Evil God

This is a world of Good and Evil. I don’t mean this metaphorically, or morally, but literally. I am Evil, and the other god of this world is Good. We define what those are in this world, and that influences every decision made by every mortal. Now, obviously, being directly involved in every decision would be far too tedious, so we delegate. I make devils, they make angels, and these beings spread our will throughout the world, tempting people with ideas and thoughts they might not otherwise have.

Today, I have received bad news.

“Someone is trying to kill you again.” 

“That’s not new.” 

“They actually have a good idea for how to do so though.” 

“... why do you sound guilty?”

“I may have been responsible for the idea. It just seemed so gloriously evil.”

“Okay, tell me, what was this wonderfully evil idea that you just had to share?”

“Well, there’s a spell for becoming a godly avatar, to enable a god to interact with the world.”

“Yes, I’m aware. People have been foolishly convinced to try killing me with it before. It’s always fun to go on murderous rampages when they do. At the end, all they have is a hollow pyrrhic victory that accomplishes nothing, as killing my avatar does nothing to me.” 

“It may be possible to strengthen the spell, and summon a god fully. It wouldn’t just be an avatar, but a full manifestation capable of being harmed.”

“You think a mortal can do that? No way.” 

“A godly avatar might be capable.”

“Wait, you mean the other god is going to kill me!?!”

“I managed to persuade Good to attempt a kidnapping and murder! Isn’t that amazing!”

“It IS, but I’m the one being targetted here. Still, that’s pretty good work, corrupting a god and all. You must’ve spoken to them when they were an avatar.”

“That’s right. Oddly, the angels didn’t seem to make any attempt to interfere.”

“That’s obviously because the angels don’t dare question their god. Would you think to try and persuade me of something when I was possessing a mortal?”

“Well, that sounds delightfully evil, so I might, if I didn’t think you’d kill me for it.”

“I’m still not sure if encouraging disobedience was really a good idea when I made you. Still, angels don’t have that sort of thinking. They’d never disobey their god… I probably shouldn’t have tried to make you imagine being in the angel’s position, you can’t. This is a delightful weakness Good has overlooked though.”

“Sadly, it’s a weakness that could get you killed. As much as I love the idea of being responsible for the death of my own boss, you’d mentioned before that if you die, all us devils die too. So, could you please come up with a method to prevent your death?” 

“Well, I’m not going to answer a summons from Good. So they’d have to make a version that summons an unwilling target. That’s such a violation of their own principles I can’t imagine it happening, unless you devils are far better at persuasion than I’ve been giving you credit for.”

Sadly, those were my last words. As for the last words I heard: 

“Hells bells! I won!”

“Yeah, yeah, and now we’re all gonna die ‘cause you just got the boss killed.”

“Eh, I’m sure he was just bluffing.”

I wasn’t bluffing. At least I could smile about that as I died. I wonder though, does getting a god of good to do evil, count as victory? Or does my death mean I still lose?

***Author Note*** 

This began as the intro to something completely different, but after writing it, I thought: This feels like a complete short story... and I'm not actually sure how to get to my original destination from here. If I ever do figure it out, maybe I'll make an actual story entry for it.

I ended up stealing this setting for another story that this is now like a prequel for: https://www.scribblehub.com/series/316008/not-so-evil-god/