Disclaimer: I do not own DanMachi or any of the Omori's original characters, nor do I make any profit off of my writing.
Long before the Gods and Goddesses of Tenkai descended to the lower world, their children were on the brink of collapse. One by one, towns and cities fell, wiped off the surface of Earth. The first efforts to reclaim the dungeon, the gaping wound in the ground that festered and bred unimaginable evils, resulted in nothing but further loss.
It was a last-ditch effort to end the slaughter of their fellow man. Elves and dwarves, chienthropes and cat people, humans and pallums. Races that since the dawn of man have been enemies banded together under one banner, one united people. They left their homes, their families. Left the security of the last safe place on the continent. And they marched on the dungeon, to face down the pit of monsters.
They suffered light losses as they forged ahead, the swarms of monsters almost parting for them, granting them safe travels. At first, the change in behavior concerned the first adventurers, but as they continued to wrack victories up, they grew overconfident.
Its where the saying the 'dungeon bares it fangs' first came to be. Thousands of years before the first professional adventurers took to the caverns beneath the surface, the last remnants of mankind learned the truth.
The dungeon's fangs are just meant to distract from its claws.
Its easy to think the dungeon can't hurt you unless you're in its mouth, for the fangs aren't around you. One can't bite what they can't reach.
It was a safe assumption. The dungeon was malevolent, but it was not all powerful. It can't control the surface. It can't spawn more of its creations just to punish and torment further. Can't trap the fools who ventured too far. It doesn't have control.
Though when the last survivors stumble away to lick their wounds; when the few lucky souls who escaped the slaughter of an army three-thousand strong stumble back into the last stronghold to find nothing but ashes and ruin.. well the notion that the dungeon only has fangs seems meaningless.
When the best and strongest leave their homes defenseless and march to their inevitable end only to fail and return to the mutilated corpses of their loved ones, well, most things seem meaningless. It didn't matter to them that there were likely some who slipped away during the sacking of the city, didn't matter that there were survivors out there. Survival was meaningless too.
The warriors dragged their exhausted, war-torn bodies through the city, gathering what they could of their family and friends. Severed limbs, mutilated bodies, bones covered in bite marks that were pointedly ignored. They forced their bodies to work, pushed themselves to their limits to give those they lost the proper burial they deserved. If they collapsed and the last vestiges of life escaped their lips, well.. despite the everything under the sun losing meaning, death didn't. It's meaning simply changed from a forgone conclusion in a world rid with monsters to a welcome end. The final peace.
Because who would care when they drew their final breath? What's one more body to throw atop the piles? Who would be left to mourn when everyone they've known and loved was stripped from their lives?
The Gods did. They cared. They really cared. They watched, they cried, and they mourned. Yet, despite their absolute power and their desire to join their children in Gekai, they couldn't. Not because they could not, or because they should not, but because they would not.
Because despite their power, they feared the dungeon. The last time their arcanum touched the surface of Gekai, catastrophe followed.
The Gods were a society, divided between their realms. Like most societies, the Gods too had laws, and divine intervention was strictly forbidden. The Lords and Ladies of Tenkai rarely agreed on anything. The realms of Heaven were at odds more often than the races of man.
But in the face of the last light of their children being snuffed out, they joined forces as well.
In the end, the Gods remained in heaven, unable to interact with their children directly, out of fear of what their efforts would wrought upon them. In their stead, the Great Spirits descended.
Sito, Great Spirit of the Harvest. Born of the blood of Demeter.
Ursa, Great Spirit of Magic. Born of the blood of Heka.
Katai, Great Spirit of Storms. Born of the blood of Tlaloc.
Aria, Great Spirit of Wind. Born of the blood of Aeolus.
Fotia, Great Spirit of Fire. Born of the blood of Hephaestus.
Neph, Great Spirit of Souls. Born of the blood of Osiris.
Near every God and Goddess had a spirit, a creation that was the closest deities could get to actual children. Each spirit had was born from the divine, a piece of their creator within them. Each God or Goddess sacrificed a portion of their power, a realm of influence, to their spirits.
The Great Spirit's power was miniscule when compared to a God's. A drop in the ocean. Not nearly enough to beget the pit's anger, but enough to help.
The spirits sought out and protected them remnants of man. They took in the survivors, the runners, everyone. They spent years collecting the children of the Gods, building a stronghold that would not fall in their absence, and training the people to defend themselves.
Over time, bonds formed. The Gods had not planned for what the changes the Great Spirits would bring, but they could not say they were at all displeased with the outcomes. Divine contracts formed between Spirits and warriors, bestowing a gift, some power, to the ones they've bound themselves too.
Heroes were born. With the power of the Great Spirits assisting them, the power of the divine flowing within their mortal souls, they began to press onward again. Unlike last time, when they pushed forward out of desperation and fear, the second generation of adventurer's pushed forward with hope for a new age. And they succeeded.
The armies of monsters were defeated, only small hunting troupes remaining in the end. Isolate groups which pose little threat to anyone but the lone traveler.
The armies of man and Great Spirit united drove the monster threat from the surface. They built new towns, new cities. The races that were once driven together by their mortal coils were free to separate again, returning to the lands their ancestors once occupied.
