[hider=Last Time on the Tonta Show]After creating the drakhorey and the phoenixes, as well as trapping a drakhorey soul in a massive pillar, Tonta wondered around watching the world die! She didn't bother saving a single person until the Wise Blob called her and told her to save the animal kingdom. And so she did, but in the process she accidentally mixed up all the animals into a great creation soup. In her attempts to get some of the animals out of the soup, she created strange amalgamations and set them loose on the world - such as cloudy whales and octopi whose piss is the rain. She pledges never to save anything ever again.[/hider]
[sub][i]excerpt from:[/i][/sub]
[centre][h1]The Book of Reflection[/h1]
[sub]by[/sub]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/rIWKeGY.png[/img]
[h3]Mouse the Wise[/h3][/centre]
[centre][img]https://i.imgur.com/XRcyBUw.png[/img][/centre]
[indent][h3][sub]I. On the God that Was, Is, and Will Be[/sub][/h3][/indent]
I begin this book of reflections with a greeting to the God That Was, the God That Is, and the God That Will Be. I salute that being who Was before the first ending of the world; by whose will the world was first made, was first made to end, and was first made to be saved. It is to that being that I send my salutations and my regards, and it is the pleasure of that being that I seek and aspire towards. And I declare, so that all creation may witness, that my great aspiration and my single-minded purpose is the preservation of the knowledge of the ways taught by that being - carried in the hearts of generation after generation of pious ancestors until it came at last to so incapable and poor a creature as myself even as the world ended all about us. I pen this record so that when in time I will have passed from existence there will remain a word calling people to the remembrance of that glorious being and to the remembrance of the ways He taught us before the world ended and the beings we now call gods emerged.

Worthy of worship indeed are the new gods, for they are powerful and they saved something of the world from complete ruination. But we must be careful, those of us who are dutiful to the gods and seek out their pleasure, of ascribing to them more worth than is theirs - for those of moral rectitude do not ascribe to anything more worth than is due to it, and do not ascribe to anything less worth than is its rightful due; and those who like to be praised for what they are not and what they have not done are truly most impoverished in spirit and are despised.

And so, in worshipping the new gods we must first know what a god is, and why the God That Was, That Is, and That Will Be is a true God while the new gods are gods insofar as they wield an aspect of divine power. Any true God, and this must be known by any who pursue true knowledge of the divine, must by its very nature be eternal without beginning, and so uncreated. It precedes all things and is preceded by nothing. By this metric, we can ascertain that there was a time when the new gods definitively came into being - indeed, they came to being in my own lifetime. Before that point, the new gods did not exist at all, of that we can be certain - and there are those still amongst us who bear witness to that, as I do, and the new gods (were one to ask them) would bear witness to that also. There was a time where they did not exist, and then they came into existence. Thus they have a beginning and are not eternal, are preceded by other things and do not precede all things. That is the nature of the new gods.

From our observation of the world, we can see that many things come into being by the will of the gods. Northing is self-created, nothing emerges from itself, everything emerged from the gods. And we can also ascertain, since the world was coming to an end not too long ago, that all things perish if not maintained by the gods - and that is why our world came to an end and there is now only a small part of it that remains. For a reason we cannot ascertain the divine power that maintained our world decided to stop maintaining it for a brief time, and then the new gods came into being to once more maintain our world. The thinking mind can piece all this together: if all things that have a beginning are created, and the new gods had a beginning, then the new gods must have been created. Since all that exists is created and has a beginning, and since the new gods - and, indeed, our universe - have beginnings and are capable of ending, they must have been created. At some point in the chain must have been a first creator, a creator who is by necessity uncreated. An ultimate creator-being.

It was that ultimate creator-being that created the new gods and gave them an aspect of its great power. Now a thinking person will say: well, if that creator-being created them and gave them such great powers, then that being must have been even greater in power than the new gods. And that is manifestly true - for if I come to you and tell you that I will give you a mountain of gold, then that must mean that I have more than a mountain of gold, or at the very least equal to it. Thus the being who created all of the new gods must be at the very least as mighty and powerful as all of them together - and it is probable that this being is many times more powerful than even that, perhaps even of infinite power since in truth it is the ultimate creator and maintainer of our world, capable of destroying it at will and restoring it at will.

