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The garden of eden was beautiful.
Chaos was returned into the Astral World. Correcting surface worldly things, settling the ground with natural fertilizer, salting the surrounding sea, returning weather and atmosphere. Dead vines crumbled in its wake, falling dust to the new living dirt.
Foliage would burst in strange places all over the ancient city now, but it cultivated at the Tower. Lush of colors and stellarborn petals, sprouted around the building like a dress’s train.
Or like an eager mouth that was being fed.
The Will could have destroyed it. Wished to. Old prejudices were not entirely forgone in the war’s victory.
The sight of so much color, life, chaos, still caused an itch for sterile correction.
But the vegetation’s safety was pleaded by a chorus of voices. (Denizen and artificial.) Which together had been enough to sway the golden leader to elsewhere focus. Though the Will continued to brood and brew over the matter.
Left alone, the garden grew.
The garden of eden was beautiful, Astral once heard.
It was one of the many legends used to explain earth’s beginning. Two figures left to govern a garden of magnificence, a place which saw the first marriage and first communion.
And the first sin. Indulged in a bite, revealing knowledge of good and evil. Spreading it to the whole world.
As Astral looked out between the high star-reflecting pillars, it wasn’t difficult to imagine such a place could have looked a little like this.
A new flower had birthed since the joining of the two worlds. None other alike it.
The denizens took to calling them Chaos Lilies.
Long stems dripping to clusters of jewel buds, something between astralite and barianite. But always in the shades of chaos, reds and pinks and oranges. They hung like bells and twinkled the way of earth jewels.
At the foot of the Tower, the lilies surrounded. Blooming across the lush fervently, but in their company were more familiar plants as well. Local flora thrived and allowed for hues of blue and aqua amidst the sunset colors. Thicker roots had even strung themselves vertical along the grassy border and bushed out with leaves, becoming warped trees.
The greenery sprawled to the first marble steps, but left with no where else to go, the roots curled heavy braids of themselves.
The Tower was home to the Will, mighty herald of order. Where the original execution of chaos had enacted. Even the new living outlets of chaos-greens were wary to approach too close inside.
What a strange taunt, then, that they chose such a place for high volumes of blooms.
(But of course he knew why.)
Astral straightened himself and floated down the stairway, beyond the curtaining tree vines leading into the garden’s heart.
He saw him immediately.
Despite weeks having passed, the deity’s body would not adapt, refusing to cleanse to the blues of its origin. A lifetime surrendered to revenge had stained red upon his soul. Sins it would not allow be revoked, forever revealing knowledge of their evil.
It made Don Thousand stark in their world. Abrasive in every scenery walked through.
Perhaps that was why he lingered in the garden. He did not look so wrong here, welcomed among the red crystalline petals and warm undergrowth.
The god of Barian World had died.
The wayward soul, banished from Astral World eons ago, had not.
The Numeron Code did not discriminate the voices of whom begged for revived life. Its command, written into the lapsing universe matter that ebbed into the face of the card, was to return the souls lost in the war who deserved another chance.
(Yuma’s choice of wording. Naturally.)
Though stripped of the dark collected power, Don Thousand had returned on the steps of Astral World in the flesh.
What ensued was a secondary war. Contained entirely within the Tower’s throne room.
Eliphas had launched into instant attack. Bringing all of his power into his fists in a blinding crackle of lightning, and swinging them with hateful precision.
Don Thousand had managed to parry some off — particularly those aimed for his head — but otherwise seemed resigned to dodging and taking the blows. Allowing shards of his exposed armor to crack under the Will’s mighty fists.
Astral and Yuma had remained to the sides, watching in mixes of shock as the two titans of artificial creation collided over and over.
Astral remembered being tense. An unnamed feeling that begun as sensations of rib constriction, then soon slithered a cold dry up his throat.
There was a point when Yuma had rushed into the crossfire to urge the two to stop.
The envoy had felt panic for his friend and rushed alongside him. Letting his own energy and power rise to signal warning against either of them harming the boy.
Of the few things in the worlds one could rely on, Yuma could always be trusted to jump into any situation and ask for the best parts of yourself to prevail.
