She was known as the Destroyer of Everything, yet here she was floating around in a bubble unable to do anything. All because her sister the Creator had gotten all huffy about her doing what she was meant to do, even if she had done it sooner than agreed. It was in her name and was the whole reason for existing: To destroy that which had been created. Locked away for aeons, with nothing to do but to plot the downfall of the 72 worlds that were the seals on her prison.

Each world had its own unique flavour or a mix of the remaining original eight worlds that the Creator had made. The Original Worlds were becoming bloated and rotten, eating away at the fabric of the universe, because the Creator would not allow the Destroyer to do her job.

The aeons that had gone by had presented opportunities for the Destroyer to gain agents on many of the Seal Worlds. At that very moment a small rift near one of the seals opened, and the Destroyer gleefully threw as much of her essence through it as possible. One of her agents had been doing their job.

The part that slipped through was so small that it was barely able to form a coherent thought and floated aimlessly around in the chamber it had gone through. Time passed, how long or short the small essence of the Destroyer could not tell because it had no concept of time, or of itself.

Then another rift opened, and the Prime Destroyer was able to push more of her essence through, making the blob of essence more self-aware, but it still did not know who it was. Time passed and tens of times more the rift opened, each time allowing the Prime Destroyer to slip some of herself through to the Seal World.

The growing blob of essence started to become self-aware, gaining small fractions of the memories belonging to the Prime Destroyer. It would never gain her full power, but she had some of it. She was becoming the Destroyer of Seal 58, or as the locals called it: Camcesa.

The Destroyer started taking in her surroundings as rift after rift made her more self-aware and increased her understanding. She was in her room, full of the creature the Creator called humans. As she floated by them, she looked at their soul: Diluted. Meaning that they were locals to the Seal World, not of the original world.

The Creator had broken the Covenant and created more life than the universe could support, all to keep her sealed in the bubble. That meant the Locals were less than those on the Original Huma World. It meant that she could possess them. She wondered if she should take over one of the humans now, but she was interrupted when a portal opened and thirteen new humans fell through without a stitch on their body.

Unseen by the human, a sliver of the Prime Destroyer slipped through the portal as well, which the Destroyer on this world eagerly consumed, feeling herself grow. Not only did she grow, but memories came with it. Memories that told her that she should wait, because more portals would open.

The Destroyer looked on as a handful of men were separated out, while the rest were killed without hesitation. Their deaths barely registered with those that had been spared. These new arrivals all had pure souls. Meaning that they were from the Original World. Which her memory confirmed for her.

If her incorporeal form had a mouth, she would have smiled, as the sweetness of the memory wafted over her: The memory of how her first agent from this world had been recruited. Not just any agent, but one of the Wardens that were meant to keep her locked up.

The Wardens were known as Gods to the people of each Seal World. The Locals worshipped the Gods and provided their diluted souls to power the Gods so they could maintain the Seals. As each Warden fell, the Seal would weaken and allow the Destroyer to reach out to the Universe. That Which Was Before alone would know how badly her sister had made the Universe.

The Destroyer did not have all of the memories, nor the same self-importance and arrogance of the Prime Destroyer, which made her realize that while the Creator had broken the Covenant, so had the Prime Destroyer, and she had done it first. By Destroying the World of Angels long before its time, she had upset the balance of the universe.

That self-realisation was quashed as a new portal opened, and more of the Prime Destroyer slipped through the portal. Twenty-two times had the portal opened since the Destroyer became aware, and she expected it to continue for quite a while. Some of the time, all thirteen of the Summoned had been killed outright. She cared not for the reason but liked when many of them were killed because that meant more summonings.

To occupy her time, she relived the time when she corrupted her first agent from this world.

It had happened long after her imprisonment, how long she did not know, because after destroying the Angel World she had taken to hibernating for long periods of time. There was simply nothing for her to do.

She was woken from her slumber by a persistent feeling of someone trying to contact her. Like when the Creator had been shouting at her to stop what she was doing. Yet this one was weak, barely a whisper. At first, she ignored it and went back to sleep, still angry about the whole being imprisoned thing. However, the feeling kept coming back, needling her constantly.

Irate, she sent back an angry demand, “Who dares interrupt me?”

“I seek your help!” the sensation had replied.

“I’ll destroy you,” she had threatened.

The sensation had actually laughed at her. At her, the Destroyer of Worlds, the Destroyer of Everything. Then the infuriating sensation had the gall to goad her, “Not while you’re locked up, you won’t. I’m one of your Wardens, so I should know.”

