Weaponsmith - Chapter 143 (Patreon)

Where does one begin?

Where could anyone begin, when unraveling the incredible mess that is the timeline of the mortal world? The fabric of reality has become such a complicated, tangled, and knotted mess. But how could it have become anything else?

Like a loom that is being spun by a dozen seamstresses, there are simply too many hands altering the fabric, shaping it this way and that way, so that it may suit their own desires for it and the final result of it all is that the people who are destined to live with this creation, humanity and their peers, are simply left with something sub-optimal.

The world, under the direct presence, influence, and guidance of the gods, is sub-optimal.

Over a decade ago, Hineni was stolen as a baby from his birth-mother, the woman who killed her and had then in turn raised him herself, having fled to the north. But after it became apparent that she could no longer keep him safe, she reached out to the boy’s birth-father — the god of death.

This creature sent his lackey, the horse-god, to kill them, but also Hineni, which he accomplished. However, the horse had become deeply scarred in the process, given that the owl-god, Obscura, had attacked him before he escaped.

This moment here is where everything became a mess.

The god of death kept Hineni with himself in slumber until the boy had grown enough to fulfill his promise as the hand that would guide the world to destruction.

However, this plan did not work, ironically enough, because of the very meddling of the other gods, interfering with Death’s doing so. Hineni’s death as a child had been interfered with by the owl-god, who began weaving her threads both after his death and post his return to the mortal coil as a man, a decade later.

The frog-god, Nekyia. Avarice, the god of wealth and all of the other gods, aware of Death’s plan to usurp the natural order, began placing their fingers into the fabric as well, tying off knots and ends in order to suit their desires to not only rid the world of Death’s base influence over it, but to, instead, assert their own dominion over creation.

Even the horse-god, mangled and wounded as it was, had been vying for influence all the time in this world. Proof of this can be seen in the presence of fives throughout Hineni’s life and in the presence of Sockel, who had been hired by the hooved entity. Yet, weaning off from the influence of his dominion and falling under that of the owl-god, Sockel had abandoned her mission and instead found her place in the house of the Hineni-man.

This is the nature of gods, Hineni has found. They can’t help themselves.

They always want more power, more control, more influence.

Being a god throws one into the race for power, resulting in a constant vying for territory in order to not fall into obscurity. The gods manipulate reality left and right in order to gain inches more might and influence, even at the cost of the clear, deciding factor of the fate of souls that belongs to the people of the world.

But enough is enough.

It all has to end.

He can’t accept living his life like this, not alone and not with the people who surround him, despite the irony of their having been brought to him in the first place by the power of the gods, and, in the back of his mind, a voice might even tell him that this is the sole reason they had stayed.

But he dismisses that.

Hineni is certain that the people who he has gathered around him are his own. They are not tied to him via the binding power of a god’s magical influence over their minds.

No, instead, he is certain to the core depths of his deep soul that his people are with him because of the blood of the covenant that they have formed, which is thicker than any magical ties. The strings of fate that guide their individualities together sit in a neat, clean, natural fabric, ordained by the cosmos, free of any external godly influence.

Familyhood.

What could an alternate world, one without gods, even look like?

He finds it hard to imagine.

A world in which every man and woman is free to follow their own fate, free of outside influences. No matter the road one takes, be it a road that leads towards fantastic adventures or to horrific nightmares, the choices are one’s own to make, together with a dash of luck, and the consequences of such are one’s own to carry. The burden of actions actually mattering, of developments mattering — developments made by simple, mortal hands that are bound to be present in the world for only the briefest flash of life, when held to the full time-line of humanity, is incredible.

But what bright flashes they might end up being.

Given the fact that he has now usurped the god of death and, as the entity’s child, taken on its role as the base weaver of reality in this existence, Hineni decides that it really is for the best that all of this just… unravels a little.

The threads that the gods have woven can, mostly, come apart, if that means it will allow humanity to finally decide its own fate without such things as owls, frogs, or horses getting in the way of it all.

— People will find their own ways to cause chaos and anarchy, and that in itself is already good enough for the world.

Present in the spirit-realm, Hineni looks at the spirit that is intertwined with his own, Obscura. The two of them, as rather abstract non-corporeal entities, wind around each other to create a beautiful pattern. Other strings move through it as well, threads of azure blues, greens, yellows, and reds. Threads of so many colors move through the cosmic pattern to create a shape of life that is something new, but not entirely so.

The spirit-world collapses in on itself and Hineni and everyone else return to the world, now not as gods or as any such abstract a thing, but rather, just as people.

And from there, life continues on in old, familiar ways.