Fic: SPN: Creation Myth
Okay, yes, I admit it: I'm writing Supernatural fic. I have no excuses.
Title: Creation Myth OR If Monsters had Sunday School OR, most honestly, I beat the crap out of 3-6 mythologies in an attempt to explain what's purgative about Purgatory, where virgins come into it, and how Leviathans got a taste for human internal organs if they've been in Purgatory since before humans existed
Rated G
~3000 words
Spoilers through early Season 7
Summary:
I: Tiamat and the Firstborn
Before humans and before angels were the true firstborn, and there were two kinds: those who were always hungry (like fire, consuming at all times) and those who were never hungry (like suns, complete unto themselves however long they last). Those who were always hungry ate and ate and ate and were never satisfied, until the Creator became disturbed and sealed them away where nothing they ate would stay eaten, and they have never been allowed to return. Those who were never hungry melded seamlessly into the natural world: Earth and Sky and Waters, Night and Day, Time and Chance, and a few others. They chose their places from their natures and took their natures from their places, and were content; and it was good.
And the Creator grew bored, and made the angels.
The angels sang in praise of the Creator, and in praise of the creations, and flew hither and thither and got everywhere. The firstborn wondered at these creatures made to praise -- was it no longer enough to to express gratitude by being, with one's whole heart? -- but none was more disturbed than the Fresh Water, Apsu.
"How can you stand them?" he asked the Earth. "They have no flesh, no bodies, no life; they are no part of that which you cherish."
But the Earth said, "They are nothing of mine. But my creatures do not hear or see as we do, and the angels do not trouble them more than any agitation in the sky."
"How can you stand them?" he asked the Sky. "They go everywhere, in your furthest reaches, where no living creature would dare go."
But the Sky said, "The living creatures cannot go there; I have not forbid them. The angels trouble nothing, and are bright to perceive."
"How can you stand them?" he asked the Night. "They disturb your darkness with their unnatural glow."
But the Night said, "It is still night when the moon lights the sky, or lightning strikes, or the creatures make their own light. I might perhaps fashion such small beings myself."
"I cannot stand them," he said to Tiamat, the Salt Water, his mate, who had loved him since the beginning. "They are noisy in every kind of sound, beyond all previous conception, they think themselves the pinnacle of creation, they are more numerous than varieties of arthropod, and I will not tolerate them any longer."
So Apsu rose up and sought to destroy the angels by drowning their burning Grace in his waters, but Grace is not fire and angels do not drown by natural means. Soon the archangels came, with the world's first weapons. They freed the angels Apsu had trapped, and fought him to a standstill, then dragged him from his place and sealed him away with the firstborn who are always hungry, in a place which still had no name.
The other firstborn were dismayed, none more so than Tiamat.
"They put him with the Hungry Ones," she cried to the Earth with the waves on the shore.
"Peace, peace," said the shore, for Gaea the Earth had been little pleased herself when Apsu turned the lakes and rivers inside out to hunt angels. "You know he would not listen to reason. And you know he wanted quiet, and now he can have it. And you know he is stronger than the Hungry Ones, especially in that place where nothing they eat will stay eaten."
But Tiamat said to herself, "How would they like to be eaten, even just for a little while?" And in the deep places of the ocean, she birthed monsters. She gave them bodies like the oldest of the animals, with no eyes or ears for the angels to destroy, but made them large; and she gave them a sense for angel-Grace and an urge to devour stronger than any but the Hungry Ones themselves. But since they were the children of Tiamat and Tiamat alone, they were never truly hungry and never truly ate, but lived as long as they lived, and then stopped.
The angels had been displeased to be accosted by rivers and lakes, but it was nothing compared to Tiamat's monsters leaping from the sea to swallow them whole (even just for a little while). They organized themselves in troops to hunt the monsters, and the archangels armed themselves again to hunt Tiamat herself.
It was a long struggle. The angels tore away great masses of sea and held it away in ice. The surface of the sea became as varied as the surface of land with Tiamat's rage. Tiamat's monsters grew confused and wandered off and tried to eat everything they met, for they had not been made to think and were better at starting fights than ending them. At long last the angels won, and Tiamat was cast down after Apsu.
