After many years had passed, the boy was now a man. Journeying home, down a road he had known, he was greeted by two celestial bodies falling from the sky. These burning, bright beings spoke. Their very words were music to his soul.

  "We should like to speak to you, Adam, son of Sky and Thought,” they said. “We have watched you for a while as you traveled the world and wondered what you have learned. For you see, we do not mingle our celestial selves with the mortal land, and so, we wish to understand why you did?"

  Adam’s breath, nearly taken away from him, spoke up. "Well, I suppose I did it because it was my choice."

  The celestial beings looked at one another and then looked back at him. "What is… ‘choice’? Does not this very thing invoke consequences? Is it better not to choose at all?"

  Adam was perplexed. "Have you not known the power of choice? Come with me, and I will teach you!"

  Thus, Adam took two celestials from the sky above and taught them the ways of free will or, as it was known in those days, the way of choice. Over time, the celestials learned to take form and shape, choosing for themselves for the first time what they believed they should look like. They were beautiful and carried much power in the space between them, all things, and their hearts. These two beings learned to shape names into items, places, and people. Mortals still worship them and call them gods.

  Thrilled by this, Adam thought he had found a new purpose in teaching the celestials who they could be, to teach them free will. He began constructing a tower to reach the rest of them. He named every block of stone with its own name so that its form would not buckle or bend. That made the stone harder than any mountain and more unyielding than the ocean. A name from Adam was a name from the Universe of thought itself. The tower would later be called Babble for its many names in many languages. In a hundred years and a day, the tower was finished. Standing on top of it was Adam, looking around at the celestials.

  They spoke to him in a symphony of voices. A cacophony of melody formed intention.

  "Adam, son of Sky and Thought,” they said. “Why have you brought the tower of your own design into our realm?"

  "I have come to give you a gift," he responded.

  They flared brightly. "We do not need your mortal items that fade in time; that fade into memory, that fade into dust. We have fixed ourselves to this position and have seen the way the world moves. We’ve seen how quickly they turn on one another for items they deem important one day, and forget in a hundred. We’ve seen how jealousy can drive a man into madness and murder. Who are you to wish this on us?!"

  "Oh no, I don't wish that at all, for you see, my gift to you is not of mortal making but from the breath of the Universe itself,” he explained. “It is called free will, and it is called choice."

  Most of the celestial bodies no longer listened to him and continued their duties, spreading their light and order throughout creation. However, a few stayed behind, listening to what Adam had to say, and in response to that, they made their first choice.

  "We wish to understand like our brother and sister down there,” they said. “We wish to choose and become something more than ourselves." And so, Adam taught them as he did with the others. Leading them in doing life hand in hand with him. These eleven celestial beings began to take shape and other forms, becoming gods. Thus, forming the first thirteen pantheons.

  Over time, the gods grew distant from Adam, and Adam continued his journey. He fell in love and had children with a woman named Gaia, the Emerald Throne’s first seat. Their love was deep and wide, and they gave birth to seven children, whom they named after the ancient elements. They were as follows:

  Pyra, of the Burning Maze.

  Petra, The Slayer of the Dream King.

  Aqua, Queen of the Ocean Below.

  Ventra, The Mad Father of Storms.

  Terra, The Wild Steward.

  Minos, The First Magician.

  Azer, The Living City.

  He taught his children the five rules that should not be changed or altered. It took him five years and a day. And he spoke so gently and so quietly when he spoke of the truths, the children started referring to the rules as the Five Whispers.

  After increased heckling and embarrassment from the seven, with even the youngest toddler joining in on the supercilious nature of the final whisper, Adam raised his voice a little bit more candidly and began his last lesson.

  “I know. I know I tend to be a bit precautionary and paranoid when speaking about the five rules,” he said. “However, you must understand that if I relay such powerful knowledge too quickly and too close together, we could attract the wrong kind of attention.”

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  “Father, who is stronger than you? Who knows more than you in a regard that you couldn’t keep up?” This one was the oldest; his name was Pyra.

  The eldest girl, Petra, followed suit. “Yes, indeed. Between the vast nature and power of the Emerald Throne, and all the knowledge you’ve acquired over the years, who could you possibly be that afraid of?”

  Adam stared into the distance blankly.

  “I’ve seen kingdoms rise and fall,” he mused. “I’ve seen wisemen go mad. I’ve seen greed rot a man from the inside out. I’ve seen great beasts with scales stronger than iron shields, dashed and sundered. They all carried the same illness of the soul. So contagious that even a thought can cause it to spread faster than any other disease. Do you know what it is?”

  A hush fell over the children, but the third child spoke up.

