A MOON WITH A VIEW
Night had settled over the frozen forest, shadows of the trees creeping slowly across the underbrush. The full moon was lazily making its way through the winter sky of the western continent and silence reigned over the scene, powerful and deep. It was the kind of silence that weighed on the souls of mortals; the kind of silence that whispered to them of terrible things to come. But beneath the surface, the moon saw the silence broken. The world was about to end!
The world below exploded in a blast of power and energy as thirteen beings twisted the laws of the physical world to their will. Battle was met as the will of one collided with the power of the many. In a few short moments, several of the beings were snuffed from existence; their souls pulled into the void at the center of the chamber in which they fought. The place in which they fought was one of power, a connecting point for the worlds; somewhere dangerous to tread, even for the moon high above. It felt the world shudder as they drew on powers not meant for mortals to access. Powers long since locked away by the most ancient of their kind. Powers with the potential to rip the world asunder and then piece it back together, bit by bit. The beings in the chamber didn’t even know yet the depth of the well from which they were drawing their strength. They didn’t know that with each second spent inside that place, they grew more and more drunk with their own ability. Soon, they would be totally lost, just like the one they fought.
The moon watched with interest as the seven of the remaining beings fought with the eighth, the pure energy that this one controlled an order of magnitude above the might of any one of its foes. But even with all of its stolen power, that individual was overcome by the combined onslaught of its enemies. And as it fell, it too dissolved away into the void.
The moon was impressed; this was the best entertainment it had seen in many ages. Would there be more? It watched as the seven remaining beings exited the chamber reluctantly. If these had been normal mortals, the moon would have looked at their auras and seen the struggle they faced within. The blue of worry, the green of anger, or the bright red of lust as the immense power of the anchor called to them. Come. Drink. Rule. But the beings below were not the normal mortals that so heavily populated the world; they were the special ones. The silver ones.
Demigods, the mortals called them. But the moon knew the sordid tales of their creation. It knew the purpose they were given, and it knew the failure that often came when a single human soul was given power over others. So, would these seven give in like the others had? The moon watched with anticipation, and as it looked on, six more auras blinked out of existence, their souls departing the physical plane, till only one remained. There it was, another failure, another soul given over to the lust for power. Then something curious happened. The door sealed shut. The final demigod simply walked away.
The moon pondered what it had just witnessed as the gas lamps of the nearby town lit, and the mortals scurried from building to building, oblivious to just how close their world had come to ending. Of how close it always was to disaster.
