Well, that was unique.

  That was the first thing Slathir thought.

  That was an obvious statement. Being born was, by its nature, a unique experience for everyone. A once-in-a-lifetime moment. But he knew, even as he lay there on the grass, born into this world mere moments ago, that his was an experience shared by very few.

  Being born from Creation herself.

  It was a feeling that could not be articulated into words. A feeling more than a memory, and one that only the blessed few would ever recall.

  The soft embrace of the ground quickly bored him, so he tried with much effort to pull himself into a sitting position. After several minutes of trying, he had barely shifted himself up an inch. No luck doing that then. Though his mind already bore the weight of ages and agelessness, his body was undeveloped. That of a babe.

  Interesting.

  With his back to the ground, he was, however, able to behold the entire expanse of the sky before him. Bright colours of every chromatic hue burst and mingled with one another. A young Sun flickered around the horizon, mirrored by the two moons, Murlan and Cerelain. One a celestial rock that orbited the sky, the other a bright orb of light that spun around it.

  The brightest stars winked at him from above, and then he realised it was not just him they stared down upon. There were others. Other babes that lay across the grass, smiling and giggling to themselves. They were… his kin then, other gods. The children of Creation themself.

  They were an inclusive bunch, as varied in appearances and mannerisms as the world being birthed around them. Some with skin red and grey, others with eyes both bright and dark. They pointed and stared at one another, each taking it all in differently. It was rather interesting to observe.

  That seeded a question in his mind. He reached up and tapped a tiny, fleshy finger to his chin.

  What do I look like?

  He rolled onto his stomach and gripped the dirt and grass between his fingers. He looked around, assuming that infinite grassland was not the only thing around him, right before he found…

  Aha!

  He pulled himself forward, kicking his undeveloped legs as best he could. Crawling at this astoundingly slow rate, he eventually reached his destination, which was no more than half a dozen feet away from him. A small, completely clear pool of water, able to cast his reflection back at him for the first time.

  A round, fat face staring back at him with amber eyes was to be expected. The horns were not.

  Multicoloured fire erupted from his head into curved horns. Red, green, blue, yellow, the colours reflected off his own eyes, melding and mixing their colour. It wasn’t scary, or even unsettling.

  On the contrary, they’re… beautiful.

  He inspected them, grabbing their tips with his fingers and finding them cold to touch, unburning. He spun around, rolling onto his back to look again at the sky before flipping onto his stomach to touch the grass.

  It was only as he inspected the grains of dirt between his fingers, a respectably past time in his eyes, that he became aware of one fundamental fact.

  He was alone.

  The far-off chatter of his kin began to reach his ears. It wasn’t conversation, their mouths were still unused to that. He’d made that discovery when trying to speak aloud the words his mind spoke. So they pointed and they giggled, and they found other ways to communicate with one another.

  But that was over there, far away and not concerning him. None of them came to mingle with him, laugh with or at him, or even notice him, for that matter. At the ripe age of a few minutes, he was already experiencing the meaning of solitude.

  It wasn’t so bad. Life was quiet, and there was nothing to distract him from his inspections and thoughts. Those consumed most of his time. But at the back of his head, he did find it curious. Was there a reason, a purpose for all of this? As a matter of fact, what was his reason? They were gods, but what did that mean exactly?

  It wasn’t long before that unspoken question was answered. As the Sun dipped ever closer to the horizon in the west, he felt a presence wash over him. He knew who, or rather, what it was. One did not forget the feeling of their mother easily.

  He slowly crawled his way closer to the pack as her voice decreed to them. There were realms of power for them, their stations as the Second Generation of gods. They were given reasons and purpose then. Though it seemed not all were as interested in it as they had hoped.

  Stratina, the Goddess of the Wind, and Nilara, the Goddess of Water, were practically sinking into one another amongst the grass. Their faces were dirty and muddy, hardly radiating any divine grandeur, but they at least were enjoying themselves. Wide smiles and jovial attitudes defined them in his mind.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Manather, the Goddess of Magic, and Loron, the God of Knowledge, seemed to be in the middle of fighting each other for rule of a boulder. It was impressive that they’d found one at all, and that ownership had so quickly come into question. Manather seemed to be getting a leg on him, but Loron, if he lacked for anything else, was incredibly persistent.

  Steraf, the Goddess of Spirits, sat in the middle of all their kin, quietly watching each of them clamber about and stare at each other with interest. She looked to be quite inwardly contemplative, perhaps similar to him in that regard. She struck no claim and looked to none for guidance or allegiance. Then she turned, and her eyes met his. She was the first of his kin to do so. They were strange eyes, he thought. Beautiful, but… strange.

  Finally, there was Kraton, the God of Chaos, who had chosen to forgo the use of his legs to instead roll between the longest blades of grass. It was proactive and certainly revolutionary to them. Although he wasn’t entirely sure if that was more effective than crawling or not, but Kraton seemed to enjoy it. It was that, or he simply enjoyed being different to the others. That much was uncertain.

