[b]"COME"[/b]

He opened his eyes.

And then He laughed.

It was beautiful. All of it. All the nothing that shone before him. All the thrumming tendrils of potential that turned and thrashed in joyous being. Every single shred of it beaming.

It was only right for him to take His share of this endless feast of delights, and join in among the dancing gods of reality. So Mammon made himself real. He gave himself an ashen body and dripping mercury eyes, rich crimson robes and a crown of flint inlaid with nacre. Jutting out beneath His crown were two curved horns, black as jet and ringed with heavy bangles of ivory and lead. His teeth were shining quartz and his feet were splayed like an eagles, or a crow. He stretched out His arms and raised a hand to His face. It was dry, and covered in cinders. He willed a strip of black to rise upon his palm. It wriggled and wiggled, twisting and turning one way to the other. Another being! Born out of the eye of his brain, to be true. He gave it oily scales and a head to see with, small tourmaline wings and a stinging tail. It spun some more, as jubilant in its existence as He was to see it. It snaked beneath his knuckles, squirming one side to the next, squirting small happy noises. Mammon crushed it between his fingers, and the slick blackness returned to liquid nothing. A thick tongue snaked out between His glassy grin and lapped it up. He could no longer keep His glee within Him, so he exploded with a burst of blinding light. Away went the arms and legs and eyes and horns, stowed away for another time. He was Him, His truest form, in great letters writhing with power. He could feel the world, all its might and splendour. He could create any wondrous creature his wandering thoughts touched upon. Every inch of the world was magnificent in all its cruel flaws and imperfections.

But He knew He had a purpose in this life beyond simple exultation. The world was beautiful, yes, but beauty had no meaning. He felt the presence of the other older gods, and knew some for what they were -- the evil necessary to reveal the good for what it was. But there was more than just good and evil. Everything needed to be tested, everything needed its proof. Just as water must flow to be called a river, and fire must burn to be called fire, righteousness must be attacked and bent to be called true morality.

One picked Him up as He had held the worm. He felt the gaze of two mighty beings and for the first time knew how atoms felt. One spoke. Their voice was like the rise and fall of mountains.

[b]“Thou art become Adversity, proof of creation. Thou art become the wretched advocate who must stand opposed to all your brethren’s doing. Thou art the one who will test the gods and their world to its breaking, and through breaking, reveal its full grandeur. That is thine dark task. Do it well, young one, for no one will thank you.”
[/b]

It was then that the Adversary knew His name for what it was. He smiled at the other one’s speech, for it pleased Him greatly. The world would be His for the eating, juiced of all its wonders and shoved down His gullet. He would gladly serve to ripen its fruit, if it made the resultant solution all the sweeter.

So when the other set Him down, He searched among His brethren for the excellence that could be gleaned. And He found much.  He found time to mark the passing of not-yet creation, He found the laws by which it whirred, He found light by which all that was good was formed, and darkness and corruption by which it was fought, He found twisting change and the twisting beauty of flesh. He found numbers and their games, and a sharpened mind behind it; He found war, the ultimate test, might against might. He found the most captivating of all, that which He worked for, that which enamoured Him most -- Life, and its end, Death. He found magic, and He found...souls, to make life and death worth something; He found the true beauty of the Narrative, although He saw beauty in all things. He found...someone. They seemed different, strange -- one to watch with interest. But He found knowledge, the contents of creation; and He found...blueprints.

His eyes widened with excitement. The world as it would truly [i]be[/i], written down in front of Him! He walked towards it, as much as walking had any meaning in this world-before-the-world. He beheld its great designer, its architect and builder. The Adversary spoke with a voice like oiled brimstone.

[color=ed1c24]“Brother. God. Make this world a place worth being. Make it well, lest my testing test it beyond its measures. You have created strange materials of adamantine and mithril; good. Make it magical. Give it the power to make power of its own. Here, let me show you; let me show you how to give the world its shine…”
[/color]
He stooped over the blueprints for what might have been an age. He wrote of herbs, and spices; of bone and ivory; of potion, and alchemical elements to add to Teknell’s more prosaic work; and he wrote down secret words, words to wake the world’s locked-up magic. But something stopped Him in His tracks.

A perfect god of porcelain. A god who sought flawlessness in a place already flawed. A god who stood against all that Mammon stood for. The Adversary wept for him. He called out, that he might be saved from his hopeless task.

[color=ed1c24]“Brother! I see your struggle. You fight for that which is perfect. But do you not see! It will always be imperfect, and that is what makes it perfect! Without the broken, how will we know the whole? Without the deformed to show their blemishes, how will we know the formed in all their wondrous beauty?”
[/color]
He frowned, and thought for a second. Then He raised a strip of black, and willed the serpent into being once more. As it twisted on the palm of His hand, He enlarged it, solidified it, until it was too big to fit. It slunk around His burning letters, waxing mighty. Its wings were rainbows, its eyes now iron. Without a reality to be real in, it was no true demon. But it was close enough in form.
[color=ed1c24]
“Do you not see? It is not perfect. It will never be perfect. But it is mine, and so I love it.”[/color]


[hider=Summary]
The Adversary comes into being. He reels at the majesty of creation, is told his true purpose, adds the occult to the blueprints, and confronts Toun's perfectionism.
[/hider]