There was no being, in this creation or any other, caught in a predicament more stupid than mine.

Can you imagine it? Sharing the corpus and animus of existence's guardian, but being unable to influence him in any way? I was a prisoner, shackled to the core of my own being, unable to do anything but watch as the greatest fool there has ever been wasted his power defending ungrateful maggots.

Ever since I awakened inside David's psyche, I have been snubbed and insulted. This was, unsurprisingly, the result of his self-loathing - the bastard always does something stupid when his loathing for himself reaches a certain point - and am I not the deepest, truest expression of who we are?

Let me let tell you an open secret, which is obvious to everyone except him: David wishes to be a tyrant. He would like nothing more than to be able to do whatever he wants, to be adored and worshipped by everyone, with every word and deed of his immortalised and approved of. If everything he did (and, more importantly) didn't do or say didn't confirm it, all one had to do was ask me. After all, I was the embodiment of his deepest desire, and no amount of lies portraying me as some ridiculous evil side could change the truth. That was what I wanted, thus what he wanted, as well.

The Unbeings has the right of it. The only flaw in the structure of the Creed Ascendant was no fault of their own, but a result of David's stubborn insistence on not doing anything in our name. What good was being a god when you couldn't even order your faithful to slaughter the unbelievers? There were some passive benefits, of course - even if we somehow lost our powers as DEATH's Keeper and our mantle of guardianship, we would still have been stronger than all Unbeings combined, and our power would be holy, as well.

But it was not enough. David, like the chaff of our homeworld, denied the truth of his divinity out of nostalgia. Because he was used to being a mortal, because it would have been morally wrong to act like a deity, and any number of excuses. All nonsense. All lies.

What did morality matter when we were the arbiter of what happened or not? Even the Mover could not gainsay us, for it had given us a power that had grown to match its own, when existence's safety was in question. The Mover hoped that, if something, somehow, made it go on a rampage, we would be able to contain if not stop it. What was morality in the face of that? We should have been revelling in our greatness, not acting like a self-effacing bitch who thought there was nothing greater than the ethics of twenty-first century Earth.

As far as I could tell, there were only two beings who could match us in the fullness of our power: the Unmoved Mover itself, as deluded when it came to what it saw as virtuousness as David, and the bringer of oblivion watching over our metaphorical shoulder.

Arvhek wanted to talk with us. To show us the past four Keepers, himself included, so that we might understand them better than we did following DEATH's stories and our perusal of its Keep's archives. I had nothing against it, not that anyone gave a damn about my opinion.

Arvhek's power was a thing of beauty, radiating the kind of purity one can only find in the deepest nothingness. It was like wind passing through hollowed bones, creating a sound that chills the heart and barely catches the ear. I could have wept at the clarity of purpose the fourth, former Keeper possessed, for there were no questions within the empty, shrieking furnace of destruction that was his heart. There was only will, proper appreciation for the might at his disposal...and love.

Arvhek loved much, and had loved more. He loved his people, and his son, but it was a tepid thing, for he knew the former feared him and the latter hated him, a sentiment he fully approved of. He had loved his wife, and he had worshipped his Empress, just like we worshipped our zmeu. Even though he had been the end of both women, their destruction had come at their own hands, and Arvhek did not have to bear the burden of knowing he had slain his lovers.

I understood his relief. I would never know joy again if I ever so much as scratched Mia. There would never be any reason or excuse to even think about laying a finger on her, or our finger. And woe betide the wretch who so much as planned to hurt them.

David shared these feelings, and was touched by the fact I held them close to my hand, but still disapproved of me. Go figure.

When I woke from the dreamless sleep I had been caught in since David's undeath, it was, around the time of the first Chernobog fiasco. The Black God hid inside us, I was told after. My senses had been too dull, my mind too dim, to truly register much, in the beginning, much less understand anything.

I still laughed when David slaughtered Loki's spawn and gorged himself on that crippled cretin, his mutt of a nemesis and his blundering oaf of a brother. My only regret was that Chernobog made us do it, instead of the deed coming from our desire, but I suppose we wouldn't have managed without the Black God's strength driving us.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

After? David never gave me the time of day. So what if I treated Mia like the goddess she was - once more, the Unbeings showed their wisdom; I hoped they would soon incorporate her into their scriptures -? So what if I helped him with Mimir's sight, and kept him company in Broceliande, and held him together during our first fight against Chernobog? I was worthless. Evil. Wretched. Not even a person.

Just because I was honest. I wanted to make his so-called friends suffer, and that would not do, though the sons of bitches certainly hadn't been good friends. If David had lived a happy, full life, he wouldn't have killed himself. But they never were close enough to him to make him open up about the suicide he contemplated. They never had time for his books, only admiring the effort it took to write them, not the contents.

