Ancestral Fish

Along the great avenue of the God-Given City, body after body of trilobite men lay arranged before the King of Wisdom, Redlichia, their eyes closed forever.

By the hundreds and the thousands, trilobite men knelt on one knee upon the ground, and grief hung heavy in the air.

No one in the crowd spoke, but every eye turned toward the King of Wisdom, Redlichia, their forebear and origin, the supreme king above them all.

Redlichia laid his hand upon one of the bodies. He could feel how young this one had been, and it was already gone.

For the first time, he felt the horror of death, and the fragility of life.

"I will find a way to solve this."

Light bloomed in every grieving eye. To them, Redlichia's promise was truth itself, an article of faith, a decree that would change their fortunes and end the crisis.

A fervent cry rose up and echoed through the crowd.

It made him seem not their king at all, but their god.

"King of Wisdom!"

"King of Wisdom!"

"..."

Redlichia believed he truly was the King of Wisdom, and that as their king, it fell to him by nature to protect his people.

And yet he had no answer. The King of Wisdom could only turn his gaze once more toward the great pyramid standing at the center of the God-Given City.

Beneath the night sky, Redlichia climbed the pyramid, while trilobite men stood guard over the stairs below.

Only the King of Wisdom, Redlichia, could enter this temple. For any other trilobite man, to set one foot upon its steps was an unforgivable crime.

Before he had even reached the top, he saw a figure standing on the very highest step, radiating white light.

In all that darkness, he was dazzling.

The light unraveled into threads that drifted across the sky, until at a glance it looked woven together with the stars above, and the figure within that radiance seemed ready to slip free of this world at any moment.

The sight tore a cry from him before he could stop himself. "God!"

He quickened his steps and climbed the long stretch of stairs, chasing after that light as though he feared it might truly vanish, melting away into the stars.

Shelly sat obediently on the steps, her hair done up in braids, her large green eyes fixed unblinking on the distant sea.

Not like a living creature, more like a doll.

God gazed up at the sky and the stars as though waiting for him, and the instant Redlichia drew near, he spoke.

"Did you know?"

"In an age like this there should be no life on land at all. And yet here, a miracle of life has taken root."

"Before we ever came here, there was green in this place already."

Redlichia followed his gaze, not understanding why God should speak of matters of the land and keep looking up at the sky instead.

The sky was densely covered with stars. Looking at it too long left one lost and dizzy, as though the stars and the Milky Way themselves were spinning.

But Yin Shen seemed to hear Redlichia's unspoken thought, and went on, "Because what shapes life does not lie in the land. It lies in the distant sky, and in the universe beyond it."

"This place must lie near one of the Earth's poles, or somewhere else very unusual. There is a layer of air over our heads that blocks out the radiation."

"An ozone layer, most likely. That is why we can find plants growing here at all."

"This place... it truly is a land of miracles, an Eden of life."

Redlichia could not understand God's words. That low murmuring was less something meant for Redlichia to hear than something God was saying to himself.

But he knew, all the same, that God was unraveling the mysteries of this world, truths that lowly mortal creatures like themselves could never see.

While they cowered before the endless blue that could swallow them whole, God's gaze had already pierced through to the very stars and the Milky Way.

Redlichia said reverently, "It was God's guidance that led us to this land of miracles, this land of life."

"It was You who let us multiply and thrive here, You who shelter us."

"You gave us a race of our own, and let us found a civilization."

"If there truly is such a thing as a miracle, then You, God, are the maker of it."

Yin Shen lowered his head, and in Redlichia's eyes that shadow of endless light bent its glow downward too, and wrapped itself around him.

"Run into some trouble?"

It was hard for Redlichia to put into words. He had promised God that he would build a great civilization, and at the time he had been so confident, so certain he could manage it with ease.

He was, after all, God's firstborn son, the first intelligent being God had ever created.

And yet this had barely begun before hardship struck him down.

Over these years, he had come to know sorrow, joy, love, one emotion after another.

This time, he came to know shame.

Redlichia knelt before Yin Shen, prostrate at his feet, his face pressed to the cold stone, not daring to look up at him.

"Food!"

"God, we need food."

Redlichia's voice rose higher now, filled with utmost reverence and solemn intent. "God, please grant me Your guidance."

Yin Shen looked at this King of Wisdom, the way one looks at a child who has never quite grown up.

He pulled Redlichia up to his feet and led him into the temple.

Redlichia hung his head in shame, listening as God laid out guidance for him, pointing the way toward the future.

"The most primitive civilizations live by hunting and gathering. A civilization one step further along learns to raise livestock and grow crops."

"You do not yet have what farming requires. But I can teach you how to raise your food."

It was the first time Redlichia had ever heard the word. "Raise our food?"

The shell Fusion Monster Shelly had shed was set into the temple's outer wall, and could be seen from within the temple as well.

Inside the temple stood rows of stone basins, planted with sea plants that plainly did not belong on land, though they had long since withered and died.

Yin Shen tapped the shell, and light spread out from his fingertips.

The great shell answered his touch, and little by little it began to turn transparent.

Through its clear surface, one could see that the shell was filled to the brim with pure seawater.

Strange little lives drifted within that water, and most numerous among them were creatures somewhat like fish, but armored in thick shells.

"This is a form of life I made recently. I wanted to call it a fish, but that never quite felt right."

Redlichia pressed close to the transparent shell, watching the creatures drift about inside.

"A fish?"

Yin Shen thought it over. "Then let us call it the Ancestral Fish."

In the temple, when idleness set in, Yin Shen threw himself into making new forms of life. It was one of the very few things he could do, one of the very few pleasures this age allowed him.

It seemed that the more species and lives there were, the faster this world might come to resemble the one he once knew.

He grew more and more skilled with Shelly's shell, that random box of a thing, and still he had not managed to create another mythical life like Redlichia or Shelly, the way he wanted. What came out instead were a handful of unexpected creations.

These were a kind of jawless fish, able to survive only by sucking up tiny creatures from the water through a straw-like mouth.

They had grown a kind of armor, and looked rather fearsome.

Fish, in name, though they were not truly fish at all.

Yin Shen pointed at the jawless fish inside the shell. "This is the food I grant to you."