She had screamed at the Warden, and it had gone away. The Destroyer had gone back to sleep, only to be awoken later, when the Warden returned. She tried to ignore the Warden, but the Warden kept coming back, bothering more and more. So finally she had snapped, “Are you here to mock me?”

“No, I’m here for your help,” the Warden had replied. “I wish to offer you a bargain.”

“Oh, and what do you want?” she had asked, suddenly interested in the little pest.

“I am Gyzbohr, the God of Law and Order, yet every time has been wronged, they pray to Ghidana for Justice, not for me to uphold the Law,” the Warden had explained. “I wish to have her domain of Justice for my own.”

“Certainly it can be done,” she had said after thinking it over for a moment. She was meant to Destroy things, and while she might not be able to influence things outside her prison, she could advise. “First, how do you measure time?”

After having been told, she had made her part of the bargain known, “You’ll pay me three things for this help. One, you will send me the soul of your most knowledgeable priest every hundred of your cycles. The first soul to be delivered before I tell you how to gain the domain of Ghidana. Two, you’ll urge your followers to go to war against one target of my choosing, after I’ve delivered on my part of the deal. Three, when you’ve constructed the weapon, you’ll forget how to construct it.”

“We have got an accord,” the pompous Gyzbohr had said.

The rest was history. Ancient for the Gods and Humanity, but not so old for her. She remembered it clearly. After having gotten the information needed and delivered instructions on how to create a weapon that would, she had ordered the Gyzbohr to create a war between humans and the elves known as lampads. A war she knew they would lose.

Time went by, unnoticeable for her in her slumber, but at some point, her agent returned. She had ignored him on purpose until she could feel him becoming frantic. Coldly she had asked, “What do you want?”

“My worshippers have been enslaved after the war, they’re being forced to convert, I need something to fight back against the elves,” the frantic God of Law, Order and Justice had demanded. “The resurrection magic of the Fire Lord makes it meaningless for my people to revolt.”

“I can give you a weapon that will make it so that anyone cut or killed by it cannot be healed or resurrected by magic. It’s something your followers would be able to produce,” she had said, feeling smug. Everything was going according to plan.

“And what price must I pay this time?” he had asked.

“You’ll order your worshippers to start enslaving other races, by using a set of tools I’ll also grant you. Also, all human females or males with magic must be put in the same collar, you decide which of the two genders,” she had answered.

“Is that all?” he had asked suspiciously.

“No, the one called Ghidana that you’ve already framed for starting the war with the elves, you must get her thrown out of your little group of Wardens. You must ostracise her.”

He had sounded almost giddy when he replied, “That’ll be a pleasure.”

The Warden had gone away again. After he had received knowledge in creating three items that she would later learn would be known as Heretic Blades, Serf Collars, and Suppression Manacles.

Every time a new soul arrived as part of their first deal, she consumed it for its knowledge and it amused her to see humanity changed. First came the revolts against the elves. Then came the founding of a new empire. Shortly the Serf Collars were not only used on other races but also on their own population, just as she had predicted would happen. Humans were so predictable.

The Serf Collars came with a small unnoticeable side-effect. It eroded the ability to produce humans with a connection to their Gods, it would show as a hereditary curse. It was a slow erosion, but generation after generation the number of human priests slowly dwindled. The Gods thought it was the other races’ Gods that had done this to their followers.

The Warden had come a third time to ask for her help, “The number of human priests dwindles, but as far as we can tell it’s not a problem for the other races. They’ve laid a curse upon our people. You must help us.”

“Must I?” she had asked with a certain amount of amusement.

“Yes, we’ll lose influence if we don’t do anything soon, you must—no have to do something,” Gyzbohr had half pleaded, half demanded.

“Very well, I will tell you how you can rectify the situation, no payment,” she had said.

“No payment?” he had asked incredulously.

“You already have the tool at your disposal.”

“We do?”

She had him now. “Oh yes indeed. The summoning device the Creator left you. Those summoned don't carry the curse.”

“But we can only summon thirteen people from the Original World, and we need the cooperation of the Thirteen Ancient Bloodlines.”

“Indeed, but that should be no trouble, your Church has manipulated the Kings so masterfully,” she had commented. She knew that the Thirteen Ancient Bloodlines were descendants of the first thirteen humans created on this world by the Creator. Each one of the bloodlines were revered, and these days held the positions of Kings. The Summoning Device required input from both the thirteen Gods and the thirteen Bloodlines.

