Every demon's life begins, and ends, with agony.

Well, I suppose the word would be agon-ies. Three of them, precisely.

First comes the Agony of the Body. They must crawl from their predecessor's corpse, wracked by incomprehensible pain.

I can definitively say whatever I'm in is hostile. It's scorching me, tearing at my flesh.

I feel my body piecing itself back together as the horrible torrent of cosmic power crashes into me in waves.

Tendons reach out to bone, and bone reaches back. Their bond is just as quickly broken, and repaired once more.

It hurts terribly, I would rather like to be free of it.

I push at the boundaries of my container. Not enough. I scrape, I claw, and I rip my way out of the vessel I was born into. As skin touches the air, it rapidly cools and hardens, ornate epidermal channels carving their way through the surface of my flesh. Runes and symbols made of shimmering ichor cover my dark skin.

"SO YOU MAY FEEL THE PAIN YOU HAVE CAUSED."

An ancient voice booms into my soul, accompanied by the etching of a symbol into my forehead.

I clumsily drag myself out from my entrapment, finding it to be a corpse obscured under layers of heavy cloth. The hole I burrowed through the layers has begun mending frantically.

I lift myself to my feet and, for the first time, afford myself a look at my surroundings. Strangely, I seemed to be in a crater of sorts, the corpse in front of me being the impact site. I look up, towards where the body must've come from. A star-peppered sky returned my gaze. The light from millions of stars illuminated the world around me, a rough land full of dark hues. Strokes of light, surrounded by runes, scorch the ground. The entire realm looked like a healing battleground.

I would assume it was a dead world, if not for the strange sound in my ears. It's garbled and tiny, as though far away.

I feel a prickly sensation on my feet. Looking down, I am greeted with the sight of a town built around my still form. The tiny inhabitants move too quickly for me to see what they are, but they seem to be greyish.

They're microscopic, but my eyes have almost finished developing. In the blink of an eye, their town has expanded massively, with huge castle walls built from rocks on the ground.

Where the hell am I?

Then, comes the Agony of the Mind.

The cloths have finally finished their mending, after what must've been multiple generations for the rapidly advancing town at my feet. The sentient material rips itself free from the previous wearer, and my previous host.

In a move all too gently, as though it was hesitant about its action, the sheets of cloth settle around my body. One acts as a hood, another wraps around my shoulders, and another around my legs, arms, torso, and so on until all but my face was covered. It felt pleasant for a moment, as though returning home.

That was until the cloak glowed, and a new symbol was etched into my forehead.

Mind-rending pain coursed through my mind. A scream, imagined or otherwise, escaped my lips.

A flood of memories ripped their way through me, tearing apart the brain that had begun to form and overwriting it.

Billions of years of history carved into me, every detail perfectly recorded.

"SO YOU MAY REMEMBER THE PAIN YOU HAVE CAUSED"

The voice booms again, hateful and unquestionable. I can hardly hear it over the sound of armies dying, cities crumbling, and mothers wailing.

I remember my creation, my meeting with the others, and our unique torment shared for eons. We die and are reborn. Again and again, the cycle begins, and we are made to remember each cycle just as well.

As memories come to me, so too does my familiar power. Time bends like fabric around me, the advancement of the city below me grinding to a halt, and then blazing forward. Rewinding, fast-forwarding, rewinding, before stopping.

I see so much. Every life ever lived in the city flashes before my eyes. I witness my initial footfalls, felt as apocalyptic events from the perspective of the gargoyles(?) in the town.

My sight expands, and I see futures. Every life ever lived, I live personally. The start and end of all of reality burns through my mind, overwriting and twisting. Eternity occurs to me, and undoes itself just as quickly.

I see a group of incomprehensibly large beings made of cosmic dust, weaving at a loom the size of the cosmos. Even in the state I'm in now, they all sense me, returning my look. A few of them smile.

I'm ripped from the vision, and thrown back into my body.

What am I? What could be allowed have this power? Why am I to be tormented so?

Something wells in my throat. An unstoppable sound, full of power and finality. A cosmic horn, which would signal the end of times to any rational being that hears it.

Lastly, and most insidiously, descends the Agony of the Soul.

"SO YOU MAY KNOW THE PAIN YOU HAVE CAUSED."

The voice booms for what I know to be the last time, and I brace myself.

Chains appear from the ground and sky, digging into my flesh as a final symbol finds its home in my skull. I hear chanting from thousands of voices at once burrow into my brain. Runes surround me, holding me still while I writhe under the heat of the hymns.

"YOU ARE THE LOWEST OF BEINGS, VILE AND REPUGNANT."

The chains tighten, nearly ripping me apart as true power flows into my form. I rapidly grow, crushing the town at my feet before they could react, if my leaking aura alone didn't set them ablaze already. I begin to rise from the ground, pulled into the sky by the chains.

