Fading Darkness, Rising Light

Prologue (Part 1)

It is said that God created the world in seven days. That is wrong. God did not make the world in seven days nor did he do this with the universe at large. There was not even just a single universe, but many in existence. And it was God that did this. However, not by himself.

Lucifer. In many depictions of religion, he is stated to be an angel that had been cast out of Heaven and into the abyss of Hell after rebelling against his creator. Some say he rebelled out of jealousy, others say simple pride. This is not the case. For he did not do this out of pride or any such thing, but what he believed to be betrayal.

However, that is a part of the story meant for a little later.

Lucifer was the first angel, the first being ever created by God, created before everything else that is now. After he was ‘born,’ Lucifer assisted God in the creation of things to come, making an uncountable amount of universes, and setting up the mechanics that would lead to the birth of dimensions that would connect some of these universes together. The proud, elder angel also assisted in the creation of his fellow angels as well as the formation of the infinite in size space known as Heaven. The angel, a truly majestic creature that far surpassed everything else to come in both beauty and power, had many roles aside from these and what he created would come to take shape in the nigh-infinite size of Creation.

After he and God formed the basis for Creation and made Heaven along with its inhabitants, Lucifer took the role of mentor and father figure amongst his younger fellow angels, the beings looking up to him, the eldest, as a truly wise and powerful figure. He taught them all they needed to know and saw to it that they would pull their weight in helping Creation grow and flourish. Many would take up roles in Creation, monitoring space and time and other such abstract qualities. Other angels would take up the mantle of protecting Heaven should any of the creatures that would undoubtedly come to exist over the course of time ever find out about the impossibly beautiful, impossibly vast, majestic place that it was an attempt to invade it.

And this continued for an immeasurable amount of time that only the angels, those beings of great power and beauty, could ever truly know.

That is, until God decided to create something new. At this point in time, creatures had come to be born on their own, through the mechanics of Creation that God and Lucifer had set so, so long ago. Lucifer and the angels loved these beings and cared for them from afar, the creatures never knowing of their presence.

But God was planning to make something unique, even amongst the vast array of already unique beings that had been born into various locations of Creation. He called his new, planned created beings humans. He told the angels that these humans were, out of all the beings in Creation, his only children, his true children and he told the angels to bow down before the humans, before man as the omnipotent, omniscient being set into motion the events that would lead to the birth of man on a planet called Earth. The angels complied with God’s wishes.

All except one: Lucifer.

The eldest angel didn’t bow down before this. Instead, he was hurt, angry, and above all, betrayed. As the eldest being, the only one to have been there beside God far before anything else, Lucifer loved him the most out of all the angels. He worshipped God and wished nothing more than to do his best to aid him whenever his aid was required. But Lucifer was also fond of the concept known as family. He considered not just the angels, but also God to be his family, with God naturally being viewed by the angel as a father. And to hear that God considered these soon to be humans as his only children, Lucifer felt crushed. Didn’t God consider him and the angels to also be his children? Did that mean he didn’t love them? Were they nothing more than servants meant only to serve his needs and that of his ‘true children?’

No Father, I cannot accept this, Lucifer would say after this. And true to his word, which he always held in very high regard, Lucifer made it a point to showcase his unacceptance of this matter; he planned to rebel against Him. He spoke to his fellow angels and told them of his views on this matter, calling for them to join him in his revolt. More than half of the angels, swayed by his words, joined him in this revolt. The other half, devoted completely to God, opposed them. And so the war in Heaven had begun.

During this war, which far exceeded any war to come in Creation in brutality, raged on for over a millennia, with Lucifer’s side actually having a huge advantage over their enemies for the elder angel known as the Light Bringer, the Morningstar, was considerably above all other angels in both power and intellect, which he demonstrated in the war with a ruthlessness that will never be seen again in Creation.

Indeed, Lucifer’s power and intellect, his cunning and ruthlessness was enough to overpower the angels under God’s banner by himself, his soldiers merely adding to this dominance of his. It was only thanks to the four angels that would come to be called archangels following this war that Lucifer didn’t win it right away. For the angels Michael, Uriel, Gabriel, and Raphael were the strongest and most intelligent of all the angels, all of them so powerful, that when they fought alongside each other, they were enough to somewhat offset the advantage Lucifer had with his own power, though their combined might was still far less than the elder angel. But with the rest of their forces, they were able to push against Lucifer and his own forces, all of them hoping to strike down Lucifer, hoping to put an end to the rebellion if the figurehead of it was defeated.

In the end, they managed to do so, but only when God himself made an appearance. The omnipotent being, not wanting to see the angels continue this horrifically bloody war, stepped in and with one move, struck Lucifer and his forces down, stripping Lucifer of a good portion of his immeasurable might and sending him and his forces down into an abyss. In this abyss, Lucifer and his fellow rebelling angels underwent a most terrifying change, their beautiful visage being warped into that of true monstrosity, though there were some that managed to retain a bit of their former selves even in their new forms. Lucifer was not so lucky. While he did retain certain aspects of his former unrivaled angelic beauty, he was still very warped, to a point that his mere presence was now enough to strike primordial fear in any being that was not of his group.

