1

The omniverse is indescribably vast and yet like all things it has an exact middle. In the middle of the omniverse, its exact center, lies a small building floating in the endless void of an otherwise unremarkable universe.

This building is staffed by strange, eldritch figures who only occasionally don the forms of humans, shedding forms and taking on new ones with the same casual ease as a human might put on or take off a piece of clothing. The figures diligently guard large chambers filled with strange vats of cosmic fluid, and wordlessly guard what they have telepathically dubbed the "stuff of creation".

Every few weeks a vat will begin to glow, its contents shedding an immense amount of light as eldritch chemical reactions occur inside of it. During this time various figures will move over to the vat and study it. They will take notes regarding the intensity of the light the vat's contents emit and they will send those notes elsewhere using powerful telepathy. Inevitably, a vat's contents will do more than merely shed light.

For reasons unknown to the strange guards who diligently guard the vats, the contents of the things inevitably undergo a strange transformation. After some time, which differs from vat to vat, the contents of the vats will condense themselves and take on new forms and new shapes, becoming fully sapient lifeforms possessing strange instincts and even stranger powers.

These new figures will emerge from vats confused and disoriented, and the guardians of the vats will move to contain and study the newly formed lifeforms. This is routine for the guardians and it is something even the newest, youngest, and least-experienced guardian has done repeatedly. This competently staffed building will go years without experiencing a single incident of note.

Events fated to reverberate throughout the omniverse begin to occur in the bubbling heart of one obsidian vat. This particular vat is not especially large and it is filled with ruby-colored fluid. For years this vat has sat mostly dormant, its contents only occasionally emitting light and thus garnering only sparse interest from the strange guardians who ceaselessly watch over the vault.

The day its contents undergo their climatic metamorphosis only a handful of guards are present in the vicinity to watch over it and to try and shepherd the newly birthed lifeform that will inevitably climb out of the vat. No one is prepared for what is to come.

______________________________________

Darkness. The first thing I "see" is darkness. I am still for a moment to give my sight time to adjust, but it never does. I eventually realize that it never adjusts because there are no stimuli for it to adjust to. I am in… something and whatever that something is it is preventing light from reaching me.

I attempt to reach forward, but I find that I can't. This only further confuses me and so I attempt to forcefully and inelegantly get a beat on my surroundings by moving in all possible directions. My arms and legs refuse to move until I will them upwards, and when they do I am pleasantly surprised to realize that I can move up. I ungracefully climb, pulling myself up in order to do so, for several seconds until my hands hit something hard and I find that I can't climb any further.

I begin to push against the obstacle in my way. As I do I feel it solidly resist my efforts, and I begin to put more and more strength into it. It is only when I feel my muscles tell me that I am putting in everything I can that I feel whatever is in my way finally move and faint light begins to trickle into my… birthplace. The instant that light touches the skin of my hand information begins to flow into my brain, telling me about my own identity.

I am the Essence of the Anti-Immortal. For reasons unknown to me I know what it means to be this "Essence", and I feel my keen mind immediately understand my terrifying potential. I also instinctively piece together what it will take for me to achieve that potential: murder and training. Lots of both.

These prospects thrill me, and even the prospect of injury thrills me, since when I recover from injuries I grow stronger. I am also sharply aware that I am the weakest I will ever be right now… I know I'm not operating at my full capacity just yet, but in time I will be. I just need a beat to get oriented before I can fully make use of my array of abilities.

I immediately move to free myself from the strange place I'm in, and in moments my head is peaking out of what I realize is a strange vat. I am in a vat along the wall of a strange chamber filled with other vats. My vat is dark, almost as dark as its interior, and a number of creatures surround it. The sight of other living beings awakens and excites a part of me, one that greedily hungers for knowledge, power, and other things I will gain whenever I end a life.

I climb out of the vat and begin to study myself. I am naked and my skin is quite pale. I glance at the other figures I can see, three beings only one of whom has a form that is vaguely like mine, and I can faintly hear other beings in the distance. One of the beings surrounding the vat is a figure with a basic body shape that resembles mine but he has something covering parts of his skin, clothes that at a glance seem to be robes of some sort, and strange, feathered wings sprouting from his back.

