Livia walked through the streets of Changeton, looking to and fro with curiosity.

“Man, this reminds me of back in the day,” she said. “A tsunami, then some obscenely strong people chasing me down...and now...” She looked up. Meteors had begun to rain from the skies, bursting out of a swathe of clouds. “Meteors...”

She squinted as one of them fell to the ground a few dozen meters in front of her. As the earth shook from its impact, Livia didn’t even flinch, a hand over her eyes.

The meteor appeared to be some sort of metal apparatus. As she stared, a door opened from it, and a man stepped out. He had large goggles covering his eyes, and he wore a dark grey military uniform that blended in with the concrete. He raised a large gun up to his shoulder, readying to shoot at her.

She raised an eyebrow, nervously regarding him. “Who the hell are you?”

“I could say the same. Civilians should be evacuated by now.”

“I don’t feel like doing that.”

“Fine.” He pressed a finger to his ear, glancing at the handgun at Livia’s belt. “This is Beta three, an armed woman is refusing to evacuate in sector Beta three...”

Livia dashed off, but when she did, he immediately shot at her. A thin, green laser shot from it, and her arm was instantly cut off.

She yelled as she ran, leaving her arm on the ground. “Ahh!”

“You brought this upon yourself, whoever you are.”

Although, as she ran behind a building’s wall, out of the street, she was completely calm as she looked between the two weapons at her belt. While she debated between either using her gun or knife, her arm quickly regrew, the bone and sinew, then skin, quickly forming a new hand for her. Good thing she wore a tank top, or she’d have to replace her shirt every time. That said, it still got stained with her blood.

She flicked out her gun, as well as another hidden behind her, then leaped out of her cover, rapidly shooting at the soldier.

“Shit, what-” He was taken aback by how she had healed already and remained a sitting duck while her shots struck true. The bullets, however, were deflected against his clothes while one cracked his visor, deflecting onto the ground. “Fuckin’ killer,” he said as he shot her once more.

This time, Livia’s leg was sliced off, and she stumbled to the ground. Almost immediately, she began regrowing a new one. She smirked as she lunged back at the man, discarding her guns and unsheathing her knife, which emanated a magical blue aura.

“Holy shit, how is she-” he began shooting repeatedly at Livia while she tried to evade the magical bullets, moving unpredictably toward the soldier, knife readied. He managed to tear nasty cuts into her body, but she focused on protecting her head as she ran and healed anything he hit.

While he stumbled back in fear, she leaped into him and blunged her knife into his head. It tore through his suit with some difficulty but cut through his skull like butter. When she took it out, his head quickly healed, but he fell to the ground, unconscious.

“Tsk.” She shrugged as she kicked his gun away. “You brought this upon yourself, right?”

Livia tore off his goggles, then began looting him. After securing a grenade and knife, she threw them into a backpack on her shoulder, along with her old handguns, and took his gun into hand.

She shot it into the concrete, slicing a razor-thin line deep into the earth with the laser shot.

She nodded. “Nice tech. I’ll take it.”

Lumia sunbathed under the Brazilian sun, enjoying her time off as she relaxed outside the nearby laboratory.

She yawned, staring at the sun with half-open eyes. Despite being dressed in heavy ceremonial robes, she wasn’t hot at all.

This is so boooring, she thought.

She could hear something happening far in the distance, and after some debate with herself, she lifted her head to see if there was anything interesting.

Far in the distance, a humanoid creature the size of a skyscraper burned down the rainforest as it moved, leaving a trail of destruction as it threw fireballs about the place, where smaller fire elementals erupted from the flames and began spreading out in different directions.

The kid rubbed her chin as she saw what was out there. “Mhm...a big fire guy...” She shrugged. “Why not?” Lumia stretched as she stepped off the lounge she’d been on. “You!” she yelled. “I’m going to kill you!”

Suddenly, in a flash of light, she seemingly teleported to the fiery creature from a dozen miles away, leaving behind a trail of shimmering plasma in her wake, which quickly dissipated.

She was a speck to the giant but smiled as she intercepted its path. “Stop right there, criminal scum!” she yelled.

It walked through her, the fire’s immaterial shape enveloping the girl.

“Yeesh, it’s hot in here.” Lumia frowned as she was enveloped by plasma hotter than the surface of the sun. That didn’t quite go as planned. In a flash, she appeared in front of the creature’s face. “Don’t you know that forest fires are illegal?” she yelled.

The fire elemental stopped this time, two concave eyesockets staring at her.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought! Stop before the l-”

It swiped at her, its hand shining a bright white as it collided with the girl.

