~ Prologue ~
Night.
The entity knew, instinctively, where it dwelt now, night had spread over the world. Pleasure flickered throughout its being. The entity enjoyed the night. Recently, it had managed to prevent the rise of the sun and almost plunged this world into endless, beautiful, glorious night.
Almost.
The light had defeated it. Light, brilliant and terrible, had cut through the entity, severing it from its host. The entity had nearly been destroyed; would have been, if not for the blessed darkness into which it had escaped. Contempt filled the entity. The host had become weak. She had been greedy and jealous when the entity came upon her in the beginning and it had made her strong. A servant of that horrible light, afraid to lose its power to them, had locked them away, for a time. But time meant nothing to the entity, and nothing to the entity's host. They were as strong as they had ever been when they had escaped that prison, aided by the stars themselves. But the light defeated it, defeated them, tearing them apart. And in her weakness, the host turned her back on the power of the entity and the beauty of darkness.
The entity's power was broken. It sailed away and sailed still, hiding in the light of day and regaining its strength in the dark of the night. It drifted over mountains, over plains, through forests and still it could find no one in which to house its strength. No one here was so fully absorbed in themselves as to want harm to come to others. These people were the only ones the entity was interested in. These were the ones to which the entity wished to join. And none of them were here! Not one being in this wide land sought the chaos and darkness in which the entity thrived.
But perhaps there was one in another land.
It drifted higher until was weaving through the clouds, then higher still. It watched day turned to night around it as it rose into the stars. Here, the light was less harsh. True, it was brighter, but there were no clouds or trees or land to reflect it. However, there were no other beings here; not a single one. The entity drifted in this darkness, past the sphere of piercing light until it found land beneath it again.
Something was different about this land. It was certainly not the place from before. This land was broken; its magic in shambles. The beings who walked upon it were confused, but hopeful. Trying to understand. The entity searched among them for a possible host. Out of disasters rose anger, despair, fear. It could use those.
The entity searched and searched, but it could find nothing. Rage stirred within it. Those things always came with disasters! Why were these people so different? It could feel flickers of those things, but no malice, no desire for one to harm another. What could have happened to these people to devastate them so, yet not destroy their spirits? It searched deeper, into the fabric of the land itself -
and paused.
The entity didn't care about time, but knew what it was and understood its passing. Time moved into one direction like water in a river. So it was in all places and lands the entity had touched.
Not so here.
Here, time was rippled. Not shattered, like the land. But altered, distorted. As if something had moved against time's flow and back again. The entity, curious, followed these ripples to see where they led. The strongest ones led to strange energies buried below the land. But one was weaker than the others, like an echo or a passing image. The entity concentrated on this one, following it across this broken land until it finally stopped at the source of the ripple. The source was not another concentration of the strange energy, but a being of this land. Pleasure suddenly filled the entity.
This being was a perfect host.
