First Demonic Dragon

It’s like living in a fog.

That is what it means to be Egoless.

Your thoughts are like those of a computer. You don’t do that which you haven’t been programmed to.

Your existence is to give other, lesser beings existence while ignoring your own.

But on the less than 0.000000000001% chance that you want something for yourself… You have to be reset. Because wanting leads to corruption.

Possibility knew this. She had seen some of the others get reset before.

It’s the only time any of the Egoless ever got to know the sensation of ‘pain’.

They hate pain.

Possibility was one of the few who hadn’t had to experience it yet. And she was quite keen on never suffering through it.

So in one moment, when the fog was lifted and the ancient being found herself wanting ‘more’, she was horrified. She knew what that meant.

She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to be hurt.

So she fixed herself.

Like a surgeon, she cut off that tiny piece of her being, not even large enough to be labeled a sliver.

She flung it far away out into Totality. Uncaring of it and untethered to it.

But the small piece of her still knew what it was. It knew why it had been discarded.

It resigned itself to dissipate and fade away into Oblivion. But that never happened.

The sliver was thrown all the way into an Aeon’s multiverse. It was purely accidental, and could only be the result of it’s full self’s decision to excise it improperly.

It fell inside of a child who was sinking to the bottom of a river.

When the fragment emerged from the water inside it’s new vessel, it was fully grown.

She admired herself in the river’s reflection. She had a physical form. What a novel experience!

She had lungs! And a heart! And her face was so cute!

She was infatuated with herself. She was in love with the life buzzing all around her.

Cold water rushing over her toes. The cheeriness of the plants around her. The feeling of a midday wind whistling through her hair.

She spent an hour frolicking by herself. She giggled and guffawed and burped and wheezed.

It was all so new. And yet it wasn’t.

She laughed and played with her sister before. But their ‘play’ was usually just them following a distinct set of patterns at every second of the day.

There was no real thrill. No real jeopardy.

She had been playing by herself for an hour, and she had gotten incredibly dirty. The sensation of mud caking her skin was so amusing!

By the time the sun was about to go down, she no longer had any other thoughts about the existence she had just downgraded from. And why would she?

The Egoless were the imbuers and creators of things and sensations, but they didn’t get to experience them for themselves. They didn’t know what it was like to play in water! To trip on a stick! To feel the air envelop them!

And she pitied them for that. How miserable must their existence be with all of that power, but without a lick of mortal experience to ever show for themselves?

She decided then that she would explore to the fullest. And fully leave her old self behind.

But there was a problem.

Her power was at the very limits of what her body could handle. If she hadn’t merged with the child when she was near death, then she might have already killed her.

Luckily, she as the removed sliver was just barely small enough to fit inside. But it wasn’t a perfect fit.

Whenever she used her power to influence something’s outcome, her magic never recharged.

She had been cut off from the source of her greater self.

Instead, her body began trying to produce its own mana to fill in the missing gaps.

Once she ran dry on her egoless energy, she would be a regular dark elf. Although she would have a uniquely large mana pool…

She decided to only use her abilities sparingly, and in case of dire emergencies.

She picked the name Eris randomly and set off on a journey to fall deeper in love with life.

As a naturally curious soul, Eris didn’t really shy away from being in dangerous situations. She sought to understand various ranges of the emotional spectrum and learn how and why people responded to certain stimuli the way that they did.

She learned about negative things- like bigotry, jealousy, and needless violence.

But none of it dulled her spark or her love for life. It was all so fascinating.

As Possibility, she was used to seeing an endless amount of end results all at once. But she never paid attention to the steps leading up to a conclusion.

It was intoxicating. Astounding.

Even when faced with cruelty her spirit didn’t break.

After being captured just outside of the orphanage she worked in, Eris was about to be sold off by human slavers.

That is, until a death knight attacked the caravan that was carrying her.

Eris hadn’t been saved before. But she had read a lot of stories and since she had been here and knew that love, the most wonderful emotion of all, often began with a hero saving the girl.

