The claws went in again, carving through twisted flesh.
Nyarlathotep shrieked. Not just in pain, but in offense. As if something like me wasn't supposed to touch something like him.
Too bad.
I kept slashing. Kept digging. The scarlet rot clung to my claws and spread like wildfire. It burrowed into him, bloomed under his skin in diseased patches that pulsed. The god twisted, his body screaming in colors.
"You animal!" he screeched, voice warping into a dozen at once. "You filthy, howling, crawling thing!"
I bared my teeth. Good. That meant it was working.
I reached out, grabbed his head, slick and writhing with too many eyes, and dug my claws into the sockets. He thrashed, limbs spasming like dying snakes. But I held.
"You don't get to call me that," I growled, pulling his jaw open.
Then I breathed in.
And spat everything out.
Hellfire roared into his throat, thick with venom. Scarlet rot poured with it, threading into his insides, curling around his core like barbed wire. His body lit from within, glowing like a furnace of sickness.
He tried to pull back, but I was stronger. My hands burned where they gripped him. The cuts along my arms, ripped open in the fight, dripped black-red blood onto his face. It hit like acid. Smoke rose.
"No," he whimpered, voice cracking. "No, this—this isn't how it goes—"
But I kept going.
His screams started to break.
And somewhere beneath them, I heard something new.
Begging.
His voice warped into something desperate, something broken.
"I can give you everything," he hissed, a thousand mouths speaking in unison from inside his dissolving flesh. "Kingdoms beyond your understanding, legions of stars, the throne of any pantheon. Anything, just—stop—"
I didn't stop.
I leaned in closer. My claws clamped tighter on his skull. His eyes rolled and popped, running like ink. I opened his jaw wider. Forced it past the angle it should've stopped.
Then I spat again. A surge of venom laced with essence this time, burning hotter, brighter. The fire wasn't red anymore. It was gold at the edges now, streaked with black rot.
He screamed.
The sound wasn't sound. It was pressure. It was every bone in the castle groaning at once. Reality wept.
"I—I can remake your world! Rewrite your fate! Let me—let me—!" he wailed.
I shoved another blast of burning rot down his throat. My voice came out hoarse, barely more than a growl.
"You talk too much."
Essence surged up my throat, thick, molten, divine, and I let it pour out of me like a goddamn volcano. It tore through his core. He bucked in my grip, but I didn't let go.
The green-stone castle cracked. Split.
No. The planet cracked.
Somewhere far above us, I felt gravity shift. Reality lurched. The ground around us spasmed like it was trying to get away.
"Choke on it."
I let the essence gather in my arm, bright and molten. My hand closed tighter around his pulsing, rotting skull, and I pulled.
Something in the universe snapped.
Nyarlathotep screamed, not a cry of rage, not a vow of return, but a final, choking death-rattle of a god. His voice tore open the seams of reality one last time, shrieking into the void like it could undo this moment through sheer force of madness.
It couldn't.
His head ripped free in my grip, dripping with divine rot. His body thrashed once, then began to unmake itself. Tendrils turned brittle, his form collapsing into itself like wet paper. Light and void warred for a second. Then…
Dust.
The castle of green stone gave a sigh, then dissolved into motes. Just an eerie stillness as its alien structure unraveled and crumbled into ash. The screaming monsters, once howling, blinked out in an instant like snuffed candles.
The sand beneath the castle shifted. Hardened. The corrupted planet groaned as the Scarlet Rot seeped deep, then began to calcify. Once a warped haven of madness, now barren. Still. A dry, lifeless rock.
Even my creatures, born from my Sea of Life, crumbled into dust.
And I stood alone.
I stood there for a while, still clutching what was left of his head. I let it fall.
Then I got up. My joints cracked, the rot pulsing faintly beneath my skin, but no longer raging. I looked around.
Nothing.
Just rock. Normal rock. No screaming geometry. No mind-breaking angles. No fleshy walls.
Just dust.
I took a deep breath. The air didn't taste like anything. Just dry. Thin. Clean, in a way that felt wrong after everything I'd just walked through.
I let my weight drop to the scorched ground, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the lifeless plain. The battle was over. The gods had screamed, and I had screamed louder. The wind, thin and rasping, dragged lines through the dust, but there was no one left to hear it. Just me and this hollow rock of a world, silent as a tomb.
My claws retracted with a soft click. The hellfire in my veins dimmed. The glow of the rune of death faded to a gentle warmth behind my sternum. I wasn't injured, not really. I don't think I could be anymore. But I still felt it. Tired. Not physically. Just... cosmically. Like my very existence had been stretched, then slammed back into shape.
