"Ahh.. I suppose a detailing of my world is in order. It would make more sense to recount from the beginning rather than the end. We had no name, no title for the planet we lived on, for we believed there were no others. I remember the history book. Having to study it, to memorize it like all my friends had to, so our generation would understand the mistakes that weren't to be repeated. Home was a vicious primitive planet. My ancestors, they knew little and cared of even less. I wouldn't even call their territorial fights
wars, the documented events were so pitiful. Yet the Home I knew was almost a utopia. A drastic change had occurred when a Visitor arrived.
I can.. recall it. I was
not, when it had come, for I had yet to be. That doesn't seem to matter anymore. It did not arrive on a ship, or in a meteorite as fiction loves to preach, but instead it just
arrived. Zah-ross. The entity declared itself to be Zaros. We never learned why it had come to us, nor did we care. It was compelling. In its presence we felt a shift in our very selves, pulling towards Zaros like a gravitational field. We wanted to serve, and worship. Our primitive minds could not understand why, but we knew we were in the presence of divinity, a divinity I have not seen in others. Zaros was disgusted with Home. The disorder and strife that ran rampant ate away at our potential like a disease, and he fixed it. He guided us as a parent guides its children, he drew out our potential. He taught us magic. He taught us how to shape and birth new from old, to raise the very earth above our heads in towering pillars. Then he taught us humility. He taught us to never overdo our magic. For each Miracle we brought about, we had to perform manual labor to offset it. Many of those stone pillars became crude shrines in His image, and the more we worked, the faster we learned. We adapted. What was once a world of mindless murder became a utopia of peace."
Apoch's left fist clenched very faintly in memory, the entity struggling to contain emotions long since packed away. "I
hated it. It was the most boring, mind-numbing experience. I had never known anything past what was stuffed down my throat yet I knew it wasn't all there was. My generation was one that had not personally met Zaros, we lacked the proper awe of the divine and so we had potential. Potential to be so much
more. I recalled the tellings of the past, the brief descriptions of crime only written down for recording purposes. This was it. My work started small.. Petty thievery at sundown. Our utopia, it had forgotten what crime was. There was no desire for it in the hearts of the Elders. Stalls of goods were left unguarded, and a young one like myself who had far more energy, nobody batted an eye at a restless Young leaving to wander. Trust was given without thought. The Young leaves at sundown and returns at Xor'tul.. Midnight with a loaf of bread, he must have been given it. Of course the Elders were no fools. They noticed the dwindling produce in the markets.
One decided to camp out to see if a wild animal was finding itself a quick meal. That is all I can assume.. or perhaps they had suspected a Young who had not learned yet. I was as ignorant as any when it came to proper crime, for in a world with none, there was nothing to learn from. I was caught easily. I can still remember the paralyzing fear I felt upon the clamping of a hand upon my arm. I remember the welling of magic in my gut, the hoarse shout I let loose as I unleashed a Miracle. A Miracle that saw my captor hurtling back, already dead. His neck broken, his mind sundered and his flesh blackened. The Miracle was not directed, I did not know I could. I was Young and ignorant, and the Miracle was instinctive, but it did the job. It killed.. I had murdered one of my own. I had done what no Elder believed possible anymore, as the desire for it was stripped from them long ago."
As he continued to speak, a welling of energy sourced within his clenched fist. From it a brilliant purple light shone. "I was a fool to think I had gotten away with it. In a world full of Miracle-weavers, what was I to expect? That they would not feel the shaping of a Miracle at sundown? I hadn't even tried to run, I did not expect them to close in so fast. They came quickly. The Eldest of our people, the last of those who had directly met Zaros. The most devout, with a sudden flame of anger in their heart they had not felt in decades. Their Judgement was immediate, they deemed me unworthy of my life. Murder was against the teachings of Zaros, and so they could not end me.. They could trap me. I was brought to my knees and locked within stasis, thrown at the feet of the Shrine in our Great Temple. I was told to beg for forgiveness, and I did not. My punishment was immediate. With the combined workings of the Eldest they sang my essence from a mortal coil and thrust it within the only thing capable of holding life.."
This is what he produced from his clenched hand, the crystal still crackling with energy. "A fragment of Him. Left behind likely unknowingly to Zaros, as I have found many in my travels. He sheds them like an animal its fur, and the one on our planet had been revered as a gift. They did not know what it could do, and neither did I. My entire self became this crystal. A reminder to the other Young who were indoctrinated more thoroughly after my taste of life. A show of proof to the Elders that this way was the best way. Yet with myself in this crystal, it was no longer fit for worship, and so it was taken to a museum. A museum that soon found itself dedicated to teaching why one should not become like Apoch.