The two other beings that surround the vat are strangely androgynous reptilian humanoids covered in both armor and scales. One of them has bright red scales and the other has dark blue ones, and both hold spears.

I am still as I gaze down at all three beings. The primary things I know are things related to my own powers as the Essence of the Anti-Immortal. My instincts are powerfully urging me to strike the creatures before me, and the part of me that wants to do so grows with every passing second. If I attack and succeed I can gain a lot… Heck, even if I fail and get injured I know instinctively that that in and of itself constitutes a victory due to my bizarre set of powers. I wrestle with the choice for several seconds before deciding to leave my options open. Instead of attacking I subtly tense my muscles and prepare to move.

When I begin to move, the very second that I begin to move, I watch the eyes of the winged figure widen in fear. My awareness of myself allows me to detect something strange in the back of my mind, a… presence of some sort that is alien and doesn't belong in my head. It takes me a second to realize that whatever is behind it is somehow scanning me and is, in all likelihood, now aware of my abilities and what I considered doing to the creatures surrounding the vat.

The winged figure doesn't speak but he does raise his hands at me and I immediately detect something in the air around me change. My body, reacting as quickly as I can perceive and make sense of what is happening, instinctually and deftly leaps out of the way right as a strange hole, in reality itself, appears right where I was.

The hole in reality is a portal of some sort and it quickly begins to assert some sort of attractive force. I faintly feel my body tilt in the direction of the hole as I reach the floor beneath the vat. The winged figure is not at all affected by the strange force, and the two beings with it are weighed down by potent armor so though they turn slightly in the direction of the portal they are otherwise unaffected by it and immediately hiss at me before raising their spears and pointing them at me.

A loud alarm begins to sound and I immediately begin to hear the sound of distant footsteps heading towards me. I glare at the winged figure, who glares right back at me. It seems he has somehow alerted others that something is occurring…

The winged figure grits his teeth and blood begins to trickle down his nose. I also feel the presence in the back of my mind get booted out, no doubt thanks to some of my abilities and the fact that with every passing second my powers are stirring within me and coming to life. The winged figure is the most likely culprit as far as being the one who was in my mind…

I grin at the winged figure, who is on the other side of the vat from where I landed when I leaped off of the thing. The guards stand between me and him. If I want to get him I have to either kill or otherwise move one of the spear-wielding reptilians.

I hurl myself at one of the guards, a savage smile on my face as I rocket toward the armed stranger. The sudden force behind my actions causes the winged stranger to reach out his hand in my direction, as though that'd stop me. Meanwhile, the guard I need to get past glares at me and bravely points his spear in my direction, attempting to position it between us as a means to dissuade me from hurling myself head-on at him. I ignore it, refusing to alter my course, and I roar in pain when the spear pierces me, the force of my initial leap causing me to impale myself on the weapon. White hot, almost blinding pain wracks my form as I am moved closer and closer to my target.

After a split second, my roar begins to change into a dark laugh. The pain I was in already begins to fade… The stranger screams in surprise at my actions, the sound harsh and disturbing but not enough to make me stop smiling as I continue to close the distance between us. I close my fists, readying them to be used as bludgeons against my foe.

"No!" The winged figure roars, his voice soft even in his fear and anger, as he uses one sleeved arm to wipe the blood trickling down his nose and points the other at me again. I inarticulately roar when another hole in space opens up right between the guard and me, the sound of my roar barely audible over the sounds of the alarm, and I am shunted through it by inertia before I can reach out and strike the guard.

I stop hurtling forward when I am shunted through the hole and instead find myself in the middle of a dark street in front of a strange building. The spear I just hurled myself onto is nowhere to be seen, and I feel my body beginning to heal as one of my powers, an adaptive healing factor, kicks in. I feel newfound strength seeping into my muscles and I turn in the direction of the portal, only to see it vanish as quickly as it formed. As I feel my healing finish I also sense the awakening of some of my stranger abilities, ones I intend to make use of immediately.