I shall content myself with this on that topic. Know then that the great being of whom I speak is the God That Was, Is, and Will Be. His ways are unknown to the new gods - perhaps in His wisdom he sought to hide Himself from them. But we who yet have memory of the days before the new gods were created remember also the teachings of our pious forefathers, the same teachings that the God taught us. To gain the pleasure of that being who is able to create and uncreate the gods and so is able to create or destroy our world at will, we must follow His ways and teachings. I spoke of this to the new goddess Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut in the days before she turned me into a mouse, but she dismissed my words and refused to give it thought. Are we to guide who do not wish after guidance? We can only deliver the message and leave the spark of this knowledge alive that perhaps there will come one day a generation of people who know the truth and live by it, who honour the God That Was, Is, and Will Be and who honour the gods He has sent forth into this world as His deputies. But we must never be blinded from the light of truth or be deluded into thinking that the deputies are true gods; we will then have fallen into the deep crevices of untruth and darkness.

[indent][h3][sub]II. On How I Became a Mouse[/sub][/h3][/indent]
There have been those who have asked me to tell of why Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut turned me into a mouse, and I shall pen that tale here. Know that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut is a being that speaks great profanities and I do not write these words here except out of faithfulness to the discourse between her and me.

Sometime after Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut created those magical bees, which suck nectar and magic out of flowers and trees and put it into their honey, she poured the soup of creation into a gourd and turned that gourd into a wooden staff - and so if you see her carrying a wooden stick or a sceptre or something of the like, know that held within that are all the creatures that were or could be. It was, of course, on my advice that she chose to save the creatures; and though she saved no animal that existed in our world before, she gave us strange creatures that hold some of their physical traits and echo their ways.

She decided to continue her explorations of the world once the bees had flown away and insisted I accompany her. "Only if you promise to do good by all creatures we cross," I told her. She laughed at me and forced me into a cage, and took me along with her anyway. She is a capricious and cruel being!- may she be guided to the path of goodness and high morals. We went then and we observed the terrible state of affairs of humanity; much goodness had been forgotten and the tree of evil had taken root in their hearts and its branches speared at the skies. To Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut this was amusing, and so I chastised her now with kindly words and now with harsh ones; but my words increased her in nothing but waywardness and moved neither her heart to feel nor her mind to think.

When I called on her to damn the cannibals who ate one another, she ignored me and ate with them. When I called on her to damn the sons and daughters who abandoned their aging parents when they needed them most, she ignored me and sat with the abandoned old folk and watched them die - though she was capable of saving them! When I called on her to damn those who commanded their people to be patient and forebear while they ate the best of the food and more than their rations, she caused the food of the needy to rot while that of those who lorded over them to grow bounteous. When I called on her to damn those who, finding that they had physical power over others, went raiding and raping and transgressing against others, she praised their freedom and wilfulness. "Have you no shame, lady?" I asked her, "you who have taken the form of woman, have you no regard for the sacredness of the womanly form and the holy bonds that precede the union of man and woman? Have you no regard for the chastity and honour of those whose form you have assumed?"

"Alright look here you fucker, I didn't bring you along to do my head in with your nagging. Since you won't shut your yapper I'm shutting it for you," was her response. And I was not able to speak after that for a long time. Not until we one day came to a cave and inside it we found a group of people dressed up as animals and going around on all fours, yapping and barking and acting in all ways like mere creatures. I remember that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut stared silently at them for the longest time before turning to me and saying: "What. The. Fuck."

Those were the first humans that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut obliterated. At some point during her week-long obliteration of the place she released me from the bindings of silence and I was able to speak to her and calm her. But nothing I could say could dissuade her from her newfound conviction. "Humans are a blight. They need to be exterminated."