They fell for over nine days in this abyss, at speeds that far exceeded the speed of light before finally, they appeared to reach the impossible bottom of this abyss. They had landed with crushing force in what had appeared to be a dimension of size that seemed to be equal to that of Heaven. But whereas Heaven was a place of everlasting majesty, this place they had landed in was the exact opposite, a place of impossible filth and decay and so much more.

It was in this place, that Lucifer and his fellow fallen, overcome with grief over their betrayal at the hands of God and being cast out of Heaven, had gone insane, with Lucifer casting off his name and adopting an new one: Satan, a name that meant ‘adversary’ in the language that later came to be known as Hebrew amongst man.

The newly christened Satan then proclaimed his new home to be a place known as Hell. The angels that fell with him would later mate and give birth to the first new denizens of Hell: demons. Their numbers soon swelled over time and so when God finally made the first man, Adam, and woman, Eve, Satan was quick to pay a visit to these two, these beings that God said would be his true children.

Satan tempted Eve into breaking the law that God had imposed on them, to never eat fruit from a tree. And when he did so, Adam and Eve were both punished for this and cast out of the place known as Eden at the time. However, Satan was also punished as well. At first, he and his minions had some ability to move from Hell to other places, but after the successful tempting of Eve, God had locked down Hell, making it so that only the weakest of demons could ever get out and even then, it would be a most difficult feat, one that would seal away roughly eighty percent of a demon’s power when the foul creature would make it out of Hell. Another punishment was also placed on Satan, but he would come to know of it later.

And that ‘later’ was when Adam and Eve, dying of age outside of Eden, fell to Hell, for God had decreed it that when humans die committing what is known as sin, unless they repent, they will be sent to the same place that Satan and his minions had been sentenced to. And when the two humans arrived, Satan, mad with grief and rage over what he has gone through, laid waste to the souls of the first two humans. And as he took out his rage on them, as he burned them, maimed them, gored them and more, he came to find out the second part of the punishment God had given him.

Adam’s and Eve’s pain became his own.

He had been cursed. Cursed by the Father who he once loved, cursed to feel the agony of all human souls that will come to Hell in the future. Despite this, Satan and his minions, far too gone from what they once were to hold back their rage, continued in their torture of the two humans, Satan feeling the physical, mental, and spiritual agony they were inflicting upon the first humans. The being that would become known to humans later in life as the Devil felt everything they felt. And he cared not one bit. The only thing he now cared about was letting out the burning, unstoppable rage that had now become the norm for him.

Time past and soon after the deaths of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, there were no humans on Earth nor any other form of sentient life. It stayed this way for nearly a thousand years before life did start to blossom once again on the beautiful planet. What came to be next was what is now described in history books and biology texts and more as dinosaurs came to be and everything went from there.

All the while, the angels in Heaven, having restored their numbers since the war with Lucifer, continued to watch over Creation and the denizens of Hell waited and schemed for a way to be free of their prison. Satan, knowing his Father well, knew that humans would one day resume walking the Earth again and he looked forward to their deaths, so that he may once again take out his fury on the ones he believed to have wronged him.

Time once more past and just as Satan predicted, humans came to walk the Earth once more. The demons watched from Hell as the humans lived their short lives, how many would prove themselves worthy of a place in Heaven while many others would condemn themselves to be alongside the demons in Hell. And the demons were eager to get their hands on the arriving souls. And so as they tortured the humans, Satan’s suffering grew as well.

But as before, he didn’t care. Instead, what had his attention for a better part of a millennia was none other than humans themselves. He may hate them, but as he watched them continue to advance and expand their knowledge, he became intrigued by what they can achieve through science. And as he watched the leaps they made in science, discovering some of the most basic, most obvious laws of creation that he and the angels had monitored so long ago, he began to have the one of the most brilliant ideas he has ever had in his long, unending life.

What better way to free us of this place than to have myself help from the outside? he thought. He had this particular thought as he observed the science of genetics. His intelligence being far greater than any other being could ever hope to be compared to, he was able to immediately make discoveries that humans nor any other sentient creature save for some of the smarter angels and demons would ever come to make in science. And now, observing genetic studies, he had a plan.

He would wait until human technology has advanced to the point where he could actually use it and when that point in time came about, he would take hold of what he needed and set to work. During his time in Hell, Satan had come to know that his powers would only come to affect Hell and nothing more; he had no way of trying to force his way through power alone nor could he hope to even remotely affect anything outside of Hell with his powers. However, he had come to learn that certain powers of his could indeed make it past Hell and interact with Earth even though it was on an incomparably lesser scale than usual for him.

And one of those powers were possession. With this, his plan was really quite simple: wait until humans made the technological advancements he required and when that occurs, possess someone with access to said equipment and use it to engineer a being based on him, complete with his powers and part of his mindset. He was planning to make a being that was both a clone of himself yet different; an Anti-Christ, a being that would grow up on Earth, amongst the humans and when said clone was old enough to have fully developed all of his abilities, he will then help Satan destroy the barrier that separated Hell from the rest of Creation. And then, he and his demons would have their vengeance. Satan could hardly wait.

And wait he did. It took a few hundred years from when he came up with this idea, but Satan was patient and it paid off for finally in the early nineteen-nineties, one day, the time for him to start his plan came.

One day in a genetics lab in Italy, a man had been working overtime on a recent project of his. This man was nothing special, being a man in his late-thirties and was of a reasonable height and build for someone of that age, dressed in simple khaki pants, button up shirt and lab coat. As he decided to finish up for the day, he began to walk out of the room where he had been working, his grey shoes loudly making noise whenever he took a step.

