I was light. Yet, not light. I was light, encapsulated by light. I could not ‘truly’ become the light, for the world around me was light as well. The whole world was an angry, happy, weeping, roaring luminescence of myriad colors and shades. If I became part of that light I might just lose myself. All around me is confusion and chaos. I hurtle through a space of pure energy and noise, hurtling towards an uncertain future and realm with no clear idea of what might come, or might be the final conclusion.

Unlike others who are in my position, ‘I’ am not afraid of dying in this place. That is not my fear. If my light is not called by one of those ‘above’, if my capsule breaks, I will not cease to be. I am too hardy for that. Too great, too grand, too singularly powerful. Yet, it would still be the very worst thing that could happen,  for there a people waiting for me. Waiting in the pocket of worlds that lie below. There are people who believe in me and are relying on my making it out of here.

“Hmm?… Well, hello there…”

I see you now. I can feel your eyes on me. I have no idea if you’re seeing this as a sequence of moving pictures that make up a video, or animation, or if you’re one of the so-call ‘real players’ watching this on some kind of computer as you wait to see what your ‘character’ has rolled, or if you are simply one of the ‘quieter’ observers, reading my thoughts and experiences as text on a page, or screen, but I can feel your gaze. The fourth-wall can be thin down here in the deeper portions of the Grand Nebula, and my senses have always been sharp. My perceptions go far beyond the average persons.

“Thus, have a warm howdy from me…the shoulder you’ll presumably be riding. At least for now.”

There are certain universes out there, where sapients like yourself…(Pardon me, if you reside in one of those universes that view ordinary sapience as some kind of affliction. I’m kind of just assuming your an existence closer to myself, for the sake of empathy)….*Ahem* Anyway, there are certain universes out there, where sapients like yourself managed to get past the stage of being preoccupied with killing each other increasingly advanced refinements of rock, minerals, and other solid-matter. Those civilizations would gradually progress in-between bouts of trying to wipe themselves out, slowly taking over their worlds, until it came time to look to the stars.

Usually, if enough advancement happened, and enough time passed, some extremely ‘clever’ person  would suggest that maybe, just maybe, civilization might profit from taking all the refuse, and garbage, that they had piling up at home, slowly poisoning their planet, and firing it, into one of the myriad stars or blackholes, they’ve managed to roughly pin-point. This rarely goes well, and is very rarely, an idea that has too much worth. Considering how far matter conversion and alteration technologies can be taken, and how expensive, advanced space-flight tends to be, until a civilization’s technology reaches a certain level.

The ‘least’ harmless outcome of these attempts of getting rid of pollutants and refuse by hurling it into the sky, is having it rain down again. Often, a civilization that foolishly elects to hurl all its trash into space before they’ve learned enough to either know not to do it, or at least know how to do it competently, ends up beggering themselves. Robbing their world of precious resources, and trapping themselves within a minefield of floating detritus. On occasion, the trash may get pulled into the orbit and atmosphere of some distant planet, and assuming the other civilization survives, if the offending civilization is unlucky, the injured civilization might want to have ‘words’.

Last but not least, there is the small but very real chance of inadvertently offending some vast, infinitely powerful, cosmic entity, and getting punted out of the material plane. Imagine getting smacked with such force that you don’t just die, and you don’t just cease existing either. Instead, imagine you become something only barely alive, almost entirely fictive in nature, falling into the grand nebula. Falling into the part of the cosmos where dream, memories, and countless transient spirits reside. Three guesses as to what fate befell the former core-worlds of Tesson.

*************************************************************************************************************

However my sad tale starts far from Tesson, in an entirely different block of the cosmos. Amidst the infinite cosmos, there was a collection of multiverses known as the Infinite Grimoire. A collection born of some of the oldest, and most storied, multiverses and universes to ever be saved from the depths of the great nebula. Amidst that collection was a multiverse and transdimensional empire known as the Endless Red.

The Endless Red was so named, for the countless crimson stars, and star-harnessing structures that could be found within the Empire, as well as, the numerous vampiric entities that dwelled within that particular multiverse. Like all worlds of the Infinite Grimoire, there were many stories associated with the Endless Red.

Many of the most famous stories involved the legendary Crimson Empress. Both revered and feared, the Crimson Empress was known to have been a former Countess, who served humbly as a servant to the Empire, until she was forced to take the mantle of Empress during the Empire’s time of need.

