Foundations

I woke up in a cleared field. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. The three of them were there, watching as I sat up from the bed in which I found myself. The three of them sat around a banquet table which was loaded with food and drink. There was a fourth chair at the table, waiting. I walked over and sat down; there really was no reason not to. We all knew why I was there.

“A fascinating device.” Blue spoke first, holding up a dunderschlag. “Immediately obvious as to its use and obviously useful.” He pointed it at me and I briefly flinched but he seemed more impressed with it than threatening.

“We don’t care about that!” snapped Green. She took the device from Blue and pointed it at me herself. This time I didn’t flinch. I suspected half her anger was due to the fact that she couldn’t use it and knew it. None of them. That would certainly anger her. “What we want to know is how you acquired it.”

I shrugged. “I made it.”

“We are aware of that.” said Red. “As we are of everything. But we are not aware of this.” It pointed at the dunderschlag which Green still held in a firm grip. “It has no source. No template. So where did you get it.”

I shrugged again, dismissively. “Not everything has a template. You know that. We make new templates all the time.”

“Yes you do.” Blue spoke again. He seemed almost genuinely curious, contrasting to the obvious anger of the others. “But all templates come from earlier, more primitive templates and those eventually trace back to the original ur-templates, the source of everything. But this has no template. No lineage. It just… is.”

I shook my head. “You think the templates are a limitation?”

Blue laughed, Green scoffed and Red turned its black, empty eyes to me. “Everything is built from a template.”

“So where did the templates come from then?”

All three of them looked at me as if I was an ignorant child. “From the Foundations, of course.” Green said finally.

She made an imperceptible motion and the Foundation Stones appeared around us, symbols of fire burning blackly on their sides. She reached into one of the stones and pulled out a glowing, empty shell.

“All things come from the Foundations.” she said, massaging and manipulating the shell. It took form and shape, color and sound. Suddenly, I was looking at a duplicate of myself, which looked blankly around the strange place in which it found itself.

“And that which is created can be destroyed.” Red gestured suddenly and my duplicate suddenly vanished again in a spray of darkness and light.

“So I guess this isn’t real then?” I held up a dunderschlag where they could see it.

Blue looked in surprise from the device he still held to the one in my hands. “How… how did you…”

“Templates can be created.” I said, “Just as things can be created from Templates. Watch.” I cradled and massaged the dunderschalg in my own hands as Green had done. It lost color and shape then solidity, becoming a glowing, hollow shell which I then slowly inserted into the Foundation Stone nearest me.

The three looked on in wonder. “So there was a template! But… where did it go? Why could we not find it?”

“Because that which is created can also be destroyed.” I said, echoing Red’s words. I reached back into the Foundation Stone and pulled a template back out, holding it before me for a moment. Green was the first to recognize it.

“But that…!” she started suddenly. She did not finish.

I gestured and the template flew apart in a spray of light and dark. Blue, Green and Red instantly vanished as well. The landscape around me faded out as well and I hung alone in the void, nothing visible except the Foundation Stones and their brilliant darkness.

The template I had pulled from the Stone was not of the dunderschalg, which I had only created so that the Three would discover it and bring me to this place. It was the primordial template, the one from which all other templates descended. The template for light in its three forms; blue, green and red. With it destroyed, everything descended from it ceased to exist. Only the Stones would continue to exist, and I had inscribed myself onto them when Green had summoned them. Thus I continued to exist too, all alone.

But not for long.

I turned to the Stone nearest to me and began scribing symbols onto its side as I started to recreate the world in my own image.