I have no doubt that many monkilli will refuse to accept their creation story, but this is the truth. They were made by a fickle and capricious goddess who did not care for the true sins of humanity, who was neither interested in learning morality nor teaching it, and instead decided to whimsically destroy the human race because of this strange animal-fetish cult made up of some five or six people. This is the truth, and if the monkilli accepted it then they would halt their futile vendetta. But as it were, it was at that time and for that reason that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut tapped her staff upon the earth and caused to emerge therefrom the many monkilli races. And even at this moment that strange species goes forth to carry out the will of a goddess whom they do not truly know but regardless adore. But they are a young species, and they will learn.

After that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut created much, and I had the opportunity to witness the creation of many strange and terrible and wonderful things. She filled the world with all nature of snakes and lizards then - she has a strange affinity for such things, she seems always to start with them. Great lizards and small, of all shapes and colours - and that is quite beside the dircaans. She decreed [url=https://i.imgur.com/moUCfzW.jpg]crocodilians[/url] of all sizes to roam the many rivers that sprouted from the heart of the Shard, and placed on the rivers and lakes and seas and oceans seals - aye, river seals and sea seals, she cared little for constancy or consistency but made as the fancy took her. And as the ocean was birthed she sent forth fishes small and fishes great, lumbering behemoths and barely visible magical plankton. Though she made no more cloud fish, the [url=https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/2100/2179/flying-fish_1_lg.gif]flying fish[/url] seemed to be made to occupy the world above and the world below while immediately being of neither. There were frogs and toads and salamanders, some of them [url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Eryops1DB.jpg/1280px-Eryops1DB.jpg]veritable giants[/url] relative to others. Birds of enormous size, birds of the tiniest proportions, flightless birds and birds that by all logic and reason should not have flown and yet did. Cats large and small she loosed, bears and [url=https://bioone.org/ContentImages/Journals/geod/42/15/geodiversitas2020v42a15/graphic/img-z16-1_223.jpg]bear dogs[/url], bats and rodents (and, of course, [i]mice![/i]), moles and voles and otters and weasels and ferrets and badgers. Great leaping hares and small rabbits, raccoons and their like, skunks at whose small even I - then still a soul - was made to weep. The civet and the mongoose and the hyena were not left to wallow in the soup, and there were mouse deers and musk deers, great deers and small deers, and bovines roaming in great herds. Pigs were loosed and camelids joined the giant snow camel (humpless camelids and humped, large camelids and small), and on the rivers the hippo was made to challenge the crocodile. There were more yet, she was for the first time untiring and persistent - armadillos were sent forth, marsupials, possums and opossums, wombats, platypi, rhinos and tapirs, [url=https://cdn.britannica.com/70/81270-050-4EC64405/conception-artist-Eohippus-toe-bones-Hyracotherium-mammal.jpg]dawn horses[/url], anteaters, monkeys and apes and squirrels and beavers. They are more than a mere mortal can hope to remember, all that was in the soup and desired release found release - and when she was done she looked into the soup and found that even after such exertions it was no closer to being depleted than when she first pulled out the [url=https://us.v-cdn.net/5018289/uploads/editor/dn/2n3dmxvbzbb0.jpeg]grobin[/url]. And she understood then, I believe, that the soup would never be depleted so long as she herself was undepleted and I saw her smile a satisfied smile and one would have almost thought her innocent and beautiful then. 

But I shall now list some of the more interesting specimens here with an accompanying attempt at visual representation:

