Humanity despises a creature it cannot see, and so it despised Carbon. One who looked upon Carbon went slowly insane, but not before they could relate what they'd seen to others. And those, too, would explore the earthy depths of the world and find the oldest living life form, born before this universe began; a privileged few heard her speak to them, listened for hours, and passed the knowledge she had related to them on. But eventually, when those who knew of her existence began to notice the insanity of Carbon's viewers, they wore blindfolds to protect themselves. As more of these people survived and remained sane, they gained a following. A local newspaper had a field day when a reporter spotted a group of blindfolded men and women descending into a dark cave beneath the ground, but no one reads small-town rags, anyway.
Carbon was kind to the life forms whose distant ancestors she had also known when they were little more than prokaryotic cells on the face of a waterless, treeless planet. Long ago, she had found this hunk of useless space rock and forced it to create life, because that is what those of Carbon's like were meant to do. They knew no higher authority - they were as gods, to spread the concept of existence through this universe, and all universes that would ever be.
Maybe they were gods.
The blindfolded men and women had become a culture, a family in and of themselves. They began to worship Carbon; they wrote a book on Carbon's accounts of the universe. She told them that she always had been, and always would be. She told them that not only did she maintain the natural laws as humanity knew them, but she was the natural laws, incarnate; her death, though impossible, would destroy all gravity, all physics, all processes of evolution. She had not caused the creatures of this world to become as they were - only enabled it.
Carbon could be more human than her followers could imagine, but she was also so completely something else that they could never forget who or what she was. Her "cult" had long forgotten what she looked like. She told them that she was everything and nothing, all at once; but that didn't satisfy anyone, so she simply said, "I have six arms, two legs, four wings and three tails." They were satisfied with that, to a point.
Centuries passed before one of her followers found a reason to doubt her authority, to challenge her. His name was Alix Caughneight, and the year 2500 CE had come and gone.
"Carbon," he asked, his blue blindfold wrapped tight, "you told us, long ago, that you could not be killed, but were it to be so, the natural laws of... evolution... would be a moot point, yes?"
"That and other things."
"But what if we were to... remove your soul?"
"It cannot be done."
"Break it, then?"
She paused. "One only wonders where your curiosity stems from, my child."
"I simply wonder about how the world works," he replied.
Carbon would not answer. But Alix knew it to be true. He researched all sorts of old records in the books where Carbon's wisdom had been recorded; he studied the texts of old religions from centuries before. And eventually he discovered how to shatter a soul.
Carbon discovered his plans and ripped away his blindfold as he greeted her, staring into his eyes. She was a sight to behold. Indeed, her description of herself had been true enough, but it didn't describe her as she truly was. She did, indeed, have six arms and two legs. As she moved, she was like a centipede, each finger scraping across the ground until she reared back on her legs and one pair of arms, her other two pairs reaching out to grab or push things aside. The pair closest to her head had four fingers; the next pair, five; the next, four; and she had six toes on each foot. In each limb, and on her sides, her skeletal structure was very distinctive and clear - her middle two pairs of arms had two more joints than any natural earth creature's.
She did, in fact, have three tails, all branching off of her spine; they were long and muscled, like snakes, but a dim, washed-out green comprised of not scales, but some other... skin sort of thing. They whipped around, slicing through tiny rocks as they would collide. And she did, in fact, have two sets of wings - feathered, but indescribably, completely unlike any bird's. Spines ran down her back, horns curled up from in front of her ears; her skull was halfway between a human's and a cat's; her mouth was like an owl's beak, but as she spoke, four rows of teeth on the top and bottom of her mouth glistened threateningly. But worst, oh, worst were her eyes, the flat yellow eyes of an old, decaying god.
Alix Caughneight killed himself that night, while the noises of the early spring crickets sang everyone else to sleep.
But his ideas refused to die. His father, mother, wife, and only child - all blindfolded followers of Carbon - discovered him, discovered his studies, and figured out what must have happened. A miniature battle went on between his family and those who still believed in Carbon, trusted her - but the Caughneight family gained supporters and sympathizers.
There was a brief struggle on the surface of the Earth, eventually - and the Caughtneights won.
On the last day of April, they approached Carbon in her underground dwelling, and Alix's widow stepped forward.
"Creature," she said, "considering your revelations and my husband's untimely insanity and death, we have come to break your soul. We no longer want your natural laws. Were they gone... we would evolve. Become that of which humanity dreams: grow wings, gills, rid ourselves of life-altering genetic illnesses. Alix only wanted what was best for our species, and you were selfish enough to kill him to spare your own life."
Carbon responded, "You do not want to do this."
"I do."
"You don't. You do not understand that to kill a god is to kill yourself ninety times over. That the laws that I hold power over keep you safe. That manipulating them is not so easy as you make it sound. Barring that, child, I can never truly die."
She only said, "I know." And she took a deep breath and removed her blindfold and stepped forward, and before Carbon could even look at her, she drew a hidden gun from her coat pocket and shot it into her skull, feeling the spells that Carbon herself had given them centuries before take effect.
Carbon felt the spells, felt Alix's widow die. And then, as she knew it would, she felt the force of the girl's soul rushing from her body puncture her own spirit, shatter it into pieces.
"I promise you," she murmured, "that you will regret this. A rubber band only stretches so far before it snaps."
And with a last glance at the corpse of the widow, she collapsed to the ground - unthinking, unmoving - a soulless creature, put into a deep sleep caused by a distinct lack of a quality of being that every living creature has.
Her soul had broken into billions of tiny pieces, yes - but they congealed as if magnetized to each other. Forced to vacate Carbon's body, they searched for another vessel... but what on earth could fit the soul of a god? They were forced to divide themselves.
Across the continent, six deformed newborns opened their dull, yellow eyes...
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