Laughter flows from my fangs, as thick and syrupy as magma from a volcano.

It gives me all the pleasure and warmth of acknowledging that I've been manipulated like a fledgling imp signing his first contract.

Did the Wizard have it all planned out, or was this just the Warlock's intuition?

[i]Traitor, traitor, if only I'd had more time to chew her soul some more, and yet my chest fills with orange pride remembering how she managed to turn my own teachings against me.[/i]

It was more than a Kalpa before I realized that creating a Cosmos using only my own essence was an effort doomed from the start. Countless pale imitations of the world before my last duel, all as fragile as a sketch drawn on a snowflake...

I have to use the thrice-damned infection the Rogue instilled in my bowel with his damnable dagger, I have to swallow my pride and vomit up the Sorcerer's green envy, the Warrior's yellow fear, the Barbarian's red anger, the Bard's pink love...

And Creation unfolds, Earth between my claws, Air inside lungs that had none a moment ago. Wood to give me a shadow, Metal to give a hoard, Fire to dance between my lips.

They were thirteen in all, and I will be only one to remember them. That gives me solace, which I immediately puke up. Fuck being happy with how things turned out.

They thought that they could unseat me from my throne, and they were wrong. I destroyed the universe rather than let that happen.

I thought that this would be my greatest victory, and I was wrong. They made me in a demiurge rather than let that happen.

And now I have to create a world, but I must follow rules I would never follow otherwise.

Digesting the Wizard's soul gave me some insight into her thought, and in the pedestrian, inept, disgusting, ironclad law that is The Dilemma of the Prisoners.

I can choose to never use the emotions, the [i]chi[/i], the mana of the merry band of heroes which I handily defeated...

But anything I make will be hollow and empty. Loneliness will corrode my mind and my sanity, and after digesting their souls my hunger will eventually turn in on itself, taking me with it.

Oblivion. Unacceptable.

Or I can use my powers and their colours to create something they too would be happy with, an unknowing mausoleum to their memory, which will grow and expand to be even greater than the last Cosmos.

Compromise. Unacceptable.

And yet here I am, debasing myself with every heave.

Crafting a universe I hate.