2 The Almighty Plays With His Toys

long before a certain Soul had begun its journey across the cosmos a young godling was orbiting a beautiful blue and green marble floating in a sea of twinkling stars, its orange-red moon catching the light from a white sun and reflecting it towards the stunning oceans and verdant landmasses that had replaced the once decaying and broken world. so broken that when he had arrived it could be seen to eject bits of its core into space every now and again. the godling himself was named Rellis and he was, as far as gods go- one of the very youngest. He was considered good looking even amongst his fellow gods in his generation, with short, ruffled, sandy blonde hair, stunning baby blue eyes, and a somewhat lanky-yet-muscular build common to surfer teens. Overall his look wouldn't be out of place on earth simply because He was dressed and looked exactly like a rather scruffy-but-handsome 14 year old in blue jeans and an old black 'Norse-Muse', band T-shirt

Rellis himself was having more fun than he had ever imagined he would since he became a god. Here he was, 'the most talented up-and-comer' among the new generation of gods, and he had seemingly run away to a dying world to waste his future and squander his potential. All of his friends thought he had gone nuts, instead, he was thrilled! sure it was a dying and blighted hell-scape when he got there, and yes he had to spend more than a significant portion of his own animus just to reset it to a blank slate, but the sense of achievement it gave him when he had torn into its guts and started tinkering was so. darned. rewarding.

And now, after three centuries spent adjusting the planet's living conditions and getting the landscaping juuuust right, Rellis was ready to name his creation (and with the planets pre-existing state requiring so much 'adjusting', it just about was entirely his creation).

"after the naming all I have to do is import some blank foreign souls to kickstart its growth and give it time to develop. Honestly though, I have no idea how the early generations of gods did all this work in seven days, but I'm super proud of what I've done with my first little mudball." he grinned to himself and patted his chest, "Let's do this!- first the name."

"//god spoke, and the world was named. [Ouros]//".

"awesome. good, okay- now we transform it from mudball to living world."

//god spoke, and there was Life!//"

if one had, like Rellis, been in orbit it would seem that on the planet, all over both green lands and deep blue oceans it was as if a breeze rippled through on a still day. seeds that had been planted in the virgin soil sprouted. microorganisms in the oceans and on the land popped into existence, and small animals and fish were... "well, they were imported from other planets, but that's only because letting them evolve from scratch would take waaay too long."

then Rellis clapped his hands and said

"//god spoke, and all things could grow//"

|System Boot initializing|

|...Unpacking System_Kernel|

|...5%|

|...37%|

|...79%|

|...100%|

|Setting Admin Permissions|

|...Unpacking [Keyword]-and-[AI] Modules| |Load Complete|

|...Unpacking [Physics]-and-[Reality] Engines| |Load Complete|

|...Unpacking [EXP]-and-[Lifeforce] Modules| |Load Complete|

|...Unpacking [Skills]-and-[Professions] Modules| |Load Complete|

|...Unpacking [Status]-and-[Assistance] Modules| |Load Complete|

|...Unpacking [Bestiary]-and-[Evolution] Modules|

|Load Warning /xXDaBestGoddessRyleeXx_Creature_Database_Evo/ -out of date- Load anyway? Y/N|

Rellis groaned "I couldn't afford the new version alright... License fees are expensive okay?... whatever- Yes, load anyway."

|...Load Complete|

|...|

|...All Modules Loaded [Checksum] Complete - Errors -0-|

|System Activated|

And suddenly the world which was now full of life seemed to wake itself up, oceans that were still fell under the moons influnce and started forming and following the tides. the air that had hung heavy in the atmosphere slowly begun to shift and move. Clouds formed, and the newly grown trees groaned under the weight of the breeze on their boughs... and the world- three hundred years in the making, was finally complete.

"I did it... holy shiet, I made this, th-this was me..."

an absolutely stunned look could be seen on Rellis' face as the impact of creating his very first world firmly sank into his heart, to be cherished forever...

"oh hey wait, didn't auntie Death say she would send me something good when everything was done?"

