- February 28, 2021
The Incarnations: Old Sins of Evil Chapter 1
Chapter One: The Birth of Sin and Patronage
Before the Incarnal War, King Evil and his mother were always close, as his brother and I are. I’ve only scratched the surface as to why, but one of the reasons must be that they are very much alike. They both have inquisitive minds, they both feel slighted and misjudged by those they love the most.
But they also share a penchant for experimentation. The most common iconogical symbols across the universe stem from them.
The scythe of the reaper, the wings of the devil, and the fiery imagery of Hell span the stars. If one of my kind were to say, restart a civilization, the books, the religions, the stories, they would not return. Something similar might take its place, but they would be replaced. The sciences would be rediscovered, they never change, maybe the steps towards complete understanding different, but they always end the same.
Except… when it comes to Death and Evil. The iconography they inspire are endless. They always reappear, so much so that the Reaper himself came after the scythe.
And the Reaper came before the Sins.
Several centuries before the Incarnal War, Death and Evil experimented together to create some of the most deadly creatures. They were neither servants nor Incarnations, and humanity, my creation, have felt the presence of these creatures ever since, but that which they represent had already existed.
It’s as if they were made so Death and Evil could finally fill some empty roles.
Among the floating isles of Paradise, where Death caters to those who are, well, dead, the two played. That’s the only way to properly describe how they treated their actions.
Their inquisitive and all-knowing minds were being tested against the future even now, surround themselves with architecture yet to come.
In that moment, in a drug-fueled fascination they created the columns of Athens before humanity had even left the continent of Africa. In this recreation they smoked and drank and laughed, they enjoyed themselves…
They played, and made toys out of forces that could wipe life from our universes.
They were too busy mocking the Greeks to realize what they were about to do.
“This is what many will consider the peak of architectural beauty,” King Evil bellowed through the halls, his chalice of wine in hand. There always had to be a hint condescension when he spoke of mortals. They blamed for everything they did, at this point, I don’t blame him.
And maybe the architecture of the Greeks is a bit overrated.
“White columns and no walls!” Evil pointed out, just as he drunkenly wiped his hand down his face, wetting his blonde curls with his wine.
“I can already guess how boring the humans will be. That… *ulk* is what Life will end up calling them… *burp*”
When he used his omniscience to know for sure, the pupils in his blue eyes pulsed white. He smiled when he knew his answer, “It’s already been decided, he named them before he even finished messing with their cells. Anyway…”
King Evil walked back towards his mother, where she laid on pillows around a fire, drinking and talking.
The toga he wore to mock the future accomplishments of Man did little to hide his impressive physique nor his perfect swan wings.
Ironically, Man is a species who take after him more than any other of his kind.
In fact, they’ll spend centuries sculpting statues, chasing after his body. Men and women will starve and gorg and destroy themselves to have what he was born with. I can imagine why they will mold their devil in his image.
He sat down on a pillow across from his mother, the fire between illuminating the true pinnacle of beauty.
Always ravishing, her pure white skin looked as smooth then as it does today, it still makes me think of clouds. Her hair has always been the same white color as it has always been, curled around her face and shoulders.
Her eyes of course, are object to subjectivity, as many have disagreed with me on the fact of their beauty.
To Hell with them. The red pupils of rubies, the white irises of snow, and the black eyeballs surrounding them, drive fear into the hearts of many… but I have always believed them to be of the greatest allure.
No one could look upon her and not know who she is. She’d need not ever bother with names, they all know Death when she comes.
Death took a sip of her own chalice then before joining Evil in mocking my creations.
“I would say that we can only imagine why they will find this design to be a thing of beauty, but that would be untrue.” Then with a guilty smile and a hush, “I already know, the ego that will these ones, as if their predecessors weren’t terrible enough. Leave the mortals be, I say, the worst ones are always the ones Life designs rather than evolution.”
She’s… she had and still has good reason to believe that.
She stopped speaking as she began to laugh, the byproduct of the excessive amounts of wine. They were on the fifth bottle, one they created themselves to make them drunk. It’s not like mortals were going to make drinks that could dull the mind of Death.
“Oh, now I’m thinking about how I’ll miss the Regamorphs,” King Evil bemoaned as he craned his neck backwards. “They were so entertaining, selfish definitely, egotistical, cruel to each other and other races, but they never made something boring. Artistic little assholes they were.”
