Humakt and the Void
As told by Grimbeak Deathblade of the Thunder Ducks
When Humakt had gathered all the pieces of Death, and bound them to himself, and made them his own, he saw that there was one task left to him. The release of Death had irrevocably brought Ending to the world, and more and more of the world kept ending, while more and more Death kept leaking in. People called this the Well of Death. But through his honorable acts Humakt had learned the secret of binding by cutting, so he set out to seal the Well.
On the way to the Well he traveled through many lands, and as he grew close he passed through places he had not been before. He came to a town where there was no sound; he passed through a country where nothing had any taste. He traveled across a great colorless field where the flowers had no fragrance, and through an ocean that could not be touched. In each land Humakt lost something, until he was blind, deaf, numb, and formless. Finally he came to the Forest Without Shape, where he found the Invisible Trail which led to the Void. And the Void was Nothing.
The Realm of Emptiness was empty even of meaning. There, Humakt learned that everything would return to the Void, and his terrible purpose, the driving will which had given him the strength to take and hold Death, drained away. He saw the end of everything which had been, which was, and which would be. He saw the destruction of all creatures and all gods. He heard the voice of the Void, which was a terrible soundless howling that shattered minds, and he felt its gaping maw, which made a terrible toothless rending that shredded souls.
This was a new horror, one that Humakt had never experienced before. He had learned what it was to be defeated and come back, and he knew what it was to be broken and recover, but this new thing, the Final End, made even his enemies Vivamort and Ikadz abject with terror, and Humakt knew that in this they knew truth. For he saw that it was because he had released Death - and because he and others had selfishly tried to take it for themselves - that the Void was eating the world.
In the Well of Death's stark emptiness many voices spoke to him: whispering and screaming, cajoling and threatening. They tempted him with bargains; they promised him privilege and glory. They said the Void would make him its chief servant, the Great Reaper of Souls to spread war and slaughter in the world, if he would send his victims into the Emptiness. At first Humakt listened to the voices, but he soon realized that they had no substance, for they came from the Great Silence. And suddenly Humakt knew the perfect clarity that is found in utter meaninglessness, and he saw that the voices wanted him to break his promise to bear Death. They wanted him to be a lie.
This reminded Humakt of who he was, and he realized how he could defeat the Void. For Humakt was not only Death, but Honor: he knew how to bind by cutting. Now he saw for the first time that this was also the power to create by killing, for only when a thing has an end - when it is separate from other things - can it be itself. Humakt knew that he was not a lie, and could never bargain with the Void and its poisonous voices. So the Warrior God clove the Void with his sword, and it swallowed him: Nothing ate Death, and, dying, stopped eating the world. And Death died, so that the world will always remember a Humakt who was himself, and who was True.
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