II: Echidna and the Monsters
For a long time, Tiamat languished in the prison of the Hungry Ones, in Purgatory, where nothing stays eaten. There was no light, and there was no land, only Apsu's waters and Tiamat's waters and the Hungry Ones who swam about trying to eat everything. Apsu's company brought no comfort, for he had no desire for anything but seeking to crush any Hungry Ones which came to his attention.
Time passed.
Then all at once there was an island in the water: a great mountain, a mighty volcano. It was one of the Ourea, Gaea's children.
"Tiamat?" said the mountain. "I come with word from my mother, Gaea, and a connection to her also. If you dive into my mouth, she can catch you."
As great a mountain as he was, only a tiny fraction of Tiamat could fit, but she drew closer. "Would it leave you trapped here?"
"The fire beneath me has moved on, leaving cold stone. Here, I can burn forever."
Apsu stirred. "Quiet!" he howled.
Trying to fit through the mountain was preferable to listening to Apsu shouting at the mountain. Tiamat drew a portion of herself apart, and dove into the mouth of the volcano.
She -- part of her -- went from Purgatory to deep in the embrace of the Earth, in a body, the likes of which she had never seen before.
"Has it been so long?" said the piece of Tiamat.
"Aeons," said Gaea. "I made that for you. It's mostly mammalian. The face is special. It's from the new favorite."
Gaea explained how one kind of living creature -- humans -- had been gifted with a thing called a soul, things of such power they might last forever. Moreover, the Creator had said humans were the pinnacle of creation. Some of the angels had not reacted well, and now they were fighting each other.
"The archangels have not suppressed them?" asked the piece of Tiamat, remembering their power.
"An archangel is leading them."
She considered, and said, "So there is no need to meddle with them, then."
"What are you planning now, Tiamat?" Gaea asked, in some dismay.
"Call me not Tiamat," she said. "Most of Tiamat is still the waters in Purgatory. This me is not the waters. I will be called Echidna, and I will be the Mother of Monsters, and my children will have these souls."
Echidna came forth. At first, all save Gaea and Nyx the Night mistook her for a Hungry God, a new sort of being descended from firstborn but depending on humans for strength. She did not correct them.
She made monsters, not starting from nothing but modifying humans. She made some that were part human and part animal. She made some based on stories human told. She made some based on nightmares humans woke from. And whether from breeding or from contagion, she made monsters which could make more monsters.
So it was that when the rebel angels were cast into Hell, there were monsters the world over, changed in body and soul. And though the angels hunted down Echidna and slew the body Gaea had made, sending her shade back to Purgatory, they could not stop the spread of her children. Never again would she be alone. And by Gaea's kindness, both pieces of Tiamat and certain of her children may sometimes be reborn, and live again.
III: Velu Mate and Purgatory
Because Echidna's children were changed in body and soul, when they died their souls followed their mother to Purgatory, as the souls twisted by the fallen angels followed their father to Hell.
As the nature of Hell is torment, the nature of Purgatory is hunger. As souls in Hell are shaped by torment, so souls in Purgatory are shaped by hunger -- except that if a soul is quiescent in Purgatory, floating in the waters of Apsu and Tiamat without action, it is unshaped and purged by the hunger around it. Echidna's power flows back to Tiamat's waters; the soul becomes purely human, and it ascends from the abyss, and Nyx sends her children, the Reapers, to escort it to its new destination. These souls shine brighter and brighter as they are purified and finally ascend; from these rising souls comes most of the light in Purgatory.
Those souls which do not ascend may follow several paths. Souls who fully embrace their hunger seldom leave the water, but strive only to eat other souls, eating and eating until the nature of the place empties them, in an echo of the Hungry Ones who have been there longest. In time, these souls become amm't, shaped like monstrous crocodiles, and even they shun their own company, for they do nothing but eat. In a living body, an amm't would eat itself to death in hours.
Rising from the waters are the Ourea of Purgatory, children of Gaea who chose burning forever in Purgatory, even with amm't and Hungry Ones trying to devour their feet, over dormancy on Earth. From the mouths of the Ourea come heat and light, and at the very peaks of the Ourea dwell the few souls who become phoenix, exalted in fire, and all of their hunger is put into the fire. A phoenix who flies straight into the mouth of an Ourea for seven days and seven nights will be born in flame atop an Ourea of Earth. On Earth it will live, in its own shape, until it dies in flame and flies back to Purgatory.
