THE CRYSTAL
Engaku
Greetings.
The perceived length of chronological measures is inversely proportional to number of events in a causal chain. This is because the primary causal chain, hereafter known as "reality" is not fixed, as believed by mortals. Rather, the nature of reality is governed by perception rather than any notion of fact. This is generally not accepted truth, instead the prevailing belief is that knowledge, particularly of events, is a universal. However, when two mortals are asked to recall a sequence of events, discrepancies arise within accounts. Furthermore, it cannot be established whether one of them engages in deception, or perceives a different truth. This is further reinforced by Cartesian physics which states that reality is governed by thought...
Chiku
Anyway... I'm Chiku, Reaper of Nature, and this is over here Engaku, Reaper of Physics.
(I point dramatically at her before turning again to the audience)
Also, I'm apparently pregnant in this picture. Sorry, this is a bad photo of me.
She governs gravity, time, force, and other physics stuff. I make the sun shine, plants grow, and the weather... well, do its thing. Both of us work on the World That Is Seen. Of course, we Reapers don't do everything alone. The seven Reapers have additional Pales to help out with the individual tasks. There are Nature, Death, Physics, Afterlife, and Birth Pales, and these help out. Unlike us, these Pales don't always have names, and some of them can be seen by the physical world. They look like animals, usually birds. For instance Yomi has crows, ravens, and other carrion birds as her Pales. I tend to use birds that drop seeds and such. I work with Engaku, though much more indirectly than Rinne, Seishi, and Yomi since I kinda sorta don't understand her at all. All of this organization, along with our magic, is part of the Unseen World. The Unseen World keeps your world running, and who keeps ours running?
(I point dramatically towards where I expect him to show up, but he proves me wrong yet again)
Bosatsu
That would be me.
Engaku
You startled me.
Chiku
Seriously, Bosatsu, don't pop out like that!
Bosatsu
I am Bosatsu, Reaper of the Unseen World. Jin and I don't have Pales. Jin doesn't because Free Will isn't something that can be planned or ordered, and because her job often isn't difficult. But I don't but I don't because part of my job is creating Pales. Logically, I cannot build the framework that Pales can exist under, if Pales already exist. This would obviously be a paradox. I shall discuss the Unseen World. This world we see, appears to be real; however, when I remove all the walls...
God
The complexity of the Earth with its clouds and trees and mountains falls away. Normally such manifestations cover over things, in much the same way as the moon eclipsing the sun turns everything dark. I yawn and rouse from my nap, "Bosatsu, why are you trying to wake me up?" This area is like a blank slate, a white world of emptiness but for the Reapers, my bed, and myself. I stretch, and will the bed out of existence. It is one of the perks of being God, I suppose.
Bosatsu
"Sorry, God. I just needed to show the people reading this book what was beyond the world we see. You can go back to sleep now," I say. God does my job without effort, rebuilding the framework of the physical world to paint over the fabric of this emptiness. "Tell them about the Void, too. Okay?" She sits down in midair, and a bed appears below her. Then she lies down and eventually fades into the background. She's right, of course. I need to tell you people reading about that too.
Okay, this will make very little sense, but bear with me, it's true. In the Beginning, there was Void, God, and the seven Reapers. And I think we were created from the fabric of the Void. So maybe just those two? We have been in this emptiness for awhile, and God became bored. God went to sleep, and dreamed about humans, plants, animals, and this universe you know of. And we as Reapers were assigned to oversee various aspects of it.
That's right. Existence is cyclic. You humans used your desire to exist to "create" us, with all your legends of Grim Reapers, and a physical world. And God wanted such beings as you to exist after dreaming of you. So we helped make you. When God wakes up, you humans will fade away again, and we return to being nameless beings that nobody but God acknowledges.
I shall tell a story of you humans and your nature. Bear with me, my memory isn't fresh...
Not long ago... in fact, you humans would call it the future, though in fact it affects the past... someone decided to go for a mining expedition against her friend's wishes. The friend you may know as the bounty hunter Sera. The other was a dwarf named Phim. Phim had just left Sera, searching for some gold. What he found instead changed a great deal of things.
