He had woken up early that morning, but despite his dearest wishes to make it to school on time for once, he had still been forced awake two hours late by his sister yelling “LET’S GET THIS BREAD” into his ear like some kind of stereophone. Sprinting by his stupidly grinning sister’s side with a piece of toast dangling haphazardly between his lips, with the annoying midsummer sun smirking down at the two of them, suddenly, Adam B Windsley was made aware of a very strange feeling. Like a feely-feeling. And then, as soon as it had appeared, it was gone, along with just about everything else. The sun, the street, the suburbs, his sister, his vision… Poof. Gone. Fear gripped his heart, and grief painted his mind black.

With a surprised, somewhat confused wriggling, Adam, or as he was known here, Antenora, awoke from his strangely nostalgic dream. He could barely remember the last time he had slept, but, as it always was that when he did sleep, he was plagued by this one, recurring dream. Or, perhaps, was the correct word “nightmare”? Nevertheless, he never did enjoy recalling his last day on Earth, before this whole Lutum business and all. Especially his sister brought him nothing but bittersweet longings for those short years he spent on his old world.

Sighing inwardly, Adam stood up out of his comfy armchair to stretch a little. The innumerable tentacles surrounding the extrusion most resembling a head stretched out into the air, trembling a little. Adam was a peculiar creature, unrivalled in form and power. The main colour scheme seemed to be a grisly, sickening combination of black, dark green and purple rings, all of them constantly in movement as if his whole body was covered by miasma in the middle of hurling up fifteen half-digested yams.

However, the most disturbing and sickening part of his visuals was hardly the colours he took on, but instead the mere shape of his body. He had the general shape of a nobleman wearing a cape of sorts, but it was so much more than that. His head was like that of a slug, with large, beady black staring eyes sitting unmoving on his “face”, a little crown made out of small tentacles situated atop his head. Surrounding his head were about a dozen slug-like tentacles of varying length, each one of them curled up into tense spirals for the sake of visibility and mobility. Below these were a smooth, slimy torso, not made up of any particular amount of tentacles. Finally, where his legs would have been, a mass of writing, spiralling tentacles created a mass upon which he stood. Had it not been such a disgusting sight, one might have found his overall countenance to be awe-inspiring in nature, like a well-dressed aristocrat.

That was not the case, simply because of one fact: his size. As much as he had tried using the Lengthening spell, he could not get any smaller than nine meters in size. He would have lamented this further, but as of the last five hundred years or so, his need to look human had waned at approximately the same speed as he had grown to loathe humans.

Sitting back down, Adam put on a pair of reading glasses and removed a small book from the colossal bookshelf he kept next to his comfy chair. This space, his reading corner, was, at this time, one of his few delights. Each of the books lining the ten-meter tall bookshelf was made for humans, meaning that the number of books he had just in this corner of the extensive cave he made his abode was well enough to stock a regular human library. And this was without mentioning that most, if not all of the books he kept, both here and in his personal library, were mostly about Magick, whether it be simple Grimoires teaching individual spells or various collections of recent research data.

Settling back into his chair, he was surprised to hear the little bell signifying that one of the servants serving him and his “friends” had something for him. Adam did not possess a mouth with which to answer this request, but he did know a couple of spells that would allow for easy communication. In this case, he did not even need that, but instead simply lifted a nearby rock and let it fall again, signifying “yes”.

“Sir Antenora? You summoned me?” a small, cowl-clad human asked, poking their head around a rocky corner. Oh, right, he did actually call on a servant.

“What’s the situation on finding a Humanification Grimoire?” Adam asked by temporarily linking their minds through telepathy. The little human shuddered at the slimy sensation that always accompanied a mental link, and although she no longer felt that sudden need to pack her bags and fly to Pteria on a gryphon, it was still far from enjoyable.

“Yes sir Antenora sir, we have located it, would it please you if I fetched it?” the little human asked, still speaking so-called manually. Adam felt a surge of joy course through him. ‘

Yes! Finally!!’ he exclaimed gleefully to himself, without showing it in any way. “Yes, do. Where was it?” Adam asked the servant curiously. She averted her gaze, looking down at an especially interesting rock.

