“Are you ready to meet the Goddess, Sera?” The smiling raven-haired woman asked, leaning over a pile of furs where a silver-haired child was currently squirming. She was dressed in the traditional hunter’s garb of the tribe, made mostly of furs and leather, and had a bow slung over her shoulder. Though her sister had never been meant to become a hunter, she had been forced into the role after their parents perished.

  Serana looked up at her sister with excited eyes, jumping up immediately, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  It was customary for very child to meet the Goddess once they reached twelve years old and to say she was excited to do the same would be an understatement.

  Her sister ruffled her hair, “Get dressed first, silly. You don’t want the Goddess to see your butt, do you?”

  Serana blushed, before dressing herself in record time. She looked at her sister with expectant eyes.

  Chuckling, the raven-haired woman walked out of their hut, Serana following like an obedient duckling.

  They walked through the camp quietly. Though it was early morning, most of the other tribesmen were awake, yet instead of the usual congratulations, their eyes avoided the pair of sisters like the plague. Most didn’t think they would both live through the winter. All thought her silver hair was a bad omen. It was the colour of winter. Of death.

  Serana knew this because she was smart. Her sister said so. Serana hadn’t confronted her sister about it, though. She knew her sister was trying her best, but there was only so much the older girl could do. Her sister was the best though, so they usually had food anyway.

  But Serana was smart. She understood that if her sister struggled to procure food in the seasons when animals were abundant, there would be an even bigger problem once winter set in. She helped as much as she could foraging for roots and berries or offering to help the other tribesmen for food, but those avenues would go dry with winter too.

  This was why she marched with her head held up high, her eyes filled with fierce determination. The Goddess would help them. She would just have to be persuasive.

  They walked on a well-travelled forest pathway, the silence broken only by birdsong and the wind. Serana thought the path was much longer than usual, but eventually, she spotted their destination.

  A massive white obelisk rose from the ground, its top reaching the clouds. Despite having seen the sight many times, the sisters still paused, taking it in. None could doubt the Goddess’ divinity when they saw the monument. No seams were visible on the massive structure, as if it was carved out of some massive mountain and carried to its destination as is.

  After a few seconds, Serana tugged on her sister’s hand. The bigger girl ruffled her hair, “Yes, yes.”

  After a few more minutes of travel, they reached the base of the obelisk.

  “What do we do now?” Serana asked, having never witnessed the ceremony, as was custom.

  Her sister knelt, tugging Serana down with her, “Now, we will pray. The Goddess will invite you in once she is satisfied with your piety.”

  Serana groaned, but obeyed, dipping her head and closing her eyes.

  The sisters knelt for barely a minute when Serana grew bored and glanced at the obelisk.

  “Look!” She gasped, poking her sister and pointing at the obelisk. A rectangular hole was now present where before was only a seamless wall.

  “That was fast,” her sister remarked, “A good omen. Now off with you, I’ll wait.”

  Serana made it a few steps before she glanced backwards at her sister, who made a shooing motion, “Go on. You know I can’t tell you anything more.”

  With those words, Serana made it towards the entrance. Only darkness lurked behind the threshold. After looking back once more, the young girl walked inside.

  The darkness did not abate, but Serana had never been afraid of the night. Resolutely moving forward, the girl walked on in darkness, the sound of her footsteps her only companion.

  After what was either a few minutes or an eternity, she spotted a light. Moving closer, she realised it wasn’t an exit. Instead, her eyes saw an image carved into the wall of the corridor. The picture was strange. It depicted one giant sphere, the light source, along with four other spheres, though these ones did not give off any light. Three were a mix of brown and grey, while the fourth one was green and blue.

  Serana looked on for a few moments, before growing bored and moving on. It didn’t take long for the next illustration to appear. It was almost the same, but the four smaller spheres had changed position and a new, blue one, had appeared near green and blue one.

  The girl trod on.

  In the next illustration, the blue sphere looked back at her with an open eye. Serana gasped, before facepalming.

  It was just a carving.

  Next, the other spheres had disappeared. Only the second smaller one and the blue one remained. This time, the eye wasn’t looking at her, but at the other sphere.

  Serana was growing bored.

