Lightbringer

Chapter 1: Creation

In the beginning, there was a god, and he had great power. The matter of the universe came at his beck and call, molding to his will with a word. I was witness to its forming, the birth of stars and planets. Now this god was only one of many, but the other gods of the divine council carved for themselves other realms and did not care much for what other divines got up to. I was a child of this god, a lesser divine, and so under the governance of his will and his court, a subject, albeit with power and dominion of my own, if somewhat less than his.

I was the eldest of his children, the first. When I burst into existence, light exploded around me, and they say he was so struck and inspired he immediately cast imitations of it across the void and called them stars, to burst in eternal remembrance of that moment and his joy. And of me. He called me Lightbringer. Lucifer.

Ah, you see, you do know this story, though already you doubt parts. You protest. You heard it differently. How many times in your human history have you heard a story told one way, only to find out decades, centuries later that what you thought you knew was wrong? That the villains you vilified weren't villains at all? Do me the curtesy of hearing me out. You've heard the other side out for thousands of years now.

Thank you.

As I was saying, I felt immeasurable pride to stand beside my father and creator, to bear witness to him shaping his realm from silent darkness. I laughed in delight as he set planets spinning around a bright and joyful sun. I gasped as he pulled land from beneath water, and exhaled in wonder as greenery exploded upon the land, and beasts of every shape and size spread out across land and water. Such imagination my father had! The sheer wonder of it was overwhelming. He beamed in satisfaction at me, reveling as his every whimsical thought and subsequent action played out on my visage.

I could not get enough of this marvelous little planet called Earth. I would observe it from the heavens from a distance, or sometimes descend to tread its rich soils and greet the creatures that called it home. My delight was expansive, but I grew wistful that there was no one to share this wonderment with.

"Father, what do you think of making one more creation for this world?" I asked him one time. (Time is strange the heavenly realms, no strict measurement. The Earth was still young and barely formed.)

"What do you feel is lacking, little Lightbringer?" he asked affectionately.

"What if you made something like us? Not children of the heavens, but of the Earth, that can love and appreciate this creation of yours as we do?"

"Stuff made of both heaven and Earth." His face grew abruptly solemn, considering. Something heady and dark sparked at the edges of his essence, terrifying like uncontrolled power, like concepts I couldn't put names to but felt in the pit of my stomach. Vengeance. Wrath. Destruction. Judgement. Worship. Sacrifice. Violence. Fear. All his usual warmth and gentleness were sharpened to harsh cutting edges and for a moment, I did not know the being before me. I had never known fear before in the heavenly realms. But the next moment, it was gone in a breeze, and it felt like a dream, so wrong and out of place it had been, and I brushed off the clinging doubts it had left in my mind.

If only I'd heeded that warning.

My father smiled benevolently at me. "Your idea is a good one." He reached back down to Earth, and I watched in tense anticipation as he took dirt from the ground, a breath from his lungs, and a word from his mouth, and shaped a creature. It had four arms and four legs and two heads, and it resonated with a kind of power that I felt in my being: power of the divines.

"Hmm..." He cast a sidelong look at me. I opened my mouth to express my awe at how impressive and fearsome and perfect this new being was, but before I could say anything, he reached towards his new creation. He tore it asunder, and I couldn't stifle my gasp of shock and horror, but when I looked again, it was fine. Or rather, they were fine. Where one creature had stood there was now two, each with two arms, two legs, and one head. Immediately they clung to each other, as if knowing they had originally been one. "Two, so it doesn't get lonely," my father said, ruffling my head. I felt relief at that. For a second, I thought – irrationally, of course – that somehow, he had felt threatened by his last creation, the divine-but-not-divine beings, and had reached out to destroy them.

I was so excited to have new beings to share the delight of my father's creation with. I visited them almost every day, and we wandered the Earth in constant wonderment together. My father visited occasionally but seemed almost bored with his creations already. He always had "something else to do," though what it was, I never knew. I thought that once these beings were created – they had named themselves humans (and had named all the other creatures to, funny things!) – all four of us would take part in his creations together, but that didn't seem to be the case.

My father, whenever I would start to bring it up to him, would pat my shoulder and tell me, "I have other parts of the story to work on." More children joined him (maybe that's what he was busy with), and he took to calling us "his angels," which I suppose was fine. It felt far less personal than "children."

I really grew fond of the humans. They were creative and imaginative, like my father. They loved the Earth dearly, like me. And they were curious, which was a whole new thing that was all them. I spent less time in heaven, so I suppose it's my fault I didn't learn what was happening sooner. Maybe I could have stopped it. Maybe I could have saved them – saved them all.