Before–at the Beginning

  At this point in time, in the darkness that consumed the entire Fourth Incarnation, there was a single point of light. The barest spark. A wavering light, and then a flicker of orange flames tinged with red, like the ignition of a fire. And this flicker of flames was ignited from her.

  The primal beast of the girl curled up in the dark, burning with white-hot flames in the Outside, the region outside of what would become the multiverse. Around her, beings of light known as the Progenitors, her creations and her children, murmured in blistered, forgotten tongues to this girl-beast, calling out her name. Grandmaster. Grandmaster. Grandmaster.

  They offered her promises and pleas, which turned to bribes and threats, but it did not matter. None of it reached the girl. She simply wound herself in a tight ball, sobbing, concentrating on Creation as she picked up pieces of the Throne, the ultimate creator of the Omniverse. She was the daughter of the Throne. A goddess of creation. A Worldwalker.

  Down the Lightning Path that connected life to death, the Reality Fireball was created with her power to create new universes when she would not be able to anymore.

  There was the searing cry of a feathered, beaked phoenix dragon, and a scarlet flame erupted out of her avatar in the form of the Fire Source, the flame that sparked creation and consumed destruction throughout the multiverse–another one of her children.

  And in a million blinking points of light and darkness, a million species burst into existence on thousands of planets as tears streamed down her cheeks. But she did not dare move. Not yet. It was not time yet.

  There were the Entities, beings of darkness that opposed the Progenitors, trapped in Limbo, the walls between universes, with their own servants. They wanted to destroy all life in the previous cycle of the multiverse.

  As the girl wept, tears of blood–her blood–ran down her cheeks. The tears of blood dripped slowly and fell to sprout a new life form connected to her–the first. Two-legged specimens with the ability to think for themselves and a mutation in their cells. Humans that were not human. Homo extraneous, not Homo sapiens. Her people. Her children. They would be known as deviants.

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  Twelve billion years passed in the blink of an eye while she curled up, weeping, frozen in her grief. But you must not think too harshly for her. She had been through so much, too much for one being, mortal or god, to bear, and her heart was torn open while her soul bled. But she had to remember who she was.

  “The country of Eboltya…” she whispered, the words dancing on her lips.

  And oh, it was so beautiful! Machines that carried ta’lien, the substance of the universe, to people through the air faster than a horse could run across the ground. Machines that carried people through the air. Great cities of buildings made of sturdy plants that were taller than mountains.

  No sickness. No hunger. No war. They planted. They danced and laughed and sang and loved.

  Then humanity set fire to their world.

  The Deathcaster, who ravaged hundreds of worlds in the Phantom City. And Oblivion, the great god of nothingness and nonexistence, the anti-Grandmaster, her counterpart, who consumed everything. He destroyed everything. Her beloved Eboltya and the entire multiverse. And she would stop it.

  The she-beast has been called a multitude of names over the course of eternity and infinity: worshiped as the Cosmic Queen and the Crown Above All Things; accused of being a rakshaka or an asura of Hindu mythology; and bestowed the titles of reality warping, Bright Dragon, and Star Phoenix. But her true name, her deviant name, was Grandmaster, and right now, Harleen Bawa closed her eyes and felt her blood shift, pulse, like the blood, cells, life and death.

  The first attempt at the multiverse was disastrous, with her cosmic counterpart wiping out all life from existence like the tide flooding a beach. Oblivion shattered the space/time continuum, breaking the First Incarnation into the Second. The Second Incarnation willingly died to bring life about. The Third Incarnation was an endless war with the Entities and the forces of Oblivion, who created Chimeras to balance out life with death. And the girl–the Grandmaster–was powerless to stop it. She could do nothing but watch as the first three Incarnations of reality destroyed themselves, and she could do nothing about it. She simply witnessed it all. So much death and carnage and destruction. The rise of Oblivion again, the death of her family and friends again. He would not, could not win again.

  Grandmaster had to bring life about, had to make the Star Legion, had to live long enough to see all her defeats and her victories again, had to meet the love of her immortal life and her friends and find her fate again.

  “One more time,” she breathed to the Progenitors, her creations and the wellsprings of life. “I am not just Grandmaster. I am Harleen and I am going to get this right.”

  It was both the next moment later and an endless number of eternities later where she brought reality back into existence. Time, which stood still for so long, began once more. Harleen closed her eyes and opened them after a trillion eons, where she was pulled from cold darkness into warm light.