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Author's Note:

I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you are not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

The golden-eyed boy wades in the river, reeds trailing behind him like a cloak. He is easy to miss, in the muddy water and there are few who are willing to meet those strange gold eyes. People attack him, sometimes. Rocks thrown with shouts of "Outsider!" and "Bad luck boy!" Sometimes they try and drown him, out past the reeds.

They don't succeed. The golden-eyed boy fights with bared teeth and bloody knuckles; he never loses.

He has no parents. No siblings. No friends. They wouldn't want him anyway, the people tell him. Probably threw him in the river to wash the bad luck downstream. He just blinks long and slow at them, watching from the reeds.

(The people told stories about him to their children. Don't go wandering off at night; don't go disobeying your parents or the golden-eyed boy will drag you to the river and hold your head under until the sunlit water fills your eyes until your just like him)

He loses a fight, once. There is screaming and shouting and staring when they find his bloody, broken body in the fishing nets. It's near sunset, then, and the waters are scarlet and orange, the sky starting to smear with indigo. They jump when the red waters take the body, reshaping it until it burns burns burns—bright as gold, as sunlight—before it shimmers away like stars.

He is not together, at first. He is shattered in pieces, with the dawn trailing from the ends of his hair and the starry night skies drizzling down with every step. He is strong, stronger than he has ever been—strong like diamonds, strong enough to be worth four arms—and the red red smears of sunset whip around his shoulders, settling comfortably. He is everything, he is more than that! He is power and knowledge and time and mass. He is the roar of the oceans, the might of the mountains. He is the judgment of lightning strikes and the whipping winds of a hurricane. He is the passion of fire and the sharpness of ice. He is every star in the sky and every space in between.

He cannot contain it all. The power is incredible, the heartbeat of everything that there ever was, is and will be, all within him.

He finds others, reaches out to them. The first person he reaches out to screams from the pressure of his voice, turning the scream into a rumbling roar as anger kicks in. They fizz and break apart until they are sparking, shattering through the clouds. He calls him Volt.

He speaks more gently to the next one, hardly more than a whisper. But the whisper is heard by the second person, proud and regal, but so very gentle. He sees it, though. Sees the rage contained within that composed figure, sees the way it roils and churns. That person just melts away, taken by the sea until she is a part of it, tumultuous and deep and terrifying, but oh so very beautiful. He calls her Undine.

The hurricane is made up of many things, he knows. He knows of the stillness that lies in the eye of the storm, knows of the fast winds and he knows of the tornados that touch down. But there is also the gentleness of the aftermath, the stillness of gray skies and humid air. The next ones—three of them, children like the golden-eyed boy had been—huddled beneath an overturned boat as the storm raged, they curl into each other, their mantra like a prayer. Save us, save us, save us. He gives to them the name of the Sylph and they are no longer afraid of the storm. They are the storm.

He does not speak to the fourth one. It is silent, where she is, and she is anchored by sheer willpower. The boy with her is not. He is shivering and his skin is blue blue blue and she is clutching at him, as though she is willing some of her own strength into him. The golden-eyed boy can appreciate strength and love. He gives her the sharpness of his ice, the silent killer that is the freeze and while he doesn't speak, she does. She stares at her hands—now pale pale blue, like the ice that she is, like the boy before whom she kneels—and stands up, tilting her chin at him. "What about him?" she demands. He does not bring her boy back, not like he was. But the courage in the boy is easy enough to convert. He rather likes the dark blue that the boy had been turning though, so that thick fur stays that way, streaked with snowy white. The boy is given teeth which match her ferocity and claws that match the desperation that he clung to life with. She clutches at the nape of the wolf's neck like she'd been clutching at the boy's shoulders and she nods in thanks. He calls this defiant one Celsius.

