Prologue: The Beginning, The End, and The Challenge

The all knowing god Shuya, quiet beacon of hope and creation, was watching from their temporally adjacent immortal realm as the human world burned itself furiously to the ground.

“Oh, well,” said their twin sibling, Harus, the Scythe. “Good game, Shu. You really did make some headway that time. For a few minutes, I thought you might win.”

That wasn’t true, and Shuya knew it.

“Let’s play again,” they suggested. “This time-!”

“Let’s not.” Harus shook their head, looking weary. “Come on, Shu; how many times have we done this already? Don’t you get tired of losing? Don’t you think you’ve put the humans through enough?”

“They never remember any of it,” murmured Shuya with a touch of bitterness. “They certainly don’t seem to learn from it, anyway. Once more won’t hurt any more than it already has.”

“I’m getting kind of bored,” complained Harus.

“I promise,” Shuya insisted. “It won’t be boring this time; I have some new ideas that I’m very excited about ,and on top of that-!”

“You aren’t going to cheat, are you?” Harus frowned.

Shuya raised an eyebrow at them.

“I never cheat,” they reminded their sibling. “You’re the cheater. You ALWAYS cheat.”

Harus straightened up to their full height and looked about as innocent as the embodiment of destruction possibly could.

“I have never cheated,” they insisted haughtily. “The fact that the odds of human nature just happen to be permanently in my favor isn’t my fault. After all, the creation of humans was your idea in the first place; the fact that they resemble me more than they do you is just a bit pathetic, but that does happen in families more than we care to admit, you know.”

Shuya chose not to dignify any of that with a response. It wasn’t worth the effort.

“I’ll make you a deal,” they told Harus. “Let’s play this game one more time; just one. To make it more interesting for you, we’ll raise the stakes; if you win this round, then the human world gets permanently destroyed, and I’ll have to start over on a new project. If I win, though, then you leave them alone. No more natural disasters, no more wars that no one can remember who started; we simply leave them to live the way they want to live, and if they continue to take after you, that’s their business. I’ll live and let live, so to speak.”

“You’d have to find something new to amuse you either way,” remarked Harus. “Are you just looking for an excuse to take up a new hobby?”

Shuya didn’t answer that either, because it was uncomfortably close to the truth.

“What do you say?” they asked instead. “One more game?

Harus just shrugged.“Well, if that’s what you want,” they muttered. “I’m just going to win again. I’d say that I admire your resolve, but I don’t, because at this point the whole thing feels more like insanity than it does like hope. I’m starting to wonder if the humans even WANT to exist in any kind of harmonious way, or if they actually enjoy bringing about The End of The World. You can’t force them to survive, Shu. You can’t bend everything to your will just because-!”

“That’s exactly what I’m meant to do; I’m a god.” Shuya shook their hair back, sat up straight, and snapped their fingers. As they did so, the human realm roared back into existence in its full force and glory, as though it had never been tragically and epically destroyed in the first place.

“Most of the humans have decided not to believe in gods, you know,” Harus reminded them. “They don’t believe in either of us; not really. Maybe if you weren’t so bad at this game, they wouldn’t have lost faith.”

That one hurt. Shuya glared at Harus, who grinned back, letting the destruction ooze out of their smile and color the empty space all around them.

In the human realm, the skies opened, and ice began to fall from the sky.

“No cheating!” Shuya cried.

“I didn’t do anything.” Harus affected surprise.”I’m just sitting here, minding my own business. And besides, we haven’t even started yet. Same rules as last time, then?”

Shuya shut their eyes, and counted to ten, Then they looked over at their sibling, attempted a confident smile, and said, “Not exactly. Here’s what I have in mind.”