The day started like any other, coming out of unconsciousness and waking up in the dark, on an unbelievably comfortable pile of grass. He groaned in discontent, running his hands over his shaggy dark hair. He always hated how it felt when he woke up... Michael didn’t want to wake up, didn’t even want to open his eyes, but eventually, after what seemed like a few minutes of peaceful rest, he decided to finally get up. Another day… Shit, the light wasn’t supposed to be coming from the window yet, right? He was probably late for school- Wait, that light wasn’t from his window… Why could he see the sky shining down on him?

...It probably didn’t matter, his half-asleep brain thought as he rolled over and took some extra grass to shove under his head. It wasn’t until a few minutes that his brain finally decided to slap itself awake. His eyes flew open as he realized what had happened. Some creature in the book’s keyhole had punctured him and caused him to pass out. He thought it was a key and got too close… and now he was outside. That was the only explanation he could come up with at the moment. Well, the other was his parents found his body and tossed him outside like garbage, but he was sure they were smarter than that.

Taking in his surroundings, he ingeniously came to the conclusion that he had no idea where he was. It was a long field of grass and flowers, with nothing but a few trees sprinkled every which way. In the distance a forest blocked his view. It was sorta beautiful, almost giving off an angelic serenity that calmed his heart... Oh FUCK. He was dead, wasn’t he? This was probably some terrifying midground between heaven and hell and he was waiting to be judged for his sins, wasn’t it? He stepped back, even though it meant nothing in a place this large. He didn’t want to be judged for his sins… He just got his shit together a year ago, he thought he had his whole life to pay for it…

He’d spent so much time making up for it but he was sure it wasn’t enough. Ah, damnit… He’d probably never see his family again. In his scared stupor, Michael fell backwards on something, landing on his back and making an imprint of himself in a small pile of flowers. The flowers were cute and soft-looking but did nothing to break his fall, which left him groaning in pain. His foot was still on top of the rock or whatever he fell on, and he looked down in anger at it.

It was the book. He yelped in fear as he scrambled away from it. That stupid book had been nothing but trouble for him, not to mention it was probably haunted or something. Maybe the weird black finger-key monster was even still around somewhere, ready to sink its venom into him once again. He quickly looked around in panic, checking around himself to see if the damn thing was prowling the area.

A closer look made him realize that not only was there no key, there was no hole to put it in, or the gem for that matter. There weren't even any marks signifying the gem’s removal, it’s spot was covered in the same old-timey details the rest was full with. How weird, was it even the same book? It looked the same… still the same giant book that had come out of nowhere, just a bit less expensive looking. Where was the red gem, by the way? His head started throbbing as he tried taking in the situation, didn’t he hear somewhere that getting knocked out was bad for the brain?

Not to mention the poison… his hand was still itchy from the bite. “Oh fuck! Hyah!” When he went to scratch his wrist he felt something hard on the palm. His head pulsed in pain as he at least found the answer to one of his questions. He had found where the ruby was. It was nowhere as big as before, about the size of his thumb, but it was still big enough to show glaringly on his arm. It looked bad, like someone welded it onto his skin, huge scars streaking around his hand. Forget itchiness, his hand should have been in unbearable pain.

This was a dream… it had to be. Everything was happening so fast, he almost couldn't perceive just how screwed he was. Almost. A scream wanted to come out, but he didn’t want to bring attention to himself here. This was unknown territory, not the nice city he’d grown up in. He took a seat on the floor, next to the giant book. It was the only thing he was familiar with now, albeit barely at all. It could open now, right? He thought, nearing his hand toward its cover. He immediately reeled back, curiosity was what got him into this in the first place. there was no reason to go any further unless he wanted more problems.

Besides, even if he wanted to take it with him, the thing was like five pounds! There was no way he’d want anything to do with it… None. Well, at least it took ten seconds of resistance before he convinced himself that not opening the book would be something he'd regret. He inched closer to it, not minding the grass strains on his pants. It had to be important, right? Would it do something if he actually tried to touch it? After various prods and pokes, he finally assumed the book was safe to open, and lifted the cover.

The rest of the book came along with it. The damn thing was still stuck, the only difference was there was nothing that looked like a lock anymore. This was stupid, he picked up the book to examine its surroundings, hoping for a way he could sort of... jam a fingernail into it. No luck. No matter how many times he tried slamming it sideways into the ground it didn’t seem to work either. After a bit more inhumane brutality on a piece of literature that he had just been terrified of, Michael finally gave it a rest, sinking to the floor. It had just occurred to him that maybe ruining the weird magic book probably wasn’t in his best interest.

