The God that was

Daniel sat still in the impossible black he had found. If anyone had told him this was what he'd find, he'd have brought them to the local asylum. But here he was, in an abyss that he couldn't escape from, where he couldn't even find a pinprick of light to suggest where he had fallen in from.

Daniel couldn't even tell if his eyes were open; such was the oppressive darkness. He had already shouted himself hoarse after he fell in and now thought he'd fallen asleep at some point, but couldn't even be sure of something that simple. As it was, he was huddled into himself, wishing for a way out of this place. Just as that thought crossed his mind, he felt something else had joined him in the abyss beneath the earth.

He opened his eyes, tears drying on his cheeks as he looked up, seeing nothing new in the crushing dark. But he did hear it. Something else breathing in the dark, only slightly behind his own breath, almost like it was copying him. He slowed his breathing, and it did as well. Eventually, it spoke.

"So you are alive. I had hoped so, but your kind are so frail sometimes." The voice was thin and staggered against its words as though it hadn't spoken to anything in years.

Daniel shot up out of his skin, immediately thinking of the demons that stalked the deeps of the caves dug by the Dwellers. Stocky beings with four arms each and skin like granite, their reputation as utterly fearless fighters was slandered in only one tale: The Fall of Krethims Castle. The one time that anyone had heard of or seen a Dweller army break and flee. Worse, not one Dweller Daniel had met ever said the story was false. And for a people known the world over for each and all being the finest soldiers, to admit to cowardice is a grave shame. Yet none deny the charge, merely hang their heads in shame and nod as the memory of their disgrace washes over them once more.

"Back, Demon! I am protected. You would bring only death to you and yours if you harm me!" He shouted into the featureless void, guessing at the voice's nature as he panicked, hoping any of the Gods would help him now.

A deep chuckle reverberated through the black, and a feeble light appeared to Daniel's right, blinding his eyes for a moment as they struggled to react to light again. "I'm no Demon, and none of my siblings would help you here, Child of Meurthur. Not when you asked for me, and certainly not after I've answered you." As Daniel's eyes recovered, he saw the absolute last thing he could have expected: a man much like himself, squatting in the dark, dressed in the manner of a well-off merchant. Wearing breeches in an older style, an opened double-breasted coat brushing against the floor, now revealed to be smooth stone, seemingly shaped by something mightier than the being beside him.

"Meurthur has no sibling who lives in the ground. All dwell above the clouds." Daniel spoke the catechism every good citizen knew, the wisdom that defends oneself against the machinations of the Demons of the earth's underbelly.

Again, the being laughed, standing up as it did, its head half again higher than Daniel's. "Is that what you've been teaching yourselves?" Its face finally became stable in the light, briefly visible like a grinning spectre. The mischievous eyes of a Sprite bored into him, even as the mouth was like that of the barbarous Swarm, with four fangs in its massive jaw, before its features blurred as its face morphed into an ever-shifting mix of each race that walked the earth, the unmistakable trait of the Gods. "No," it laughed low as its face continued morphing, "no, I alone have been exiled for the sake of your kind. I am Faust, the speaker of Meurthur, and I answered your prayers, Daniel. The ones that brought you here and will free you again." As Faust finished his sentence, the tunnel's roof partially collapsed, the resultant pile of scree offering a way out.

Before Daniel could climb, a question barreled out of his mouth, "How could we have caused your exile?".

"Because it is in my nature to grant your kind's desires. And your kind's desires are manifold. Some are good, others evil. Some sound good, and others sound evil while each is a deception." Faust's skin mottled in rage, becoming almost purely demon-kind in its features, shark's teeth, black eyes, and the smell of blood emanating from its mouth as it spoke, "The Demons you fear? The Dwellers created them. In their minds, their fears, their nightmares. And one day I saw them. And in that moment they came to be, and countless horrors have been wrought by Demon and Dweller to destroy the other." Faust's face became that of a veteran dweller, grief permanently etched within its skin, carved paths betraying untold tears. "For your own sake, I dwell far away from you all. Now, leave, before my nature answers anymore of your desires."

Faust tore itself away from Daniel as he climbed out to freedom once more, damning itself again to the isolation of the tunnels it had found. Happy to have helped someone, but terrified of what it had given Daniel, Faust could only hope the Meurthan would keep silent about what he had found. Another test of Faust's restraint like that, and it feared something far worse than even Demon kind would be born.