Even so, it had taken the addition of Ena’s calm but resolute interjection to quell the crackling of hostility in the air. Yuma’s pursuit had been valiant, but there exist undercurrents even he is yet too young to grasp.
The animosity between the Will of Order and the Zeal of Chaos run far, far deeper than declarative speeches alone could solve.
What would the boy say now? Were he here, watching Astral gingerly float over wild, beautiful chaos-veined vegetation just to reach his most sworn foe.
He would like that I was doing this, Astral realized as he watched Don Thousand’s blue eye regard him from over a dark shoulder.
Even if no one else was. He would praise Astral for doing anything with olive branch intention.
When war had been done, the Tsukumo family's reunion had been tender. A swelled moment of tears and laughs. It had made Astral’s chest feel like bursting, so gladdened to see his companion embrace his lost parents.
They had invited Astral to stay with them for dinner, and in the evening’s later hours, somehow, had come the topic of the parent’s meeting and union.
Kotori, ever the romantic, and spurred on by Yuma’s protesting whines, had asked at what moment the older Tsukumos had become certain of one another.
“I just knew.” Mirai had waved off, eyes bright with the shine that Yuma had inherited.
“Like she was made for me,” Kazuma had finished, wrapping around his wife and displaying affections that made their children halfheartedly gag.
How strange that Astral recalled that now. Here.
The words burning a stronger imprint on his mind the longer his stare with the deity was kept.
“Don Thousand,” Astral greeted the other in his usual tone. If not stiffer. Giving nothing of his inner thoughts away.
“Astral,” He was greeted back by a voice of storm rumble.
The deity stood before one of the greater trees the garden had formed. It had grown tall and thick until it could bear itself no more and was forced to bend, bowing into a willow-like tree of delicate vines covered in chaos lilies.
“You surprise me by being here. Has it come to pass that Eliphas finally grew tired of this place, and sent you to eradicate it.”
“I am here of my choosing.” Astral answered with a pause, “And even if he did command such, it would have no lasting affect. These gardens are a sign of our world healing, propelling us forward, to the future, instead of frozen in the past.”
Don Thousand fully turned himself to face the envoy. Astral had a hard time reading his expression. It was one of surprise? Approval? Or . . . pride.
He found he disliked all those possible answers.
“Your stance surprises me further, messenger.”
“It should not. Chaos is the source of life, and therefore infinite. That is what you said yourself at the end of our duel, was it not.”
“…The end of our duel.” Don Thousand echoed lowly.
The space separating them thickened. The small orbs that rose off the planet’s ground flurried, as if disturbed by unseen force.
Astral’s shoulders set aback slightly. “I— yes. When Yuma and I defeated you on earth.”
Don Thousand was motionless so long that Astral thought he was simply not going to say anything else. Somehow the silence brought itches underneath his skin that made him want to abandon the garden altogether.
It made him question (for the up-tenth) why he had come here. What he was looking to gain by speaking to the deity, after avoiding him at every pass all these weeks.
“It is over… it all ended, and only then, you finally joined me.” The god spoke it so softly, and gently, that the envoy’s insides tried to jump out of himself.
Astral flew back, the statement received like a blow. Fists balled and legs uncrossing to a stance of opposition. “I do not condone any of what you did in your warpath. I could never have—”
His burst of emotion was disregarded by the deity, who walked back to his original place before the canting tree.
“My heart having changed towards chaos has nothing to do with you, Don Thousand. To suggest I would follow your influence, now or ever, is blasphemous.”
“Is it blasphemy that you were created with me in mind. Made for me as your purpose?”
That offered perspective was so abrupt and shocking it made the envoy dizzy.
“My purpose was the safety of Astral World.” It still was. That’s why he was here.
“As was mine,” Don Thousand told.
Silence reigned again.
It hit Astral that he didn’t know whether that was a lie. Don Thousand was artificial, like himself, but the exact reason of his existence wasn’t known to him.
Any knowledge from before the war had been lost. History was altered, any trace of things that didn’t befit Order or Rank-Up were obliterated.
Ena said the true Astral World had died when chaos was banished. So its return must be a reincarnation.
This was a new world. Rewritten to genesis.
It was growing a garden.
Astral’s teeth pinched the inside of his cheek, and then it was as if Don Thousand was suddenly watching him much more intensely.