She easily evaded it, turning into a bolt of light, seemingly teleporting under then behind the hand in a zig-zag. “I see! You don’t respect the law. It seems like I will have to be your teacher, big fire guy!”

Five dots of blackness, singularities that warped the light around them, appeared around her as the lesser elementals began to assault her with fire.

“Take th...” She paused and frowned, looking down as her vision was enveloped in flame. She instead zipped to the ground. “I should first handle your lackeys, though. I gotta do this right.”

She pointed a finger gun toward an elemental, closing one eye as she looked down her sights.

“Pew.”

Her hand flicked up as if she’d been hit by recoil while an enormous laser suddenly shot from a singularity, instantly blowing the elephant-sized elemental away and eploding far behind it. Then, she raised a finger toward another elemental as it began to shoot fire toward her.

“Pew.”

A different singularity shot another laser, annihilating it and its attack.

A geyser of fire suddenly erupted from below her, called upon by the great elemental. Lumia teleported behind another elemental, avoiding it. “Pew.” She shot another one, incinerating the fire.

She raised both her hands as she moved above a small group of elementals, then pointed her guns down.

“Pew, pew, pew, pew pew!”

Lumia wiped her forehead as she teleported away again. “Man, you’re one hot guy,” she noted, shrouded in air hot enough to melt skin. She raised her finger guns again. “But that won’t stop me from pewing you and all your friends!”

She began shooting down each of the elementals as they futilely tried to fight back against her. The god of light would show the miscreants law!

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Lumia lost track of the time as she made a mockery of the godlike entity, but she knew it sure had been a while. Actually, it seemed like the creature hadn’t grown smaller in the slightest.

It seemed like the great elemental was using the rainforest as fuel for its fire as it had begun moving forward, ignoring the almighty child as she slaughtered its underlings.

“Hmm...” she rubbed her chin as she let it continue moving. “You need to die already!” she yelled. “Since you refuse to...”

She raised an open palm to the heavens. As she did, her five singularities combined into one, then floated high into the clouds above the elemental. “Omega Solar Beam!”

A pause ensued as she turned her back on the elemental, crossing her arms. Then, a blinding laser of light the size of a small town fell upon the elemental, overwhelming it entirely.

The ground shuttered from its impact, and the ground beneath it was turned into a whirlpool of lava. The sheer power of the laser and the titanic explosion that followed turned what had once been miles of a lush rainforest into a steaming, broken, burning pile of lava, steam, and ash.

Lumia smiled as she saw how it didn’t just incinerate but annihilated the jungle, leaving nothing more than a circular crater filled with molten and vaporized dirt.

“You looked back at the explosion, you know.”

In a panic, she shot a laser at the person who had spoken. “Eep!”

“Oh shi-” With a thud, he was sent slamming into the ground below. Yet, unlike the elementals, he simply shook off his shock and then flew up toward Lumia. “What the hell was that for!?”

She blinked. “You’re alive? Wow, you must be pretty strong.”

He scoffed as he looked past her toward the crater left over. “Hardly. Are you going to hit me again?!”

“Let me see...” The nine-year-old looked him up and down. He was wrapped in mummy wraps, although his face was exposed after the wraps had been incinerated by her laser, leaving his curly hair exposed. “Weirdo. Pew.”

He was suddenly sent careening to the ground by a blast of light.

“Seriously?” He flew back to her, scratching his hair incessantly, causing flakes of dead skin to flutter off it. “Are you going to keep doing that, or can we have a conversation?!”

“I’ll stop.”

“Thank Chaos...”

“Thank god. I am one, after all,” she said proudly.

He tilted his head curiously. “Are you, now?”

“The god of light, Lumia!” she pointed a thumb toward herself.

“I see...okay, so can you tell me why a god decided to fuck up my plans?”

“Bad words!” she pouted.

“Decided to ruin my plans?” he corrected himself with annoyance.

She crossed her arms. “Because it was fun, obviously.”

He sighed deeply, a hand outstretched across his face as though he were holding back frustration. “Of course...of course...why not, why the f- the heck not!? Why would a Chaos-damned god not do this...”

“I’m sorry, was that your fire guy?” Lumia asked. “I thought he was just walking around the place destroying the wildlife recklessly.

He tilted his head to look behind Lumia at the enormous crater left behind after her attack. “Riiight.” He frowned in thought.

“So, who are you?”

“You can call me Therin.”

“What’s your job?”

“Science...I’m also attempting to take over the world at the moment...Kinda.”

“Ooh, that sounds fun! Unfortunately...” she crossed her arms. “I’m loyal to my friend, so I can’t help you with that.”

Therin narrowed his eyebrows. “Really now? Who would that be?”

