Creation

A woman, fair in form and pale in skin, walked alone in a wooded wasteland. In one hand, she held the last power from the last god. In the other, she held fragments of creation itself, stolen by that same god. As she walked, she stopped, and sat beneath the husk of a great tree. This tree stood upon a hill of bones at the center of what was once a great forest. It was here she watched the world die. In a handful of years, her world had gone from peace to global war. Magic and science clashed in epic battles that tore the land apart, poisoned the soil, and turned the oceans to acid. In the end, no one remained beyond a few scattered enclaves that clung to their new lives after the world had ended. She remembered those she had lost, those she fought so hard for only to fail. Kneeling before the tree, Belladonna clasped a locket in her hands and whispered a prayer of apology. She reached out, and claimed the last breath of her dying home.

As the woman stole the power of the forest, the twisted trunks around her melted away to ash and smoke, twisted mutants coughed and died, rivers of poison dried up, and the blackened soil cracked. The hill crumbled and the great tree withered. Its bark peeled away, showing the white wood within as branches fell like bones upon the hill of the dead. Through it, the woman knelt, her pale skin became white like marble. The power of life, of renewal, of hope was hers. In a dark world, she could be a beacon, but she could not save it. The life of this place was not enough. She took the fragments of creation and godhood that remained, and she drew from them as she had the forest. The power burned, black lines began to etch themselves into her flesh, and though it agonized her, she endured. They moved from her hands, to her chest, then swirled across her body until nothing was untouched.

When she rose, an empty desert surrounded her. She stood as the only god in a world that had killed itself. Such a world could not be saved, but she would try. Turning to the ruined horizon, the goddess reached up to the sky and pulled back the days...

In the cool evening of a silent world, the sounds of a weeping goddess could be heard. Where her tears fell, sound broke the gray and blackened wasteland around her. The world had burned. She had failed. Once more, she grasped time itself and returned. Once more, she failed. In the end, even a goddess's power was not absolute and with each failure a new world had burned, and a world burned anew. But she was not a goddess was she? She was no more a goddess than a wizard, wielding stolen power from a dying god in the twilight of his reality. Not that that mattered anymore. His time had been written and rewritten with each of her failed attempts. The end always came and always left her alone. How many times has she repeated the same cataclysm? Even she had lost count. Every method, every strategy, every possibility was exploited, and it all amounted to nothing.

At last, the self-titled goddess rose and wiped her tears. How far back had she gone last time? Decades? Centuries? It still hadn't been enough. It was never enough. Belladonna held her arms out, closed her eyes and steadied herself. Time flowed through her fingers, then began to slow before flowing in reverse. Smoke became people, cities, and animals. The cool night burned like the sun once more.

The goddess moved backwards, reaching desperately for that tipping point that would turn the world away from its fate. Each time it ended the same. The tools, races, nations - they change with each iteration, but the end was always the same. One night of Hellfire scorched creation to a burnt husk, and the survivors became twisted monsters or cannibals. Every time there was a glimmer of hope, and every time, that hope burned and died as if it had never been.

Belladonna looked across the ravaged landscape of her latest failure, reflecting. There was nothing left, and she could stand it no more. "No more," the goddess vowed. This will be the last time that world will happen. She watched as the world grew younger, as civilization fell and rose and was unmade. People regressed to animals, animals to fish, and fish to nothing. The world melted, shrunk, and spread out in the vast empty Cosmos.

In this new beginning, there was nothing. An endless, yet miniscule expanse. Before time, light, or matter there was an infinite yet non-existent void. She let this nothing exist for but an instant, but existed for longer than the coming worlds ever will. It was in this dichotomy of infinite and nothing that everything came to be.

Light, a single pinprick of brilliant shifting color; the abyss dark around it exploded with every color, each mixing and withering together like innumerable nebulae in space. This was her canvas, the æther that would become a new reality. From her body, she pulled stones of power. One after another they were thrown away, seeding the realms so they may grow. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of seeds floated in the blue void around her, waiting to become something more.

Belladonna began to shape time so that the realms may grow, but as she began, she paused. Her infinite previous failures came back to her. She needed someone to guide and design them, to succeed where she could not. From a great nebula in the sky, she created a web, and there formed Praelium, the spider Ancient of creation, art, and light. With skill and precision, she wove the elements around each bead of a realm, turning raw æther into masterpieces. The first realm, she made to be her inspiration. It was raw and unguided, the materials within constantly shifting. Mountain ranges of crystal bubbled up from oceans of ice. Acid rained down and made fires rage over turbulent waters. Concepts and law did not exist in this realm, and so it would serve as a place to experiment and discover. The next realm was a gift to Belladonna, crafted from a memory the goddess carried. A wide plane filled with the first grasses and deep tunnels that interlaced. Time was frozen here, preserved in a place of serenity; a place for Belladonna to observe and to plan.

Each realm was more beautiful than the last. As Praelium worked, Belladonna watched the beautiful places of stone and fire, but knew they would never support life. One realm was filled with an endless ocean of pure water and quiet clouds. With a great heave, Belladonna struck this pristine water with the first lightning bolt. Placid waters turned to great waves, soft winds became a typhoon, and from the lightning of the storm, Kasai was born. From the wind Karr took shape. Kasai, the Ancient of oceans and storms set out like a tempest and filled the barren worlds with rich water. Karr, the Ancient of winds, followed in her wake, filling voids with air and silence with wind.

Wind, water, and salt filled the worlds. Stone became dirt, and dirt sand. The mountains wore away, and the lands began to sink. Seeing this, Belladonna wove fire into Karr, allowing him to drive magma to the surface, rebuilding the land and replacing the mountains. The weathering and birth of new land allowed the realms to change on their own, each one becoming unique.