Just a little further...

The thought vanished upon awakening as the Power that once was stared at the ever-shifting clouds above. His mind became aware as it always did when the century drew to a close. The haze of the long sleep dissipating, he paused to view the beauty of what had been denied him. Now bound to the earth, he gazed at the sky he’d once ruled... A crueler torment seemed impossible to conceive. He longed to feel the currents of wind, once instruments of his design, now just out of reach. The Power turned his mind from thoughts of his creation. This was not a time for longing.

The Outsiders would arrive soon.

The Power struggled against his bonds of earth and darkness. They held firm, as they had every century for eons. Fortification against his will, his need to taste the sky once more. Feeling his resistance, deep pools of malignant power wrapped about him. The numb tingling of narcotic bliss, lulling him into a false sense of calm.

His fight for freedom relented as memories of the past came flooding in. To the beginning, when he and his kin ruled the heavens. Under their watch and guidance, the worlds they touched, changed. The molten rivers cooled and faded, the skies turned from darkened ash to immaculate blue. Soil became rich, ready to sustain life, which each of the Powers breathed into existence.

His own name was lost to the passage of time, but he remembered the beings he’d created, who soared along the currents of his sky. With the aid of Earth, they had joined in sacred union to birth countless forms of life into this world.

Earth was all he could remember of her. Earth, and her touch, her beauty, her love. Earth with blood on her lips…

Abruptly the nostalgia vanished and the Power remembered.

His utter dismay as he watched his labors of love drained of life in the wake of the Outsiders’ arrival. Beings that existed before the light of creation spread to the vast reaches of the universe. Hungry, soulless things, with no understanding of the sanctity of life. They were void, anathema, and their lust for all things of creation was matched only by their indifference toward it.

The Pantheon united to combat the threat to their existence. Trumpets sounded the call to war and the cry of dying gods followed.

Their conflict raged across the cosmos as these malicious beings came to devour the worlds he and his kin had brought to life. Earth, his lover, had been cruelly taken from him, destroyed by their oppressors. The Power remembered her once graceful form, broken as she lay in his arms. In the light of a dying sun, he screamed his anguish to the stars beyond.

In his anguish the Power rose up amongst the Pantheon, leading his kind against the Outsiders. Where once he had known only life, love, and creation, the Power discovered hate. Latching onto it, embracing it, he railed against the Outsiders, leading others into the fray and claiming a terrible toll on the undivine threat. Their war shattered worlds and brought chaos to the mastered works of creation that had taken eons to build.

Rather than flee and save what they could, as many of the Pantheon had begged, he pressed on, heedless of the dangers. Blind to what it would cost.

More memories followed, and the Power felt the price of his hatred as he recalled every fallen world and every lost kin. To the Power’s dismay, the few surviving Outsiders bound those who hadn’t fallen; some to the earth, others above it, a few beneath the oceans. Each cut off from the the source of their design.

For the Power, he was ripped from the sky and confined beneath the earth, his screams silenced as the narcotic touch of the Outsiders lulled him into submission, burying all but his face. The dark intelligence of the enemy knew they could not consume every source of life. And so, those Powers that survived became little more than sustenance for the Outsiders. Taking what they desired and leaving his kin little more than empty husks before seeking out new sources of life within the cosmos.

The Power forced himself back to the now, even as he felt the arrival of the Outsiders. The malignant force above him blotting out the moon and clouds. Their ever-present hunger hushing the very world he’d been bound to. Winds died down, the grass lay low, and animals coward in their dens. All were quelled by the overwhelming force above.

The Power felt a wave of helplessness roll over him. How many eons had he been trapped? Forced to remain in place only to have his lifeforce drained, his memories fade, and his dreams die. To forget Earth, her love, and the time they shared. To be used, over and over again in an endless, hopeless cycle without end. Better to surrender what was left of his mind and fade away...

He was Sky, God of Wind and Change, War and Wrath.

Remembering his name brought a surge of righteous indignation. What was time to a being of eternity? He had seen the expansion of the universe and witnessed the birth of stars. He had loved beyond the comprehension of mortal and divine minds alike.

He would not be bound.

Hatred blossomed, burning away the fear and loathing that threatened to claim his mind. The narcotic in his system dulled as the energy that had once filled him began to flow throughout his body. With every ounce of his gathering strength, Sky worked against the shackles that held him. He could feel the soil begin to loosen, the inky blackness that tied him down, fraying and breaking away. For a brief moment, his body began to move against the constraints of his prison.

In the next, the Outsider above him initiated the harvesting process. Sky felt his heartbeat quicken; the source of his power draining from his body, coalescing in his chest. He raged against the process, as he had done a thousand times over. With what strength he had, he focused on pushing himself up.

Just a little further…

The energy within was brimming, his limbs becoming weaker and weaker until he couldn’t do much more and writhe. The terrible sense of gradual paralysis and impending loss smothered the fire in his breast. Again, he would be bound and there wasn’t enough time to break free. In one mind-numbing flash of pain and panic, Sky’s lifeforce roared out of him in a torrent of untapped energy, soaring up into the Outsider’s core as it consumed every ounce of him. He became an empty husk, save for the smallest fragment of creation which would slowly rebuild over time.

Having taken what it needed, the Outsider vanished, leaving the bound god where it had been contained.

Unknown to the Outsider, the Power had risen from the earth. It was no great amount, nothing that the Outsider, a being beyond time, would perceive. As the dark pools flowed away, waiting for the next century when they would be called upon to restrain him once again, a single digit revealed itself. Free of the earth and tendrils that once held it in place.

Time passed, the decades gradually shifting the dynamics of the world around the Power. As a new century neared its end, the Power that was began to stir and awaken.

Just a little further…