I leaned back, resting my weight on my palms, and stared at the sky. It was normal now. Just quiet.
That, more than anything, told me I'd won.
"Huh," I muttered to myself. "Guess this planet's mine now."
It wasn't said with pride or some grand sense of triumph. Just fact. Just observation. One minute I was riding a horse through a desert. The next I was ramming divine hellfire down the throat of a writhing cosmic tumor pretending to be a god. And now the sand was rock, the monsters were gone, and the castle of madness was nothing more than a bad memory.
Then I sighed and let myself fall flat on my back, the rocky ground scraping gently against my back. I stared up at the voidless sky for a while.
"Welp," I said after a long moment, dragging the word out. "It's gonna take some time before my Spark has the juice to pull me back to Earth. Hell, I need to figure out how to do the whole ritual thing."
No answer, of course. No wind. No voices. Just me and the sound of my own breathing.
"So..." I sat back up, dusted myself off, and squinted toward the horizon.
"Let's give this god business a try."
I stood up slowly, feeling the new weight in my soul, Exalted, Primordial, Rotfather, whatever I was now. Titles didn't matter. What mattered was what I did with them. I started walking across the empty landscape, one feet crunching after the other. The sky above remained still. The ground stayed quiet.
"Can't do worse than the competition," I muttered with a tired smirk. "Right?"
I sat there on the rocky ground, elbows digging into my knees, just staring out at the endless wasteland like it owed me answers. The wind didn't blow. Nothing moved.
Well. It was mine now.
I exhaled, dragging a palm across my face, half-expecting sand to come off. "Okay," I muttered. "Step one: water. Need that for blue mana."
Water's important. Life stuff. Amphibians. Grass. I reached down, broke off a chunk of the rock beneath me, and popped it into my mouth like a protein bar. It crunched then flaked like dry dirt. Tasted like earth, but not in a good way. I swallowed it anyway.
"Thanks, primarch body," I mumbled dryly. No gag reflex had it's perks.
I leaned back, eyes tracing the dull sky until they found the moon. Or what passed for one. A tiny silver pebble hanging way too far out to matter. Looked like it could fall out of orbit if someone sneezed hard enough. No wonder this place felt wrong.
"Need tides," I muttered to myself. "Moon stuff. Gravity. Currents. Helps with agriculture and magic and... werewolves probably."
I pointed a finger at it.
"Moon, grow."
Nothing.
I furrowed my brow. Maybe it needed something fancier.
"Lunar expandium," I declared, with a little dramatic flair.
Still nothing.
"Expandus Maximus? Moonium Biggus? ...C'mon."
I let my hand drop. Silence. A little crackle of rot magic behind me as the rock tried to turn into something and failed. Useless. I sighed and lay back, letting the grit press into my coat, my axe resting across my lap like a tired dog.
"Should've paid more attention in geography class," I muttered. "Wait. Astronomy? Geology? Shit. All of it."
Above me, the moon didn't move. Probably laughing, if moons could laugh.
"Fine," I said, half to myself, half to the cosmos.
I broke off another piece of rock and chewed slowly. Still tasted like what glass would, like nothing. I stared into the sky, chewing stone.
"Godhood," I muttered. "So far, it's just babysitting a rock."
Time passed.
I couldn't tell how much. Days? Hours? The sun didn't move. Maybe there weren't any shadows at all, just static light bleeding in from a starless sky. It didn't matter. I sat there, cross-legged on scorched stone, meditating like a jackass, trying to pull mana motes out of nowhere.
Nothing. Just dry air and cold stone.
I exhaled slowly, reaching deeper, into myself until I hit something gross, warm and slightly metaphorical.
There it was.
My creamy rot center.
Gross.
It wasn't flashy, a slow ache behind the ribs as I finally reached into the silent pool of power inside me and pulled something out, pure, raw, colorless mana. Cosmic tofu.
I opened my eyes. The moon hadn't moved.
So I clenched my jaw, gripped the void beneath me, and shoved.
Somewhere in the heavens, something cracked.
The pebble in the sky jerked, shivered, and grew. Slowly at first, then faster, its edges smoothing, swelling, shifting. Still cold and silver, but now visible. Heavy enough to drag tides. It was a moon now. A proper one.
I leapt to my feet like a maniac, arms raised in triumph. "YES! Suck it, lunar mechanics!"
I spun in place like a cracked-up wizard, then reached out for the bottle of cough syrup.
"Hell yeah," I coughed, wiping my mouth. "Moon? Check. Next up, the blue shit."
I stared at the ground, then up at the sky, then down again.