“We can go see them, you know, they’re not all dead,” Death reminded him before taking a shallow sip, “Yet…”
She’s quick to swallow and gesture out to the unknown of Paradise. “There aren’t as many here from their modern age as you would think, but when they come, they will have a place among the dead as all do.”
“Are trying to pitch on a vacation home, mother?” Evil asked her.
“Hmm,” she smirked as she took one last sip and threw the empty chalice into the fire, turning it red. “Would that be so bad? To come see me?”
“I fail to see the need for a vacation home, Life would have easier time talking about me like I were some deadbeat god if I just stayed at your place.”
He made his mother laugh mocking me, and I know now that I deserved it, but… well, my hurt feelings are my own problem. No one else’s.
His Majesty waved his hand before him to assure her that he wanted no such thing. “No, I think I’ll do whatever like in the moment, making plans is for schmucks like Peace and Justice. They don’t have an interesting bone in their body, and eventually they’ll die from boredom. Not me, I’ll go out into the world, my own home barely sees me much these days.”
“I barely see you much,” Death pointed out.
“Well, unlike the Greeks, I value the love of my mommy as all good boys should, and I hereby swear an oath to seeing you more often!” His brazen mocking of the Greek sense of forum made her laugh.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
He then set his chalice down and leaned back onto the assortment of pillows to rest his head. “Oh mortals, they lose their imagination once anything becomes possible, as things tend to do here. It makes their company much less alluring on average compared to us, the real downside is how violent we get once we’ve annoyed each other enough.”
The idea of her children fighting makes Death mull. “Hmm,” Death hummed to herself, not readily prepared to disagree.
The living such as her son cannot stay in her realms for too long, or else she might have dragged her children there and kept them there until they could learn to get along. It was hard enough to ignore how Evil would have to leave soon.
While to any mortal his stay would have seemed long, to a being that have lived since the dawn of time, this period was not long enough.
She took the moment to crawl towards her son’s head, and rest her own beside his.
In a low hush, she admitted to him, “I could do with any company here. Even the most boring of company is better than none, it’s impossible to justify the violence between you, Incarnations. Servants rarely do anything besides serve. Servants are not our friends, at least for me.”
“If only I had that problem,” King Evil complained, “even Onheil to a degree is a kissass, and it infuriates me. None of them want anything for themselves, they’re all just disappointing sycophants… or they’re terrified of me. If only they had an interesting life of their own to tell me about, it’d be harder to overlook them.”
This complaint made Death laugh. Evil smirked as if he knew his problems were quite the opposite of hers, and the mundaneness of his helped her forget her own.
“Do you think such a servant could be created?” she asked his Majesty.
He turned his head from the sky above to his mother’s eyes beside him. He thought about the possibility, first as an actual normal thought, than as an all-knowing one.
As his eyes glowed, he definitively answered, “I do.” His wicked smile grew across his face. “Mother, I have a truly wicked idea.”
He moved to sit up, and she followed immediately. “You have me excited, what do you have in mind?”
“I have my Eden Pieces still, and unless Creation has decided to play a foul joke, it told me that we can use them to make a special servant.
“One that stands on his own legs. One that could finally have something interesting to say outside of how evil they were today!” With all of his excitement, his Majesty clutched his arms to his chest as if he had won a lottery. “Can we try it, mother? Please?”
At first Death wondered why he would even ask permission, so she wanted to know the details.
She used her omniscience to know that to create such a servant, would be to create a being that holds its own power. It would not feed on her power to survive as a servant would. It could live even if she died, and it would only live by her will if it wanted to. Such a being could possibly have power greater than her children, and that risk may not be worth it.
But the alcohol made by these two didn’t argue those points well enough in her head, because she agreed. “I believe this sounds like fun, and I already know how to do it.”
“I love the fun ideas we conjure once alcohol and drugs are involved,” King Evil gushed to his mother.
As they began to stand up, she admitted with a hand over her laughing mouth, “That sounds like something we won’t think once we’re sober.” She took her son’s hand as he led her away from the futuristic atrium.
They walked towards the end of their floating isle, one not as gigantic at all compared to the mountain and planet sized isles floating around them.
The two stopped at the edge to look over the side. Before them lied more clouds and the edge of the night sky, a night sky that covered only their land at the moment.
His Majesty asked her, “Do you want to try first, or should I?”
“I’ll go first,” she told him, “better something go wrong in my face than yours.”
“Oh, few would agree on that.”
“Did I ask them?”
She left him grinning as she pointed towards him. “Lest not forget, I know you, once you start, you’ll keep making more, then you’ll agonize over the details with each and every one!”
