Zero

Zero is a major Traveler character. She is considered to be the first "child" of the Divine in Flurutus.

Appearances

 * Flurutus: Genesis: Major Character
 * Flurutus: Major Character
 * Flurutus: Exitus: Major Character

Personality
Zero was a being born into an empty world with no emotion save for the incomplete ones she created after wandering an empty expanse alone. Though it has been six centuries and a half, she still cannot show emotion very well, and despite her wish to grow closer to other living beings, fails at this due to her inability. The emotions she has come to know quite well are those of frustration, loneliness, and sorrow, leaving her love for the living beings of the world as her only positive emotion that shows through. Though a largely incomplete and expressionless being, Zero wishes to share the emotions that she's seen others express, or at the very least, understand them. To her, the world was a colorless place before emotion existed, and she still exists as a "colorless" being without even the capacity to flash a single smile.

Though she cannot express or understand emotion, she genuinely feels it, and it reflects on her creations as opposed to her face or voice. Her smiles may look forced at times when she practices, but she feels true happiness, though, she lacks the ability to tell how she really feels at any given time. The emptiness that composes her being almost seemingly vanishes when she's around living creatures. She has a child-like wonder in watching them, but is motherly in encouraging their growth and advancement, and even protecting them when she can. To that end, Zero, despite being non-violent to a degree, would do most anything for anybody that asks, and even lost her right arm trying to protect the world she had crafted and come to adore. Over time, however, Zero became jaded with the world and what it had to offer, and began to despise creation, only showing deep affection for Travelers and doing anything for them she could.

Despite her courage in the face of threats for the sake of her creations, Zero is a difficult person to know, and this causes many to be driven away from her if they try to know her at all. She takes no pride in her origins, nor does she feel anything for her legend or name. If she can't cause one of the incomplete emotions she's developed to display, she often seems to feel nothing at all, and moves based on an unknown agenda. To that end, Zero herself isn't even quite sure what she's doing or why she's alive, taking solace in the fact that even if she finds no purpose in her existence, the rest of the world can and will, making her life worth something through the happiness of others, even if they're unaware of her part in it.

Background
As the story goes, the world was born from Zero. Zero became one. One became ten. Ten became two-hundred. Two-hundred became fifteen-thousand. So on and so forth until the world was filled with vibrancy and life. Though true that the world was, very literally, born from Zero, she herself was personally birthed by the gods, given no purpose originally, but given free-reign to roam the world as she pleased. The world, a barren and lifeless landscape, would slowly begin to sprout to life as she wandered, no aim as the wind carried her this way and that. Though life would begin to spring forth by her simply existing, it was simple life. The basis of life came first, being air and water, followed by bacteria and plants, but it was still nothing more than an empty landscape. She painted on her canvas, but there was nobody to share it with. For the first time since she had wandered, she'd felt her first emotions. Emptiness gave way to loneliness, and loneliness gave birth to the first lifeform beyond her. Libatis, a demon of nothingness, would become her companion.

Zero and Libatis would wander together, and the first cycle would be introduced. While Zero possessed only the ability to create, Libatis destroyed. Through Zero, life came, and through the darkness that had created a demon to follow her, death was born. Travelers, born of Zero's own flesh, and Devils, born of Libatis', would begin to populate the world, and together, the two halves would create an entirely new species...the Draco. It was a budding world, but Zero had somebody to share her canvas with...she had many to share the world she would come to love with. Syhomn, the first of the dragons, would become Zero's most enduring friend and companion beside Libatis. Zero would come to confide in Syhomn, however, that despite having crafted the world from hand, she found that she couldn't share in the emotions the three races had. Out of them all, she was the outlier. She felt nothing. It was here she tried, for the first time, to form an emotion by giving Syhomn her best smile. Despite it looking clearly forced, her intent and meaning was clear as she told him she never wanted her beautiful world to disappear.

She would later create a massive city to house every species, new and old, that had come to exist. In this unity came the congregation, who would make decisions on behalf of all. Syhomn, however, saw fault in this and refused to sit at a table with inferior beings. One day, Zero would confront him alone over his disgust of other species, but for all of her attempts to convince him that he could live in harmony with the others, she sensed no change. For all of her trying, her voice lacked passion, her words lacked impact, and Syhomn simply couldn't stand the species that had come after him. This would later become painfully clear as Syhomn declared war on every species, destroying a grand majority of the city she had built, and crushing Zero's right arm in the process. Though she refused to fight him, Libatis, ever her protector, gravely wounded the great dragon and ordered Zero to deal the finishing blow before Syhomn became an even bigger threat than what he was. Sorrowfully, Zero ended his life, but did no move after she did. Minutes, days...years. They all blended into one for her. Syhomn was dead. Her utopia destroyed. The other races, her children, at each other's throats and trying to contain the Draco menace. The day when she finally rose to her feet, the remains of this once great city would vanish, becoming the basis for the Wanderer's Palace.

Zero considered the Wanderer's Palace a safe haven for her children, Travelers, and would later compile information on the growth of the world from there while refusing to personally interfere. Around this time, despite attempts to calm the fighting, there was rampant violence still widespread between species. Zero would experience greater loss as days passed and her children failed to come home. Each that died caused her to feel the pain of another part of her being chipped away. The pain of her right arm, the pain of her children, everything hurt her. She would, in an attempt to keep her children safe, confine them to the Palace for their own safety after discerning that the world would take them from her. It was a heartless place, and the "picture" that she had painted distorted and blackened until it looked nothing like what she had envisioned. This was her first true act of free will, but it later turned into a pointless exercise as one of her children spat on the protection she offered and forced himself out of the Palace, leaving Zero shaken. Her first act was worthless in her eyes if she couldn't protect one child, and through that, it would become her only act. She no longer wanted to try, for all her attempts to change things for the better made them worse. While Travelers would spread through the world quickly after Tempus opening it, Zero would confine herself away in the deepest levels of the tower, refusing to speak or even acknowledge the fact that she still lived.

When her children came for her, it was discovered that she was nowhere in the Palace. She had seemingly vanished, but in truth, she herself had decided to run away, finding that if being who she was caused too many problems, she would become somebody else. She reinvented herself as a human hero with no name, eventually becoming known as a "White Raven" and adopting that as her moniker so long as she traveled the world. Later, she would establish White Wing, and swear that she would never return to the Palace as "Zero" given that she availed her children nothing. They didn't need her, and she didn't need that old self either. Though for a time she enjoyed what she did just for the sake of getting away from centuries of torment, she noticed an ill wind blowing her way signaling violent change. Something would happen to her precious children and her world that would change its face forever, and she promised there that she, and White Wing, would be there to stop it, no matter what.