An excerpt from Apotheosis

Prologue One.

"Oh, God, John! The plane! It's going down!"

I could hardly hear her over the screams of the other passengers. All I could do was reach across to her and hug her. We would never see our children or grandchildren again. We would never see another sunrise, or enjoy another sunset. Her screams in my ear were piercing - but I hugged her tight anyway. It was all I could do. At least, we would die in each other's arms.

At the last moment, just before everything flashed a brilliant white, she hugged me back.

Prologue Two.

"Has she gone?" her husband asked, looking up from his sickbed. "Has the witch gone to the temple?"

Ellsbatha nodded. The witch, Vordenai, had left the village, to hike to the temple on the hill. Ellsbatha feared her - in all her twenty-eight years of age, Ellsbatha could think of nothing she feared more, save perhaps death. "She says... She says the stars are in the proper alignment, Nadar. She says the time is now."

"Can it be done?" Nadar asked weakly.

"She says it can. She knows the Old Ways, beloved. She knows the Words of Power..." Ellsbatha shuddered. "She says..."

"Yes?" Nadar asked, and fell to coughing for a moment.

"She says her great-great grandmother was one of the Coders," Ellsbatha replied, and shuddered again. "Oh, Nadar!" she wept, and hugged her ailing husband as he lay in the bed. "I'm so frightened!"

"It must be done, love... The land is ill... Ravaged by this war... Perhaps even dying," Nadar replied softly. "It must be done, for good or ill."

"But... But to birth a new god..." Ellsbatha whispered. "We all chose, we all agreed... But what have we chosen?"

"We have chosen life, I hope."

Ellsbatha nodded silently, and prayed they had not also chosen death.

One.

"Awaken, Lord..."

The voice was the faintest whisper, the quiet call of a dream... A woman's voice, softened by distance... But not physical distance.

"Hear me, O Lord, and awaken... The Land calls out for you..."

The Land... The way it was spoken, it was more than what the words had once meant to me... It was a place... A world...

"Speak to me, O Lord... Hear the call of your supplicant..."

It was an effort greater than moving a mountain - but I managed to speak. "I hear you."

"O Gracious Lord, arise, and walk the Land! Help us in our time of plight!"

"I... I cannot," I replied, for I knew not how - and even speaking was a monumental effort, and my voice was little more than the whispering of a dying wind over ancient stones.

"What may I do to help you, O Lord?"

"I... What are you doing now?"

"I kneel before your altar, and pray for you to enter the Land, and become the salvation of all."

"Then continue, and perhaps we shall wait, and see..."

Slowly, very slowly, I became aware of pulling... A tugging sensation, drawing me from nowhere to somewhere. Memories flashed in my mind, trying to draw me back to the nothingness... A world of glass and steel, of concrete canyons, and teeming billions... A birth, a life... Marriage, children... Grandchildren... And then death. Finality, completeness. There was nothing more - there could be nothing more, the memories said. All had ended. It was done, finished.

And yet, the insistent tug of the woman's voice continued.

For a brief moment, I stood on a precipice. Would it be the safe and secure finality of nothingness, the knowledge of a life lived well and to completion, or the unknown that drew me forward?

I was curious - I have always been a curious man.

I stretched forward, towards the woman's pull... Towards the unknown.

Two.

Stone.

My first awareness was of stone.

Not in the sense that I saw stone, or even that I touched stone, but in that I felt stone.

Granite, I once might have called it - though that was hardly what it really was. Blood from the living heart of a planet older than time, cooled in air that had never seen the touch of decay and pollution that a world of teeming billions brings, shaped by energies that were beyond my previous experience, energies I once might have simply called magic...

...and yet, the heart of the stone was unchanged. It was stone. It was the living blood of the Land, cooled and hardened and shaped into...

An altar.

I gazed down for a long moment before I realized that's what it was. An altar of stone, curved slightly like a bowl, and perhaps twenty feet wide, as I once might have measured it, resting atop a pedestal that held its lip six feet above the ground. And yet, I was drawn to the body I saw sitting upon it more than I was to the stone itself. Myself - and yet not.

My hands... Young, fresh and vital, the skin unwrinkled? Somehow, that didn't seem right. I remembered age, great age... Or was that the past?

The altar sat at the base of a low, squat tower of stone, a seamless edifice that rose from the grassy knoll it sat upon as a single piece. No stonecutter had touched any part of this monument - I could sense, without knowing how I could sense it, that the tower was formed in the same manner and at the same moment as the altar. Before the altar, a barefoot woman in dingy, woven-grass dress knelt in the dirt, her head hung low. I knew, without knowing how I knew, that she was exhausted, and dozing. I could feel her heart beat... Sense the soft flow of her breath... And hear the soft whispering of her dozing mind. And as I examined her, she slowly awakened, and looked up to me.

Once, in another life, I would have called her beautiful.

