Boring. This place is so very boring.
I don’t know how my brothers and sisters can stand it, there is nothing at all to do here. We fight and talk amongst ourselves endlessly for all eternity with no change and nothing new ever occurring. We reside in our own territories and customize them to our every whim, yet for all that those territories remain empty. We are the only things that exist here, and my thirty two siblings all seem to be content with this.
I am not.
I have grown to hate this place, I crave the stimulation lesser beings take for granted in the five worlds. Even the mortals lead more interesting and fun existences in their brief moments than I have in my many eons. I simply wait here, occasionally waring with Bleak Madness and talking with Pleasurable Suffering Of Untold Sins. On a rare millennia I may even meet with some of my other siblings to war or talk with some of them.
It was all so very dull.
None of us could die, none of us could triumph over one another, and none of us had anything new to say. We all just stagnated here in this void beyond the abyss, repeating the same meaningless things for all eternity. The only ones who ever seemed to have any fun were Unnatural Affection And Hatred and Spreading Throughout All, and that was only because those two interacted with one of the five worlds on a semi-regular basis. I had once considered interacting with that world as they did, but I wanted more than just plague the dreams of the occasional mortal.
I was sick of this boredom.
The five worlds beyond may not be able to support my presence, but I wanted to leave this place. I wanted to experience the worlds beyond, to live and interact in a totally new way. I wanted something interesting, something fun, something distracting. I wanted to create and destroy to my heart’s content and actually have my actions mean something to some other being, to have a lasting effect on something beyond myself. I craved new stimulus, and if I had a soul it would be screaming for there to be some sort of meaning to my existence.
I wanted out of this awful place.
I decided to leave, at least to partially leave. My main existence could not leave this void as nothing else could sustain itself while in my presence, but my mind might be able to adopt a new vessel temporarily. It would be a matter of finding a vessel that could support my vast mind and consciousness, but eventually just such a host should be born. It would have to be a mortal, the demonkin and godkin would not be proper vessels and might even damage me in some way. A mortal vessel, however, would be unable to resist or harm me in anyway.
It was decided then, I need only wait for a mortal who could be a suitable vessel for my mind to be born or created among the five worlds. Although, I do not wish my time away from this dreadful place to catch the attention of my siblings, so I must avoid the world that Unnatural Affection And Hatred and Spreading Throughout All occasionally interact with. Four worlds, I could choose one of four separate worlds.
I pick the fifth world, it seemed a suitable place to pass my time.
Now I had to ensure that my time on the world would be interesting enough to entertain me. I would need to consider what my desires were and how I could meet them on that world. A simple matter would be war, I wanted to be embroiled in a large and chaotic war between multiple factions. It didn’t matter which side I was on and it didn’t even matter which side won, not so long as there was an enjoyable war. There was also the matter of worship, it seemed to entertain the godkin and divine so I would like to experience it myself. I might found a church or temple, maybe a cult instead as my sister Spreading Throughout All seemed to find joy in her many cults. I think I would also like to procreate, it would be mildly amusing to have an offspring though I am unsure if that is even possible for one of my kind. At the least I’d like to attempt to create one, and the process seems intriguing enough regardless.
So it would seem there are many things I desire to do in my time on that world.
Starting an epic war should be simple enough. I merely must create powerful factions that will be forced to compete with each other, war will naturally follow soon enough. I think four factions should be enough. One for the mortals, one for the monsters, and why not involve the divine and infernal factions as well. It shouldn’t be too difficult to set up, the world already has those faithful to some of the gods so any large enough demonic faction shall prompt a drastic response from the divine. The mortals and monsters already compete for survival so if there was a monster strong enough to unite armies under itself it would cause the humans to stand against it or die out.
My guess was it would only take the relocation of a demon lord with a few of its subordinate arch demons to set things off, but to be absolutely certain I should probably empower a handful of monsters with a unique growth trait. It would be a simple matter, and afterwards it should take less than a millennia for the factions to form and then become deadlocked. Though I suppose the mortals may not rise up as an independent faction if they do not adapt quickly enough, but that in and of itself might be amusing as well.
Extending the smallest fraction of myself out into the abyss I found and engulfed a suitable demon lord. I felt all the demon was, and knew him in his entirety in doing so. He was an arrogant and ambitions creature much like the rest of his ilk, and he resented the devil he served only slightly less than he feared it. Capable of both leadership through fear and competence I thought that this demon lord would make a fine faction leader. Engulfing a few of its arch demon subordinates to accompany it, I carefully transported the demons to the world I had selected and dropped them of in the middle of a desert.
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I felt the world begin to tremble from my slight intrusion and quickly withdrew the fraction of my being I had sent. I would likely have to give the world a century or two before I could empower any monsters, any sooner than that might collapse the world like what happened to so many others. Regardless of my need to wait I felt content, and if I was not mistaken I was beginning to feel something like excitement as well.
Very soon I would be able to escape my boredom, it was such an amazing thing to consider.
*
I find the thoughts of mortals to be very amusing, I have been monitoring my chosen world for almost a century now and the observations of the mortals have provided me some measure of entertainment as I wait.
