Entropy's Servant

Chapter 52 - Avatars

There has never been and never will be a thing like a dimensional gap. After all, different worlds don't physically exist 'somewhere' in relation to each other, so there's no 'inbetween', either.

And yet, in the dimensional gap lived a being. Although, to say it 'lived' or were a 'being' would be an overstatement, yet to call it a 'thing' would be an understatement. To call it an 'agglomeration of thought' would be an insult to the concept of thinking, yet to call it 'mindless' would be unfair treatment.

The form this being took currently resembled a mass of tentacles, writhing and crawling. It wasn't its true form, but then, it wasn't as if this being had a true form to begin with.

The summit of evil, the ultimate neutrality, an avatar of judgment, the affirmer of all contradictions, the base of logic, the eater of worlds, the being had many names. Not one of them could completely capture its essence, but it wasn't like it had a true name.

A name which could potentially come close would be 'embodiment of gluttony'.

And yet, it currently had no mouth.

To say the being thought could not be right, yet to say it acted on instinct would not explain its behaviour. The being extended its influence to the worlds around it, one by one. These worlds couldn't possibly have been surrounding the being, yet there they were. Due to the being's nature, it couldn't enter the worlds it reached, but it influenced them, taking advantage of the weak-willed inside. Sometimes, it was feared; Sometimes, it was revered.

It didn't care. Perhaps it didn't want to care, or perhaps it couldn't care. Either way, the worlds the being reached all faced the same fate. Their gods devoured, the worlds destroyed. Although it's hard to say, exactly, it's likely the creature didn't even know what resistance was, let alone how it felt.

And yet, even this primal force you could barely call a 'being' could feel that its newest prey was fighting it.

This world was just like all the others, or so it thought. Easier, even. It even had six whole gods! Or so the being thought.

Yet, before the being could even reach the god, the people it influenced felt such delicious influxes of despair it couldn't stop itself. It promptly ate them, turning their bodies into vessels.

For the person with a burning heart, it simply fanned the flames until his instincts consumed him, using those flames to house a part of its essence.

For the person with a heart filled with despair, it whispered sweet things while expanding the darkness without the person's knowledge.

It had planned to cause chaos by fanning the flames of war between mortals, but... It supposed that causing chaos by attacking mortals would work just as well.

In the past, it had encountered and swiftly dealt with powerful beings, so it figured that it would be able to cause chaos with little to no resistance.

And yet, this world was different from its expectations.

One of its avatars encountered not one, but four beings, the likes of which there would normally only be one per world. Even if there were multiple, they would almost always be too occupied in their fight with each other to pay any attention to the intruder. And yet, these four were working together, and the one that seemed to command the others was even more powerful than the rest.

Its other avatar, meanwhile, faced a bizarre alliance of light and dark, which were supposed to be as opposite as opposites could be. Although it planned to use the dark enemy's darkness against her, she had refrained from using it due to one of the light enemy's warnings--it had become such a situation.