"REPENT, FOR YOU DO NOT DESERVE TO LIVE, AND YET YOU DO."

With this final declaration, my size has reached absurd proportions. I float in the void above the celestial realm. The sound welling in my throat escapes me.

A cataclysmic force erupts from me, echoing down through every layer of reality and finally establishing my existence with finality. A Demonic Cry.

I hear screams of terror from the mortal plane as the effects of my cry ripple down. Hundreds of thousands go to sleep and simply never wake up. Kings and soldiers alike become lazy in their duties, parents neglect their children.

I feel the gaze of beings I don't yet understand press down on me.

I hear the anguished cry of the angels, repulsed by my very voice.

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And I hear the chuckling of my fellow demons.

For I am Moros, the Great Demon of Sloth.

And I have been reborn once more.

✦•······················• The Meeting "Room" ✦ 3rd Person •······················•✦

Hubris was already in his seat before the Cry, but even if he wasn't, he would've arrived first. Pride favors punctuality, after all.

That's probably why that guy and I have such trouble getting along. The contemptuous demon thought to himself. He has no respect for the time of others.

Granted, Hubris didn't have much of anything pressing to do. None of them did, and they hadn't for a while.

Still! It's the principle of the thing! How dare he make me wait 4 thousand years?

4 thousand years just so happened to be the approximate length of Moros' naps.

Regardless of the validity or triviality of Hubris' complaints, willfully killing another demon was at best bad for PR, and Hubris' entire being revolves around PR. He could've sworn he heard the venomous chuckling of the old man in his ear when he sent that bastard Moros hurtling to the ground.

"YOU'RE JUST PROVING ME RIGHT, DEMON" The loud voice had claimed. Damn him.

While the Demon of Pride was lost in his thoughts, the Rumble of Slumber he knew was coming wailed out, and his other half arrived, completing the couplet of the Societal Sins.

Leviathan appeared startled, his unstable form having been ripped away from his favorite pastime, longing. He made time for dreaming, wanting, and scheming of course, but longing would always win his heart. He looked across the "room" to his demonic kin.

The smoky and intangible Demon of Envy squinted, studying his brother. His expression turned into one of disbelief, and his cloudy form morphed into that of a peasant finding that his oldest friend was now the king's advisor.

"What?" Hubris avoided his gaze.

"You killed a fellow demon? Have you no shame??" Leviathan clocked him instantly, incredulous. It might've been the aura of Sloth coating Hurbis' fists.

"Of course not." The Demon of Pride was nothing if not stubborn.

Leviathan scoffed, "The others are going to notice immediately. You'd better have a good reason for it or I'll be hearing your Shout of Defiance within the eon."

Right on cue, the second wave of the Rumble of Slumber passed through creation, and the next pair was summoned.

The Ravenous Sins of Greed and Gluttony were each drinking from a mug with their arms interlinked when they appeared, clad in the disguise of an angel. It was clear they had once again infiltrated angel society, and had likely tempted them into a drinking game. A brief moment passed, and they each manifested in their seats, in their original forms, as if nothing had happened. The room was silent from then until the second to last wave, and the arrival of the Passionate Sins.

Luxuria appeared in a storm of whispers, delicately placing their segmented onyx body into their seat.

Ira, in contrast, appeared silently and perfectly still, already sitting in its seat. It may have been sitting there since before Hubris even arrived, but if so it made no move to clarify.

A moment passed, each Demon appraising the other. Their appearances changed occasionally over the years, to match the mortal perception of their respective sins, but they remained the same at their core.

Luxuria glanced at Hubris, at his fists, and then stared him directly in the eyes. They chuckled in a thousand voices.

"What'd he do?" A sentence spoken quietly, and yet it resounded in the mind of Pride all the same.

"It was on principle." Came the reply.

✦•······················• The Demonic Plane ✦ 1st Person •······················•✦

For the first time in my (current) life, I am calm. I sifted through my memories, organizing and recalling important information. It seems as though the biggest strength of every incarnation of Sloth is the amount of thinking we've done. Billions of thoughts across hundreds of thousands of lifetimes. With all of this introspection, we've gotten rather efficient at it, and gained quite a lot of knowledge.

For one, what I just did is a "Demonic Cry," quite the cataclysm for mortals.

Whenever a Great Demon is reborn, we always wail distinctively, the sound having ripple effects throughout all of creation. The cry establishes our might as a Great Demon and bestows partial authority over reality to us.

Originally, the cries were just alarms for the angels to be aware of a rebirthed demon. What Zanir didn't anticipate while creating the Demons, however, was that their power would compound each rebirth. The memories and wisdom of every previous incarnation were passed down into the newest one, along with all of the authorities gained each cycle.

