Sons of Ironstorm - Book 1: Griffon's Rise

Dark Vision

It was a small thing, a particle of space dust so minute it would’ve escaped notice even if it sat in one’s hand.  It hurtled unknown and unnoticed through the vastness of space, one particle amongst many; a thousand, tens of thousands, as many as the sands of a thousand beaches.  Yet, as it was with many great things, this tiny particle of dust, unknown and unnoticed, was a beginning.

A flare of light marking where the particle of dust intersected the plane of the ecliptic, a shockwave was sent rippling through time and space from the flare, reaching across the normal and the paranormal to touch all corners of Reality, known and unknown.  And from where it sat brooding in its contemplation of the vast, multi-colored matrix that was the fabric of space and time from a vantage point outside of Reality, a dark intelligence stirred as the ripple washed over it.

Here, in a pocket of existence, the intelligence had waited for millennia.  Waited for this exact moment, announced by the ripple across the continuum.  And as it felt the ripple touch it, it paused in its consideration to savor the dark joy that filled it with a rush.  Finally it would have its revenge.

With a thought the intelligence pressed even further into the existence beyond Reality, into an abyss that lacked light or life, where only the darkest of dreams prevailed.  Deep into the realm of nightmares it sped until it felt the emptiness change, become substance in itself, given a form of reality by fear, anger and pain spawned by the nightmares that dwelt here.

Compared to the vastness of Reality, this island, this form of reality in the midst of emptiness was but a sliver, the thinnest plane; a shadow of what was.  But it was enough for the purpose that it fulfilled.  The intelligence didn’t pause at the plane’s borders but flew instead to its very heart, seeking out that which dwelt there.

Out of the darkness of the Abyss stars had been born to this island of reality, and around those suns spun a multitude of worlds.  Each was covered with cities as tall as mountains and as vast as continents, home to creatures the like that mortal eyes had never before seen.  If they had, however, the owners of those eyes would flee in absolute terror for these creatures were given perverse life by the dark energy that filled this place, an energy created by nightmares.

Words had been created to name such creatures, to give them form and shape.  But only one seemed completely appropriate here, in the heart of their power: demon.

Each city on each world seethed with demonic life, both mechanical and organic.  In the darkness of the Abyss they worked to create new nightmares and to consume the dark energy spewed out by existing ones.  And they looked with hate and envy at the bright light of Reality hovering at the edge of the Abyss, mocking them with its flawless beauty.  Soon would come the time that they would be clothed in flesh and sent ravening against that beauty, to destroy it with their hate, burn it with their envy until only the Abyss remained.  The ripple across their dark existence marked that time.

In the heart of the greatest of the shadow worlds, in a shadowy city that stood far greater than any other in this place, there stood a building that was both terrible in its countenance and perfect in its dimension.  A cube like no other, it stood as tall as a mountain and as broad as a sea, its four faces incised with symbols of dark power.  Those symbols gathered the dark power that fueled the Abyss, spinning it into the shadow reality that formed the plane of existence the demons dwelt upon.  The building was the beginning of the demonic plane; it’s beginning and its ultimate end.

To the building the dark intelligence came, passing through the thick rivers of negative energy that flowed both into and out of the building, each river imparting a measure of substance to the intelligence.  Until when it came to a halt before the building, on an artificial plain that surrounded it on all sides, the intelligence was clothed in a shadowy body of sorts, a wraith of movement and shadow that paused a moment to consider the building before it slowly moved towards it, casting no trail in the strange illumination that filled the plane.