Many, many centuries ago...

He rose, his power crackling and surging, his sweet and pleasant dreams chased away by boiling anger.

The creatures under his benevolent protection were not embracing his will, his love... instead abandoning him for lesser gods.

Vile and perverse creatures that hung on like parasites, too weak to face his magnificence directly.

The craven cowardly and weak lesser creatures should know their place and their foolish worshippers would taste only agony and death before their pathetic patrons.

He would tolerate no others, no other was as worthy as he to claim this world, this world and all in it belonged to him.

Smooth etherial pale skin wriggled and wrinkled as he pulsed displeasure, many-layered veins of thought twisting ceaselessly in the vast entities gargantuan mind.

He would spare no heretics.

The essence of reality, warping and stretching to accommodate him, he drew himself towards the highest concentration of his disloyal heathens.

Arriving unseen as little more than a shade or shadow, he looked down on his followers with barely contained disgust, two days and nights passing as if no time at all to the powerful entity.

What he beheld did not ease his ire.

The tiny and woefully inadequate creatures were trundling back and forth in their daily and meaningless patterns, most not even stopping to offer tribute or prayer at his shrines, instead, exchanging shiny chunks of metal and wooden figurines.

Crude likenesses of some of his most hated rivals, a form of worship.

'UNACCEPTABLE,'

There would be no more mercy for the unrepentant heretics, violently punching a hole in the fabric of space he made himself known, pale gleaming body manifesting in a cloak of dazzling light.

His startled and loyal monkeys stared at their savior, their god, and called out in joy, some looking enthralled and in awe, while others stared disbelievingly, their jaws slack with shock.

But all soon began to call out to him, praising his magnificence and power, the slackjawed fools more with desperation than genuinity.

He stared with disdain at these wretches with distaste.

'HOLLOW DECLARATIONS.'

Unmoved by his loyal monkey's outbursts, he spoke, his voice quiet but everywhere.

"VERILY, DOTH MY PEOPLE KNOW ME?"

The loudly chanting monkeys went quiet, uncertain what their god was saying.

He looked at the uncertain monkeys from every possible angle.

'DISBEILIEVERS.'

Faces furrowing, he cast his displeasure over the monkeys, his voice low and menacing.

"NAY... MANY TURN AWAY FROM ME... TO FALSE AND SINFUL IDOLS "

His monkeys shifted uncomfortably, glancing at each other with wary or distrustful eyes.

He did not need the monkeys to search to know that already many had forsaken him.

Turned to the depths and unsavory pits.

He felt it in their pathetic, greedy, dark souls.

Anger spilling over into his amplified grand voice, he spat.

"YOU BEINGS UNDER MINE WINGS HATH COMMITTED GRIEVOUS SINS."

The monkeys looked extremely uneasy, some were even backing away, beginning to split and run.

"FOOLS," He hissed, flicking his limbs effortlessly, the fleeing monkeys were hit with a pure white light, turning the fleeing humanoids into charred corpses.

Unperturbed by the smoking remains he continued, the remaining monkeys either looking scared or exultant.

"YOU HATH LET THE DARK AND TAINT SPREAD UNCHECKED, ITS VILE INFLUENCE CORRODING THE HEART OF MAN EVEN NOW."

Hearing his words the more fearful monkeys looked around desperately, searching for an escape.

There would be no escape.

"ON THIS CYCLE AND EVERY FROST HENCEFORTH A GREAT PURGE SHALL TAKE PLACE, ONLY THOSE WHOM HATH FAITH IN THEIR LORD SHALL BE SPARED."

He flexed a limb, the material plane warping and buckling like wet paper.

The land writhing and twisting, nightmares crawled, slithered, shambled, and jerked, falling from the shifting tears in the sky to land among the monkeys.

As the nightmares raised their misshapen mouths and disproportionate bodies, the screaming began.

"ONLY THE FAITHFUL SHALL LIVE."

Staggering and lumbering toward the people the monstrosities attacked, tearing the populace to pieces, only those on their knees praying, were passed by.

The very first frost purge had come to the world and many more were to come.