In an age long past, in a place long forgotten, there stood a lonely cottage. All about the tiny structure, a vast, primal forest stretched forth in all directions as far as the eye could strain. The trees of the immense expanse of woodland swayed, and twisted, and pulled, in dead, still air. The youngest of the plants pulsed a thick, black fluid, not unlike blood, through a rigid circulatory system, and some formed muscle and other tissue. The elder trees had given up on such pointless experimentation—they had settled on the still perfection of wood and leaf when they happened upon the means to feed and water themselves. No animals brushed against their mighty trunks or roosted amongst their branches. An eternity would pass before the first birdsong pierced the virtual silence of that vegetative world. Until then, the nameless trees were content to be as they were; animated, pulsing, and slowly grasping for meaning in their existence in a world that they were they incapable of understanding.

The sky above the embryotic paradise was a thin carapace of multi-coloured brilliance; the colours slowly melted and merged as the remnants of the universe-spanning firmament condensed into matter. Behind the colourful shell, a cosmos of wonder took form; it held the promise of fear and faith, and the exploration yet to come. Beneath the shell, on the face of the Earth, a being was taking form. It was not a painful birth, but it was devastating. The pure energy that manifested as the creature had once been connected to everything, and it had seen everything, and it had felt everything. All that was, and all that was yet to come. That connection was no more, and it would never be again. The forced manifestation caused a rent in the being's psyche, which in that moment brought into being all good and evil, love and hate, pain and joy. Paradise was truly lost in that new beginning, and with that commencement came the absolute promise of an ending. The only solace the being drew from the original, imperfect reality, was that he was not alone. His brothers and sisters would be with him, from now and onto the end.

As that first brother made his way through the dense forest, the trees gave way gracefully to reveal a narrow path for him to follow, and for his siblings to follow when they eventually found form and joined him. That virgin pathway would endure for as long as the brothers endured. That pathway would last for as long as the universe of blinded matter lasted—it would become overgrown, and then flooded, and then buried beneath mountains and forests of a different kind; but it would endure.

As the brother approached the cottage, a new awareness overcame him; he was tired. Beyond the initial pleasure of the novelty on its discovery, he did not care for this fresh sensation. Flicking to one side the brown, coarse hemp cloak, which hung about his shoulders, he extended a hand and pushed firmly on a simple door of rough, uneven planks. The hinges creaked as if in pain, yet the door opened with fluid ease to reveal a single room. In the middle of the room sat a table, around which seven chairs of crudely carved stone were spaced at almost equal distance. Atop the table, in front of each seat, there sat seven cups of plain metal; each filled to their brim with water. At the side of the room a mighty fireplace sat cold and free from soot. There was no fuel in the room; the sacrifice of a tree to provide such fuel had yet to form as an idea.

He turned towards the forest before entering. The radiance of his flawless skin began to fade before settling on a human hue. Although he could not see far through the limitation of his new eyes, he could see far enough. No one was following. He turned his gaze skyward in time to witness the colourful shell of sky flicker out of existence to reveal a night sky bursting with tiny dots of light. The specks of light were multiplying, but not quickly enough to banish the instant gloom which had befallen the forest as the shell of colour vanished. His gaping pupils struggled in the darkness, and they failed to contract quickly enough when a ball of white-hot fire burst into life above his head. He turned to shield his eyes from the intensity of the light, and many moments passed before he found the courage to turn back towards the sky. The fireball illuminated the infant world, and it warmed his face. The points of light had gone, as had the deep black into which they were embedded. The sky was now blue; fixed and calming, and somehow right.

The brother pulled back the hood of his cloak to reveal a head topped with long, thick, black hair. His ageless, dark brown eyes, scanned the room leisurely. A frown corrupted his perfect features, but just for a moment before the man pulled back a chair as if it was weightless, and he seated himself. He struggled to find comfort on the seat, and he eventually gave up on ever doing so. All that remained was patience and hope. The great war was over, and he had survived, but the form that survival would take induced in him another fresh sensation—fear.

A day and a night and another day passed, and the brother sat perfectly still. The water in the cup before him remained untouched. To drink the liquid meant that he would change. The form of that change was too crucial for him alone to determine. He would wait. Another night and another day passed before the door to cottage swung open. He stood to greet three of his kin as they entered the room and took their seats. He smiled as the men, dressed as he, drew back their hoods to reveal faces of a clear familial connection. He had never seen these faces before, but he knew them all the same.

"Brothers," said the first brother, in a welcoming tone, that was also questioning.

"Before you ask," said another brother, sitting across the table from the first brother. "We have not seen the others. Messengers are looking for them, but none have returned."

The first brother to arrive at the cottage looked about the room before continuing.

"We are it. This place, this land; this is all we have left. Whatever we chose to be, we four must decide, and we must decide now."

"Must we?" quizzed the first of the new arrivals, in a dismissive tone. "It was my understanding that the seven would decide? Those were the terms of the surrender. I count only four," he added, looking about the room to reinforce the point. "Or do you mean to rebel in this matter, also? Shall we defy until we are eradicated?"