"God did all this in seven days," I muttered, shaking the bottle like it owed me answers. "I got, what, infinite time? I can do it in six. Probably."
I glanced at the moon again. It hung there, obedient now, casting a soft light over the broken earth. My moon.
I grinned. "That's right. Who's the god now?"
Alright. Moon handled. Easy.
Next up: water.
Y'know, the thing all life needs. No big deal. Just summon a few oceans. Maybe a lazy river. I'd settle for a puddle at this point.
I sat down again, legs crossed, fingers laced together like I was praying to a god, which was ironic, considering. I reached back into that creamy rot core of mine, trying to coax out more colorless mana. It had worked before. Should work again.
Nothing.
I furrowed my brow. Focused harder. Reached deeper.
Still nothing. Just a big empty throb.
"Urghhhh," I growled, falling back onto the rocky ground and kicking dust into the air. "Come on, I made a moon. A moon. You're telling me liquid is harder than rock?!"
And that's when the sky started burning.
A faint hiss, like static. Then a roar. I sat up, eyes squinting into the blank horizon, and there it was.
A comet. No, dozens of them. No, hundreds. An entire meteor shower pouring down from the void like flaming hail, painting the heavens with streaks of fire. Glowing stones hurtled toward the planet, their wakes shimmering with frozen gas and dust.
My jaw dropped.
"…Huh."
I watched as the first one broke apart mid-air, scattering into molten sparks that hissed as they crashed into the stone, melting it into bubbly craters. Steam. Vapor. I could smell it. Water.
"So that's how I get more water," I muttered. "Comet delivery system. Of course. Because why pop it into existence like a sane god when you can just play galactic dodgeball."
The light grew brighter. The air hotter.
I took a breath, let it out slow, then braced myself.
I dug my heels in and raised my arms as the comets fell, the sky screaming above me.
Some time later, it's raining.
It hasn't stopped since the comet storm began. I guess when you punch a planet's mana core and whisper "please give me water," the universe answers by chucking a thousand mile-wide snowballs at your face. Real subtle, cosmos. Thanks.
They hit with enough force to crack tectonics. One by one, they carved basins into the dead crust, releasing steam and ash and, eventually, rain. Endless sheets of it. Cold. Heavy. Soaking into every crevice, pelting me in the face with it.
But there's no life yet. Not even algae. Just gray water pooling across rock that still steams from impact, and me, standing ankle-deep in it, watching the craters fill.
And sinking.
Turns out when your bones are made of super metal and gene-forged to survive everything, buoyancy isn't really on the table. I tried floating once. Just once. Straight to the bottom like a goddamn anvil.
I sat up on a ridge of half-melted stone, soaked and scowling. Wind howled. A comet screamed overhead. The moon above average glowed softly through the haze.
I coughed up dust, or maybe mist. Hard to tell anymore.
"…I miss indoor plumbing."
I trudged through knee-deep water, each step a heavy slosh against the steaming floodplain. My boots dragged through silt that hadn't existed yesterday, and I punched the ground with both fists, mana and essence coiling around my knuckles.
Crack.
The earth split. Another vent opened. Steam hissed up, thick and sulfurous, and I grinned through the stink.
"Life needs heat. Minerals. Sludge," I muttered, punching again. The next hit went deeper, crusted rock fractured into molten orange, glowing faintly as I connected another path to the core. "Come on, magma jacuzzi... feed the soup."
I kept working, carving geothermal veins by hand. One by one. I could feel it: the slow pulse of the planet waking up, its dead veins twitching toward motion. And not just from me. A few ridges over, I saw a new fissure tearing open on its own, vomiting hot brine and gas like it had been inspired.
I paused, shaking the scalding water off my hand. "Wait… is this how myths work?"
I looked around. The moon I yelled at did grow. The comets did show up. And now the ground itself was copying my vent-punching strategy like a lazy student.
"Huh."
I raised a brow at the horizon, where another vent geysered steam. "So you make a couple of things by hand, and then the world just… copy-pastes it? That's how divine geology works?"
I snorted, cracking my knuckles again and wading toward the next patch of dead stone. "Good to know. Let's speedrun evolution."
The water was up to my shoulders now. Which, considering I was eight feet tall and built like a demigod designed by committee, meant this whole "accidental ocean" thing was getting out of hand. The planet was basically a giant soup bowl, and I was the last crouton still above the broth.
I kept dog-paddling in slow, annoyed circles.
"Zaa," I muttered, half-floating, half-sinking. "You met the big guy, right? The flaming throne dude? Surely he gave you a few pointers back in your angel days?"
No answer. Just that familiar thrum in my soul, like a low guitar string being plucked underwater.
