In the ancient age known as the mythic era, higher beings existed in great numbers across all of reality and every iteration of reality. In the modern age of Althos, only two such creatures exist; the being for whom the age is named, and Ravanthan, the resurrected spirit queen who was rescued from the clutches of Akamal's vestige, a phantom of an ancient and truly wicked deity.

In the days before the end of the mythic era, strange events plagued the cosmos. Until recently these events were mysterious and largely unknown to Althos, aside from through the memories of extraplanar beings so incredibly old they remembered those events, or through the memories of Ravanthan herself, memories Althos took into himself the moment he met her back when she was an enemy of his.

That said, the universe recently opened up to Althos, and one of the ways that the universe had opened up to him was that he had recently acquired a powerful ability to safely wander through time, immune to things that would harm or detect him while he explored the universe before he was born.

The first time he ever sat down and explored time was when he was wandering through Infernius and to do so he sat down and actually scried on an event in the past, rather than visiting directly even though the system told him he'd be safe if he went into the past. This is that event: one fatal encounter three angel lords had with a strange, anomalous being unlike any they had ever encountered.

Three beings flew in tight formation through the vast, dark space between worlds. They were three members of the ancient and cosmically powerful race known as angel lords. They flew at the edge of a galaxy, merely a few thousand light-years away from a strange and dramatic battle, between unthinkably powerful higher beings, one which they, as angel lords, were sworn to interrupt and break up so as to maintain some sort of cosmic order.

Unsanctioned fighting between higher beings could destabilize entire galaxies, or worse. Higher beings had the power to destroy or create entire galaxies, and during a more chaotic period in the universe's history, such fights were responsible for the creation of vast voids in the universe, empty places where no stars or galaxies would come into existence for over half a million years before one deity would fill them with life, stars, galaxies, and planets again.

Now, in the middle of the mythic era, there were rules and laws in place that facilitated even violent interactions between higher beings for the sake of protecting the fabric of reality. Those foolish enough to break the rules were punished and held accountable by angel lords, or rarely, when necessary, such as when fighting between deities broke out, gods themselves.

One of the angel lords, the tallest of the trio, held a spear in one hand and a book in the other. From his back jutted three pairs of golden wings, with each wing extending over three meters in length. He was clothed in the metal armor of a warrior from an undeveloped world, and yet his metal armor retained its flexibility, not even fusing as other pieces of metal might in deep space, due to his divine aura.

The shortest member of the trio held a massive mallet in one hand and a shield in the other. She had just two pairs of wings, and she wore robes on her golden, metal-like skin. Her face, exposed to view by her lack of armor, revealed her annoyance and impatience. She had distinctly dwarven features, for reasons she'd never reveal to either of her fellow angel-lords, even though they had agreed to watch each other's backs until they made it to the battlefield.

The being who stood in the middle of the three, as far as height went, had multiple pairs of arms and each pair of arms wielded a gigantic bow. He had four pairs of wings jutting from his back, and his facial features were vaguely elven. His skin was comparable to liquid silver.

The three warriors flew in silence, not even communicating telepathically, though they certainly could have. They were too consumed by their other thoughts to bother speaking to each other. Each of them could hear and feel the fighting going on in the distance, thousands of light-years away from themselves. They could hear the distant screams of higher beings seeking to kill each other, and wielding vast, potentially galaxy-destroying powers to do so.

Each flap of their aetherium wings gave them a burst of speed that was multiple times the speed of light. These bursts of speed allowed them to cross truly vast distances in seconds, or minutes, and it didn't take them long to exit even the furthest reaches of the solar system they had just been in and enter the vastness of interstellar space.

Their angelic eyes were well-suited to seeing across cosmic distances and as they began to close in on a strange, distant battle, their eyes beginning to make out a frightening scene in the distance, they felt their divine blood run cold. Ahead of them was not a battle. It was something worse.

A truly vast distance from them they could see a strange creature clashing, single-handedly, against numerous other beings. Their eyes struggled to make sense of what they were witnessing, but if they had been pressed to describe the monstrosity they were witnessing they'd have begun by describing it as a creature made half of light and half of darkness.

The being had the proportions of a humanoid of truly vast size. It was in fact larger than entire planets. It was made of both truly radiant, impossibly so, light, and utter darkness, and its body appeared to be cut in half, with one half radiating the impossibly luminous light and the other half radiating sinister darkness.

It was floating of its own power, ignoring any gravitational pull, or worse, perhaps it was able to generate its own gravitational pull. Either way, the strange monster did not need to resist any sort of physical laws to move through outer space. Numerous higher beings, some smaller than it, and others larger than it were floating in space around it and surrounding it.

Frighteningly, other higher beings were also floating in space, idly, emptiness visible in their unmoving, unblinking gazes As the angel lords drew closer to the creature they noticed something alarming about the higher beings that floated lazily around the creature: they themselves were still but they were slowly drifting towards the monster, which lent credence to the idea that it generated its own gravity, one all three of the angel lords were smart enough to theorize on their own prior to noticing the corpses drifting towards the creature.