He swiftly smoothed his jaw, a spark dropping down his chest.
This was only the second time a conversation today had left the envoy spinning.
His talk with Eliphas, which had brought him down to the garden in the first place — had gone as sparse as it had terse.
Standing at the balcony’s edge, facing out the tower’s highest vantage point across all the city, Eliphas’s stare had been burning through the gathered greenery, taking as much ground as a forest fire.
The Will had listened over the details of Astral’s dutiful observations for what the day had held without note or interruption. Simply kept to his chilly stares as the envoy finished off his political listings.
“Voice your inquiry.” He had begun in his mighty voice when Astral finished. “I commend your acquiescence, but you are not inobvious in your eagerness for whatever question you harbor.”
Astral remembered the slow way his head had lifted, his own eyes entrapped by the below garden as well. But with a different emotion.
“Eliphas. I, of anyone, understood the decisions made in precaution against Don Thousand.” Greatly. He had voted in its favor in fact.
Locking down the Tower and instilling a hard law forbidding the once-chaos deity to leave, Astral maintained, had been the wisest and clearest cut decision at the time. And remained so.
“…But,” Astral had trailed.
The Will had waited.
“…Do you truly believe it necessary — to extend the same harsh speculation to the new plant life? When much time has—”
“I know it so.”
The response had been swift, a chill hanging on the edge of each word like frost. Beneath layers of armor and flesh, a spark of heat had moved in the Will’s veins. If his temperament was aflame on the inside, by the time it expelled outward, it had froze over. Icy.
In the distance, thunder rumbled in tremors over the ground, but no flash could have been seen outside.
“I have always known my enemy.” Eliphas had clenched a gloved hand against the balcony’s fixture.
Your enemy? Astral had held his tongue but raised his chin.
It was not you who faced him and watched as the days became years together, said a little dark voice in Astral’s mind.
The sudden internal defensiveness had unsettled the envoy.
That was not even a time he recalled. Not in any depth. After that shining draw all those millennia ago, (or maybe because of it), when he next had been awakened, all detailed memories of the one thousand day duel were gone.
Those were memories that, even now, were yet to have returned to him.
“The energies have made reunion in our world, stabilizing more each day… What now is there to fear?” Astral made the err to observe out loud.
Stepping sideways, Eliphas had looked directly at him. Stare impossibly colder when the interjections were out in the open between them, hanging in the air.
“Once, it was I speaking in your place, Astral. It was I defending the actions, the existence, the living chaos of one whom I thought worthy of trust.”
The envoy had stared back, boggled of mind.
Such a recounting of the pre-war had never been shared to him. It almost implied Eliphas had tried to offer chaos — or someone defending chaos — a chance, and had seen dire consequences for it.
The unnecessarily slow strides he took forward to pass the lither male were unnerving. Halting when their profiles had aligned.
“You forget what you do not know. I say this to you in hopes the same dire mistake shall never repeat.”
Astral fell back into the present moment like a star cometing a dark sky.
Don Thousand was offering him the grace of not further questioning why Astral was here, but it was all the envoy could think about.
If he had been asked. And if he had been open to offer some morsel answer. Astral supposed he would have said; for answers.
But answers to what?
The envoy found his attention stolen by the twinkle of a lily branch. Loose on the vine compared to its siblings.
The chaos-made deity watched the order-made messenger as he approached the tiny flower.
It flickered light under the starry sky above, dancing with iridescence from the floating orbs and lunar shining astral plants that emitted their own light.
It felt all at once very important that only Astral and Don Thousand were in this garden. Alone. Together.
For the first time in a hundred centuries.
For the first time at all.
The astral sea was too far, its salt scent and wave roars too faint in the air to be offered distractions Astral could latch to. Noise of the garden was limited to rustling leaves, and soft crystal clinks of chaos petals.
Making the loudest thing here — next to Astral — the sound of Don Thousand’s breaths leaving his body.
Astral felt it again, the unnamed thing; ribs constricted, cold drying throat.
The god of the dead chaos world paced around the tree’s perimeter.
Astral began speaking before he knew where he’d finish. “Has Eliphas… always advocated for chaos erasure?”