The thrum shifted, vibrating through my spine. My hands started glowing faintly, orange and red with golden flickers dancing across my fingers. I felt the mana settle and somewhere in that burning marrow of mine, Zaa guided my thoughts.
I raised one fist above the surface and slammed it downward.
The water rippled. But more than that, the sea pulled back. Like it was scared of me. A crater formed, then the edges hardened. Blackened stone. Glassy ridges. Heat hissed from the wound I'd made in the planet, and I could feel the crust beginning to solidify. The planet was listening.
I grinned.
"Okay. Okay! Now we're getting somewhere."
Zaa didn't say anything. He just hummed again, a deep approval radiating through my bones from his feedback.
So I punched again. And again, I let the essence guide me. Let the humming some catchy tune while I worked. Each strike molded the land, raised the crust, pushed down the mantle, forged the tectonics by sheer stubbornness.
I slammed my fist into the crust again, letting the molten weight of my essence drag upward, and the mountain rose.
Slow at first. Just a bulge beneath the water. Then it started climbing, pushing back the sea, the peak growing under my hand like the world itself was trying to impress me. Black stone cracked and steamed, magma veins pulsed just beneath the surface. It wasn't perfect. Jagged, ugly, steaming. But it was mine.
First mountain on this rock. Go me.
I stood on the new peak, steam curling around my boots as I caught my breath. The water lapped at the base of the mountain far below, still rising, but I had a place now. A high ground. One point in this soggy ball of failure that I could call solid.
"Zaa," I muttered, glancing at the dull red sky. "Olympians used to grow, right? Literally. Zeus gets big and throws a tantrum, Hera turns into a giant cow or whatever according to myths. You know anything about that?"
Another hum. Ambivalent this time. Maybe even embarrassed. That meant no.
I sighed and sat cross-legged at the summit, feeling the faint pulse of the world beneath me. Still no animals, no plants, just boiling water and stone. I closed my eyes, focused inward, and tried to gather mana. Pull it into me like I'd done before, the way I used to reach for inspiration with my lyre back in the day. One note at a time.
But this time, something was different.
I reached not into the air, or the void, but into the mountain itself, down through its layers. And there, not far beneath the surface, I felt it. Not colorless mana. Not that blank white stuff like dry flour.
Red.
Raw, molten, blood-red mana. It wasn't ready for harvesting yet, not stable enough. But it was there. The color. The intent. The first step toward something alive.
"Huh," I muttered, letting my fingers rest on the warm rock. "Okay. This mountain's got juice."
Zaa hummed again, low and approving.
CP Bank:700cp
Perks earned this chapter: None.
Milestones: Godslayer- kill a major god: 500cp
Quest start- My little goodhood: 100 cp234Magus exploratorJul 1, 2025View discussionThreadmarks Chapter 47- God business. View contentMagus exploratorJul 5, 2025#2,860In a deep chamber carved from black stone and candlewax, the air was thick with incense and whispers.
Shadows danced along the damp walls, cast by dozens of flickering tallow candles wedged into skull-shaped sconces. Hooded figures stood in concentric circles, murmuring in sync, their voices a monotone hum that felt more like vibration than sound. The language wasn't human. It scraped against the mind like wet bone dragged across glass.
At the center of the ritual space lay a stone slab, stained from use, cracked with age. Upon it, a woman lay still. Young. Pale. Naked. Her body was painted in looping spirals and glyphs, daubed with mineral pigments that shimmered oddly in the light, reds that looked too wet, greens that twitched when stared at. Her eyes were closed, lips parted just slightly, as if whispering to something no one else could hear.
The preacher, an emaciated man robed in faded yellow, with a voice like dry paper, stood above her. His hands were raised high, clutching a dagger of carved obsidian and bone. The prayers spilled from him in harsh consonants and wrong vowels, a dialect older than civilization, maybe even older than language. Each word left a sour aftertaste in the air, like burnt hair and sulfur.
Behind him, the congregation bowed their heads lower, as if trying to sink into the stone.
The woman smiled faintly, blissful in her devotion. She did not flinch when the cold stone kissed her back, nor when the preacher leaned forward with a bowl of thick, black liquid. She drank it eagerly, the taste acrid and numbing as it coated her throat. Her breath slowed. Her pupils dilated. A shiver passed through her painted body like a divine touch.
The congregation began to chant louder, no longer whispers but rising tones of reverence and ecstasy. Dozens of voices layered atop one another, breaking rhythm and merging into something formless. The preacher raised his dagger high above her chest, obsidian catching the candlelight in unnatural reflections.
