Verse 51: "Shinko Fights God."

I watched as the archwizards who were still present followed Rikkert’s commands. They spent a few minutes discussing how they would record the results of the spell, but I didn’t pay any attention to that.
          After a while, they pushed the large table away from the center of the room. They began tracing strange symbols into the floor with their staves and marking certain locations with chalk. Rikkert directed each of them with careful precision.
          “You!” Rikkert pointed at me. “Go into the center of the traced pattern.”
          I did as he commanded. The archwizards watched as I did so, each one tense and nervous. Rikkert’s smile widened.
          “If there are no more wordth to be thaid, then I will begin the ritual.” He motioned for the other archwizards to step near the traced pattern. Each one was placed equidistant from each other around the circle.
          Rikkert began speaking in a language I didn’t understand. I watched him, slightly interested. All of the other archwizards began mimicking his speech. The pattern beneath me started to glow.
          The archwizards each raised their hands in unison, then began speaking louder. As they did, the light of the pattern faded, and a black mist rose up towards the ceiling.
          I didn’t flinch.
          The mist settled in a haze above the pattern. With one swift motion, the archwizards all dropped their hands.
          The black mist followed like a curtain, and I found myself situated in complete darkness.
~~~
          I couldn’t feel the ground beneath me. All around me was darkness; my breath caught in my throat. I forced myself to calm down; maybe the spell took a while to work. 
          I remained in the darkness. I looked around in the void, but I couldn’t see anything.
          I thought to move, but I couldn’t; or, if I could move, I didn’t feel it.
          I remained there for too long.
          “You need me.” I said into the darkness; there was no response.
          “You need me!” I shouted as a thought came to me.
          What had I done that was so unique? Had I been granted a special power? Some sort of ‘cheat’ that I could use to bend reality to my will? I had prayer, but as Albert had told me, the thing that made my prayers come true was not me.
          It was God.
          “But you only answer me because you need to! If you didn’t need me, then why would you pick me? Obviously, you needed me to do something only I could do!”
          No answer came. I shivered in fear.
          “Wait.”
          If God only brought me to Firma because he needed me, then what happened after he didn’t need me anymore?
          My mind began to race. What did God need from us that he couldn’t get on his own? Entertainment? But why? Was he bored? Could he even become bored? I remembered something John had told me.
          “God is unchanging. He’s the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”
          Albert’s words came back to my head.
          “God doesn’t need anyone.”
          Of course he needed us; why else would he keep us around? If we were so 'evil’ and God was so ‘holy,’ then why did he tolerate us? The only logical explanation was that God needed us.
          I heard Vivian’s words ring in my head again.
          “Because he loves us.”
          In the dark abyss I was in, I thought.
          “For God so loved the world…”
          I stopped. 
          That verse was stupid. It was a cop-out. It was illogical.
          God, by his own admission, in his own holy writ, said that people were evil and that he was good. He also explicitly said that evil deserved to be punished. He told the first people that the day they ate of the stupid tree in the story, they would die.
          Such harsh rules; such harsh penalties; and I was expected to believe that this God loved the world? I was expected to believe that this God loved people?
          The first two people broke his rules, and then he… 
          He didn’t kill them, did he?
          It wasn’t like he had needed them; they were, literally, the first two people to ever exist; they were not irreplaceable.
          In fact, they might have been the very definition of replaceable; the first of their kind, they could be discounted as “prototypes.”
          I began to recall everything John had told me about those first two people. God had, supposedly, made them from dirt. He had given life to them, and he’d created a garden for them to tend and enjoy. I couldn't understand why he'd done that.
          He’d given them the rule, ‘Don’t eat from that tree.’ 
          I felt nothing inside me. 
          They ate from the tree anyway. They’d broken the rule. According to what Albert told me, God could have annihilated them on the spot; they’d defied his orders.
          He could have. He should have. Logically, he should have destroyed both of them and started over. They’d broken the rules. Instead of doing that, he’d shown them mercy.
          “Mercy.” I whispered.
          He’d shown mercy to the “prototypes.” Even when he could have started over, he didn’t; he stuck with them. He had no need for them. He could have ended it all and made a new pair of humans out of the dirt. It wasn’t like he was short on the raw materials.
          God didn’t need humans. He didn’t need me.
          “So what? Am I a puppet? A toy? To be used and discarded?” I spoke into the darkness. “Because I’m not falling for this false ‘choice’ you’ve given… given…”
          Given. 
          He had given me a choice. I could choose. 
          At first, it seemed like a horrible choice; serving a tyrannical God or facing everlasting death. Perhaps it seemed unfair, but God was under no obligation to give me any choice in the matter at all. If he really wanted to, he could have obliterated me the moment I sinned.
          "Then do it! I dare you!" I shouted into the abyss. "Come on, kill me! Annihilate me! Prove that you're God or whatever it is you want! Do it!"