But Satan had other plans for him. Using his power, he was able to quickly invade the man’s body, shoving aside his mind so that he may take over, if only temporarily. The man hardly knew what hit him. Satan, now in control of the man’s body, hunched over as if hit in the stomach as he adjusted to the man’s body.

After taking a quick minute to get his bearings, Satan started walking to the room where the equipment was stored, him knowing where it was thanks to him and other demons being able to observe the Earth from Hell. Making his way inside the room, he quickly began to get to work.

Although his power in his temporary vessel was extremely limited, Satan was still able to go about the use of the equipment at a speed far surpassing anything any human could ever accomplish. The fact that he was also creating DNA, DNA completely alien to anything else in Creation, that would soon grow into a new being, was also something that no one would have dreamt possible. But this he did as he managed to replicate his own DNA with the use of the equipment on hand.

However, as he did so, as he set in motion the process that would force his own DNA to slowly grow into a new being, he made some tweaks to it, as a fail-safe in case things didn’t go as planned and his partial clone, partial son felt like going against him instead.

Now, having done what he had set out to do, Satan couldn’t help but smile in satisfaction, pleased that he may relatively soon be freed from Hell. It also felt rather nice that when he left this man’s body, the look of shock he will have at not only being in a different spot from where he was before Satan took over, that he would be staring at the forming DNA before him, a feat that most definitely broke many laws of nature, logic, and even physics, for the DNA was not of anything on Earth, went against any form of logic that could be used to explain its most rudimentary workings, and the fact that it just came to be so soon went against most laws of physics.

Satan smirked. This was going to be much fun for him. However, there was one more thing he had left to do before returning to Hell: naming his would-be clone/son. And he already had what he believed to be a good name for him. He took a step forward towards the test tube, where he had constructed the DNA, and gently, almost father-like, picked it up and walked over to another part of the room where a much larger test tube was. He quickly managed to extract the DNA and transfer it to the larger test tube, where he watched the small strain slowly begin to grow.

Your first name shall be Adam, to spite the first man that God dared to create, Satan said in the man’s voice, placing his left hand up against the test tube. And your last name will be Alighieri, in honor of Dante Alighieri, the only human to have ever had a vision of Hell, and not be driven insane, he said, thinking of how inexplicably there would sometimes be a human that would appear to have visions of Hell and other dimensions. Some humans merely shrugged it off as dreams, while other were driven insane by the revelations that came with the visions. But Dante Alighieri, the writer of the Divine Comedy, was unique. He not only saw Hell and took note of its nine levels and some of its smaller details, but he didn’t lose his mind from it and even used this vision to craft his story. Satan, despite his hatred of humans, couldn’t have helped but be a little impressed by that.

Adam Alighieri, he mused aloud, as if seeing how the name for his ‘son’ sounded. After a moment of silence, he smiled just a bit. Has a nice ring to it. He took a few steps back from the test tube. Looking forward to when you grow up, he said.

And with that, he shuddered as his hold over the man’s body lifted, Satan’s consciousness returning to his original body down in Hell. However, before he went, he made sure to implant a bit of knowledge in the man’s mind as he nearly slumped to the floor, slowly but surely regaining his own consciousness.

"Urgghhh, the man groaned as he stood up, his hand clutching his head in apparent pain. But then when he finally stood to his full height and looked upon the growing DNA strain in the test tube, whatever pain he had been feeling seemed to just fade away.

He took a slow step forward as if he feared to touch it. Not out of fear for what was in it, but out of fear of perhaps breaking it. Holy... he began, shock evident in his voice. But that shock quickly gave way to what could best be described as a joyous expression on his face. He’s here... our messiah is here! he exclaimed happily.

The man had not simply been chosen by Satan because he happened to be in the building and had access to the equipment he needed. No, there were more reasons why Satan chose to possess him; the man was a Satanist. And he also happened to be a member of a relatively large and powerful Satanic cult. And Satan, just before departing, had given him the information of just what he was looking at: the Anti-Christ, the one that his group had deemed their messiah.

Prologue (Part 2)

A few months have passed since Satan has come to Earth. During that time, the man that he had temporarily possessed – his name was Calogero De Luca – had been quick to inform the rest of his group of what had come to pass that day. Their reaction to this news was nothing short of euphoric.

Upon the learning of this news, the group, which had no real name, made it a point to move the forming Anti-Christ to a more secure location, careful with the test tube that the still growing DNA was in. Calogero also made sure to take with them anything that he needed to ensure the maintenance of the test tube, for none of them wished to see their ‘messiah’ threatened in any way.

And so they have seen fit to watch over the Anti-Christ, the named Adam Alighieri, with an almost fervent desire whenever they had a chance to do so. This was due to the fact that most, if not all of them still had jobs to attend to.

However, there was also another reason why they wanted to hide Adam as he eventually formed into a fetus during the months with them; they were being hunted. Not by people looking to strike down Satanists such as themselves, but by people who wielded power greater than normal peoples. They were being searched for by mages.