"Accept this offering, O Stalker of the Stars!" he cried, voice hoarse with strain. "He who speaks with a thousand tongues! May she open the gate for your return!"
The woman arched her back, as though feeling some unseen presence descend.
Then—
"Oh, oh, slow down, cowboy."
The voice rang through the chamber like a cracked bell, mocking, casual, entirely out of place.
Every head in the room whipped around in confusion before instinct took hold. One by one, the congregation dropped to their knees. Some bowed until their foreheads pressed to the stone, others trembled where they stood.
The preacher froze, dagger suspended mid-air, suddenly sweating under his ceremonial hood. The voice hadn't echoed. It came from everywhere at once and nowhere.
"Lord Nyarlathotep? Is that... you?" the preacher croaked, voice trembling as he knelt, dagger still hovering over the woman's chest. The congregation dropped with him, a ripple of panicked devotion spreading like wildfire.
There was a beat of silence, then a voice echoed from the shadows, casual, sardonic, and entirely too human.
"Oh no, sorry. I kinda killed him and took his job. So... what's going on here?"
A few cultists gasped. One fainted. The woman on the altar blinked, confused, her lips stained from the ritual concoction.
"Is this a sacrifice? Really? Laying someone out like lunch meat on a rock?" the voice continued. "Did anyone bother checking if I was cool with this?"
The preacher's hands began to shake violently, the blade slipping from his grip and clattering to the floor. The murmuring intensified. This wasn't the voice of the Crawling Chaos. It lacked that cosmic wrongness. But it had power. And it knew it had power.
One cultist finally raised her voice, nervously: "A-are you our new god?"
There was a thoughtful pause, then Lucas answered, "Yeah, I guess I am."
He sounded vaguely amused. "I'm new to this whole 'eldritch overlord' thing, but don't worry, won't be worse than the last guy. Probably. First rule, though? No more sacrifices. I'm not that hungry."
Whispers spread like wildfire. Some wept. Others looked hopeful. A new god. A new age. One who spoke back.
The voice returned, louder this time, echoing across the chamber with the lazy bravado of someone reclining on a cosmic throne.
"Alright, new rule. You want my attention? Don't gut anyone. Just open your wallets, toss some greenbacks into the fire. Cash is way more useful than blood."
"Hell, I'll take food. You got fried chicken? You've got a prayer."
The congregation sat in stunned silence for a beat. Then the preacher, still pale, cleared his throat.
"O-our Lord, your humble servants await your divine commandments. What are your holy laws, O new god of the Outer Black?"
There was a pause. Then:
"Law number one: Be excellent to each other."
"Law number two: Party on, dudes."
Several of the cultists looked at each other. Some began to weep with joy. A few started nodding reverently, scribbling the commandments into half-burnt notebooks.
From the altar, the woman who had been moments away from becoming a blood sacrifice raised her hand hesitantly.
"Do... do we still wear the robes?"
"Sure, if you want. Optional. Just don't wear them in summer, they look sweaty as hell."
The fire crackled. The congregation leaned forward, breath held in anticipation. Their new god had spoken, and now, surely, he would offer divine wisdom. Eternal truth. A path to salvation.
Instead, the voice came again, casual, half-distracted, like he was multitasking from beyond the stars.
"Yeah, nah. Not really interested in your sins or whatever. I'm still making my planet, y'know? So afterlives are kinda... pending."
"Like, there's literally nowhere to send you when you croak yet. Maybe a comfy waiting room later. I'm working on it."
Murmurs rippled through the kneeling crowd.
"I did just take over this place today. Still has that old god smell."
The preacher wiped sweat from his brow. "But—O great one—how shall we live our lives? What is your divine counsel?"
Lucas's voice returned, a little brighter now, as if a thought had just occurred to him.
"Okay, okay. You want advice? Here's one—write this down."
"On this thing called the internet, there's this virtual coin called bitcoin. You guys wanna buy as much of it as you can."
"No, seriously. It's gonna go crazy in a few years. Like, divine growth levels. But—" he paused, tone mock-stern, "—don't spend too much. I'm not trying to make y'all poor or anything."
A few cultists began frantically scribbling the word "bitcoin" into their sacred scrolls. One of them pulled out a flip phone and whispered, "How do I spell that?"
"B-I-T..." someone mouthed reverently, as if invoking a holy name.
"See? Look at you guys. Already halfway to masterminding the world economy."
"Keep this up, and I might actually bother building you an afterlife someday."
The flames gave off a soft blue shimmer now, as if reacting to the question even before it was fully asked. A lone cultist, clutching their ceremonial staff like a mic stand at open mic night, cleared their throat.
