As the song of our beginnings has it: parity drives the human race to the verge of extinction. Hopelessness plagues the world and the world order is awry. The reins of the world exist in the possession of a powerful, autonomous few. Desperation leads them to turn to the supernatural in hopes of salvation.
We accept our end, having sullied the world beyond repair. Seeking repentance, we forgo our form.
Through the forbidden exchange, we no longer need.
Bound by ancestral covenant and sins we seek forgiveness for, the cursed people wander. They are forced to walk the Amatas, an endless desert where once oceans churned.
The group walks with no end in sight.
In Amatas, time grinds to a halt, an everlasting present. The sun and moon stand still in the sky, shrouded by fog of ashen earth. The nights and days, the weeks and months dissolve. And the pale quartz sand stretches to the furthest edges.
As their will wanes, a formless Amalgam offers a proposition. It offers them freedom from their plight by granting them knowledge of their condition, but in exchange will claim the mind of the Wisher.
The eldest warns the travelers of the venomous bargain. He recounts the trauma of their ruin to all. But, the temptations draw ears and entice the heart, stronger than any siren song. That very night, the youngest, lacking the strength to resist its call, approaches it.
Such a tender glow in this endless dark.
Wisher, but a poor, intrepid child, cannot sense the air’s heavy malice.
Amalgam extends its phantom limb. It reveals to him that it once bestowed a power to his first ancestors. Wisher reaches out and his very being begins to cohere with the entity. His mind is overwhelmed by Amalgam’s revelation.
He sees three drifting through Amatas. And by identical fate, they encounter an offer that grants them a formidable power. At their will, they could supplant the consciousness of their child with their own. The two argue. At every other moment, one challenges the other for a claim over the child, swearing by their moralities and suppressing opposing thoughts.
The autonomy of the child is stripped and rewritten countless times. Long after the two grew silent, war rages in the lonesome mind as it retaliates against oppressors of its own creation. The immense pressure besieges the brittle mind.
The child’s mind, delicate like glass, is fragmented irreparably.
Each shard seeded the minds of the future.
Wisher can now see the poison in his roots. Amalgam reveals the memories of all to have come before him and the endless cycle of destruction his people have self-inflicted.
The ideals that motivate such violence and torment…
Protecting oneselves in annihilating the other… the irony…
Amalgam withdraws Wisher from the vision. And within himself and his people, he sees but the singular and lonely mind, fractured infinitely, unknowing of how to put itself back together.
And in claiming Wisher, Amalgam claims them all.
In this limbo, as his mind is stripped, he regrets. The eternal sterilization of the minds of his people or this endless misery. Perhaps there was another way.
A future unlike the revelations.
One of harmony and where difference bred growth instead of vitriol. One of warmth and nurture, freedom from doom and impotence. Wisher cries out in a tempest of emotion.
As the souls of his people travel to Amalgam’s grasp, Wisher’s cries are heard. Sensations they once lacked the faculties to even comprehend overwhelm their being. They are immersed in Wisher’s future of such beautiful promise. They cry out to each other in euphoria, despair, comfort, and disappointment. Knowing they won’t see another day of any future, they let their imaginations wander in Wisher’s dream, envisioning their lives in this blissful and perfect alternate universe.
… at least it all might just be over.
Wisher does not know it, but he has saved them all.
They all dream deeply of their own unique and beautiful present.
When the lightning struck, gentle like falling ash, the souls collected neatly in the sand…
