Af opened his fish-like eyes, and for a moment he panicked as he thought he had gone blind, but no, then he began to pick out shapes, patches of deeper blackness in the dark. Not for the first time, Af wished the master had given him the same golden eyes that he had given the eels and the newborn runners. They with their golden eyes had no problem seeing in the absolute blackness of the murky ink. As he had created his imps first, the master had not thought of everything as he had made them. So the imps had weaker eyesight than the master’s other creations. Still, that they could see at all in such perfect darkness meant that their night vision was many times stronger than any natural-born creature. 

Af pushed himself out of the rocky crevice in the tunnel wall that was his sleeping space and stretched his long, thin arms to prepare for the work ahead. All around him, he saw other imps crawling out of the walls and doing the same. Their eyes glowed gold, the sign of being born of their master’s life force, but theirs only glowed very dimly. It looked as if many pairs of barely-lit candles had filled the tunnel. 

A cold ripple preceded the eel as it came around the corner and upon the wakening imps. The eel’s golden eyes narrowed, the knowledge that the master had forbidden the eating of imps was all that kept them from feasting on the small creatures. The master had only forbid things that would hamper the imps working though, and anything else the eels wanted to do to them was fair game. This eel decided to play a game with one of the smaller imps, spinning it around with his tail, pushing it back if it tried to get away. When the eel finally stopped with that, it opened its mouth wide, flaring its many teeth as far out as they would go, closing its jaws around the imp. At the last second, it folded back its teeth and hissed at the imp, swimming away but leaving the unspoken promise of returning to play again.

The unfortunate imp just floated, paralyzed with fear and helplessness, knowing that it was powerless against the master’s deadly creations. Next to them, the imps were… unnecessary. What the imps feared most, constantly, was that the master would stop needing them, that he would get rid of them, allow the eels to finally consume them in a frenzy of death and black blood.

Af stirred himself from his stupor of helplessness and swam over to where the eel’s victim floated. He brought his face close to the other imp’s looking into the other’s eye and forcing the other to do the same. “You see that? Do you see that golden light in my eye? That light means that the master created us, and the master loves all of his creations. Be strong now, the master loves us, loves you.” Pulling back and looking around at the other imps, Af spoke to them, “Remember, back when it was just the master? Who did he create first? Us. Who did he rely on when he was alone and found himself in a world that he knew nothing about? Us.” The other imps just stared at him blankly, wondering what his point was. “Well right now, the master needs us. He may have moved away from us, and he may have created monsters that terrify us, but why do you think he created those monsters?” None of the other imps made any move to answer their vocal friend’s question. Af went on, “To protect us, don’t you see? The master still loves us most. The eels and the runners may scare us now, but the things that stalk the surface are even more terrifying. When those things try to attack us, it is the eels and the runners that will protect us on the master’s orders.”

Now a few of the gathered imps seemed to think, and they found that they quite liked what the loud imp was saying. The master still loved them and thought of them first. The imps cheered for their master who loved them, and they rallied behind their new imp leader. Af and his words had become the hope that kept the imps happy, content, strong, and most importantly, working. The imps attacked the rocky walls of the tunnels with renewed vigor, tearing, clawing, crushing the earth with a new sense of purpose. 

When the next eel came to torment the imps, it was Af who came forward to speak out against it, and he who it redirected its malevolence towards, but he did not flinch. Af was confident in the knowledge that the eel could not hurt him. "You only hate us because you were born for the sole purpose to die protecting us," is what he said to the eel as it threatened to rip his body apart. The eel reeled back in shock and confusion. Shocked that a lowly imp would speak at it in such a manner, confused at what it said. Born to die? Protecting imps? What was it saying? Could it be true? The eel, distracted from the sport of tormenting the imps, swam back to the home, the chamber where all eels and runners were born, with its head full of uncertainty and questions. 

"Where is the master?" it asked the others, but the master was gone down one of the long tunnels and none knew when he might return. It could have followed, but instead the eel chose to ask the runners about the imp's words. The eels and runners were so similar in many ways that they acted more like two forms of the same creature than as two completely unrelated ones. Xir'ain had built the runners using many of the same parts as the eels, so that may have had something to do with their kinship-like bond. The eel knew that the runners had faster minds than he and the other eels; perhaps they could make sense of the imp's claims. The runners that lounged along the shore of the home chamber could not, and indeed they were as perplexed as the eels by the imp's words. Was it true? Were they really mere fortifications for the master's favorites? The runners and the eels together decided to ask the master upon his return if this was true.

Af may have believed his powerful words, but that didn’t make them any more true. Xir’ain hadn’t given the imps a thought since he had created the first of the eels. The eels did everything the imps did, but unlike the imps, the eels could fight. Why he had ordered the eels not to eat the imps Xir’ain wasn’t really sure, so in some degree, maybe Af wasn’t entirely wrong about his master’s heart. Maybe. All the creatures of his creation, imp, eel, and runner, awaited the master's return with apprehension. All could sense that something had changed that couldn't be undone, but none was sure what this change meant. Xir'ain, and his runner companion, was completely unaware of the tension that was gathering behind him. He was too focused on seeing what was ahead to feel what threatened from behind.