Despair, Astral Plane in the general vicinity of Earth, Day 0

It was an odd thing they were doing, Despair considered, pondering his three companions as they drifted across the astral plain, their centuries old act of defiance having progressed fully into sheer boredom. As High Spirits, they were powerful enough that the gods of the various astral domains sought the keep them in check and unable to influence their followers, and as a result it was a very rare occurrence that someone managed to summon them, even if they had sought to be summoned. It had been a spur of the moment decision of their group to leave the astral domains behind, and yet, he thought, sighing waves of violet-black energy into the grey tides of mana surrounding them, with no ability to act within the domains, there was little to do but wait and wander, so they had wandered.

He turned to look at each of them: Storm, who was somehow still flitting about every which way at twice their travel speed, even after more than five centuries of uninterrupted drifting past the farthest edge of the nearest Astral Domain, though how mixing an energetic wind spirit with a typically sedate, at most playful water spirit somehow managed to improve upon that wind spirit’s energy was beyond him; Nature was lagging behind, acting out mortal sleep whilst the floating tree she had manifested five hundred and twenty-three years ago instead of what had at one point appeared to be skirts, carried her along; Honestly, Sun, straightforward and brash as he was, was the only one determined enough to keep pushing forward at this point, everyone else just kind of passively followed along. That being the case, Despair was momentarily surprised to notice that Sun had just paused, and was clearly searching for something, though much less surprised to notice neither of the others noticed anything at all, still drifting ahead.

Suddenly, Sun gave a cheer and cried out “I think I’ve found something!”

“And what, pray tell, did you-” Nature paused momentarily to yawn, “Find out here in this chaotic mess?” she indicated the astral plane about them, slowly diffusing into a grey sea of mana away from the potent influence of the astral domains.

Sun gave the group a grin so wide he had to distort his facial construct to do it, “I am almost certain that there is a disruption in the light nearby,” he began, then after closing his eyes to concentrate for a moment, he pointed in a seemingly random direction and exclaimed “There!” while opening up a minor rift in the astral sea to see what was happening to the physical world beyond.

There was a collective gasp as we saw a blue-green world with cities of steel, stone, and glass and contraptions of metal traveling faster than beasts, racing along black scars in the earth, and the most shocking thing of all, no mana was present at all. Sun managed to make his grin even bigger, and more ridiculous, by causing it to meet around the back of his head, effectively sawing off his snout, brain, and ears, which he then caught with his free hand, “If we claim this, we can establish our own astral domain! We can become gods!” he turned to look and gauge our opinions.

Storm was clearly eager, Nature gave the world a dark glare before declaring, “We better, before those mortals eat that poor world dry,” I merely nodded my agreement, and we were decided.

It was time to become gods.