Lost In Character: Transmigration Chronicles Of A Nameless Heroine 77 Time Out Of Memory Iii

Two distinct ways of being came to emerge among mortals burdened with consciousness.

The followers of Amalasuintha had made the wilderness their home. They lived deep in the forests and the caves, burrowing where they may, as close to the earth as they could settle.
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They had learned to hunt as they had once been hunted, and they continued to gather other forms of sustenance from what the land had to provide.

Being communal in nature, they shared most things amongst each other: their joys and their sorrows, the decisions that needed to be made for the greater good of the whole, the raising of their children and the caring for the sick and the elderly.

They had no fear of death, because what came after had long ago ceased to be a mystery. And though there remained regret for the lives cut short from causes they could not prevent or reverse, those who managed to reach the natural end of their lifespan expired in peace. They went knowing that all that they were shall return to the earth and that they shall be reborn as so much more of who they had once been.

The children of the stars believed, "As above, so below." Having settled at the foot of their G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses' dwelling, they had solved the problem of scarce sustenance by taming the land around them and growing what they needed to live on. They had done the same to many creatures of the wild, capturing and caging them so that they could multiply in confinement and provide their settled populace with a reliable supply of meat.

By imposing order over the aspects of life they could control -- by constructing systems around which their more manageable world could revolve -- they grew less fearful of all the things they still did not know and became increasingly emboldened to continually seek out the possible answers. They hailed as their chiefs only those who had the capability to fix what can be fixed or to find ways to make daily living less of a struggle.

Alas, of the things they were yet to conquer, death was still what preoccupied them the most. Early in their religion's conception, they had formed the belief that when they die, their spirits rise and return to the star-filled sky. This was not so in truth. Along with their body, the energy that had animated it also returned to the cycle.

Their G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses knew that this should not be so, but being young and alien to this world -- being cut off from their people by a wide gulf they had no power yet to cross -- they could do nothing except bear witness as humans who had lived their lives as distinct individuals disperse to become parts of everything else.

In time, the acc.u.mulated frustrations and grievances of fragmented lost souls began affecting in drastic ways not only Amalasuintha's chosen people but also the entire world. When they were reborn into other living beings, their residual bitterness transformed some creatures into ones that were governed by malice, which was by far worse than the earlier humans' infantile instincts to exclude.

In plants, these were the ones that present a beautiful appearance to attract unsuspecting prey, whom they'd then trap unto slow death, or poison, or both.

In animals, these were the vultures and the hyenas and all the other carrion-eaters, who'd seek a weakened prey and, rather than pounce at once, wait no matter how long it took for the prey to die, suffering in multiple ways until the last moment.

In humans… these were the ones who'd deliberately inflict pain on others and be gladdened by it; the ones who'd think nothing of reducing to rubble all that another had painstakingly built -- a creation, an ident.i.ty, a life -- and who'd then lie and point their fingers at others about what they'd done.

They were the ones who could wield death against their own kind and fear no consequences, or feel no remorse.

They were a curse in this world.

Alas, there was no erasing their presence in the chains of life; they can only be contained. With her vast power and solid strength, Amalasuintha was only incrementally affected by this new and unwelcome mutation, and this small taint, she put to good use.

She'd come to see that this time, it would not do to let nature continue its course as it would -- the seeds of destruction had already been sown, and the disease must thereafter be managed. Thus, she sought to interrupt what should have been its natural unfolding.

Long had Amalasuintha known that the children of the stars had made it their purpose to solve the problem that was life. She also knew that their G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses would similarly be problem-solvers of the highest order. For the conundrum that faced them all, therefore, she went to them for the solution.

As she was nearly as old as the world and more powerful than most of them combined, the pantheon gave her due deference. When they told her the simplest solution was to allow their souls to disperse into the cosmos and not sink back into the earth, she answered that that would greatly disturb the laws of nature.

After all, if the souls were to be sent out, then something else from outside must take their place. Piece by piece, those that ought to return to their source would be relinquished, and each time, there'd be less and less of the original that would remain.

That mustn't be allowed, or there'd come a day when most of what this world is would be different from what it was.

With no intention to budge from her stance, Amalasuintha bade the pantheon to provide another solution. The G.o.ddess of healing stepped forward and observed that the malice was merely the symptom. She said that in order to stem the spread of the infection, they must seek its true root and fix it from there.

As the only one with the capacity to examine the earth on the minutest level, Amalasuintha delved deep and found that, more than their dashed dreams of ascending to the stars, what had poisoned their disintegrated spirits the most was the loss of who they'd once been.

This was something that earth's keeper could not only understand but also sympathize with: the entire reason they could not be released to their heaven was so the earth could be preserved.

Presented with this critical dilemma, it was the chief Ansigar who finally proposed a compromise. The star children's souls would remain a part of the earth, but upon their deaths, they must first pa.s.s through their G.o.ddesses and G.o.ds' dwelling, where they were to be embraced, cleansed, and preserved.

After that, they must be returned to the cycle of life as they were, their souls as intact as it was possible for them to be.