          Nothing happened.
          "Coward! You absolute coward! I'm wide open! Go ahead and end me!" I started to smile as I realized that, even here, I was unstoppable. "You can't stop me, can you?"
          I heard something behind me.
          I turned around in the darkness. 
          There was an image floating in the dark; a simple moving image that showed me something I didn't understand. 
          It was an image of me. 
          It showed me as a young boy, stealing a cookie from my mother's cookie jar; even as I looked at the image, it was like I was doing it again.
          "What, are you trying to guilt trip me?" I shook my head. "How pathetic."
          It didn't stop. The image continued, and it showed me something strange.
          As I grabbed the cookie, the jar tipped and shook, then fell off the counter, hit me on the head, and my younger self's eyes closed.
          "W-what the hell?" 
          The image changed.
          I was still the same age, playing with a fork and an electrical socket.
          My younger self jammed the fork in between the plastic socket guard and socket, then electrocuted himself and died.
          I looked around the void.
          "What kind of sick God are you?! Stop showing me this crap!"
          The image changed again. I was in the bathtub, my mother left for just a moment, and in that moment of her absence, I slipped and hit my small head in the tub.
          "Stop! You're disgusting! What are you doing?!"
          The image kept changing, and it sped up.
          I saw dozens, hundreds, thousands of versions of me die. Some of my deaths were due to freak accidents, and some were just natural extensions of actions that I took. I looked at my hands and clenched them.
          "What is the point of this?!" 
          The images disappeared and turned into a mirror. I saw my reflection looking back at me.
          It had my white hair, grey eyes, pale skin, and slight build. I reached out to touch it. 
          I hadn't died.
          As I thought about it, something occurred to me that I had never, in all my twenty three years of life, ever considered. 
          I should have died.
          A lot of the deaths that I'd seen were, statistically, more likely to occur to me than not.
          My life was lucky; there were so many spots where I logically should have died. My life was a series of freak accidents that I barely missed. 
          "You kept me around because you needed me!" I said, desperately, even though I already knew that wasn't true. 
           “Why?” I hated him. I mocked people who believed in him.
          Why hadn't he let me die? Why had he chosen me? Why had he sent me to Firma?
          “Why me, God?” 
          The darkness seemed to lessen. 
          I heard something; it was small, and quiet, and I could barely make it out, but I heard it.
          “I don’t need you, Shinko. I want you.”
          He could have chosen anyone else. He could have chosen John; or maybe another man like Alexander.
          He could’ve picked a teenage girl.
          An old man.
          A thief.
          He could’ve chosen anyone in the entire world to send to Firma, but he hadn’t.
          God had chosen me. 
          Not out of obligation; not out of grudging necessity; but purely of his own desire, he looked over everyone in the world, and his gaze fell on me, and he'd said, “That one.”
          The darkness trembled.
          It shook, then it shattered like a stained glass window. 
          A storm; I was in the middle of a storm. A storm so fierce that I couldn’t hope to withstand it. The storm battered me ruthlessly. It felt like at any moment, I might be torn to pieces by the power.
          "You love me.” I was swept away by the currents of the storm, completely unable to control where I was going. Rain fell on me from everywhere, and it splashed my face and wet my robes until I was completely soaked.
          “You love me!” Despite everything; despite my hatred and my ego, God hadn’t left me in darkness. He hadn’t let me suffer the fate I deserved.
          He hadn't let me die when, realistically, I should have died a long, long time ago! He’d given me what I never deserved.
          “Mercy! Mercy!” I smiled wide.
          God hadn't done so out of necessity, but out of pure, true, completely undeserved and unearned love!
          The storm ravaged me as I flew through it, helpless to do anything about it.
          “God, I want more of this! More of your love! How can I have more?” I shouted into the storm as loudly as I could. 
          The winds began to die down, and my feet landed on something solid.
          As I composed myself, I saw that I was standing before a cross.
          My smile disappeared. 
          "Oh."
          My head felt light.
          “How could I ask for more?” I walked towards the old rugged cross with staggered steps. “How could someone so unworthy ask for any love?” Each step was as if I was getting lighter. “How could a man so burdened with sins ever approach God?” It felt almost like chains were falling off my back. “How could man; evil man; unrepentant, wicked, man, ever dare to ask for God’s love?” My eyes watered as I reached out to touch the cross.
          “But… I didn’t ask for it.”
          I knelt and leaned my head against the cross.
          "Yet you gave it." As I said those words, I felt my soul lighten. It was like a burden that I had long borne fell off my back and was destroyed. Like invisible chains binding me to the ground had been torn off and I could fly.
          “God, I’m free!” Free of my pride; my self-obsession; my ego! 
          I shouted for the whole world to hear. 
          “By God, I’m free! I’m finally free!”

Edited on 09/19/25