole world, exerting its terrible power of devouring and attraction down upon the sea.

Seizing the Star Night Mountain Range had been only the first step. Now the second step was about to begin.

Shelly meant to press the Star of Death into the shape of a star.

Rumble!

The sea itself could be seen tearing open, its waters surging backward into the sky.

Terrible waterspouts spun one after another up into the sky. In an instant, the sea's waters vanished across who knew how many miles, laying the seabed bare.

Along with the water, the massive stones of the seabed were pulled up into the sky as well, merging into that Star of Death.

Bit by bit, the Star Night Mountain Range took on the shape of a vast sphere.

Most of it was water. A smaller part was stone.

As this huge man-made sphere rose higher and higher, its water froze solid, until it had become a thing half ice, half land.

By now, standing on the Star of Death and looking down, one could take in the whole of the world at a glance.

Out beyond the heavens, a cold, icy star, its ridgelines and its temple glimmering with starlight.

Inside that temple the Creator God sat high atop the Altar, and the girl seated there reached out a hand toward Ruhe, who knelt beneath with the whole world borne upon his head, and with her bare hand she shaped a star from beyond the sky.

Below the Altar, the Dream Sovereign looked up at the Creator, dreamlike light rippling across her golden robes.

The six mythic witch doctors, meanwhile, lay prostrate on the ground, unmoving from beginning to end, not even daring to steal a single glance.

Perhaps it was reverence.

Or perhaps it was fear that if they looked, even a mind forged of myth would simply shatter.

Atop the Altar, the Creator looked toward Shelly, who was having the time of her life, and told her it was time to bring this to an end.

"It is about to leave the atmosphere, to leave this world behind."

"We too should be going down now."

They had carried it about as far as they needed to. It was time to say farewell to the Star of Death.

Shelly bit her lip and nodded.

"Okay, then let's finish up!"

She hopped down off the Altar, and with a wave of the Creator's hand, everyone dissolved into light at once, left standing there in place.

The shadow of the Star of Death swept across the void, rising higher and higher.

Shelly waved her hand, bidding farewell to her Big Meteor.

Hmmmm

Ring after ring of starlight spread outward from the Star of Death, as though it too were waving farewell to Shelly.

The supreme divine beings stayed behind, leaving only the Star of Death to journey on alone into the cold and lonely reaches beyond the sky.

Once it reached its intended position, the Star of Death began to circle along its orbit, setting off in another direction.

---

Above the Sea

Only a shadow could be seen streaking in from the edge of the sky, a trail of light piercing cloud and heaven, stirring up wave after wave of wind.

One could feel that whoever it was had thrown everything into a desperate flight, though he had no idea at all what might happen, no idea even what it was he feared.

All he knew was that he had to run, had to fly toward the distance as fast as he possibly could.

Somewhere along that headlong flight, he realized the whole world had gone dark.

This was not the ordinary darkening of the sky, not something an eclipse could explain.

He watched a boundless darkness bear down from the edge of the sky in an instant, swallowing every trace of light whole.

He did not dare stop, but his heart pounded like a drum, and that drumbeat echoed through his mind until he could not help gasping for breath.

"What was that?"

"What was that?"

Lomier could not see what the darkness truly was, could not see the vast hand reaching down from beyond the sky. All he could do was flee for his life, in terror and horror, toward the distance.

Even blind in the darkness, able only to blunder about like a headless fly, he still did not dare stop.

A little longer, and light reappeared in the sky far behind him.

With that light at his back, Lomier fled on and caught sight of the coastline in the distance.

For one instant, his heart settled.

"I am safe," he thought.

Without even realizing it, he had fled all the way back to the Land of Light, back to the mainland.

As he saw it, at such a distance, even if something truly terrible had happened, it could never reach him now.

Just as he slowed his pace, meaning to rest a moment, a new disturbance stirred behind him.

Rumble!

Whoosh~

It was a sound like a tsunami, a great roaring crash of waves, along with a deep, rolling thunder.

The noise was earth-shaking, as though the sky itself were splitting and the ground breaking apart.

He had only just begun to calm down, but now he could not help himself, and he turned to look back into the distance.

"What in the world has happened?"

Lomier turned his head and looked toward the edge of the sky.

The world's shadow swelled and condensed into his eyes.

His pupils mirrored that distant sight, blown wide in an instant, stretched to their very limit.

His mouth fell open, wider and wider, until it had opened far enough to split his own lips.

He was looking at a sight beyond imagining, a scene even a nightmare would not dare imagine.

He saw the water of an entire sea pouring backward into the sky.

He saw the world collapsing.

He saw endless, massive stones floating up into the sky.

The source of it all was a five-pointed star, high in the heavens, radiant with starlight.

"Uh... uh... uh..."

He seemed to want to say something.

But the words, once they reached his lips, dissolved into a meaningless whimper.

As if the words themselves had turned to food and lodged, choking, in his throat.

In the instant Lomier turned his head, he witnessed the Star of Death rise into the sky. He saw the birth of a star.

He stared at the Star of Death, far off at the edge of the sky.

In this moment, he finally understood where his earlier fear had come from.

Even across the sea, even at that impossibly vast distance, Lomier's very mind was shattered in an instant.

A sound like some kind of monster tore free from him into the sky.

"AAAH!"

The sky messenger let out a scream of utter agony, clutching his own head in a death grip, and in that instant forgot even how to beat his wings or ride the wind, plunging straight down out of the sky.

Shrieks tore from his mouth, while blood streamed endlessly from his eyes.

At last he understood what a Great God was, and understood, too, exactly what it was he had been so afraid of all along.

"A Great God!"

Lomier crashed down hard into the jungle below, while high above, the Star of Death tore through sky and cloud and swept out beyond the heavens on boundless waves of air and pressure.

Little by little, the darkness receded, and light returned to the world.

The star named for death vanished along with it, without a trace, breaking free of this world entirely.

Down in the jungle, Lomier lay on the ground, barely breathing, blood streaming from his mouth, his nose, his eyes, all at once.

It was fortunate he had been far enough away. At least he had not simply melted beneath that power.

Everything before his eyes had gone dim, and all he could make out were layers of blurred, doubled shapes, but in his mind he could not stop replaying the sight he had just seen.

He was afraid. He was terrified.

But beyond the fear, something else rose in his heart, a longing and a yearning beyond words.

At last he had seen for himself what greatness meant.

He had seen what it meant to raise a kingdom of stars beyond the world entire.

He had come to know, too, what it truly looked like to dwell above the layered clouds, high above the mortal dust of the world.

He had no way of knowing that what he had just seen was not even the most terrifying part.

He had not yet seen the vast hand above the endless heavens, the hand that could cradle whole continents, the hand that shaped stars between its fingers.

But that single glimpse of the Star of Death, that one instant, had already drained every last bit of his strength. He lay there, barely breathing, and muttered to himself.

"How magnificent it was!"

"How staggering it was!"

"So this is what a true god is?"

Lomier lay on the ground and reached out a hand, slowly, toward the sky, as though he meant to touch that vast star, that great being that had risen into the heavens.

"O Great King of Angels!"

"One day, the sky messengers too shall raise a divine kingdom beyond the dome of the sky."