Golden sunlight filtered through the cornerstone-gray clouds when their lethargic tumble across the sky permitted it.  On occasion, great clefts in the sky's downy, gloomy blanket allowed an entire column of solar radiance to shine down and illuminate the earth, as if lighting the way for some divine being's descent.  In such opulent incandescence, the dry skin still clinging to the skull of a goddess looked almost rich enough to be alive.

Yet no life remained, here or anywhere.  Sometime before, the skull had borne a petite, flawless face, and surrounded itself in luxuriant, violet locks, but with nobody to hold her cherished face in memory she might have just as well never existed.  For certain, the lone, fibrous being stalking along the wasted, yellow field gave no thought for what had been, and carelessly crunched the moldy skull beneath its foot.

Ghostlike, Aforgomon trudged slowly between the clean-picked carcasses of fools who fooled themselves into believing themselves truly divine.  When the rotting black fabric clinging to a young, female corpse snagged its foot, it clumsily pulled free, tugging the skeleton gruesomely apart as it did.  A soft clang echoed across the deathly silent plain when its shovel smacked against a bone.  Aforgomon forgot it as easily as a bad dream and plodded onward, a giant now that the greats were laid low.

The moist ground uttered gooey squelches beneath the lone being's feet, each one a testament to the departed rains.  A poetic mortal might have said that even nature itself wept to see the tragedy that enveloped the earth, but no mortals remained, and all of nature's deities lay still in the rain-soaked earth.  Aforgomon considered none of this, instead merely moving onward.

In the very middle of the vast expanse of twisted yellow grass knelt a body propped up by its spear.  As Aforgomon approached, two gray eyes turned upon its eternal, skeletal grin.  With painstaking patience, the monstrosity stooped over the kneeling figure, and beheld that though it moved still, it did not break the rule that spanned the entire world.  Faint whispers, dry and ephemeral as tomb dust stirred up by a passing marauder, issued from the body's undead lips.  [color=ec008c]”I  t h o u g h t  t h a t  y o u  m i g h t  b e  h e r e...a t  t h e  e n d  o f  a l l  t h i n g s...”[/color]  It paused, seeded with new knowledge.  Aforgomon thought it inappropriate that something might still be moving in a dead world, knew that Occus sustained himself after death with his magic.  The dead god mouthed a word a protest, but Aforgomon's sinister talons slipped out, grasped the spear, and gently pulled it free.  Then it reached down while the corpse gasped desperately for a last breath, and drew a bead of multicolored liquid from Occus' eye.  With a slow, anticipatory gurgle that might have been a sigh, it slid its finger into its mouth and licked away the last god's unspoken, final dream: that as long as he clung to life he might be able to do something,anything, anything at all.

Spear in hand, Aforgomon vanished into a tear of brilliant light.

[center]-=-=-[/center]

From a portal of light Aforgomon emerged from a dimension in which the undead virus had conquered the world, even its gods, and into the dimension of its birth.  Its red, knobby foot slapped against the marble floor of Mount Olympus, though a part seldom seen by any other god.  Aforgomon strode quietly into the room that had been Athena's study, and threw the inert spear of Occus onto a pile of similar objects for later research.  Then it faded away again, as if it never existed.

Next, Aforgomon appeared on a hillside in South Africa, where it knew the outbreak of the humans' plague had started.  Over the course of a few moments, more and more of its presence manifested there, until a full-bodied Aforgomon stood sentry-like on the ridge.  Below, a village protected for a while by walls was just now succumbing to the undead onslaught.  Aforgomon strode boldly down the main street, unnoticed by the panicked populace, and seized a zombie in its outstretched claw.  Like a man subduing a dog, it flattened the zombie's head against the ground, and shed light into its mind to see if it could dream.