“No, you’re right, my priests can convince them it’s needed,” he had said. “But we have a bigger problem, we need Ghidana and she’ll not help us.”

“Oh dear, so troublesome.”

“Yes, I would never have stolen her power or ostracized her, if I knew we would need her. Even if we could convince her, thirteen people are not enough,” he had said dismissively.

She had chuckled at that, “I can provide a way to summon more than thirteen and bypass the need for Ghidana to help.”

“I see, and what would that cost?” he had asked with an eagerness he could not mask.

“I shall require that you go to war with the elves before the summoning starts,” she had said.

“We don’t stand a chance,” he had said.

“I’ll provide you with weapons that the Angels had just invented before their world fell. They had something called muskets and gunpowder that should serve your people nicely.”

“And you just want us to go to war with the elves?” he had asked a final time.

“Yes,” she had said. In the end, he accepted and she provided him with all the knowledge needed for her plan to come to fruition.

“I don’t like these drawbacks,” he had said after getting the information.

“Which drawbacks do you mean?”

“That we’ve to choose whether they live or die within two spans of summoning, if they’re still alive after that, the empowering device is locked for their use only. Doesn’t give us enough time to get to know them, or perform tests. We can only let one hundred and sixty-nine of them live. If we try to take more than one hundred and sixty-nine of them to the device and give them power, all of them will die and the device explodes. Those drawbacks,” he had complained.

“Well, one hundred and sixty-nine is better than thirteen,” she had countered. He had conceded and the fact that a copy of her was now on one of the Seal Worlds showed her that he had gone through with it. The best part of the whole thing was that the modifications to the whole thing left a backdoor to the Higher Realm, the realm of the Gods.

She had only paid half attention to the men in charge of summoning, but she had paid enough attention to figure out when they stopped summoning. Knowing she would not gain more of her true self, she followed along with the last batch of summoned humans.

She knew everything about the ritual and knew that there were some heavy mind-affecting magics placed on the Summoned. So it was a surprise to her when she saw several of them were fighting the effects. They would be good candidates for her Catalyst.

She watched with little interest as the Creator’s device was providing the Summoned with powers. Though she noted that the ones with good ratings and powers were amongst those she considered for her Catalyst. She was indeed surprised that there was one who gained the power of a human priest outright, but with no connection to one of the Gods, he was a free agent and would be perfect as a Catalyst.

Delighted at having such a gift drop in her metaphorical lap, she followed as he left the Cathedral. Unfortunately, the oafs of priests had convinced him that he had the power to link objects and nothing more, which was the least of the possibilities available to those with the humans’ priests’ power. At least that was her observation when the potential catalyst failed to connect a thread to a fellow human’s skin. The power of the mind often trumped that of magic often, at least when it came to comprehend and use magic.

Because the humans had the largest population and thus the most Gods, they were the Prime Wardens, meaning that though they were only 13 out of 31 Wardens, they upheld nearly 66% of the Seal’s power. With the added responsibility, they also gained the most powerful magic.

The ability to link two objects was just the start of their power. They could link souls, take on powers of other magic wielders, create a link between two points in space, but not time. The possibilities were endless but were limited by the creativity and knowledge of the user. Meaning the Catalyst would need training, but it would seem that he would get little since the Church and its members tried to hide his abilities.

They wanted simply to use him for breeding. She suspected the whole Lord and upholding the words of the Prophecy business was the priest having to appease the Kings. Their power and influence had certainly eroded, just like she had planned.

She followed him to his assigned room, and as he spoke with others of his kind while playing dress-up, she decided to do something about the Creator’s mind-altering magic. Even if he was struggling against the bond, he would eventually fail, her sister too powerful.

She started unravelling her sister’s work, but something went wrong. What exactly it was, the Destroyer could not figure out, but at some point, during her attempt to break the enchantment on the Catalyst’s mind she applied too much power, maybe. Nevertheless, the result was that the spell reversed itself.

Instead of making him steadily calmer and more accepting of those that summoned him, the spell now made him angrier and more hostile towards them. Which in itself was not a bad thing, but she would have to observe him for a day or two. Depending on his behaviour he might still be viable as a catalyst. If not, she could always find someone else.