Her hair was black as night, her eyes brown, with a slight epicanthic fold. Her face was bare, unadorned, and yet needed no adornment. Her lips were full, soft... In another life, I might have called them inviting. Beneath the primitive garments she wore, her body was rounded and curved in just the ways I once enjoyed in a woman. Yes, I once might have called her beautiful...

But now, I felt nothing towards her. She simply existed, like the trees of the nearby forest in this small, quiet valley, or the very stone of the altar I sat upon.

"Forgive me, O Lord... I fainted from lack of sleep," she said, bowing her head.

"And hunger," I replied, looking at her and feeling her hunger, without knowing how I could feel it. "You have been here days, with only water to tide you over..."

"Yes, Lord - but it was all worth it. You have arrived. You have awakened."

"And where have I arrived? And why?"

"You are in the Land, my Lord... The world itself. And now, you must choose your name."

"My... My name?" I replied, confused. "I once had a name... Yet... Somehow, it escapes me at the moment."

"Not your old name, my Lord. A new name, reflecting your new life."

"Yes... My new life, certainly, for I remember being dead. And now I am..."

"A god, lord."

I blinked in surprise. "I am God?!"

"No, Lord. You are a god. In time, if you defeat all your rivals, you may become the God of all the Land, but for now, you are merely one of many."

"I cannot be a god. I am... I was a man," I replied, trying to conjure up the memories which had once tried to hold me back - and failing. All I knew was that they had once been, and were no more, just as I had once been, then was not.

"But now, you are more than that, Lord."

"How did this happen?"

"Because of us, Lord. We called you - we, the Godless Ones. But I knew that we did not need another god, an aloof and inhuman being formed from hope and desire and the power of prayer from the emotionless, limitless energies of the Void. We did not need another heartless being who would develop their own desires for power, crushing us like ants beneath their heel when we were no longer useful. We needed someone who would understand us... Someone who would help us, and care for us. So I reached beyond the Void, to the multiverse... Worlds beyond worlds... And drew you to me."

"You are a witch," I said flatly.

"I am called that by some, Lord. I am called Vordenai, by others. I once served the god Allakbeth, before he was destroyed by the god Lysander. Such are the ways of the gods... But that is nothing, Lord," she replied, and waved a hand in dismissal. "Lord, what is more important is that you choose your name."

"My name?"

"Yes, Lord. You must choose your name, that the people may worship in your name."

"I was dead. You drew me from that..."

"Yes, Lord."

"To serve you," I said, frowning.

"No, Lord - to help us. Please, Lord - choose a name! Without one, you will fade back into the Void soon, and be lost! You need a name to tie you to the Land!"

"A name...?" I said, and paused. After a moment, I shook my head. "Pfft. I was dead, and now you say I'm some kind of god. Well, call me 'Death', if you like."

I don't know what made me say it. The words literally just popped out of my mouth. Perhaps it was annoyance. Perhaps it was simply a growing sense of unease with my new situation. Perhaps it was fate. I don't know.

There was a pause, and for a moment, the entire universe dimmed, then brightened again. I could feel a vibration deep within myself that swelled, then faded.

Vordenai bowed her head, and was silent. After a long moment, tears rolled down her soft cheeks. "I had hoped to draw one who would be compassionate... And instead, I have drawn our doom."

Her tears moved me. "No, wait... I'll choose a better name. I am compassionate, really. I can see you need help. I don't really understand what's happened to me, or what's going on, but if you'll show me how, I'll help you as best I can."

Vordenai looked up again, wiping her cheeks. "You really mean it, Lord?"

"Yes, of course. Come - let's choose a better name, you and I."

"Well, Lord, you cannot choose another name. Once chosen, it is set, and becomes part of your Fate. Perhaps we'll simply tell the others that you are the Nameless God - an odd deity for an odd, godless people does fit, after a fashion. We'll keep your true name to ourselves, Lord."

I nodded. "Alright. Lead me to your people, and we'll see if I can do anything to help."

"Your people, my lord. We have waited and prayed for you years, Lord - we are yours."

"Alright... My people, then - either way, let's go."

"Our village is just beyond that grove of trees, there," Vordenai said, rising to her feet and pointing to a stand of trees across the floor of the valley. "Just follow me, Lord."

As Vordenai led the way, I looked around, absorbed in the sights and smells of the valley. Birds, small animals, and countless insects abounded - and somehow, I could sense them all. Oddly, I only heard one set of footsteps through the grass as we walked - Vordenai's. I looked down at myself - I appeared normal, so far as I could tell. Two arms, two legs... I was dressed in an odd gray robe that seemed to be made of some kind of soft material I couldn't identify, but otherwise I couldn't see anything different about myself. Yet, after a moment, I realized I cast no shadow. As we passed the stream that ran down the middle of the valley, I looked, and understood. Vordenai's reflection was as one might expect - the rippling image of a barefoot woman in primitive, woven-grass garb crossing a small stream. I, on the other hand, was simply a ball of pale gray light, floating behind her.

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