On the slopes of the Ourea are shades, the faint powerless things left behind by things which die and leave no souls. Here are the shades of hungry gods (unless their fellows divert them), and angels, and demons who are truly killed (for to kill a demon is to kill what was once a soul). Some souls seek their company, and become shade-shadows, scarcely distinguishable.
A few special souls, the firstborn-of-their-kind, become themselves, only more so. They are reborn to their kindred in times of great need.
The strongest souls find the caverns and hidden caves of the Ourea, and become dragons. By Gaea's charity, because of her love for Tiamat, they may return to Earth and live again.
IV: Kulshedra and the Dragons
Like demons, dragons can return to Earth. Unlike demons, they cannot change hosts at will or wander disembodied -- once in a body, they become it, belong to the body as it belongs to them. For demons must claw their way in defiance of every law, but dragons return to the Earth through the mouths of the Ourea, by Gaea's permission, and they must obey her rules.
When she who had been Tiamat and Echidna was incarnated as Kulshedra, she showed the dragons they way back to Earth, and explained
They must have a body. Customarily, dragons on Earth bring one to a place deep underground, at the mouth of an Ourea. They speak an incantation to call their kindred in Purgatory, and the dragon so called goes to the mouth of an Ourea in mirror. The dragons on Earth cast the body in; the dragon in Purgatory casts itself in. Dragon and body meet in between worlds, the soul is expelled, and the dragon becomes one with the body, so much so that if it is killed, it returns to Purgatory as a soul, and must begin its journey anew.
"But," Kulshedra said, "it cannot be just any body. Human bodies belong to Gaea, the Earth, my sister and my mother. And out of respect for Gaea, it is forbidden to take a fruitful human. You may take only one that you know, with absolute certainty, cannot possibly have given life, or cannot possibly give it in the future, or ideally both. And out of respect and gratitude for Gaea, in the future I myself will obey the same rules."
"But Mother," said the dragons, "how can we tell?"
"A human may be so young that he or she cannot have given life," Kulshedra said.
"But such bodies are very small," said the dragons.
"A human may be so old that he or she cannot again give life," Kulshedra said.
"But such bodies are very frail," said the dragons.
"A human may be mutilated so that he cannot again give life," Kulshedra said.
"But we do not wish to be mutilated," said the male dragons.
"Such small things can easily be patched over once you have the body," Kulshedra said, and the male dragons fell silent to think.
"But," said the female dragons, "we do not wish to be male, and to remove a female body's seeds without killing it is nigh-impossible."
"A human female has a membrane which tears should she give birth," Kulshedra said.
But it took some time for the dragons to learn to observe the membrance without complex examination, and even now some female dragons prefer a sound old woman to the uncertainty of a virgin hunt.
There are seldom many dragons on Earth. They are not as desperate for escape as demons are to escape Hell, and at heart they are solitary creatures.
V: Eve, the Mad God, and the Hungry Ones
None of the firstborn were pleased when the angels plotted to end the world, but they are not quick to act. "And what they mean to end is humanity," said Gaea. "The world they mean to change, and that will happen no matter what."
"Are you tiring of the humans?" asked Nyx.
"I do not tire of things," said Gaea. "Their chemical production has exceeded that I expect from a life-form, is all." (For Gaea is the mother of humans, but she is equally the mother of blue whales and spotted owls, and of the dodo, and of the dinosaurs.)
But Purgatory was troubled only after the plot failed, when demons began hunting monsters, not to kill them, but to torture them brutally for information they did not even have. The firstborn-of-their-kind were reborn in response to the crisis, but the demons only escalated in return. And so the Mother was incarnated again, this time taking the name Eve; she proclaimed that if the demon plotted to wrest the souls from Purgatory, they would not let him, and what was more they would see to it that as few souls as possible went anywhere but Purgatory.
And this she would have done, but the demons conspired with an angel, and the angel used humans to obtain ash from the last phoenix on the continent, who had died in fire long years before. Eve died at the hands of the humans, and the body the dragons had brought for her was cruelly desecrated by the demons. The angel then captured a shade-shadow which had escaped to Earth some time before, and from her learned how to open a door into Purgatory, unmoderated by Gaea's hand.
