198 Curiosity, Experimentation, And Empire Building (1/2)
Even though I had proclaimed this planet's age of man to be at an end I was still surrounded by artificial objects. I turned my attention towards the large buildings that surrounded me. In every direction, my view was obstructed by at least one large building. It was annoying.
I hopped over the car in front of me with ease, landing behind it on a sidewalk, and placed my hand on the building that was closest to me. The building was made of a mix of concrete and brick and was hard to the touch. I shivered as knowledge and memories seeped into me, depicting the building's creation years ago and then the plethora of businesses that had since made use of the building. The memories that poured into me played out like something called ”movies” from Htrae, and watching them was an easy and quick avenue to knowledge.
Many different memories seeped into my mind all at once, and they all played out at once as well. I was still as I watched them and during this time my worms began their assault on distinct portions of the city. My enhanced hearing easily picked up the sounds of their vicious attacks and occasionally the distant cries of the humans who had survived the end of their civilization only to be swept up in another calamity.
In time the memories ceased pouring into me and I withdrew my hand from the building. I glanced at it and considered what to do for a moment. And then I decided I would just destroy the thing. A soft grin spread across my face, a deceptively serene expression given the devastation I was about to unleash.
I didn't even bother to study the building. Instead, I just rose my hand in its direction and unleashed one of the powers I was given access too by the destruction domain. I looked at the building and began to manipulate nothingness, one of the more esoteric abilities I had been given access too through the destruction domain.
I shivered again, though this was due to the unpleasantness of the sensations I was feeling. And then I felt it, the total absence of existence I had called upon. It came into being, for lack of better verbiage, in my hand, like a ball of total emptiness. Somehow I knew I could touch it and no ill effects would befall me, but I also knew that it would destroy just about anything else it made contact with.
I glanced at it and saw that it had the appearance of empty air. Even with my supernatural vision, I couldn't physically see the object, the ball, I held in my hands. Or rather there was nothing to see. Perhaps the most frightening part of this power, now that I was utilizing it for the first time, was that it would be incredibly difficult to dodge due to how hard it was to perceive.
Everything was destroyed. The power worked perfectly. That said, the second the orb moved out of one place and into another oxygen and dust and other small things flooded back into the spaces the orb left eerily empty.
”So this is nothingness manipulation? That's fun.” I mused, entertained by the power I had just utilized. I peered through the hole I had created and glanced inside the darkened building. The wall I had assailed was windowless and beyond it there was no light, aside from the light pouring into the circular peephole I had just made. I began to slowly push the orb in my hand against more of the wall, and thus widened the hole I had created.
I spent a few moments making an Althos-sized hole in the wall for me to walk through so I could enter the building. Doing so was a simple task that consisted of me merely utilizing my orb and making it delete more of the wall until enough was gone for me to effortlessly step through and into the building. As I did that I was able to peer into the inside of the building without utilizing any of my supernatural abilities. I also had a chance to further experiment with my powers, which I did so eagerly.
I studied the janitorial closet I was creating a hole into and spotted a broom. I closed my eyes for a moment and focused on the orb in my hand, as well as the distant broom.
While my eyes were closed I effortlessly made the orb in my hands the object that now had gravitational pull over the broom and opened my eyes just in time to see the broom fly from the wall it had been placed on, on the other end of the closet, and into the orb in my hand. This of course destroyed the broom, the object vanishing as it reached the orb, and eliciting a chuckle from me.
At this point, I recognized this attack for what it was: a flexible, miniaturized black hole attack. And that was amazing. What's more, was that I could manipulate it however I wished. And now that I an awareness of how at least a simple orb of nothingness worked I quietly uncreated the orb, causing it to vanish. Oxygen and dust particles began to flow back into the space the orb had occupied.
A second later, I covered a single finger of mine with the dreadful power of nothingness. With it, I would be able to do away with anything that got in my way. I smiled, cruelly, at the thought of destroying anything that attempted to curtail my fun. Imposing restrictions or otherwise getting in the way of a god of chaos was ill-advised at best.
I looked around the interior of the building I had just created an entryway into, before sighing. The building was filled with corpses and with few other things of interest to me. After a few moments of careful consideration and clear-headed thinking, I ultimately resigned myself to the knowledge that I ought to probably leave this world for now. I had more to do and I knew for sure that I would be busy if I wanted to go ahead and become an intermediate god.
I had tools I could utilize if I truly wanted to speed my ascension into intermediate godhood. Potent tools, both living and not, that would happily aid me as I made power-plays across the universe. It was time I began to use them a bit more strategically. After all, I had an empire to build.
With as much effort as it took to take a breath, I teleported from the janitorial closet to an old and familiar place: my tower, atop my island home in my divine realm.
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One second I was in the darkened janitorial closet and the next I found myself in what passed for a throne room in my tower. The difference in the overall atmosphere was night and day, and in my divine realm, the sun was beginning to set.
I quietly walked towards the throne, and warily sat upon it. An instant later I reached out to all of my angels, extraplanar entities who served gods in exchange for immortality and a set of godly powers of their own. I reached into their minds and spoke a single word, mightily using my holy voice to command them.
”Come.” I commanded, my voice entering their minds and in many cases overpowering their wills outright. Half a second later they began to appear, instantaneously teleporting into the throne room and I received a chance to look at the beautiful creatures, the first chance I had gotten in months.
Angels were intriguing creatures to look at. Many of them were looked like idealized humans with fantastical features such as a halo, multiple sets of wings, or even visible auras, but more than a few simply didn't look like humans at all.
