IVIasterJay — Roleplayer Guild

A golden sea, bathed in the golden light of the sun, moved into waves by the unseen tremors of some great leviathan deep below. In the center of these golden grasses was a small lake, a pond really. Perfectly round, perfectly still, guarded from the wind by the tall grasses on every side, fed from below by an underground spring. The golden grasses waved lazily back and forth in the gentle breeze, without a care in the world. Though there was no cloud in the sky to interrupt the golden sun’s rays, a shadow fell over the grassland nonetheless. The great airy leviathan with his tides of wind stilled, and not a blade of grass dared move. And all of a sudden, it was as if a hurricane had appeared over the grassland. Air was grabbed and pulled toward the eye; all the grasses fell towards the center of the storm, its eye the pond. A black shape bubbled into existence where the wind was pulled into, growing as it pulled in the world around it. Just as suddenly as it had begun, the gale stilled, and the dark shape fell through the air to splash down in the center of the small lake.

The water stilled, a perfectly round mirror of the sky above, and then a plume of black darkened the water. In the middle of the day, sun burning down on the world below, the small pond in the center of the golden sea reflected the darkest night sky. Deep in the darkened water, as black as a sea of ink, Xir’ain opened his eyes. They were like windows into the heart of a supernova, their golden light cutting through the darkness, illuminating the black waters. He might have been human, at some point, or at least that’s what his body’s shape seemed to suggest, but if so it was long ago. Eyes of gold, skin of pitch black, smooth, hairless, oily, like ink in the shape of a man, no mouth, no nose visible, so signs of being either man or woman, though he thought himself the former.

Xir’ain knew not who he was, nor where he was, yet he knew what he had to do. The black creature pulled an imp from the void and watched how it struggled to free itself from his grasp. Could it not breathe in the black water? Xir’ain pondered the idea for a while, long after the imp had grown still and cold. Did he breathe? Xir’ain felt his face, but found no nose, no gills, no marks of any kind beyond his eyes. He ordered his body to breathe, and his face split open, where there would be a mouth there was a void lined by thousands and thousands of needle-like teeth. Black water fell into the void and disappeared, and earth from the edge of lake was likewise pulled in. Xir’ain closed his mouth, and the lake refilled with the black water that seemed to be coming from Xir’ain himself. No, he did not breathe.

Pulling another imp from the void, he held it close and ripped it’s skin from its body, letting the black pollution enter it. It still had the basic form of the imp it had been, but its new skin was the same as Xir’ain’s: black and oily. It has gills on its neck, its hands and feet were webbed, both made much larger, and it was given a large jaw. Xir’ain released the new imp, watching it dart about in the black water to test out its newly amphibious body. “Dig, down, out, spread.” His body showed no change, but Xir’ain’s subtle voice echoed through the dark water clearly. The imp darted toward the edge of the small pond, tearing and ripping at the earth with shovel-like hands and bucket-like jaws. More imps Xir’ain pulled from the void, each transformed and set to work. As more and more earth fell into the lake, more black water rose up to take its place. The pond became a true lake, and the lake grew as it swallowed up the sea of golden grass. When it grew to half a mile in diameter, the imps stopped digging out along the surface and instead dug down, carving out a maze of watery tunnels, filled with narrow gaps and huge caverns that held large pockets of air. They dug and dug, and they would continue to do so without end. When they finished digging down, they would resume spreading outwards, just below the ground, a network of black, inky water spreading its tentacles in every direction.

In the deepest part of the submerged maze, Xir’ain stood where the pond had been fed by untainted water from deep below. Clear water flowed into the small cavern, brushed against his skin, and up it rose through the cracks in the bedrock ceiling, black water polluted by Xir’ain’s inky skin. Here would be his dungeon’s heart, where all the water that filled its halls originated and was corrupted, directly below the center of the black lake, below where the original pond had been. In this lightless room of black water and bedrock, Xir’ain began to make his army. He knew not why, or what it was he was fighting. But he knew that he had to fight. Some whisper in his head told him that this world he had appeared in was meant to fall by his hands, and to this whisper he chose to listen.

Golden light shattered the darkness and bathed the room in its glow, not of fear or maliciousness, but in the gentle light of creation. Cold dark water boiled, and ink was combined with water and thought and golden light, and Xir’ain stood there in his dungeon’s heart and created life, as above him and in all directions his imps ate away at the earth. Not a soul took notice of the black lake, so isolated as it was in that endless sea of gold.

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