He stays silent for the fifth one too. A boy, skin and hair and eyes black black black like the coal he mines. The coal that is becoming his grave. The golden-eyed boy shimmers to life beside the coal boy and the coal boy doesn't ask, doesn't demand. He just laughs and talks. Nothing of consequence. Just talking, using whatever air he has left in this rockslide grave of his. The golden-eyed boy touches him, gently and the black skin glows gold where he had. He gives this boy the might of mountains and the steadiness of soil, calls him Gnome, partially serious, partially just to see the coal boy laugh again.

The sixth one had known the fourth one, actually. The sixth is passion and anger and what do you mean we can't look for them? They disappeared! The sixth one is broad and righteous and full of love. It is different than Celsius; she had loved deep and unwavering like her ice. The sixth one loves like burning coals, like bonfire flames, still deep, but brighter, too hot, too much. The golden-eyed boy comes to him and tells him that they are safe, his two loved ones. That they will be safe for all of time. The anger dims, but the love and passion don't. For that, the sixth one is granted the flickering flames and is called Efreet.

The seventh is half-mad when he finds him, lost in a labyrinth deep in the heart of the mountains, candles and torches having burned out long ago. He whispers an idea, when the golden-eyed boy appears to him, little more than two points of light in all this darkness. He whispers about the beginning and the end and the void in between and he sees the being that the golden-eyed boy has become more clearly than anyone else. He calls this one Shadow and gives him the darkness of the womb and connectivity of the shadow at one's side.

The eighth is elegant and soft-edged. She lies dying at the edge of moonlit water because people think her a witch. ("Outsider!" and "Cursed girl!" they had shouted at her. Just like they had shouted at the golden-eyed boy, once) He crouches beside her, ready to give her all the light that is owed her because of the darkness lurking in people's hearts when someone barrels in. The ninth, he must admit, is ballsy. He rather likes that. The ninth is trembling and bright and stands between the golden-eyed boy and the dying woman. "If you want to take her, you'll have to take me too!" The golden-eyed boy can agree to that. He gives her the moon that cradles her and he gives him the sun's deep-setting warmth, able to burn and soothe all at once. They are two parts of a whole; Luna and Aska.

The tenth is a surprise, the golden-eyed boy will admit. An old man, hobbling and snappy that tells the golden-eyed boy in no uncertain terms that he's not ready to die until his research is finished. The golden-eyed boy laughs when the old man tells him this, but not unkindly. He laughs because he enjoys the people who aren't afraid of him, who aren't afraid to ask questions and challenge and think. The old man tells him his name is Maxwell. He gets to keep his name and is given the stars and the comets in exchange.

The eleventh is the one who becomes a friend. The eleventh is the one that calls him Origin. The golden-eyed boy likes the sound of that. The beginning of everything. It's the first time anyone's ever given him a name that isn't a jab, isn't cruel. The eleventh is born in the shadowy forests, skin brown like the earth and his eyes green like the plants he tends to so carefully. The eleventh doesn't back down from him, refuses to give him an inch and outright laughs in Origin's face when he tries to tell him of his new responsibilities. The eleventh boy is life, in every rough incarnation of it, in every bright grin and sideways smirk, in every note of his unashamed laughter. For that, he is given the name Ratatosk.

There is darkness in Ratatosk too. A feral quality that snaps and rages, a quirk to his smiles that are sometimes jaded. He is a survivor, Origin knows. He can recognize it easily, knows it like he knows that once, a golden-eyed boy had scraped rotting food from the ground to keep himself from starving, had killed over half a loaf of hard bread. He is not just life, he is survival. For that, he gets his own title. Lord of Monsters. "A little pretentious, isn't it?" Ratatosk laughs, but a glint in his eye is pleased.

(It was easier, with the parts of him solidified like this. He was still broken apart, but the pieces were lined up beside each other, fitting into the empty spaces with ease)

He hears the name more often, not just in Ratatosk's voice. He hears them call in desperation, in calm, in reverence Origin Origin Origin and they construct altars of smooth river stones and driftwood and they carve him symbols into the stone, symbols that burn within him because they are him.

