And so she was alone.
She’d been frustrated with the world, and so she’d sought out a solution, and when she’d wished for a place of her own, The serpent had told her that when she arrived there would be nothing. She failed to consider the meaning behind that, as she failed to consider her own wording, and so there was not only nothing, but she was nothing. She was simply will in a dark nothingness, no heart pumping blood, no eyes seeing shapes, no lungs breathing air, and that way it was for an eternity. She simply existed.
And then, she decided to test a drive she’d had in her time submerged in this nothing. She decided to create, not letting herself be held down by the daunt and difficulty of it all. Remembering her upbringing and quoting a deity lost, she said simply “Let there be light”. And there was light—seventy-thousand photons, which flashed and dissipated in an instant, leaving her as nothing once more.
Then she was tired.
And so she slept.
She had no dreams and felt nothing, but she needed to rest, and when she willed herself awake she thought more of what she needed to do. So she created structure, and there was structure, simple, but it was what her will could easily manifest, and over eternity and a day she created more. She found that the less complex action she took, the more she could do with her limited supply of energy, and found then that if she made rules within herself they would be followed, and things became simpler still. After she was filled with trillions of somethings, she started working on putting them together, and as quickly as she had willed them together, they collapsed. These things were unlike those of her place of origin, more simple shapes than atomic structure, and so she had to try and fail and learn to think within herself.
The Queen swept her hand throughout herself, curiously and carefully arranging structure out of nothing, and over time she learned of everything about her, how each bit of the crystalline machinery she created and gave logic to worked before she continued, applying rules like an engineer correcting code. After she had given birth to these processes, she started expanding them, creating larger structure to fill herself, and beginning work on something yet greater.
She swayed as she put together, ceaseless, piece after piece. She guided each tetrahedron like kine towards her design, and after so very long she had reached its near completion, as she put the final piece into the great machinery and it roared to life, bathing her realm in refracted, multicolored light which stretched boundlessly. This crystal star was intense in its radiance, but this was merely her first project, and as she swept her hand to the base and started putting together more, she began once more to plan. She’d learned so much, and greater than the star which hung like a lantern in the sky would be this. Cubic base, triangle matches with triangle, structure above is as structure below. It was as she willed it.
Keeping the crystal star in balance was difficult like nothing else as she planned and drew together the below, but she couldn’t bear the thought of losing it. The first true child of her creation must be held, but soon after she began to focus more on the greater task, the structure, her crown began to slip, and she mantled it as she mantled the ground, splitting focus on her creations. She built a plain then, governed by repeating structure, and she filled it with buildings which were anchored firmly to the below and connected with great tunnels which stretched like roots into the jagged ground. She built cities of crystalline marble and glass, lakes of strange rippling fluid, great mountains and misty vistas all shaped by her hand as this below expanded endlessly.
It was when she had finished creating her city, her temple, her kingdom that she realized something, something which up until this point she’d been distracted from but now was gaining more importance. She was alone, and a sudden feeling of dread filled her, as she didn’t want to be the only one to ever see what she had made, the great efforts she had gone through to create even the smallest thing, she couldn’t just be by herself. She needed someone to be with her.
As she held both the sky and the ground together, she realized this. Then she split her focus to her more experimental structures. Dodecahedron held in octahedrons—instability held in stability allows movement, movement allows change, change allows growth, growth creates life. Simple experiments at first, but then more complex, Tall static structures which swayed as she began to enact patterns, rain, wind, snow. And they fed on these patterns and they fed on her child’s light, and they fed on her, in some way, as in each strand she was there, and so they were held together. Then she focused on larger things, beings disconnected from the ground, small, insignificant, but capable of spectacular things, she crafted them with her own hand, and she set them unto the below.
They did nothing.
They had no will and no life without her, and so she picked them up and split herself again as she created more, she needed to create more, she needed to not be by herself within herself, she needed something. And as it was her will, so it was. She created larger beings, beings that fed on the others, which created and hunted and explored and flew and ran and bit and fought and sang and were; and with each action, with each new thing she made, the Queen split herself more. She became nothing, became will, became function, became cycle.
She created because it was what she wanted, she destroyed even if she didn’t want her to, she tried to break from herself, explore outside of her, but met with failure. The Queen acted and started wars and sat atop one thousand thrones and wore one thousand crowns, told stories of herself and sought out the great treasures which she had made. She created demons to fight her, beings to disobey her, and unbelievers in her, and at times she felt free from herself, like she was someone else. But only ever for a moment. All she could do to hold this off was to keep building.
And so the Shattered Queen became everything.
And so she was alone.