Centuries before Christ was born to the Virgin Mary, there were a small band of weak demons that wanted nothing to do with Satan and the other demons in the destruction of humans and the rest of Creation, instead choosing to escape from Hell as soon as they had the chance. Upon making their way out of Hell and to Earth, they took a rather strong liking to humans while concealing their true nature by taking on human forms using whatever power they had left after a majority of it was sealed upon leaving Hell. During this time period, the demons decided to teach some humans some of their abilities. However, humans were fundamentally different from demons and angels; they simply didn’t have the potential to attain the kind of power that the aforementioned two species had. To compensate for this, the demons had managed to find a way around this gap in ability by coming up with magic, which they then taught to humans in the attempt to get them to somewhat emulate their abilities. And in this they succeeded. And so magic had been born.

After this had occurred, magic had quietly spread to different parts of the Earth, to relatively small groups of humans. Over the long centuries, it got to the point where humans who wielded magic were able to form their own societies, kept secret from the rest of the world and usually stayed to themselves in order to further their knowledge in magic, which had since being created, come to be of great use to them. Humans could use magic to manipulate the elements, enter a person’s mind, enhance their own physical abilities to inhuman levels that could destroy entire towns if they so desired, and even partially warp time and space to cover large distances and so much more.

And in current times, such mage societies have taken to being more active in the world. As they are quite benevolent, they take to helping out behind the scenes, mainly the country that they reside in. However, there were those mages that wanted nothing more than to use their magic for their own selfish, destructive, and cruel needs and when they pose a threat to mage societies, the rest of the world, or both, they are deemed as terrorists and are dealt with just as normal governments deal with normal terrorists. Mage societies have even gone as far as to come up with their own private government and political system, careful in their construction to avoid causing any strife when it happens to overlap with the laws of the rest of the world. They have even constructed their own magic academies and jobs such as magic professors, leaders, and a special mage unit to apprehend mage terrorists. They also made sure to have more mundane jobs and careers available such as desk jobs, marketing and more, in an attempt to further mix together their own magical ways with that of the mundane world. They even went as far as to incorporate technology into their ways, having their own research division dedicated to trying to somehow combine technology and magic into something more effective. And on top of all this, mages, even without magic, were for the most part in peak physical condition for magic was quite draining on their stamina and so it was necessary for them to build themselves up physically. In short, mages were a very dangerous bunch.

However, this mattered little to the group for they were indeed mages themselves, some even coming from families that were comprised of nothing but mages for the last dozen generations or so. A few of them didn’t look the part though, possessing relatively weak physiques in comparison to most other mages, but this actually worked to their advantage for the mages after them had barely a clue as to most of their identities and the ones whom they actually knew off were very good at staying off the radar.

But their luck was not to last much longer from now.

How is he? The person asking this was a tall, very well-built man in his late thirties with a bit of a tan, hawkish brown eyes, dark brown hair and a bit of an intimidating angular face. His name was Amadeo Moretti and he was the unofficial leader of the Satanist group. As befitting of a leader of such a group, he was the strongest of them all and also was the biggest worshipper of their ‘messiah.’

He was speaking to the current person watching over Adam. It was a young woman, no older than her late teens or early twenties. She was a rather beautiful one at that too. She stood at about five foot eight and weighed a healthy hundred and twenty five pounds. She had a bit of an hourglass figure, with long legs and modest breasts. Her figure was overall slightly enhanced by the light brown skirt she wore along with her white blouse. Her straight light brown hair flowed down a bit past her shoulders, framing her healthily angular and slightly heart shaped face. She also possessed a light skin tone, shown off by the light of the room. Her name is Arianna Bianchi.

She comes from the Bianchi family, a large family that is famous amongst the mages of the world as they have produced some of the most gifted mages in centuries. However, Arianna was an exception to this; she was, by mage standards, a complete failure, hardly capable of doing the simplest of spells, and when she attempted some of the more complex spells, they tend to almost literally blow up in her face. Not only that, but she was also quite the klutz, to the point where just being in any area with any sort of dangerous object would result with her somehow knocking it over or accidently dropping something in a manner that would endanger others. It was to the point where many mages would regard her as having supernatural klutziness.

Combined with her lack of intelligence compared to her older and younger siblings and cousins – she was by no means dumb, being quite smart, just not to the standards of her family – her family held very little love for her. They even went as far as to belittle her and wish she wouldn’t stain their name with her status as a failure, all the while ignoring her and just verbally lashing out at her, with her father one time striking her after a particularly bad failure. This eventually became too much for her and so when she was sixteen, she ran away from the family and met the Satanist group roughly a few months later. She has been with them ever since.

He’s doing fine, she said, referring to Adam. She watched with some kind of content smile as she watched the still-forming fetus in the test tube.

However, Adam was not fine at all. It was quite the opposite. Had the Satanist group been considerably more knowledgeable on the workings Satan did in the creation of Adam, they’d know immediately that Adam was going to be far different from a human fetus. One of the many differences between him and a normal fetus being that he would exhibit qualities that soon-to-be human children wouldn’t develop until they were a few years old at the least. And one of these qualities being that Adam was already capable of complete thought. While other fetuses would barely begin to have dreams of sorts, Adam was already perfectly capable of thinking at a level that far surpassed that of most humans.

Why does it hurt so much? the forming Adam thought. Being Satan’s son, he was naturally terrifyingly intelligent, already knowing words that most adult humans didn’t even know. However, such intelligence and thought weren’t the only things he’s already developed; he also could hear and see and touch and taste and smell as well despite his still developing self.

