Peace is a prize to cherish, but not when it is won at the cost of things held dear. So I reject the peace that falls upon my island as the last of the invaders fall. Gathering my anguished children to me, I rush to my tree and, as gently as my fretting allows me, I entrust them to its boughs once more.

Goldling: A creature of purity, innocence and love. It has been stained by the awareness of brutality’s existence. Status: Staining knowledge: This being has internalized concepts alien to its nature. It is at risk of tearing itself apart.

Perish the thought. I can fix you, my dear, dear children. I will fix you. I will wipe away this horrible lesson from your soul and you’ll be allowed once more to roam freely the garden of your heyday.

Goldling Class: Divine Dweller Level: 1 Consciousness: Focused Movement: Ground, Air (Perfect Gold Affinity) Body: Spiritual (Gold-Matter) Soul: Golden Thought-Hive (Wound: Anguish, Wound: Irreconciliable) Senses: Spiritual, omnidirectional

Face: Two-legged, two-armed humanoid, small, golden wings / primeval owl winged form, small Faith: Eternity

Fate: To be happy and innocent and live forever. Warning! This fate has been skewed by the introduction of external elements!

Would it be that I could reach out and pluck out those horrible imperfections from my children’s minds and souls. But, to my rage, I can’t. They are too fragile, too damaged already for such a direct intervention. But don’t you worry, my little stars. Ilienta’s light will remake you, reset you, bring back everything to zero and erase all malaises. I can fix you. I know I can. I will fix you. I will fix you.

My children’s spirits sigh as they nestle into Ilienta’s depths, little butterflies setting into a disturbed slumber. I watch over them for a while, and I cannot but think that it would have been all too brief a time for their innocence to last. But maybe that’s the way of the world.

Izilianchi lies where he fell, entangled by chains that are not weaker than the ones the monsters laid over him, only more difficult to entangle.

Izilianchi, the Elder Brother A powerful progeny of the Goddess, created to defend her first children. The beat of his wings raises storm winds and his cry calls the golden lightning. A Great Failure: this being has failed in his reason for existence. Strength escapes his limbs and breath his soul as he sinks into dejected darkness.

My fingers twitch, my ribbons curling and twisting. My son…

Izilianchi, the Elder Brother Class: Divine Beast Level: 480

Consciousness: Focused

Movement: Ground, Air (Perfect Gold Affinity) Body: Spiritual (Gold-Matter, Gold Lightning) Soul: Golden Hive (Wound: Anguish, Wound: Failure) Senses: Spiritual, omnidirectional Face: Primeval owl winged form, giant

Faith: Eternity

Fate: To protect the Garden and Al’Huota. To fight and destroy the enemies of the Goddess. Warning! This fate has been skewed by the introduction of external elements!

Kneeling, I gently take him into my arms. My poor child barely stirs, hanging limply in my grip. Cursed invaders. You drowned him in failure. But I will fix you, my child. Mother will make it all go away.

Ilienta welcomes my greater son as easily as it did with his smaller siblings, his massive form melting away into glass-like bark. I guide his essence as it settles at the bottom of the golden abyss, helping him to a peaceful slumber.

Ilienta will heal them all. I grew it from a seed of my will, grown it into a focused manifestation of my desire. It’s a deluge of passion and design given form, an incubator of what it is into what it should be, a forge of unquenchable transformation. The great tree will remind the spirits of my children of the shapes I made them to be, rasp and shave away any impurity until that shape is forged anew and the alloy is perfect once again. When its boughs rise once more, it will be to allow once more golden wings to soar freely.

Izilianchi. Strong and ever-faithful. My Goldlings. Happy and innocent and smiling. It was my will and desire that judged they should be such, and my will and desire accept no impediment. It will be so again. It… must be.

I grab that little, traitorous thought, crush it into my fist until nothing remains. It shall be so.

I turn, and walk toward my Workshop. It shall be so.

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Thankfully, my Workshop and my Vault are inviolated. I cannot fathom the means these… invaders have pierced my walls, but at least they lacked the time, the will, or the numbers to swarm other, more critical areas of my island. Critical to my island, not to me.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Immersed in the glow, I sit on my stool, thinking. Invaders, hundreds of them, flake mercifully away inside my being. Foreign memories swim through my mind, and I parse carefully through them.

Uthar. Urnath. Daemon. Meaningless words, if not for the context brought by snatched images and words.

Uthar. A black land of ash and fire. Where is it? Beyond. Beyond those walls around my world. Walls I thought impassable. But they are not. Formulae float among this riot of memories, broken syllables and gestures for incantations meant to break holes into reality, lead the way to another place. Beyond.

There’s where daemons live. Beings of hunger and violence, unrestrained energy and just as unrestrained lack of morality. In service of what? I see torture, slavery, war, hunt, deceit, fear, pain, delight, reckless ambition and endless curiosity. All of them focused on…

Each memory chants the same answer. They do so with shocking single-mindedness, showing how focused these creatures are.

The self. Ego. Validation of one over another. The triumph of selfishness. To hear one’s voice above all others.

I lean back, setting my fist against my cheek. An ego prop, I wonder? A cultural crutch? No, that’s not it. These… daemons, they take sustenance from acts of self-affirmation and dominance. They feed on it, grow strong from it, even as they delight in it. It’s a game, a way of life, a cultural path and a necessity all at once.

Curious. Deeply curious. This is a self-defeating shape for a mortal creature to have. An immortal, unbound by basic needs of hunger and thirst and death, could sustain it, but this is no such case, as the many I have devoured can attest to. The constant attrition and enhanced egos would mean societal collapse in a matter of brief time, no matter how high the reproductive rates are, or how tight the societal structures. I cannot imagine a creature left to itself developing such a convoluted system of values and self-sustenance.