So the angel opened Purgatory and took into himself all the undifferentiated souls; and all the rising souls; and all the dragons; and all the phoenixes; and all the firstborn-of-their-kind; and all the amm't; and all the shades of hungry gods; and all the shades of demons; and all the shades of angels; and all the Hungry Ones; and all the detritus of a place used as a dumping ground for anything the powers did not know where else to put. With all the power of all the souls, the angel grew mighty, and became the Mad God.
Left alone in Purgatory were those parts of Tiamat that had never been incarnated, and Apsu, for they are too great to be held in any angel, and the Ourea, for their roots are deep and the gate was open too short a time. They were not alone for long: dying things went still to Purgatory, not directly to the Mad God, so they soon began to accumulate monster souls again -- and many shades of angels.
In little time as the firstborn measure it, the Mad God was brought again to a portal, and emptied back into Purgatory: the undifferentiated souls, and the rising souls, and the dragons, and the phoenixes, and the firstborn-of-their-kind, and the amm't, and the shades of hungry gods, and the shades of demons, and the shades of angels, and the detritus all poured back. And grave was the confusion, and Apsu did not get anything resembling his quiet back for more than a little time, even as the firstborn measure it.
The Hungry Ones did not return to Purgatory, but clung to the Mad God and loosed themselves on the Earth. So convinced were they of the importance of souls -- whether by the thoughts of the Mad God or the preponderance of souls in Purgatory -- that they resolved to eat nothing but the flesh of things with souls, with some particular attention to those organs which humans have believed held the soul.
And there was great concern, for with the Creator nowhere to be found, who could force the Hungry Ones back to Purgatory, and what would they do if they found themselves imprisoned once more?
[END OF AVAILABLE COPY]
Notes on 'Creation Myth'
Energy & power:
In my headcanon: A soul is like a perpetual motion machine. It can just keep going forever. In contrast, Those Who Are Never Hungry (Tiamat, Gaea, Nyx, Aether) are finite -- but very, very big.
The never-hungry Firstborn can split off parts of themselves and give them agency and individuality. Like their parents, these entities require no sustenance and have a set lifetime.
Tiamat is too big to get out of Purgatory, but can split off small parts of herself without giving them individuality; they remain part of the whole. Whenever one of her incarnations is killed, she loses whatever power she put into that incarnation, but she is not in danger of running out anytime soon.
The Hungry Gods are the children of the Firstborn and humanity -- the Firstborn gave them form and humans give them life, in that Hungry Gods live off humans in one way or another (worship, flesh, devotion, lives, etc.). They take power in and use it.
Demons are essentially souls, and run on their own power. Eve/Tiamat's monsters have souls, and run on their own power.
Angels run off a communal energy pool in Heaven. I suspect the source of that energy is all the souls in Heaven being happy little batteries. (Matrix-heaven in more ways than one?)
Death is eternal and comes from nothing. However, Death's physical form is a gift from Nyx. The Reapers are like Hungry Gods, except they draw strength from Death, not from humans. The other Horsemen are probably technically Hungry Gods, and their 'mother' is probably Nyx.
When things without souls (Hungry Gods, firstborn, reapers, angels) die, or things which are only souls (demons) are destroyed, what is left behind is a shade. Shades mostly go to Purgatory. They have no strength, and they're not really capable of any kind of action. They're barely more than a perfect memory of the entity.
I don't know what Leviathans run on.
****
As I mentioned, I was trying to explain:
--What's purgative about Purgatory. (There has to be something, right?)
--Where virgins come into it. (I think this explanation is still a little weak, but it's better than nothing.)
--How Leviathans got a taste for humans when they've been in Purgatory since before there were any humans.
My theory is that the individual heavens are the equivalent of packing souls in cotton wool. In this eternal navel-gazing, not only to they not use their strength (leaving it available to the angels), they aren't exposed to any stimuli which would cause them to evolve. Therefore, Heaven has no equivalent of demons.
...Probably. I have a cracky theory that the first souls in Heaven were not packed in cotton wool, but were exposed to a dynamic atmosphere of permanant happiness, evolved, got more than slightly weird, and escaped from Heaven to go entertain themselves. What things are happy most of the time? Fairies!