  “It was pride,” she said. “They thought they were invincible, but everything has a weakness, everything has an antithesis. Everything, in the end, floats downstream.” She was the second girl, and her name was Aqua.

  “Very good, Aqua,” said her father. “These Five Truths are such an antithesis. If there is ever a day that someone or something with real power tries to bend or break these rules, to do such a thing to one of these Five Truths…”

  Adam paused and held his breath. The world grew dark around him; his eyes fell heavily on the children, and they were laced with a deep and true power only a parent can muster.

  “...the very nature of these truths would turn back on the person, rot their soul from the inside. Wither their mind. Ravage their body. This curse of which I speak is a binding to protect and to punish those who deem to upset the very balance of the space between and the hearts within them.”

  As he spoke the last of these words, his eyes locked with each of his children. He shut his eyes. The darkness relented.

  When he opened his eyes again, the loving father had returned.

  “Now I will only say all five once and for all. They are to guide you through life and spare your hand from great darkness, to do what is necessary when the time comes.” The children nodded. Their father began.

  “One must not defile love.

  One must not cause another to murder.

  One must not break one’s oath.

  One must not steal hope.

  And one must never lie about the truth.”

  Each sentence twisted and resounded in a boom that traveled all across worlds. The words bound themselves into the earth, into the sky, and into the space between each thing. From that point on, the children knew. And that knowing molded and shaped them, grew them into powerful beings.

  The gods saw these children and became afraid, knowing the power of what Adam could teach them. So, the gods began to scheme and, in doing so, chose to betray him. This shaped them further.

  The gods invited Adam and his children to the top of the Tower of Babble, but their mother, Gaia, wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove, saw how hungry the gods had become for power, and how they demanded more sacrifices over the years from their followers. She was horrified that even some of the gods required mortal sacrifices. The choice they made took life and defiled it. She devised a plan of her own and pleaded with Adam to hide the children in a place that she would build, and he would name. Then he would go to the gods and either lead them back to a way of peace, flee from them, or wage war against them.

  Adam agreed. So Gaia built a garden out of the boundaries of time and space, and Adam named it Eden. Then he left for the top of the tower. However, in Adam’s naivete, he still wished for the gods to choose good, to lead with diplomacy instead of a firm hand. The gods and their way of understanding Adams’s compassion manipulated the conversation until his words fell so weakly that they were not afraid. In one fell swoop, the thirteen gods all turned on him, striking down his form into three parts: spirit, blood, and bone. Gaia watched in abject horror as her heart was ripped from her chest. As his blood struck the ground, she took it into herself and gave birth in her heartbreak. Pouring all her hate for the gods into the forming of these creatures, she vowed that they would be the undoing of the gods.

  They were two-headed creatures with the gender of male and female upon them. From the cracks of the foundations of the world spawned forth creatures with a hundred hands, towering frames, and insatiable appetites. With the last of Gaia's power, she named them “giants.”

  They crawled out of the wounds of the world and headed toward the Tower of Babble. However, due to their size, they could not climb the tower to render the gods into stardust. They ravenously hungered with rage and a desire for retribution. The giants grabbed pieces of the Tower of Babble, the same stones Adam had named, and they threw them at the gods. In surprise, the gods failed to react in time, and one of the stones connected, striking one out of the sky.

  The god fell into the cracks of the earth and passed into the underworld, where a winged snake slept. At the sound of the god crashing in its domain, the snake awoke from its slumber and devoured the god. The giants watched from the top of the crack as the snake ripped apart the god and swallowed its divinity in its entirety. In doing so, the snake became a god, and its first choice was to hide from the giants and go deeper underground, making a home for itself in hell.

  While the giants were distracted, the gods used the breath of creation and spoke into the space between them and pure separation. Before them, nothing could pass through this gate physically, removing the gods from the world. In the giant’s rage, they tore down the tower, throwing stone after stone at the gate to no avail—every thrown stone lowering them further and further away from the heavenly bodies. Time went on and, over the centuries, the giant's rage began to subside. Some even began to journey as Adam once did. Other giants dedicated themselves to the destruction of anyone who worshipped the gods, hoping to starve them out. Others grew tired and fell asleep, following their mother into the realm of dreams, and became the mountains we see today.

  In the end, creation grew still, and mortals began to forget these events and move them into myth and legend. Some even deny the existence of the gods entirely, denying the existence of Adam. They even deny the existence of choice. In their false wisdom, they found peace in the denial of truth. The world of the space between was forgotten, and a sickness began in immortal hearts—unbelief formed in faith’s place. Chronic unbelief was crowned ruler and king.

  remarkable ordeals still to come in Coffee With Immortals!