Chapter 2: For the very thing Death could love.
The Tree of Mortality was the most important tree for the real importance of the lower-realm. The importance of life and death to thrive for the existence of mortals. A Heaven and Hell would need to be set in order for the balance of all higher sentience in the lower-realm. In this, two guardians would be born in order to set out the tree’s purpose. Ankou, the Guardian of Death, and Vida the Guardian of Life. The realm from which these two guardians resided in had happened to be dominantly expressive for Vida; gardens, forests, small animals, larger animals, etc. Ankou found nothing in wanting to express the epitome of his own sorrow by covering the lands in charred ash. Nothing in this realm was immortal besides the two. Everyone there would be in their own heaven or hell and not brought into the same heaven/hell that Ankou and Vida had controlled in the lower realm. This world was an Eden like most of the other Concept Trees. Ankou protected the world and Vida nurtured it. In the midst of the time they had lived there, Vida and Ankou had grown closer and closer among the years. Ankou and Vida would later amongst this time have ten children together. Each one of these children were unique in their own aspect. They were also granted powers of their own that Ankou and Vida would help them control. These powers were extensions of Ankou and Vida’s own. Depending on the child’s divine soul, they’d be granted a power to replicate their parents. For example, a child who cared for the animals rather than attempting to fight them, would have an extension of Vida’s own power. One of these children growing up had been a unique boy named Abimelech. He didn’t pester himself to try and connect with the rest of the children as they never sought him out to go play with anyways. He was always alone in his own room or against a wall reading a book whenever he was brought out forcefully. As he continued to grow up, he knew that he had barely existed to anyone there. It was unfair that he had to live out a life that he had to choose for himself. He knew that even if he was gone, nothing would change for anybody. Though, despite this, he was the most docile of all the children. The one thing that would get him to leave was a crow that always seemed to come to his window sill. This crow, even though he knew it lacked real intelligence, was the only being besides his mother that would actively seek him out to just be around. It could be because he gave it his food sometimes he always thought, but he knew he shouldn’t be thinking about that thought for this crow. He would go outside every now and then and would follow the crow. He learned how simple life truly was and how fragile it could be. He learned that the crow struggled each day to keep itself up yet it still chose to be near him. As he grew older, he would be forced to learn how to fight for himself. Ankou began to assemble all the children together (mainly the boys unless the girls chose to participate), to begin to learn how to use their powers to defend others and themselves. Ankou was among one of the strongest if not THE strongest guardian there had been to exist due to his importance. No other guardian would ever de-test Ankou as they knew his strength. So, you could say that these kids were somewhat blessed to have such a formidable teacher. Abimelech was one of those children who knew that in order to achieve anything he needed, he needed the strength to do it. His problem was that he had no purpose in this strength as he had no sole reason for even being here besides the crow. The crow had taught him everything he knew just by guiding him outside the palace that all the children took their stay in. Ankou had noticed this for a while but never acted on it due to his growing curiosity for his own child.
One of those days, Abimelech wouldn’t see the crow ever again. It never came back to him to see where he was, to see if he was crying, or to see if he was happy. Abimelech had thought that the crow must’ve passed away that day. He didn’t know how the crow did die too, maybe that was what left the biggest mark on how he thought about his life. Those who cared for him even if they never said it directly would vanish without a trace or true reason that he knew, nothing had been his fault, he never made mistakes, but it always seemed to all lead to him at the end of the day. Ankou noticed Abimelech’s growing depression and would take him personally to visit the lower-realms. Ankou was unable to express his own emotions as he found it hard, so he stood silent for most of that time that he was with Abimelech. Abimelech never knew of these lower realms, he only knew the forest and the palace he grew up in.
His view of everything changed, he saw everything he knew about life from the crow but infinitely larger. He saw the stars, planets, he saw love, hardship, death, etc. He saw everything. He was jealous but thankful that he wasn’t in the lower realm. He didn’t know what to think of it, he didn’t know why his father would even show him the lower-realm in the first place. Was it to show that one small death shouldn’t change him? Was he supposed to be inspired off of other people's lives? None of that was ever answered to him like most things. Yet, he noticed one thing. That most of all suffering that came to intelligent creatures, was from emotion. War, love, break-ups, fights, etc. They all committed each action based on what they desired or how life shaped them. They were all learning rats in a giant system that no matter how hard they tried to escape, they were always shaped by it one way or another. The clashing forces between good and evil in these worlds were shaped by the past of the people who fought. Abimelech’s father told him one thing though, that everything was shaped by another no matter where you were or who you were, and if you believed that making everything in your own view would change the sorrow in your heart, you’d be wrong, there would be nothing except for you in a world only based by you. Abimelech took those words to his heart, as they became distorted as the distance between him and his father grew after that day.
