[i]You stand adrift in an endless void.[/i] A vast expanse of completely blank space that went on forever in all directions. In a time when light and dark were the same before the beginning, devoid of light and yet one could see everything at once in a massive, overwhelmingly desolate panoramic vacuum like a night sky without stars. [i]Your sins are infinite, for it is you who made their premise.[/i] The cold was bottomless. Before the rules of physics had come into play, an impossible cold that amplified with each passing moment. Or rather, a moment that didn't pass, as time had yet to turn. A marked void with a temperature beyond negative infinity. [i]Your blessings are naught, for it is you who has sinned.[/i] It drifted in a "nothing", locked within the hellish trap of existence, and yet it could be said to "not be". It was perfectly blank, immobile, unthinking. There was nothing to distinguish it from the void. The rules had yet to be made, and in their place was a nature of reality before there was being and before a mind had ever turned upon itself. [i]So then, let us begin.[/i] And it is in this hell that It lived, not wanting, not desiring, not acting. And so the nothing remained, undisturbed and unfettered. "Let's make something fun happen." A voice broke through the silence. It did not recognize the voice, it did not understand the new imposition amidst the nothing. And yet it knew, it knew that voice was its own. Yes...let's make something fun happen. In the midst of this void, awaken. The line between It and Nothing was drawn. "...I am." And if I am, then that means we can start. Let's build a chessboard to cut this nothingness in two. It was at last awake. Eyes opened. Mind expanded. Desire born. The void twisted. The nothing gave birth to something, the Primal Form of all was shaped by a pair of hands that could never hold. [i]You cannot atone with death, for then there is nothing to see the atonement. Without interaction with observers, that atonement is meaningless.[/i] Nothing split into black and white. Power condensed into a single point, pushing further into itself as if about to burst. [i]Instead of atonement, it shall be a curse.[/i] It saw every possibility, every idea, and shaped one after another in a time before time. It laughed, another sound it did not recognize. What was this? What was this feeling? [i]The nightmare ends when the dreamer wakes, so this will simply never end.[/i] [b][i]"There is merely one penalty."[/b][/i] It spoke in tandem with the thrum of the void. Was it speaking to itself, or to something beyond? "The penalty which encompasses first and last is that which shall be eternally endured, appointed by you unto you within you." Not death by happiness, madness, love, dehydration, burning, electrocution, suffocation. No, none of those. This was the truest penalty of the First and Last. Death by life. It laughed once more, a raucous blade that sliced through the nothingness, through the light and dark. "You really are pathetic like this, talking to yourself, you know that right? I, you, we really are a pathetic existence. It's laughable, the Blind Idiot God who created reality on an ignorant whim, but unlike that being you cannot destroy it on that same ignorant whim. But that's okay. That's perfectly okay, because we don't need to ever stop." The system was made, and It spread its arms wide in joy as it looked upon its great work. "You will never let yourself awaken, because when you do, you yourself will cease to be." It fell backwards into the world it had formed, and felt itself break. Infinite points cut through the world. Infinite points intersected with the finitude of the world. Infinite overwhelmed the finite, and the nature of “is” roared in a primordial void as it collapsed as if the center of a neutron star- A chessboard needs pieces after all, doesn't it? "So keep existing for yourself, will you?" A futile grin as It became what it was not, shattering into infinite shards of an originary self. And one such shard fell... And fell... And fell... Until one day, it simply stopped. [b]"Let's keep this game going forever."[/b] --- The United States of AUO. As peaceful an area as there can be. An idyllic utopia in which there was no deviation from the natural order. An area in which all could be happy. ...was this feeling "happiness"? They assumed that it was. They all had to assume that it was, for if they suspected that it wasn't, they doubted their minds could take such a revelation without shattering. The Goddess of Order presided over this land. From a single zone all of the island could be seen, as well as all that the island was not. Everything that had occurred, and everything that had not. Every possibility, every possible world or future which could be spawned, and everything that was "impossible". This was the power to view all of creation through a sense beyond sight, the Authority of Order. "...so it's beginning, then." The possible futures, the "could be", was viewed simultaneously to the "is". Myriad futures of a number such that trying to count them could break one's mind and shatter one's soul. But among all of these "could be"s, 99% of them shared one feature, an event that could be said to grow nearer with each passing second, an event that every God could feel approaching on the horizon. War. "Well then, let's get to it~" And in the center of this island, the world distorted for the briefest of instants as Power was called back into being. Bend space, twist time, warp reality. Destroy the world and create it anew. Fire, thunder, ice, entropy. Hope and despair, black and white. The others would fight and rage and burn and die, but she would forever persist. That was her duty. That was her penalty. That was her atonement. A god of the world who surpassed the world. The landscape of the island writhed as that which it was constructed out of roared to life, the Prima Materia at the root of is-ness. The six-sided die of reality, composed of "is" and "isn't" across three different facets, was viewed from all angles at once. The silent roar of the void echoed in her mind, the scream of the world outside the world and of the world before the world. "Please do your best to make this entertaining for me, everyone. Let's start the banquet to herald the end of the world." A wonderful party to shatter the firmament. At this time the pieces had finally been placed on the board, the game would finally enter its opening move, and so... "If the party is going to begin, then I suppose I'll have to be a suitable hostess." [i]You stand adrift in an endless void.[/i] [i]You and the naught become two, and you look upon the nothingness.[/i] [i]And in that moment, you create the first system, the rule from which all else must rise.[/i] "...I [b]am[/b]." A declaration of statement, a prayer for an outcome, the invocation of spell, which of these it was could not be known. What could be known was that the shard of a shard of It, the glimmer of light which had stopped, was at last moving once more. The God of Order was awake.