II. Red and White

How To Build A Human

II. Red and White

The builder opened his eyes, warding away the motes of light slipping in and out of his vision. Before him was a misty, spacious area full of calm energies who moved sluggishly in and out of the clear, wavy path in front of him. Rolling, deep pink puffs of energy crawled by him, covering the expanse of the limitless roof. Heaving himself upward, he settled into a languid rhythm, his creation hugged tightly to his chest. The inaudible inhales and exhales of the builder slowed, and jerkily the builder continued on, his oily, shiny pupils navigating through the thick fumes of time itself. There was some sort of disturbance in the air, although he could not sense what. Something did not feel right. A pressing sensation forced itself upon him, sending broiling hot prickles down his translucent outer skin. 

Halting, the builder skidded backward, his sinuous neck angling to the left and the right, closely resembling a cobra about to strike. “A puzzle…” such a flummox to my mind! The builder froze, his body stretched taut as he stood still. The bodiless souls beneath him who stroked his ankles with sighs of craving to be brought alive did nothing to help his confused alarm. The voice strangely carried a human ring to it, as it did not match the airy and disfigured tone of the builder's. It would make sense to him that perhaps he had tuned in on one of the mortal worlds for only a second and caught onto one of their conversations.

However, the voice the builder had just heard fluctuated between being auditorily heard and then lapsed into brain-speak. Whomever owned the quirky voice certainly was wily, for the builder could only glimpse what was directly in front of him when traveling the passageways of time. Looking to his left or right had a possibility of straying the builder from his destination and sucking him into another place or time before the builder even existed. The point of using the passageways of time were to only go forward or to leave it completely and withdraw back to the builder’s own land. The builder blinked, his round, black-rimmed eyes appearing to be dopey and dreamy.

If his pursuer wanted to draw a reaction from the builder, it would not be so. He had more imperative matters. Even then, it may have just been a snippet from a fellow builder’s murmurings and thoughts that accidentally interluded into a neighboring pathway. But such a weird thing like that had never happened before in all the time the builder had existed and used the pathways. It would have to be disregarded until later. The most important thing now was transporting the mold of the boy and successfully obtaining enough materials to fill his eye sockets and eyelashes. If anything, it was not intentional but it alluded to something that was disrupting the flow of the passageways. The builder had no time to observe it now, as his main focus was on his creation.

As he resumed his earlier pace, energies mingled with the builder and circled around him in a whirlwind of saffrons, grays and silvers, and pinks and indigo. Hot tingles ran up the builder’s spine, invigorating his body with vitality and rapture. It reminded him of something he’d felt towards a mortal woman when he realized he loved her. It was a giddiness, a sort of rapture, like when heat rushed to an enamored human’s cheeks and made them blush in shyness. It was horrible to be so vulnerable to your own kind, especially as a mortal being. All emotions expressed in your heart were set in public display on your face! How could they not feel so helpless and weak in front of others? It was still something the builder had yet to understand.

The air around the builder closed in, muffling his breath and distorting the flitting beings of light nervously scattering around his head and shoulders. Something was present here. The builder let out a strained huff, stroking the free-flowing airy eye above his brow. The shutter drawn over its glassed surface lifted, blotting out all energies and lights save for the detection of any living, breathing objects. Just as he were about to scan the area, hundreds of scattered thoughts he had previously thought of wormed themselves back into his head, swarming his mind with a jumble of words and phrases.

It was not painful, although it pounded at his mind with such an ardor that stirred an irritation in the builder. The air thickened around him, the surrounding energies conforming with it, forcing the builder and his creation backward. Body rigid, he clung tighter onto the mold wedged between his arms, peeling his mind’s eye open through the dense haze. Closing his seeing eyes, he glimpsed through the clouded vision of his mind’s eye the pulsating, nervous energies trying to break free from their temporary imprisonment.

Swiveling around his head disorientedly, the builder peered into the depths of the pathway, dissecting soul from energy. He could not see anything through the fog no matter how much energy he called to his will. And at that moment, as he were about to heighten his defenses, a light force heaved him backward. The souls around him screeched with some immovable emotion that warped all of the time passageway. Their distorted voices rose as one, combining into a singular pure, crystal clear sigh. 

The souls crumpled to the floor, their energy arms stirring like a bug who neared death. A certain sense of peace settled around the area like a calming blanket. Suspicious and yet trusting all the same, the builder looked about him, crouching against the feathery ground. He hugged the mold closer to him, retreating towards the beginnings of the passageway. It all had gone by so quickly. The warm tingles grouping upon his spine, the abnormal density of the air, and the joined wails of the souls all had to mean something. 

If it were an enemy, the assault would have been directed at him and him only. But a builder who goes out of their way to disturb the time passageways are threatening time, and the Universe itself, thus going against all the other builders, he reasoned to himself. Compelling his mind’s eye to open to his influence, the builder focused his attention on a shuddering soul laying in front of him. The livid, red energies stored inside of its body pounded against the soul’s limp form with a demand to be released.

