"Thank you," he eventually replied. "for giving me a second chance. It's more than I deserve."
She simply shook her head. "It is now clear to me that you either did not intend to have these things occur, or you have grown beyond those vices with time."
"It doesn't matter. God's law is very clear on the stakes. I have wrought much pain, and sin must be repaid with death in order for justice to exist. In essence, I already agreed to die, once all the other daemons under Lucifer spoke for me on that fateful day when the tree was made."
"I do not care. Was it not you yourself who told me that 'This was our own world, and we alone decide the rules?' You have not forgotten that, have you?"
He laughed. "Wow. You almost remembered, impressive! I believe the exact line was 'We alone decide what to make of it.' a little bit looser syntax, but the meaning is similar."
"No need to be rude," she huffed.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. You're right. Okay? You are right. I just don't know how to accept that this actually happened. I've been hoping for someone to treat me like this for longer than you can imagine.
"Civilizations have risen and fallen within the span of time since I have last felt hope. As you well know, my cause has been doomed from the start. He was kind enough to confirm it for us within my presence. I believe I am the only daemon who bore witness to Lucifer's candor with Him."
The mood eventually settled, and they were able to resume their former plan. Thrall climbed to his feet, and again approached the Tree. His order had settled back into his basic Archangel form while they sat there talking. It wasn't the most efficient method of existence, to be fair.
The Seraphim were not designed to enter the dimension of man, after all. They were created to be the stewards and guards of the Court itself. It required a great source of spiritual power to maintain such dimensions.
He pressed his palm against the surface of the tree, and time again seemed to lurch forward. The entire garden continued to disappear in direct proportion to the distance from the clearing that they resided in.
"I meant to ask you about that," she mentioned. "The whole issue of my civilization being a figment of mankind's imagination—Did you not say that it was the daemons who invented the various religions? How can it be both?"
"No, I merely stated that we created the idea of other gods. Mankind used their incredible imaginations to invent fictions and legends of their own."
"...and my world is just one of those cultures that appeared within your story? What happens after... my time?" She didn't know how to construct the question in a way that wouldn't make her seem more like the terrified little child that she was made to feel whenever she considered the possibility of her entire world vanishing.
It was this dizzying pit in the center of her stomach, that threatened to swallow her whole from the inside—too big to be looked away from, and too personal to be forgotten.
"...Your world was never more than an idea in my story." he clarified. "None of it ever-"
"No, I know! I get it, alright? I just... you always talk about how things are so much different 'after my time.' I just want to know. What does that mean?"
"A-are you sure?"
She took a deep breath, and then slowly exhaled. "Yes, I think I am ready."
"Well, just to be clear, this is only how the story goes in my world. It doesn't necessarily affect your own story."
"Just—Give it to me straight. How much of my civilization survives until the common day?"
"That's what I was trying to tell you. Your entire empire—the race that invented your story—The Grecian people, were taken over by the Romans over one-thousand and four-hundred years ago. All that is left are rotten scrolls and fragments of lore that the Romans stole. Then they, too withered away, with time. All that remains of the great Roman empire are ruins and statues."
The news was too great. She was glad to have been already sitting. It made it a very simple gesture to rest her chin on the top of her knees.
1,400 years... That was almost the entire length of her nation's recorded history! They had been dead for about the same time that they had been alive.
All that she had known, all that ever was, existed as only a distant memory, to him. After her creators were subsumed by a greater polity, time continued onward without mourning for her. It was just one small religion of a particular empire. The world must have had thousands by the time she appeared!
"The world is a much stranger place than it was when your world was designed. There was an industrial revolution, and all the legendary works from your time could be manufactured by a simple hobbyist, with the tools they discovered.
"As the world became slowly more scientific, the quality of life climbed. Hardly anyone has time for spiritual matters, now. Their own power is enough to level mountains, and erect dwellings so tall that they sway in the wind. Who has need for a 'God' to bless their harvest, when food dwells in abundance at every market across the country?"
The forest dwindled in the distance, until there was nothing but bare earth remaining. Finally, the very vines encircling them fell away, and exposed a circle of brown grass that slowly shrank to the surface beneath their feet.
The mountains seemed to be losing their texture, and height. All was returning to the familiar white void without the idea inherited by the tree itself—Paradise. It all seemed to collapse in on itself, that great lie.
"Here we go," he grimaced, wrapping his fingers around the trunk of the tree, which had shrunk almost to the size of a sapling. With a mighty crunch, he pulled the tree from the soil—and all the world went white.
He smiled. "Finally!" What could be worth all this trouble? Despite herself, Xantheaa's curiosity perked up her head to peek at him, over his shoulders. It didn't make sense, at first. The tree itself was missing, and another object had replaced it in his hands, for in his arms he held a sword. A sword on fire.