“Drade! He’s great. He gives me food, and he helps me out, and he’s super-duper wise and smart!”

Therin blinked. “You said...Drade?”

She nodded. “Yeah?”

“That figures.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes. We are acquainted, though I’m more familiar with his sister. Say, would you mind helping me with something else?”

“Sure?”

“Good.” He pointed forward. “My great elemental was going to attack a big temple about fifty miles from here. The problem is, without him, I can’t break through the temple’s defenses. Would you mind helping me with that?”

“I won’t help you with that! I shouldn’t endanger anyone, plus I get nothing out of this, so no. Hmph.”

He scratched his head. “Umm...is there something you want?”

“Hmm...” she frowned. “Do you have...sweets?”

“All the sweets you could ever want.”

Lumia lit up, literally. “Really!?”

He shielded his eyes from her light. “Yes, yes, all of the sweets you could imagine. If you help me, you’ll be swimming in...uhh...what candy do you like?”

“Tootsie rolls and candy canes!”

“So cheap...” he muttered. “Sure. You’ll bathe in tootsie rolls every day.”

“YAY!” she spread out her limbs in an x-shape with excitement. “Where do you want me to go?”

Floating through Changeton city, Therin’s other body placed a hand over his wrapped-up face. “This is so ridiculous...”

Therin's notes on the eldritch:

{Then there are Eldritch of lawful nature. These creatures are an inherent opposite to chaotic beings, so anything I said about chaotic beings applies here in reverse. We struggle to feel emotions the way that chaotic beings and most other living beings do. The reason why, of course, is how we struggle with attachment. The idea upon which lawful beings are borne from is meaninglessness, as strange as it sounds. However, despite the common assumptions that chaotic beings make, we are not, in fact, nihilists. Not only do our views on life and meaning vary greatly from person to person, but the most common train of thought we have is not the assumption that our lives are meaningless but instead that we are tools to be used for those who can value their lives more. Most lawful beings are utilitarian, even to a fault, as we don't have many needs, either psychological or physical. On the other hand, chaotic beings can be quite needy in those departments.

Though I suppose I should get this out of the way. We are not all utilitarian, or even good. In fact, humans are right to fear both lawful and chaotic beings. Some of us are beasts, some schemers, some monstrosities, and others...are beings that I simply would rather not describe. Thankfully, we Eldritch are adaptable beings, and those who take residence in the material realm for long enough will pick up on human traits.

We lawful beings also often have a 'code'. We aren't directly 'utilitarian' at all times, and we instead follow varying moral, ethical, or 'strange' guidelines that describe how we live our lives. If one were to battle a lawful being with knowledge of their code, it might serve as an exploitable weakness. However, many of us aren't complete slaves to our codes, such as myself.

Anyways, to reflect my basic explanation of chaotic beings: Lawful beings aren't particularly involved in deriving meaning from their lives. We don't attach to ideas and concepts very easily, nor to our life or world.

I am one such being. I am a pureblood eldritch whose existence is tied to my ability to create human souls. I could write a book on the details of the ability, but I'll leave it at that. Anyways, when I was first birthed, a lust for battle, destruction, and most of all, survival drove me. Once I proved myself to be the strongest of my mother's similar offspring, I was sent out on my own. As I was born from an experiment, I began to grow an interest in experimentation and learning. From there, I eventually learned to create human souls -simulacrum- outside of the Astral Plane, and used them as vessels to pursue my research. From there, I very slowly grew attached to the material realm, and I even made friends; though they seemed to die in a blink of an eye. As time passed, I slowly became acclimated to the passing of time in the human world, and time began to seemingly pass at a more regular pace. At some point, I met Gau, and the rest is history. This isn't a biography, though. I already wrote a 'fictional' book on that. Anyways, after I broke into the second phase of Eldritch development, much of my world view began to change. Again, more on that later.

Another pureblood lawful being, one of whom I'm only passingly familiar and whose name I won't write for the sake of their privacy, is very...strange. I suspect that they broke into the second phase of eldritch development very, very early in their life, perhaps due to being part human. While I would have ordinarily written them off as different from fully lawful beings like myself, I had a hunch that they were quite Eldritch on the inside. After I met them, I began to seek out any eldritch entities with a similarly rapid mental development. My findings after four hundred lawful and chaotic beings of up to the age of fifty analyzed and interviewed was that none had even become close to reaching their second stage of development. I am deeply disturbed by anything that doesn't fit my understanding of the world, and so I soothe myself to sleep every night by repeating the mantra 'it's just an anomaly'. Unfortunately, I can't sleep in the first place, so it doesn't work.}