To mark their efforts and their championing over the dungeon, mankind placed a crowned city atop the pit. Orario. Tall walls surrounding a bustling city. A tower, still under construction, built tall enough to reach the heavens. A gift bestowed by the last united artisans to the Gods before they too returned to their homelands.
The tower of Babel took centuries to create. The magical wards placed on each floor, written by elven mages under the tutelage of Ursa and the lesser spirits, protected the surface world from the dungeon's claws. The scores of adventurer's that entered day after day to keep the ever rising armies of monsters at bay, protected them from its fangs.
For a long time there was peace. Babies were born. Children played. Young adults fell in love. They got married. They consummated their marriages. Babies were born.
Soon enough, the stories of the past, the desperate attempts to reclaim the last of life on the surface were forgotten. Mere legends meant to scare children or teach lessons. Not the reality that they were. Not the horrors their ancestors faced.
The people grew lazy.
The Gods grew bored.
The Gods are perfect beings by definition, that does not mean the gods are not all good. Goodness is relative, and to someone such as a God of Death or to someone such as a Goddess of Marriage, what is good? A God of Death's being is in and of itself, death. A Goddess of Marriage being is in and of itself, the union of two in matrimony. Is death wholly bad? Good? Is marriage?
The Gods are perfect beings. They perfectly personify their domains.
So when they grow bored of their lives, and their children no longer provide the same amusement as they once did, maybe their memories become slightly more selective.
Maybe they forget that semi-important reason for why they limit their divine powers in Gekai.
Maybe they ignore the laws that protected their children from catastrophe.
Maybe they join them on the surface and play with lives like chess pieces.
The Gods were perfect, and the Gods were bored.
And so, the Gods descended, lavishing the surface with their arcanum.
And the dungeon did not like that.
And calamity came.
The Behemoth. King of the Earth.
The Leviathan. Overlord of the Seas.
The Black Dragon. Lady of the Skies.
Monster Rexes from the deep floors that ripped their way through leagues of earth to breach the surface, toppling Babel, and razing the dungeon city.
If nobody made the connection between the Gods arrival and the collapse of Orario, then who were the Gods to correct them? Certainly, it couldn't be a bad thing if their children believed they came to protect them. Couldn't be bad that they had no idea it was their arrival that wrought the destruction in the first place.
The Gods were perfect beings, but they were not perfect.
The cyclic rise and fall of civilization began anew. This time, with the backing of the Gods and their blessings.
The Great Beasts still roamed the continent, spreading famine and disease in their wake, dragging ships beneath the crashing waves of the ocean, and devastating distant villages in the mountains of the northern reach.
In truth, the calamities of the lower world were so awesome that once again many didn't believe them.
A monster the size of a mountain that brings entire fields of crop to ruin? Preposterous.
A snake said to be long enough to encircle the entire continent from its place beneath the seas? Unfounded.
A dragon capable of eclipsing the sun and razing entire country sides in one breath? Impossible.
The beasts' attacks were so few and far between that they too became nothing more than local folklore and legend.
The beasts were given a mission by their mother – the dungeon – snuff out the arcanum of the surface.
Return the divine to their place in the Heavens above.
For many the threat was unimportant, they were mortal, the beasts cared not for them. True, they were considered to be little more than insects, an annoyance and disturbance to their mission at best. They were squashed as if they were nothing, because to the calamities they were.
But the beasts did not seek them out, their mission was the removal of the divine, nothing else.
A sighting of one of the great beasts was always preceded by the unleashing of large sums or arcanum.
Perhaps a few obsidian scales dropped from the heavens as a man mourned the loss of his beloved Brigid under the stars.
Perhaps a few fishermen watched a storm brew overtop a fleet of ships in the south as Poseidon pushed his arcanum into his lover's corpse after she was pulled from the water. Perhaps some driftwood reached the coast, but never one of the ships.
Perhaps a man and wife wanted nothing more than to have a child of their own, despite the infertility of the mother. Perhaps they found a way, with the blood of their union they could create a child of their own, their beautiful daughter. Perhaps their efforts took a little more of the mother's arcanum than normal, perhaps the birth of their daughter drew the Lady of the Skies' attention. Perhaps the father gave his life striking the great beast, claiming its eye. Perhaps the mother was never seen or heard from again. Perhaps their little Aiz was lost to time.
Perhaps in a thousand years, after an old God lost his entire family to the being of winged death, he learned that the last living member of his family, a newborn baby with the most endearing, ruby eyes, was sick with the same fatal illness that claimed his mother. Perhaps, unable to cope with the loss of another of his precious familia, he did something to save the boy – consequences be damned. Perhaps he stayed as long as he could, raised the boy as his own, but was forced to leave when the black dragon drew close. Perhaps it broke his heart to leave his son behind, alone and confused. Perhaps it was necessary.
Perhaps, millennia after the first Great Spirits were born, the last followed.
Bellerophontes, Great Spirit of the Skies. Born of the blood of Zeus.
Author Notes:
Yes, Bell's full name shall be Bellerophontes, he was cool and rode Pegasus - I thought it was fitting. Yes, I am well aware Bellerophon was Poseidon's son, I just do not care. Yes, I understand that some shit has changed from canon, I couldn't be bothered to reread all twenty something light novels to get the lore of the world before the main story takes place right, sue me.