The Reaper King

Prologue

Three figures gazed down solemnly at a meager cradle floating gently between them, undisturbed. Around the three, there was a great and terrible fire. Silently, it burnt for all eternity, illuminating its surroundings with pain and suffering. No sound permeated the conversation the three figures were having. The fire would not allow it. All throughout the realm, an eerie silence held a death grip on reality. Yet, deep within the fire, emitted a faint but unquantifiable litany of screams and tortured wailing.

Calamities more depraved than anything any mind could fathom, were commonplace within the merciless fire. Horrors born from the evils of billions of years of countless intelligent species, populated every crevice of the horrible landscape. 

There stood also, a thick, ominous, leviathan sized fog, and an equally large, deep blanket of darkness which shrouded the realm in cold detachment from the rest of creation. Yet to the three, it gave them comfort. Hiding them well from the rest of the universe, safe within its horrors.

For now...

Within the fog, the light of the hellish fire hinted at the silhouettes of endless scores of incredibly powerful and incredibly dangerous monsters and entities.

Many of whom, were locked in deadly combat. Since before time itself, they had been compelled to fight, compelled to suffer. Trapped in eternal anguish while fighting fierce, titanic battles. Some of which had been going on for many millennia.

The scores of monsters and entities spanned all shapes and sizes. All types of forms and states of matter.

A great myriad of these creatures slithered, flew, crawled, or hovered, battered, made deals, and even attempted to lead rebellions and insurrections, all in a futile attempt to escape from the realm of ceaseless torture. All were eventually caught. And mercilessly reeducated. 

Some of the entities and monsters were frozen and had been for all time, literally and mentally. Many were melting, burning, or being dismembered then repaired and then brutally ripped apart again. It had been going on for so long, many couldn't remember when the pain had started.

However, all of them, despite their various forms of torture or battling, all had their eyes arrested on the three figures, and primarily the child laying between them.

The monsters knew however, to approach the cradle, was to be destroyed horribly.

Despite their varying levels of power, from some of the monsters only being able to dismember others and cause nightmares, to the most powerful of these beings casually able to collapse planets, snuff the light from even the largest of stars, and even consume and destroy entire realms, none of them dared approach. All knew, beyond any fleeting shadow of a doubt, that the three figures around the child, two men and a lady, commanded powers and energies vastly beyond the scope of even the strongest of the monsters hidden within the veil of fire and shadows.

Of the two men, one was clearly taller than the other, yet both of them were taller than the woman, which was of note considering she towered at a calm 6'2".

To call them merely gods was too simple a term.

They were forces of magic and energy capable of rending universes to ashes were any of them to rage at their fullest capacity, and currently all 3 were locked in heated debate over the future of the child laying asleep in the center of them.

"You know you can't leave him here forever right?" The taller of the two males asked with barely contained irritation after a while of silent deliberation. "Taboo will set its eyes upon even here eventually, and then this whole charade will be brought to a crushing halt. I'm risking quite a lot for you two," he said, crossing his arms in frustration, "damn blood debts," he grumbled.