“We-, uh… it was under Miss Caïna’s couch, sir, it seems to have been mispla-”

“It was where now?”

“A-, ah, p-, please, sir! One of the former servants must have lost it when you requested it! I was-, we weren’t even born back then, sir!!” the little human please helplessly. She knew fully well that Antenora, the Evil God of Disgust and Despair, was far more forgiving than the other ones. If they(she) had misplaced a single one of Judecca’s silver coins, each and every one of the servant staff would have been executed on the spot already.

Sighing internally, Adam repressed any ill intent he could possibly house and packed it away into a cold, damp corner of his mind he didn’t like thinking about. “It’s-, it’s alright. I’m in a good mood. So long as you bring me the Grimoire I’ll forgive you, oh, and, uh, don’t tell anybody, right?” Adam told the girl telepathically, resigned to being “the nice one” of the five Evil Gods. The little cowled human nodded fiercely before sprinting off without so much as a bow and a farewell. Insolent little pricks. This is why he didn’t like humans.

Adam tried to focus back on his little book documenting Menicual Poesiusci’s latest discoveries regarding the origins of Magick, but it was impossible. Poesiusci had a way of explaining the most interesting and fun parts of Magick-to-energy conversion in a way that would make even the most avid and passionate of scholars, such as Adam, fall dead asleep. Maybe that’s what had happened before?... Plus, Adam had already disproved many of the statements Poesiusci had based his thesis on, and he had even published them under his pen-name Adam B. Windsley, so there was no reason for Poesiusci to disregard it!

‘What a hack’ Adam thought as he tried to focus on the part where Poesiusci tried to explain that it was totally possible to convert a Beast of the Spirit into a Beast of the World using the proper methods, but as a Beast of the Spirit himself, Adam considered the very idea ridiculous. He couldn’t see it himself, but just out of his line of sight, the little fleshy crown atop his head was wriggling and shivering in nervous excitement. When he heard the dainty yet quick-paced steps of a human, he slowly grew so excited he almost hopped right out of his chair to meet her.

It wasn’t her. A large, burly man, also wearing a cowl, stepped into the mouth of the cave and did the formal salute, proper of meeting one of the five Evil Gods. The salute consisted of three quick movements, index- and middle finger would swoosh over the eyes, then the ears, before finally clasping together with all the other fingers into a praying position. This took less than a second for the seasoned veteran servant, and it always somewhat surprised Adam whenever he saw it executed so perfectly. This man, Grerio, was Caïna’s personal servant, just as how the girl from before had been his. What was her name?... Lindei? Something like that.

“Sir Evil God Antenora sir!” Grerio boomed from his lowly position, his voice and face stern and unchanging even in the face of the disgusting creature that was Adam. Adam, unwilling to make any sort of mental contact with this muscle-brained fool, simply nodded for him to continue.

“Sir Evil God Antenora, your humble followers have collected for the weekly ritual!” Grerio continued, unfazed by the silent nature that surrounded Adam. Weekly ritual? Oh, yeah, that should be around this time, right? Adam always forgot the time since it was always equally dark in his humble little abode, but the ritual was one of the few things that always took place at the same time of the week, allowing him to orient his time. ‘So it was already Sunday, huh?’

But… what about the Humanization Grimoire?... Grerio, who only saw Antenora when his own servant, little Miss Lindei, was displaced, was completely unable to place the expression on Antenora’s face, which was a small pout. Man, he could never be left alone, could he? Deflating a little, he raised one of the two arm-shaped tentacles and waved to Grerio dismissively. The servant may not have been able to pick up on any sorts of facial expressions the disgustingly writhing mass of slimy tentacles before he did, but he could understand a dismissal when he saw it.

“Sir!” he roared, did the little salute, bowed, and left without much fuss.

See, that’s how a servant should behave! Adam sighed internally. Yeah, it was about time, wasn’t it? Getting out of his beloved chair that he honestly never wanted to leave, he turned and walked over to the one other exit in his reading corner, obviously not counting the secret escape hatch underneath his chair. Taking a deep breath, Adam allowed his tensely knotted body to collapse like a twirled-up bundle of spaghetti, and silently manoeuvred his two clawed tentacle arms to create two little Magick circles in the air, one for Float, and one for Magnify. His loose, tentacle-ridden body quickly floated up off the ground, and with rhythmic, routinely movements, he floated through the air and outside, into the Antenore Ritual Chamber, where the preparations were already complete.