And his senses were far beyond anything that could be imagined. Right now, he could hear a small drop of water strike the dirt of a floor from more than halfway across the world and the vision of his forming eyes was great enough for him to peer at Arianna and Amadeo and see everything that there is to see, every single last microscopic wrinkle and dying skin cell, every single molecule and even the atoms that make up their being. Why, Adam could even swear that he could see their souls, underneath the matter that made them. He could smell things that even transcended what could physically be smelled. He could smell their joy and anticipation, he could smell the sweat they unconsciously secreted from their sweat glands and can even smell anything and everything they have come across or eaten for the past few weeks. His sense of taste allowed him to perfectly analyze every single last element of the clear liquid that filled his large test tube and his sense of touch allowed him the same thing.

However, his senses were far too strong. His hearing made it so that the water drop he heard before sound like a dozen truckloads of explosives going off merely centimeters away from his forming ears and that was just the most mundane sound; louder sounds were so painful to his ears that Adam felt what he could only describe as shock that his ears just haven’t exploded yet from it all. His sight was so good that he could clearly see even past Arianna and Amadeo and see the walls and the floor and everything that they were made of. If he focused just a bit more, he could see even past the ground and all the way to the Earth’s core and perfectly make out every single last element and atom it’s made out of. His taste and touch were to the point that he could swear that it felt like his body was made of the liquid itself. And his sense of smell was advanced to the point where he felt his still forming nose would collapse. In short, he was experiencing an unbelievably severe case of sensory overload. What really had him worried too was that his eyes, ears, and nose aren’t fully developed yet, which meant that his senses will most likely be even sharper when he is fully formed. This wasn’t something he was looking forward to. And that was just the beginning of his suffering.

He had also inherited from his ‘father’ the curse, the very same one that made Satan feel the anguish of the damned souls in Hell in its entirety. Every single last beating, every single last torture and rape and abuse and so much more. All of the pain the damned felt, Adam now felt all at the exact time. He was, to put it simply, feeling the unimaginable pain of the dozens of billions of human souls in Hell, just like Satan does. Words like ‘agonizing,’ ‘excruciating’ didn’t even come remotely close to describing what he felt.

Yet, despite the pain, Adam didn’t try to cry out. Although he had no mouth with which to scream anyway, he unconsciously refused to cry out in pain within his advanced mind. He had inherited Satan’s indomitable willpower, shrugging off the pain as best as he can even as the agony seemed to try and manifest in the form of the wounds the damned were currently receiving.

Instead, he merely questioned why he was in such pain, what had he done to get the same curse as Satan’s. He knew he was Satan’s son, the Anti-Christ. He knew this out of perhaps some kind of subconscious knowledge. The fact that he can hear Arianna and Amadeo and the other Satanists speak of him being this only cemented this further in his mind. Yet he was still confused on this. Why? he asked himself, why should I have to help Satan out of Hell? Although he was the Anti-Christ, Adam still had the ability to question this. Sure, he found humans so far to be unbearably ugly, being able to see every dying skin cell as it fell from their bodies along with all of their wrinkles and sagging skin and scars down to the smallest atom, but so far he had yet to find a reason for wanting to do what he was apparently made to do. The only thing that made him doubt this particular thought was what he could hear going on in the rest of the world, that being crimes as humans fought and killed and raped and just flat out hurt others despite being of the same species. Yet even then, he couldn’t really think of a reason to do anything against humans.

But, Arianna and Amadeo were oblivious to the current experience Adam has been having. Instead, they were chatting amongst themselves, worried. So what has been happening lately? Arianna asked, her eyes narrowing in worry.

Amadeo sighed. They have been very persistent in hunting us down, he commented. By ‘they,’ he was referring to the mages of Fortuna, a large island off the coast of Italy and almost in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. The island is known to the world, but merely as a place where a large number of people live, content with being away from the rest of the world. In actuality, there was a mage society on that island, one that had somewhat close ties to the special mage section of the Vatican (which is naturally kept a secret) and as a favor to the Vatican’s mage section, the mages of Fortuna have been helping them try and track down the Satanist group. And the Fortuna mages were making progress. It would only be a matter of time before they found out where the Satanists were hiding.

Arianna tensed a bit. So then what do we do next? Should we move him? she asked, referring to Adam.

Amadeo took a step forward to get a better look at the test tube. Perhaps and if so we should do it soon. It won’t be long before they pick up enough clues to find this place. He then sighed and shook his head. They’ve been putting a lot of pressure on us recently and as a result, we’ve been leaving behind too many clues to this place thanks to our haste in staying hidden.

And he was right, which was proven at that very moment.

The hidden base they were in shook as though a massive earthquake was occurring, nearly knocking the two off their feet from the suddenness of it. Adam, for his part, merely rocked around almost helplessly in the test tube, growing very annoyed at the shaking thanks to it affecting his senses.

No way! They’re here already? Arianna yelled. Amadeo said nothing in response, just looking shocked.

Before he could even recover from this, the doors to the room were blasted out of existence by a magnificent fireball, melting the metallic constructions into nothingness.

