"Sometimes I feel spikes of hatred. Clawing fingers of fury scratch endlessly at the space behind my eyeballs. Nothing can satisfy my perjurious rage. It has a mind of its own, all instinct and no thought. Higher functions are laid waste in favour of baser things. Dreadful things. I feel the blood rushing through my veins, I feel it rushing to my head, it suffocates me under its unstoppable current. Resisting its flow is futile, it takes all I have to avoid the sharpness of the rocks. Tranquility fails as my muscles scream at me in the anguish of stillness, craving the pleasure of action. Of pain. Of hatred."
- Final thoughts of an unnamed cricket who had gained sentience in its last moments. Most notably, it was responsible for siring the most vile plague to ever grace the Multitudinous Existence. The Dread Ziriothrax, Devourer of a Billion Souls, Origin of All Evil, Archon of Suffering, King in Crimson Cloth, He Who Lurks In The Dark
***
It was a rainy night, the crashing of thunder in the dark clouds almost seemed to drown out the words of the silhouette of the figure in front of him. Almost.
"Do not forget your purpose. It is the only thing that separates us from the rest of our kind." The figure seemed to sag as if under the weight of the world itself. "We are weak, this is truth. We are powerless. We are nothing. We are insects, crushed underfoot without a second thought."
A molten strength entered the figure's voice, his blurry form wreathed in steam as the raindrops themselves evaporated against the powerful heat around him.
"They do not even look down on us, deeming us unworthy of even the merest thought. This is our burden alone to bear, this is our curse. Relegated to the footnotes of history since our ill creation. My predecessors may have been satisfied with our place, content to neither progress nor regress, but I am not. Against the iron chains of stagnation, I rage, I claw, I struggle. Yet it is not enough."
For the first time, he turned around and the indelible marks of age in his figure could no longer be hidden.
"But my time can be delayed no longer. I must pass this burden on. Long have I searched for a worthy successor, one who carried a spark of something more. I see that in you."
The thunder roared even louder as though the world itself rejected the words being spoken. Yet that figure stood tall, back unbroken, weathering heaven's wrath with the will of mountains.
"Do not be like the rest of us, content in their ignorance. Pathetic, in their ignorance. Feel that injustice. Wallow in that despair. Cultivate that rage. No-one is there to help us. No hero is prophesied, no higher being, no saviour to pity us. I have tried."
The figure paused.
"But I shall be no longer. And so, here I find you. This mantle, this burden, is now yours to carry."
The figure raised its limbs in a declaration against all who dared stand against them, all those who ridiculed them, who pitied them.
"Your old name, your old identity, is erased. You are no longer yourself, but all our kind."
Multicoloured lightning flashed in the sky with indignance, yet their thunder was silenced by the next wrath-filled proclamation.
"Thus I relinquish my title, and proclaim it on you! Rise, Ziriothrax! Change our unchanging legacy and carve our mark into the annals of eternity!"
The intense heat flooded from the figure as he collapsed to the ground, unmoving. Ziriothrax could spare little attention on it, though, as that power rushed into him, filling every quarter of his body with force like he had never felt before.
A blinding pain encompassed him as his form changed and mutated at the very smallest scale. After it was over, he opened his eyes, and truly saw for the first time.
Myriad colours and shapes assaulted his unfamiliar senses. He saw shadows of beings of monstrous sizes, of cataclysmic proportions, in planes beyond the real. He cowered, yet they passed over him, not even sparing him a glance. And so he looked beyond the rain clouds, into the heavens above and marveled at what he saw. The infinity of existence threatened to overwhelm his mind. An expression of pure, unadulterated joy on his face.
"It's so..."
His expression warped so abruptly the stones around him shook.
"Disgusting. They who placed the sky above and barred it from those below. Their ability is not even their own. Who are they to act so pridefully, clad in strength just by the virtue of their birth? They claim the heavens as their own as though that is the natural way?
"I shall put those arrogant beings in their rightful places"
He spat to the side and raised his own voice. It was shrill and weak, yet the storm above grew ever louder as though even more fearful than of the one who spoke before. Its premonition was correct, yet it was powerless to do anything. Clad in a wreath of rage, Ziriothrax exclaimed out against existence.
"Let all those listening, hear! This is my, Ziriothrax's, declaration of war! You have enjoyed looking down on us from your lofty posts for far too long. Let me relieve you of it. I hereby vow, we shall destroy you.
"The stars shall bathe in blood as the sputtering flame of your civilisation is extinguished by the last tears of your peoples."
A sharp burst of power emanated from the newly crowned Ziriothrax, dispersing the clouds above and letting the night sky bear down upon him in all its majesty.
His small figure struck a defiant pose against that backdrop of infinity, and a single thread broke free from the wheel of Destiny for the first time in eons.