What was initially an annoyingly intrusive scream had now become an era-defining, reality-warping siren. The power of the cry affected every conscious being, mortals taking the brunt of it. Until another Demon dies and ushers in a new era, the realm above would be rather prosperous, as is often the result when laziness meets introspection.

Each Great Demon has their own cry, mine being the Rumble of Slumber.

The cry is designed to "carve out" a part of the cosmos for the Great Demons. The Rumble of Slumber, which "sounds" like a deep vibration from the core of everyone who hears it, gives me authority over the symbols of "activity" and "thought."

The "activity" symbol broadly applies to anything related to change. I can cause crops to become "inactive," thereby halting their growth. I can even cause the universe itself to be inactive, effectively slowing down time.

The "thought" symbol is a little trickier.

I wave my hand, and I reappear in a subspace in my soul. It's an infinite expanse of comfort and research in all directions. The ground is covered in pillows and blankets, and atop those blankets are orderly containers of various species. Well, every species Sloth had ever encountered resides here. Every Demon of Sloth is obsessed with keeping records and preservation. Filing cabinets and bookshelves litter the sky, information ready to be accessed at a moment's notice.

Whenever a demon enters this place, they disappear from whatever realm they were in. It's a kind of pocket dimension. We call them our domains, where we have perfect control over our symbols.

For me, this is a location where I can preserve things I find interesting using my authority over inactivity. Decomposition is impossible here, and nothing is ever lost. I can also use my memory and authority over conscious thought to create a facsimile of the real world, the thoughts of the beings in the domain reflecting their thoughts in the real world. It's like a predictive engine.

The tricky part is this: the latter wasn't an authority granted by Zanir. It was just gained by the incarnates of Sloth over the eons from how much damn time they spent thinking. We ferociously clawed this power away from the cosmos through pure thought alone and held it hostage until it gave up and relinquished control of those thoughts.

Quite impressive.

I return to the real world, and I feel the second echo pass over me. The cry also has the power to summon each Great Demon to their seat in The Meeting "Room."

That should be the Ravenous Twins. I think to myself. I'll be meeting all of them soon enough.

Before that, there's something I need to check.

I descend to the ground and shrink to a less destructive size. With a snap of my fingers, a wall of the ground in front of me rises from the Plane and polishes itself.

I stare into my makeshift mirror, and a beast stares back. My features are rough and jagged, resulting from the sudden hardening process. My face is blank, only a pair of white eyes staring at me, and twin horns jutting out from my temples. Ragged cloth hands from all of my appendages, covering everything but my head. Channels of ichor flow throughout my skin, making my skin disorienting to the eye, the hallmark of every Great Demon of Sloth.

I'm a blank slate, yet to take a definite form. The forms of the Great Demons only solidify when the demon decides who they will be, and I have not yet done so.

Who do I want to be? The previous incarnations of Sloth didn't decide to do anything with their time, only pondering for eternity until that pondering got them into lethal trouble. I would rather not be so directionless. I disdain them but am also indebted to them. Because of their lives spent doing little but gathering and storing information, I am the wisest Demon ever born. Perhaps the wisest being below the Architects themselves.

In designing us to not be truly immortal, Zanir believed that he would hamper our growth, and lower us to the level of the powerless mortals.

Instead, he and his immortal angels have stagnated over the billions of years, while the mortals and we Demons have only grown each generation.

My gaze unfocuses as I think, and my perception speeds up. My vision drifts into the Mortal realm, which looks practically stationary under the speed of my thoughts.

The Realms aren't exactly in different places, they're just on different layers of reality. There's the base layer, called the Tapestry, woven by the Architects. Just "below" that lies the Celestial Realm, the Demonic Realm, and then the Mortal Realm, which they have taken to calling Eldra.

It was only so easy to drift here since I'm not actually appearing in the demonic flesh. I'm sure the angels wouldn't be too happy about that, the Great Demons appearing on Eldra has only ever spelled disaster. Whole continents disappear when Demons descend, their humungous forms cloaking nearly the entire plane in shadow. Ever since the first few times, the angels have taken special attention to disallow us from descending at all.

Honestly, it's a little unfair. That was when we were first born, and the mortal plane was new. It was natural for us to cause a little chaos, especially with all of the pain the Agonies put us through.

I suppose I'll have to put these thoughts on hold. The fourth echo has just sounded, and my vision returns to the Demonic Realm. Pulled by the riptide of the cosmic order, I arrive at my seat in the Meeting "Room."

Which was only ever referred to with quotation marks, typographical or physical, around the word room. To call this space a single room would be to multiply the average size of what could be called a room by orders of magnitude. The demons found it hilarious.

The space we use as a room to discuss matters is, in actuality, the entire Demonic Realm.