Chapter 1 - New beginnings of a very old story

On the continent of Pulch in one of the greatest cities of the world, a boy shifts uncomfortably on the floor. He shifts and murmurs in his sleep as he dreams the same dream over and over again. The child releases a small groan and rolls over causing a tidal wave of similar groans from the other sleeping figures.

The child shifts in that awkward half-asleep dream state that all people know, his brow creases as his dreams shift from apocalyptic wars to more mundane matters. He grunts happily though his contentment is short lived. Muscles tense as the boy whimpers in his half-asleep state as another nightmare of apocalyptic battles descend upon him. He shifts again as he tries to slip further into sleep and leave the monsters of his dream behind. The monsters however have other plans.

Breathing tickles, the nape of the boy's neck.

Had the boy been fully conscious perhaps he would have reacted at once but in his half-asleep state his mind dismisses the erroneous stimuli. The breathing unperturbed by the boy's ignorance continues its machine perfect rhythm of inhalation and exhalation.

The breath glides upward tickling the boy's neck in a stream of goosebumps. 

The boy shudders as though graced by a cold breeze he wraps the tattered dirty blanket around himself tighter. The gentle breathing arcs from the boy's neck to behind his ear. The boy lies perfectly still as he tries desperately to fall back into sleep's embrace, he deliberately ignores the sensation of something hovering just behind him.

Gradually the breathing grows louder, at first it is barely noticeable the difference between a murmur and a whisper, barely even an increase. But slowly, with each breath, it grows louder. As the sound grows so does the boy's unease. 

With every inhalation the boy sees rows of razor-sharp teeth. With every exhalation the boy has a vision of impossibly damp lips twitching.

The boy feels his heart race and his breathing try to mimic the impossible timbre of the spectre hoping against hope to pass unnoticed. He fails.

The boy grabs the dirty blanket abandoning any pretence at sleep and buries himself under its protecting warmth. The breathing is loud enough that the boy is struggling to think, a sick whistling sound accompanies the breathing like air forced through rows and rows of teeth. 

Teeth.

The boy curses his mistake and wraps the blanket around him tighter, but it is too late. Teeth. Even with his eyes closed he can see them. Rows and rows of triangular serrated teeth rotating in a lamprey mouth. Somehow even with his eyes clamped closed he can see the rotting maw of the monster right behind him. The boy gags. Rancid putrescence wafts from the open breathing maw smothering the boy. 

A taloned hand rests gently on his shoulder almost reassuringly if it wasn't dripping in human viscera. A second hand caresses his leg, a third hovers millimetres from the back of his neck, a fourth reaches out and hangs above his mouth almost daring the boy to scream. Blood drips from the hand staining the blanket and seeping through its protection to pitter patter on the boy's face.

The breathing stops.

…

The room is silent.

…

Impossibly quiet

…

The silence breaks the boy.

The boy whirls a chaotic motion of sweat and blankets as he turns to confront the monster. The room is empty besides the other sleeping forms on the floor. No monster. "Just a nightmare" the boy whispers to himself. He chastises himself for having such an overactive imagination, seemingly settled the boy lies back down. He chooses to ignore the breathing just behind his ear and falls into an unsettled sleep. He's just imagining it. 

The bloody blanket though tells a different story.

Somewhere, somewhen, someone is breathing.

The entity that kneels in chains breathes. Entity is the term that can be used to describe the thing for no other words can describe the aberration made of translucent nightmares that is compressed into a mortal form. Strictly speaking it does not need to breath, it has not needed to breath for a long time however it chooses to breath because breathing is all that is left to the creature now. It breathes for no other reason than it can and because it wants to.

A single chain firmly secures each limb of the creature, one for each of the creatures six arms, two chains secure its bloated legs and firm clamps bind the chained limbs to the ground. A chain encircles its groin and another its midriff, one chain encircles its tree-trunk thick neck another wraps itself in circles around its single cyclopean eye. The shattered remanent of a burial mask that once covered its mouth lies discarded on the floor. Silver plate covered in sigils and magical diagrams adorned the majority of the creatures body.

If mortal man could stand before such a creature and prevent its pulsating, quivering flesh sack that it names brain from self-combusting, if one's consciousness could survive being immolated and unmade from being in that thing's presence. It would see, in truth very little.

Very little of the creature's flesh is visible but that which can be seen is horrifying. What can be roughly assumed to skin on what again can be assumed to be a face appears like dried molten rock. Its surface is craggy and shot through with veins of pulsating crimson and azure, despite its obvious solidity its rock like skin shifts liquidly appearing to be simultaneously molten and solid. The creature only visible flesh is its lower jaw and mouth the area once covered by the removed burial mask. The rest of its body was held in what might loosely be called a kind of strait jacket. You might call it a strait jacket in the same way you might say the sun is bright. 

It was a sealing armour of unimaginable complexity covered in esoteric runes and magical diagrams which boggled description and understanding by even the most learned sorcerer. This armour covered the entirety of the Demon's body except for its head where two shattered horns protruded awkwardly from its head. It's six gigantic arms were held taut behind it forcing it to press its chest forward, its neck was similarly bound but pulled forward rather than back forcing the creature into a position of obvious discomfort.

