Paralysed by the dreaded reality that had manifested before him, Theo could only gape at his advisor as the crustacean threw a vigorous tantrum. It was quite impressive. The crab flung himself from side to side, occasionally leaping onto his back and kicking vigorously with his pointy little legs whilst snapping his claws and cursing vividly. Theo just stared at him since it helped him avoid looking at the doomed souls who'd landed in his possession.

These were souls. Souls! To Theo's mind, and what he had managed to recover of his memory, he didn't even believe they existed, and yet, here they were, awaiting horrific torture from him. He didn't know how to torture a living creature, let alone the ephemeral embodiment of a person's spirit! How the hell is that even a thing in the first place!?

He drew in deep breaths to try and calm his heart and the churn in his stomach. He'd known this was going to happen, planned for it in fact. The entire reason he'd expanded his realm to the limit in the first place was to make it more likely that a soul would be drawn to it. He'd gotten lucky and the first Soul Fall happened to be close enough that he'd netted two souls.

According to the rules of the Multiverse, as far as Theo understood them, these were souls that had been stained by the weight of their deeds in life, having caused suffering and misery that outweighed the joy and pleasure they had created. It was the role of the Demiurge to expunge that impurity and allow the souls to reincarnate freed from the burden of their misdeeds.

So he was performing a good deed, a meritorious service, when he extracted pain from these souls and used it as currency to protect his own ongoing existence.

"Ah, shit," Theo moaned to himself, "I'm not good at self-pep talks."

He turned to his self-pitying advisor.

"Bbl!" Theo hissed. "Hey, Bbl! I could really use some advice right about now."

The crab slowly ceased to kick the air and curse Theo's head with a variety of aquatic deaths as he collected himself.

"What is it, human?" Bbl asked, still grumpy.

"Well, we have some souls now, what are supposed to… I mean…. How do we? … Do the… thing?" Theo finished lamely.

Bbl stared back at him, uncomprehending for a moment, before he clacked a claw in understanding.

"Ah, right. You've never done this before. I keep forgetting."

"Right!" Theo tried to encourage his advisor, "I could really use a bit of your… uh … wisdom."

This tiny bit of flattery worked far better than it should've.

"Well of course!" Bbl drew himself up to his unimpressive full height. "I know everything there is to know about extracting AU from miserable vessels such as these!"

Theo felt a burning sensation as hot acid flushed through his guts at Bbls casual tone, but he gritted his teeth and focused. He had to do this to survive. He did not want to be another failed demiurge.

Bbl was blithely ignorant of his conflicted master and scratched at his shell as he mused to himself.

"I suppose this a teachable moment, as my rock pool instructor would have put it. We can get quite a bit out of this. OK then!"

The small crab thrust one claw forward to point at Theo's chest.

"First thing you need to remember. You are no longer the soft bag of useless flesh you were before."

"… Care to elaborate?"

"Whatever you were before…"

"Human."

"Right, that. You are no longer one of those. The Administration has taken your soul and placed it within a new and better shell! Think about it, the only creatures who have bodies here in the Chaos are the Demiurge, their servants and advisors and the members of the Administration. Everyone else is just a soul."

Theo's head spun a little but he held on and tried to focus.

"So my body is no longer a human body. I think I knew that already?"

His advisor shook his shell in denial.

"You knew it was true but you didn't understand what it meant! You are now a Demiurge, and though you look much as you did before, things are different on the inside. Every Demiurge looks different but they all share the same traits. They were all made for the same thing!"

Theo swallowed.

"And that is?" he asked reluctantly.

Bbl spun in a small circle and thrust forward both claws.

"You are a machine designed to inflict pain and misery on the souls of the damned! You were quite literally made for it! An engine of despair and suffering! The embodiment of agony! The catalyst of horror wherever you go!"

Theo shook his head.

"I don't feel any different," he muttered.

Bbl cocked one claw open.

"Oh no?" he said slyly, "then why do you feel so hungry?"

Stunned, Theo sat in silence for a beat before he lowered his head and looked at his arms still wrapped around his stomach. It was true. His stomach had churned and growled from the moment the Soul Fall had begun. He'd thought he was uncomfortable, sick or anxious. But no, he was horrified to realise, he'd been assaulted by a sensation he hadn't felt since he'd woken up in this new place.

