A vast nothingness stretched out in all directions, until it hit the dimensional barrier and ceased to exist. The only thing that broke the silky blackness was a circular structure, supported by ten pillars. A young man with pointed ears and a slight build sat in the center of the structure, staring out into his blank surroundings.

“Where is this place?” he wondered out loud. “How long have I been here?”

But there were no answers for him and he simply continued to sit there.

Time wore on endlessly and the boy grew bored.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” he said to one of the pillars. “If there was more here………maybe some land?”

The pillar did not, of course, care if there was land and the boy stood there for some time wondering if it thought his idea was good. Eventually, though, he stopped caring what the pillar thought and took some initiative. He walked to the edge of the structure and, taking another look at the vast darkness, willed rocks and soil to appear. The land spread out until it had become a planet.

The boy wandered around the sphere of uneven rock. Eventually he reached the structure once again.

“Hello!” he said to the pillar, happy to meet the old friend.

The pillar did not, of course, answer. After a while, the boy continued his one sided conversation.

“There isn’t much here…………” said the boy. “I think we need water.”

The pillar said nothing, so the boy created water. The water, not wishing to stay in one place too long, slithered off to the lower points of the land. Once it reached these points, though, it became trapped. The water, though, wasn’t so bothered by this, and simply ran where it could.

The world continued for some time, just rock and water, with the boy wandering around its vastness and adding spots of light to the sky here and there. He decided that air would also be a smart move, so he created a shining blue blanket, which he threw over the sphere. The blanket caught the land and held it, protecting it from the darkness.

The boy stared admiringly at his planet from inside the boundaries of the structure. One day, though, a feeling crept into his stomach.

“Something’s missing,” he said to the pillar. “I’m not sure what, though. But it definitely isn’t here…………”

He contemplated this for many days. Then, getting bored of the day, he created night. He then contemplated what was missing for many nights. But the nights also got boring and he began alternating the day and night, all the while contemplating.

“This is really quite lonely stuff,” he said to himself one day, having given up on the pillar for a response. Suddenly he knew what was missing.

He stood and thought about how to bring living creatures into being, but the more he thought about it the more unsure he was about what a living creature was, exactly. As he wandered along the rocky landscape, pondering how to create life when he was not sure what it truly was, he caught sight of a pond.

The boy went and sat beside it, enjoying its slight swishing sounds as the water tried to climb out and run. As he stared into it, he caught sight of his reflection on the water.

“I must be a living creature,” he said to the pond. “So I should seek to make a creature like I…………right?”

The pond ignored him, but he wasn’t really expecting it to answer. Not after the way the pillar had acted.

So the boy hiked back to the circular structure to think about how to create a creature like himself. After ten days, he decided to will it into existence, like he had with the earth and the water. He stood for centuries in that spot, trying to will life to occur, but it didn’t.

He’d never been unable to will something into existence before, and it was quite a shock to him that it hadn’t worked. He tried harder and longer, and still there was nothing to show for his efforts. Frustrated, the sat down and began to cry.

His tears, when they landed upon the stone ground, did a very funny thing. They began to grow, and shift. Each became a pointy eared creature of slight build. The boy didn’t notice until three creatures had sprouted of his tears. He stared at them. Two were just like him and the other was…different some how. What was it? The third was…curvier, with longer hair. A girl. That was it.

“Hello,” said one of the men.

“Hello,” the boy replied with wide eyes. Suddenly he stood and smiled broadly. “Hello!”

“This is interesting,” said the other man. “What is this?”

“It’s living.”

“Interesting…”

“What are you?” The boy asked them.

“We are elves,” The girl said as she surveyed the young world.

“Am I an elf as well, then?” The boy asked.

“No,” said the girl. “You are a god.”

“A Creation God,” said the first man.

“Oh,” said the boy. “So then…we are not the same, you and I?”

The elves shook their heads.

“I want other like me, but I suppose you’ll do,” the boy said with a sigh.

“It could use some plants,” the girl said staring out at the rocky landscape.

“Plants? Okay…” said the boy and he willed them to grow.

The girl smiled. “They’re a lot nicer, I think…”

“What are we to call you, Creation God?” asked the first man suddenly.

