The great games can be watched or coached from Above, but they can only be played from Below.

- The Lore of Above and Below, Verse 17

Chaos awoke to find herself propped upright against a stone wall, her body aching. The air was dusty and stale. It was dark. There were no stars, no hint of distant fires. Not even a lonely firefly. It was as if Chaos had been swallowed by agreat beast and lay in the black hollow of its belly. This was of no concern to Chaos. She was a creature of the deep and the night.

(Mostly so that she could do naughty or dangerous things without her mother, the Sun, worrying about her.)

She groaned and reached up to scratch her nose, but her head tumbled forward, panting her face on the hard stone. The reason was clear: she had no body to support her. She was a head and a neck, nothing more.

“Where is my— oh, of course. Dammit, Order! But I should have expected that, I suppose.”

The pantheon lived for powerplays, intrigue, conflict, and treachery. Mostly they used the mortals Below as proxies in their games, but direct violence wasn’t unknown Order had fought Chaos in the heavens Above, and he had won. And as Above, so Below. Order’s mortal followers would be out to get Chaos.

It was a worry.

But it wasn’t her first concern. The itch in her nose had gotten worse. She needed fingers. Claws. Lots of them. Chaos bit the inside of her cheek until she could taste blood. She spat onto the stone, and her spittle sizzled.

“Mana gather and flesh flow, I remake myself in the mortal form of something that really knows how to scratch,” she said.

Thin red lines of mana flowed into her from the darkness, filling her. Her head exploded into a red mist that coalesced into a bloated abdomen. A dozen thin segmented legs sprouted from her waist, and tufts of thick white hair grew over her body. An angular face emerged from her form, eyes splitting in dozens of dark orbs above a small, sharp nose.

“Come on,” Chaos growled. “Come hurry up!”

A segmented leg emerged from her torso. The leg ended in a talon which Chaos brought down on her face with great satisfaction, scratching so hard that she drew blood. Two long arms burst forth, and she used them, too, and the three that followed. She chased the itch from her nose across her face, down her neck, onto her back, twisting her long legs to ensure it could not escape.

“Ah,” she moaned with pleasure. “Ah! Good! Good! What am I, anyway? A giant spider or…oh, no, not that! Dammit.”

She was a tahnago. Her body was a hybrid of walrus and spider, with a fat nose, tusks, eight eyes, and chelicerae around her mouth. She held up one of her long legs: it was covered in mottled fur, scales, and spines, all an unpleasantly brown color. A pair of humanoid arms extended from the middle of her chest, ending in and stumpy fingers.

“No!”

Chaos wasn’t a particularly vain goddess, but even tahnago didn’t find tahnago attractive - how the species survived was a mystery, but not one anyone cared to investigate. Even worse than their appearance, however, was their reputation as a race of fools.

(It hadn’t always been this way. The tahnago race had once been so powerful that their king had captured a goddess of the seventh tier, an ocean nymph named Current, causing great consternation Above. Chaos hadn’t noticed, as she didn’t care what happened to the rabble of the lower tiers, but the abduction had been the only topic of conversation Above. The tahnago planned to use Current’s power to raise an army of golem spiders to conquer the world Below. This plan lasted about three days. Unbeknownst to the tahnago, Current and Bloodshed were in the ‘off’ phase a longstanding relationship. Seeing the opportunity for a grand romantic gesture, Bloodshed rescued Current and rained fire and brimstone on every tahnago city. Harpies descended on their armies, giants rose up against their fortresses, and the tahnago survivors were scattered across the seven continents. By the time Chaos was imprisoned a few centuries later, Current was shacked up with a mortal musician, Bloodshed was dating Death, and what remained of the tahnago race was mostly remembered as the punchline in a series of bad jokes like Q: How many tahnago does it take to light a fire? A: Two, one to start the fire and one to fall in it.)

“Well, at least nobody saw that,” Chaos said, as she scratched until her nose bled. “Now, mana flow and body stretch, let me become a great serpent!”

A few lines of mana flickered in the air around her, but they faded to nothing, and she remained a tahnago. She tried again but had the same disappointing result.

“What. In. The. Seven layers. Of Above,” Chaos said, spitting each word. “Where! Is! My! Power!”

In the Age of Mythology, when the universe was new, she had danced through many bodies, changing from dragon to elf to mermaid in an instant. No form had been denied to her. Even after the Lore was created, limiting the pantheon’s powers and ushering in the Age of Legends, a simple physical transformation had been easy for Chaos.

