“Hey…”

“Hey boy…”

“Hey… WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

I opened my eyes to a world of pure white. I was sitting on what felt like a cold and hard floor but when I looked down at it, it was simply more light with my shadow cast in all directions. As though there was a light directly above me but looking there didn’t show any. The light wasn’t particularly intense or hard to see, not like the bulbs the Master and his son would use when operating on me.

I looked all around for the source of the voice that had been shouting at me but couldn’t see any.

“This is going to be a long life isn’t it…” The voice grumbled once more, I could hear it in my ears, as though he was leaning over and talking straight into my ears but still didn’t see him.

The tone reminded me a lot of the boys in the village who would look at me with whispered fear when alone but would be brash and mocking whenever they joined up in packs.

“Who are you?!” I yelled at the voice, as I scrambled to my feet readying to defend myself. “Show yourself!”

I thought I heard the voice laughing a bit but he was quiet enough that I couldn't be sure. 

I went to yell again but was stopped when a woman and man seemed to appear out of midair, lounging on thrones that seemed to be sitting on a ledge raising them just a bit higher than where I stood. 

“Forcing us me to look up at them”

 The man was stumbling and reeking of alcohol and body odor with a lab coat covered in burns, tears, and stains loosely thrown over his body, his clothes below that seemed to be little more than rags covering only his important bits. Worst of all were his eyes that pierced right through my soul, judging me for all my worth and finding me so very lacking.

The woman on the other hand was his mirror opposite she wore a body hugging black dress that highlighted her curves but for some reason seemed to still communicate that the act was incidental rather than intentional. Around her neck was a tasteful necklace of pearls whose white forms seemed to contrast wonderfully with her tan skin. 

“Focus.” the male voice from before chastised me but seemed to be keeping his volume low. For a moment I thought it might have been the man in front of me playing a cruel joke but I realized his eyes that were so stern and judging just moments before had shut and he was clearly dozing off. Just a moment after the space was filled with an overwhelming awkward tension as he began to loudly snore.

I saw the woman’s expression start to crack as she attempted to nudge the man to wake him up without making it obvious but that just made the man shift in his sleep so he used his arm as a pillow.

“Please excuse me for just one moment…” The woman awkwardly bowed and asked for my understanding, making me nod reflexively as she smiled at me and waved her hand covering them in that eternal whiteness again, hiding them from view.

I started to mumble in my confusion but realized whatever they did didn’t block sound.

“You idiot stupid accursed brother!” Her voice seemed to smother the entire space, as though I found myself like Atlas carrying the sky itself as I was forced to the ground unable to even breath. “Embarrassing me in front of the human!” 

The white wall she conjured began to have cracks rapidly spreading throughout it as I heard a scared man’s voice yelping out unintelligible noises, as a series of rapid explosions echoed out spreading the cracks more and more before finally, it felt as though I couldn’t breathe anymore at all and all the noise, light, and pressure seemed to be sucked out of the space itself. For a moment I thought I would pass out again? Was that how I got here? But I felt a hand on my back holding me up as that male voice seemed to form words I couldn’t understand that gave me just enough strength to hold myself together.

Finally the walls collapsed and I saw…

Eternity.

All around us spread out forever and ever. 

Not just the cosmos themselves but it felt as though I was looking into the very essence of existence. 

The meaning of it all.

How many times have I had to do this?

I can see it out there. 

A home… my old-

The cracks in the wall seemed to roll backwards, as time rewound itself in the last moments before they could crack.

I wiped my cheeks as I felt my eyes sting.

Tears were streaming down… Why was I crying?

I saw the man and woman standing up there, they were both clearly acting as though nothing happened, the man looked annoyed, and I noticed he smelled slightly of burning hair while the woman was obviously trying to hide her embarrassment. 

“Oh lucky human…” The man spoke with a kind of cold uncaring tone. I remember the master had made this metal golem once that could speak out simple words. I think the man would get along with the golem well.

The woman shot the man with a glare that he flinched at. He paused for a second before sighing and sitting up straight. He coughed, took a deep breath, and started once more, this time with some actual emotion in his voice, so much in fact that I felt myself wanting to draw closer but I felt something in my stomach that told me I shouldn’t.

  “Human. You stand before the gods of Entropy and Order.” As he spoke I felt runes around my arm begin to burn like a brand was being pushed into it. I looked down, wanting to yell in pain but unable to make a noise as though the gods' presence was forcing me mute. The burning skin was smoking and forming a sigils surrounded by runes. I recognized some of them from my Master's study but others were totally foreign. What little I could grasp from its purpose was just the identifying marks of the two gods before me.