Wait…magic... The gem! What an idiot, how could he forget. It was probably some dumb magic trick where he slammed the gem where it used to be and it unlocked something inside. He instantly tried it, slamming his palm in the center of the book with enough force to really dig the gem in there. For a second nothing happened, and Michael almost pulled his hand back in embarrassment. Then the book latched on to his middle finger, the same black sinewy material that the key was out of ripped out of the lacerated scars on his hand, pulsing and glowing a thick gray as he could feel something enter his body.

It was a sickening, pulsing pressure that made him want to pass out. He pulled back but reeled in pain as the black veins tightened from the strain. They were latched inside him, and unless he wanted to check how deep in him they were, he’d have to stay in place. Whatever it was pumping into him felt thick and hot, the veins in his arm going black. He could feel it burning all the way up to his biceps, his arm getting red and itchy from the foreign substance. He screamed, pathetically. He’d been through a lot of painful moments in his life, most with grace, but this one was too weird to react in any other way.

He breathed in and out, focusing on anything else but the book. It was something he learned in therapy to calm his anger issues, and he thought it’d work in this situation, as well. In. Out. Just like that piece of shit therapist he was forced to go to likedto bring up every time he… Ah, shit. Just keep breathing... Just as he was starting to get his bearings the book kicked it up a notch, making him choke on his spit. The black in his veins started spreading towards his chest, the place where his heart was. He knew he couldn’t have that, that was the last straw.

With a deep breath, he held the book down with his foot and pulled with all his might. The black veins in his arm shifting caused him such intense agony that he couldn’t even scream, only a pathetic whimper came from his mouth as he keeled over, vomit spewing all over the floor. What the fuck was this pathetic situation? Was he always this weak? He used to feel so big before, maybe he’d gotten soft in the last year. He was still pulling, albeit with less of a grip than before. He could feel them squirming… whatever that was inside him was alive, eating him from the inside out. It was eating him.

As that piece of information went inside him, his mind went on overdrive. Everything felt just a bit less painful, his thoughts were just a tad more simple. Everything slowed down, and for a moment he knew what he had to do. Keep this thing contained. With that thought, he began his plan. He tore off the left sleeve of his shirt, one of his favorite black button-ups. It was a bit difficult without a hand but with the help of his mouth, he managed to tighten it around his bicep, squeezing as tightly between his arm and teeth as he could to prevent the book from taking over.

In his panic he was only worsening the situation, his heart speeding things up with its speed. Carefully he slowed his breathing, forcefully trying to calm his pumping heart. Everything had to be peaceful, or else the black -probably poisoned- shit in the book would spread into his heart. He gazed at the beautiful scenery around him, checking out the way the grass and flowers would move in waves along with the wind. The sun gently peaking over the partly cloudy sky. He focused on that and not the fact that it already inched over the cloth.

This would be a particularly shitty way to die, his sister would probably laugh about it after some 20 years. His parents would be heartbroken. He’d just started acting like a good kid, only to be found in a field in the middle of nowhere frothing at the mouth, apparently reading some decent literature. Well, that just meant he would have to live through this. He wanted to die in a cool way, hopefully a good 90 years in the future. Living to 106 wasn’t too hard of an ask, right? Plenty of people made it that far, surely.

His head was just trying to fill space, trying to keep the fact that it was already past the clothand probably nearing his shoulder. It kept going, just a constant flow of disgusting pressure, squirming up his arm without any say from his side. At least his wrapping seemed to be working, though he couldn’t say he liked the results. It looked disgusting, like someone chugging black paint was licking his arm between each session. It looked like parts of the veins had burst and started leaking all around, giving it menacing streaks of black splotches.

Everything he knew about the human body told him that was not how arms and liquid worked, but he stopped thinking about realism the moment the book started attacking him. He held the cloth even tighter against his bicep, making it start to look purple from the lack of blood. It already looked bad enough not to care about what was going to happen to it, so he held it as tightly as he could, hoping he’d at least be able to save the rest of his body. He stood there for a minute, a cloth stuck between his teeth as he pulled it tight with his other arm, kneeled on the floor as his pain slowly intensified.

By the end, he was sweating and breathing raggedly, the stress of it all too much for him to keep going for much longer. He had his eyes closed for a while and once he opened them he pitifully yelped at the scene. His arm didn’t even look human anymore. It was comical how bloated it was, like bees had stung him a million times. It was completely dark, too. His fist looked like a giant black glove filled with paint. There wasn’t any pain anymore, but he assumed that was because the poison had accomplished what it was meant to do, which was probably to liquefy him. Like a spider would a fly.

He thought about how he lived his life so far, the parts of his pasts he tried his best to forget, the parts of his life he didn’t even know he remembered. Like that one time his parents had bought him a toy car at age two and he cried for hours because one of the wheels didn’t move. He could never properly explain to them and his mother said he only stopped crying when the dad ‘gave it a shower’. It was years later before the innocent little memory got cleared up, and sometimes they’d bring it up to embarrass him.

