Big Book Of Parvill One Shots

The Edge Of The Knife (S)

TW: Role-Reversal AU, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Two gods sit on the edge of eternity.

Their legs dangle over the side like children not yet grown. They're not quite children, though, even if KirinDave would have you know that there's still a lot left for them to learn. If it is a child's job to learn, he says, then we are all made children, and experimentation is as our wont.

His companion agrees, idly kicking against the empty void. He rather likes the sound of that, he says. Of course, he's more about the exploring the dark places and lightning them up, which is conceptually the same thing from a certain point of view. He's got stars falling from his eyes which is really quite dangerous, but it's just stardust in the end.

Or so he says.

We're all stardust in the end.

Not us, says KirinDave. Never us.

They watch as innumerable threads of spacetime coil and twist through the darkened void. Uncountable colours flitting up and down their vein-like lengths as they struggle in some strange semblance of life.

There's a misconception that there's one true timeline with all the others coiling off and fading. It's said that the world and the laws of physics enforce that one fated thread, with all the others doomed to die away.

There is something enforcing that.

DaveChaos lightly plucks at a thick piece of infinity and looks at it with the detatched curiosity of a scientist. It tries to wriggle away from him but he keeps a hold on it.

Isn't that one of yours? KirinDave asks.

Yup.

Are you going to keep it?

DaveChaos says nothing. He stretches the coil out despite its subtle protests, lays it flat on the palm of his hand, and he prods it a few times.

Let's see how this goes, shall we?

____________________

From the skies-

The desert is cold at night. It's not an icy cold that bites like a snake, but it's cool and life comes out at night. Here, the desert creepers with sandier skin than their grassland cousins scuttle across the dunes, softly hissing to each other.

There, the bones of long dead adventurers creak with renewed life. The less undead life forms jump and scurry away from them by order of instinct seared into their minds, making little noise lest the undead come after them. Small mice skitter under the sands and even the immobile cacti seem to lean away.

And over there, flashing into existence, a man stumbles into reality. He's choking and he's swearing, and for a moment he thinks he's just going to fall over onto the sand and just die there. He'd rather not, though.

That's why he's here. Out of the kindness of the judge's heart, although surely he had little to spare after seeing the holographic footage of the carnage. That was the trouble with his people - they were just too fucking kind for their own good.

It works to his advantage, though.

He tastes the bitter air of the cold desert night and laughs, and he is answered by nothing save his own regrets.

The judicators who had held him down and forced him to walk into the light of his doom had told him of a structure that he could stay in. It was an ancient relic with no supplies, but that was okay because they would supply him with a few day's ration. He scoffed at their kindness, but he admitted to himself that he did appreciate it. You had to give your thanks where you could find it, or else you were uncivilised.