Though she scolded him prematurely, she was not wrong about the quantity. “I on the other hand already have one in mind. I thought of a new outfit for Dood, but he never reacts to the uniform changes. Typical servant.”
First, she pressed her right hand out towards the sky beside them, and turned her palm upwards as she called for one of the last Eden Pieces that she had.
The piece was a stone, a crystal that looked like glass as it vibrated and shined a multitude of different colors. It shined so bright that it was hard to even see.
From this piece, she took a large chunk and stored the rest in its private place somewhere in deep space.
The chunk she kept now floated above her palm, and she flicked her palm to prompt the Piece of Creation to float away. It was like beckoning a world to and fro from her with all the power the small chunk contained.
She began to funnel as much power into it as she would creating a new world, but with the technique of making a servant, all around an Eden Piece.
Slowly, the universe bent around this point in space. Being a Creator, the form of which Death’s power takes is much like mine.
Our power is more universally transformative than an Incarnation. The space around it seemed to swirl into a point, as if the world was falling in on itself around the Eden Piece.
As it did so, darkness began to foam out from the chunk. To Evil, who stayed behind his mother, it seemed to be a black hole.
The sight no longer was one his Majesty considered fun or inducing of excitement. He began to regret mixing drugs and alcohol that night. On the other hand he could see that his mother was having the time of her life.
Even though she is a Creator, Death does not do much of the sort. She creates land regularly, but that’s become a meaningless spor. What are islands after designing a few realms? Even creating servants came to grow stale in much the same way.
This, this was new territory, and from all that Evil could see of her, it was giving her quite the thrill. Who could blame her for feeling this burning excitement as the dark cloak first took shape. Soon after, the hands formed with muscles and bone, but his skin had yet to take form.
She left him like that for minutes, puzzled as to how his exterior should appear. Evil watched her decide that she could add it later, so in that moment in her drunken delirium, she settled.
She left him a skinless beast, and his legs followed the same way.
A face without skin would be too off putting, so she left only darkness under the hood as his head.
When she was finished, she let her connection to him go, but instead of soft release she felt it snap. She equated it to an umbilical cord being torn based on the pain she felt.
Evil was there, seeing her act as if she had lost a part of herself and put it in this new being. This wasn’t only power but a true life force. She hadn’t thought this through, she had created a being capable of living on its own without her. She knew these facts beforehand, but now it was setting in as the feelings of loss did as well.
She clutched at her heart and all over her chest, feeling something missing. Still, she had yet to look over at her creation.
When Death finally did, her look of horror matched the hiding smirk on Evil’s face. The curse she had placed upon him on this new being was dastardly, it fueled his Majesty.
She will never be able to finish him, and she had cursed this new being with a horrific figure, not even a face.
Steam and flames burned from his cloak as it was the closest he had to actual skin. He clutched at his whole body, and felt as incomplete as he looked. He looked at the sky as King Evil pulled his mother away from the mistake they made in their drunken haze.
This being screamed at the sky, he waved his arms and slashed at the air, incapable of understanding what he was and what had just been done.
Death saw this being, saw this beast, and Evil could just tell she had to care for him, for she was his mother.
She torn herself from her first son’s arms as the beast was locked in his own thrall, lashing out and about. She grasped his hood and pulled his head to her arms. He stood so tall, but she floated above the ground to consume him with herself. She grew to encompass him, to smother her him with the love that she had failed to sculpt him with. She hugged him so close that he could make no mistake of who she was.
His arms slumped to the ground that was her lap as did his posture.
“He doesn’t know what to do,” Evil figured for himself, “all he knows is that this being, this woman, will care for him,” as similar ideas of his own swirled through his head.
This new being made humming noises, grunts that slowly turned into words. He acted to learn something that every being wants to know.
After many attempts and failures, he eventually did utter the question to her, “Who am I?”
Death brought this new creature’s face out to hers, and didn’t know the answer until she did. She saw his future, his meaning to the world and how his presence and appearance was shaped by how history had already perceived her.
She told him that he was, “The Reaper, you are my Reaper.”
Death took great care with this being, this being that could live without her and contained power of his own. King Evil left within days, repulsed by the creature, but mainly by how he almost made the same mistake. The Reaper would suffer because of their mother’s lack of preparation and hand for creation.
Whenever his Majesty gazed upon or thought of the Reaper, he thought of the wasted potential, the lack of meaning and personality. All he could think of is what he would have done instead.
Then he realized that’s all he wanted to do.