There were a few more memories of his family, all before he’d turn 13, before he had started working for his uncle. He’d been so caught up in his reminiscing that he didn’t even realize the book was no longer pulling on him. His arm had finally retracted from it, and though he couldn’t feel anything he was still able to move it around. He almost couldn’t look at it, swollen and completely black, looking as if it would burst at any second. He let go of the knot on his arm, sighing in relief. He closed his eyes, relief and exhaustion finally coming over him. It was over, and as he slowly drifted into unconsciousness he thought one thing. He was alive.

____________________________________

In the middle of a large and black void, sat a woman. A plain but endearing face, with a button nose and freckles. Her hair was short and curly, making her look younger than she really was. She seemed to be staring at nothing, muttering to herself and chuckling occasionally. To any who didn’t understand who she was she’d be deemed pitifully insane. They’d be right, but she still wasn’t just staring at nothing, or maybe she was from another god’s point of view. Only new gods ever toyed in the human realm, like a child with their toys. To put it in our perspective, it’d be like a grown forty-year-old woman making plane noises in the playground, running around with her arms outstretched like wings.

Mostly only new, weaker gods bothered with the magic realm, those who were only a few hundred thousand years old. Gods who were killed and reborn, gods created when a human ascended, or merely new gods in general, ones who just pop from the cosmic realm to fill a balance. Though that wasn’t any of her business. Origin was the only god that wasn’t created, she just… existed. She was titled a god the moment other gods were made, before then, all she believed she was... was nothing.

Before there was nothing she barely considered herself as a thing, let alone a conscience being. That all changed once they were made. The two gods born were that of life and death, and for the first time she’d seen and later understood the concept of “moving” and “creating”. It was insanity. She’d gone through the experience that what she understood now was an infinity of nothing. The nothing that seemed so permanent was tainted for the first time ever. It was loud, it was chaotic, it made her feel spectacular. For the first time, she realized she was more than nothing. Though it took many, many years to feel like more.

At first, she was happy to have company. Well, more like she was too interested and attracted to the new information. Such new possibilities, how they constantly killed and fought each other, only to be reborn in a few thousand years and do it all over again. It was loud, bright, and beautiful. A constant source of struggle that tickled her pink whenever they clashed. It was hilarious how two beautiful creatures could only focus on the flaws in each other.

Eventually, death had covered everything in decay and darkness, filling the empty void with such devastatingly attractive allure. It was amazing, but over time it became boring. She started to root for the other god, the one that was adorable and filled everything with vibrant and fresh beauty. It was one of the first moments where she had wanted to do more than just react. To want to do more than just watch. She had lived her whole life with nothing, woefully unaware but ok with her life. She was surprised at first by how greedy she had gotten, not even 10 millenniums had passed before she thought of wanting more.

She had developed such a bias for life that she willed the goddess to become more than an agent meant only to destroy death. Thus, the first facets of combative life were made, each with a touch of Origin and Life in their bodies. Each had been created in the form of life. They were adorable, and the way they fought was so full of sacrifice and endearment that she had grown to love them more than Life herself. And so she gave them the ability to grow and create, both the beings of Life and Life and Death themselves.

This had been a mistake. The moment the spark of creation had been given to them everything had become too hard for her to comprehend. War, betrayal, love, hate, envy… each emotion had each taken millions of years to comprehend. Life and death were relatively simple, both focused only on the other. Neither showed hesitance in their goal, kill Death, kill Life. The chaos of the Life’s people wasn’t unnoticed by death, and at some point, he had started creating those who served under him. “Monsters.” Unlike the beings of life, they were formed wrong, in ways that would never sustain a normal life without unnatural means, a way of rejecting his own creations.

The rest had finally become too complicated for her to care. Too loud, too explosive. In a fit of exasperation of it all she sealed herself away, back into a form of emptiness. The calm of before, she hadn’t realized just how much she had missed it. There she slept, blissfully ignorant of the complicated world outside. Occasionally, she tended to check it out, only for it all to be too much for her. But eventually, after billions of years, things had begun to calm down. Life and Death had begun to calm down with age, each finally viewing the world around them. Another billion years or so had passed before she became bored at how sedentary everything had become. Everyone had calmed down to the point where even the magic grew sedentary and boring… She wanted to change that.

And now she was here, with one of Life’s creations acting so weak and pathetic, so wonderfully unique. So human. It had foiled her plans in turning him into a mindless puppet, but halfway through the act she realized it’d be so much more fun to have someone to talk to for the first time… to interact with. She just had to gather up the courage to take that step.