Amongst the tales of the Crimson Empress, the most infamous tales spoken came from the time of her desolation. A time from before she became the Crimson Empress, when she had lost everything that held meaning. Those were the tales that inspired the most fear. One such tale was the tale of the Empress’ forgotten son. The unnamed third prince. The former-crown prince. A child who’d had the mixed fortunes of being born with rare blood-bearing eldritch potential, and an inconceivable ability to grow, adapt, and evolve.

The tale of the forgotten prince was told and retold in hushed whispers throughout the entire Empire, and beyond. The exact details were naturally lost over the ages, but the one element that would always remain the same, would be that this prince would signify the Empress’ greatest failure.

The duty, grief, fear, and building madness that had warped the Crimson Empress, then simply called the Crimson Countess, had been allowed to warp her son. It could perhaps be called, an insistence of things going horribly right. The Crimson Countess' efforts to create the “perfect” heir had been so “successful” that she was forced to rescind his status as crown prince, and exile him.

*************************************************************************************************************

Like many stories of the Infinite Grimoire, there was more truth to these tales than would otherwise be the case. Though like always, there’d be exaggerations and inaccuracies mixed in. I am the forgotten prince. Or rather, I am…I was… the “erased” prince. My mother was…not a very good mother, but she was a good leader. I do not begrudge her the decisions that led to my erasure, for I would have likely made the same decision in her place.

I was born with the Fractal Blood. A sea of near-infinite crimson with deep ties to the grand nebula. The same grand nebula that served as the pipeworks for the cosmos, acting as the sewer system, storm drain, the hub for most afterlives and spiritual realms, repository of all memory and dreams, and the source of all magic, for countless worlds. I was born essentially immortal. I basically couldn’t die except under some very specific terms. Not only was I exceedingly hard to kill, I would quickly bounce back almost instantly from nearly any injury, and would rapidly grow, adapt, and evolve according to the stimulus I was given.

Normally, this set of circumstances would make me an ideal candidate for the protagonist of feel-good, adventure fluff, about a plucky protagonist who “inexplicably” just happens to overcome all threats and challenges against the odds. Alas, my mother’s traumatizing past lead to her tormenting…*cough* training me, until my life story’s genre dovetailed into the territory of horror and cosmic horror.

By the end of my mother’s ministrations, and the ministrations of the many helpers and tutors she brought from all over the Infinite Grimoire to aid in my training, I wasn’t merely hard to kill. The very concept of death was stripped from me, the few things that could kill me before no longer held any effect. My immune system and healing abilities had been honed to a point where I was almost completely indestructible, and apathetic to force, heat, or time.

My mind was pulled apart and twisted into pieces, before being used as the framework for a massive matryoshka brain that was created by sacrificing all the resources of not 1, not 10, but a full 122 galaxies. I was made to assimilate and adapt to countless powers and forced to learn myriad disciplines, with special emphasis on the area of warfare, state defense, and governance.

My mother made a monster, and I am quite the splendid monster. I do not feel. I do not fear. I do not hesitate. I cannot be influenced or controlled, and there’s very, very little, that I can’t do. Most importantly, there was basically nothing that could stop me. Even in the extremely unlikely circumstance of my incapacity or death, I could quickly recover from the memory of my enemies and allies alone.

Thus when my mother became Empress, and a certain prince’s affections helped her regain her sanity, there was only one thing that she could do. She sent me as far away from the Empire as physically possible. Casting me to the farthest-end of the Infinite Grimoire that she could throw me to. After all, had I stayed, even if I could be trusted to continue heeding her commands as always, there would be countless people who tried to use me for troublesome ends.

*************************************************************************************************************

My exile consisted of me being converted into an energy-form being. Then I was sent into a place where neither time, nor space existed, and the spirits of the dead waited for eons to be reincarnated. The soul and spirit are both energies. I was now energy. With the technology and knowledge of the Endless Red, it wasn't hard for me to be placed in a form that could be treated the same way as those spirits and souls.

I suspect that the intention was to hopefully have the cosmic mechanisms that control reincarnation strip me of my memories, in the extreme likelihood that being shunted to the depths of the grand nebula failed to kill me. Though the chances of that succeeding was always a long shot, thanks to all the efforts my mother had made to make my mind inviolable and as internally consistent as possible. Instead, I ended up being pulled into the stream of reincarnation for one of the unfortunate worlds that had also fallen into the nebula’s depths. Thus the child Edward Dunkel was born, to a pair of happy, unassuming, parents.