He found his new motive, his new purpose. It had been a tribute to his own waking for which his ideal would lay. That he alone would have to take upon this task and commit a crime which would testify as heresy towards order among the guardians. He alone would need to kill the Tree of Emotions. Did he know how he’d manage to end up there yet? No, he didn’t. Yet he marked it as his destiny. He found peace in the thought. A worth to follow by and be. Everyone doesn’t deserve the pain of knowing themself, or perhaps that was Abimelech’s twisted version of saying it. The same cycle played out over and over. Nothing changed. He hid among the palace walls in his home. His thoughts unconditionally corrupted and marred him alone. Was it too much to be free from yourself? Was it not hypocritical that the very emotions that led him here would be that very same thing he would be trying to remove? So what was it then…? He was always anxious about himself, he became agitated, hateful, and nihilistic. Despite the distance growing further and further from Ankou and Abimelech. Abimelech stood nearby him, determining his own father’s reason of purpose besides the given one from his own birth. Yet he found nothing. Not in his mother either. He stood near his siblings. He found their motives were unknown, they didn’t know what they were there for but they wanted to enjoy every lasting minute of it. He began to hate everything around him despite never knowing them. Did he need to? Does their reason of life not describe what he needed to know of their character? None of them were free. Yet he visioned himself free among the walls, so he thought. From this prospering malice. He manipulated his mother to bring him to the lower-realm. Despite her knowing of his own malice from the very energy which emitted from his soul, she decided to care for her son to see if he had this moment to help himself. Abimelech took this trip to only ask her questions about the purpose of their lives, how they worked with the existential dread they all had…his questions only got deeper and deeper until Vida could no longer answer them as they became questions that extended off of Abimelech’s own fantasies.
This transpired into an argument between him and his mother as Abimelech’s want for knowledge and truth had been covered in the underlying knowing that there had been things that he had to find out himself despite him not even knowing his own reason for living nor had he ever seen anyone besides his mother and father ever have. They weren’t even brought upon their own actions, they were given purpose at birth. But Abimelech and his siblings? They were all because Vida had been bored of her own immortal life. From this realization, Abimelech would storm off away from his family, heading into the never ending forest outside the palace. He traveled for days on end, killing animals he found just for survival. Weeks later, he found himself in a village. A town of humanoid beings. Vida had never told him about these beings, nor had Ankou ever mentioned anything outside the forest. The village folk consisted of…individuals with their own purpose. Though they were not born with one, they were shaped with and to it. They chose their own fates, they chose what happened to them. Even if their life was pre-determined, their choices still mattered. It changed who they were, it defined who they were. All things that Abimelech watched with silent torment. Torment that boiled with his rage. He saw what he could’ve been, if he hadn’t even been born in the first place in this treacherous, bland, boring, palace. It was the sin of Envy, it boiled his blood. It felt like rusty nails digging inside of him in every single space he had left to even cling to. Why was he like this…? Why is it so hard to just be happy with whatever you have left. Maybe he could’ve. Maybe if he had just tried a little harder when he was young. When he still had purposeful time to find his own meaning, his own chart. But no. It only bit him in his neck, sapping him of all pleasure, a devoid place in his heart where blood no longer had a place. And…that’s when this all became a genocide. He didn’t see these people as anyone. He knew they were all immortal. Though, he tried his best to connect them to the suffering he saw all around the lower-realm. Yet these people, from a first glance. All seemed happier than even his own mother. He never saw them cry, he never saw them whine, they just did what they had to. It was all meaningless. He was wrong to even consider these beings remotely mortal. He approached them, he tried to converse. Nothing came out of them. They were all walking husks without any knowledge. They were better off dead anyways. He knew well, he knew very well…he was damned proud. Yet, he felt incomplete. He knew this action meant nothing. He knew he had to do what was needed. So, during his monologue after he held the head of a child in his right hand. Something he considered sub-human. He knew this child, had no real age, he knew it existed as this always. It was all fake. It was made of clay. Shaped by…who exactly? He pondered this thought, he didn’t know. Why hasn’t he asked before? What changed now if he always was going to feel this way…then…a man approached him. A figure in complete darkness. He felt a…relieving connection to the man. It was refreshing. He knew this was important. So, he approach the man. The man’s name was Lucifer. Nothing else to say besides that. He stood there silently upon each-other questions Abimelech had asked him. So, with no other answer. He asked why. Why had he been here? To which…Lucifer had held out a pale hand. It was a dagger, in the same texture of obsidian yet it had a remnant of Ankou’s purple flame. The very flame that would silence every guardian nearby. He grasped the dagger. It felt right in his hands. Lucifer kept his hand out. He told Abimelech that he could bring him what he really wanted. What everyone needed. The death of Emotions. He could bring him there now, if he so declined. He would never show up with the same opportunity ever again and he’d be left in this damned forest that never ended. Never again to find his way back home, if even he considered it that anymore.
So, upon this pressure, this desire, this lust. He took his hand, brought to the guardian of emotions. Appearing behind her in the same instance, and stabbing the dagger right into the back of her. He watched…and enjoyed the scream that came from her withering body that combusted upon into flames inside until she melted. He didn’t even notice the villagers watching until one screamed. Then another, and another. They all saw him. So what…these were no different people from the town he thought. So, upon his greed, lust, desire, envy, and wrath. He brought flames from hell to these villagers.
But…it was all hypocritical. He stabbed himself in the back with the same weapon he had been using. Lucifer. Him. He had been deemed the hero that day. And Abimelech? He melted, he felt the pain eternally. It didn’t end. He didn’t know why it started. He felt it all. And…within his soul. It escaped his body, his immortal soul planning to live on. It hid itself within the Tree of Emotions. But, it had rather been sealed inside a fruit of pure negativity. Forever to be damned by hate, sorrow, everything that brought pain in the lower existence. He had failed his purpose. And so with that. A tragic end…