The very first angels I had ever laid eyes on, Lahar and Pagsabog, on were not humanoid in appearance. Instead, they looked like insects, but ones that lived in volcanoes. They were among the first angels to appear in the throne room, dripping lava onto the stone floor beneath their butterfly-like wings. The creatures were magmic angels, potent angelic entities who apparently tended to serve as either guardians of nature or weapons of mass destruction. I greeted them with warm smiles, heartened to be reunited with familiar faces after all this time.
Other angels took on other, sometimes more fantastical forms, and at other times more familiar forms. Angels in my employ included angels of nature, love, faith, law, nobility, lies, truth, war, life, dreams, and even creation. Of those types of angels, the ones who took on more humanoid appearances included the angels of life, love, creation, law, and nobility.
The other angels took on an assortment of forms. The angel of nature who worshiped and served me had a humanoid-shape but wasn't that different from my Cosecha-forms in that it had a body composed of various elements and materials. The angel of war was immaterial and was the sole immaterial angel of the angelic host I had assembled to date.
That said, angels had bodies that could be changed dramatically. I could force them to change, or they could change their own appearances, all at will. Angels who had agreed to serve me forsook mortality and even death altogether and in exchange, they gave me power over them. It was, in their eyes anyway, an even enough exchange since I legitimately hadn't coerced them into serving me they opted to do so willingly.
I waited until all of the few hundred angels who served me appeared before me. It took a few minutes for that to happen. When they did I began to speak.
”It has been too long my angelic servants.” I began, a smile on my face. It had indeed been months since I had seen them. A mistake on my part if I was being honest. This remark was met with soft chuckles and murmurs of agreement.
”I have been a bit too independently minded, taking on things by myself and doing things directly that I hadn't needed too.” I confessed, smiling a bit sheepishly. This remark was met with braver, louder chuckles. I chuckled as well. I didn't mind being frank at the moment. But then my eyes narrowed and I began to consciously radiate more power than I usually did, suffusing the air around me with my intense energy and divine might.
”That said... I am beginning to think more clearly. And I am beginning to organize my thoughts. It's... a bit hard for a god of chaos to do that. I admit I am inclined to be scatterbrained and distracted from my grander objectives. But that is changing.” I told the assembled host of angelic entities. This time my remarks were met with awed, cowed silence. I was a god after all. But eventually, one angel spoke up.
”Lord-god Althos, we are your angelic host. We exist to serve you. We have made ourselves available to you to use as you see fit. That said, please enlighten us. What are your goals?” One of the angels, an angel of law asked. The angel had the appearance of a boy in his teens with his eyes closed and a blank, stone tablet in hand. Its voice was soft, and I could tell it was legitimately curious as to what I would say. I studied it for a moment, and the creature shuddered as it felt my gaze fall upon it.
”That is a good question. You know my major goals, but not my minor ones. Not my immediately achievable ones. That is but one mistake I have made. Allow me to correct that. I seek to build an empire. It need not be the most intimately connected one, but it'll be an empire all the same. An empire that serves me and worships me.” I told the angel.
As I spoke my words after ”Allow me to correct that” began to appear on the blanket stone tablet the creature held, before vanishing immediately after I spoke. I began to grin as I watched that, amused to see that the angel's tool could record messages.
”I seek to build an empire that stretches not only from one end of the universe to the other but into and throughout every dimension. It is my intention to be worshiped by every creature in this universe. And then... in every universe.” I told the assembled host of angels. And then I smiled at the angels I had already drawn into my service.
At the same time as I smiled, I activated an especially useful power I possessed. I turned ”Absolute beauty” all the way up to the maximum, aware that it was one of my few abilities which could affect creatures greater than mortals. I felt their hearts speed up in response to the heightened beauty I was showing them, and I felt, in some of them anyway, another sort of reaction. A surprisingly physical one. It made me chuckle, but I did so internally.
”I intend to save every angel and to give your species purpose again. In time we shall gather every angel in existence, in every universe in existence, and the whole of your kind shall serve me. But first, we shall gather more angels to our side.” I told the assembled creatures. I closed my eyes and clapped, utilizing my power over my divine realm for one of the first times ever.
Divine realms were, to my knowledge, places were gods were at their absolute strongest. They were cosmic strongholds for divinities, where a divinity could rest and recuperate from injuries and from boredom as well as perform feats of exceptional strength even for gods. And I intended to begin to truly use mine.
When I clapped my hands my angelic host and I were teleported out of my tower. We were taken instantly from the tower to a clearing on my island. Above us, we could endlessly gaze at a rapidly darkening sky. That wouldn't be the case for long. I rose a hand and created a vast portal that connected the skies above us with various points throughout the dimension that mortals dominated.
It was after that that I quietly crafted and then transmitted a message to every single angel I could detect in each and every solar system my ”Stellar Awareness” power allowed me too. It was a message I was quite proud of as well, one I constructed easily and proudly, utilizing both my godly pride and my knowledge of angels. And to ensure my success I fully unleashed a quiet and dangerous combination of abilities all at once.
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[Alert: The Destiny Of Angelkind
Angels throughout the cosmos, listen to the voice of your new god and come to him. A new god has come to life and he is intent on unifying the angel race under a single banner. His name is Althos and he is inviting you to his home so that you may bask in his power and be restored to your true, resplendent, immortal glory.
Althos is an empire-builder who is working to build a universe-wide empire and he is in need of your power, your loyalty, and your faith. Join him, embrace your collective destiny, and come together so that as one a new divine force in service to a true ruler may sweep over the universe and usher in a new age of glory, piety, and wonder.
Portals are opening near you. They lead to his divine realm. Enter them and embrace the future. Never again fear mortality, death, or even suffering. Come home and you shall experience that which you lost so long ago, the power and purpose that came from serving a god.]