WP – Ancient Evil

I lived a solitary existence in the Nothing, long before the impetuous young deity took it upon himself to move in and create his own little universe. I watched him, silent but curious, and found myself piqued when he filled one of his planets with tiny creatures that built grand monuments to themselves before running off to kill each other. It was strange.

The deity had assumed that they would worship him, but from the beginning his plan had gone awry – these creatures did not want to be controlled by anything. I watched as he punished them, demanded obedience, then punished them again, until he finally gave up and turned his back on them. Without his watchful eye on his little planet, I decided that it was time to step out of the Nothing.

While I had enjoyed watching the creatures, somewhere over the expanse of time I began to crave to walk among them, perhaps to even interact with them. However, I was not naive or idealistic. I did not imagine silly things like love and friendship; I had observed their interactions for far too long to fantasize them as a peaceful people. Truth be told, the excitement they promised was the reason why I wanted to share a world with them.

I took a form that was similar to their own, and I descended to their planet. The resulting chaos was glorious and beautiful. They violently rejected me, sending heroes and armies against me until they grew too exhausted to keep fighting. Then, after a couple centuries of rest and virgin sacrifices, they would try again. I grew to love them dearly, through their endearing games and insatiable lust for blood. These humans were a people after my own heart, though I did not expect to find my feelings reciprocated. I privately regarded them as my adopted children, and never once revealed that they had been abandoned by their true father.

Then, one day, she appeared.

After eons of our game, I hadn’t imagined that any one human in particular would come to mean more to me than any other. They were all the same, shedding their mortal bodies shortly after giving birth to others, without enough time to truly grasp the nature of their own existence. Yet, strangely, time stopped even for me the moment she crossed my threshold, and I knew that she wasn’t like the others.

I had built a castle as big as a mountain, then surrounded it with fire because it scared my little humans, and I was loathe to disappoint. She had lost her shoes during her journey, and the first thing I noticed was the red blisters on her bare feet, poking out from under the blackened hem of her skirt. It was strange to encounter someone in my abode who was so clearly not a warrior by any stretch of the imagination.

I bade her to sit, then carefully applied ointment and bandages to her burns as the both of us remained dead silent. When I finished, I asked her, “Why are you here?”

“I want to know you,” was all she replied.

Through the years that passed since that moment, she never returned to the humans that had given birth to her. Instead, she chose to remain by my side.