Disappointed at her failure she started looking around for other candidates. She would have to keep the number small. Not too small so that the Wardens would just blame the ousted Goddess, but not too large that they would immediately fall apart. No, just enough to sow distrust between the Wardens, and slowly corrode their cohesiveness. So that when the time came her Catalyst could kill them. A job she wanted to do herself but was too weak to do.

She had watched the potential candidates and had even shown herself to her chosen Catalyst. Just a brief glimpse, but enough to make the man mystified and intrigued. Her other Divine agent had already dispatched one of her priestesses to infiltrate the man’s entourage. Her Catalyst would be in for a hard time, but she was certain that he would succeed. In fact, he had to. Otherwise, her plans would be ruined. She just hoped he could stay out of trouble, but his character did not seem to be built that way.

As they left through the portals, she turned her attention towards two meetings she was interested in observing. One in the Material Realm, the other in the Higher Realm. With some difficulty, because she was not as strong as she would have liked, she split off a part of herself. Little more than a mindless drone to observe the human Gods and their meeting, while she remained to observe their highest ranking members hold a meeting. Meetings were boring, but information was key to her success.

She was surprised when they left through the portal after the last of the Kings had left. With them, she saw a whole train of women. She recognized most of the women that had been entertaining her potential Catalysts. All of them had been altered in some way by magic to make them more appealing to their targets, however, the changes were mere superficial sculpting. Illusions made flesh so to speak.

Intrigued, she followed them and soon found herself on an island somewhere. She listened in as the women were handed over to a group of female priests. The one who seemed to be in charge of the women was wearing one of her collars and was asking something of Gyzbohr’s head priest. “Are all of them impregnated, Your Excellency?”

“Yes,” he said and looked longingly at the young women. “Everyone of them has been bred with one of the Summoned.”

“Hopefully that’ll alleviate some of the Curse,” the priestess commented.

“Indeed,” the priest said and pointed to a young blond woman, the one who had been sleeping with the first of the potential Catalysts. “Give extra care to that one, she has been bred by one who has the power of a priest.”

“Is that true?” the priestess asked breathlessly.

“Yes, I have high hopes. Hopefully, it’ll be a girl so she can be used to breed a new generation of priests. Oh, and get them changed back to proper looking women. The sight of Taint makes me nauseous, even if it’s just trickery.”

With that, the head priests, or High Hierophants as she had found out they were called, all headed to a luxurious building, where they stopped in a grand chamber where a circle of stone thrones stood. Thirteen of them, all grand in design and comfort, except one of them which had been destroyed. So only twelve.

“We have a problem,” the High Hierophant of Gyzbohr said.

“You don’t say,” one of the others grunted.

Another one asked, “How many are fighting the calming and obedience side-effects of being summoned?”

“Twenty-six,” the High Hierophant of Chostus answered.

“What steps are being taken?” the oldest in the group asked.

“We’re trying to entice them in other ways, however, one of them has shown violent tendencies. Unfortunately, it’s also the Summoned with the powers of a priest,” the High Hierophant of Gyzbohr.

“That’s unfortunate,” the oldest man commented. “What is being done?”

“My son is Cardinal in the High Hold he’s assigned to,” the High Hierophant of Gyzbohr answered. “I’ve tasked him with taking care of it.”

“You mean the one who’s trying to put his non-magical whelp in position to be a Lord?” the High Hierophant of Chostus questioned with hostility in his voice.

“Yes,” Gyzbohr’s representative replied with narrowed eyes. “My son has been unfortunate, and only had daughters, except for that one son. He’s simply trying to build a legacy.”

“Hardly an excuse. A priest should have no contact with his children unless they’re priests themselves. The cattle doesn’t matter, only the Enlightened does,” one of the others said.

“Enough!” the High Hierophant of Gyzbohr roared. “We’ll concentrate on the matter at hand, not my son and his schemes. We’ve one hundred and sixty-six breeders impregnated. With the marriages being arranged tonight or tomorrow, we can expect another one hundred and sixty-nine who’ll be pregnant. Even if only half of those born being female, we still got the start of a good stable of breeders who shouldn’t be affected by the Curse, or at least less affected.”

“What about the last three?” someone queried.

“Two are deviants, prefer men to women. We’ll work on them, the last one rejected the advances of the assigned temptress. He was one of those that the mind magic is failing on,” Gyzbohr’s representative reported.

“What can we do about those?” Chostus’ head priest asked.

“I say we just round them up and put them into a breeding hall,” someone suggested.