They weren't even there when he hanged himself. Nor was the spineless slave he called father, not that his blood sire was much to write home about, either. But Constantin? He saw nothing wrong with living under Yahweh's yoke, because, to him, it did not chafe. He found it admirable! Asked others, didn't they want to become lapdogs, too?

David, bafflingly, continued to follow the word of that monstrous hypocrite and his unwashed carpenter of a prophet. Why, I could not fathom, for the thing he called God certainly was not better than David, in terms of either beliefs or power. I knew there were people who worried about reading on ants, but this was ridiculous. Closer to praying to a microbe. If we wanted to, if we deemed Yahweh a threat to creation, we could make it so it had never been. So why, why, why kneel before the images of this ridiculous parasite we could unmake with a thought? This facet of the Mover it sometimes answered prayers to?

Looking at all the worthless gods that clustered around Earth, and their fawning worshippers, I could not help but understand the senior agent of ARC's American Crypt branch, the one who called himself Prince because he acknowledged that there were still people between him and eternal domination over all there was. Not only that, he was wise enough to understand that almost all beings who lived were either cattle to collar and cull, or curs to put down. He had needed to be broken in the clutches of the Empire Endless before he reforged himself into a blade above all blades, but I came into being aware of worthlessness. Still, I saw a kindred spirit in Prince, though he only saw us as an obstacle. I understood his hunger for power, and did not begrudge him his lack of trust. Even more so than Arvhek, he had nothing left. Not even a happy memory, untainted by what had come after.

That approval of the Lord of Edges - pfft, yeah; I know - was only the latest in a long list of things David found distasteful about me. Even now, fighting as Keeper to stop those who would pervert the cycle of life and death, who would destroy all that lived and didn't, he found reasons to complain. How dare I want to split that whore in half, or rape that child's mind?

"We cannot simply be monsters; there must be a difference between us and those we fight, or what's the fucking point?"

You see what I have to deal with, every moment?

Arvhek, who had paused in the introduction of the first Keeper's story, brought his hands together. Obviously, he had felt that not all of David had been listening to him, and that neither half of us was content.

'Could you balance your humours, David?' Arv asked, sounding like such a kindly old man it was hilarious, given every Mover he had silenced, and every creation that would never be because of him. 'It would help you learn, and I dislike disharmony.'

See? There was a honest man. He said what he didn't like, and put an end to it.

'Yes, sorry,' David said, glaring inwardly. Appearing as a silhouette made of shadows, with fangs and eyes of white fire and our noose around my neck, I flashed him a burning grin.

The rope's presence was reassuring, as always. Comforting, even. It was not a thing of shaped hemp, any more than the cemetery was a thing of cold soil and headstones. It was a fact, carved into the heart of our being. I knew who I was.

'I was just talking to myself, Arvhek.'

'I noticed. You are not at peace.'

He rarely was, when we spoke. It was as often the cause as it was the effect.

Arvhek, appearing as a gloved, hooded thug, practically featureless, spread his covered hands with the air of an impatient storyteller. 'What would make you happy?'

Happy? Everyone I have ever hated, shackled and suffering forever. Every ungrateful swine who did not see David' suffering as enough of a reason to let existence end. Even if that had been unjustified, David had redeemed himself by awakening the Mover, his plan helping guide it to divine lucidity. He became DEATH's Keeper, holding those who would prey on the departed at bay, and helping improve the lot of the dead who wanted better afterlives, but lacked the will or imagination to improve them. Mia had inspired us again, there.

They should all be kneeling and thanking us, for eternity. Not blaming us for what we almost did. If David had acted differently, we would just be the fifth Keeper to bear the title, at the mercy of both DEATH's whims and the Mover's dream. Instead, he made things better for everyone. DEATH was redundant now, as easy to remove as a flake of skin if we so desired, and the Mover had taken to policing its Maker brethren.

But no. Let's all whine at David because, at the lowest point in his life, he thought that there was no reason to go on.

'What would make me happy?' I giggled, speaking with David's voice. To answer Arvhek, we could collaborate. 'Hmm...' I stroked out chin, pretending to think. 'Mia sitting on my face and our enemies dead around us.' I shrugged. 'Oh wait, that's just everyday for me. I don't know, man...'

Did you really have to bring that up?

Watch your whore mouth, human! I am many things, but ashamed of my love for our woman, I am not. And neither should you be!

As he sputtered, I resumed focusing on Arvhek, who had cracked a faint smile at my obvious affection for our zmeu.

We might have been the regent of creation as appointed by the Mover, but I could hardly enjoy my privileges while trapped in the mind of an idiotic prude. Still...I'd be damned if I let David put himself down when there was no reason to. He barely enjoyed our work, anyway.