He was starving! Saliva pooled in his mouth as the most delicious aura emanated from the two souls and wafted against his senses. His body was having a physiological response to the presence of the damned, as if he were Pavlov's dog!

Stolen novel; please report.

Theo turned his head and began to wretch, filled with panic and disgust. After five minutes of dry heaving and spitting onto the ground, he turned back to his advisor.

"Alright" he gasped, "keep going."

"I don't know why this is such a big deal for you," Bbl harrumphed, "this is part of the natural cycle of the Multiverse. Nothing to get your shell cracked over."

"Was it easy for you, your first time?" Theo countered.

"Heck yes!" Bbl declared, "I was natural! Damned souls never knew what hit them. Look, we'll start easy. Those two cash bags are stunned after their landing, probably just glad they aren't being scorched or falling or falling whilst being scorched. All I want you to do, is walk toward them, look at them, and then come back. Alright?"

The new demiurge nodded slowly.

"Aright. I can do that."

Probably.

"You'll be fine. Just a little walk."

Theo pulled himself up, his hands gripped the plinth till his knuckled turned white, before he forced himself to let go and turn to look at the two souls. They'd both landed on the same side of the realm, close to the edge, only a few metres apart. He firmed his will and began to take slow deliberate steps towards the two souls. He could do this. It was just walking.

But as he drew nearer to them, the hunger struck again at full force. Just being near them caused his mouth to water and his eyes to light up, as if he were anticipating the finest roast dinner. Waves of nausea threatened to rise again but Theo forced himself to be steady and continued to draw closer.

As he walked, Theo gazed at the two souls in turn. It was hard to tell exactly how they looked, but it was clear that neither was human. It was a little harder to see since they were indistinct, almost semi-transparent, which made it hard to focus on details. When he was less than ten metres away he became cognizant of a voice that whispered and tickled at the edge of his awareness. Curious, he walked another few steps forward and he felt the voice grow louder the closer he became. He took two more steps, which brought him within five metres of the two souls and suddenly he realised they weren't voices in his mind, but a steady trickle of information that became louder and more clear the closer he became.

When he 'listened' closely, he almost passed out on the spot.

Whispered into his subconscious, were details of the two damned before him. Information about their lives and the society they came from was leaking into his head! Fantastic details of alien races and worlds, even entire universes that were strange and wonderful to Theo was being fed into his mind. More disturbingly, he gained information about their misdeeds, the suffering they had inflicted on others throughout their lives and endless ripples that each misdeed had caused.

Almost without thinking, he took another long step forward.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" the first soul screamed.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" the second soul screamed.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Theo screamed.

As they screamed the two souls flared with light and a dark vapour leaked out of them into the air. For Theo's part, he turned and ran back to the safety of the plinth where Bbl waited for him, claws crossed in front of him. Theo gasped for breath and tried to collect himself as he leant against the plinth that held his realm stone whilst Bbl watched with contempt drawn in every crabby line of his carapace.

"Stop being such a soft shell."

Theo wretched for a bit. "I don't have a shell."

"I know. I shouldn't hold it against you I suppose. So, how do you feel? Enjoy your first meal?"

"My … what?"

Bbl poked him in the leg with the pointed end of one claw.

"Your meal. You felt it right?"

He wished he didn't understand what Bbl meant, but he did. As he'd drawn closer to the souls, as the details of their existence had trickled into his mind, they'd … reacted to him. They'd begun to experience pain. Terrible pain. And he had… absorbed it. It had been intoxicating. The pain of the souls had been sucked into him and a thrill had rushed through his entire frame. More to the point, his mind had exploded in a kaleidoscope of colour and sensation. The experience had terrified him enough that he'd turned and ran. He'd never experienced anything remotely like it as a human.

Theo hauled in a few more deep breaths before he nodded, then hauled in a few more until he felt calm enough to speak.

"S-So that's what … what I eat then?"

"Yep!"

Theo slumped down. Great. So not only did he need to extract pain from the souls of the damned to use as currency to sustain his own existence, he quite literally had to consume their pain as sustenance.

"Feel any better? How's that memory?" Bbl asked.

Theo froze. Right! Sustenance was supposed to help settle his mind! When he thought about it, he could feel it happening. His memories and emotions had begun to sort themselves. Piece by piece, he could feel the puzzle of his life was being put together. His emotions had even started to make more sense. It was still a gradual process, but he was immensely relieved to feel it happening.

