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Three figures gazed down solemnly at a meager cradle floating gently between them, undisturbed. Yet, around the three, a great and terrible fire burnt patiently , silently, eternally... Illuminating its surroundings with perpetual pain and suffering.
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No sounds from the realm permeated the conversation the three figures were having.
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The fire would not allow it.
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All throughout the realm, an eerie silence was held in a death grip. Yet, deep within the fire, a faint but unquantifiable litany of screams and tortured wailing echoed.
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There stood also, a thick, ominous, leviathan sized fog, casting an equally large, ocean of darkness, shrouding the realm in cold detachment and unparalleled darkness. However, to the three beings, instead the mix of fire and darkness gave them comfort. At least the realm hid them well from the rest of the universe, safe within its endless depraved horrors.
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For now...
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Within the fog, the light of the hellish fire hinted at the silhouettes of endless scores of incredibly powerful and incredibly dangerous monsters and entities.
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Many of whom, were locked in deadly combat. Since before time itself, they had been compelled to fight, compelled to suffer. Trapped in eternal anguish while fighting fierce, titanic battles. Some of which had been going on for many millennia.
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The scores of monsters and entities spanned all shapes and sizes. All types of forms and states of matter.
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A great myriad of these creatures slithered, flew, crawled, or hovered, battered, made deals, and even attempted to lead rebellions and insurrections, all in a futile attempt to escape from the realm of ceaseless torture. All were eventually caught. And mercilessly reeducated.
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Some of the entities and monsters were frozen and had been for all time, literally and mentally. Many were melting, burning, or being dismembered then repaired and then brutally ripped apart again. It had been going on for so long, many couldn't remember when the pain had started.
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However, all of them, despite their various forms of torture or battling, all had their eyes arrested on the three figures, and primarily the child laying between them.
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The monsters knew however, to approach the cradle, was to be destroyed horribly.
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Despite their varying levels of power, from some of the monsters only being able to dismember others and cause nightmares, to the most powerful of these beings casually able to collapse planets, snuff the light from even the largest of stars, and even consume and destroy entire realms, none of them dared approach. All knew, beyond any fleeting shadow of a doubt, that the three figures around the child, two men and a lady, commanded powers and energies vastly beyond the scope of even the strongest of the monsters hidden within the veil of fire and shadows.
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Of the two men, one was clearly taller than the other, yet both of them were taller than the woman, which was of note considering she towered at a calm 6'2".
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To call them merely gods was too simple a term.
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They were forces of magic and energy capable of rending universes to ashes were any of them to rage at their fullest capacity, and currently all 3 were locked in heated debate over the future of the child laying asleep in the center of them.
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"You know you can't leave him here forever right?" The taller of the two males asked with barely contained irritation after a while of silent deliberation. "Taboo will set its eyes upon even here eventually, and then this whole charade will be brought to a crushing halt. I'm risking quite a lot for you two," he said, crossing his arms in frustration, "damn blood debts," he grumbled.
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"We are aware," the second male replied dryly, rolling his eyes in frustration, "however at this point, chaos hasn't stabilized, taking him out now will be an immediate death sentence."
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The woman shuffled slightly with discomfort, but immediately regained her composure, her features resetting in a state of cold, detached beauty. "He needs to stay another 6,000 years, to try and take him out before then, as was said before, isn't an option."
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The taller male said nothing, his cold, almost calmly psychotic eyes resting upon the child. "You know," he started, coyly, "aside from how callously you desecrate my realm with your hilariously unholy spawn, you sure seem to trust me a lot to keep him safe for another 6000 years." He crossed his arms and gave a slow, wicked smile, accentuating the barely contained, depthless, depraved insanity that radiated from him, "I'm almost flattered."
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The shorter of the two males laughed a deep, roaring belly laugh. The tremors from his laughter shook even the darkest, most recessed crevices of creation. "Trust?" he almost wheezed out, "I'd rather cast myself into the void." He too folded his incredibly muscular arms and looked the taller male straight in the eyes with his own, equally insane but innately domineering eyes adorning the wide, crazed smile of a hunter, that slowly morphed into a deeply disgusted, chin raised sneer. "Touch him, and I will show you no mercy, attempt to coerce any of your filth to even dream of touching him, and I will disfigure you beyond recognition. Let any stray harm befall him, and I will extinguish your flame," he spoke this in a calm, level voice, but every word felt heavily lacquered with violence beyond comprehension, heavy with the promise of awesome power to back up such audacious claims.
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At this, the realm went truly silent. A feat, that quite literally, had never happened before. Even the fires themselves stilled, as if too afraid to attract the attention of the shorter male.
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"But," the shorter male continued, this time with a sweet smile that never reached his eyes, all the while never breaking eye contact with the taller male, "that won't even be a concern, since I'll be here the whole time."
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The woman looked at the taller male with blatant disgust. "Know. Your. Place," Was simply all she said, yet her aura spelled doom upon whomever was foolish enough to continue this branch of the conversation.
