It was a natural moment as the crumbled remnants of a dead city returned to their original state, fallen level to earth once again as grass began to grow beneath the lacking feet of a worm. And yet the worm continued to crawl forward as the others in the scene trembled in terror, as the so-called gods found themselves once again among the company of men face-first in prostration on the fresh grass covering the new soil. There were three left standing, but even in his defiance Zorvilon was well aware of his inability to act alone. The Covenant had not confronted Yaldabaoth in a fully united front, but there had also been much more than three in his company then. It wasn’t just him and two fledgling gods good for nothing more than distraction of a mid-level foe.

It almost made him miss Xevis, brutish and forceful as he may have been, and Quorus, the sly bastard that had crossed him in completion of the act to take hold of a larger territory. Not that Zorvilon wouldn’t have done the same, of course— and he had prepared to, but wasn’t fast enough. Quorus had set a plan in motion from long before the battle started, and his vision stretched far past the end of the battle it seemed. These were the benefits of a thousand immortal eyes, and these were the foresights Zorvilon never could have predicted in advance.

And yet here he stood among the gods who would dictate the trajectory of the world. He had cast Yaldabaoth aside before and would do so again if he were able, the problem of course being the legendarily massive gap in strength. Zorvilon had no need of cheap tricks and pathetic crutches the likes of Anderson leaned on. To use Yaldabaoth’s latent energy spilled as blood in their conflict? How weak. How pathetic! A fighter should use his own strength and nothing less. Anything else is a disgrace to what it means to conquer…

Or so he would like to think, but Zorvilon was well aware this was a position taken only by the strong during the apex of their strength. It wasn’t a luxury the weak could afford to disregard options available to them— no matter how cheap, no matter how cowardly, a victory won on borrowed strength is a victory still, and costly or otherwise, a pyrrhic victory is likewise the same— far better than a mortal defeat.

And so Zorvilon made his decision to spit in Yaldabaoth’s helping hand once again. For all the things this H— David— was, he wasn’t Yaldabaoth, and after a thousand centuries of stagnation any change that brought the opportunity of a higher station would be worth taking.

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In all the years he had spent loyal there was never an opportunity for advancement. It was always stagnation, always watching the same soil regenerate, the same positions filled by the same warm bodies whose drive had left them ten thousand millenia prior to Zorvilon’s birth, itself from long before antiquity. He would have it no longer! He had sided with Quorus in the full knowledge he would be betrayed, and when it happened Zorvilon accepted the outcome with a smile, because for all the faults of the new regime, Quorus acknowledged Zorvilon as a peer— he acknowledged Zorvilon’s remaining faction of the Covenant as something he had to respect and whose authority he had to acknowledge.

Yaldabaoth? He saw them all as worms, as lesser, as mere creations. They were playthings, objects, matter without spirit. And yet with so much power. What was it for? What was the power for if not to do something— anything— with it? They were gods of a dead creation, implements of a divine will to watch the work stagnate and decay. Power wasn’t worth the station if it meant sitting on the hands, and yet life after having experienced absolute power wasn’t worth living.

When the moment of betrayal happened Yaldabaoth’s eyes did something Zorvilon had never before seen. There was a brief wrinkle, a tiny flash of light behind them. It was like there was a deep sadness, almost a longing, there hidden within the stoic mask of an eternal creator. There were no tears, and his eyes hardened once again faster than Zorvilon could even process the grief Yaldabaoth had felt, but in the aftermath it had become clear to acknowledge. Yaldabaoth cared for his creation, and this meant David was a danger to it now, but

“To hell with stagnancy, I cast my die to the wind!,” Zorvilon screamed as his legs trembled. He would not lay down like a worm today. He would fight and die if necessary, but he would not be bound in chains for an eternity again.

Fire streamed from the sky as David’s city fell, but its fate didn’t matter as he was done with the place. Its occupants had been consumed and David’s power rippled with their combined strength. Zorvilon’s fire did not touch him, and though David would not spare Zorvilon his coming fate, a temporary alliance of convenience was worth taking with a babbling child if it meant distracting the real foe.

And it was terribly clear just who this foe happened to be.