How the multiverse froze.
Usi
A world that burns is a living world.
Fire, the heat of it warming the souls.
They want the warmth.
They want the flames.
They want the feel of it burning them.
In their eyes.
Their skin.
Their trembling, fragile hearts.
Their world was stone cold.
Ice, snow.
Long, cold, cloudy days.
A longing for more, for more.
For more.
I took the sparks and set their world alight.
Watching the smoke rise as a fire ignited.
Burnt.
Blazed.
The wonderment it cast was tangible.
As they found a new love.
Of awe, of fire.
Of a world warmed up from the brink of frozen death.
My sister, she watched.
Her heart stone cold.
My fires never melted her.
Only hardened her clay shell.
Atumusa
She could not see the worlds she was killing.
My sister, my fire sibling.
My flame so bright it hurt.
She did not see the ends of them.
Only the fire.
The flames that licked the air with smoke.
With poison.
With a sentence only of death.
I watched as they burned, as they fell.
As the inhabitants struggled and fought and lived in a Hell.
A Daut turned real.
A war larger than life.
My cold was not cold, but a frozen not of ice.
I stopped the fires, the destruction, the time.
So the worlds could rest in peace.
So they could live without struggle.
Without a burning death.
Without years of crumbling, fiery, Hell.
I followed my sister throughout the Complex.
Fixing worlds set on fire.
No longer raging, no longer screaming.
A quiet world just for them.
In every branch, in many a Ring.
A world was at peace.
Finally.
Usi
My fire was rageful one day.
Born of spite.
Of anger.
Of a life I once lost.
Of the life I could have lived.
The Ring I had found glowed with my fire.
Warm, hot, scorching.
'Til all that was left were embers.
And smoke drifting solemnly.
I could burn a world, a Ring.
So what could I do to more?
To the ones who had wronged me?
To those I cared not for?
If I could set them alight, I'd be happy for once.
Finally at peace with the fire I held so close to my chest.
Maybe I should.
Maybe I could.
I turned from my long flight and headed to a home that was no longer home.
The Complex was bright.
Blue and beautiful.
But it was cold on the outside and in.
No fire warmed its heart.
If heart it even had.
I let my flames rip at the walls.
They burned and they scorched.
Like lava seeping inside.
The trunk of the tree aflame with my light.
I danced in the space around it.
The power of flames, I felt inside me.
It was warm, it was strong.
Like armour around my heart.
Or a weapon in my hands.
For the first time in years I laughed.
Of joy.
Of relief.
Of something so deep down, I knew not what it was.
Only that my fire now burned in a darkness.
Where I could burn the brightest.
Atumusa
A dead, burned Ring I found.
And knew at once where to go.
She had found her strength, her darkness.
And now she'd shine her true colours.
I quenched the Ring and flew in my sister's path.
The smoke already reaching me.
The dimmed light already flickering.
No sight had I seen more devastating.
No image ever captured true sadness.
The Complex burned, a husk of itself.
The fire still flickering.
The flames reaching out.
She did not see me as I swept by.
Searching for survivors, seeing none.
I could hear them inside, the living.
But never see them, never.
As the Boundaries burned, I closed my eyes.
I couldn't watch, but I could stop.
Time.
Lives.
They'd be in peace.
As they froze, and flames flickered out.
My sister's fire burned no more.
Her heart trapped between beats.
Her mind caged within an infinite second.
But my halting, it kept on going.
Slowly spreading, freezing.
The entire Complex in its grip.
I could not stop it.
The Roots were victim, then next the branches.
Everything stopping, freezing, as I flew watching.
The destruction of my sister halted, but mine now ever going on.
What had I caused?
What had I done?
I was alone.
In darkness.
Darkness of my own making.
Usi
I couldn't move, I couldn't think.
It was peaceful.
Yet terrifying.
I knew what had happened.
I cursed her for it.
In an abstract way I called out to her to stop her foolish play.
Not living.
Not dying.
Not asleep but not awake.
Like in a dreamworld my mind wandered.
Yet stayed in the very same place.
Atumusa
To the ends of the multiverse I tried to fly.
But there was no end.
No horizon.
Only branches reaching out, freezing.
I caught up with outcasts.
But they were gone before I could ask.
My very being halting them.
Sending them deep to an endless, dreamless, waking sleep.
Until finally, I myself could stand it no longer.
And froze.
Stopped.
Halted.
Caught between the seconds.
Forever.