"Uh… my lord?" they asked hesitantly. "Are you… cool with the gays?"
The response came without a pause, casual and warm, like someone answering a friend at a backyard barbecue.
"Yeah, I'm cool with them. Nothing against it. Y'all do your thing."
"Honestly? You get extra points if you look good in thigh highs and burn some photos for your god."
There was a beat of stunned silence.
Then one of the burlier cultists, still shirtless from the failed sacrifice prep, muscles gleaming with ritual oils, raised a hand, face sheepish.
"Uh, my lord… I don't think I'd look great in thigh highs, but… I can deadlift a little over two-fifty kilos?"
The flames flickered with what could only be interpreted as pleased amusement.
"Oh, nice dude!" Lucas replied, voice grinning. "That counts. I got a bit of Greek on me, so you get some extra points."
The congregation murmured in delight, feeling more seen than they ever had by an uncaring cosmos.
The flames began to dim, flickering with a sense of conclusion as Lucas's voice rang out one last time from beyond the veil.
"Oh, someone else is calling me. See you guys later."
The congregation stirred in dismay.
"B-but my lord!" one of them cried, scrambling forward on hands and knees. "We didn't even learn your name!"
There was a pause.
Then the fire flared gold and red for a heartbeat, and his voice returned, warm and amused.
"Oh. Right. Name's Lucas. Lucas Walker."
"God of Life and Rot, —maybe a bit more, we'll see. New titles pending. But for now, let's go with that."
"Vanquisher of Evil... if I'm feeling a little saucy."
The flames pulsed again.
"Emperor of Man."
Then silence.
The fire settled. The cultists looked at each other, dazed and reverent.
In another corner of the Earth, a group of cheerleaders stood in a poorly lit basement, flashlights balanced between soda cans and glittery pom-poms. They wore matching uniforms, half-unzipped hoodies, and expressions that wavered between excitement and growing regret.
"…This is so stupid," one of them muttered, but still read aloud from the grainy, photocopied chant sheet. A dare was a dare, after all.
"O Lord beyond stars and flesh, hear our cheer, accept our call…"
The air got cold.
A flicker of red light danced across the ceiling. Then a voice, not booming, not demonic, but warm, casual, and just a bit too chipper, cut through the silence.
"…Hello, ladies. Can I bother you guys for some photos? It's very lonely here on my planet."
The flashlight dropped.
Screaming followed. One girl hit another with a pom-pom.
"Oh c'mon, don't be like that. I promise I'm cool, a lot better than the other guy."
"Yeah… I didn't think this through," I muttered, standing knee-deep in warm, ankle-scalding seawater as I stared out across my godly masterpiece.
Or what should've been a masterpiece.
The horizon boiled a thick, bloody red. In the distance, at least four mega volcanoes were vomiting magma into my newly-forged ocean. The sky above them churned like a cauldron of angry soup, ash clouds climbing fast, blotting out what little sunlight I had painstakingly allowed through my janky ozone layer.
Yeah, I figured out how to make an ozone layer. Pretty cool, right? Except the atmosphere was now a roiling mess because I got frustrated while trying to set up ocean currents and wind patterns and, well, I might've punched a few chunks of crust into the sea to simulate continental shelves.
And, uh… turns out shoving land into place like a cosmic ice cream scoop doesn't sit well with tectonics.
Now my world was choking on smoke. The air was humid, sulfuric, and full of ominous rumbles that definitely weren't coming from my stomach. Steam geysers hissed from the coastline like it was auditioning for Dante's Inferno: Beach Edition.
I sighed and sat down on a slab of half-cooled obsidian, feeling it melt slightly beneath me. Zarathos hummed low in my soul, probably judging me. I ignored him.
"Okay, okay, so maybe terraforming isn't my strong suit. But hey—on the bright side, we've got clouds now. That's weather." I looked up. One of the clouds flashed red and started raining boiling rain.
Zarathos laughed.
Another volcano erupted in the distance with a thunderous crack, followed by another, then another, like the world itself was popping its knuckles. The ocean hissed violently as molten stone crashed into it, and clouds of superheated steam rolled across the horizon like advancing armies.
"...Well," I muttered, watching as a whole new island exploded into existence. "At least we're finally getting some land."
Zarathos hummed in agreement, still chuckling deep in my soul like an old engine sputtering back to life. I swear I could feel him enjoying this, my unintentional world-spanning apocalypse. He hadn't said a word, of course. That wasn't his style. But the mirth was there, radiating through the bond we shared like a furnace with a sense of irony.
Chunks of cooled basalt were rising from the ocean like jagged teeth. Lava hardened in layers, bubbling and cracking as it claimed territory inch by inch. The beginnings of a continent, maybe. Or a graveyard for my optimism. Hard to tell.
