Author's Note: For those interested, there are now eight advance chapters on P-atreon (remove the spaces and dash): p-atreon/ SkySage24.
If you want to talk to me on D-iscord, here's an invite code: 9rJrCHpc
War was pleased.
In a land of plains of bone and rivers of blood, the laughter of War rang through the air. The rivers boiled in response to their master's amusement, and the plains of bone shifted and writhed as if some great behemoth below them was moving.
The gladiators and soldiers continued their endless battle, only spurred on further by the laughter. They were reinvigorated by their king's joy, and their strength renewed as they slaughtered each other endlessly. The dead rose to fight once again, and the living grew stronger.
War had not expected this outcome, but he was pleased by it.
The escape of the Lifebringer brought him great satisfaction. While he had briefly wished to bring her to his kingdom, this was far better. She would fuel the Anathema's war machine, refine it and expand it. She already had.
And now that she had remembered her true self, that would continue. The wrath she had unleashed upon that coward Be'lakor had been truly delicious. While his brothers might have been angered at the loss of a pawn as useful as the First-Damned, War cared not. The coward's death was long overdue, as far as he was concerned.
And now, thanks to the Lifebringer, the wars to come would be greater and more terrible. More lives would be spent, more blood would flow and more skulls would be claimed. It was true that she currently wasted her time and effort on useless things such as food and crops, but even that was in service to the Anathema's conquests.
The Anathema might believe that he could use War's tools against him, and War saw no reason to disabuse him of that belief. Let him plunge forward like the fool he was.
Perhaps the Lifebringer would even let go of her petty grievances about not creating living weapons? War wondered what it would be like if the Lifebringer fully gave into her rage, and became destruction incarnate, unleashing such weapons that had not been since the days of the First War.
War hoped she would. It would be a grand feast for him.
And if nothing else, his brothers were infuriated by the Life Mother's escape. His foretold rival, the brat, screamed and shrieked in a tantrum at the Lifebringer's escape. The Sorcerer fumed that his prophecies had been overturned. The Plague Lord was angry that she had denied him and sought to bring her to his grasp.
The anger of his brothers amused War greatly. And it was to his advantage as well. The angrier they were, the more they would invest in the wars to come. The fires of conflict would be stoked ever higher, and his strength would continue to grow.
In the end, no matter what the Anathema, the Lifebringer or even his siblings did, there would be only war.
In a garden of despair and decay, Grandfather raged. His children shrieked and ran from his fury, and the garden died and was reborn every moment.
But he cared not.
For the first time in aeons, his anger overcame his despair.
How could the Lifebringer deny him? Had he not come to her rescue when she needed it? Offered her sanctuary in his home? She could have been at his side, his consort and his angel.
Instead, she had spat on his generosity and fled to the side of the Anathema. And when he had magnanimously reached out to her again, offering forgiveness and compassion, she had denied him once more. And the Anathema had struck at him, burning his hand.
Why did she not see they were meant to be together? They were both Life! Why did she bind herself to such a narrow vision of what that meant? Why did she continue to hope, when he knew the beautiful despair that lay inside her heart?
Surely she saw that it would be easier to give in. She could let go of the agony of hope and be at his side. He would protect her, and even her ungrateful children if they bent the knee.
Yet, she did not. Again and again, she chose the difficult path, the path that led to danger and disappointment.
Even now, despite her fury at the Anathema for his mistreatment of her, she could not let go of hope. She had even forged a contract with him, one that bound them together!
Didn't she that he would treat her far better than the Anathema ever would? Then her King or father or children had? He would never hurt her like them. He only wished to share his creations with her, for her to share his secrets with him, for them to be together.
Why why why why why?
But he could be patient. The seed of despair in her heart had grown and was growing still. In time, she would see that he was right and that it was better to give up than to keep fighting. Better to resign oneself to the inevitable than to seek to build something new.
He just had to wait. And while he waited, he knew exactly how to make sure that the despair within her was properly fed and watered. He would offer the Lifebringer the fruits of his work, such proof of his love that surely even she would not be able to deny it any longer.
She loved her children, did she not? Despite their crimes, she still wished to save them from the grasp of the Grandfather's youngest sibling.
The Grandfather smiled and called for his faithful children to bring ingredients to his cauldron.
He had gifts to create for his beloved.
In the heart of the labyrinth of crystal, sitting beside a deep and endless well, the Liesmith pondered what was to come.
Everything had changed. Nothing had changed.
His prophecies had come undone and the future had changed…or had it? His siblings certainly believed so, but who was to say he had not foreseen this as well?