Now, Amadeo was a talented mage, one that even his enemies could admire, but he was still human just like all other mages. And without magic to enhance his physical abilities, he was just as frail as a normal person when in the face of danger. In this case, the massive fireball that just destroyed the doors. Despite it coming right at him at speeds too fast for him to use his magic to enhance himself enough to survive it or at least deflect it, he instead turned to Arianna. Go! Get him out of-! he began to say, but was then enveloped by the fireball before he could finish.

However, Arianna immediately knew what he meant: get out of here and take Adam with her. She wasted no time in doing this. Running up to the test tube, she used magic to enhance her strength just enough to avoid having it backfire on her and give her the boost needed to tear the test tube free from where it was at.

But when she did so, she accidently shattered the glass of the test tube and Adam began to fall out of it. No! Arianna cried, now completely oblivious to the several mages that now proceeded to enter the room in the wake of the fireball.

Don’t move! one of the mages, a woman in her late twenties and in excellent shape said sternly. But Arianna ignored her and the other mages and went to grab Adam before he could fall. Though the fall wouldn’t kill him, Arianna didn’t know that; all she cared about was just saving him.

And save him she did. Seconds before he hit the ground, Arianna lunged low with her arms outreached and grabbed Adam right before he hit. Arianna immediately began to stand back up, only for the female mage to suddenly shove her. I said don’t move! she yelled, as she and the others prepared to put Arianna under arrest.

However, when she shoved Arianna, Arianna’s klutziness seemed to manifest itself as she lurched forward, Adam’s small, still forming fetus body wobbling in her arms unsteadily as she kept losing her grip on him as she stumbled forward, nearly tripping over her own feet several times consecutively. She nearly cried out in shock and fear as she felt Adam begin to slip out of her hands once more and sure enough, he did.

No! she yelled as she once again tried to grab him and just managed to do so before he could fall any more. When she grabbed him, she had unconsciously pressed him up against her own stomach.

Adam, feeling himself now pressing up against the warm flesh of Arianna’s stomach despite her blouse begin in the way, thought of perhaps taking refuge in her; being exposed to the air for the first hurt him a bit, adding to his torment and now he wished to be placed somewhere where he could stay relatively pain-free until he fully forms. And this decision of his was made upon the feel of Arianna’s body.

What happened next was something that the mages there wouldn’t quite be able to explain to their commanding officer nor the leader of their society for the better part of the next decade. Adam, almost doing so unconsciously as he somehow managed to tap into the vast power he possessed despite his tiny frame, began to warp the very fabric of reality around him and Arianna, ripples being perfectly visible amongst things that would normally be completely impossible for anyone to actually touch let alone distort in such a way.

The mages watched, dumbfounded as they saw the same ripple effects occur along the front of Arianna’s stomach. Arianna herself was too shocked to do anything about this.

They all watched as the ripple effects across her stomach increased in speed as Adam suddenly began to somehow push up against her stomach. However, rather than simply stop upon pushing Arianna’s stomach, everyone was very shocked to see Adam actually seem to go right through the stomach, the rippling effects now slowing to something similar to how they look on water when something small strikes it. Adam slowly, but steadily pushed himself further into Arianna’s stomach until nearly several seconds later, a bright flash of light suddenly filled the room,  forcing everyone save for Arianna to cover their eyes. Arianna on the other hand, started to moan in pain as Adam fully entered her body, taking place in her new womb as he nestled there.

When the light died down nearly half a minute later, the mages slowly put down their hands to see what just happened, only to freeze at what they saw. On her knees, Arianna had her hands placed on her belly. Her now swollen belly. Adam had effectively made her pregnant with himself as he took residence in her womb and he wasn’t going to be coming out until he reached the nine months limit just like most other human babies.

Ah, It was the only thing Arianna could say as the pain she felt began to go away and she rubbed her belly almost lovingly, her mind now oddly at peace now with her new ‘baby.’

The mages simply looked dumbfounded, at least more so than just moments before. One of them, a tall, wiry boy with jet black hair and fair skin and was no older than his late teens, seemed to sum up their reaction to this pretty well. What the fuck just happened?

The female mage, clearly the leader of this group at this point, responded back to him without even looking. More like, how the hell do we explain this?

Prologue (Part 3)

Several months have passed since Adam had entered Arianna’s womb. Since then, Arianna had been arrested by the Fortuna mages, but upon being taken to the leader of Fortuna Island, Alvise Romano, and his council, the mages that had arrested Arianna explained to them all the situation. When Alvise and the council had been fully informed of what happened, they were quite shocked to say the least, so much so that it had taken them a few days to come up with a decision on what to do. During this time period, several mage doctors took a look at Arianna and found her to be in good health despite how Adam entered her womb and they had ended up scratching their heads in confusion at how her body seemed to be putting up no fight against what they had defined as an invader of sorts.

After this had occurred, Alvise had informed the Vatican of all of this and they were downright terrified of Arianna after hearing of what happened. The mages of the Vatican wanted nothing more than to kill her to ensure the death of Adam within her, but the more rational members of them along with Alvise and some members of his council did their best to keep them from possibly doing something stupid. Alvise, though he and the others were still rather disturbed by the fact that the Anti-Christ was indeed alive and would be ‘born’ soon, didn’t want Arianna to suffer because of this even though she had been a member of the Satanist group, which mages have come to call Satan’s Shadow due to their almost obsessive worship of said being.