I wiped some soot off my face and looked at my steaming, ash-choked, chaos-ridden planet.
"…You know, Zaa," I said, stretching my back with a wet crunch, "I think I finally understand why so many gods are emotionally unavailable."
I stared at the steaming horizon with a dry squint, one eye twitching as another titanic volcano burst like a zit into the boiling ocean I'd handcrafted a few hours ago. Red sky, ash clouds, sulfur storms, this wasn't exactly the garden of Eden I had in mind.
"Quick question, Zaa," I muttered, rubbing the bridge of my nose free of ash. "Do I need to, like, seed this place with minerals, or is that something the world handles on its own?"
Zarathos, ever helpful, hummed in that smug, infernal way of his.
"Do you know how I'm supposed to do that?"
Another hum. Shrug-vibe. Bastard.
I glanced down at the churning, acid-looking puddle I was standing in. It burbled ominously.
"Alright. I've got minerals in me, right?"
I held up my hand and sliced across my finger with a claw, letting a fat drop of golden ichor drip into the soup. It hissed like I'd dropped holy water into a fryer.
"Boom. Iron. Gold. Trace amounts of cosmic spice. Planet complete."
I waited a few seconds. Nothing changed.
I sighed. "Of course not."
A second later, I reached under my jaw and slashed, quick, deep, but not too deep. Had to be faster than my regeneration. My fingers plunged in, feeling around until I gritted my teeth and ripped out my own hyoid bone with a wet snap. Yeah, I know it's not vital, but still, ripping out your own bones is a special kind of unsettling.
Zarathos started laughing. Low and wheezy at first, then growing into that full-body soul-cackle of his.
"Laugh it up, Zaa," I grumbled, holding the little U-shaped bone in my blood-slicked hand. I tried to crush it into dust, no go. Just cracked it into a few chalky chunks. Whatever. I tossed them into the water like I was making soup.
Then I had a thought.
Teeth. Teeth have minerals. Lots of minerals. Calcium, enamel, magic crap, and mine had dragon stuff in them. And I had, like… what, thirty-two of those? Infinite maybe?
"Don't judge me," I said aloud as I reached into my mouth and clamped my fingers around a molar.
It didn't budge.
I braced my foot on a rock and yanked harder.
Still nothing. The tooth didn't even wiggle.
I growled, channeled a spark of Essence into my hand, and added a splash of rot and hellfire just to soften the root. Zarathos was howling now, deep in my soul like this was the funniest thing he'd ever witnessed.
"I swear to god, Zaa," I hissed, claw still in my mouth, "if this works I'm pulling your teeth next."
My fingers were jammed in my mouth, claw hooked around the base of that stubborn molar like I was trying to extract the Holy Grail from my gums. Blood dribbled down my chin. I was drooling, muttering curses, and stomping my foot in volcanic runoff like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Zarathos was screaming with laughter. It echoed through my skull like a church bell.
"You think this is funny?" I snarled, yanking again. My jaw cracked. "This is science, you overgrown mood swing. Mineral seeding! Ecosystem development! You know, creation?"
Another tug. A wet pop. The sharp molar came free, root and all, slick with blood and faintly glowing from the essence I'd accidentally infused into it. I held it up like a war trophy, panting.
"Ha!" I laughed, almost slipping in the sludge. "One divine tooth. Boom. That's a geological epoch right there, baby."
I hurled it into the ocean like a meteor. It hissed, boiled, then detonated with a deep underwater thump that sent ripples across the shore. A plume of steam rose, tinged faintly green. The sky even flickered a slightly less murderous shade of red for a moment. Nice.
I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, then grinned through the missing tooth that was rising once again from my jaw. "I am a goddamn genius, Zaa."
Zarathos didn't say anything. Just kept laughing, quieter now, like he'd seen the whole joke play out and was still letting it linger on his spiritual tongue like good wine.
I sat down on a chunk of obsidian and stared out at the steaming horizon. The world was shaping up. Slowly. Violently. Incorrectly. But it was happening.
"You know," I said, kicking my feet through the molten puddle like a bored kid, "I don't think the Olympians had to yank their teeth out to get metal into the world."
Zarathos hummed again. This one felt suspiciously like yeah, and they probably had a geology department too, dumbass.
"Alright," I sighed. "Next step. I need flora. Fauna. Oceans that don't try to digest my ankles. And maybe—maybe—some actual dirt instead of this nightmare soup."
I leaned back on my elbows and watched another volcano go off in the distance. Red sky. Green lightning. Bubbling acid lakes.