  The next few illustrations only got a cursory glance at her as she sped up. Something was happening on the sphere that the eye was looking at, but Serana didn’t see how this was relevant. She was here to speak to the Goddess!

  The next depiction made her pause though. The smaller sphere was pitch black and the eye was crying.

  Frowning, she backtracked before sticking her head as close to the sphere as she could. Serana blinked, struggling to make sense of what she saw.

  Tiny creatures that looked like a weird mix of human and mantis were all over the sphere, living in strange and wondrous cities. Killing each other by the million. Great armies marched across the land, only to be wiped out in seconds in fiery conflagrations. Cities and forests were turned to ashes, while the oceans boiled.

  She gasped, moving away from the little sphere. There was no way such a tiny carving on a wall could let her see so much. Carefully glancing at the image again, she saw just a simple sphere, if one with detailed carvings of the mantis creatures present.

  Frightened, she moved on.

  The story repeated. Over and over again. First, there would be a picture of one big sphere of light surrounded by smaller ones, though the numbers, colours and sizes varied. Then, the blue eye would arrive and watch one of the smaller spheres.

  Then some manner of creature would emerge on it. Sometimes she had to move past many illustrations for that to happen, sometimes it happened in the very next depiction.

  After that, the story diverged, though the broad strokes were similar. The creatures would grow, building cities and warring. Then, they would end and the eye would move on.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Serana avoided looking closely at those.

  Then, the pattern was broken.

  The eye had been watching another of the fairly common blue-green spheres, this one in a system of seven other spheres. The creatures were fairly ugly, with long arms and fur covering them everywhere except for their faces and hands, which were leathery. At least they had the right number of limbs and heads, unlike some of the previous one.

  Instead of the story continuing until their destruction, the Eye just disappeared.

  The next image was different, if still following the broad strokes of the previous one. The central sphere was very small, with only two other spheres present. The blue eye-sphere appeared next, closer to the smaller of the present spheres.

  Then the watched sphere started changing. Barren rock was replaced by grass and valleys filled with water. Trees and small animals appeared after. Then, a giant white obelisk.

  Serana was starting to put things together.

  In the next depiction, the furry creatures from the previous sphere system were shown around the monolith.

  The walls remained blank after.

  It took Serana a few more minutes of walking to spot light. Too much to come out of some wall carving, this time. Excited to get outside, the young girl sped up, half closing her eyes to protect them from the sudden increase in brightness.

  The sight that greeted her made her stop, then stumble backward.

  She was on the very top of the obelisk, despite walking on perfectly even ground for the entire time.

  The corridor behind her emerged from the floor at nearly ninety degrees, the heavy slope obvious now that Serana was outside of it.

  Shaking her head at the weirdness, she examined her surroundings.

  The top of the obelisk was rather small, making her stick to the centre, lest a gust of wind blow her off, even though she couldn’t feel even the slightest breeze on her skin. The view was spectacular. Serana could see far, all the way to the mountain range down south which was said to mark the edge of the world, to the oceans to the east and west, and the frozen plains of the north.

  To the young girl, it felt like she was seeing the entire world.

  Finally, after a while spent admiring the view, her gaze was slowly and inexorably attracted upwards, towards the sky.

  An eye the size of a world was staring right back at her.

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  Now

  What was a god?

  It was a simple question, one that had resounded through the ages. Beggars, kings and philosophers alike, all had thought of the question at least once in their short lives, some even arriving at something akin to the truth in their musings.

  In Serana’s opinion, the easiest way to understand what a God is was the parable of the anthill.

  Less of a story and more of a question, it was wisdom the Custodian had carried forth across millennia, even if she no longer remembered the sister who had once told it to her.

  To grasp the nature of a god, one only had to consider what humans were to ants.

  Untold millions of the creatures worked, fought and died in mere months. Great anthills were built and destroyed, all while unfathomable giants walked the ground, every step causing the very earth to tremble. Most were utterly indifferent to the ants. And why would they not be? Ants were nothing. They lived and died, achieving little and understanding even less. Many ants died when they displeased these giants for reasons they could not hope to comprehend in a million years, yet many flourished from their crumbs as well.

  The truth was that humans had no reason to care about ants. They might destroy an anthill if it was built in an inconvenient spot, but would they give even a second of thought to what they were destroying? The work of generations, of hundreds of thousands of ants, gone just like that.