The entity kneels in a blank empty space void of all decoration and adornment. The space is roughly circular spreading out for an unknown distance before terminating in a vaguely defined wall. The only exception to this sterile blankness are twelve jade pillars that surround the monster in chains and the ceiling.

The ceiling resembles a curved depiction of a single colossal nebula shining light gently downwards like a heaven-sent blessing. This light though it originates from the ceiling oddly diffuses itself through the room, so no part is any brighter or darker than the other. This has the strange side effect of annihilating any shadow in the room.

Twelve stone colonnades rise hundreds of metres high; these pillars stand oddly in the sterile room looking as though they had been ripped out of some place of worship and then transplanted into this strange white void room. They seem to grow organically from the floor and stretch for hundreds of metres towards the ceiling before again their jade façade melds organically into the ceiling as though they were a single object.

The twelve pillars stretch towards the roof of this place like the pillars of the world. Upon closer inspection their surfaces are intricately engraved with every inch of them covered in murals of various races fighting endless hordes of monsters. The murals combined in a single tapestry of unimaginably beautiful craftmanship, with each pillar culminating in either a man or a monster being slain at the hands of the other. From the sculpted blood of the slain stone warrior a single chain of pure white light emerges seemingly from nothing holding the creature, holding the Demon in place.

These creatures depicted on the pillars have many names. In the ancient tongue of the Caldari they are named the "shedimn", or in the forgotten sorcerous tongue of the shadow people of Alfersk the "forrask", or the toll'garsk in the common tongue spoken by many peoples. They bear as many names as there are grains of sand on a beach. However, in all of them, in every tribe, in every tongue, in every nation they all meant the same thing.

Defilers.

Despoilers.

Demons.

That name among all of them feels the most accurate. No other word in the human lexicon can truly encapsulate what those monsters truly are but demon comes the closest. No other word can carry such cultural, religious and spiritual significance as that one word. The creature bound in chains fits such a description.

And that was all there was. A bland circular room made entirely of sterile white materials and a majestic ceiling that the Demon couldn't even see. It was the perfect hole to throw something in that you never ever wanted climbing back out.

In that regard it was the single most sophisticated hole ever made in the history of ever.

The labour of untold sorcerers of myth and the greatest occult practitioners to ever exist had remoulded reality itself to create this place. Through effort that boggles comprehension they had bent space-time over itself creating a singularity from which nothing could escape. At the heart of this singularity, they had impossibly ordered the chaos of a black hole and created a pocket universe inside the folds of the underlying layer of reality that underpin the physical universe. It was in all truth madness by any mortal comprehension, it was so unimaginably overwrought and overengineered that it would bring men to their knees in stupefaction.

It was a cell of the most ludicrous construction imaginable; it was so over engineered to beyond the point of ridiculousness to a concept somewhere beyond insanity. A labour of such ground-breaking complexity that it rivalled or in honesty surpassed the creation of the universe in the scope of its design. A cell of such impossibilities that it had stretched the mind of the god who conceived it to its limit.

The creature bound in chains was worth such a cell.

It was an entity of such unimaginable malice, such inconceivable destruction that even this cell which spat in the face of God was barely enough to contain it. Barely. Not that it stopped the creature from trying to escape.

In a place where the physical laws of creation had been turned into metaphysical chains it was still trying to escape.

In a place where the literal concept of death had been crystallised and converted into a curved ceiling, it was still trying to escape.

And despite everything, despite the pillars of jadestone cut from the domain of the gods.

Despite an atmosphere filled with a poison strong enough to murder the stars.

Despite restraints that had been made from crystallised desire and warded by a god, the creature was still trying to escape.

And in a mockery of creation itself, a blaring middle finger to rationality the entity was succeeding.

It was escaping.

A cell made from the gilded halls of creation itself was being pentameter by pentameter eroded under a will that reshaped reality. This cell, no this reality hand crafted for the single purpose to contain it and overlooked by the second greatest entity under heaven was somehow not enough to contain its malice.

That was why it breathed, because it could because it should not be possible, because the air should be poisonous, because its mouth should be bound, and because with each breath another iota of power, a fragment of a fragment escaped the seal and tore back towards corporal reality.

The creature stopped breathing for the first time since it had begun, since it had shattered the gag made from blood of universe and smiled, the action a mockery of biological laws, its jaw twisting impossibly muscles shifting in a way that was simply not possible.

The creature smiled, teeth locking together it a parody of amusement, for it was finally time to begin. The entity straightened its back as much as it could pushing its body into a marginally more impressive and comfortable position against the chains, dust fell from the pillars as the chains groaned under the weight, but they would not break so easily. The creature turned its shackled head towards a spot where absolutely nothing stood and waited before it spoke.

"My foolish hero; my glorious seal-bearer I have waited for eternity for you, you seek power young one, the power to save the lives you cherish. I have such power".

"You need only reach inside ... and take it".