Chapter 1: Nelos
I am an infinitesimally small mote drifting in the froth of the multiverse. My corporeal existence precludes my knowledge of my place and purpose here. For instance, I couldn't say with absolute certainty that I am immortal. I have met others like me who did claim to be so—others younger, stupider, and, in some cases, deceived (as I showed). I don't believe corporeal beings can be omniscient—we don't have the capacity for it, even if we are immortal. That said, I cannot remember being young even in my farthest memories, and those—by my calculations to Earth's solar cycle—are seven thousand years old.
It's possible I am immortal. Sometimes, when my power waxes and I feel this verse quake and hearken to my will, I am certain of it and I wonder: What the hell am I doing here? Did I come to this particular place for a reason? These philosophical musings often evoke in me a thirst for meaning and I'll spend decades searching for portents, diviners, ruins—everything that might reveal any clue I may have left eons in the past to my purpose here. I futilely lament my inability to sire children for I'd have sired a nation just to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to my origin. Everything crumbles.
My last bout of self-searching ended in frustration and I conceived a new creed: "Fuck it, let's play." So I built my home here on Earth and created portals by which my friends and fanatics could come and go. Together we created dragons and magical flora and fauna; we grafted bewildering landscapes and planted beautiful gardens. We built soaring fortresses on roaming paradisiacal islands. We toyed with sapient natives, claimed our favorites, and gifted them with magic. When we tired of that, we drew civilizations up and pitted them against one another in games befitting my scheme to take the human species to the rest of the galaxy.
It was invigorating at first, but I gradually suspected that my wins were not all due to skill alone, that I had done this before. I felt a niggling dèjá vu to the nurturing of a superior star-faring civilization and an uninspired dread of its culmination. Each technological breakthrough in the space program began to weigh on me inexplicably. Then my portals began to fail with catastrophic consequences. In the end, it was the abrupt global annihilation of all our civilizations that gave me pause. Twenty billion dead in the spanse of a year and what did I feel? Shock? Rage? Grief? Frustration? No: relief. I paused, on my wasted planet, with a sigh of relief.
In that pause a filthy five year old human reached for my hand and pleaded, "Help me and I will tell you who you are." His name was James. He was a tragic orphan of my doing persecuted for his parentage.
I replied, "I'm seven thousand years old, I've watched your ancestors evolve from dung-flinging beasts to masters of war. I am an Elder sorcerer of power that would quench a hundred suns. I have pursued my enemies and their kin across the breadth of galaxies and back to annihilate them. I tame demons, humiliate gods, and consume the souls of the living. I slew your parents. I know who I am boy."
And out of the mouth of this babe came, "You're 3,842,000 years old, but you won't remember that in another seven millennia without my aid."
It was his diction that seduced me as much as his promise. Not that I would or could have harmed him. I assumed he was possessed and took him to the Franciscan priory outside the ruins of Winston-Salem as he wished. I waited a fortnight for the demon to destroy him and procure a more suitable host with which to parley, but when I returned I found the boy, unpossessed of anything but some rude skills in compulsion, telepathy, and precognition.
After that meeting I reconsidered a theory I'd dismissed before. There are no clues to my past. I left no record because I didn't want to be found. I am here because I am hiding.
From whom?