  However, not all humans were like that. Some cared at least a little, taking care to step around the small creatures. Much, much rarer were those willing to help the ant. To guide, to feed, to protect, without hope of repayment. A kindness beyond comprehension.

  Alas, while repaying a god for their kindness might be impossible, that does not mean the ants should not try.

  Waves of power rolled from Serana as she channeled more power than ever before, reducing the top of her tower to dust. The Custodian remained motionless in the air, with gravity itself seemingly too afraid to move her.

  As the Eye of Eternity opened in the sky once more, wakened by the enormous amount of raw power coarsing through Serana's body, she smiled so wildly her cheeks hurt.

  Her plans were unchanged.

  After all, she was not an ungrateful ant.

  She turned her head, surveying the destruction. The once pristine lands surrounding the First Temple were a wasteland, but no soldier, whether ally or enemy, dared to move. The entire world held its breath, all its inhabitants forced to acknowledge the indisputable truth before them. All were frozen in awe of true divinity.

  The Custodian raised her hand towards the sky. Though the silver glow was blinding, she could see her fingers beginning to crumble, as if she were a statue made of ash.

  “Bear witness,” her soft voice resounded through the battlefield, breaking the silence like a thunderclap.

  Not all managed to turn their attention away from the eldritch sight above them, but enough did. The light originating from the Custodian’s body grew, the woman becoming akin to a second sun.

  Then, a spear of light the size of a mountain erupted from her outstretched hand, heading upward into space.

  Aisac stood, leaning on his blood-soaked sword, while the part of his mouth that was still intact hung open. He might have felt embarrassed about the lapse of control normally, but he was hardly the only one. Though Eternity had been often depicted as a giant eye in the sky, he had always thought it a metaphor. Apparently not.

  As the light show ended, the battlefield remained frozen. The Knight Commander could not make out what had happened to the Custodian, yet the glow was gone.

  Eternity was not. Where once the blue gas giant Agnu gently illuminated the night, a great eye now peered down at the moon’s surface.

  The peace lasted for a scant few seconds more.

  Then, someone screamed. Aisac couldn’t make out the words, but their voice was soon joined by hundreds and then thousands of others. An ear drum-shattering warcry resounded throughout the field as the faithful were emboldened by the presence of their Goddess.

  Aisac barely realised his voice had joined in.

  The tired and battered knights surged with renewed vigour, breaking their formations as they rushed forth.

  They slaughtered any in their way without resistance. Many of the heretics had fallen to their knees once they realised the truth, while the Terrans were stunned by the sight. For a while, their enemy was too disoriented to mount a proper resistance. Then, the sound of gunshots broke the spell.

  Aisac’s men started dropping like flies as he realised with horror that he could no longer create a shield to protect them. Nor could he do anything else but swing his sword.

  However, even the mounting casualties were not enough to break the zealous frenzy which had possessed the remnants of the Temple Knights.

  A silver shield snapped into place in front of the charging knights.

  Aisac’s eyes widened, searching for the source. His own powers were still completely unresponsive.

  He found it quickly. A rider, galloping forward from their lines in battered armour while laughing madly all the while. The Knight Commander stared, before recognising the motifs on the figure's armour.

  “Finlay?” He muttered.

  It didn’t take long for the enemy to break after that.

  “Well, we’ve won,” Ashwood muttered, standing outside the shuttle, his head tilted towards the sky, “Order the retreat.”

  “Won?” Jane asked tonelessly.

  He pointed at the sky, “There is our answer. Hell if I know what it is, but I sincerely doubt we’ll find out more by interrogating medieval peasants and combing through castles.”

  Ashwood turned towards the communications officer, “Yang, tell them not to resume the bombardment. Let’s not piss that thing off more.”

  “Uh, sir, we’ve lost contact with the fleet,” the warrant officer answered meekly.

  “What do you mean, lost contact?” Ashwood rounded on him.

  “Just before that eye appeared, communications ceased. I’ve been trying to re-establish contact, but the computer things there isn’t anything up there,” Yang paused, “Must be some sort of a jammer,” he muttered, before returning to fiddling with the machine.

  “Or, that flash of light was an attack,” Jane chimed in.

  “Fuck.”