[list][*][url=https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/031/728/256/4k/kevin-macio-mushroompig-01.jpg?1604427394]Mushroom Boar[/url]: A large boar with fungal growths that dwells in Vatrai.
[*][url=https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0709/1715/products/mosasaur-illustration-final_1024x1024.jpg?v=1575218964]Mosasa[/url]: A giant aquatic reptile that inhabits the oceans and seas. It can reach fifty-eight feet in length, making it a veritable leviathan, and is a truly formidable apex predator that can prey on even the largest forms of aquatic life. Its sight is extraordinarily keen while its sense of smell is quite deficient. In a similar way to crocodiles, mosasa attacking one another tend to grapple the other's head with their jaw, causing severe head injuries and often leading to death. They also occasionally engage in cannibalism.
[*][url=https://cdn.britannica.com/46/128846-050-0C50C3F5/Cephalaspis-group.jpg]Head-shielded Fish[/url]: A small heavily-armoured bottom-feeding fish that lives in estuaries. Its diet consists mainly of worms and other burrowing organisms in the mud and algae.
[*][url=https://i.imgur.com/tHxrBJx.jpg]Great Bone-headed Dunkler[/url]: An enormous, armoured and jawed fish, reaching thirty-two feet in length. It has a two-part exterior of armour-like bone, which makes it a relatively slow but powerful swimmer. Rather than teeth it possesses two pairs of sharp bony plates that form a beak-like structure. They are able to open and close their jaw at incredible speeds and produce a very powerful bite force on closing their jaw. They live in shallow waters during adolescence and move onto deeper waters in adulthood.
[*][url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c3/3b/fc/c33bfc72139bf36eb685e0b5a60b8205.jpg]Lesser Bone-headed Dunkler[/url]: A relative of the aforementioned Dunkler, it often reaches some twenty-six feet in length. It does not have the same boney teeth of it relative, but is rather a filter feeder. It uses its capacious mouth to swallow or inhale schools of small fish, krill and plankton. Its mouth-plates were made in such a way as to retain prey while allowing water to escape as it closes its mouth.
[*][url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9d/Leedsichthys_problematicus.jpg/1280px-Leedsichthys_problematicus.jpg]Lada[/url]: An enormous filter-feeding fish, capable of reaching lengths of one-hundred feet. Despite its size, it can often fall prey to apex predators.
[*][url=https://i.pinimg.com/736x/3e/e2/2b/3ee22b4af90003538555f48f4d5ae4f1.jpg]Cirnus[/url]: A large, short-necked aquatic reptilian that can reach lengths of thirty-six feet. An apex predator, it is a fast swimmer and actively hunts down or pursues its prey. Being an apex predator, it preys on large aquatic life forms such as the aforementioned lada, alongside smaller ones.
[*][url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Stensioella_heintzi.jpg]Water Angel[/url]: A strange fish that has an elongated body, a whip-like tail, and long, wing-like pectoral fins. Its armor is made up of a complex mosaic of small scales. It is an enigmatic creature, but the goddess poured strange magicks into it and gave it her blessing.
[*][url=https://ai-illustrator-file.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/100_0075_2.png]Canthala[/url]: An elusive fish that tends to live in shallow coastal waters, especially around islands. It can reach lengths of twenty feet. It is generally not fit for sapient consumption due to its poor nutritional value and can cause various illnesses of consumed.
[*]Dircaans: A diverse species of giant reptilians. They include carnivorous and herbivorous subspecies, and some, such as the comb-headed and one-horned dircaans, also eat small wildlife and fish on occasion. The small dircaan is too small to ride and occupies a niche similar to that of goats and sheep in some communities. The water dircaan is semiaquatic, and so is adapted to aquatic environments and is generally to be found stalking swamps, rivers, and wetlands.
[list][*][url=https://jurassiccoast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Rhynchosaur-header-image-1920x0-c-default.png]Badger Dircaan[/url]: A herbivorous dircaan with a bone-like beak, able to reach lengths of six feet. Boasts powerful hindlegs and claws that enable it to dig up roots and tubers, and its powerful bone-like beak can make short work of tough plant material.
[*][url=https://cdn.inprnt.com/thumbs/93/1f/931f6c914ef9265e016030f08016e2b4.jpg?response-cache-control=max-age=2628000]Tiger Dircaan[/url]: A carnivorous bipedal dircaan of moderate size, capable of reaching lengths of sixteen feet. It has a massively built skull bearing dagger-like teeth, large eyes that allow for extremely keen vision, and elongated nostrils providing a strong sense of smell. They prey on creatures large and small, including the badger dircaan.
[*][url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0a/eb/8c/0aeb8c6b37ffaffc3fe0a221dbddfb5c.jpg]One-horned Dircaan[/url]
[*][url=https://tbosapf.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/triceratops.jpg]Tri-horned Dircaan[/url]
[*][url=http://dino-dictionary.herokuapp.com/assets/protoceratops-254714094fe34fdef44a7236c430f0691dadc3cc7420dc5112ad82e43048e0b2.jpg]Small Dircaan[/url]
[*][url=https://cs8.pikabu.ru/post_img/big/2016/11/02/11/1478110482215045246.jpg]Comb-headed Dircaan[/url]
[*][url=https://memestatic.fjcdn.com/pictures/Come+out+you+little+bastard+ill++your+car+if_c84c82_7035677.jpg]Winged Dircaan[/url]: Sometimes also called the Lesser Drakhorey, though there is little in common between the firebreathing leviathans of the heavens that are the drakhorey and the comparatively mundaned winged lizards that are the winged dircaans.
[*][url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cf/6e/ef/cf6eeffbb1541be916a308ea5654488b.jpg]Water Dircaan[/url]
[*][url=https://i.imgur.com/3FhwKQY.jpg]Great-beak Dircaan[/url]: An enormous dircaan, beaked and toothless, which is capable of flight. It boasts a wingspan of up to forty feet and a standing shoulder height of ten feet. It has an exceptionally large and sharp beak, large eyes that enable telescopic vision, and tends to inhabit plain environments that give way to cliffs so as to facilitate its glided flight. While entirely capable of such flight, they are extremely capable land predators, snatching up their prey from above - often coordination in large groups so as to prevent smaller prey from escaping with their larger size and great wingspan.[/list][/list]