I was still aware. I was overloaded with new sensations.. It all came at once. The thoughts of others, the feeling of the energy of our Miracles saturating the air, and while I could not move I could relocate my Self. It was as if, while bound without, I was freed within. Yet my ignorant self did not realize how to harness this and so I remained for
decades. I felt each and every thought thrown my way, by all who came. I knew there was no-one to mourn what had become of me, for we did not have Families as you say it. We were all one people, and our civilization was built around that. We had no Mother or Father, as all Elders were our 'parents'. What would best be described as 'home' was the city where all the Young were raised, with a building for sleeping, a building for eating, a building for learning and a building for playing. The Elders despised me, the Young feared me, and I was forced to listen to every thought that passed through their head. Dissapointment. Foul. Evil.
Vile. These titles and more were what I was given.
I believe I was driven insane. Or perhaps the fury that grew within me finally acted out on its own. Even now I cannot say what had gifted me the ability, but I began harnessing the energy for Miracles that was flowing through the air and I lashed out. The Museum was the first building to go, and all within it were killed. Their lives snuffed like a candle. They had put the first criminal in decades within a fragment of Zaros thinking it would restructure my Self and produce a proper Young, they could not have known the power it would grant me. They could not have known, so I taught them. I spread my metaphysical arms and drew in the waning souls of the departed, and Learned. All knowledge they had, I gained. It was my first introduction to what I now know as leeching, and soon my thoughts were overwhelmed with the terrified babblings of those I had drawn in and trapped with me. Yet in my insanity I was able to guide their own thoughts.
Freedom. It was what we all desired. So from their broken bodies I drew their flesh and bone. Primitive desire guided a Miracle and shaped my very first Vessel. A crude, unstable body of flesh to house Us as We rampaged. Across Home, murdering and leeching and getting stronger, yet also getting more incoherent. Too many voices, too many thoughts. I was just a Young who could not understand. Within two moons the world was dead for we were restless and violent. The Eldest could not stand up to Us and we tore them apart. Every time a part of Our vessel fell, we fashioned a new replacement, able to make it more stable than the last with the ever-growing knowledge and power. We sat alone, yet surrounded by each other, after the death of Home. Life extinguished and the Utopia in ruins. We would not have moved for a very long time if not for a yearning that birthed within Us. A desire to leave, to follow a path that we could not understand. I know now that the yearning was the crystal we were trapped within, hungering to return to Zaros. So We directed our might and tore our first hole in reality, thoughtlessly stepping through. Strong as we were, our might was drained horrifically by that travel, and we arrived on our first foreign planet drained and, effectively, back to square one."
What could best be believed as a sigh hummed from within the entity's helmet, and the brilliant glow that shone within dimmed and eventually faded. The crystal he had delicately caught between his fingers vanished and his arms lowered to his sides, as the memory of the unequivocal anger faded. When he spoke again it was with a far more confident tone, his voice thrumming in the air, "I spend my time searching for others with divinity within. I seek to end this blight called Godhood, and rend it from Creation. The pain and suffering it brings to all is unforgivable. Even to those who possess this Blight are prone to unimaginable suffering as all around then wither while they continue on. Nothing the Divine do will bring joy, and so Divinity must be squandered and all it has done, unmade. My
occupation is searching for Home, where I may undo my own mistakes. Where I may restart the life of the Xrithen, free from outside influence, and let them shape themselves. Spare them from another birth of a Blight.
My most notable relationship is a friendship. Gonad Yaksplitter, I would call him my brother had I blood to share with him. He was the first I had fallen to in battle when I was still comparably mortal, and even now he considers me his greatest rival. Certainly I would not have reshaped myself and Learned the way I did if not for him."
Then the question of accomplishments, and had he a mouth he would have frowned. "Were I still mortal I would boast of my conquests across the worlds, of my triumph over demi-gods and my climb to Blighthood. Of my brilliant dominance over great Kingdoms and teachings to its people for them to speak up for what they want instead of suffering under heel, and of my everlasting mark on worlds. However I know that none of that will remain when I am done my work, and even when I accomplish the sundering of Blighthood from all of Creation I cannot boast of that, for I will unmake myself and leave behind no trace of my work. So.. I have no accomplishments.
My greatest failure is the only one I deem a failure, for even if I succeed in all my goals I will never be able to Undo what I have done. I have driven my people to extinction and I have left a world decrepit and dead, thrown aside like the many I visited in my Young times. I must find Home and repair the travesty I wrought, I have to locate it.. But I can't. I feel remorse for my actions, for the endless souls I reaped on that day. I also feel guilt for finding it funny.. My name is Apoch, and I was their apocalypse."
