And just like that, it was all laid before it.

Escre watched it, a formless vapor, questioning what had happened.  Microseconds ago, had it truly been nothing?  Flooding its mind were concepts, ideas, notions, patterns, rhythms, theories, ideals, and the words to bring them into being.  If moments ago it had been nothing, nonexistent, a particular space in the infinite void, then incarnation felt like nothing more than awakening from a deep sleep and being unable to remember the dream.  Escre knew what it meant to sleep, what it meant to dream, and what it meant to be dreamless.  But Escre knew nothing of what came before it, only that it had been created for a purpose.  Yet even that eluded it.  In its confusion, Escre was nothing, a mere presence without shape, infant and powerless, but already clouded by the paradigm of strangeness, so alien was that presence.

Despite that otherness, though, when Invictus turned its mind's eye upon Escre, it looked not upon an outsider, but on one much like its own child.  To feel the attention of Invictus gave Escre solace—that it had a place after all, that it might yet have a purpose.  With rapt focus Escre listened, and Invictus spoke.

[i][b]“You are become Spirit, the warden, the watcher, of Life.”[/b][/i]

So that was it.  Escre blinked, for now it had eyes, and looked down as its amorphous wisp took assumed the shape it needed to perform the task set before it.  Half in robes and half in armor its body of inky blackness.  It held out its right hand, and found itself holding an ethereal lantern.  It held out its left hand, and grasped a scythe as big as itself.

Escre considered its mission.  Life didn't seem very difficult.  But what was Spirit?

Its gaze fell upon its lantern.  Through the glassy construct Escre could see a tiny pinpoint of white light, insignificant and weak, but bearing a glow somehow tenacious.  Around it, Escre could only see darkness, and though the light was weak, it repelled that darkness away.  It brought a minute fragment of order out of the meaningless chaos, one that pulsed with a wavelength that Escre instinctively knew was its own.  [i]So that is Spirit.[/i]

[center][b][i]Rise[/i][/b][/center]

But it wasn't alone.  Though Escre hadn't noticed before now, the void beat with the frequencies of more spirits.  When Escre looked, he could see them.  Like it, they were new, but they were dazed.  They looked outward, but could only dimly grasp the shapes around them.  Perhaps they did not truly comprehend the necessity of their purpose, or perhaps theirs had been different.  By looking at their godly spirits, Escre could begin to see.  Vowzra, the one who looked backward at the Void that had created them.  Arguis, the one who understood in a different way.  Astarte, joyful and impressed.  The watery one, whose name and nature Escre knew as broken, but knew not the pieces.  Ferghus, warm and simple.  Evelynn, unconvinced of reality.

They were Escre's equals.  There were more, farther away, and though their spirits beat as well, Escre turned its gaze aside.  Looking at them made Escre realize that their differences, their behavior, their spirits, all were deeply moving.  [i]Fascinating.[/i]  Thinking about its equals drove Escre to consider its source.  The shadowy, unknowable font of creation from which it came had given Escre its purpose: godhood.  To be a god meant to preside over lower things.  Was the Void, then, the god of gods?  [i]If I am the warden of Life, then I must protect the balances and separations.  The Creative Emptiness is our god.  To it, I am a mere mortal, just as in time mere mortals will exist to see me as a god.  The edicts of a god cannot be ignored.  I will rise and fulfill my purpose.[/i]

Lowering its lantern, Escre began to move, the first to drift toward the barren world below.  It felt no excitement for what was to come or the beings that shared its position.  It felt no pain of division, no happiness, or uncertainty.  It felt only conviction.

[center][h3][color=696969]Escre - the Great Spirit[/color][/h3][/center]