Now, when Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut was satisfied with all this, the goddess turned to me and asked what form of life I wished to be breathed into. My response came swift - too swift, I now know: "I have no desire for life, my lady." I told her, and hindsight has taught me what a great lack of wisdom lay in those words. 

"Go on, I insist." She said, smiling that pleasant and innocent smile of hers. Beware you who associate with Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut! Beware, for such a smile often precedes some cruel and inexplicably callous act on that divine's part! You have been warned, so let there be no cries about the injustice of it when you find yourself gazing into that smile; you were informed of this before and associated with her regardless, so taste you now the bitterness that comes with such evil company!

"I do not fear death, my lady. I am excited to see what comes next." I told her in response - a second mistake! Mouse the Wise? Why, Mouse the Fool! And so her smile then became so sweet that it was really quite sickening, and I had no sooner looked on her countenance before I found myself a mouse - and when I looked up again and beheld her visage I found that she was no longer smiling. (And yes, I admit that her darkened face and glowering eyes were more merciful by far than that sickly-sweet smile.)

"You were offered a gift, prick!" She screamed. "You don't reject a fucking gift - especially not from me! But since you had the gall to taint my [i]good name[/i] and [i]drag my honour through the dogshit of your oh-so-pious rejection[/i], you will now be obliged to carry my curse into eternity. Live well, Mouse the [i]Stupid Dumbfuck[/i]."

And that was the last time I saw Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut before her journey into the realm of death.

[list][*][hider=Summary]The first two parts from a book called The Book of Reflection by a character called Mouse the Wise. 
The first chapter is an argument about how the new gods aren't true gods, and that there is in fact a greater divine being called the God That Was, Is, and Will Be who created the gods and the world and should in fact be worshipped.
The second chapter details the journey of Mouse the Wise, back when he was still a soul, with Tonta around the world. They see all th evil things humans are doing, and Mouse calls on her to punish the wrongdoers and stand up for the oppressed, but Tonta doesn't much care and eventually forcefully shuts him up. Then one day they come upon a few people in a cave dressed up as animals, and Tonta is so disgusted that she smites them and swears by the firmaments and the ligaments that humanity must be obliterated. So she makes the monkilli to do just that. She then create a great many creatures, a few of them listed in the post. When she's done she turns to Mouse the Wise and offers him a reward: she will give him a new body and a new chance at life. Mouse doesn't want new life and tells her to let him die. She insists. He insists. She turns him into a mouse.[/hider]
[*][hider=MA Spent]Creation of the monkilli.
Creation of a great deal of animals.
Cursing Mouse the [s]Wise[/s] Stupid Dumbfuck to eternally occupy a tiny anthropomorphic mouse's body.[/hider]
[/list]