The first times they come to him, begging for help because they are weak, ordinary, he helps them. He brings all that he is upon their enemies and he watches the world suffer for it. Ratatosk is the one who calls him on it—of course he is. Ratatosk. Rough, lively, brave Ratatosk who loves the world in a much more personal way than Origin does. He tells Origin to stop, tells him that their power is a black ship (This metaphor made sense to Origin. He had known black sails on the water, remembered watching them from his reeds and his river) and that they cannot involve themselves so carelessly like this. They will end up ripping the world apart if this continues.

Ratatosk is many things. A liar has never been one of them.

Origin does not speak to many of them, after that. They are ordinary and now that he has taken a step back, he sees the way that ordinary people's petty matters of hatred and anger raze the ground and choke the skies with their smoke. Though he does not come to them, they do not stop. They carve the symbols into river stones and twist reeds into the right shape, tying them to their belts and their button holes, hoping to earn his favor.

Empires rise and fall, plagues come and go. Sometimes, he helps. Those that come to him and he thinks that they are not so ordinary and yes, he can help them. Ratatosk snorts every time, calls him a trusting fool, but that doesn't stop him from occasionally easing the passage of some of the ordinary people, of making the lions and bears seek different prey.

The pieces of himself—Spirits, as the ordinary call them—allow themselves to be called away from their altars in the void by little rituals and words that the ordinary think actually restrain them. (They were gods, forces of nature. As if such power could be controlled by scribbles on the ground and a few candles on an altar) Summoners, they started calling themselves, those ordinary ones for whom the Spirits appeared for, calling down lightning and swallowing entire cities in darkness.

They run on mana. They all do. Ratatosk is the one that says, "They don't understand it. How could they? No one has ever explained to them what they need to know. Let me teach them mana, give them a chance to understand control."

Ratatosk comes to the world at the same time the elves do, taking the opportunity that they present. He pours much of himself into a mighty Tree, large and beautiful, as full of life as he is. Ratatosk lounges in its branches, a god of his own making as wolves and panthers pad through the enormous roots and hawks make their nests. Origin only smiles fondly at it all.

And the ordinary do learn. They learn of mana, learn how to control it, weave it, learn spells. This is where Maxwell delights in them, teaching them what he knows. Things are good, for a time.

The elves create complications that they could not have known. The world chokes on hatred. Origin can see it. He can feel himself stretched thin—not diminished, never diminished—and he can see it in Ratatosk, sees that the façade of his physical body is almost transparent, at times. It shouldn't affect him like that. Ratatosk just laughs softly when Origin tells him so. "That Tree is me. It's half of what I am, what you made me. And they're killing it."

Origin appears before his altar because something about the four people in front of it feels different. Different in a way he hasn't known since Ratatosk. It is a group of two men, a woman and a boy.

The first man is a half-elf and the only talisman on him is a triple-strand braid of leather inscribed with a single rune over and over, held together with three beads on the end, that hangs from his belt. A talisman for the Sylph, who guard travelers and have recently (in the past few centuries) been favoring the city of Asgard. Despite that, Origin can feel Volt churning inside him. Not enough to be part of a pact, but more than an average mage. He must be a terror on the battlefield.

The second man is human, oddly enough. These days, humans don't intersect with other races much. Too busy killing them. And this one has killed; he has a soldier's bearing and the kind of shadows in his eyes that come from blood your hands. He stands strong, but trying to project unthreatening, hands off of the sword at his hip.

The woman is a tough looking one, also a half-elf. Her skin is sun-brown and there are callouses on those hands that carry a staff, but there is also a mean looking knife at her belt. She is not a person that enjoys violence, but one who understands that it is a very real part of the world and is prepared to deal with it. But there is power inside her too, soft-edged like Luna and lively like Ratatosk.