“But now I’m as feeble as a goddess of the seventh tier,” she complained. “No, worse, I’m as weak as a mortal mage, stuck in one body. Dammit, Order. Kill me if you can, but don’t embarrass me like this!”

Her power was faint, less than an echo of an echo. She was stuck as a tahnago. There was a bright side, she supposed. If any agents of Order heard rumors of her new dungeon, they would assume it was led by an idiot tahnago and not worth worrying about.

“Well…” Chaos said, sighing. “Let there be light, at least.”

She spat a globule of fire onto the floor in front of her. It hit the stone and burst into the form of a tiny, dancing fire elemental.

“Be born, be bright, light my throne room”! Chaos told them.

The elemental flickered playfully, then spit and split again, until a dozen little fire elementals were leaping across the floor. They spread out until they reached stone walls and began to climb, wedging themselves into cracks and crevasses, casting a wild, flickering light that illuminated Chaos’s surroundings. She was in a cave. Its stalactites were short and grey, and boring. The walls were granite, strong but plain, without any suggestion of crystal veins or embedded fossils. It was a plain, dusty place. But safe, she thought. There were no signs of mortals, not even a footprint in the dust. It was likely that the only person who knew of the cave’s existence was Form, the fourthborn, who held domain over the bones of the world and never got involved in family politics.

“This will do nicely,” Chaos said.

Chaos needed caves. The creatures of Chaos – and she would be the first to admit this – were easily distracted. They forgot to reinforce tunnels, tended to knock out load-bearing columns, and generally ignored blueprints or building codes. Their creations were organic rather than elegant, flexible rather than safe. Caves provided protection and space safely.

“How long has it been since my fall?” she demanded of her fire elementals.

The elementals flickered and waved, desperate to please but unable to help. They had been born of Chaos only minutes before and could never know more than her. No matter how much time had passed, however, Order would still have his mortal followers out looking for Chaos. She needed an army. Traps. Magical weapons. Beasts. A better throne, too. One with cushions, she thought. And cupholders. But first, she needed minions.

Chaos bit the tip of her finger until she could taste blood. She spat on the ground, and her spit sizzled on the stone.

“I am Chaos, the firstborn. Seek me out, my loyal creatures!”

Her shout echoed through her throne room and caverns beyond, entering the pattern of the very world itself. Creatures containing elements of chaos would feel the call tug at their souls, pulling them towards the dungeon where they would work, fight, and die in service to Chaos. Mortals would come, and great beasts, too, the fiercer the better. But that would take time. Her power was like a lantern; while it was still dim, it would attract little attention.

The first to respond to her call were creatures that lived close to the throne room. There was life in every corner of Below, even in the caves.

(Life was a particularly creative and hardworking deity, possessed of a stubborn dedication only matched her twin, Death.)

Chaos could feel weak creatures approaching her, driven more by hunger than bravery. She could feel their tiny spirits as they got closer.

“Come forward!” Chaos said softly. “Bind, serve, grow strong.”

A swarm of rats entered the throne room, skirting the cavern walls. They were skinny, filthy creatures, all teeth and hunger.

“Come closer,” Chaos whispered.

They inched forward uncertainly.

“Closer!”

The rats crawled over Chaos, and she felt a surge of energy as the tiniest fragment of her soul flowed down into the little creatures, binding them to her. She let her mind take over their bodies, seeing with their eyes, feeling the strength in their tiny legs, but she only maintained the link for a few seconds. Possession of minions was enjoyable, but their bodies were not strong enough to hold Chaos’s focus for long.

“You are pathetic,” Chaos said, a little disappointed.

Calling them pathetic was not an insult – or it was not only an insult – but also a classification. It was the name that Chaos gave to the lowest of the seven tiers of power, the tier which was rock bottom. The rats were small, feeble, and mindless.

But they were hers.

“Hello, my pets,” Chaos said as they formed a living blanket over her.

She let mana flow through her arms and into their tiny bodies. Not too much – they were so fragile – but enough that they began to grow, elongating until they were the size of cats. Their fur changed into a patchwork of red and white, their teeth grew long. They were no longer pathetic; Chaos had boosted their ascension to the next level of power: lame. The rats squeaked in appreciation, climbing over Chaos, gently nipping her fingers and flesh.

“You beautiful things,” Chaos told them. “You lovely little creatures.”

The rats weren’t beautiful, or lovely, nor were they little anymore, but they were pleased that Chaos cared for them. They were not strong, but they were loyal. They would serve her well.

“And by such small steps my empire grows,” Chaos said with some satisfaction. “Now go and explore my new domain.”