Floating into the large, 100-meter wide dome-like cave, Adam was instantly met with hundreds of thousands of cowled men and women, along with hundreds of lit candles, which weren’t even barely enough to light up the colosseum-sized hemisphere. Sticking to the roof with well-practised sneakiness, Adam waited until either A, one of his “Followers” noticed his presence or B, he grew to a size so large they could no longer ignore him. This week, it was the former, with him quickly being noticed by Superior Cultist Fernigus Platos, who pointed at him with an eager, crooked finger. All of the High Cultists by his side immediately followed his gaze, their bodies tensing up in fear and excitement from what they saw.

At the very top of the dome-shaped cave, a vague, writing silhouette could be made out, gradually growing in size. The only things visible beyond the eerie movements were the slowly moving, somewhat luminous splotches of purple adorning his body like the ominous characteristic markings of the blue-ringed octopus. A silent yet visible frenzy quickly spread through the thousand-odd cultists that were squeezed together like herrings in a can, and the whole bunch of them quickly fell to their hands and knees in a religious sort of greeting Adam had seen way too many times by now. Some of the more devoted, long-term cultists quickly did what Adam had personally dubbed the “No Evil” salute, and when Adam’s body had finally grown to cover the entire roof, he cancelled the Magnify spell, his current size and shape being like that of a thunderous blackish-green cloud, his every slug-like tentacle wriggling and squirming involuntarily.

The High Cultists, including Fernigus Platos, at seeing his growth end, quickly stood up as to not incur his wrath, raised their hands to the skies, and started chanting in Latin, or, as it was known here, Demonic. Adam still, after six hundred years of being stuck in this place, still had no idea why there was Latin in Lutum when all the other languages were completely foreign to him. Adam had quickly learnt that it was pretty boring to pay attention to the chant instead, so instead, he simply observed the actions of his Followers. Each and every one of them had raised their hands to the skies, and unnoticeable to any non-Sorcerer, small clumps of Magick left their hands like the animated lumps in a lava lamp, before all collecting into one giant concentrated mass of Magick collected just below Adam’s humongous body.

The cultists would often compete over who could sacrifice the most Magick to their Evil God Antenora, which would, without fail, cause some of the newer cultists to lose their lives from Magicka depletion. Those who could give the most Magick were immediately appointed High Cultists, no matter how long they had been apart of the cult, but the Superior Cultist, who at this time was Fernigus Platos, a famous scholar of the Illusion school of Magick, had to be appointed by vote, with Adam personally deciding whether the Cult was correct in their decision. Adam didn’t really care much for his cultists, unlike his fellow Evil Gods, so he had pretty much just agreed to whoever they appointed. He had been massively hyped that one time one of his idol Sorcerers had joined his cult, and had he had the Humanification spell, he would definitively ask for his signature, but he didn’t, so he had been forced to simply observe him from the roof, silently admiring the way he summoned his Magick.

Thinking back on that time, Adam almost forgot that the next step in the Ritual was about to begin. The last of the cultists had sent up as much Magick as they possibly could, and they were all staring at him expectantly. God, he hated those stares. Way back when, before this whole Lutum deal, he had loved getting attention, but now… ‘Let’s just get this over with.’

One of his main two tentacles which had two small claws on it quickly whipped out from its position of lying flat against his body and touched the concentrated mass of Magick, and as soon as he touched it, the whole thing was sucked into his slimy body. His enormous mass of tentacles spasmed at the sudden influx of Magick, and Adam recognized that this might be one of the biggest meals he’d ever had. With this, he’d last at least three, four weeks without needing another meal.