The boy is the interesting part. He shares features with the woman; the same pointed chin and high cheekbones. He is the one that steps forward to ask for the boon, to ask for his help in ending the war that the mortals have begun. He says that the people in charge won't listen to the people who are calling for peace, but with enough power, they can make them look at them so they can listen.

(Origin had always had a soft spot for people like this boy. People that suffer injustices and rise to meet them. But this boy is trying something different. Not quietly plotting an escape or vengeance, but trying to make peace)

Origin accepts the idea of a pact with this boy, accepts that this might change things.

What he doesn't expect is how different the boy—and the others—are even compared to all those who had been in their shoes before. The boy—who is called Mithos, an elven name—is friendly and inquisitive, constantly wanting to know little details about Origin's day or his thoughts on various subjects. The human—Kratos, named after a great human warrior of centuries past—is similar to Mithos in that regard. Kratos, for all his talent in fighting, is a rather passive young man, preferring books to people's company most of the time. The half-elf who wears the Sylph talisman—Yuan, who was born and raised in Asgard—likes to debate and argue. Not just with Origin, but with all of them. Origin has watched Yuan and Kratos argue back and forth for hours on a single subject. The woman—Martel—is intelligent as well, but of a quieter sort. She has steel in her spine though; it takes a strong person to see the horrors of the battlefield in the way that she does—the wounded and dying beneath her fingertips, up to her elbows in the blood of dead men.

It's not that they don't treat him with respect—they do—but they do not cower from his voice or bow every time he appears. They smile and welcome him and rope him into the conversations and "Please tell Kratos he's being ridiculous—of course a manticore would beat a chimera in a fight!" It is a fascinating thing, to be allowed into a family like this. Because that's what these four are: a ragtag family.

(The golden-eyed boy never knew family. He never remembered his parents, was never shown the kindness of a mother, had never experienced the secret exchange of smiles between siblings)

There comes a day when Ratatosk—looking stronger and more solid than he had lately—asks him, "How is it with your new masters?" The last word is said with a small sneer; Ratatosk knows as well as Origin does that Mithos is not his master, nor are any of the others, but Ratatosk won't allow himself to be part of a pact. He had been a slave, once. Never again.

"They are fascinating people. Good people."

Ratatosk hums, interested. "You think they have a chance?" (He could use some saving, if he was honest with himself. His Tree was dying and so was he)

"You called us black ships once. What do you think?"

That makes him laugh, a sharp, short sound. "I think you have a soft spot for Mithos. And that makes it almost certain that he'll succeed."

The four of them come to Ratatosk, to his Tree. Martel strokes a hand over the roots, a soft smile on her face. Both of the Yggdrasills are connected to mana; they feel it more intimately than most mortals. Ratatosk wonders if she can feel him dying.

They ask for his help, for a pact. He tells them no. Ratatosk doesn't make pacts. But he might be willing to help without one.

Ratatosk has very little to offer, in truth. He is weakened, but he still has his monsters, has that side of his power. So the monsters keep away from them, letting them save their strength and if sometimes, their path is cleared with wolf tracks imprinted in the mud, well, Mithos just grins and thanks him. Origin is right: they are different.

There is silence after the war ends, tremulous and tense, waiting for the hard-earned peace to shatter with a drop of a hat.

The drop of a hat is when Martel is murdered. Out by herself, running a quick errand to see one of her patients who lives outside the city limits. It's a trip that Martel has made a dozen times. She dies with a sword through her belly, but not without taking people with her. She is fierce like that; while she doesn't kill all of them, she does take about five of those humans with her and more are injured. It is a coward's kill, for the humans; a dozen men to kill one woman.

Origin feels the fabric of reality shudder when her family finds her, struggling to stand and still fight. They kill the other humans, her husband running to her, helping her to lie down in the grass already slick with her blood. She asks for one thing—a world without discrimination. Origin has never had the heart to tell her that as long as people have been alive, there has been discrimination and millions killed in the name of being different. (The golden-eyed boy had only been one of those millions)

One of the humans is sturdier than the rest, not quite dead. He gloats over her death, says that the world will be better off. Another shudder of reality when the three young men whirl to him. The human is slaughtered, brutally, in grief and rage and sorrow.