****************************

Emilia felt as if she was waking from a deep, deep sleep, surrounded by stars that were shooting past her at unfathomable speeds. however as she slowly regained more and more of her ability to think, she realized that "huh?" that's exactly what was happening. weirdly however, she couldn't actually see anything, she just sort of... felt it. Just as she was puzzled about this very weird, very trippy feeling It was at this moment her short term memories decided to make themselves known. She remembered the crowd, and the police officer pointing his gun at a mentally ill person who was causing a scene in the square. then the cop tripped walking backwards and *whoops* dropped his gun, which fell, spun, bounced... and then a flash.

it had to have been a solid 30 seconds later that she realized her jacket seemed to be soaked through with something, and another 30 seconds before she realized she felt rather faint... that the world seemed to move out from under her feet, and then, nothing.

"th-that mother@#er shot me! what the hell! I swear to God I will gut that dumbass when I wake up from this trippy ass nightmare, imma take that gun-" and what followed seemed, in this endless, timeless space to be a good 15 minutes of cursing. In the back of her mind though she was still thinking about the sequence of events, and as she got to the more elaborate and creative insults the sneaking, ever-growing suspicion that many things, from then and until now, were not quite right.

her cursing slowly dropped off as she eventually she got bored and her mind turned fully to the matter at hand.

"Okay firstly, this dream seems all kinds of strange, I mean, I never have had a lucid dream before so I don't know if this is that... but, it doesn't seem like one."

"but then there's the whole the whole gunshot thing, if there was ever a time to have weird and unfathomable dream stuff happen, soap opera common sense says its after an accident where the actor is sent into a coma for a couple episodes."

"Lastly, I guess, Death... but this also makes no sense, I mean, which God decided to throw flashy lights and motion sickness to their idea of Heaven?... well in any case, what I have to do is crystal clear- straight up nothing, do nothing and wait for something to change."

time passed, days maybe, interspersed with occasional periods of sleep as she got closer and closer to her destination, it was almost an instinctive feeling, like she was being reeled in towards whatever came next- oddly enough she could tell that the time she had been awake was only the shortest part near the end of a long, long journey that passed before she first awoke. and sure enough only a few... days was it? the stars that had been whizzing past with long tails following behind suddenly had their tails shortened until they turned, eventually, into a more familiar form she was used to seeing in pictures of space, tiny little dots of light in the vast cosmos. her 'vision' also seemed to stabilize, and she saw a beautiful yet small Sun, shining with a brilliant white light it seemed pure and flawless, almost holy as it hung in thee space 'nearby' with a backdrop of endless stars... it was very different from the sun she knew almost half the size that she had imagined earths sun would look like it nevertheless had a similar majesty that was undeniable, and then she noticed something- she was still moving, only it seemed slower, such that even as she hurtled closer to the glowing orb it felt as if the universe was only moving in slow motion.

Emilia, had the idle thought that if she in fact still had a face, her expression right now must look a mix between deer-in-the-headlights and straight up awed... as she got closer she realized that she wasn't actually on a direct course for the sun (thank god) but instead was headed towards a space patch of space between where the sun was and the direction she had arrived from, when she was nearer still a black dot appeared and grew larger, and larger until she could finally be sure of what it was, at which point she promptly- "Holy mother of F#@k" swore.

The movement stopped when she had arrived firmly in orbit, pausing as if letting her appreciate the view, or maybe waiting for something. probably a mixture of both, all she could say was that whoever had been in charge of her journey so far had certainly been excellent at building the suspense... soon later though she had her answer as to which it was when something, unbelievable happened, well not that she thought the rest of this shit-show had been normal.

*Ding*

|...Foreign Soul Detected|

|...System Interface not found|

|...|

|...Installing System Interface|

|...Installation Warning - Soul Markers Found|

|Beginning Deep scan|

|System Instructions Found|

|User Profile Updated - User Grade S |

|...Installation Resumed|

|installing -93,576- System Updates - User might shutdown or restart during installation|