At this size, Adam was actually more tentacle than the main body, his near-humanoid slimy upper body sticking out of the writing cloud-like mass of tentacles like some sort of Gladios, the tentacles surrounding his head and neck handing down over his face like long, slimy hair, his dead, beady eyes peeking out and observing without much interest. If he ever felt threatened he could just retreat into his impenetrable mass of tentacles, but he had never actually felt that threatened, not even when a bunch of assassins had infiltrated the ranks of his cultists and attacked him before he could even have his meal. If he’d been a Beast of the World he would have eaten them alive, but since he wasn’t, and he also didn’t have a mouth, he enjoyed himself by just beating the ever-loving crap out of them and consuming their souls, or the entirety of their Magick, instead. Good times.

The second he had finished his meal, he cast Diminish and the highest level of Invisibility, “Anonymous”, which not even a Divine Sorcerer of Trickery(Illusion) could see through and melded into the shadows, slowly retreating to his reading corner without anybody noticing him. What followed this, ritual-wise was a banquet and a council meeting of all the High Cultists, but Adam never wanted to attend that, ever.

With a rare enthusiasm, Adam quickly retreated to his reading corner, and, as he had hoped, he found a small, black Grimore on his chair, the corners adorned with gold and the title written in silver. It was made for human hands, which was sort of ironic, making it microscopic to the humongous Adam, but he was used to it. Gingerly picking up the tome, he grabbed his reading glasses and sat himself down to study.

For the next three days, all Adam did was read, over and over again, making sure he understood every part correct, that no part had eluded his manic gaze. And, eventually, he felt confident enough that he could pull it of on the first try. It was, surprisingly enough, quite similar to the Body Manipulation and the Mistify spells, but with an added human twist. But, for obvious reasons, he could not let anyone, Cultist Evil God or Servant, know that he had taken the form of a human. Not that he was much for humans in the first place, but… It would be nostalgic if anything. He had wanted this for hundreds of years, hadn’t he? So why was he hesitating now?...

“Sir Antenora, sir? How may I help?” his personal servant, Lindei was her name, asked in her best customer service voice. She was still unwilling to stand in the middle of the doorway like the more experienced servants, but her confidence would build. She’d dare face him fully in a few years, and if not, she could always be replaced. Adam quickly created a mental link, and she shuddered in disgust but did not voice her opinion.

“I will be experimenting with a spell during the coming days until the next Ritual. Please make sure that no human or god enters this room, if not, I will personally flay you myself,” Adam casually threatened. He didn’t like touching humans, but if it was for the sake of punishment, he had nothing against getting hands-on. The little girl shivered at the callousness in his voice, but nodded nonetheless, quickly turning around to guard the other end of the cave that connected to his reading corner. He would, of course, erect a sizable Magick wall, but he was sure that Lindei would guard to the best of her abilities nonetheless.

Now then, to the matter at hand. The spell was simple enough. Mumbling the correct movements and demonic cantos to himself, he easily formed the correct Magick circle, which shone an ominous light, and for a second, Adam felt very dumb. He was the foremost expert on all things Magick and Sorcery, and this simple little thing had eluded him for all these years? How preposterous. The Spell quickly took effect, and Adam could feel something strange forming within his chest, like a lump in the throat except far more tangible. He was a Beast of the Spirit. The physical was beyond him. So what was this weight inside of him?...

Falling to his figurative knees, he soon realized what it was, when his smooth chest burst open, allowing a small, unmoving child to splatter into the floor, a long, slimy tentacle connecting it’s naval to Adam’s chest. For a few seconds, Adam could only stare at the blond little thing before his head started feeling strangely light, and in the next second, he was no longer there, but instead here, in the child. He looked up at his body. Slimy, disgusting and sickening, he finally understood how people felt when they saw him, and he was repulsed. Nonetheless, he knew what he had to do. With a few coordinated movements in the air using his very much human right arm, he formed the Spell circle for “Ingest”, feeling the power flow into him along with the entirety of his body.

His head was swimming, and his former body was gone. He felt strange and unreal like his body was a balloon filled with mucus. With unsteady legs, he tried to stand, only to fall down once more, unable to understand how his joints worked anymore. His chair, his comfy chair made of solid rock, was so big and large, and the Humanification Grimoire was lying lazily on it, out of reach, yet now perfectly befitting his size. He’d no longer need glasses!