Origin doesn't stop them. He kneels over Martel's corpse instead, passing a hand over her eyes to close them. She has seen a great deal of suffering already. There is no need for her to be a witness to the suffering of her family after her death.

Mithos comes to him, breaking apart at the seams, tears still in his eyes, but there is a stubborn set in his jaw yet. "Can you bring her back?" he asks. Origin tells him no. Dead are dead. (It was not, strictly, true. He could have shared some of his power with Martel, given her a portion like he had to his eleven others. She would be quite a Spirit, Origin knew. But she would not be the Martel that Mithos wanted back, would not be the same and even Origin was not that cruel)

Fighting breaks out again after that, the half-elves in outrage over their Lady Healer's death, the humans retaliating from the slaughter of a dozen of their men. The peace that so many had died for lasted little more than six months. Ratatosk, who had been growing stronger in peacetime, is among the dead. His Tree shrivels, the leaves fallen.

When Origin goes to find him, he sees only what is left. None of the life. Only survival, in feral teeth bared and those green eyes of his turn red. Red like the last of autumn's leaves before winter strikes, like blood. He can't keep a form down, he is so terribly shattered. He changes without volition, a snake, a wolf, a man, a woman, in between creatures with shark's teeth and poison spines. Origin keeps away, lets Ratatosk lick his wounds. It will be some time before he approaches him again.

But Mithos is brilliant. Of course he would come up with a solution. He just needs Origin's power to do it. "Please," he begs after explaining. The fabric of reality would of course need to be twisted a little, time tweaked in order to be rid of discrimination permanently.

Origin agrees. He creates a sword for Mithos, his twelfth, the Warrior, a sword that can cut through time and space. A new piece of himself portioned out, the first time in millennia. (Mithos was love and rage and grief wrapped up with curiosity and mischief and he's a bit broken, but Origin believed he could heal stronger than he was)

Mithos is the first to betray Origin's power.

He breaks the world apart, splitting the factions of the war. Kratos and Yuan help, their eyes dim with grief and Yuan won't remove his wedding ring. Love is the terrible mistress, Origin has found, and the most powerful agent of chaos.

Ratatosk finds him, briefly. The curl of his lips is cruel. "I warned you, Origin. Ages ago. This world is broken because of you, because you can't resist in your meddling. Power like yours shouldn't be shared with mortals. They're fickle."

"You were mortal once."

The Lord of Monsters doesn't grin so much as bare his teeth. "And look where your 'mercy' has gotten me." His visage shatter-falls, like a comet's tail. He is something in-between again, something with a single wing—broad and powerful like an eagle, speckled with brown—gills fluttering and several rows of teeth. And always, always, his eyes are that terrible red. "Let the mortals wipe themselves out. We shouldn't have interfered."

Ratatosk is many thing. He is broken—like Mithos, like Kratos, like Yuan. He is powerful, even in the broken places, using the shards of himself like daggers and he is angry. One thing he isn't is a liar. That hasn't changed either.

He retreats into the void, doesn't surface up for any callings. Mithos calls him, sometimes lucid, sometimes not. He never responds, just feels the tugs and churns of the power in the Sword. Kratos comes occasionally to the altar. He doesn't speak, usually. As the millennia drag on, he grows quieter, but sometimes, he'll speak his sins to the altar like the devotees of old, with their river stones.

Undine visits him, once. Her form shimmers, sunlight on water. (That sight is one that the golden-eyed boy remembered vividly) "You're ashamed," she says. A god shouldn't feel ashamed, but Origin has learned that he is no god. Just a boy-man with too much power. Like Mithos is.

"Are you saying I shouldn't be?" he asks. Undine still churns with betrayal—like all the Spirits do. Mithos had used them all—but she appears calm, the stillness of lake water with the ocean's furious currents beneath the surface.

