Prologue (The Mad God)

I was a tired god. My eyes strained from peering into infinities. As a man, I had once seen the world as all men do: as physical and simple, even if I had arrogantly thought I had seen more than most. In reality I had just seen enough to fall into a divinity that may, or may not, have been fated from the very start.

Now, however, I did see the countless possibilities of the Other world, of the Cravens and Amberlands, that melted into the Realms of Man and then stretched to the Places Beyond where even my distant vision dimmed.

Of the concepts of godhood, I had learned that there was much to know, foremost among them was this: subconscious dreams were free to create, costing the dreamer nothing, and a determined dream could become as real as any solid matter.

It was a truth that a mortal man could perhaps grasp, and that the magi and shaman of the Spheres attempted to harness to varying degrees of self awareness, but a man was limited and his mind was protected by his inability to see the entirety of the truth.

Now, few trappings remained of that human-being who had reached past his limitations so many years ago to glimpse the universe's dry honesty.

I will admit that I did still wear the clothes of a person who had been strangely proud; old robes of gold and purple, of a king bereft of a forgotten crown, draped my thin and decaying frame.

And, yes, my face remained as flesh--more out of habit than anything else--it was true, but my mind was spirit.

I was not limited as others. I could see reality as a god did and to be a god was to be driven mad through honest sight.

So, I, the mad god, watched the world from my tall and towering home--a home that did not meet the flat planet far below it. Men rarely saw me, yet I knew they spoke of me.

The mathematicians created proofs to explain my being, the mystics wrote tomes to instruct in contacting myself--though I had never answered--and the naysayers spoke against my lengthy history.

I was not bothered by this last bit in the slightest, since it discouraged the former of the lot from pestering me. A few, if their motivation was allowed to fester and grow, would seemingly always show enough talent to manage to breach my abode give or take every few hundred cycles.

The prayers, on the other hand, I would rarely resolve and only when the petition was merited, though never directly; there existed a few who deserved for someone to finally see them, when no one else would in this creation where loneliness was the true mean of existence.

I, however, had not spoken either a psalm or even a sentence for a long time. When all at once your words were all revealed to you, as they had been in my apotheosis, I found that you lost all the joy in speaking them, or at least I had--perhaps this was merely a facet of my former personality showing through into my now infinity.

Other than to embrace what could be seen as every manner of contradictory insanity, to be a god was to also live in a predetermined routine--one that godhood had mostly decided for you.

I turned back from the balcony. My tower opened before me.

Orreries and starlight crossed the ceilings above my head. In places, living stars themselves sat among the tools I'd once used to observe them from a distance; though this had been more a chore to satisfy linear causality than something I had been able to enjoy as I had once hoped.

To study the cosmos had been the first step of the path set before me by the nature of godhood and the grand Idea; in other words, it had been the route that my suddenly limitless mind had decided upon, all at once, when it had first become unshackled.

This was a goal I had accomplished, mostly at least; I didn't know every secret of the celestial bodies and the Infinite Dream that they sat in, but I did know of every secret that I could not grasp.

However, mapping reality had only been the first of countless tasks. The tools that I'd used to do so were now littered with dust.

The great constructs of unfathomable technology and mysticism, that I had forged from ancient magics and mechanisms pried from the Not-Yet-Times, were quiet and unmoving now. Their purpose had been served and now they were allowed to rest as all things eventually should be.

In what was at least momentarily the center of the room, a great dipping in the floor pulled downwards. It was a well of blackness and light, of fire and ice. Creativity and drear simplicity mixed in perfect, yet unequal and unusual, proportions within the well.

The energy swelled and moved. It had yet to reach its end form, but it came ever closer as it was now being allowed to decide its own destiny. This one, unlike the many before it, had survived the initial stages of creation.

I, the mad god, knew that my waiting would last only a short time longer. It was long predetermined and also not--in the way only free-will could be.

There was no loud bang or spark of light. The energy in the well eased into its life. The creation of a soul was something the world at one time had done naturally, yet something that had become long unachievable to all until now.

I watched and felt relief for the first time in countless ages.

To be a god was to be divine and nearly all-knowing for a time, as you accomplished the singular purpose your ascension granted you, and yet it was to also be but a very tired man in the end.

I had secured my promise now. I could now rest as only a god could--and that was forever.

"And this," I declared, "was," at last, "good."