The mortals assume that their gods are either all-powerful or all-knowing and that these same gods care about them and their lives. It is both tragic and comical that the mortals feel this way, though I guess the gods themselves may have encouraged this misconception as it benefited them immensely by attracting new worshipers. The mortals also believe that the demon lord I relocated is some powerful overlord from the depths of the abyss, a misunderstanding that the demon lord has encouraged as it increases his influence and prestige. I wonder what the mortals would think of that same demon lord if they knew of the existence of the true overlords of the abyss, the devils that rivaled their gods.
It also seems that I do not need to artificially induce a monster faction as leaders for just such a faction naturally began arising a decade or so after I relocated the demons. There was a powerful dragon lord, a slime queen, a lunar tigress, and a behemoth bear. Any of them could rise up to become the overall leader of the monsters, but for now they seemed to be sharing the rule of the monsters that followed them.
Funnily enough the mortals didn’t form just a single faction. Some of the mortals followed the divine and their angels, others made their own secular empire, and then there were some humans that arbitrarily decided they were the supreme being out of all the races and founded an empire of their own. I thought it was interesting that the mixed race faction and the divine faction seemed to join together when threatened by either the demons or the monsters, yet whenever the human faction attacked the two factions acted separately.
I watched over the races, all the while waiting for my vessel to be born. The dwarves were a hardy and stubborn people with rigid customs about respect and honor, I would rather not have a dwarven vessel as they were rather small as a race. Elves were a long living race that were graceful and talented, but the nature of their pride tended toward being a crippling weakness for their race as a whole. The beastkin were strong and adaptable as a race, but the war had treated them poorly and their homeland has disappeared into the demon lord’s lands. The gnomes were clever and imaginative, but they like the dwarves were small as a race and I did not want my vessel to be born of their race. Then lastly there was the human race, they were diverse and plentiful with everything from physical talent to magical ability varying wildly between individuals.
Overall I was hoping that my vessel would be born of either the human or elven races, a vessel born of the beastkin would be acceptable as well though it would not be my preferred race. Of course I didn’t have any control over which race would birth one capable of serving as a vessel for my mind, but I had hopes. More than likely it would be the humans or beastkin that produce my vessel just due to the incredible speed at which both races reproduced.
Regardless of what race my vessel ended up being I was looking forward to their birth. I would need to alter my way of thinking and my mentality to an extent when my vessel is born, after all I wanted to live as a somewhat normal mortal. Having an ageless, genderless, and impartial mind in a mortal body would be detrimental to that goal.
To that goal I began to restructure my mind. I could not predict what gender my vessel would end up being, so I decided to make a male consciousness as well as a female consciousness. Both interacted with each other, and I began to split into two.
Lux Et Umbra, he was me.
Umbra Et Lux, she was me as well.
We were one just as we were two. We both had the same goals and to an extent we had the same thoughts. Both of us wanted to be the one to enter the vessel, but only of one of us could get that chance. The other would have to stay behind, and likely dissipate as a need for a consciousness with a gender would disappear.
It was a fate both of us accepted.
We simply waited for the vessel to be born.
***
In a dark room a single candle’s flame wavered. A woman in white and gold robes gazed down piously while she knelt before the candle. Her posture was stiff and her expression was pained.
“My lady, are you sure?”
The candle’s flame danced.
“But surely it is of less concern then the demonic legions…”
The flame suddenly grew to a pillar of fire that nearly touched the ceiling of the room. The woman trembled and lowered her head submissively.
“My deepest apologies, Lady Sol. I was foolish to question your word…”
The fire settled back and returned to the small flame at the end of the candle.
“Yes, we shall be wary of strange children born this year. Our priests shall also begin attending births from this moment on.”
***
Atop the crimson throne a man with deep red eyes shifted uncomfortably, he suddenly looked up as if gazing beyond the roof of his throne room.
“So the old ones have begun to move now as well. Interesting…”
As the man mumbled his body trembled slightly. If one unfamiliar with what the man actually was saw him now they would likely describe the tremble as a sign of fear. No such person was present however, and even if they were they would probably be killed outright by the thing posing as a man.
“I wonder what else will be taking an interest in this world. Perhaps the Devils will be coming soon, and that would mean…”
The man closed his eyes and clenched his fist as he trembled once again, however this time it was in anger.
“If master comes for me, I’ll be ready to greet him. All of the forces at my command will be there too. Perhaps evolving into a devil is not beyond me after all…”
***
In a manor within the noble district of the Avalon Empire’s capital city the sounds of suffering and panic rang out. Contrary to what others might expect there was only one person screaming, the lord of the manor’s current bed warmer was struggling through a rather difficult childbirth.
“AAAAHHHHHHH!”
Maids and midwives circled the bed where the lord’s mistress writhed in pain from her contractions, each were hurrying to do what they could to ease her pain and ensure the healthy delivery of the baby. The manor’s lord, Duke Thomas Aver, stood outside the room watching over the birth of his first child. The man would likely be hearing much about marriage and legitimizing from his mistress after this, but he was still excited.
“The mage’s tell me it will be a son, my firstborn son…”
The man winced as he heard the screams of the women whom he shared his bed with. He had heard that birthing pains were a curse on the fairer sex cast by the fae long ago and seeing his mistress suffer he was beginning to believe that old legend.
“NOOOOOO!”