Prologue: Whole: ?_?_?

thud thud THUD

A single vibration. A sound, flowing through each piece. Separate, but once of a single consciousness.

She stirred. A singular instinct burst into life like a struck match, illuminating an infinite expanse of nothing. A single light.

The light grew, meek at first, but soon hungrily lapping at the rest of her. It brightened the dark and distant caverns of her disjointed cognizance.

She groped about blindly, seeking a concrete impulse to focus on.

Here she found Hate. It churned inside, outside.

There she found Failure. So complete as to be irreversible.

Everywhere she found Isolation. It lasted forever.

The sensations flowed in all directions like crude oil from the ground, igniting the flickering flame into an inferno. She felt these emotions burn into the most distant parts of her awareness, eradicating any sense of logic but infusing her with longing. Could this really be all she was?!

Now she found that she was clutching to a concrete form, and seized hold of that once-inert projection.

From deep beneath the ground, she arose. Sounds and images and smells filtered in like hazy memories, abstract and painful. She sought to tear them all down.

Somewhere on the distant horizon, there was a question. A yearning.

What was she really seeking? Before… had she not sought to create? Was this all that was left? Remains of something far grander…

Could creation arise from destruction? Of course… to destroy was to generate the raw materials for creation! For expression! To use symbols to express her most personal world… yes, that word, that title she had clung to, fought for! What was it?! What was she?!

She… she was…

Yes! Stunning! STUNNING! HOW STUNNING TO BE REBORN AS A CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION! A TRAGIC HARBRINGER OF CREATION!

She was the ARTIST!

She screamed, delighted to find that she recognized living beings all around her. She lumbered after them, recalling how she drew inspiration from their minds, tools with which she could shape something meaningful… she could tear down what they had wrought, and build it anew! Into a far more complex image. A worthy image. Her own image.

THAT was her goal. But first… she would have to clear out a new canvas on which she could work once more.

She rampaged with intent, carving a scar of hate into the world she had forgotten. Each piece of her vibrated to this tune of destruction, singing together, urging her to turn her strength against anything that stood in the way of this crude physical form. She could not make rational sense of the world… but she fought against it anyhow.

Some foolish creature had found its way into that path of annihilation, weakly lashing out. She trashed her body mindlessly, not knowing which piece was controlling what. It would suffice. It was satisfying enough.

Something snagged against the organism that was fighting her, and it appeared to flee. She felt savage joy.

But she suddenly met real resistance. These new agents of the world struck back against her, damaging her precious projection…

With her pieces so far away from one another, she found herself unable to resist the furious onslaught. Some buried memory stirred as she struggled to focus on her assailants, blurs of light and sound. She felt hate once more, burning her insides.

It was no use. The weak links her pieces had established were severed, and she found that her revived existence, so painfully rediscovered, was snuffed out as if by a single breeze. Smoothed to death.

The darkness rushed back in.

Emptiness.

Yet… a tiny glimmer persisted. She wasn't gone. Her form may be smashed, her pieces scattered but… a tiny cinder continued to glow, her fire not yet extinguished.

Here I am! The Artist! Listen to me!

A voice sent into void. She recalled that memory of failure. Just like before… nothing would reply… she would forget all she had ever been and all that was to be…

Something answered.

Organic life. Pulsating persistently, adapting and changing. But it was more than just that, more than just muscle and bone and squirming cells- it was life.

Thought. Consciousness. Rich, layered hallucinations that struggled together to form a being that was self-aware. Symbols strung together to make meaning. Emotions. Memories. Ideas.

But even better… they were being rearranged to form new symbols, new emotions, new ideas. Clumsily she reached out for them, finding purchase. Her cries echoed back, transformed by the influence of the surface they had struck.

Yes. Yes, this was stunning. This was something she could work with, even as a shred of her former self.

Using the image of the organic life she was clinging to, she could create herself once more.