Title: Creation Myth OR If Monsters had Sunday School OR, most honestly, I beat the crap out of 3-6 mythologies in an attempt to explain what's purgative about Purgatory, where virgins come into it, and how Leviathans got a taste for human internal organs if they've been in Purgatory since before humans existed
Rated G
~3000 words
Spoilers through early Season 7
Summary:
I: Tiamat and the Firstborn
Before humans and before angels were the true firstborn, and there were two kinds: those who were always hungry (like fire, consuming at all times) and those who were never hungry (like suns, complete unto themselves however long they last). Those who were always hungry ate and ate and ate and were never satisfied, until the Creator became disturbed and sealed them away where nothing they ate would stay eaten, and they have never been allowed to return. Those who were never hungry melded seamlessly into the natural world: Earth and Sky and Waters, Night and Day, Time and Chance, and a few others. They chose their places from their natures and took their natures from their places, and were content; and it was good.
And the Creator grew bored, and made the angels.
The angels sang in praise of the Creator, and in praise of the creations, and flew hither and thither and got everywhere. The firstborn wondered at these creatures made to praise -- was it no longer enough to to express gratitude by being, with one's whole heart? -- but none was more disturbed than the Fresh Water, Apsu.
"How can you stand them?" he asked the Earth. "They have no flesh, no bodies, no life; they are no part of that which you cherish."
But the Earth said, "They are nothing of mine. But my creatures do not hear or see as we do, and the angels do not trouble them more than any agitation in the sky."
"How can you stand them?" he asked the Sky. "They go everywhere, in your furthest reaches, where no living creature would dare go."
But the Sky said, "The living creatures cannot go there; I have not forbid them. The angels trouble nothing, and are bright to perceive."
"How can you stand them?" he asked the Night. "They disturb your darkness with their unnatural glow."
But the Night said, "It is still night when the moon lights the sky, or lightning strikes, or the creatures make their own light. I might perhaps fashion such small beings myself."
"I cannot stand them," he said to Tiamat, the Salt Water, his mate, who had loved him since the beginning. "They are noisy in every kind of sound, beyond all previous conception, they think themselves the pinnacle of creation, they are more numerous than varieties of arthropod, and I will not tolerate them any longer."
So Apsu rose up and sought to destroy the angels by drowning their burning Grace in his waters, but Grace is not fire and angels do not drown by natural means. Soon the archangels came, with the world's first weapons. They freed the angels Apsu had trapped, and fought him to a standstill, then dragged him from his place and sealed him away with the firstborn who are always hungry, in a place which still had no name.
The other firstborn were dismayed, none more so than Tiamat.
"They put him with the Hungry Ones," she cried to the Earth with the waves on the shore.
"Peace, peace," said the shore, for Gaea the Earth had been little pleased herself when Apsu turned the lakes and rivers inside out to hunt angels. "You know he would not listen to reason. And you know he wanted quiet, and now he can have it. And you know he is stronger than the Hungry Ones, especially in that place where nothing they eat will stay eaten."
But Tiamat said to herself, "How would they like to be eaten, even just for a little while?" And in the deep places of the ocean, she birthed monsters. She gave them bodies like the oldest of the animals, with no eyes or ears for the angels to destroy, but made them large; and she gave them a sense for angel-Grace and an urge to devour stronger than any but the Hungry Ones themselves. But since they were the children of Tiamat and Tiamat alone, they were never truly hungry and never truly ate, but lived as long as they lived, and then stopped.
The angels had been displeased to be accosted by rivers and lakes, but it was nothing compared to Tiamat's monsters leaping from the sea to swallow them whole (even just for a little while). They organized themselves in troops to hunt the monsters, and the archangels armed themselves again to hunt Tiamat herself.
It was a long struggle. The angels tore away great masses of sea and held it away in ice. The surface of the sea became as varied as the surface of land with Tiamat's rage. Tiamat's monsters grew confused and wandered off and tried to eat everything they met, for they had not been made to think and were better at starting fights than ending them. At long last the angels won, and Tiamat was cast down after Apsu.
