I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
- Revelation 22:13
INTERLUDE
The darkness was vast. It was a living abyss that suffocated one's senses instead of filling them. He had spent thousands upon thousands of years in the darkness, cursing the magician and waiting. He waited throughout the centuries for the single moment when the doors of his prison would open and he would step into the world once again. Dreamed of it. Prepared himself for it.
It had been so long, and the darkness was so encompassing, that at times - once every few decades - he was inclined to wonder if perhaps the magician had been correct. Much of his years, though, he knew that he would escape. It was fated - written in the very stars that had once stretched above him in the desert sky. He merely needed to be patient.
And his patience had been rewarded. Fate had delivered unto him a servant with a most useful talent: the ability to bend other's minds to his own. He could remember the first triumphant brush of mental contact with his servant, the careful whispers urging the man closer to his prison. Closer, then closer still, and then - proximity was everything - he had entrapped his servant's mind as surely as he himself was trapped in this mountain prison.
The fool had tried to resist.
After a thousand years of disuse, his powers had swelled to the point where he truly felt as a god. No one could resist. His servant had crumbled as all things crumbled before his might.
Now, in the darkness, he felt the edges of his prison weaken. There was only one door left to breach, and on the other side the world was lying, ripe for the taking. His servant had the pieces of the third key, and the pathetic band of weaklings would not stop him.
He was unstoppable. He was eternal. He was a god on earth. No one could resist.
He laughed, long and low, and the darkness seemed to shrink away from the sound.
END INTERLUDE