  And that left him. Slathir, the God of Demons.

  Their babbling and bickering continued, but he found himself back beside the pool of water, staring down at his own reflection. He wondered aloud.

  “Bah bouh bah boh.”

  Which, of course, was pointless. What he thought was more intelligible.

  What is a Demon?

  And how was he the God of them? It was them, wasn’t it? It certainly sounded like a group of people. But if they were, he had not an inkling of whether or where they existed. It felt so strange, so different, not a sphere or nature, nor a concept to be understood like the others. He was simply… the God of Demons.

  And that troubled him.

  It was when the Sun finally set beyond the distant horizon, leaving the moons and stars behind, that he felt multiple new presences approaching. Of course, they were the Second Generation. Their older kin, the other gods, were now approaching.

  As was Creation’s will, they each took their kin as their own, to nurture and raise their young bodies until they came into their own as Gods of Andwelm. He looked upon each of their faces and saw as much variance there as he had with his own group.

  Mayare of the Light and Chalador of Fire pried apart Stratina from her erstwhile companion. In her, he thought they saw more than just the Wind, but perhaps what came with it. Storms and destruction. Or maybe it was the calm breeze, the gift to mortality in struggle that they wished to nurture. He wasn’t sure.

  Mariath, the Goddess of Nature, was hand in hand with her sister, the Goddess of Death. There was a dichotomy and duality he understood in a heartbeat, and so it was by their nature that in each of their arms they cradled Steraf and Kraton, two aspects and opposites that would otherwise never have brushed against each other.

  Kal Trathar arrived, and he took the longest to make a decision, looking for only the most perfect, or perhaps compatible, amongst us. He settled on Loron, and there Slathir could see how the God of Time would instil both great virtues and the mind to think in the God of Knowledge, whether that was for good or ill was to be seen.

  The last two, however, made him stumble. Metaphorically, that was.

  Nilara, wailing for her lost companion, was taken into the surprisingly gentle arms of Kal Mandor, the God of Ice. His face was stern, impartial, and he couldn’t bear to look at it longer than a second, but he held her close to him, willing her tears to cease. What he saw in her was beyond anybody’s guess.

  Finally, sometime after the others, Manather, triumphant on her dominion of rock, was floated down by a lithe and mesmerising figure. Lathtar, the God of Void, who even then was seen as strange and otherworldly, if that description could even make sense. Magic met the expanse of the Void, and Andwelm was never again the same.

  It was only once those two departed, leaving behind the verdant grasslands of their birth, that Slathir realised a key truth.

  They had all left him there, alone.

  Well, that is… I mean…

  For the first time in his short life, words failed him. The Sun departed, and darkness engulfed the land. An empty land, save for the lonely god picking at the ground and still finding himself unable to stand on two legs. He did not fear the darkness, for it was simply an absence of light that would in time return.

  But as the darkness arrived, it came with it Darkness, the Fundamental Power, and that Darkness came from the Abyss.

  And with the Abyss came Frandwil.

  He held an imposing figure. With his hands clasped behind him, an unnaturally large sword of grey metal on his back, and a serious look on his face. He looked around and saw the young god sitting alone there, staring up at him. When he leaned down, their eyes met, and Slathir found pools of swirling silver and grey staring back at him. In a terrifying way, he found them beautiful.

  “You are Slathir.” He said. It wasn’t a question. “The First Demon.”

  So that’s what it was. He was God of a people, race, whatever they were, that did not exist beyond him. Then, for the first time, he felt a stab of anger. Creation, he decided, was crueller than he first appeared.

  Outwardly, he let out an unintelligent babble of a response, trying to convey all his emotions into one word, a sentence maybe. And that was when Frandwil smiled. Standing starkly against his imposing appearance was a warm smile that could bring calm to the mind of any who saw him. The smile of a father, a mother, and a guardian all melded into one.

  “They left you alone, then?”

  He nodded in response.

  “It is in their nature, though you should bear them no ill will for it. Sometimes it is best for us to be… apart from them.”

  Us?

  He nodded and gestured beside him. Slathir recoiled in surprise, for hidden from his own senses was another being, another god, who slinked in and out of Frandwil’s shadows.

  He met the eyes of the God of Evil, wondering above all why he hid behind another, and then feeling overwhelming sympathy. They all had their reasons. So instead, he nodded his head solemnly to the much younger-looking god than he might’ve expected. He received a tentative look in response.

  “You were not forgotten, Slathir, but they did leave you. Because they do not understand you. I will admit, neither do I, and I believe you do not either.”

  He nodded.

  The God of Darkness smiled, “You are in the company of peers then.”

  Slathir paused for a moment, considering it, before nodding again. When the God of the Abyss bent down, he left a shimmering after-effect in the air around him.

  But his smile didn’t wane, “Then come,” he picked him up from the ground and into his arms, “let us be loners together, God of Demons.”

  And so it began.