II: Echidna and the Monsters
For a long time, Tiamat languished in the prison of the Hungry Ones, in Purgatory, where nothing stays eaten. There was no light, and there was no land, only Apsu's waters and Tiamat's waters and the Hungry Ones who swam about trying to eat everything. Apsu's company brought no comfort, for he had no desire for anything but seeking to crush any Hungry Ones which came to his attention.
Time passed.
Then all at once there was an island in the water: a great mountain, a mighty volcano. It was one of the Ourea, Gaea's children.
"Tiamat?" said the mountain. "I come with word from my mother, Gaea, and a connection to her also. If you dive into my mouth, she can catch you."
As great a mountain as he was, only a tiny fraction of Tiamat could fit, but she drew closer. "Would it leave you trapped here?"
"The fire beneath me has moved on, leaving cold stone. Here, I can burn forever."
Apsu stirred. "Quiet!" he howled.
Trying to fit through the mountain was preferable to listening to Apsu shouting at the mountain. Tiamat drew a portion of herself apart, and dove into the mouth of the volcano.
She -- part of her -- went from Purgatory to deep in the embrace of the Earth, in a body, the likes of which she had never seen before.
"Has it been so long?" said the piece of Tiamat.
"Aeons," said Gaea. "I made that for you. It's mostly mammalian. The face is special. It's from the new favorite."
Gaea explained how one kind of living creature -- humans -- had been gifted with a thing called a soul, things of such power they might last forever. Moreover, the Creator had said humans were the pinnacle of creation. Some of the angels had not reacted well, and now they were fighting each other.
"The archangels have not suppressed them?" asked the piece of Tiamat, remembering their power.
"An archangel is leading them."
She considered, and said, "So there is no need to meddle with them, then."
"What are you planning now, Tiamat?" Gaea asked, in some dismay.
"Call me not Tiamat," she said. "Most of Tiamat is still the waters in Purgatory. This me is not the waters. I will be called Echidna, and I will be the Mother of Monsters, and my children will have these souls."
Echidna came forth. At first, all save Gaea and Nyx the Night mistook her for a Hungry God, a new sort of being descended from firstborn but depending on humans for strength. She did not correct them.
She made monsters, not starting from nothing but modifying humans. She made some that were part human and part animal. She made some based on stories human told. She made some based on nightmares humans woke from. And whether from breeding or from contagion, she made monsters which could make more monsters.
So it was that when the rebel angels were cast into Hell, there were monsters the world over, changed in body and soul. And though the angels hunted down Echidna and slew the body Gaea had made, sending her shade back to Purgatory, they could not stop the spread of her children. Never again would she be alone. And by Gaea's kindness, both pieces of Tiamat and certain of her children may sometimes be reborn, and live again.
III: Velu Mate and Purgatory
Because Echidna's children were changed in body and soul, when they died their souls followed their mother to Purgatory, as the souls twisted by the fallen angels followed their father to Hell.
As the nature of Hell is torment, the nature of Purgatory is hunger. As souls in Hell are shaped by torment, so souls in Purgatory are shaped by hunger -- except that if a soul is quiescent in Purgatory, floating in the waters of Apsu and Tiamat without action, it is unshaped and purged by the hunger around it. Echidna's power flows back to Tiamat's waters; the soul becomes purely human, and it ascends from the abyss, and Nyx sends her children, the Reapers, to escort it to its new destination. These souls shine brighter and brighter as they are purified and finally ascend; from these rising souls comes most of the light in Purgatory.
Those souls which do not ascend may follow several paths. Souls who fully embrace their hunger seldom leave the water, but strive only to eat other souls, eating and eating until the nature of the place empties them, in an echo of the Hungry Ones who have been there longest. In time, these souls become amm't, shaped like monstrous crocodiles, and even they shun their own company, for they do nothing but eat. In a living body, an amm't would eat itself to death in hours.
Rising from the waters are the Ourea of Purgatory, children of Gaea who chose burning forever in Purgatory, even with amm't and Hungry Ones trying to devour their feet, over dormancy on Earth. From the mouths of the Ourea come heat and light, and at the very peaks of the Ourea dwell the few souls who become phoenix, exalted in fire, and all of their hunger is put into the fire. A phoenix who flies straight into the mouth of an Ourea for seven days and seven nights will be born in flame atop an Ourea of Earth. On Earth it will live, in its own shape, until it dies in flame and flies back to Purgatory.