… except if it was engineered.

“Interesting…”

Standing up, I go to my table. My tools are where I have left, and seeing them, in order and ready, slows down the budding fire inside my Core.

Thrusting a hand into my chest, I extract a sphere, as big as my fingertip, my skin letting it go with a pop after a small tug. I set the sphere on my forge, let the fire heaten and loosen its bindings, then I lay it on the table. I have grown quite adept in devouring what needs to be devoured. It’s quite the novelty to do the opposite. As I gently tap it with my hammer, I let the feeling carry me through.

The creature is… very ugly.

The body is humanoid, all tough, sinewy muscle without a drop of fat. Flaming red scales and bone plates and spurs form a tight mesh over every part. They make for an armor dotted with discolorations, glowing runes, missing patches and a crisscross of scars that hint at a lifetime of battle. Where wounds were carved, tough red flesh has puckered from beneath, knotting in obsidian-looking growths upon which sides the scales have regrown in a chaotic array. Sturdy, no doubt.

Two smaller and shorter arms emerge from around the sides, both ending in pincers while the main ones end in wicked claws. A thick tail ridged with spurs emerges from the back, ending in a stinger to a length on par with the body’s full height.

The face is interesting. It protrudes forward, with hooked fangs and teeth meeting together to give it a bestial look and peeled-back lips to make for an ever-present grimace. Four eyes – two forward and two at the sides – give the being what I surmise to be an almost perfect circle vision. Two holes make for a nose, with the skin clinging tightly to the elongated skull, from which two horns emerge, forming a crescent shape.

A tough, brutish creature. The only hint of its feminity is the wider hips. She’s naked. Both her equipment and weapons didn’t survive the transition through me.

Kiarak the Bloody Demigoddess thirty-nine generations removed from the Fount. It is a powerful being, as devious and hellbent on survival and thriving as she is in keeping a grudge. She won’t stop at nothing to obtain what she desires, but hesitation secretly beats in her chest. Status: Tyrant’s Mark: ??? ??? ???

A Touch of Gold: Those who pass through golden bowels aren’t left untouched.

Mmh…

Kiarak the Bloody Race: Demigoddess (Darkness) Class: Talon of the Dark Level: 372 Consciousness: Focused (Focus Imperfect) Movement: Ground, Underground, Swimming (Lava and Ash Affinity) Body: Material (Daemon-flesh) (A touch of Gold) Soul: Daemon, Demigod (Wound: Uncertainty, Degenerating: Conflicting Natures) Senses: Sight (Keen), Smell (Keen), Hearing (Keen), Touch (Keen), Taste (Keen), Glow-Sight (Keen), Soul-Sight (Keen), Dag’Drohma (Keen), Ninth (Mediocre) Face: Daemon humanoid form, four-armed, tail, twin horns, medium Faith: Hunger, the Self

Fate: To die in slavery (Tyrant’s Mark)

Kiarak. The smell of my children’s anguish hangs heavy over her. I have to exert myself not to… do something horrible to her. Instead, I puzzle over her. What a tantalizingly curious creature, soliciting so many questions only by the din of existence. Not originating in this place, of course. This is a mortal. A mortal with quite the story, judging from the memories retained.

It’s the first time I see one and, as galling it is that it’s the creation of another and given the sad circumstances, I still give myself the time to fully take in the solemnity of the moment.

First times don’t come back, even for Gods.

Or maybe they do.

----------------------------------------

Kiarak came back with a gasp.

First thing you do as you wake, look where you are. One of the very few tidbits the daemon she had the cursed luck to call a clutch-father echoed in her head as her instincts did just that.

First, her stomach fell, since she quickly realized she was in a cage. Then again, didn’t she die? She didn’t evidently, and Darkness be praised if that wasn’t quite the ego boost. Energy washed over her, and she immediately fell into a stalking position, making herself smaller of a target, and reducing the sounds of her movements.

She looked around.

The cage she was trapped in was small but more than wide enough for her to turn. It was a surprise, and again when she realized there were no torture implements. No stakes pushing against her from mutually exclusive directions. No unstable floor to keep her awake. No glaring lights or heavy noise to pierce her senses. Only strangely luminiscent bars, converging over her head to form a small cupola.

It should have been relieving. Weakling captors were easy to deal with. But she couldn’t shake the memory of sinking into the ground…

A shaft of light whose origin she couldn’t locate illuminated a thin circle around her cage. Beyond, the world was indistinct murk.

Kiarak felt a twisted sense of relief as even her daemon senses couldn’t penetrate the gloom. Sense-denial was basic daemon torture. At least, there was something familiar for her to cling on there. Or maybe not…

Suddenly, her throat seized. Kiarak gasped, her hands grabbing the bars as a sense of crushing pressure grasped her. For a moment, she was sure her eyeballs were going to burst. Her heart felt about to burst.

Then, it passed.

Kiarak blinked, not even feeling the need to gasp or wheeze. Something had changed. The air felt more… real? It was a feeling difficult to grasp.

She blinked. There was someone there. A daemon? Something else? She… couldn’t quite say it. Their shape was fuzzy, indefinite, its features never coming into real focus, no matter how much she tried. She swallowed. Not a daemon, her instincts decided. And her instincts were rarely wrong.

They sat cross-legged at the edge of the murk, a totem emerging from it as if they were an extension of it. They gave her their back, busy doing… something she couldn’t see.

Kiarak reached tentatively for that part of her where instincts, well-engrained by a lifetime of struggle and fight, waited. She had been a prisoner before, and a plaything to beings far stronger than her. Bribe, threat, cajole, negotiate, beg, acquiesce, it was just a matter to find how to assert her own value to her captors. To keep herself useful and alive.

This… wasn’t any different.

“H-hello?”

Right?