Do You See?

Today, before the great well that joined the God-Given City to the sea, a large crowd had gathered as though for some grand ceremony.

Thousands upon thousands of trilobite men looked on. Out of the undersea city beneath the great well came a small trilobite man, tottering unsteadily, climbing step by step up stone stairs still drowned in water, until at last he set foot on the land beneath the sun.

Never before had he seen sunlight. Never before had he seen the grandeur of the God-Given City.

The blazing light overhead set his head swimming, and the cheers of countless thousands left him flushed and trembling with excitement.

He saw a tall trilobite man in a crown of stone, standing at the heart of a crowd ten thousand strong that ringed him about like a guard.

From his place high above, the man reached out a hand to him.

"Come to me!"

Step by step the young trilobite man came forward, until he stood before the figure in the stone crown, and knelt. A hush fell over the crowd, every one of them witness to this moment of a great miracle.

The King of Wisdom reached out and laid his hand upon the young trilobite man's head.

"My child, upon you I bestow wisdom and knowledge."

"You who carry on my bloodline, from this day forward you shall be part of the God-Given City."

Not a trilobite man in the crowd so much as blinked. Even those who had seen it before, even those who had lived through it themselves, could not look past the wonder of that power.

It filled them with awe and with longing, and it taught them what it meant to be the King of Wisdom, what it meant to hold power like myth made real.

Redlichia poured the writing and the spoken language held in his own memory, along with a portion of his knowledge, into the young trilobite man's mind. The power was his by birthright as the King of Wisdom, a gift the divine had granted him.

Not only did it pass knowledge and inheritance down his direct bloodline, it also let many of the God-Given City's people learn to speak in short order.

The young trilobite man opened his mouth and strained a long while before the words finally came.

"Father."

Redlichia looked down at him. "I am your father. But more than that, I am the King of Wisdom of the God-Given City, and I am your king."

"Before others, you are to address me as king."

Inside the royal palace, the King of Wisdom's whole family sat gathered around a long stone table, row upon row of prepared Ancestral Fish laid out along it.

The family had grown large by now. Redlichia had grandchildren, great-grandchildren even, yet today the honor belonged to his youngest son.

The King of Wisdom was celebrating his youngest son's passage into adolescence, the change from the larval form of the sea into a human shape.

Seated at Redlichia's left hand, the eldest brother gave him a warm look. "You are one of our family now, my brother. Welcome."

Another brother reached over and clapped him on the shoulder. "Come find me at the storehouse in a few days. I've got some good things to show you."

Across the table his sister watched him with a gentle look. "Tomorrow your sister is taking you down into the water to see the Ancestral Fish."

"You've never seen it before, have you! Sunlight comes pouring down through the water, and thousands upon thousands of fish go streaming past underneath. It's so beautiful there's no describing it."

Dinner ended just as night fell.

The moonlight that night was lovely, and it bathed the whole palace in a clear glow.

Redlichia turned to his youngest. "You are grown now. It is time you had a name of your own."

The King of Wisdom and the queen traded a smile. She had chosen the name herself, and he meant to let her be the one to speak it.

Before the queen could open her mouth, however, the young trilobite man spoke first.

"Yesael!"

"So my name is Yesael? It means moonlight?"

Yesael meant moonlight, a beautiful name.

The language of the trilobite men had grown out of the exchanges between Yin Shen and Redlichia. Redlichia's accent was intelligible enough to Yin Shen, but it was, frankly, hard on the ears.

That accent, together with the writing Redlichia had invented on his own, had grown into a whole language that even Yin Shen did not know how to explain.

This was hardly the moment to dwell on what a name literally meant. The queen was staring at her youngest son in utter astonishment.

"How did you know? I have told no one but your father."

The young trilobite man merely said, "You told me! I heard my name being called from inside you."

Yesael turned to his brother, smiling.

"The storehouse is enormous. I'm definitely going to see it tomorrow."

He nodded to his sister across the table. "The fish streaming past really is beautiful. I've seen it already."

Redlichia looked at his son. "You can see straight into the consciousness and the thoughts of others."

The whole family stared at Yesael in shock. Such power belonged to the King of Wisdom alone.

The young trilobite man plainly did not understand what set him apart. He took it for an unremarkable knack, something everyone else must have as well.

What he did not know was that, for now, he was the only one who had inherited this myth-like ability from the King of Wisdom.

At the head of the long stone table Redlichia sat watching his youngest son, joy plain in his eyes.

"Yesael, you are wonderful."

"Wonderful!"

"Hahahaha!"

"Truly wonderful!"

Rarely did Redlichia show such powerful emotion before other trilobite men, his own family included.

Today, though, he was genuinely overjoyed, happier than he had ever been.

For as long as he could remember, he alone among all trilobite men had held this myth-like power. He had received a divine oracle from God Yinsai, and he wanted to build a great civilization.

But no one understood him. No one could truly walk at his side. And no one could inherit his power and his ideals.

He was the King of Wisdom, king of the trilobite men, lord over thousands upon thousands of his own kind.

And yet he felt a loneliness like God's.

Now, though, everything was different. It seemed he had finally found someone who could inherit his will and his ideals...

Yesael followed his father up a stairway that seemed to have no end, up the mountain-like pyramid, on toward the temple at its very summit.

With every step along that stairway some sacred feeling stirred and welled up in his chest.

Redlichia had brought his eldest son here once and come away disappointed, and since then he had never brought anyone up again.

Even his own son. Anyone without the myth-like power was unworthy of coming before the divine.

As he saw it, anyone who lacked even the power to see God and receive a divine oracle could only defile the deity's will and pollute the deity's sanctum.

Before the temple two trilobite men knelt, one large and one small.

The King of Wisdom, Redlichia, looked at Yesael with excitement and with boundless anticipation.

"Yesael, did you see it?"

Still kneeling, Yesael raised his head with care and looked into the temple, his gaze traveling along the floor and on into its depths.

He saw the shell that radiated a myth-like light, the supreme divine artifact that had created life.

Beneath the altar sat a girl, the Fusion Monster Shelly, terrifying power surging within her.

The instant he saw the girl, a beast like a mountain range rose before his eyes. Countless hands reached toward him, hundreds upon thousands of terrible eyes stared back, and he felt as though he were falling into an abyss.

At last, he saw the divine.

The divine, who had mastered the law of time and transcended countless ages, shone with a brilliance like starlight. That light swallowed him whole, and everything within sight turned blazing white.

Yesael's gaze went vacant, and his mind turned to a perfect blank.

He cried out, just as his father once had, the very sound his father had made on first seeing the divine.

"God!"