This is Emmorta

30

Fate

It is my favorite time. Politicking. And I am so ready to be entertained.

I never arrive at these on time, especially not early, but today marks a special occasion and I'm particularly looking forward to the dynamics unfolding. New rule politics of infant gods and old bastards with grudges. The amount of history about to implode in this very room is the equivalent to what one might call a too-lengthy series of books, or even a soap opera, unfolding before me. And after this, I shall walk out of here, having defeated at least two of my adversaries. Evander being the first, considering he is the weakest of sound mind.

My special little pet boy comes at the snap of my fingers. The friction between them sends a delightful scent into my nose.

"You called for me, sir," he says.

Adam. He's not so much a boy, but an aged man who should have died long ago. However, we all bear a weakness for sentimental value. Still, his skin is paper thin despite his unnatural eternal youth. Everything else about him is a blatant announcement of forever suffering in silence, but I am not one who needs to remind others of their places or their poor choices made.

I digress.

"Summon them."

He lifts his horn to his lips and calls the others. When finished, he dips his head to me and returns to his station outside the door, where he remains, counting time until the end. It is proper payment for his part in the fall of humanity. That rib of his remains in a state of unrest, since he damned her when given the choice.

It's not long before Orion and Evander tumble through a portal amid a rolling fight. Hands on one another, growling and cursing about "hurting her." Orion gets the upper hand, and wails on Evander, bloodying his face.

What an impressive fighter if only we were in some lowly human's patch of dirt behind a house.

No doubt in my mind what the fight is over—their loss, my gain, and she's sleeping sweetly in her room, where she will emerge much stronger for taking my blood. If she wasn't strong enough to kill a god before, she certainly is now.

It's a few more hits and exchanges before they notice me and stop. Argument forgotten, they scramble up and lunge toward me until the forces of this room stop them. Though I wish I had the foresight to make it send them backward and impale them on something sharp against the wall, they hit the forces that send them backwards on their rears.

"I am protected in this room since I designed it," I say. It's nothing more than a blank space with my obsidian table. The dark things that have been dealt across this smooth surface and numbers exchanged for various reasons extend beyond one's most haunting nightmares. I've also witnessed many threats made—those are my favorite. Apart from Lucifer, everyone else who has threatened me has departed. So many players we've lost over time and yet two originals remain in this little game.

The top is smooth to the touch, with rough edges around it. I even designed chairs to go alongside it.

Here, we made the first agreement to begin Emmorta. Here, Lucifer defied his creator and "fell." Here, Eden sacrificed one day each year to accept a punishment of my choosing in order to allow the naphil to live—my failed experiment who made my perfect Rune. Here, Michael sacrificed his child. Eden and my first creation gave their third child. Vanessa gave up the ability to love. Samael sacrificed himself since he claimed there was no one or thing he would love more. Here, Lucifer cut out Rune's heart the day he took her, forever tangling her in this web.

And here, I will lay the heads of my own children before collapsing all of Creation on itself once I have proven it is a job well done.

"You may take your seats, they are carved with the sun and moon—"