Phim
Sera and me, we go way back. We did everything together. When she wanted to dress like a boy, and be a bounty hunter, I joined up right along with her. We got to be one of the best groups, well until those lot sealed up that big critter. Those people. We met them in that forest, when they stole our kill, some big giant wolfie named Fenrir. And they got in our way ever since. We did team up with them after all that, but that story comes after this one. This is kind of the story of how I ditched Sera for awhile, so I could go off seeking some loot. Sera wanted to stay and guard some creepy castle. I told her that was a boring waste of time, she called me a damned fool dwarf who would probly die in a cave-in, and she was sorry we ever worked together. Don't worry, we made up later.
I bashed at the rock walls of the cave for awhile, and pretty soon, I did find a treasure. But it wasn't gold, and I really wanted gold. In fact, I stared at the crystal, and thought I really want gold and some dropped from the air. I kinda had to move out of the way right quick, cuz it almost smushed me. So then I couldn't help it, I thought about how I needed a few people to help haul this huge crystal and all this gold away. I'd find some excuse to keep most of the gold, they could have that crystal.
Just then, a bunch of people showed up. If I didn't know better, I'd say this crystal granted wishes. But I knew better. There had been sheets of paper requesting help for a gold dig, and that's how I got interested. This must be the power of advertising! Listen children, you can't rely on magic gems or rings or cellphones to do things for you, you need to work hard. And remember, you need to get out there and update that rolodex!
In any case, these shiftless people seemed to believe in such foolishness, because as soon as they got here, they didn't help lift the crystal, or even try to take my gold. They stood around at wished for damned-fool things like "whirled peas" and "hax0rs pl0x" and "make me into a pretty pretty princess." All the while, that crystal started glowing and making creepy sounds. It turned from a nice clear color to a deep red, and I thought I heard some Latin chanting in the background. It was all very scary, and then one of these guys asked the crystal to help him commmit suicide. I'm not sure if it was the crystal talking, or if things just went south, but I was outta here. I loaded up as much gold as I could tote, and tried to move it toward the surface when I saw her.
Engaku
My amaranth hair and eyes, my tall frame, and my deadpan visage unnerved the middle-aged dwarf. He appeared to debate whether to attack me, but fear gave way to admiration as the man stood gawking. As a Reaper, it was seldom that we achieved bodily manifestation on the physical dimension, but I needed to make myself known to these individuals. "Greetings," I announced myself to these mortals, "it appears you have discovered the Crystal of Human Existence, and have abused its powers." The dwarf known as Phim queried, "What is this thing, and why is it granting wishes?" It was refreshing to see that this one had overcome his denial. I explained, in full awareness that my ability to create plain terminology was decidedly limited, "This is the condensed form of the Atman, the collective soul of humanity. All memory, reason, and ambition has been converted into this cosmic keystone. Fear not. Your friend's wish to suicide himself was not validated. I took the liberty of halting the movement of time, and making a wish to prevent this wish." The dwarf shook his head, "He's not my friend. I don't even know him! What do I care if he wants to kill himself? Anyway, are you here for a wish? Come to make yourself a human?" I ignored his implication that I was in some say abnormal, but I realized making a wish might be in fact what was needed here. "Very well," I said, "I wish for this Crystal to shatter into as many pieces as there are humans, and be embedded inside the souls of living things." As I said this, I slashed through the Crystal with my scythe. The Crystal normally indestructible since it was made from souls, granted my wish and allowed itself to be carved into tiny shards. The unique trait of my scythe is its temporal distortion effect. As I sliced through the Crystal, these shards flew backward and forward in time, placing them outside of time. And so, while this happened in the future, it affected people well into the distant past. And so it was that all of you humans have a crystal of existence deep within your soul governing personal reality.
