Chapter 16: The Horrific Beauty And The Cosmic Game.

In the palace floating through the emptiness of space was the creator, Azaroth, as well as two of his earliest creations, Aelia and Vyria. The three of them were observing Alex's and Elara's lives ever since Alex was first born.

They were watching in silence, when suddenly, "Can we change back now?" Aelia asked.

Vyria looked in Aelia's direction and shrugged her shoulders, "Go for it, nobody is stopping you."

"You're not gonna?" Aelia asked, and Vyria shrugged her shoulders yet again.

"I mean, I can if you want me to." Vyria responded casually.

"I do, so let's do it. Azaroth, you joining us?" Aelia asked.

Azaroth, who was watching both Aelia and Vyria as well as Alex and Elara, nodded his head, "Sure, why not. But you two first." He agreed.

Aelia and Vyria nodded their heads and in an instant disappeared after transforming their bodies to their original forms. Their true forms completely intangible and imperceptible, yet Azaroth could perceive them perfectly and clearly. Neither looked human or even remotely close to any lifeform that Alex would be familiar with. If anything or anyone, mortal or otherwise, were to be able to see these forms, they would die from simple glancing at them due to their horrific but at the same time beautiful 'appearance'. Horrors as well as beauty beyond human comprehension, in simple words. And yet, Azaroth looked directly at them with pride in his eyes.

"Beautiful, so beautiful." He muttered. Then, he himself transformed into his own true form, even more horrific, terrifying, and beautiful than Aelia and Vyria. Azaroth could perceive Aelia and Vyria clearly, yet they couldn't perceive him.

"You know we can't see you, create an avatar." Aelia said.

"Ah, right." Azaroth said and did as Aelia suggested, creating an avatar so they could perceive and interact with him.

"You both are so beautiful." Azaroth said, admiring their forms.

"You created these bodies, obviously they'll be most beautiful to your eyes." Aelia responded.

"Exactly, you're biased." Vyria said.

"Maybe, what of it?" Azaroth replied.

"Nothing really." Aelia said.

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In the Void were three figures: two Heroes, Kael and Keri, and one Demon, Hriu. Kael and Keri were in their true forms, while Hriu was in a human avatar.

"These human forms are… certainly something." Said Keri, and Kael and Hriu nodded.

"True." Hriu responded before transforming his body to something akin to a dragon-human demihuman from the universe Alex reincarnated into. Most of the left side of his body turned into dark red dragon-like scales, his left hand and foot to a dragon's paws, the sclera in his left eye turned dark red, while the iris turned a deep green. "However, I feel like this form fits me better." He said.

"What's… the difference?" Asked Keri, confused.

"Well, just like Avalog, I have sent my own avatar into the lower worlds to find out what Avalog saw in these creatures. Apparently, this appearance signifies strength and wisdom in one of these worlds." Hriu answered.

"But that's not what a human looks like, right? Alex and Elara don't look like that and they're humans." Kael said.

"It looks close enough, and they're called half-humans." Hriu replied.

"Keri?" Kael said, looking towards the Hero.

"Hm?" Keri replied.

"Did you do something since Avalog's leave?" Kael asked.

"I also visited some lower worlds, and I showed some of them a fraction of my real form through an avatar. You wanna know what happened?" Keri asked, but she didn't give them a chance to answer before continuing, "They started attacking me! That was pretty interesting, who would've thought that humans wouldn't be terrified of my real form."

They all started laughing, and Hriu said, "See? We told you, you're not scary."

"They started attacking you? And what did you do?" Asked Kael.

"Well, I showed more of my real form to see how much they could survive. Most died almost instantly, but some of them survived until I accidentally destroyed their universes." Keri answered.

"Oh come on, Azaroth worked hard to create them." Kael said sarcastically, not at all concerned with what Keri did.

"Don't worry, I recreated them and their timelines up until the moment I appeared. And now they are apparently worshiping me as a god!" Keri said, almost laughing as she mentioned the humans in the recreated universes worshiping her as a god.

"And you, Kael?" Keri asked.

"I explored the universe that Avalog made for us before leaving." Kael answered, "Keri, create an avatar for yourself and we'll visit it." He added, already in his human avatar.

"Of course." Keri said, and also changed into her own human avatar.

Kael then teleported them all to the universe he explored, and they appeared in the emptiness of space. They were inside a galaxy, in the interstellar space. All around the trio was a glow.

"What's all that?" Keri asked, looking around herself. While normally it would be impossible to make a noise in the vacuum due to the lack of any medium, Keri didn't need a physical medium. Instead, she was forcefully creating ripples through spacetime, which Kael and Hriu could interpret as noise.

"I heard about that one, humans call it the 'Cosmic Microwave Backround Radiation'. When Avalog created this universe, he first made it in a singular spot, and then he expanded it. Over time the light wavelengths redshifted into a region of light called the microwave." Kael answered.

"And what's 'light', 'redshifted', and 'microwave'?" Hriu asked.

"Light is some spectrum of waves or something, redshift is when those waves expand due to the expansion of spacetime, and microwave is a region of the light spectrum that has a higher frequency than visible light." Kael explained.

"Right… Humans came up with these terms, right?" Asked Hriu.

"Yeah. I can't be bothered to explain it all, so here." Kael said before telepathically sending Keri and Hriu all the information he got from humans. They all tuned the frequency of light they could see to only what humans call visible light.

"Alright, what now?" Keri asked right before a gamma-ray burst sped past them. They all looked to the direction it came from. It came from two neutron stars colliding and merging.

After a moment of watching the beam of radiation, Kael turned his attention back to Keri and Hriu, and said, "Now we explore."

"Why would we bother? Me and Hriu have already seen humans and even interacted with them." Keri said.

"Yeah, interacted with humans, but you didn't explore the rest of these universes, right?" Kael responded.

"Yeah, I didn't." Keri said before looking towards Hriu, "You?" She asked.

"Neither did I, observing these creatures was more interesting." Hriu answered.

"Alright then." Kael said, turned around, and started flying away from Keri and Hriu.

After a few moments he telepathically yelled to Keri and Hriu, "Catch that!" Not even a second later, Keri and Hriu could see a planet hurdling towards them. After Kael had left, he flew to a nearby planetary system, and pushed it towards his friends.

Keri smirked and flew towards the planet, her hand in a fist. Right before she was about to slam into the planet's surface, she punched it, which destroyed the planet completely.

"Gotta do better than that!" Hriu yelled back, also readying himself.

And thus, a cosmic game started, the trio flying around the galaxy and throwing entire planets at each other. Once planets from one planetary system were gone, they quickly moved on to another system.

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Author's words:

Hey y'all, I hope you liked the story up until this point and continue liking it in the future, though that depends on me actually making the story enjoyable. If you have any issues with/questions about this story or anything, please mention them/ask.

This chapter is a bit shorter than the usual one, but it is what it is.