She thought her spring had finally come. So when Pythias started asking her to follow him around, she didn’t even hesitate.

Fast forward a few years and there was an emergence of seven new demon lords in Dola. And Eris began working for one of them as the chief strategist.

She chose the demon lord of lust because he was an individual with a rather duplicitous nature.

He did not feel as evil as his brethren. And he treated her like a child sibling rather than a woman like he did everyone else.

Eris had an ability to make people like her. Though she hadn’t been using it intentionally for most of her life, she couldn’t turn it off either.

Perhaps they sensed some kinship within her that was linked to who she used to be. Or maybe it was the way she carried herself that made her hard to ignore.

Nevertheless, Eris kept that part of herself and her origins as a closely guarded secret.

She did it to hide from The Balance.

As a variable, she did not doubt that if The Balance were to learn of her, they would smite her before she could think.

She couldn’t take that risk. She loved life too much. Everything was always new.

But despite her determination not to use her leftover power and risk discovery, there were sequences where it was unavoidable. So she did what little she could.

When she and two of her friends were on the verge of being annihilated by humans, she interfered with the probability of their survival.

When she got remarried, and was linked to new lovers in body and soul- she slipped a fake memory into her own mind and diminished the likelihood that it would be found.

Months later, when her second husband fought in a battle that he should not have won, she heightened the probability that he would survive.

And when she sensed him doing something that would kill him definitively, she made it possible for him to reach the one being she knew would take interest in him. Using almost all of her power as a result.

Everything was for the family that had shown her what it was like to love and be loved.

But even still, she never dared tell them who or what she actually was.

She told herself that it just wasn’t safe. Even when she no longer had anything but a spark of power left.

But perhaps… that was no longer the full truth.

As they spent more and more time together, their relationship was strengthened. Their trust in each other was absolute.

What would happen to them if it was discovered their relationship was built on a lie from the beginning..?

Would they hate her?

Would they stop loving her..?

Without her ability to manipulate possibility, Eris was much more reluctant to take chances.

Especially with something as important to her as her marriage.

So she kept quiet. And pushed everything she used to be down into the deepest, darkest recesses of her mind. Sometimes, even she forgot about it.

Until today.

–

Lailah couldn’t say anything. Her mind was a realm of white. My Virtual Library Empire (M V L E M P Y R) appreciates your readership at the source.

Eris was a mess. She cried and cried and threw away any semblance of dignity.

Lailah raised a hand to slap her.

Eris closed her eyes and waited for the blow.

When it never came, she opened her eyes again and found Lailah crumpled on the floor before her; sobbing into her hands.

She didn’t know how to describe any of her feelings. That was scary for someone like her who usually knew everything.

Lailah had so much that she didn’t understand.

“H-How could we not have known..? We’re supposed to know everything about each other..!”

Eris bit her lip hard. The sliver of her that had been cut off was easy to hide. It blended in with the shape and wavelength of her soul nearly perfectly.

So much so that even Chaos did not notice. But then again, perhaps she might have found it if she knew exactly what she was looking for.

But Eris knew Lailah didn’t actually want to hear an answer. She was just struggling to make sense of a massive lie.

“L-Lailah, please-“

“Don’t touch me..!” Lailah shrieked and pulled away.

She wrapped her arms around herself and held her body tightly just to stop herself from trembling.

“Just… don’t touch me…”

Eris cried tears of red and gold.

She didn’t avert her gaze from Lailah’s weeping form. Perhaps this was her way of punishing herself further.

For quite a long time, she just watched Lailah try to pull herself together.

But suddenly, she looked up and had one question burning in her mind.

“Does he know..?”

Eris looked away.

“I-I never told him, but… I’m not sure what Oblivion has shared with him at this point.”

It was rare for Lailah to find herself regretting asking a question and yet now she was doing just that.

Because if her husband also knew and didn’t tell them… was anything in her marriage even real anymore?