Internally I roar in displeasure as I size up my failure, but I do not make a sound. I am now in a strange place, and I don't want to alert anyone to my presence without a chance to figure out my current circumstances. I am in the middle of a settlement of some sort and I study my surroundings before taking a breath and beginning to head towards the large building in front of me.

I approach the building, an elegant-looking structure that must be designed with some potent purpose in mind, and activate one of my powers: the ability to perceive the past. Doing so allows me to see the building's recent past, which I can observe in my mind's eye.

I reach a flight of steps leading up to the building's front door and as I begin to climb them, still naked and unarmed, I study the mental vision of the building's past I am able to see. In my mind's eye I see the building during the day and I get to watch groups of people climb the stairs and knock on the door.

It is opened by a group of well-dressed children, who eagerly welcome them into the building's interior, which is made up of several rooms but the biggest is a grand one filled with rows of wooden seats. Behind all of them is a grand lecturn, a large altar, and an area for performers to stand and sing, which they begin to do as the groups of people enter the large room and seek out seats.

My vision of the place's past is just strong enough for me to both see and hear the vision. As I watch the vision my potent mind allows me to learn a lot, and I feel my knowledge base greatly expanding. Even just listening to words allows me to begin to understand the language I'm hearing, and in doing so I learn new words which describe some of the specific things I see.

I am able to listen to the hymns the choir sings, and I realize that I can fast forward the vision. I do this and the vision's speed is greatly increased until I watch a man dressed in fancy robes begin to sermonize the people who visited the building. I stop accelerating the vision and listen to the sermon for a second before beginning to mentally fast-forward the vision again and watching as people begin to leave the… "Church" as the people call it. Some people return for a while, head to a strange area, confess "sins" to the "Father" as the fancily-dressed man is referred to, and accept a gentle rebuke from him before he tells them of a "Penance" they must perform.

I pause as I reach the front doors of the building, and I will the vision to speed up again. I silently wait and watch, waiting to see if anyone would even be in the building… As I watch I consider the strangeness of my powers, and attempt to come up with a viable strategy moving forward.

I have no clue as to where I am, and strangely when I glance at the people in the vision I have of the "Church's" past I don't feel the same strange desire to kill. I don't know if it's because I'm not actually seeing them or if it's because they lack much of a value to me, but either option has fascinating implications that would allow me to strategize further once I can determine which is more reflective of reality.

When I kill something I take… nearly everything from it. The one thing I don't take from victims of mine is their souls, which pass on to whatever afterlife they are meant to go to. By killing people I can gain all of the knowledge they have, as well as transform their shadows into strange beings loyal to me that take on their forms and retain all of their memories, knowledge, skills, and powers, but their skills and powers are boosted beyond what they were in life in exchange for my "Shadow servants" lacking souls.

A good strategy, for the time being, would be for me to find someone and kill them and then use their knowledge to come up with a better plan. At the moment I can't even really make use of my more interesting abilities to do something as simple as conjure clothes. I know of "Runes" and "Spells" that'd allow me to do just that but they all cost more magical energy than I currently possess…

I watch the vision of the past for several moments and never see the leader of the people who work in this building leave, even though I see various other people eventually depart. Before long I am satisfied that the head of this building must still be inside of it, so I quickly formulate a simple strategy: I'll just knock on the front door and when it opens I'll attack whoever is waiting on the other side. When he, or whoever opens the door, dies I'll be able to take what I need from them, which is good because I probably need a lot. I need knowledge, clothes, and almost certainly other things I don't even know that I lack.

I knock on the doors standing between me and the church's interior. I faintly hear someone gasp quietly and begin to scramble to do something that takes several seconds. I glance in the direction of the sound and activate my ability to see into the past which allows me to see another section of the place: a small office where sometime shortly before I knocked on the door the head of the building, the "Father" of the place, was in a state of undress. This causes me to realize that the man is startled because he was disrobed, for some reason.

I hear footsteps begin to approach the doors in front of me and this makes me smile. I ready myself to attack whoever will open the door as whoever I intend to make my first victim reaches the area just beyond the door. My eyes narrow and I dart forward the instant that the door begins to open, closing my fists and readying myself for the pleasant sensations of the pain I'm about to inflict.