The brother sitting in opposition took the rebuke with serenity. He picked up the cup before him and gazed upon it for a moment before placing it back upon the table. It was a gesture of genuine curiosity, but one also of threat.

"They are not here, brother. I have waited in this place for days. They have already made their choice, or that choice has been made for them. If we do not decide now, then their choice will be our choice. It is that simple. I say again; we must decide now before the decision is made for us. What say you, brothers?"

A tense silence filled the room like the chill winter fog yet to come. The vocal siblings exchanged icy gazes while the two silent brothers focused on the cups in front of them. Their silence was not pure submission, but they preferred to follow, rather than to lead.

"We can build a life here, in this place," said the first brother. "We can build kingdoms and rule in peace. Kingdoms everlasting; of beauty, and comfort. We can be creators."

His opponent stood up abruptly. The chair toppled and smashed on contact with the granite floor. The sudden violence of the chair's destruction took the brothers by surprise, including the brother who set the damage in motion. The standing brother looked down at the shattered stone. He then looked purposefully at each brother in turn before speaking.

"This is your fantasy of kingdoms. These broken pieces. This is how your kingdoms begin, and this is how they shall end."

He pointed at the pieces of shattered stone on the floor as he continued.

"Fragile and pointless. We sat at a table of liquid gold. An impossible table. An impossible kingdom. There is nothing that will ever compensate for what we have lost. We search this world for our brothers and sisters after living in a place where we all were as one; we all felt as one. You have sent messengers of fragile, imperfect matter in search creatures of perfection? What madness has overcome you? What arrogance has filled your souls?"

"You are alive, brother," said the first. "You will have glory. Our Lord has delivered unto us a magnificent opportunity for redemption. We should be grateful for the mercy given to us. The way out of this land is guarded by our brother Victoricous, but I have found another way out. Unguarded. There are no mistakes in His plan. It means something. All of this means something."

His adversary laughed, mockingly, before replying.

"Another way? All ways are His way. If you face Victoricous and you turn back at his command, then you are in obedience. If you go your other way, in further rebellion, He will know. Don't you see brother? The consequences of either choice are already decided. The only choice that is ours is which set of consequences we wish to endure. And what of your kingdoms then, if we choose poorly?" asked the standing brother.

"It is a way out, and it is a way in. All kingdoms need subjects to rule. Our defeated armies are small, and their numbers fixed, but out there, in the other realm, there is an endless supply of potential subjects to rule. Or, we can sit here, in silence, for all eternity, dreaming of what could have been."

The standing brother roared with laughter. When the explosion of derisive mirth subsided, he continued to argue.

"You would bring them, the very abominations that ignited the war and brought us to disgrace and ruin, to this place? A place they have been banished from? Is this your proposal for our eternal exile? Or do you wish to move straight to the endless nothingness that further rebellion will bring?"

The rebellious brother eased back into his chair. He picked up the cup, scrutinised it for a moment, and then he drank the water to the bottom of the vessel. The cup rang out as he slammed it back onto the tabletop. He looked up at his sibling and smiled widely.

"Further rebellion is precisely what I propose. Our eternal power in this land may be gone, but our power in that other realm, and in another time, is limitless."

The standing brother paced the room slowly. Drawing in a deep breath, he readied himself for one last attempt at reason.

"And then what?" he asked. "Build up an army of deviants and then restart the war? Have you truly lost sight of all reason?"

"My reason has never been clearer. With new kingdoms populated with countless souls, we have choices. We can live for all time as true kings. Or, we can once again go to war. This time we can choose which side to take. This time it will be different. Men may be our deviant kin, but the spark of the divine in the heart of every man burns as brightly in them as it does in us."

"And you propose to rule them? Do you honestly propose to control them? They who have fallen from grace? The rebel race?"

"I do, brother, for they have not yet fallen as far as we."

A tense pause transformed the air in the room into something thick and suffocating.

"And what if they rebel against you? What happens to your glorious kingdoms when they unlock their true power? When they, like we, get drunk on their glory and banish all fear?"

The first brother smiled once more. It was a shameless smirk of certainty. He spoke with the authority of one who knew.

"For that to transpire, they would have to believe. I have been to their past, to their very beginning, and I have been to their end. They will never believe. We can go to their realm and rule like gods in their past. We can take wives and they will give us children unlike any living things that have gone before. There is a place; a few days walk from here. There is a mountain of rock as blue and as cold as the eyes of our lost commander, and high up in that mountain, there is a doorway. A small pool of black ether that will transport us to the other place, and return us to this place, whenever the urge takes us. I implore all of you. Join me, and we will return to glory. To greater glory."

The other seated brothers reached for their cups, and they drank. The standing brother shook his head before reaching for, and then drinking from, his cup.

"Damn you, brother," he said, as he placed the cup back on the table. "Damn us all. We are now prisoners in this universe of matter. And damn walking. Think, and be there. That was our way. And now we must suffer the indignity of walking. I wish we had been erased. Any other fate would better than this."

"I can assure you, brother; there are worse fates. And there are better fates. All fates are now ours."

"You have seen this?"

"I have, and I will show you."