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The taller male for a second showed a nightmarish face. A visage beyond all mortal and even most divine comprehension. The entire universe shook with his rage and sounds that felt like the primordial horrors themselves made physical, cascaded horribly in their ears of all divine and mortal creatures in creation. Unfortunately, most beings that heard it, for a moment, went cripplingly insane. And yet in fractions upon fractions of a moment, the taller male was as if nothing had ever happened, returning everything his power had briefly tortured, to as it had been before. The three could all feel a vast, vast sea of relieved sighs resounding throughout the multiverse.
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Taking a deep breath, the taller male closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "I can attempt another 6,000 years," he started slowly looking down, then suddenly his sickeningly innocent yet obviously vile eyes flicked up sweetly as he continued in a singsong voice, "but, it will cost you..."
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He started laughing, with his awful, horrible, sickening, multi-voiced dissonant laugh that echoed across billions of galaxies. Now, the previously marred inhabitant's of creation were treated to a second round of misfortune. Untold trillions upon trillions of sleeping beings in the universe, writhed in pain, wracked with horrible nightmares, yet unable to escape or wake. As the taller male roared his calamity inducing laughter, black tears cascaded down his pale face. All the while, his long, jet black hair splayed wildly about as his tall, emaciated torso shook with depraved glee. The taller male clutched his face with his long, sickly pale hands as he heaved to regain his composure. Eventually, his wild merriment faded to soft sighs and he lifted a hand to smooth his disheveled hair back into place.
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But on his face rested a simple, satisfied smile.
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The shorter male and the woman each looked at each other, and for a moment both shared a somber look of defeat and understanding, gently bowing their heads together, briefly touching. Then, each regaining their composure, they turned back to the taller male. The woman, without breaking eye contact from the taller male, slowly reached out around herself and plucked a long, majestic, shimmering gold and white feather from her massive wings that were neatly folded behind her. Letting her hand drop, the feather was then wrapped in a ball of bloody aura and floated gently to above the taller male's hand where the bubble of aura popped and the feather fell gently into his patiently waiting, open fingers.
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The taller male, closed his grasp on the feather slowly, carefully, as if his hand were a Venus flytrap. His eyes fluttered in almost primal ecstasy as the feather disappeared.
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"Pleasure doing business with you," the taller male said, again giving one of his signature unnerving smiles.
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"Go to hell," was simply all the woman replied. She looked down at the baby, her baby, and let one single tear drop on the infant's forehead in a brief moment of weakness. She then whispered a brief enchantment, and the tear blossomed into a golden outline of a flower upon where it had fell on the infant's head. Smiling softly for a moment, she then immediately vanished in a massive portal of incredible kaleidoscopic energies emitting in endless arrays of colors that had instantly manifested behind her. Just as quick as it appeared, the lights vanished, closing on itself in a planet shattering thunderclap and flash of golden light that would rival even the most brilliant quasar.
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"Moody," the taller male grumbled quietly after she had disappeared and the roar of her energy subsided, absorbed by the titanic fog clouding the realm. He pouted slightly as he rubbed his slightly injured eyes.
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"Tell me about it," the shorter male said with a snort, while secretly knowing he'd also be doing the same if he didn't have the foresight to look away. But still, he bore a wide smirk of deep pride in the woman, as he went back to staring down at the child in the cradle.
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"Sure hope you're worth all this trouble my son," the shorter male said quietly, "cause your life is going to be packed full of it."
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The baby then slowly awoke, as if summoned by its father's voice.
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Its attention was immediately captivated by the flames and shadows around it. Whether or not the baby could even understand what it saw, none would ever be able to completely ascertain.
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Nevertheless, the fire itself felt.... uneasy?
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As if for the first time, in an impossibly long time, it was being judged by a being greater than itself. A being, almost.... almost on the same level as The Almighty itself?
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In an intuitive reflex that the fire itself would never be able to explain again why it did so, it reached out gently to the baby's forehead with a simple strand of its damning fire. All the while, the two males and the hordes of monsters watched with unbroken attention. The fire spoke into the baby's mind. While it told the baby its secrets, every monster within the realm paused whatever it was they were doing, and bowed in reverence to the fire. While none could hear the conversation currently happening between the child and the great fire, they all knew the fire was speaking, and none dared show the being even the slightest disrespect.
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Even the two males themselves bowed their heads slightly, though they both were the only ones within the entire realm that had remained standing.
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It wasn't often that the fire ever spoke. Even the taller male himself, the lord of this realm, had only ever heard the voice of the fire twice before, and only once had it ever reached out to him unrequested. But still, despite the rage the taller male currently felt that made him want to lash out with a fury so cruel he would scour the life from as many universes as he needed to kill the child, when the fire spoke, reverence wasn't requested, it was demanded.
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The audacity from which the great fire drew its actions upon was simple. Damnation was its fuel, cruel was its
rage, exact, immediate and eternal were its punishments.
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And Hell was its name.
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