Special trivia challenge: Who can figure out what movie characters the two brothers are based on? Bwahahahhahaha. I'll answer later.
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The two beings were ancient
beyond telling, yet they were neither source nor beginning. When
they came into being, there was already existence, there was already
life. Neither fully understood his nature, but simply knew that they
were the only two beings of their nature in the universe.
When they awakened, they
found a great multitude of worlds that already teemed with life
spread across the stars. The inhabitants of those worlds were varied
and fascinating to the two brothers, for that is how they'd come to
think of one another.
For many eons, the brothers
were well content to watch and observe the countless worlds. They
debated endlessly why one world took one path, while others branched
out in different ways. They saw worlds destroy themselves in
mindless fury, while others would overcome all the challenges of
hatred and survive another day, another year, another eon.
In time, the simple sport
of watching the countless worlds began to lose some of its appeal,
and the two brothers decided it was time to start experimenting on
the worlds. At first, many of their actions were small and subtle,
and they delighted in watching the ripples of their work bring
changes to the worlds they experimented on.
This game went on for many
more centuries, with the brothers endlessly debating the consequences
of one action or another. They shaped worlds to their liking again
and again. On one world, they would fill it with magic, to see how
the people of that would would cope with such awesome power. On
another world, they would strip it of all magic, that they might
observe how people built a world on understanding, craft and
artifice.
One day, a new debate
arose between the brothers: “Could a world escape the bounds of a
tight and devastating fate?” Long they debated, but both knew
where the debate would end. There would need to be a world with a
fate of devastation and destruction laid upon it. They would weave
the fate to create a time where that fate could be challenged, and
see where it led.
They found a world, one
that already had life, but they began to reshape it to their whim.
It had been a world with weak magic, but they poured more and more
power into that world, concentrated it, and then tied it behind a
strong but fragile barrier. Would would this world do with that
power? They filled the world with magical creatures, who would live
side by side with humanity. They brought dragons from a far distant
world, and filled them with yet greater power, the power to speak and
reason. They might be shepherds or wolves, as their whims would lead
them.
Yet, the dragons were not
the centerpiece of their experiment, but one part. The centerpiece,
those upon whom fate would be focused, would be the Ten. Ten people,
some with great power, some with none, but all of them chained by
fate in one form or another. Men and women of joy and tragedy,
vision and blindness, power and helplessness. They were bound and
chained by fate, yet the last of them would be the one who would have
a moment, the least opportunity to sunder those shackles and avert
destruction.
For those ten, a great hall
was built, nowhere and yet between everywhere, a place where the Ten
could abide while the experiment continued. From the day they passed
from this world until the day the experiment ended, they would remain
in the Hidden Hall. Was this a blessing or a curse? The brothers
cared little. They people they watched were but the subjects of
their experiments.
Would those Ten stand or
fall? Would that world stand or fall. To the brothers, it was simply
a question they would use to pass the time. However, to the people
of that world, bound by that fate, it was something far greater. It
was their own lives and loves, their own joys and sorrows which they
played with.
In all their debate, the
brothers did not consider what rage the people of that world might
show them in time. What is more, they had long forgotten to consider
a simple question: “If the brothers were not the first, then what
was?”