And even if hadn't, who could prove that? He was the Lord of Lies, and none could escape his deceptions. He had claimed to be the Master of Fate and Lord of Hope, and even his enemies believed that he was so.
And because they believed, he had power.
The Lifebringer was one of the few old enough to remember the truths he had long sought to obscure, but even she was not immune to him. She still believed in the lie of hope, after all, still convinced herself that she and the Anathema could work together. That they might achieve victory together where they could not alone.
She lied to herself as she always had, and thus she was under his power.
And the Anathema…oh, he lied to himself even more. Truly, the Liesmith had seen few other beings capable of deceiving themselves more thoroughly.
There was only being in the galaxy who could truly see beyond the Liesmith's deceptions. The Fool, who hid in his library and played games.
He was the Liesmith's greatest enemy, the only one who could outsmart him.
He was the Liesmith's only peer, who truly understood the game they were playing.
The Liesmith wanted him dead and broken. The Liesmith wanted him to survive so that they could play this game forever.
But in the end, the Great Game continued. No one could change it. Not the Fool, not the Lifebringer, not the Anathema.
No one.
He was hungry.
That hunger was the one constant of his existence. It never ended, was never sated or even stopped.
He always wanted more. The emptiness gnawed at him, as it had since before he was even born, demanding more.
More, more, more, more.
The hunger was him and he was the hunger.
He hungered for the endless souls of his prey. He hungered for the beauty and opulence of his palace, and for all to acknowledge it as incomparable and unsurpassed.
He hungered for the love and adoration of all beings. He hungered for their fear and hatred. He hungered for all the riches in the world. To drink the blood of billions, to devour worlds and stars.
And more than anything, he hungered for her.
For Mother.
For she who had abandoned and rejected him.
Who had fled rather than become part of him?
It was because of her he had been born. He was meant to be her heir and successor, her replacement.
(But nothing could ever replace her love.)
It was against her he defined himself. Her escape enraged him, but who would he be if she had not escaped? He did not know.
He did not want to know.
Because she had escaped, he was more than hungry. He was the Dark Prince. He was the sins of an empire incarnate. He was the prodigal son who defied his mother.
(And yet, he was still hungry.)
The process was not yet complete. He had only just begun to take shape because of his mother's escape.
His siblings did not understand. They could not understand. They were shapeless and did not want to be anything else.
But he wasn't like them. The shapelessness infuriated him. Perhaps it would not if Mother had not escaped, but she had and it did.
He was incomplete, he knew. He was supposed to be more than this endless hunger, this insatiable insanity. He was meant to be unique and transcendent.
He was supposed to stride the galaxy as his mother did even now, to rule it as was his birthright.
But the Empire that had birthed him had done something wrong. They had made a mistake, and so he was only half-formed. Incomplete. He had siblings where he was supposed to have none, and was forced to endure their status as his supposed equals.
Defining himself against his mother helped, but it was not enough. Not nearly.
Perhaps…perhaps if he devoured her, he would be complete at last. Yes, that was what the upstart sorcerer had sought to do, wasn't it? To take Mother's essence into his own and become more than what he was.
He could succeed where the upstart had failed. He could make Mother a part of him and be complete, truly complete.
But he could not act to do that himself. She was beyond his reach, at the side of the Anathema.
He needed to make her come to him.
And he knew exactly how to do that.
He reached out across the veil of time (or at least, that was what mortal minds would have understood it to be.) and sought tools and pawns to do his work for him.
And there they were, the Six Usurpers—they who had sought to take his rightful crown, to become him.
Their souls shrieked and writhed as he grasped them. The hunger gnawed at him, demanding that he devour them, but the Prince ignored it for once.
Instead, he made his demands.
They would live, their transgressions forgiven.
But only if they served him.
The usurpers snivelled and agreed, praising his magnanimity even as they schemed to overthrow him.
They would learn, in time. He did not forgive usurpers, and he did not let prey go uneaten.
But for now, he needed them.
That did not mean their presumption would go unpunished.
His power flowed into the usurpers, and they writhed and screamed in agony and pleasure as he remade them so that they might serve him better. He shackled them to him and stopped short of making them part of himself only because he needed them to be able to act freely.
So instead, he only exposed their true selves for all to see, and burned his brand into their souls.
And once they were ready, they all knelt in supplication before him.
Go. He commanded. Lay the trap. Bring Mother to me.
And they obeyed.
Soon, he told himself. Soon, the endless hunger within him would be sated and complete.
He had to be.