Tales From Scrollos – Origins of a Universe (MOTUC)

Greetings, fellow travelers. I am Scrollos, keeper of knowledge, archivist of secrets, warden of truths. In my journey to discover all that can be known, I have found many myths and legends that tell of the creation of our universe. Some secrets lay waiting to be easily plucked, and some are buried deep beneath deception and time. Who knows what is real and what is fantasy fantasy when peering back into time’s murky corridors? From the Tome of Whenevers I bring you but one version of the beginnings of this universe of heroes and villains.

In a time of infant infinity, nothingness held dominance over all that was. Purity reigned supreme in a simmering quagmire of potential.

Into this fragility strode a conqueror, and his name was Goliatos. In this time of black consonance Goliatos strode unmolested across the great empty universe, a solitary titan. Nothing stood in his path, for he was all that existed in the broad expanse of nothing that was the universe, and this was pleasing. All this being wished was room to walk, free from the endless impediments that blighted his passage through other existences.

Goliatos and the universe primordial existed in this relationship for eons. Goliatos roamed the universe and the universe ignored him. Here he had finally found a great peace that silenced the nascent urges that beat under his unknowable frame.

Despite this seemingly symbiotic relationship between the great Goliatos and the universe at large, there came a time when all truths must end, and at that time Goliatos discovered he was not the sole totality of this universe. At this critical time, Goliatos found his path barred by obstruction, something that in his endless travels through the black wastelands of this dead universe had never happened. A rock of incalculable immensity whose dimensions would stagger the minds of lesser beings stood in his path, willfully denying him the continuance of his free passage. Where it had come from, Goliatos did not know. If it had always been here, waiting, Goliatos did not know. All he knew or cared was that the universe had been his and his alone, and now it was not. And so he felt fall away the peace that had claimed him. He felt the resurgence of a great anger blossom inside him.

Though Goliatos was vast beyond reason, and though the rock that barred his path dwarfed even Goliatos himself, the universe operated on a scale so grand that Goliatos could easily find his way around the great rock and walk eternities piled upon eternities and never see its like again. It is possible that in the fullness of time Goliatos may even forget that his way had once been barred.

But that mattered little because Goliatos, as beings of such enormity and power tend to be, was a petty titan, and demanded that which was his right through design. He wanted sole custody of the universe, and the rock denied him that.

The rage flowered. Goliatos raised a great hand and brought it crashing hatefully down on the rock that denied him.

There was a tumult as Goliatos unleashed his wrath upon the rock. Unimagined power thus alien to this little corner of reality was unleashed as Goliatos let fly his rage. Unstoppable force met immoveable object, and in their clash was born the seeds of all that might be. Sparks flew, and they became stars. Pebbles broke free from the great rock and became planets, and they found their orbit around the stars created from the sparks of his fistfalls.

How long Goliatos worried at the rock none may know. He was ageless of body and the rock was immune to entropy, and thus their enmity could have lasted as stars sparked and extinguished and were relit again. But his were single-minded labors, and with each fistfall he struck more sparks, and bit by bit the rock began losing form. And bit by bit more stars lit in the endless dusk, and more planets took their home beside them. Feeble dust became belligerent asteroid storms. Comets sung from upraised fists. Tyrant suns ignited as he worked at his task.

Eventually, as is an inevitable end to all obstacles if one hammers at them tirelessly, Goliatos found that the great intruder to his solitude had been reduced in stature. How long he had worked at it he did not know, nor did he care to know. All that was important was that finally, finally, his path would no longer be barred, and he could continue his walk unabated.

There existed but a single chunk of the mighty rock left. Proud in his accomplishments, Goliatos allowed himself a satisfied smile. All it would take was a single blow to eradicate the obdurate rock once and for all.

Goliatos looked from his labors to the universe around him.

And then, at the height of his triumph, the titan’s eyes grew wide. He looked that which he had wrought.

Stars shared the infinite with him, twinkling madly. Planets mocked him, sailing their way through the simmering sea of black. Suns burned, galaxies swirled.

Goliatos, in his anger, had populated a universe with grand impediments. That which he had once escaped had come to find him, in cosmic inevitability.

He turned to the rock, which was so diminished in size that, though it had once dwarfed even him, he now towered over it. Filled with a spiteful rage, he raised his fist again, and brought it down, intending to pulverize the remaining speck of his hated nemesis. The rock that had once been nothing but an obstacle was now fuel for an endless rage that simmered in the cauldron of the titan’s breast.

His fist hammered down onto the sole remaining chunk of the behemoth that had once barred the titan’s path. It was his mightiest blow, fueled by eons of frustration and anger. It was a blow that would utterly annihilate this last remaining fragment, this stubborn center of the only barrier to his happiness.

But when the blow landed, the rock did not move.

Waves of pure force lashed out from the impact. Energies of vast magnitude poured from the rock. They cascaded across the universe both known and unknown, and ignited potential in all the various planets that Goliatos had broken from the once proud rock.

But the rock did not move.

For inside that rock was the Star Seed, and the energies unleashed upon the impact began the lifespan of this universe. And the shell that protected that seed from harm was eternal.

Goliatos was consumed by the energies. As impossible became possible, Goliatos fell. The great being fell! He lost form and substance as he fell, dwindling in stature and resonance. It was bitter irony that his final resting place was upon that which had brought his end. All that was left of great Goliatos, who had accidentally created a universe, was a charred, graying skull, greatly diminished in stature.

Though the rock withstood the final blow of Goliatos, it was a wounded rock, and some small act of self-preservation mingled with the Star Seed and thus was born a creature made of the rock’s own substance to hold the rock together, and his name was Procrustus.

In millennia’s time, the towering gray skull of Goliatos would be found by men of wisdom and strength, and they would use it as the foundation of a towering stronghold, wherein great power would be housed along with great secrets.

Such as the one that has just been told.