What separates a man from a monster? Is it money or power, fame or notoriety? Is it something like physical might or intelligence? Perhaps maybe something like wisdom or restraint? What about common sense or discipline?
The truth is fairly simple and something that is often played by many as some higher moral that most people don't really believe or care about. The truth is that the only thing that separates a man from a monster is love. Love comes in many forms, shapes, and varieties. It does not care about anything because love does not worry about people's morals, ideals, or beliefs. Love is fearless and powerful and can inspire those weak and strong to do things that they otherwise would not logically do. And so long as that love remains driving a person to keep on going that person remains a man.
However................ When that love becomes tainted, twisted, corrupted, toxic, destroyed, or taken away you could compel a man to fall into such great anger or despair or madness that they become vile monsters unlike anything close to what they were before. For when one of the greatest of all virtues and experiences that a person can feel is lost to them or can never be the same; the reactions to such a predicament can create living nightmares in the form of people who wish only to destroy or to get revenge.
Despite this I wish to tell you of a legend. A myth of great proportions from ages long forgotten. I wish to tell you the tale of a monster who never forgot what it meant to be a man and who only delved into that realm of vile wretchedness to smite all that dared to threaten that which he loved. Let me tell you the story of the Godslayer of the Gods and his truest love. A tale known as the Dragon and the Dove.
These were the words I once wrote for a game I had made in my early twenties. I dreamed for most of my live of being someone else and being somewhere else. I dreamed of her......... In all her divine beauty of which no Goddess could compare. Her skin the soft light shade of pink. Eyes the same color as flawless rubies with long curly hair of the same lovely shade of red. Oh how it seemed to gleam when the light of the moon headed like it had a nice trying to it to add to her ethereal grace. How often she worried I would leave her due to her figure. She worried that she was becoming fat and ugly but she had never been even close. Short but thick with curves that seem to view elegantly carved by the hand of some great master artisan of the heavens perfectly sculpted with skin so smooth like marble what is soft to the touch as that of a babe. Lips not too thick or too thin but just right, and her sweet kisses give me a rush like that of a child who has energize themself with too many sugary treats. The way her tail intertwined with mine as she lay in my arms each night. She always did enjoy listening to the rhythm of my heart, but the sound of hers was like a song that charmed me in ways like no other. My hand would trace along her spine feeling the same red feathers as they went from the tip of her tail all the way up to who the base of her neck. Her wings were beautiful and that she would wrap me up in them each night and I would wrap her in mine I felt at peace.
Oh how I was plagued by this dream. Of this woman.... No matter how hard I tried I could not stop fantasizing about her. With each dream feeling so real like I was reliving moments from a life that was so much better than mine. Some nights a single dream felt like I was reliving entire weeks of my time with her. She called me Klatu and I called her Klatuua. At first I thought these were our names but instead it slowly came with time that the language reveal to me these words meant "My Love". In time I was able to start understanding almost all of this strange language that she and I spoke in these dreams. The Language of the Dragons she called it. She spoke it for me for it was my language, for my people. She wanted to be able to tell me in a way that I could understand how much you loved me.
How sad my life that's the only time a woman can tell me that they love me is in my dream. Dreams that for 21 years of my life I could only put to paper with pencil and ink sometimes catching her sometimes recording the dreams in exact vivid detail as they happened. Drawing out scenes from those dreams brought me peace and the only time in my life that I felt happy in my youth was when I was asleep because they are no one could hurt me and I knew someone was waiting to tell me that they love me. In my dreams the scars of my youth both mental and physical where nowhere to be found and all I had was her. Around my 22nd birthday one of my oldest friends finally took a peek against my wishes into one of the nine journals I had for my dreams, and he saw her and the read what I wrote and he was mesmerized but happiness I found when I was asleep. He finally understood why was that I would rather sleep all day then wake up and deal with the pains of life. He asked me to share this great love story with the world in a way that I could find joy. So I made a game..... The Dragon and the Dove.
How sweet it was to work on a game where I made reality out of the dreams that had been so prevalent in my youth. 6 years of work and precise accurate pictures of every ounce of the world and her and every bit of the dreams that I had fallen in love with and right when we were finishing up the last bit of the story the final dream came to me.
The ending to this tale was not a happy one. The woman of my dreams was also the desire of many others but that desire turned to jealousy and jealousy turned to rage. In the dream the priests and priestesses that she had served alongside to honor me turned against her as many of them knew her to be my favorite. They knew that I loved her that she was more to me than just a worshipper. I offered her godhood so that I would never have to part with the one that I loved and my own faithful killed her as she ascended. In my grief all that I had ever loved was stripped from me in a moment by the people who promised me their lives and their souls. And in the void that was left behind grew a fiery rage from a flame that was always there now twisted the burn everything that I created to the ground. I remember waking from that dream roaring out and anger and hatred only to find myself in bed looking out at the city just after midnight with a cold sweat running down my back and the adrenaline pumping in my veins.
It was the realest of all moments from any of the dreams. A part of me hated all of those responsible, yet they were all just figments of my imagination that ran too wild. What my therapist at the time told me was a reflection of my outlook on life becoming a dire one and me blaming everybody else for my predicament. However from that day on I never had another dream of her or that world and when it came time to work on the ending for the game a part of me did not want that ending but I could not let that story go untold.