Don Thousand looked to him through the sun-bleached hangings of willow vine. Red and blue eyes aglow through leaves.
“Have you ever done something, messenger,” The exiled artificial asked instead, “That you vowed within yourself to never speak? To take with you, unto death?”
Astral searched himself for any kinship example, and turned up nothing. Only met a wall of inner fog.
He was the envoy. Created for perfection. In his existence, especially prior to Yuma, he would not have been able to entertain a secret, much less defy his coding to go through with one.
Even now, with all his friendships and acceptance of certain chaoses, there was nothing Astral ever so deeply harbored that had inspired a vow willingly taken to grave.
(Even though some distant feeling in his memories called for him to second-guess it.)
The loose lily got plucked off the tree. Astral gave it ginger attention in his hand, bringing it nearer.
It blinked and glittered and warmed.
Don Thousand came round the other side of the vines, walking close until he was flush over the envoy’s back.
The closeness draped Astral in heat, potent chaos energy exhaling off the deity like thick humidity, fogging the cold purity of his body.
Those deep breaths left the deity’s lips to meet the skin behind Astral’s neck.
Loud. (So close to his ear now). Hot. (Tremors down his whole form.)
Don Thousand’s fingers touched Astral’s elbow.
When the envoy failed to move away, they slid up, carving touch all the way to the thin of his wrist. And up more, finding Astral’s knuckles to close over. Until they held the flower together.
Astral’s hand fought for steadiness, cradled between two sources of heat.
How stark the contrast of their hands, undeniable so up close.
Red and midnight, blue and starlight.
They shouldn’t have looked like they belonged.
There had been two people in eden, a man and the woman god made for him. They had stayed in the garden as one.
One could wonder, for their betrayal, had they burned in hell as one too?
Strands of long hair spilled over the messenger’s shoulder when the god leaned to whisper.
“If you could eat from every tree in the garden, except for one. The one whose fruit begot you truth. Would you taste from it, Astral?”
Their connected touch caused the petals to bloom brighter. Chaos and order.
“It is foolish,” Astral’s mouth felt numb, “to reject seeking knowledge.”
“It is not paradise,” Don Thousand murmured, “if it relies on you being a willing lesser.”
Knowledge was power.
Astral let his head slowly, slowly fall back. They were so close that his hair curled beneath the deity’s chin.
“Is that why you chose it?… You could not stand Eliphas having more power?”
The spell broke like a fever.
Don Thousand’s touch swiftly gone from him.
The flower dropped and scattered among the roots.
Astral was cold.
He heard Don Thousand backing away, but Astral could not bring himself to lock eyes to him.
Instead, Astral’s gaze flickered to the tower, uprooting from the garden’s edge like a monstrous effigy. Herald of order. Like a titanous creature, touching down on a too-small plain to punish the sinners inside.
In words almost unheard, the deity said, “Our destinies always lead us here…”
They stopped Astral’s heart.
Inside him, the wall of fog cracked.
The envoy spun, but he was gone.
Overwhelming though the god’s presence was, his retreat was inherently silence shrouded. He did not need grand exit to bring attention to the loss of him.
It was felt.
Astral’s feet met the soft grass and he half-leaned, half-fell upon the trunk of the tree.
He could not help wondering — with odd guilt — whether he had prematurely wrought an end to . . . whatever it was that had been happening.
Consuming forbidden fruit had unleashed sin into the earth.
Lifting a hand before his eyes, he observed the tips of his fingers. Stained by the chaos of the petals.
Astral could not suppress the shiver that rattled through him as he watched his natural purity fight off the discoloration.
Could such a thing happen again? On a different world?
Unmatched beauty was told to have resided within the garden of eden.
The glow around the envoy ebbed bright and low, rhythms of a pulse.
Astral reimagined the scene that had unfolded between him and the god. But if instead of chaos lily, the thing in their hands had been a fruit.
He imagined rolling a wrist to turn the fruit, that it would have revealed two sets of overlapping teeth marks.
The imaginary Astral let it slip to the ground. Where it decayed to rot across the expanse of his mind.
It was only a story.
For now, Astral knew to guard his heart. (New, scared, clumsy heart).
A snake had resided in eden too.