He really hated it when he didn't understand something, even if that thing was himself. He could remember that now.

"Now you know how to sustain yourself! Yay!" Bbl clapped his claws together sarcastically. "What else have you learned about yourself in this little experiment?"

Theo thought for a second, his brain moved slowly after being rocked by such an experience.

"Your referring to the… knowledge?"

"Right. That. In order to effectively extract the stains from a soul it's necessary that you know something about them. So naturally, the Demiurge as well as any helpers you create, will be able to ascertain this information. Did you get much whilst you were over there?"

"Ah, so. The one on … the left, is uh, his name is … was… is, uh, Addelin. He's from a race of uh, jellyfish people? That live in the sea?"

"Aha. A fellow water dweller is it? A superior lifeform then" Bbl grunted. "What about the other one?"

"Her name is…. Uh, K'll'acksan'iin? I think? She's from a … space faring civilisation of… bugs? Bug.. People?"

Bbl shivered.

"Creepy. More important than that. Why are they here?"

".. You mean…"

"What did they do to land themselves in the Chaos?" Bbl demanded impatiently.

"Well, uh," Theo swallowed and tried again. "Addelin lied… like… a lot. And borrowed money that… he.. Uh, never paid back. I think his parents ended up homeless after he scammed them."

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Sucked his parents dry and left them for dead eh? Typical barnacle. You hate to see it," Bbl opined. "What about the insect?"

"She uh… well. She was a killer."

"A murderer eh? You lucky squishy sack! In the first Soul Fall no less! If I'd had that sort of luck I'd…"

Theo hurried to cut the crab off before he was too far gone.

"I think she was a .. Soldier of some sort. She fought in wars."

"Ah, well that's not quite the same. The kind of suffering you accrue in war is a lot less than what you'd get from a direct murder. The circumstances and people at the top are more to blame than the individual soldiers, so they get stained, but not as much. A murderer is quite the tasty catch. Maybe next time. What else did you notice?"

"When I got close to them they started to scream?"

"Right! Nice work picking up on that," Bbl praised patronisingly. "As a Demiurge, your presence is in and of it itself enough to cause suffering to the souls of the deceased. Check your Realm Stone."

Confused, Theo brought up the menu of his realm stone and read what he saw there.

Demesne: Unnamed

Area: 400.1 metres squared

Souls: 2

Demons:0

AU Balance: 1

Expand territory.

Material change/creation

Access Restricted Marketplace.

Souls had obviously ticked up to two, but more than that, his AU balance had increased to one!

Just from being near them for such a short time?

"So as you can see, just being close to a soul is enough to inflict suffering on them. It's quick and effective, which is all we care about. It's just not the most efficient."

Theo paused. He'd felt quite pleased with the realisation he wouldn't have to put his hands anywhere red in order to get AU. If all he had to do was stand around and put up with the screaming, that would probably be the best possible outcome he could have hoped for, all things considered.

But when Bbl mentioned efficiency, it had jagged at his mind like a hook in a fish's cheek.

"Inefficient how?" he asked, almost despite himself.

The crab shrugged his claws.

"The pain caused by a Demiurge being so exquisite, so potent, that other sources just don't quite measure up afterwards. It's as if you build a tolerance in the souls, if you take my meaning. The more you personally inflict suffering on a soul, the less effective any other method of stain extraction will become. It isn't going to be possible for you to personally torture every soul that falls into the realm, even if you were into that. So you need to be careful. The more time you personally spend on a soul, the less your servants will be able to get out of them."

Theo was definitely not into that.

"Alright. I get that much."

"Mind you, sometimes you get a particularly delicious piece of shit fall into your realm. Taking on a project to torture them personally is one of the exquisite pleasures of being a Demiurge. I got this serial killer once, gave my servants all sorts of lip. Can you imagine? Oh, those screams, I can still remember like it was yesterday."

The little crab shivered in pleasure, his claws rattling with delight and Theo couldn't help but feel put off by his obvious enjoyment.

"Can we move on, please? I don't want to hear about this."

Bbl snapped back into the present and pointed one sharp claw at him.

"You'll see. Wont' be long until you're swimming in suffering and fucking loving it. Anyways. We need to get to torturing so we can make some sweet coin and get to work up in here. It might take a little while for the package to arrive, so why don't you try doing the most pointless thing you could do and talk to the souls?"