The End of the Ocean

Never before had Yesael traveled so far from the God-Given City, and never had he seen the ocean stretch so vast, so boundless that it seemed to him the sea could have no end at all.

That so-called dry land was nothing but a myth.

More than that, it was a place no mortal could ever hope to reach, a place that belonged to the divine alone.

They passed through whirlpools of storm violent enough to tear an island apart.

Before their eyes the whirlpool joined sky and sea as one, and terrible bolts of lightning reached down from the clouds clear to the ocean floor below.

"Aaah!" That was the scream torn from him and his companions, who clung to the tentacles and were dragged along the whole way.

"Woo! Woo! Woo!" That was the sound the fusion monster Nini made.

Terrified, they fled wildly, but the storm and its ruinous lightning seemed to have eyes of their own and came chasing hard on their heels.

Only when they were utterly spent did they finally break free of the storm's whirlpool.

Once free, Yesael and his companions burst out laughing. They had fought the storm and lived to tell of it, and the thought left them boundlessly exhilarated.

When the laughter died down, they realized they had lost their way entirely.

They circled a long way around before they finally found their bearings again, and set out once more in the direction the King of Wisdom had told them.

Not long after, they ran into a strange stretch of sea that boiled every living thing to death in an instant. Bubbles rose from the water, and great drifts of dead creatures floated up alongside them. Had the fusion monster Nini not sheltered them within it, they would have died there long since.

They met with dangers they never could have foreseen, one after another, and they came to see just how vast the world truly was.

In the face of danger, they found within themselves a strength that seemed to have no limit.

One day, while they rested, they fell to talking idly among themselves.

One of his followers spoke up. "Prince Yesael, when will we reach the Origin Site?"

Yesael grinned. "Soon. We'll be there very soon."

The follower pressed him. "How soon is soon?"

Yesael answered, "When I say soon, what I mean is, I don't actually know how long it'll be."

Out on the night sea, every trilobite man resting against the reef in the cool air turned to look at Yesael, their eyes full of disbelief.

"???"

Yesael burst out laughing. "I don't know exactly when we'll get there, but I do know we're getting close."

"We're retracing the path God and the King of Wisdom walked all those years ago. The road we're on now is the very sea route God guided the King of Wisdom along to find the God-Given Land."

"So long as our direction is right, and the landmarks are right, all we have to do is keep going, and we're bound to find the Origin Site."

Seeing Yesael so sure of himself, the others felt their own spirits lift along with his, and they laughed together with him.

Another young man stood up. "Prince Yesael, will our story really be written into an epic?"

"Yes, yes, how could you possibly know something that far in the future, Your Highness?"

Yesael nodded, utterly certain, and said, "Of course I know."

The crowd marveled. "Is it a prophecy?"

Someone else asked, "Or did the Supreme God Yinsai tell Your Highness?"

Yesael shook his head and looked at the others with a mysterious smile.

"Once we get back, I'll have someone carve our story down in writing."

"Ten thousand years from now, our story won't just be an epic. It'll be a myth."

So this was how epics and myths were made. The crowd could not help bursting into laughter all over again.

As they talked, the tense, oppressive mood that had hung over them melted away in an instant.

The next day, everyone set out again.

It was a clear day without a single cloud in the sky. The fusion monster Nini seemed to sense something, and it began swimming faster.

Along the way it let out roar after roar. It could sense the trace that the Mother of Life, Shelly, had once left in these waters, long ago.

"Look, what is that?" someone cried out.

More and more of them rose up from beneath the waves and looked toward the far side of the sea.

There, they saw a single line, dividing sky from sea.

That same line also seemed to cut the sea itself short, drawing an endpoint across the boundless world of water.

"It's land!"

"It's really land!"

"We finally found it."

"Prince Yesael, do you see it?"

Of course Yesael saw it. He too had fallen into a rapture beyond all words.

At the end of the sea lay land. Only now did Yesael understand what those words truly meant, and only now did he understand why his father could never let the thought go.

The ocean held a stillness and a vastness that belonged to it alone, and the land held a weight, a boundlessness, every bit its equal.

He led a band of trilobite men and the fusion monster Nini, and together they set foot at last upon the horizon, climbing slowly up onto the shore.

"The Origin Site."

"I have found you."

Yesael sank to his knees in the sand, cupped it in his hands, and buried his face in it.

After every hardship he had endured, he had finally found this place where God had once descended, the birthplace of the King of Wisdom, forefather of the trilobite men.

"The God-Descended Land."

One of the trilobite men beside him spoke up. "Prince Yesael, are we really going to build a city here?"

Yesael repeated it. "Build a city?"

He shook his head, then called out loudly to the land itself, "No!"

"We're going to build ten cities here. A hundred cities."

"I'm going to see the footprints of the Yinsai Kingdom spread into every last corner of this land."

Yesael looked out over the coastline. The closer to the sea, the more the plants and creatures flourished, and the better suited the land was for trilobite men to live on.

He could not hide his joy. He was all but ready to dance.

"Look at this coastline. Just think how many ancestral fish we could raise here."

"This is the perfect home for us to settle in."

The whole company made camp there. Yesael even had his companion, the fusion monster Nini, dig a number of dwellings into the cliff face, chambers set right into the rock, to house them during their short stay and to make ready for the trilobite men who would keep arriving after them in an endless stream.

They had only just laid the first foundations, and they were readying to begin a new age here that belonged to the Yinsai Kingdom, when all at once his father's voice rose unbidden in the mind of Yesael, giddy as he was with excitement. That voice was nothing like his own eager, excited mood. In it he could feel sorrow.

"Yesael, have you found the Origin Site? If you have, then come back!"

Yesael spun around at once and stared out across the sea.

His father had not said what it was, but Yesael could feel that something had happened, and it was surely nothing good.

Yesael left his followers behind to break ground on the new city, while he himself rode the fusion monster Nini back to the God-Given City at full speed.

Yet the moment he arrived, he sensed that something was wrong.

"Prince Yesael."

"Prince Yesael."

"Your Highness."

All along both sides of the avenue, every one of the God-Given City's people bowed to Yesael, but sorrow lay behind their eyes, and the whole city seemed shrouded beneath some dark cloud.

He hurried toward the Wisdom Palace, only to find that the once-magnificent palace had already collapsed into ruin. Nothing was left standing but the stone keep behind it and the royal bedchamber to its left, along with a few other scattered structures.

The guard at the doorway dropped to one knee and said to Yesael, "Prince Yesael, my condolences."

Yesael ran straight through, racing down the corridor, and in a side hall he saw a stone coffin resting there.

Inside it lay his mother, the King of Wisdom's queen, silent and still. In an instant he sank to his knees, staring at the coffin, unable to believe his eyes.

"Mother!"

Redlichia stepped out from the shadowed doorway. "Yesael, my son."

"I have been waiting for you all this while."

Yesael knelt there staring at his father, unable to understand how, in so short a time away, everything could have come to this.

"My king, what in the world has happened?"