On the slopes of the Ourea are shades, the faint powerless things left behind by things which die and leave no souls. Here are the shades of hungry gods (unless their fellows divert them), and angels, and demons who are truly killed (for to kill a demon is to kill what was once a soul). Some souls seek their company, and become shade-shadows, scarcely distinguishable.
A few special souls, the firstborn-of-their-kind, become themselves, only more so. They are reborn to their kindred in times of great need.
The strongest souls find the caverns and hidden caves of the Ourea, and become dragons. By Gaea's charity, because of her love for Tiamat, they may return to Earth and live again.
IV: Kulshedra and the Dragons
Like demons, dragons can return to Earth. Unlike demons, they cannot change hosts at will or wander disembodied -- once in a body, they become it, belong to the body as it belongs to them. For demons must claw their way in defiance of every law, but dragons return to the Earth through the mouths of the Ourea, by Gaea's permission, and they must obey her rules.
When she who had been Tiamat and Echidna was incarnated as Kulshedra, she showed the dragons they way back to Earth, and explained
They must have a body. Customarily, dragons on Earth bring one to a place deep underground, at the mouth of an Ourea. They speak an incantation to call their kindred in Purgatory, and the dragon so called goes to the mouth of an Ourea in mirror. The dragons on Earth cast the body in; the dragon in Purgatory casts itself in. Dragon and body meet in between worlds, the soul is expelled, and the dragon becomes one with the body, so much so that if it is killed, it returns to Purgatory as a soul, and must begin its journey anew.
"But," Kulshedra said, "it cannot be just any body. Human bodies belong to Gaea, the Earth, my sister and my mother. And out of respect for Gaea, it is forbidden to take a fruitful human. You may take only one that you know, with absolute certainty, cannot possibly have given life, or cannot possibly give it in the future, or ideally both. And out of respect and gratitude for Gaea, in the future I myself will obey the same rules."
"But Mother," said the dragons, "how can we tell?"
"A human may be so young that he or she cannot have given life," Kulshedra said.
"But such bodies are very small," said the dragons.
"A human may be so old that he or she cannot again give life," Kulshedra said.
"But such bodies are very frail," said the dragons.
"A human may be mutilated so that he cannot again give life," Kulshedra said.
"But we do not wish to be mutilated," said the male dragons.
"Such small things can easily be patched over once you have the body," Kulshedra said, and the male dragons fell silent to think.
"But," said the female dragons, "we do not wish to be male, and to remove a female body's seeds without killing it is nigh-impossible."
"A human female has a membrane which tears should she give birth," Kulshedra said.
But it took some time for the dragons to learn to observe the membrance without complex examination, and even now some female dragons prefer a sound old woman to the uncertainty of a virgin hunt.
There are seldom many dragons on Earth. They are not as desperate for escape as demons are to escape Hell, and at heart they are solitary creatures.
V: Eve, the Mad God, and the Hungry Ones
None of the firstborn were pleased when the angels plotted to end the world, but they are not quick to act. "And what they mean to end is humanity," said Gaea. "The world they mean to change, and that will happen no matter what."
"Are you tiring of the humans?" asked Nyx.
"I do not tire of things," said Gaea. "Their chemical production has exceeded that I expect from a life-form, is all." (For Gaea is the mother of humans, but she is equally the mother of blue whales and spotted owls, and of the dodo, and of the dinosaurs.)
But Purgatory was troubled only after the plot failed, when demons began hunting monsters, not to kill them, but to torture them brutally for information they did not even have. The firstborn-of-their-kind were reborn in response to the crisis, but the demons only escalated in return. And so the Mother was incarnated again, this time taking the name Eve; she proclaimed that if the demon plotted to wrest the souls from Purgatory, they would not let him, and what was more they would see to it that as few souls as possible went anywhere but Purgatory.
And this she would have done, but the demons conspired with an angel, and the angel used humans to obtain ash from the last phoenix on the continent, who had died in fire long years before. Eve died at the hands of the humans, and the body the dragons had brought for her was cruelly desecrated by the demons. The angel then captured a shade-shadow which had escaped to Earth some time before, and from her learned how to open a door into Purgatory, unmoderated by Gaea's hand.