The man went silent as though that introduction was supposed to explain anything happening. The woman let out another annoyed sigh before speaking. Her voice didn’t have any real annoyance in it, none that flew my way anyways, I thought maybe this is just daily life for these gods. “I am Niblic, God of Entropy. This is my brother Calibrion, God of Order. Do you know why you have been summoned here?”

I tried to think of anything I had done but I couldn’t imagine what. I shook my head and spoke, the pressure on my chest lightening to allow sound. “Tools can’t-” 

Before I could finish speaking another voice spoke out of my voice like an echo coming out from the distance but reverberating within my body. “We aren’t a tool!”

I looked at the gods but they didn’t seem surprised. What shook me even more was this was the same voice I heard speaking earlier. The person who woke me here and who I’ve felt on my shoulder. The existence just out of the corner of my eyesight. I tried to speak but a different kind of pressure was pushing on me, as if it was trying to shove me aside and use my body as its own. “You damned gods and your accursed manipulations won’t have any role to play in our life! Begone and leave us be!”

I felt my body heating up and my heart pounding. I was so so angry. I’ve never felt this way before. 

I’m not a tool.

Why did that come to me so easily now?

My head was pounding and I felt something dripping out of my nose as a familiar metallic taste of blood filled my throat and the runes on my arms began to heat up like my entire body was on fire.

My eyes met with the goddess. I thought she might be angry at the cursing the voice had done but instead she just seemed bored. Maybe a little disappointed not at us but someone far away. 

It made me think of the look a Master would have when examining someone else's magical research. 

The voice tried to speak again but the pressure on us rapidly increased to the point where I felt our ears pop and we collapsed down to the ground on our knees unable to even raise our heads.

I thought the goddess Nibilc would speak but her brother did instead. “You act as though you have everything under control and treat us as pests but don’t even know enough not to kill the boy whose body you're parasitizing. If you truly want to be abandoned and left alone we can do that but know this-” The language the god was speaking shifted all of a sudden to one I couldn’t recognize at all. It was like a rhythmic pattern of clicking and humming. It felt similar to the singing I heard the field workers do when I was really young and mother was still around. 

I thought the voice might resist again but instead I felt both the pressure from the god and from within my own body lighten significantly and I started gasping for air even though I hadn’t realized I was missing any.

“Your two souls are so disconnected yet you somehow found balance within that body. I can’t imagine how many years you’ve been living like this.” I looked up in surprise to realize the god had approached me at some point and was staring at me and through me but unlike Master who looked at me as an object to be taken apart and put together it felt like he was genuinely expressing sorrow towards me. “Have you truly given up all sense of self-preservation?”

I wanted to respond but the goddess spoke first. I was shocked into silence though when I looked at her and felt my heart skip a beat in fear. The air around her seemed to be breaking apart as if reacting to her emotions that were bubbling up to affect the very bonds of reality around her. “This is how humans treat each other brother. Won’t you finally see this as a chance to wipe the slate clean and start fresh? You needn’t lift a finger… I’ll gladly do this work for you.”

He let out a sigh and rubbed my head with a painful, tired, smile there before turning around and blocking my view of his sister. “No sister. We cannot kill the humans. We have to hands off with them. You know that. We manage the system and give out gifts occasionally but that’s it. If you want them to change…” He walked up closer to her and whispered in her ear, as he did I felt the voice speak to me.

 “You can’t trust them. No matter what. There is no such thing as a god with pure motives. They aren’t people. They’re natural disasters.”

“A quest… A quest… Ok. Ok yea.” Nibilic walked over to me as if she’d gotten a great idea from her brother. “Boy what is your name?”

I choked up a quiet answer forcing myself to speak through the fear of the wild intensity that was storming in her eyes. “Leo.”

She gave me a wild smile that looked more like a demon than a goddess. “Leo, I have a quest for you. A mission to save the world. Will you take it?”

ShatteredAuthor

Hey! Sorry for the long delay. This isn't my main project, I actually just wrapped that one up and self-published it on Amazon (link) been out querying agents and taking a bit of a break from writing to recharge. Still want to work on this one but until people start really reading it and responding I probably won't be able to promote it up to a main focus. Honestly kinda prefer it like this atm makes it less stressful though I would love for more people to respond and tell me what you think. I realize the way the two in one body is written could be a bit confusing but for an easy analogy think of how the MC of Cyberpunk 2077 would look like to someone from the outside who cant see Keanu Reeves character.