By the time the game was out I was 27 years old, almost 28. I expected it to do terribly who would want play a game about the love story between a God and his one true love only for it to end with her tragic demise and him falling into a rage so an ending that I could not even show fully his torment of those he wished to punish. I could never tell anyone other than the three or four people who knew that the game was based off of the dreams that I had. How many people would consider me psychotic or call me diluted for dreaming of myself as a god when that was never the point nor what makes the dream important or why I missed it so much when it stop? But to my surprise many were angry, just not at the game or the story. They shared the same anger with the character, wishing that those responsible would have paid dearly for what they had done. They loved it they loved it so much it made me rich when I had been living in the same apartment for almost 8 years as I was going through life before being convinced to make the game in the first place.
In a couple months I was a multi-millionaire with more than enough money that I knew what to do with at first. However there were no more dreams and no more games I wanted to make but people wanted more I took half of that money and made a game studio and put people there I could tell their own stories well I derived a portion of the finances to back things that I felt motivated to do. I always had a love for science so I spent five years of my life pursuing that getting a degree in everything and soon began working on the possibility of genetic alteration and I dabbled in cybernetics. I was lucky I guess as with the money I had and the knowledge and skills that I had acquired over time I ended up succeeding. I created the world's first ever medically approved and safe genetic augmentation device that could reprogram a person's DNA no matter how old they were to help get rid of negative effects of their lineage that they might develop going on in life. For instance my family has a problem with heart complications like many African Americans do. With my creation I was able to alter my own DNA so that I would never have to worry about that.
That was just scratching the tip of the iceberg of what it was made for. I used to to improve my strength, my speed, my durability, and my own mental processes and cognitive functions so that I could be over all better and be more then I was before. I wanted to be better than the past that I came from when I was weak and helpless. I made myself superhuman by comparison. I could run as fast as a cheetah. I was as strong as 100 men. I could take shots from 50 caliber bullets straight to the head and be unphased. I was smart enough to accurately predict 95 out of 100 simulations that were programmed in a computer that was processing at speeds of one thousandth of a second just as they started. At times of stress when my adrenaline kicked in the world seem to slow down as I could see and hear almost everything around me in such perfect unison and react before anyone else could even realize.
Yet it wasn't enough......... All my life I struggled with my health because I was innately sickly. Despite my condition my parents didn't care my father wanted nothing to do with me or my mother which is why you left when I was only ten years old. My mother was already abusive but after he left she became even more so. Every scar on my body I got because of her and what she did to me and how she tormented me it was no wonder why I love my dreams so much with someone like that ruining every moment of my existence when I was awake. I tried to change my body not just to be better but to save my own life to make a body strong enough to outmatch whatever was slowly killing me. But in the end I failed and now I'm here in the void between.
It's strange. I almost need to remember this place. The black void between as the souls of the dead transition into Limbo. I see them you know. The souls of the dead who have died around the same time as me traveling to the bright light of limbo where will you be judged and sent to our respective planes of the afterlife. I don't know why I know this but I do and I'm ready.
My last memory what's up for my 50th birthday. After spending the majority of my thirties and early forties working on genetics and most of my mid-forties on cybernetics; the last three years of my life were spent working on folding space and time to create portals and researching dark matter to see if it could be harvested and experimented with to make such a dream possible. I remember reaching a breakthrough when everyone that I had come to know as my friends surprise me for my birthday which I had forgotten. They seemed so happy for me to reach 50 years old something that I meant that I was halfway to 100. As I was going to toast and thank them for all of their hard work and how much they had all meant to me I felt myself becoming weaker than I ever had and it felt as if my heart breaking in half. I fell to the ground unable to move and as everyone came to try and save me I just remember hearing her voice pulling out to me one last time when I hadn't heard it for decades. The woman of my dreams change my life and her sweet voice beckoning me to come and save her.
But that is gone now and I am dead. At least in my last moment I got to hear her voice again and feel the warmth of her love. I just wish I could have answered her cry for help. I won't lie, as many of my previous regrets had fell by the wayside; I think that in my last moments not being able to try and save her or knowing where to go and what to do is the only regret I have left from a life well-lived.
"What a fool you are boy? You think this is how we end. What utter nonsense you speak. This is not the end but only the beginning as of now I will make sure that this time we will have a body strong enough for us. Then we will save my Yunasilla!"
"What??? Who is that? Where are you? What are you talking abo-"
In an instant an unknown force whose hands are strong and mighty pull me away out of this void and into somewhere else. All becomes dark. I see no lights, no souls. I'll become silent and I feel like I'm locked in the type closet with no way out I can't even move. I want to scream but I cannot open my mouth but I know that it is there. Then I feel it.... Hands reaching out and grabbing me once more this time different. In moments the darkness fades away and I can hear the voices people all around me speaking in a dialect that seems so familiar to me and I swear I've heard it before. I can see light through my closed eyelids but before I can open my eyes someone wipes me down and cleans me as I'm covered in something wet and odd.
When I feel them stop, I open my eyes for the first time and then I am horrified. Holding me as a man he looks like he is part demon with horns and purplish skin and purple eyes with silvery hair with streaks of green. I hear the words he says as he sees fear on my face and I recognize the language. The Language of the Dragons that I had heard in my dreams, that I remember speaking.
I know what he says and immediately I am confused by it but not for long, "Hey there little guy let's go ahead and give you to your mom." He hands me to a woman who looks like an angel and I am confused her wings folded but noticeable the burn like fire but nothing that they touch burns. The ends of her hair are ablaze and her eyes are like staring into a white dwarf star. The halo behind her looks like that the flaming ring slowly rotating ever so often. Her skin is actually golden and her ears are pointed like that of an elf from fantasy stories. But when she looks at me and smiles even though it is clear that she is tired and in pain; it makes me feel happy for reasons that I do not understand. She says to me joyfully, "Welcome my sweet boy."
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