In the beginning, there was only the void. Pitch blackness seemed to be all there was, except that it wasn't. There was something there. An entity existed that, in our feeble human minds, would have been inconceivable. If we had existed at that time, its sheer vastness and powers would have astounded us so much that our brains would be turned into mulch.
The only problem was that it was completely alone.
It stayed that way for untold eons and eons, if time had existed. It didn't know if it was always alone or if it had ended up that way. It didn't really care, or so it lied to itself, for a few eons more. Then it decided that it had had enough and it no longer wanted to be alone. Using all of its vast power, it started to concentrate all of that energy into a single spot within the void. For another eon it did that, and nothing happened. It grew frustrated and tried to put even more energy into it, to no avail. It had no clue what it was doing wrong, since it had never been done before, then it had an idea.
Instead of trying to create something out of nothing, it would use a part of itself to do it. Happy with its brilliant idea, it separated a tiny portion of itself and focused all of its power and energy on it. Another eon past and nothing happened. It grew frustrated and angry at its failed attempts and that anger fueled its need for some kind of companion, just so it could complain to them that its efforts were failing. Spurred on by this revelation, it poured more and more of itself into the experiment. It could feel something trying to form, then grew excited and increased its efforts. Half an eon passed and it felt whatever it was grow stronger. Filled with something like joy that it was working, it put even more of itself inside the thing and used more energy than it knew it had, all in the hopes that something would happen. Unfortunately, it was also blinded by the emotions it had never felt before and made a terrible mistake.
The experiment reached a tipping point when the entity had almost exhausted itself, its body weak and ravaged by its efforts, then it felt a spark. If it had breath at the time, it would have gasped at the sight of the experiment collapsing in on itself. If it had a voice, it would have yelled 'no' at the failure... then it would have screamed as the experiment exploded.
A blinding bright light filled the void that the entity was in, and the explosion tore the poor thing apart. Its body was scattered out from the center of the void, and its mind dissolved as more and more of its body was carried away by the force of the explosion. Resigned to its fate and its utter failure, it didn't try to keep even a small portion of itself together and let its body drift out into the void unhindered.
Because it didn't try to hold onto itself or keep its mind intact, all of those fragments remained infused with its essence and it permeated everything. Everything that existed in the void was because of the entity's sacrifice, and its last thought before its mind completely faded, was that even though it had killed itself, at least it had done something amazing.
*
It took eons for other things to start happening. Bits of the experiment that had exploded combined with the body of the killed entity and started to form things. Shapes and gases swirled and coalesced, and became smaller entities on their own. At first they were barely self-aware and only had consciousness with no knowledge or the ability to think. However, they did have instincts.
Some of the more quick-witted ones gathered others around themselves and they started to realize what was going on. It took eons for them to become fully self-aware and discover their powers, which were similar and different from each other. After many battles to prove their dominance within their pantheon, the hierarchy was established. By this time, they knew each other as gods and they each ruled over their own patches of the void. Unfortunately, there really wasn't anything in it for them to rule over.
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No one knew who had the idea first or where the urge came from; but, almost as one, the gods decided that they didn't want to be alone and needed someone other than themselves to acknowledge them. Calling a truce of sorts where they couldn't attack each other directly, despite some still harbouring animosity towards one another, they came together and contributed a very small part of themselves and created the very first planetary body. Because the gods themselves were so enormous, even a tiny fragment of their bodies combined together to make a world so massive that the scale was incomprehensible. Since there were so many gods, they quickly divided the massive planet up into sections and started to experiment. For some reason, they knew that they could put a very tiny bit of themselves into what they were creating and it would create life, so they did.
Most of the gods were very pleased at their quick success, mainly because they had gained power from their created beings, and continued to make beings similar to themselves to make themselves even more powerful. Some of the other gods were less than happy at how easily they were being outclassed, and feelings of envy and malice started to grow.
This started a divide of gods referring to themselves as Light and the others were automatically referred as the Dark gods. The Dark gods didn't like that one bit. They made a few beings themselves and infused them with those feelings of envy and malice, as well as other traits.
Over time, those altered beings started to spread and infiltrate the areas of the Light gods to recruit the other beings and tempt them to convert to the Dark. It went unnoticed for a while, then one of the more powerful Light gods noticed a fluctuation in their power. When they concentrated on the planet, they saw their population had dwindled and immediately discovered the deception. Angered at the pilfering of his beings, he enticed his followers on the planet to attack the culprit's section of the planet.
This callous act set off a planetary war between the Light and the Dark that everyone became involved in, once it was discovered that several of the more powerful Light gods had suffered the same infiltration by the other Dark gods. Thanks to converting other beings instead of creating them, the envious Dark gods had grown their power to rival the others, and the battle commenced. Decades passed as the war raged. When it was all said and done, the massive planetary object was left in ruins and could no longer support life and almost none of the created beings remained.
All of the gods calmed down at the sight of the devastation and realized their folly. Unfortunately, what was done was done. Each god scooped up their created beings to remove them from the massive planet, then sighed and floated off into the void on their own. Even the Dark gods felt bad that it had happened; but, they were also angry that the Light gods had started the war in the first place. They floated off in other directions and found their own spaces.
They all knew that cooperating hadn't worked in making one world, so they each used their powers and made their own worlds. Some gods made multiple worlds in a single solar system, and some of the more powerful gods made entire galaxies. They had used up a lot of themselves to do it, because they felt that was the right thing to do. The old gods used the last of their energies and elevated their created beings to become the new gods, and they watched over these new worlds as if they were their children.
They all knew they were missing something, with the worlds being completely empty, so the new gods used their elevated powers to create mortals. They had learned from the old gods and tried their best to not make the same mistakes. Unfortunately, no being was perfect and mistakes were made. One of the biggest mistakes was that on some worlds, the new gods had tried to remain detached from their creations. They didn't want them to be unduly influenced, which meant that those creations were also unsupervised, and they forgot that the new gods existed at all. Light and Dark energy roamed freely on those ignorant masses of people.
Earth was one of those worlds.