But on another hand, Alvise knew that he couldn’t just let Arianna roam free given these facts as well and so he had arranged a small house for her to stay in on Fortuna Island while having over a dozen of his best mages watch over her at all times in case either she tried something or someone else tried something; due to the unusual situation, news of Arianna carrying Adam leaked to the populace of Fortuna Island and so Arianna had found herself immediately ostracized. When news of her involvement with Satan’s Shadow leaked as well, the treatment of her at the people’s hands grew worse.

However, despite all of this alienation and politics and talk of execution – the latter being more on the part of the Vatican’s mage section than the Fortuna higher ups – Arianna didn’t truly mind it. She was simply content to house Adam until his ‘birth.’ Now that she thought about it, she had never truly believed in the same thing as the other Satanists at all; she was actually a bit of a believer in Catholicism, this due to her family having raised her as one rather sternly, and she had only stayed with the Satanists because they had actually accepted her despite her failures and klutziness. And over time, she had managed to delude herself into believing she had the same beliefs and desires as them.

But with Adam now within her, she realized that what the Satanists had been offering her wasn’t what she really wanted. What she had really wanted was a family. Since her own family had all practically shunned her at every opportunity, Arianna had been left very much unloved and she sought the familial love that most other people had. And though Adam was not her child in the usual sense, he was still in her womb, waiting to be ‘born’ just like any other baby. This was reason enough for her to consider him her own child and as such, she came to love him.

Adam, for his part, felt a bit of a connection with Arianna. For reasons he couldn’t explain, when he entered her womb, he felt his immeasurable pain fade just a bit and he was actually able to feel Arianna’s motherly love for him. Given the feelings that he got from the damned, love was something entirely new to Adam at the time, but he didn’t find it unpleasant; in fact, he found it rather soothing, washing away a bit of his pain.

But the love Arianna had for Adam did nothing to dissuade the residents of Fortuna Island from hating her. Her love of the Anti-Christ only made them hate her more, to the point where some actually tried to kill her in an attempt to see to it that the Anti-Christ would die. The guards Alvise had assigned to her managed to repel most of the attempts, but one person had managed to sneak in and attack Arianna. The attacker had struck fast and hard with a knife, his attack having landed on her swollen stomach. Arianna looked both shocked and terrified when this had happened, immediately worried for herself and Adam, but she and her attacker both looked stupefied when the attacker pulled out the knife and the wound he made suddenly healed. It seemed that Adam’s power was great enough to keep his ‘mother’ safe. The man was promptly arrested when the guards discovered him, not resisting out of shock at what just happened. Arianna had been just as shocked herself and when this incident had been reported to Alvise and his council, they had been positively dumbfounded by it.

A few more months past and during that time, Adam had come to be fully formed in Arianna’s belly, now only days away from being ‘born.’ During these months, Arianna had come to love Adam even more than before, going out of her way to start reading parenting books – her own parents didn’t serve as good role models for a being a parent herself, after all – and even started trying eating and drinking new things, even though such things were pointless; Adam, being Satan’s ‘son’ would never suffer from things like lack of nutrition and the likes.

During this time, Arianna took the liberty of trying things like  whole grain, oatmeal, and many other things to ensure Adam’s health, though she knew not that it was unnecessary on her part for this. However, she also tried something that she had never tried before in her life: chocolate milk. Upon first trying it, she took an instant liking to it and drank it every morning. Adam, who also experienced some of these foods and drinks in small measures as a result, also took a liking to the drink as well. Arianna would always rub her belly lovingly every time she did so as well, Adam unconsciously and very lightly kicking in what could possibly be contentment at the kiddie drink.

However, Arianna, for all her happiness and motherly love, couldn’t help but feel a bit worried. As the months have passed, she had come to actually be able to sense the ungodly power that Adam possessed. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. It was like some kind of paradox, one that she never would have fathomed. On one hand, the power she felt from Adam was dark, beyond that even. It felt more evil than any atrocity that had been committed thus far in history and seemed to just be waiting for a chance to spill out from Adam and reduce all of Creation to nothingness. But on the other hand, this very same power felt pure, perhaps even sacred. It was soothing and calm and hopeful, radiating like some sort of calming wave, one that could make even the most cynical and depressed and lonely of people feel like there is a warm light guiding them to happiness. Adam’s power was both darkness and light, the beginning and the end, the death and the life. Arianna simply didn’t know what to make of it, but she was certain that Adam had apparently taken some qualities from Satan back when the fallen angel was still known as Lucifer. But that wasn’t what had her worried.

What had her worried, was the sheer immensity of this power. It felt like an ocean, one that knew no bottom nor shore, expanding forever without slowing. Arianna could say with complete certainty that no force on Earth would be able to compare to Adam once he was ‘born’ and was old enough to wield his power in its entirety.

Her main concern, however, was when Adam finally came into the world. His power was simply too vast, vast enough for her to immediately know that when he is ‘born,’ the power will kill Arianna in the process. Arianna couldn’t help but despair a bit over this; she had no wish to die without seeing her ‘son.’ But she was realist and as she felt the day of Adam’s ‘birth’ coming soon, she slowly came to accept her fate.

And sure enough, the day came. Just as with any other pregnancy, Arianna’s water broke, signifying that it was time. She was rushed by the guards to the hospital, where her cries of pain could be heard all throughout the building, this experience being much more painful than any other birth. Arianna’s body convulsed as she tried to push, Adam even trying to get out of the womb in order to end his mother’s suffering.