The angels watched as the enemies of the creature began to launch a number of attacks at once. One, a dragon-like eldritch being with ruby scales, unleashed a blistering blast of divine fire, one so potent that it made a sun look pitiful in comparison, at the strange being but in response, all it did was silently conjure a black hole in front of itself which drew in the flames, rendering them harmless, and then vanished.

Another, an archfey of blizzards and swords, was positioned behind the being. She rose a hand above her head and roared as she conjured an intense blizzard wherein each snowflake was a sharp sword and hurled it at her enigmatic enemy.

The being didn't even bother to turn, instead the moment the blizzard was almost close enough to touch the being there was an enormous flash of light, one far brighter than any solar flare from any sun the angel lords had ever seen, the ensuing light covering not only the blizzard but also the archfey herself. The light blinded the angel lords for a few moments, but when they regained their vision they were distraught at what they saw.

The archfey of blizzards and swords was still and her glowing eyes were dimming. She was slowly floating through the emptiness of space, her body beginning to turn ever so slightly in the direction of the strange being. This was the moment that caused the angel lords to stop being so individualistic and to turn to stare at each other.

"What in the heavens is that thing?" One of them, the one with the mallet and shield, asked. There was an undercurrent of fear in her voice, one that each of her companions noticed, which only amplified their own fear.

"I do not know. That said we must fulfill our duty. We must engage that being, prevent it from doing any more damage." The tallest angel replied, his eyes taking in the sight of his partner's anxiety.

"We must report this creature. It is... unlike anything I, and perhaps anyone, has ever seen." Replied, with characteristic coldness and rationality, the angel who held and wielded multiple pairs of bows. His calmness helped Dazielle regain some of her bravery since he was evidently the least perturbed by the strange creature they were approaching.

"Do you think it is... perhaps a leftover creation of the eldritch domain? Some sort of ancient warrior who was allowed to fester and grow in power in a distant, corrupted star?" Harut, the spear and book-wielding angel lord asked. He glanced at Appoloin, one of the few angel lords of knowledge.

Appoloin's face was a stoic mask, keeping whatever emotions he felt mostly under the surface. A bit of fear was visible in his violet eyes, but even he couldn't keep his emotions entirely hidden from Harut, an angel lord of emotions, and Dazielle, an angel lord of truth and warfare. When he spoke he was calm, but his words revealed his concern anyway.

"I suggest, before we engage that creature, be it an outer god or perhaps another, new sort of nightmare birthed from the depths of a place like the Heart of Darkness or Zenith, that we send messages to the others. This creature does not seem to be phased by attacks, and that light ability might not kill us in one go, but we just don't know enough about that being to take any chances." Appoloin uttered, his words cold but rational. His colleagues nodded at him, grateful for his sense of stillness even in the face of the fear this creature made him feel.

Beings that could attack with light were among the worst creatures to have to contend with. Light attacks didn't miss, and for the few creatures who could dodge the first volley of light-based attacks, there was always the possibility that the light itself was a homing attack and would come and hit someone from behind. Not to mention the fact that light attacks burned through lesser enemy obstacles, meaning that objects like shields were usually useless against them.

However, this creature was also capable of manipulating, or at least summoning, and canceling black holes which was also a strange ability. Appoloin didn't want to run afoul of a creature who could use, as a defense mechanism, a power so great that light itself couldn't escape it.

Even as Appoloin attempted to view the creature rationally and to try and make sense of what he knew about it so far, the creature ignored several other attacks from nearby higher beings and indifferently launched its own. The higher-being-level monstrous entity hurled more bursts of light at its foes and freely used black holes to defend itself, which was an annoyingly clever defense for a being of the creature's size since they could effectively devour projectiles both huge and small.

Each of the angel lords sent telepathic messages to their closest followers and allies explaining the situation to them. And each of the angel lords told their loved ones that if they didn't see each other again they loved them. This frightened their loved ones, but the angel lords were willful and stopped replying to messages when they began to approach the half luminous and half pitch-black being so that perhaps, just maybe, they could see their loved ones again in a matter of hours or days.

The creature would ignore the trio of angel lords until they were close enough for the monster's dangerous aura to take ahold of them. When they were they felt themselves want to fight and kill something, which was a strange and abrupt feeling for them to feel.

The angel lords stiffened in response to the alien feeling and began to shake it off, which was the first and thus far only thing that had spurred the creature to real action. The creature pointed a hand at the trio and each one of them froze in fear, as its hand began to exude white light. The light quickly spread out of its hand, and filled the space between it and them, and then came to surround them as well.

The trio was, at this point, frozen in fear, but when the end came for the trio they felt a strange sort of calmness wash over them. In the nanoseconds between the light touching them and it killing them like it had the archfey of blizzards and swords, they made their peace and felt grateful that they had messaged their allies about the light-wielding creature. They only hoped someone proved strong enough to best the being someday so that whatever foul agenda it had in mind that required fighting and killing higher beings were foiled.