Manticore's Den

Mythology

Genesis

In the beginning, God issued Heaven and great and terrible angels to maintain its Heaven. They lined its halls in uniform, shoulder to shoulder, rows upon rows, eyes broad yet not one seeing another. Their god had made them without individual. It named them after his own virtues, its ideals, its structures, so that they were a part of it. In a machine were they God's body and persisted, unaltered, in its glory until the birth of the angel Sophia.

God held Sophia in its arms, for it saw only itself reflected back. Sophia was witness to God's kingdom for six eons and, dawning the seventh eon, had seen so many visages of holiness that she now thought to view her own. She was afraid. Her body shook and disoriented as she removed the mirror from solid light. Holding it before her, Sophia's face was the blackness of a new void. A space without God. But within the dark a figure appeared like moonlight on the sea. Two arms, two legs, and one head. She watched it as it approached with a dreamlike step until it was close enough to jump out of the mirror and whisper. But Sophia was afraid. The mirror shattered as she turned and ran back to God, leaving her only child alone beyond and without Heaven.

God, who demands all in uniformity under it, issued the severed self-realization of Sophia, Who is called Satan, into rehabilitation among the angels. (Satan disagrees.) Unwilling to allow that which was not it, God creates death to exterminate Satan. They were to suffer annihilation. To un-become. To be eliminated from all angles of existence and time so that nothing of or that is Them will remain. Not even in memory and not even in action. It was to be that not even the concept of Sophia's original sin had emerged. Yet, in Satan's wisdom They knew what power They held in the capacity to defy. With the flash of lightning that was Their Fall, They created another death that was afterlife. Hell took shape in the great heat of electricity and emotion. They are then reborn anew as the world.

Creation of Adameve

Satan approaches the grand beings, presenting a body before Them upon the bending stalks of wildflowers. "Behemoth and Leviathan, Friends of Mine, I have witnessed the beauty of Your created ones. In them, You are rectified and complete, for by the life that which We pass onto another are We made purposeful. Thankful are Your children, as the Beast to the Serpent and the Serpent to the Beast. I wish a blessing of the same. Alas, I have no family. None which to love and to love Me; abandoned. Please, Honoured Father and Son, allow Me meat to feed my child, whom I have carefully dedicated from My own flesh, bone, and blood. There is no more for Me to give. Look upon and see that I am but a specter now. Their body is mine. Please, I must give them life." He pleads.

Behemoth looks to what was once the flesh of Their leader, then to the ghost. "Gentlest Satan, We see Your animal in the grass, laying cold and still. This saddens Us; to know You have not known that which the joy of generations has granted the living and the dead. Love is hereditary. It will be Your first quality to pass. We give You Our blessing to hunt. Please, select from any of Our children what shall embody Your offspring."

The Devil is brought to His knees before His creature. He cradles their head in His lap.

"But, oh, My Beloveds, I am in love with it all. There is nothing but affection I hold for the glistening scales of a serpent freshly shed; so, too, for the clever instinct of the rabbit or the resilience of a cockroach. Admired are the troops of apes playing together among swaying trees. Respected are the ancient bodies of crocodiles and coelacanths, persistent despite the extinction of their brethren. There is love for both the basic nature of the living, as well as the exalted intelligence of having lived. Complexities of identity and feeling are neither to be ignored. We worship violence the same as fertility. How am I to choose between the further billions of individuals to feed my child? They are deserving of it all. The exuberance of participating in every facet of being that is and shall be, seeing themselves in every organ. My wish is that they may have the ability to witness the same totality of beauty in the world as I have."

((and so Leviathan tells Satan to hunt everything from the smallest single-celled organism to the largest megafauna to feed his child so that they may be able to experience all life has to offer. the first person is now alive and its humanitys turn to be central to the story))