"I think that it's time to stop hiding." Undine is one that knows patience, knows when to strike. But she doesn't know everything.

"I bound myself to the Sword. More closely than any pact. I can do nothing."

"You can fight it," she tells him and yes, there is the anger, swimming up to the surface. Her pride won't allow herself to be used without retaliation. He had liked that about her, once upon a time, liked her refusal to take things lying down.

"Fighting is what got us into this."

She leaves, after that.

Time doesn't matter, in the void. It shrinks and curls away and Origin is unsure how much of it has passed when he feels the change. It's a release of pressure, solid, but easy. Kratos' seal, willingly given. It's that curiosity of his that makes Origin surface. The world has changed. This altar had been in a valley, once. Now, it lies in the middle of a great forest.

The mortal who stands before it doesn't have the pride that Mithos had, doesn't have his brilliance. He seems a bit weary, in fact, but still strong. Yuan and Kratos stand behind him, along with other mortals that Origin doesn't recognize.

"You who lack the right." There is no magic in this mortal boy. He is human. "I have lost faith in all things. Have you come here to disappoint me as well?"

Once, Yuan and Kratos would have flinched at his words. Now, they simply stand and stare right back at him, heavy with the ages they've lived. Time does not settle well with mortals; they've outlasted theirs and it doesn't suit them.

"Origin. Are you bound by a pact to Mithos?" The boy is polite, somewhat, his voice gentle.

"My pact with Mithos was broken the moment I was freed. Never again shall anyone make use of my power." (Somewhere, Origin was sure, Ratatosk was smirking in satisfaction)

A girl steps up, bold and desperate. She has the right to a pact, the only one left. "Even if we make a vow? We need the Eternal Sword!"

"I want to use the Eternal Sword to reunite the two worlds and revive the Giant Kharlan Tree." Using a sword to heal. Such a backwards way of thinking, but for a warrior, Origin supposes it makes some sort of sense. "Unless we do something, the worlds will never stop vying for mana and everyone will suffer!"

"That situation was born from the weakness of creatures who are unable to accept those that are different."

"That may be true, but mistakes can be corrected."

What a naïve thought. Some mistakes are too terrible to be fixed, to be forgiven. Origin tells him so.

Another girl speaks up. "Even so, we have to do everything we can."

"Exactly. I'm not going to give up." Yes, that much is clear. The boy has resolve that Origin has rarely seen. (Mithos had resolve like that…) "From the moment they are born, everyone has the right to live. I want to reclaim that. Humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves and even Summon Spirits—everyone has a right to life!"

This boy is the first to ever mention the Spirits in his ideals. No one has ever cared much for them. Even Mithos had not mentioned them when he spoke of peace.

Kratos steps up, limping a little. There are wounds on him, none life-threatening or even serious, but it takes a skilled warrior to put so much as a mark on a man with his mastery. "For almost an eternity, I thought that the only way to save this world was to cling to Mithos' ideals. Just as you once agreed with Mithos' ideals, I, too, thought his was the only way. But Lloyd is different. He taught me that in order to change something, you must do it yourself. It is not enough to merely rely on someone else and go along with their ideals."

Origin hesitates. (This world broke because of you, because you can't resist in your meddling…) He has no wish to put such power—the power to rip worlds asunder—in a mortal's hand once again, but he can see that Kratos and Yuan don't want that either. They have suffered at Mithos' insanity, have figured things out for themselves. If they can trust that this boy—Lloyd—will not betray him, perhaps Origin can as well.

"…You who possess the right of the summoning. Make your vow." He may not be a god, but he is the closest thing this world has to one. He has a responsibility to the people he has ignored and hidden from for so long. They deserve a chance to make their own peace. Lloyd lights up with a smile. Origin recognizes it instantly, remembers it on Kratos' face. "I will try once more to believe in people. I shall do my duty in order to create a world you speak of—a world in which everyone can live equally."