For the next eight days, he would learn yet again how to move his body. He found out pretty quick that although he looked human enough on the outside, if he hurt himself, as that could be found on the inside was a never-ending stream of green-and-purple slugs. Not tentacles, not mucus, just… slugs. It was disgusting, but he couldn’t exactly do anything about it. So he practised walking and moving and holding things and moving his little hand-tentacles and doing spells. His Magick was nowhere near as potent as it was in his “real” form, but at least he could still do it.

However, the one thing he could never learn to do was talking. Moving his mouth-lips, making noises with them… no, that way beyond him. And, plus, his body was still around the size of a nine-year-old child, and no matter what Magicks he used, it could not be changed. But otherwise, he was sure he would be indiscernible from a regular human… child. The effectiveness of the spell would soon be made clear, as his barrier finally dissipated, which in itself was a testament to how powerful a barrier it actually was since most high-level barriers would only last a day at most. Nevertheless, the moment it fell, a little girl of 14 winters at most ran into the reading corner, her hood had fallen down to show her pale, freckled face, her curly red hair bobbing passionately as she hurried through the room, her icy blue eyes erratically scanning for any sign of the Evil God Antenora, her master and lord.

But, instead of finding the nine-meter tall abomination of a creature sitting atop his stone throne, as usual, she found the room mysteriously empty, apart from one little thing. With his back to the endless bookshelf, a small, naked, black-haired and green-eyed boy sat perched, a tome way to big for him opened midway in his lap.

“Wh-, who are you?! What have you done with sir Antenora??!?” Lindei shouted at the boy, pointing a trembling, accusing finger at him. He didn’t show any visible emotions, but she could sense he was confused. The boy opened his mouth for a second, as if to say something, but snapped it shut the moment he did so. Lindei could swear she had seen something strange in there. She wasn’t sure what, but it had seemed as if his mouth was a portal to a realm filled with endless greenish purple-blotted slugs. Wait… purple blotted? A familiar disgusting sensation spread through her mind.

“Lindei, you mustn’t tell of this to anyone,” she could hear that familiar monotone voice whisper directly into her mind.

“S-, Sir Antenora?! What have you done to yourself??” Lindei questioned frantically, her hands waving in the air as if to create some sort of Magick circle to dispel whatever Magick he had cast upon herself. If that was the case, it didn’t work. All of his followers and servants had to be somewhat proficient in Magick, but Lindei had never been much of an Oracle, so her hapless flailing did nothing. Standing up, Adam started preparing a new barrier. Lindei quickly covered her reddening face, trying her damndest not to look.

“S-, sir Antenora, please put on some clothes-!!” she almost demanded, ripping off her cloak to hand it to him. Adam stared at it for a second, his hands stopping in the tracks.

Lindei sighed in an extravagant, dramatic manner, before quickly unbuttoning the cloak and hanging it over his shoulders and buttoning it up for him.

‘...’ Adam didn’t know what to say.

“Geez, you can’t just wander around naked sir, even for an Evil God that’s a bit much…” she mumbled, stepping back to quickly admire his new state. The cloak was pretty large, so it easily covered him almost down to his feet.

When had he last been treated like this?... Not like a monster, not like a God, not like a Beast of the Spirit… like a human.

“...Thank you,” he mumbled at her, one of his hands flailing up into the air to finish the barrier. And then, Lindei made a mistake. The second his pale, smooth-skinned little hand went into the air, she grabbed it, her fingers intertwining with his. The second Adam felt her skin, the second he was made aware of her touch, he backhanded her in the face. Her body flew through the air in a visible arc before bouncing a few times and landing by a stony wall. Adam knew he had broken a few bones there.

Holding out his hand, he realized he was trembling. His face twisted into a grimace. From beside the wall, Lindei groaned in pain. Adam couldn’t breathe, he hadn’t taken a breath in hundreds of years, and yet, he felt his breath hitch, his non-existent heart jump into his throat, panic gripping his soul, and with a mighty push, he moved his stone throne, and leapt into the crevice beneath, ran through the hidden escape hatch, and, tears in his eyes, he was outside, the cool evening air whipping his long, ebony hair across his face.

Shouldn’t have touched him. He couldn’t stand human touch. Why did she do that?...

He ran away.

And in all his years, he would only see the inside of that foul cavern once more.