In a corrupt need to escape, the bulbous wisps of energies conjoined into one, its slimy body thrashing like a cornered snake at its host’s weak frame. Just as it were about to break free, the builder leaped upon it in a budding wrath. He wrapped his arms and legs about the soul like a spider around a fly, pressing his head against the soul’s stomach. The builder tore upon its belly, and just as the energies were about to emerge with glee, he let out a shuddering breath.

White, pure energies stormed out of his maw, settling on top of the large red mass, covering it and subduing it. They delved into the core of the raw, furious energies, soothing its red hot core into a sweet lull.

With a shaking sigh the builder detached, and so did the once red energies, now a sweet, sugary pink. They lay on top of the soul in a pulp. The builder's pure energies had bled out all of the vigor and willpower from the soul’s stored energy. The soul, now emptied of its contents, folded into itself until it were nothing. The builder then froze in a frenzied realization. If it were to happen to one soul, the energies from all the others would escape as well!

"Open your ears, stomach and eyes; do you see a point in it all? Builders were created to serve the Universe for thousands of years, and here you are...creating inferior humans. You are a creation yourself!" 

The mind voice rattled the nervous atmosphere of the passageways, drawing in on the builder's every breath. The builder looked upward, his eyes dilating as he dropped into a crouch, pressing the mold against his frame. I have known this for awhile, I am no dummy, the builder responded, projecting his thoughts out into the surrounding air. He pressed his nimble fingers to his temples, weaving cords of clear energy from his forehead around him like a shield. Discarding the mold onto the ground, the builder stood, positioned in a defensive stance. Sending out balls of energy, the builder watched as they plunged into the foggy maw of the clouded passageway. Tuning in onto the energies, the builder was granted sight as they dodged through angry masses of a million different colors. 

Suddenly, a searing bright red energy zoomed past the energy, disconnecting the builder's sight inside of the white energy he had sent. Tension pressed in on his mind and closed in like a mortal sickness. Loosening his shoulders, the builder clenched his palms into fists. I suppose it makes sense, the builder thought to himself, that whoever this is, they are tired of creating humans over and over again and then watching them go. I understand that---I get it. If anything, though, they should not be going against one of their fellow builders instead but rather the Universe. 

Turning around to take his mold and return to Sweet Dream, the land he called his home, a sense of flooding loss overcame him. He should’ve not felt human emotion, and yet it consumed him like a monsoon. Burning, scalding fury came after it. The fire kindled and spread throughout his body, and took with it all in its path. The tides of loss inside him wailed in grief as they were consumed by the builder’s unwelcome fires.

Whoever was wrecking all this damage to the passageways, and only treated it as nothing more than a simple experiment, now had taken some sort of ungodly fun in taking the builder’s creation. What sort of loss and sadness had taken such a toll on another builder’s mind to make him do such things? The only question he could ask is why. In his peripheral vision, he saw pulsating blood red and inky energies slip by him, twirling about in impish delight. Fury was something a builder should never nurse, and yet he did so now. If he were in the mortal plains, he would scream at the top of his lungs, “damn them all!”, “all of them!”

The builder opened his mouth, taken by freakish human feelings. He let out a great cry, a cry that would have lanced the minds of men into a fit of unbreakable sadness. Such a bellow would have made them fall into a heap on the ground, sobbing and howling in pain and grief. The builder did not speak in words, but he seemed to say, realize it! All of what you’ve done to me, to the world, to each and every living, breathing being! White cords of energy erupted from his maw, penetrating the vile, malevolent energies circling around him. They came out from the builder’s being like the waters of a waterfall, whose contents spilled over the sides of fresh green land and into some depraved gaping hole beneath it.

Focusing his strained eyes ahead, the builder focused in on a distracting thought that would keep him occupied until he could last no longer. To a mortal's eyes, he would be an angel; sacrificing a great deal of stamina for the destruction of the evil beings let lose from their cages. Angels, to them, were pure and holy things, descended from the skies. These beings were not human. It was laughably so how close they'd come to the truth. He had heard of this prevalence of angels in many cultures and universes, whether they be called angels or not. One thing they did not comprehend was there was no good and evil, only chaos and order. A builder is not bad or good. They are order, but accidentally can cause chaos. After all, such chaos originated from the mortal plains which builders only brought inadvertently to cultivation.

The souls among the passageways were exact examples of this. Some builders were quite risky, and imbued an element that would either provide healthy and beneficial traits to their creation, or those that were destructive and vile. And here they were, forever abandoned. The shaking spew of white energies that once poured so angrily out of his mouth now shuttered with exhaustion. The builder, brought back to attention, forced out the remains of his energy. It would be enough. It had to be enough. The fading echos of the drained crimson energies proved so. 

Falling to one knee, his head hanging limply, the builder shut his maw close. The world around him went blurry, as if he were glimpsing it all through an impregnable film. Flashes of red and white, of wrathful wails reached his eyes and his hearing. Take me where I must go, the builder reasoned with the universe. His body went weak and the last thing he felt was the soothing, icy grounds of the passageway.

(A/N: Please let me know if the scenes went by too fast. I didn't really edit this much.)