With the Light of a Thousand Suns
About 2000 years ago, there lived a man who tried telling people they
should be nice to each other. He was summarily nailed to a tree for his
naivety, but He also said something I have always found interesting,
glossed over by many of His followers and doubters alike.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega.”
These
words, signifying that He is the very first and the very last, took all
of two seconds for Him to say, and they aptly summarize not only His
sentiment but mine as well. I am a minor power as far as us Old Ones go,
but I have existed from before the beginning and I will continue
existing after everything else has ended.
You probably wonder
where I’m going with this. The simple truth is, after an eternity of
merely existing, I have grown bored. Bored, but not apathetic. I wanted
to do something. Not something great, mind you, just something to take
my mind off the tedium and malaise that goes hand-in-hand with
immortality. And that is why I am here, in the bottom of a well located
on Alpenview’s outskirts. I took it upon myself to grant people whatever
wish they associated with this particular well. I granted a great many
wishes, just to observe the outcomes. It isn’t my fault a person’s wish
often wrecks chaos on their life, because Humans are innately selfish,
and by their nature they desire things which are detrimental to their
health.
But the story doesn’t actually begin here. I have been
in a similar space, sleeping in the inky black long before Alpenview was
founded. In a different part of the world I took up residence in a
nomad village’s well, coincidentally around the same time as that man I
mentioned was first beginning to gain in followers. The sun was harsh in
this land, and many days I would hear the muttered pleas of the
villagers, begging for any respite from that infernal sphere of fire in
the sky. So, one day, I granted their wish.
I took the sun away from them.
A
bitter cold and perpetual night washed over this land. Many people
died, and that was before society began to collapse in earnest. And all
of a sudden, people started begging and praying to their deities of
choice for the sun to come back! Now, I am not a cruel being by nature. I granted this new wish and brought the sun back. In fullest force.
The
resulting firestorm of a conflagration incinerated this pitiful nomad
village into charred rubble. Really, Humans should learn to be more
careful with what they wish for.
