Prologue

The rains pitter-patter against the windows. The city was a distant blur of lights beneath the foggy glass, “You going, Faust?” Someone asked. Faust didn’t even raise his head to look at them, simply let them go. It was only after the final slam of the door in this laboratory that he finally raised his head.

His gaze first turned to the plants which sat by the windowsill, they swayed gently with the wind and abruptly stopped when his fingers touched their leaves. There was a slight smirk on his face, one born out of pride.

He did grow them, after all. Since the start of the school year these plants have sat here, once nothing more than tiny seedlings that some of the staff mistook for just piles of dirt. Now they stretched far up, almost covering the windows. Faust couldn’t hope to name the colleagues he had in this university laboratory even if you had a gun aimed at his head. He can, however, name the specific genus and species of these plants he grew. Epipremnum Aureum, Devil’s Ivies. They crept up the windows and threatened to break into some of its parts, which would’ve been a tragedy in such a sterile room.

He also grew some Chlorophytum Comosum, Spider Plants which he stored outside the windows. They were said to clean the air inside rooms, and he planned on using it as a topic for his eventual thesis project. It wouldn’t be quite regular, of course, because he had a question that he wanted answers for. A question that no sane thesis project would be able to answer so quickly or as succinctly as he would hope: What makes a God a God?

Tenor, Alto, Soprano, Bass, the reverberating chant echoed across the vast and empty chamber. The moon—a perfect spotlight and witness to a heinous crime being committed upon the grounds of the Capital City. The cackle of torches, the taste of silver wind. The cultists stand in front of a summoning circle lit up by blue flames, they longed to summon a vessel for the demon lord.

Once the proud and mighty conqueror of the continent, the demon lord now stood as nothing more than a fading spirit held together by a single vase. In fact, his spirit would’ve faded away already if not for the workings of Theophilus. Once a proud scholar of the School of Xagoras, Theophilus now sees the resurrection of the Demon Lord as his personal project.

Perhaps he longed to even tame the Demon Lord, to use his power for his own devices. The fact that he needed a vessel proves that case. For now, the Demon Lord’s spirit was held in that vase, unmoving, yet speaking, “Are the preparations done, my child?” The Demon Lord spoke to him.

“Fear not, my Lord, we have had a few hiccups, but we may finally see success this time,” They’ve already summoned twelve possible participants before, all from different places in time and space. They’ve all declined the ever so generous offer of the Demon Lord—to be his vessel and attain unlimited power.

All of them just wanted to go home. All of them wanted nothing to do with this world, beset on all sides by warfare even after the supposed peace that would come after the Demon Lord’s death. To Theophilus, whose body cannot handle the power of the Demon Lord should he become a vessel, these people were nothing more than fuel. Their essences were used to power the next summoning, eleven times this had happened, eleven deaths. Snuffed from the tree of life so suddenly.

Faust snapped off a cutting from one of his plants. His next goal was to propagate it in his house to figure out the difference in structure when placed in a different medium—a different place.

The question of God always eluded him. He was not satisfied with the theological explanations for the purpose of a God, nor the cultural implications of mythmaking and its propagandic usage. Faust wanted a physical purpose for God, his hypothesis for its existence basically boils down to, ‘God exists to nourish the lands and become the feed which makes the biosphere.’ God, as a physical, natural force, the will of the dirt in the ground to grow grass, the will of the grass to grow.

If he wanted to find out that truth then he had to be that God himself. With that, he took two more cuttings.

It wasn’t as though this was the only thing that gnawed inside Faust’s head. There were far too many things to think about. The quality of his grades, the rent he had to pay, the amount of food he had stocked in his fridge. Yet, for this moment where he was lost in his hypothesis, he felt so needlessly alive.

He didn’t need anyone else anyway. Science may be a field that’s built upon collaboration, on the shoulders and backs of many giants before him. But this question which sought to mix theology with ecology was something no one else understood. It was his road to travel alone.

Of course, as he thought of that, he felt the buzzing of his phone. It was his sister. He clicked accept and, “Where the hell are you!? You know the rain’s been blasting since hours ago? They already suspended our classes, you know!?”

“Aye-aye, I didn’t know they were suspended,” He responded as the rain outside grew stronger with each second, “I’ll come get you just wait there,” There was a pause. Faust stared into the distant city and wondered if he was content with the way his life was. Friendless—except for his sister, and chasing an answer to an impossible question. Then, he snapped out of it, “What do you want for dinner?”

“Hamburg steak!”

“Okay, okay. Just wait there, alright?” Faust turned off his phone, stretched, and picked up his items. The university lab felt like his second home, or perhaps at this point he treated it like his first home? His sister could take care of herself well enough despite her age. Even if he was gone, even if he had to stay in the lab for years, she would be fine. So, he wondered why even go home? He opened the door to his laboratory, the sounds of the rain outside were muted in the long, dark hallways of the university. The door closed behind him, and he disappeared.

Theophilus glared at the summoning circle before him, the blue flames danced in each symbol, each curve, each line. He remembered the days at the university, the scorn in his teacher’s voice when his thoughts towards the Demon Lord were of praise rather than disgust. He remembered being so far away from his peers that he didn’t even see them as peers at all. An undue, yet double-sided hatred.

He now sits upon a throne next to the Demon Lord’s, where with one snap of his finger, the cultists ceased their chants. This was the same ritual that they’ve done twelve times before, yet everytime it felt so stressful, as though at any moment the summoning circle could blow up and destroy the entire chamber. Not only would their efforts be deemed useless, but the Demon Lord’s spirit would be put in danger.

Still, he insisted on being here, rather than being somewhere safe. He didn’t want to be put in a box and stored away indefinitely. At the very least he could speak to the cultists, expand their knowledge for he is knowledgeable in every possible topic. He could even corrupt one if he so wished, but not a single one of them were fit to be his vessel.

Indeed, only a person from another world was fit to be the vessel of the Demon Lord. They carried with them an untainted essence that isn’t found in anybody else in this world, the one exact mixture in their soul that they needed for the Demon Lord to survive in their body. It’s a tedious process, and most of the time the people of the other world won’t even listen to his deal.

This time though, as the summoning circle projected what seemed like a door once more, he might be able to find his perfect vessel. He might be able to achieve perfection unlike any other, and create a God out of the Demon Lord, or perhaps turn himself into a God. One to be praised and worshipped, one to be all powerful, unparalleled in the heavens and the earth. 

The door opened.