CHAPTER SIX

Prometheus roamed the planes for eons. He ventured alone through the vast Void. The time of the titans had ended so long ago. The time of the gods had also ended for a period. He was the titan of forethought. He saw the future and unlike his brethren, he used his visions to benefit mankind. Usually his power was activated only when he willed it to. This time was different. His power of forethought fell upon him with overwhelming power that dropped Prometheus to his knees. He saw the Void of darkness with no stars. He saw fallen titans and dead gods drifting along the astral plane like a graveyard of deities. An overwhelming number of tendrils sprung from the depths of darkness and reached across the Void in search of something. Gods ran in ear from the titanic tendrils. He saw the eyes of Kronos light up with renewed power and watched as the elder titan of chaos sprouted tentacles from his face like those on an octopus or a squid and devoured a god from a distant pantheon whole. His mind returned to the present and the titan of forethought knelt motionless as he absorbed the powerful vision he just had.

"I must warn Olympus!" Prometheus gasped. Travelling across the endless Void was much more difficult than travelling across the known planes. Prometheus envisioned Olympus and in a flash, he was there. He looked around and saw only the remnants of a crumbled mountain that once reached too high for any mortal to climb.

"What?" Prometheus gasped in confusion. Olympus was gone. He looked up and saw dark clouds. He focused his divine vision and looked through the otherworldly veil of clouds to see four massive tendrils stretching through portals and bored into the foundation that once held Mount Olympus.

"Olympus has fallen," Prometheus said in realization as he looked around for any possible survivors. He only saw the remains of fallen seeker-titans that would regenerate in about a thousand years. He noticed that the titans were mutated with a taint of madness. The taint triggered another vision. Prometheus fell to the rocky ground as the vision overpowered him. He saw deep into the darkness of the Void. He saw the empty eyes of an ancient titan-god only mentioned in stories to frighten other titans. His mere presence caused titans and gods to go mad.

"I thought he was just a myth," Prometheus choked as he saw the titan-god of madness in his vision. "The Forgotten One… Insanium. I need to find Zeus and help him destroy these abominations."

*****

Man roamed the world in their tribes surviving by grouping together and learning from one another. One tribe of man survives by hiding from the world and in their belief, hides from the gods that created them as well. They were evil by nature having risen from the dirt touched by something wicked along the way. Their diabolic nature is what caught the attention of the only three gods to set foot on the world of Athyx since its creation, the Vermin Trinity. The tribe of the wicked humans were hunted and cornered in a cave where they were transformed into something that was more fitting to their nature. They became insectile versions of their former selves and called themselves the Vile. The Vile aided the other minions of the Vermin Trinity in hunting down other species to feed on or transform into an insectile version of its species. The objective of the Vermin Trinity was to re-forge the world into a world of insects. The Vile stayed close to the Spider God and roamed in the Great Forest, hunting any species they could track to either eat or take as an offering to their gods. It was the Vile that helped bring about the first age of insectile beings. The Vile did not use names for one another. They all answered to, the Vile. Few women existed so they were kept safe in their cave homes. Few males were ever allowed to breed which made them even more hostile during a hunt.

A group of the Vile tracked a small tribe of kobolds in the forest. Kobolds made for easy prey. They were small and often weak; however, they bred like rabbits and survived by fighting in numbers. The Vile were not sure how this small tribe survived for so long. They surrounded the kobold layer and slowly closed in on it. The cave had a large entrance that made one member of the Vile wonder, was it a coincidence that the cave was so vast? The Vile in deep thought broke away from his group and duck back behind the outer wall of the cave entrance. Something did not feel right to him. His hunting party would not listen to him, he knew. They were a brave and arrogant race, too proud to listen to anyone but their leader. The Vile watched as his party continued without him into the darkness of the cave. He would have to enter the darkness for his vision to shift spectrums and allow him to see in the dark. He waited and listened instead. In moments, he heard frantic kobolds and the clicking sounds of the Vile inside. Then silence. Sinister kobold laughter erupted.

"Run!" The Vile leader shouted inside the cave. The Vile could not see what his hunting party feared. He only heard the painful screams of his hunting party seconds later. The smell of burning flesh mixed with an acidic aroma in the air wafting out of the cave. The lone Vile slunk back farther as he heard something very big coming out of the cave. He hid behind a large rock just as the head of a green dragon came out of the cave entrance. The dragon looked around and smelled the air.

"I smell a coward," the dragon spoke in the common tongue. The Vile ducked low to the ground, trying to hide his sent from the blowing wind.

"I will let you live so that you can go back to your so-called gods and tell them that this is my forest. I am Keltorilax! These are my kobolds!" The green dragon roared. The dragon exited the cave and looked around. The Vile peeked around the rock he hid behind to see the ten-foot long dragon in its entirety. The dragon was still young, in its juvenile stage from the looks of it. The Vile knew that he could not hope to survive an encounter with such a beast. He was no coward. He felt that he was simply higher up on the evolutionary ladder than the rest of his kind and used intelligence rather than brawn to survive. The Vile crawled away slowly. Keltorilax heard the Vile crawling and smirked at his poor efforts of sneaking away.

"On second thought, I may be hungry." Keltorilax said as he turned his head around the rock where the Vile was hiding only to find tracks of a crawling man with six upper appendages leading away into the forest. Keltorilax smiled as only a dragon could before returning into his layer. He tromped across the remains of the hunting party bones that still corroded from his acidic breath. The kobolds cheered at the return of their fearless leader and protector.

"If not for those cursed vermin and their false gods I would be off tormenting villages and searching for new treasures to add to my hoard. Remember, if anything is ever missing then I eat the whole lot of you!" Keltorilax barked before curling up around his pile of treasures and closing his eyes.

The Vile crawled as fast as he dared without making too much noise. Once he was within the safety of the forest line he stood to his feet and ran as fast as he could without ever looking back. He could not return to his tribe. He would be sacrificed for his failures and disgrace. The Vile set out on his own, to live in the wilderness. The vermin would hunt for him. Keltorilax might also hunt for him. The Vile was at a path of uncertainty in his life.