Chapter Text
Nothing is truly infinite, every thing meets their ends at some point in time.
The end of humanity had been presaged for a long time, but they didn’t possess the power to act upon their imagination, this privileged belonged exclusively to the king of thoughts, Imagination.
Ina stood before her canvas, measuring her brush against the stroke on this full art piece. She admired her work and exclaimed. “There’s more to be done!”
She brushed against the canvas, applying paint to cover the already existing colors previously on this piece. “That’s good, pretty good!”
She applied some more paint onto the canvas, defacing it with new forms and an entirely new shape forming within its confines; “Cthulhu, that sounds good.”
The paint took form, an indescribable entity with tentacles dressing its body. It belonged in an entirely new universe, dreaming of one day joining the mortal realm to spread its influence once more.
Pretty wicked, where did these thoughts come from? Only humans could have such vivid imaginations, thinking of the most crazy stuff all the times!
Looking at her canvas, it was only ever as big as it needed to be. She looked at the four corners, their black font creeping in over the canvas like a disease. The dark thoughts of humanity, they could spread like wildfire over the canvas, taking over anything within and annihilating it.
She shuddered at the thoughts of her canvas being ruined, it would be a tragedy.
She spent a lot of time simply observing humanity, awaiting any new ideas that would come to her mind, that was her life for as long as she remembered, and she’d have it no other way.
There have been highs and lows, like always, periods of depressing nihilism squashing any new ideas that could come out of humanity, but the sky always shone brighter thereafter.
Like that time in 1346 where humanity experienced one of the worst crisis in history. The black plague truly took its toll on Europeans, all these flying gargoyles, these flesh-eating dark scarabs, the plague ridden rodents roaming streets and the black ink like water staining the Seine.
She shuddered at this thought, such senseless death staining history, but humanity prevailed in the end, the plague doctors associating themselves with the church to cleanse the evil seeping from every street corner, they really did rebound and came out even stronger than before.
So resilient, that’s what she admired of these puny humans, they lived for the least amount of time, but they had the courage to imagine their success in every endeavors they took, even against one another…
That time in 1914 where the first major conflict between humanity, it was a disaster, so many deaths caused by none other than humans.
The cause was a conquest, the quest for more… humanity’s desire for more was insatiable, that’s what gave them courage and also what drove their deepest and darkest thoughts.
It started slowly with a fiery bang, a golden volcano sprawling from the ground in an uncompromising land. Every one nations wanted it for themselves and that’s how the great war began, that’s how… the world fell in a great depression.
A great darkness befell the four years this war took place, during which the dead came back to life, the sky turned upside down and leaked dark oil, machines of war took a life of their own and actively participated in this conquest, mutants from the craziest imaginary roamed the battlefields.
Ina saw it all, all these thoughts taking form and belittling each other, and these humans simply trying to survive the chaos brought about by their own mindless greed.
That was the worst conflict in history, the great war. None other existed, none should exist, that was simply too hard on humanity, they would manage to exterminate themselves… they had the imagination to.
But, from that lowest point in time came greatness, a great deal of imaginative minds sprawled from the rubbles of humanity to create some of her finest ideas. An absolute evil being conquered by friendship and love. That was her soft spot, she always liked a good ending.
As she drew her brush on the canvas, absorbed by new ideas, she wonders how these new ideas could potentially take form; a big metallic shell with wings driving its path down an endless void of darkness, spreading light everywhere.
If Ina had a single regret, it would be her driving force. Her biggest source of inspiration remained in conflicts, nowhere else was she as inspired to create some of the most innovative tools of destruction, or creation, both were driven by a need for change and war brought the change needed for ideas to sprout.
She felt something behind her and when she turned around to look, there was nothing, something odd, but not unnatural, there was nothing unnatural when you had the imagination to create it.
She decided to look on what humans were doing, plunging inside her canvas and exploring the world beyond.
Earth, the epicenter of consciousness, of thoughts. While humans weren’t the only beings gifted with imagination, nor were they the firsts, they were the greatest proponents of it. A literal gold mine of ideas, such that Ina decided to settle her imaginary kingdom right there.
She observed earth, looming over it like a shadow just beyond the visible spectrum of light. Earthlings always had this sense of hurry to them, as if time was finite… to be fair it kinda is for them, but their ideas remained eternal.
She wandered over some of the greatest monuments in history, some of the most prominent discoveries of mankind and sources of the greatest tales.
The chapel Sixtine was a marvel of craftsmanship at the height of religious zealotry. The ceiling told the entire story of creation by God, a being of unfathomable power responsible for the creation of the earth in six days.
Such vivid imagination was responsible for these tales to be told, and that’s why Ina loved these humans so much!
She went back to her canvas, she had more inspiration to draw from, some of the most magnificent instruments that would change the world forever! Nuclear fission, fracturing matter to its most essential state, atoms.
Such discoveries needed to be imprinted on history, something that she was great at doing! She almost imagined herself as some sort of archivist for humanity’s sake, other groups were simply lacking in imagination…
As she was brushing against her canvas, a loud rumbling shook the whole place to the ground, Ina protected her canvas from any falling debris that could come of the cosmic place she called home, her own imaginary kingdom.
As she saw it crumbling to dust, she looked one last time at her canvas being overtaken by the black goo, collapsing on itself and spreading goo all over Ina’s eyes. Her last thought before her mind collapsed was about humanity and her desire to see it survive yet another calamity.