“A name?” the boy asked. “Well, I really hadn’t thought about it, but…Well, I suppose you shall call me Kraah Shohk.”

“A good name,” said the second man.

And so Kraah Shohk and his three traveled the small world. The three elves aged, though, while Kraah Shohk did not. They mated and the girl bore children and then, after some time—a blink of Kraah Shohk’s eye, it seemed to the god—they died. Their many children continued to travel with Kraah Shohk, however. Though, these children too surrendered to time and they aged and mated and died. And few of their children had any interest in Kraah Shohk. They split off and settled on plots of land, save for a few.

But, like their parents and their grandparents that gave them life, they aged and mated and died. Not a single child wanted anything to do with the god and Kraah Shohk was left alone in his world once again.

Lonely, the creation god walked alone through the rocky forests he created. He walked deep into one of these forests until he came upon the most familiar sight he had—the ten pillared sanctuary that had been the start of his life. He sat inside it and cried.

And, as before, for every tear that touched the ground, a creature sprang up. And as his sorrow deepened and his pain magnified, these beasts became more and more sinister. Soon they were giant, monstrous things with nothing but death upon their minds. Many creatures of varying degrees of evil came about into the world before Kraah Shohk found the strength to stop crying and carry on.

He continued his aimless wandering, alone. Every time he came upon an elf, he would shed a tear and from these tears, new intelligent lives were formed. Soon Kraah Shohk, seeking only to avoid his creations, found himself in a most desolate place, with strange plants he could not remember creating.

As he pondered this place, one of his abominations came upon him. It was a huge creature, with fangs of iron and wiry fur that cut the plants it crouched behind. It lurched from the brush and attacked the god. Before he could even turn to face it, the beast had torn Kraah Shohk’s side wide open. The blood gushed out and splattered the ground in twelve different areas. Kraah Shohk willed himself a sword and with it he slashed the creature’s throat before it could strike again.

Though his adversary was defeated, Kraah Shohk was gravely wounded. He staggered and fell to the ground. Clutching his side where the animal had torn his flesh, he tried to push the organs that were falling out back into him.

“Are you injured, m’lord?” he heard a voice say.

Kraah Shohk lifted his head with great effort so as to look upon the speaker. His eyes widened when he saw twelve creatures in the clearing with him. They were similar to him, save one, but they were not the same. Not like the elves had been.

“Who are you?” Kraah Shohk asked them as one—a young man with round ears and a tall, heavy build—stepped forward to survey the Creator’s wound.

“We are gods, of course,” said a brutish looking man with sharp ears and rotting teeth.

“Yes,” piped in a small girl with a bovine head. “We are the Zykarinek Lxnaken twelve.”

“Where did you come from?” he asked the girl as she stepped forward and placed her hands upon his shredded side. As she did, the hot wound cooled and healed painlessly.

“We came from your blood,” said the young man who had stepped forward before. “We came from your sorrow.”

“And you….are gods?”

“Yes.”

“Just like me?”

“Yes.”

“Just….like me…?”

The gods nodded.

Kraah Shohk wept then, but not with sorrow. He wept with the joy at finally having creatures that were just the same as him. And from these tears came beautiful things, and the more he cried the more their beauty and grace increased.

“What of this ruined world, m’lord?” the girl with the cow’s face asked.

“Indeed,” said a creature with a body of both equine and human qualities. “It is only war and death and hate and fire here. This place is not fit for the Zykarinek Lxnaken—holiest of creatures.”

“Then we will leave it,” Kraah Shohk said as he rose to his feet. “These beings do not deserve any of our presence. They abandoned me to pursue this chaos, after all…”

And with that the god willed a stair case. He willed it open to a new world, one that was clean and pure. And here he lived with his twelve lesser gods. And they married and bore more gods, but they did not age and they did not die. They sat in that place, the God’s Spring, and looked down upon their world—their rotten, mortal world of rotten, mortal creatures—and they shook their heads and Kraah Shohk, the father of all that existed here, forsook the mortals he had created.

And so, life continued that way for many, many centuries, the gods separating themselves from those crude life forms.