So the angel opened Purgatory and took into himself all the undifferentiated souls; and all the rising souls; and all the dragons; and all the phoenixes; and all the firstborn-of-their-kind; and all the amm't; and all the shades of hungry gods; and all the shades of demons; and all the shades of angels; and all the Hungry Ones; and all the detritus of a place used as a dumping ground for anything the powers did not know where else to put. With all the power of all the souls, the angel grew mighty, and became the Mad God.
Left alone in Purgatory were those parts of Tiamat that had never been incarnated, and Apsu, for they are too great to be held in any angel, and the Ourea, for their roots are deep and the gate was open too short a time. They were not alone for long: dying things went still to Purgatory, not directly to the Mad God, so they soon began to accumulate monster souls again -- and many shades of angels.
In little time as the firstborn measure it, the Mad God was brought again to a portal, and emptied back into Purgatory: the undifferentiated souls, and the rising souls, and the dragons, and the phoenixes, and the firstborn-of-their-kind, and the amm't, and the shades of hungry gods, and the shades of demons, and the shades of angels, and the detritus all poured back. And grave was the confusion, and Apsu did not get anything resembling his quiet back for more than a little time, even as the firstborn measure it.
The Hungry Ones did not return to Purgatory, but clung to the Mad God and loosed themselves on the Earth. So convinced were they of the importance of souls -- whether by the thoughts of the Mad God or the preponderance of souls in Purgatory -- that they resolved to eat nothing but the flesh of things with souls, with some particular attention to those organs which humans have believed held the soul.
And there was great concern, for with the Creator nowhere to be found, who could force the Hungry Ones back to Purgatory, and what would they do if they found themselves imprisoned once more?
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Notes on 'Creation Myth'
Energy & power:
In my headcanon: A soul is like a perpetual motion machine. It can just keep going forever. In contrast, Those Who Are Never Hungry (Tiamat, Gaea, Nyx, Aether) are finite -- but very, very big.
The never-hungry Firstborn can split off parts of themselves and give them agency and individuality. Like their parents, these entities require no sustenance and have a set lifetime.
Tiamat is too big to get out of Purgatory, but can split off small parts of herself without giving them individuality; they remain part of the whole. Whenever one of her incarnations is killed, she loses whatever power she put into that incarnation, but she is not in danger of running out anytime soon.
The Hungry Gods are the children of the Firstborn and humanity -- the Firstborn gave them form and humans give them life, in that Hungry Gods live off humans in one way or another (worship, flesh, devotion, lives, etc.). They take power in and use it.
Demons are essentially souls, and run on their own power. Eve/Tiamat's monsters have souls, and run on their own power.
Angels run off a communal energy pool in Heaven. I suspect the source of that energy is all the souls in Heaven being happy little batteries. (Matrix-heaven in more ways than one?)
Death is eternal and comes from nothing. However, Death's physical form is a gift from Nyx. The Reapers are like Hungry Gods, except they draw strength from Death, not from humans. The other Horsemen are probably technically Hungry Gods, and their 'mother' is probably Nyx.
When things without souls (Hungry Gods, firstborn, reapers, angels) die, or things which are only souls (demons) are destroyed, what is left behind is a shade. Shades mostly go to Purgatory. They have no strength, and they're not really capable of any kind of action. They're barely more than a perfect memory of the entity.
I don't know what Leviathans run on.
****
As I mentioned, I was trying to explain:
--What's purgative about Purgatory. (There has to be something, right?)
--Where virgins come into it. (I think this explanation is still a little weak, but it's better than nothing.)
--How Leviathans got a taste for humans when they've been in Purgatory since before there were any humans.
My theory is that the individual heavens are the equivalent of packing souls in cotton wool. In this eternal navel-gazing, not only to they not use their strength (leaving it available to the angels), they aren't exposed to any stimuli which would cause them to evolve. Therefore, Heaven has no equivalent of demons.
...Probably. I have a cracky theory that the first souls in Heaven were not packed in cotton wool, but were exposed to a dynamic atmosphere of permanant happiness, evolved, got more than slightly weird, and escaped from Heaven to go entertain themselves. What things are happy most of the time? Fairies!