But the story doesn't end here. Since the Crystal shattering was an eternal event reaching even to the original Earth's history, people discovered these shards occasionally before I pulverized it. One such man was a wizard named Tolkien. Entirely by accident, you understand, he got access to the Sword of Sorrow that should be sole property of Yomi. Using it, he extracted souls from humans, elves, and other living creatures. Of course, doing this meant these beings died. But this wasn't apparently a concern, as he planned to use the completed Crystal to revive them. I know all of this from reading his logbooks in an underground bunker filled with traps that did absolutely nothing to the likes of me. He had sent golems every night to kidnap people in order to perform his experiments, but somehow he had never thought through the fact that in order to grant such a wish, he needed a complete Crystal. Now the shards of crystals were redivided with every new soul, so as long as her removed all crystals from everyone living (no need for grave-robbery), his plan would succeed. But the obvious flaw in his plan was that in order to have the Crystal intact, he needed to give up his own crystal shard. For such a brilliant researcher, he was only human after all, and prone to arrogance and half-baked plans. I knew that as his plan continued, the human race and many others would become extinct, leaving only plants, low-order animals, protists, fungi, the Archaea, and the bacteria. While it was tempting to see life without humanoids, the rosy picture that population control types see isn't reality. And so, it was up to me to stop him.
Now, thwarting a Reaper is significantly more impossible than stopping any of the mortal races, but he did admirably for a human. There were the aforementioned golems, which I cut down and removed from existence. He sent tanks and aircrafts to stop me. There were warriors and assassins. I made a promise to myself to remain aloof from the affairs of humanoids, so I wasn't about to attack innocent lives with my scythe. I sidestepped their attacks, or in some cases just shrugged off their damage. No mortal weapons could hurt me, and even weapons of the spiritual world could only wound, not kill. But passing out from blood loss was nothing to sneeze at. When the constructs and assassins failed, he went after me himself, using all the magic he had at his disposal. But I had magic too, of a sort that didn't use runes, and I blocked and countered his spells with ease. I was about to arrest him, trapping him in some kind of temporal effect (perhaps GR0L|1\1D1-10G variant loop might be most suitable) when he sidestepped and slashed at me like a maniac. He told me all of his plans that I had already read in depth from his copious logs, monologuing for a good half-hour. Meanwhile, I was having to get out of his way, since every lucky hit that he landed made me bleed my own blood. "Why! Won't You! Die!!!" he screamed at me, punctuating each slash. I realized that if I wanted to prevent this from coming to pass, I needed to be a bit more drastic. And so, I went back in time. It was not my place to end lives, so I brought Yomi along.
"I don't feel good about this," said she. "For the sake of the future, we must," I assured her. She told me that it was my mess, and that I should clean it up, even though I would clearly be overstepping my duties in that case. After some heated and rather colorful conversation, she agreed to kill Tolkien before he could mess with the crystal shards and despite the fact that this would also undo much of the fantasy genre including this account. You see, besides being a powerful wizard, Tolkien was actually that Tolkien. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. But she didn't agree to any abortions, so her plan required that either Mabel Suffield or Arthur Reuel Tolkien be assassinated. It was bad enough that the likes of The Hobbit be snuffed from history, but Arthur was also manager of the Bloemfontein branch of the Bank of Africa. Since Mabel was to die at age 34 of diabetes without any help, it was decided that she would be the one to die. Since we couldn't hire humans to do our work, conjuring explosions was too prone to collateral damage, and anything too violent might shock Arthur, it was decided to kill her quietly with poisoned tea like any good English person should prefer to die. But Mabel was a student of botany, and refused to drink any herbs that she knew would hurt her. Finally, Yomi had to be sent back to just before became engaged to Arthur to kill her in her sleep. It was still tragic, but far less of an impact than it could have been. Terence Hanbury White instead became credited for the fantasy genre movement.
As Reapers, we regularly have to make decisions that affect the course of history. But it was imperative that souls stay as they are. Perhaps one day, we will have a version of existence and reality without sacrificing humans and elves and the like. And yes, I do not know how JRR Tolkien managed to acquire tanks and aircrafts. Or why he was doing this rather than writing his novels. We must not discuss this too closely.
