Thin curling white smoke floated from the burning skull. It sunk off the slab and over the bisected withered body, brushing against the black ooze of creation before it gently spiraled upwards, following the long singular root that had dug into the skull of the long dead dragon.

The root itself, long dormant and withered, began to pulse steadily. Its sides cracked with thick pallid liquid. Sometimes something that looked vaguely armlike or similar to a head might push itself from the crack, reaching desperately into the darkness before being reabsorbed into the whole.

The root's movement grew more vigorous and the stone slab far below cracked, leaving the ash and remaining chunks of skull to tumble downwards with the sword into the thick liquid. Sobbing, weak, the grieving student pulled himself forward in time to grab the hilt of the sword, but the last bits of ash slipped past his fingers. He pulled, the sword eased slowly out from the liquid as though it were actually stuck in a tarry pond. Lingering fingers of the liquid held onto the blade, more pale smoke rising where the liquid met metal.

Suddenly the substance released the sword, and the massive root above swelled dramatically, bursting at the seams with wild white flame and smoke, the burning embers farther above shifting in color to match it. A low moan filled the burning chamber, rumbling through the roots, the bones, the puddle, all of it. The burning root above that pulsated with unearthly life pulled upwards and away from the skull it had dug itself into with a thunderous crack.

A massive form shifted, slowly at first, displacing millennia of ash and dust from around it as it shook the sleep of death away. The body had decayed, being abandoned so long in the mortal realm and left to wither yet as life flooded back into it a vigor returned that allowed it to gradually roll onto its front and then begin to push itself upwards with its hands. Its hundreds of thick root-tendrils that made up it's head independently flailed and twitched as it experimentally flexed each one.

The body then pressed against the ground, slowly rising upwards as the rumbling sound of an earthquake rattled through the world around it.

He remembered...

He remembered billions of voices calling out, in despair of their existences trapped in man-made tombs.

He remembered the ennui of millions, waiting for the inevitable end to hasten itself at their new god's command.

The opening of the moon and the frigid lonely prison, only able to reach out through the white weak light of night.

Butchery, subdivision, subtraction, reduction.

They needed something to take the burdens no one else would. They needed him again, but not as a whole...

A god of suffering, a god of curses, a god of revenge and executions. Judgement from on high.

Red hair...

Red hair, with golden threads under a muggy summer sun, hands reaching out towards a ripe fruit as thick storm clouds gathered in the distance. She turned her head to him and smiled as she took the fruit with both hands and offered it. Her voice was sweet and soft and her skin was warm under his fingers.

The withered corpse, hastily wrapped in a white burial shroud, mummified by the cold dry air. They had not even bothered to put it in the grand wool dress with golden torcs and sacred beads so common in that land. It had simply been dumped in the barrow unceremoniously in the same clothes she had died in.

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A small form, unmoving in the snow, red hair splayed as blood.

A young man, a heart burning with the poison of grief that had boiled to rage.

A scholarly shark with bitterness in his chest from guilt.

A merchant's son, who was never fated to a happy ending.

A person with the cut strings of a puppet...

The body heaved itself upwards, one hand larger than a hill crashing against the hollow shape of the mountain. Trunks of trees that had grown from it over time tore, shattered as the god dug itself free of the grave. Stones larger than horses and boulders bigger than houses crashed below, the thin barrier between the living mortal realm and the dead husks it was built upon breached with the violence of an erupting volcano. The Marsh of Jade Corpses boiled in an instant, water flash evaporating and the jade statues themselves shattering. The hand that emerged from below made the statue remnants look minuscule. The hand was made of wood, or was it stone? Ash leaked from cracked gaps in the fingers, white flame burned deeper within like dying embers.

The mortal realm was in chaos.

The sun and moon both hung limp in the sky, the sun a raging orange and the moon a boiling wounded red. Evil winds howled viciously, tearing at exposed skin. In the distance a forest of red maple trees glowed with a ferocious aura of its own, as though it held a singular will that made itself a shield against the winds and sky. Tombs and graves thousands of years old vomited their dead, which screamed in voices like storms as the remnants of their material souls were forcibly awakened. The mighty roar of dragonkin was matched with the screaming sky. The land had been dominated by a tower that grew out from the First Palace. Built from stone ripped from the foundations of the palace and the bodies of hundred thousands flesh warped people, joined together by entangling white roots and flowers that slowly hardened into a rock-like substance. Curling around this tower was a massive pallid body, bright white scales that only barely concealed squirming roots beneath. The body was even longer than the tower was tall, and it disappeared into the swirling morass of clouds above that had the consistency of flesh.

A shrieking howl and the cracking of wood broke over the sea of evil wind and tortured dead. The many flailing tendrils of its head writhed with the noise, and it pulled itself further from the ground. A strange mix of tree, dragon, human, and stone. Its body seemed to never end as it pulled itself quickly from the remnants of the mountain, making the earth shudder with every movement it made. The roots that extended from its lower body dragged vast lumps of earth with it, the roots themselves curling and uncurling, swelling and shriveling as though blood ran through them.

The pallid body that clung to the tower shifted slowly and despite it's clearly greater weight the tower did not move. Slowly from the churning sky a head moved downwards. Strangely almost triangular and wolfish, with too many eyes and teeth, long branch like horns with flowers that bloomed and rotted in equal turns. All of its eyes rolled in their sockets before focusing on its challenger. It opened it's mouth, a vivid crimson exposed as it made a noise like laughter.

The two beings, the same and yet radically different, were still for only a moment.

Tendrils flailing, a horrible roar of annoyed rage, the two surged at each other as the ground itself churned like water from their movements. Divine blood gushed as teeth ripped into wood and claws tore into scales.

Far beneath it all, shielded by the remnants of prior worlds, the small enclosed space was alone and inviolate. There was only the exhausted weeping of a single person, who clutched the sword with ash-marked hands. A small pale hand pushed itself from the pool of black liquid, then another hand. Heaving against the ground, a head emerged as well, sputtering and coughing as the rest of the small body was dragged free.

Idony hunched up on the ground, trying to wipe away the black gunk that clung to her. After a few minutes she gave up and accepted her fate before turning her head to the sound of sobbing. "Ah!" She got up, wobbling as though she had never walked before, took a step and felt her knees give out beneath her. So she crawled over to the man quickly, grabbing his arm. "Bo!" She said, worried. Why was he crying? What happened?

Bo's harsh sobs wracked his chest, his face was pale as though ill, streaked with dirt and tears. He slowly looked up and his eye fell on her. For a moment he hiccuped, then Idony was pulled into a tight hug, so tight she thought he was going to break her ribs. He was talking so fast and so incoherently with his sobs she had no idea what he was saying, but hugged him back anyway, happy to see him again even if nothing made sense.