“Our relationship with the Kings is barely tenable these days, with the ever decreasing number of priests, we’re not able to ferret out discontent and head it off like we used to,” the delegate of Chostus said with a huff. “If we do something like that, our power will start declining faster. It was hard enough to convince them that now was the time to use the Gift of the Creator.”

“He’s right,” Gyzbohr’s High Hierophant said. “We can maybe move covertly against a couple of them if they make a lot of enemies, but otherwise we need to let things play out. At least until we’ve ensured a large supply of fresh bloodlines. Remind the priests assigned to the Summoned, to keep track of their sexual partners, so if the women become pregnant we can scoop up any girls with magic and get them brought here.”

After that, the meeting turned to more mundane and boring stuff, something that the Destroyer did not want to listen in on. Instead, she zoomed off to merge with the drone in the Higher Realm.

The Drone found the pathway to the Higher Realm where it had been instructed it would be. It entered without hesitation and thought and found itself in the Higher Realm. It looked remarkably like the material realm, except that the landscape was ever changing. One moment the Drone was in a forest, then in a desert, and suddenly underwater.

It did not faze the Drone because it was incorporeal and it did not get confused by the change in everything. It could feel where the human Wardens were gathered, so she shifted her presence there.

Unlike the most of the rest of the Higher Realm, the location the Wardens were meeting in was not shifting. It stayed a permanent white circular structure, no roof, no walls, only a series of columns denoting where the structure started and ended. In a circle in front, every third column was a statue. Thirteen of them, but one of them had been smashed to pieces. Each statue was the human form of one of the Wardens.

Gyzbohr the God of Law, Order, and Justice, had taken his human form, though it was ten metres tall. Most of the other Gods and Goddesses had taken a human form as well. Only two of them remained in a formless constantly shifting glob of essence.

“We’ve got a problem,” the blob that was Retar, the God of Luck, said.

“And what problem might that be?” Gyzbohr asked coldly.

It was Chostus, the God of Wisdom in his human form, who replied, “We have been unable to contact our priests directly. Normally we only do it rarely, but this situation requires a more hands-on approach, yet we’re unable to communicate with them. Sure they can still pray and we can hear it, but we cannot respond.”

“Likely a side-effect of us using the summoning ritual when it was not time. I always knew it would bring trouble. The Prophecy says that the Summoned are our Champions, and they should stand at the head of our armies,” the matronly looking Goddess of the Hearth, Adea, said. “It’s likely that we can only communicate with them. But none of them has a connection with the Higher Realm, possibly a side-effect of us summoning more than the Thirteen.”

“Don’t start on this now,” Gyzbohr grumbled. “When we voted on the subject you were most eager to have them come and start new bloodlines without the Curse that those traitorous elven Gods put on our people.”

“That’s not the problem I’m talking about,” Retar finally said, interrupting the brewing argument between Gyzbohr and his wife.

They all looked at him. It was the human form of Ideyar the God of War, who finally asked, “What’s the problem then?”

It was at that moment that the two forms of the Destroyer merged, and she absorbed the knowledge of what had been said, so she could follow the conversation. Which looked to be turning juicy.

“I’m talking about the fact that not thirteen, but twenty-six of the Summoned are unaffected by the mind magic. I would expect that Ghidana would withdraw her support from that part of the summoning ritual, but with twenty-six of them, it means that someone else did not participate fully,” Retar said accusingly. “And I want to know which one of you that was!”

“And I want to know how Gyzbohr convinced the traitorous Whore to participate in the ritual? After we threw her out for starting the war with the elves that got our people enslaved, I highly doubt she would be willing to help,” Chostus demanded.

Ideyar immediately turned his attention to Chostus and growled, “Why are you changing the subject? Are you the one who neglected to do his duty?”

“What?” Chostus confusedly said. “No! I did my duty.”

From there the meeting dissolved into accusations and counter-accusations as old grievances were brought back to life. The Destroyer felt pleased with herself. The plan put in motion by her Prime consciousness was working out exactly like planned. Within a cycle or two, her Catalyst would be ready to conquer the Higher Realm.

Happy, the Destroyer left the meeting-turned-brawl between Gods and went to seek out the other agent that had contacted the Prime Destroyer. The second agent would play an important part now that her first unwitting agent had finished playing his part. Oh, he still had one last part to play, but that was the same part all the Gods had to play. The second agent was not an unwitting one, but one that had voluntarily pledged herself to the Destroyer and her course.

A thought occurred to the Destroyer as she searched for the signature of her next agent, ‘The game is afoot.’