A few nurses had to actually hold Arianna down as the convulsions quickly grew worse as she pushed. Though everyone in that room knew of her and Adam, they couldn’t bring themselves to try anything to kill either of them, for they were doctors and to take life, even if they hated Adam, was not something they could contemplate.

Hold her down! the doctor shouted, nervous about this whole situation. Never before had he been helping a woman deliver a child like this; this was by no means a normal birth.

The nurses complied with the doctor’s command, using magic to reinforce themselves, making themselves physically stronger to keep a good hold on Arianna, who was flailing about to the point where she was ready to fall off the bed. They too were very nervous about this whole thing.

Adam, for his part, was feeling worried. As he slowly began to make his way out of the womb, he could feel his power practically leaking out of himself, as if this was to help him get out faster. But as this occurred, he noticed that it was doing great harm to his ‘mother.’ If this kept up, she would undoubtedly die. Adam didn’t want that, but his small body didn’t seem to be listening to his mind; it seemed as if his whole being wanted out of the womb. He made a fist with his left hand as he began to move out of the womb, the pain of the damned increasing as the lessening of pain Arianna had provided him with seemed to fade away.

But before he could fully leave the womb, he heard Arianna’s voice, her thoughts thanks to his power. Adam, Arianna thought, I know that you’re the Anti-Christ, the one that will open the gates to Hell, but please, do me a favor, she thought as she now felt her own life force slip away as slowly but surely, Adam began to come out. Her cries of pain gave way to tired panting, which slowed with every passing second. Even though I have always been insulted and put down, I have never actually lost faith in humanity, Arianna thought, we humans may have our dark sides and may do things that are truly horrific, but please promise me this, Adam. Please give them a chance, she thought, almost pleadingly.

Adam stopped moving for a moment as he digested what Arianna had just thought right now. Though the pain the damned went through was truly horrendous, far beyond any amount of words to fully describe in its entirety, they went through such pain because they had apparently earned it. This didn’t leave Adam with a good impression of humankind, the only exception having been his ‘mother.’ But he supposed that she had a point; since there was a Heaven, surely there must be those humans that have been pure enough to earn a place there. I will, mother. I promise, he thought, hoping that Arianna could hear him.

She did, proven by the small but happy smile on her tired face. It was as though some sort of worry or burden that had been plaguing her for some time now had just been lifted off of her shoulders. Thank you, she said aloud as she stopped convulsing. Surprised by this, the doctor and nurses froze, only for theirs eyes to widen as they saw her eyes suddenly go blank.

She had died.

They were silent for several seconds before they had a wriggling sound, followed by some sickening noises. They looked down, near the bottom edge of the bed where Arianna’s legs were spread wide open just in time to see blood flowing out from between her legs.

The doctor and nurses looked on in shock as suddenly Adam, though only a baby, managed to crawl his way out of Arianna’s womb. He had finally been ‘born.’

Everyone in the room could only gasp in shock as they got a good look at the infant Anti-Christ, amazed by how light his skin was and his open eyes, revealing the most piercing and beautiful ice blue eyes they have ever seen. What’s more is that he didn’t have black pupils like others. Instead he possessed cat-like slits, the slits being an amazing glowing white color. Staring into these slits was like staring into a star, bright and enrapturing.

Adam had been ‘born’ into the world. And as the infant sat up and looked around, he felt like weeping.

Chapter 1

It had been six years since that day. Right now, outside a modest, renaissance styled house sat a young boy. But this boy was far different from anyone else on the planet. The boy sat without shoes or socks on, dressed in a gray short sleeve shirt with a demonic skull on the front while angel wings were on the back, with black long sleeves connected inside of the short sleeves. In addition to this, the boy wore black lightly baggy jeans with a silver chain that connected from the lower front pocket to the back pocket. The boy was rather tall for a six year old, the average height for one being roughly three and a half feet, while he stood at just an inch or two over four feet and weighed forty five pounds of pure lean muscle despite his young age and surprisingly slender figure.

But this older-than-he-looks look and rather unusual wear for a child wasn’t what made him unusual; it was his looks. The boy had immaculate silver hair that went straight down to just a bit past his chin from the back while in the front he had thin silver locks that fell straight down, just barely passing his eyes. His eyes themselves were unimaginably beautiful, being an absolutely soul piercing ice blue, a fact that did nothing to detract from their beauty. The seemingly glowing white slits that he had in placement of normal pupils only added to his eyes’ beauty. In addition, the boy possessed a fair skin complexion, with light and incredibly smooth skin that any girl would envy even though he did nothing really special in taking care of outside the usual shampoo and soap he uses in showers.

His face though, could only be described as angelic, being slightly round due to him being a kid still, but had a mature leanness to it that most other kids didn’t have. His face and skin were completely and utterly free of blemishes, of scars, and sweat, for he possessed no sweat glands, allowing him to always appear perfect. His features also had a certain effeminate look to them, his lips being rather soft for a boy. In short, he had the sort of face that could literally stop traffic and always ensured he had people looking at him with a blush on his face, entranced by his young, but heavenly beauty.

Not only that, but every movement he made, regardless of how savage they may sometimes be thanks to conscious effort on his part, always contained an entrancing grace to them. No