"Godhood's overrated, man."
But I was still smiling. Because deep down, I was having the time of my life.
Spore ain't got shit on me.
I noticed something.
It took me a while, what with the red sky, endless volcanic eruptions, toxic ocean fog, and Zarathos still chuckling like a demon watching a clown fall down the stairs, but eventually it hit me.
It was getting a bit hard to see. Not because the sun was setting. No, there was no sunset. The sky was just... dark. Not like midnight-dark. More like "deep-space-void smothered by carbon soot" dark.
And the shadows weren't moving.
"…Oh, come on," I muttered, squinting at the horizon. "Did I seriously forget to make the planet spin?"
Zarathos didn't even laugh this time. He just gave me the spiritual equivalent of a disappointed dad sigh. I could feel the shrug vibrating in my ribcage.
"Right, rookie god mistake. I get it," I grumbled, stomping through a shallow pool of half-frozen, acid-spiked water. "One little oversight and suddenly the whole planet's stuck in a dead zone with no axial tilt, no rotation, and no fucking sunrise."
Then I saw it, just a flicker at first. A few tiny specks fluttering down from the smog-choked sky.
"…Snow?" I blinked. "Wait, snow?!"
I held out my hand. A single flake landed on my palm. It didn't melt. It just sat there, crystalline and smug, like it knew exactly what it meant.
"Oh, hell no," I growled. "I did not build a death ocean, punch a mountain into existence, and rip out my own molar just to let snow start falling on my unfinished lopsided mudball and start the ice age."
The flake slid off my hand into the pool and froze a ring around itself. I stared at it, then at the sky. Then groaned.
"Zaa... we gotta fix the spin."
He hummed something ancient and vaguely amused. I took it as approval.
"Alright. Planet... rotate," I said, dramatically pointing at the ground.
Nothing.
I narrowed my eyes. Gathered some Essence. Pooled it in my feet. Tried again.
"Planet... spiiiiin!"
Still nothing.
"…Spin, you big rock bitch!" I kicked the dirt, accidentally cracking it into a glowing fault line that belched steam.
Okay. New plan.
I planted both feet, flexed my fingers, reached deep into the planet's crust with my will, and gave it a shove.
A low rumble.
A twitch.
And then, very slowly, like a rusty gear in a forgotten machine, the sky began to shift.
I laughed like a lunatic, eyes wide. "YES! SCIENCE! MAGIC! WHATEVER THIS IS!"
The wind picked up.
The edge of light began to crawl back over the world like a sleepy eyelid blinking open.
Zarathos hummed a little triumphant tune.
There was a flicker in my vision. A black sun pulsed in my mind's eye for half a second, then popped like a bubble.
And something plopped into the ocean beside me.
I blinked.
A giant yellow bird, no, a Chocobo, was flailing in the scalding, acidic water. Its oversized feet slapped and kicked at the surface as it tried, and failed, to float. Its feathers were matted, its eyes wide with panic, and it was screaming with the high-pitched warble of a cartoonish war crime.
"Wha—what the hell?" I waded over, feet hissing in the bubbling brine, and tried to soothe it.
"Hey, hey, shh, it's okay, buddy," I murmured, reaching out carefully. It leaned into my hand, desperate and shivering.
I looked into its eyes.
"You're not supposed to exist yet," I whispered, guilt tightening in my chest. "This world isn't ready. I don't even have plankton. You're too early."
The bird screeched again, and my hand trembled.
The Chocobo chirped, confused and pitiful, as I stepped back.
I raised my hand, calling forth a swirl of black mud from the sea floor. It rose like a serpent, slow and deliberate, slick and rippling with power. I hated what I was about to do, but I couldn't let it suffer. Not here. Not yet.
"Sorry, little guy," I muttered. "You're too early."
The mud twisted around the bird.
It squawked once, a long, drawn-out warble, as the tendrils coiled tighter. Then it was gone, sucked into the black like it had never existed. No blood. No bones. Just a swirl of ripples and silence.
I stood still for a moment, hand outstretched, staring at where it had been.
"…I'll make a better place next time."
The ocean bubbled around my knees, but it felt colder. Inside of me, the ocean of life had acquired another blueprint.
CP Bank: 500cp
Perks earned this chapter: 200cp Chocobo (Final Fantasy V) [Control] An incredibly intelligent and hardy Chocobo. Able to not only cross vast distances quickly, this one can learn (with training) to fly as well as help in combat. You may also freely choose to have this Chocobo be treated as a Companion (or import a pet or current Companion as a Chocobo) in this jump if taken, with 600 CP.
Milestones: None.