Chapter 1A New Nest

The whole world was red.

Tears of blood fell from the sky, and where they touched the ground they turned into cocoons. The monsters that spun their way out of those membranes held a feast of blood. It looked like mindless slaughter, but they had tastes of their own, and there was an order to what they preferred. As the things worth devouring grew fewer, though, they could no longer afford to be picky.

It had been about a hundred years since the blood rain began.
A full century, in other words.

Saha, gazing blankly at the rain, noticed a small change.

Grrrk. Grrrrrk.

A misshapen creature was staring straight at him. Even with heaven and earth painted red, these things had never lost the minimum ability to tell one thing from another. But somewhere along the way their appetites must have changed. They had begun to send Saha hungry looks.

For as long as Saha had watched them, the monsters had been short on patience.
Some would say that made them the natural opposite of his unhurried temperament.

Sure enough.

By the time Saha started weighing what to do, they had come very close. Their numbers had swollen beyond recognition. The wasteland, which had always been empty apart from the occasional uninvited guest, and which had kept his heart at peace, now surged with crimson waves.

That was when Saha felt a faint irritation.

Because his neighbors' red was garish.
Because they had no manners.
Because the four-legged beast that had caught his eye now and then had been trampled.

Some also said that he knew no mercy.
The verdicts differed, no doubt, because the names he was called by differed.

Mortals had a habit of confusing his names. Perhaps it came of so much time having passed since anyone asked him directly.

Which of the two mortals was right, there was no telling.
Only that his irritation tended to take much the same shape either way.

Saha took a step.
Black seeped out through the folds of his trailing hem.

A dot like a drop of ink became a line in an instant, then a plane. Before long the black had covered everything above, below, left and right, and wiped the color from the sky.

The world beneath the darkness seemed endlessly wide and endlessly narrow. For a while there was only the whispering of cells too small for anyone to see.

When the darkness finally drew back, the sky was a clear cobalt.

A little freshness bloomed in Saha's chest, but only for a moment. Far off, the clouds that carried the blood rain were already rolling in.

The sight told Saha a simple, plain fact.

"The world has ended."

He made his decision, a little late.
He would go and find a new nest.

---

A mortal once claimed that time is relative.

I could only marvel at mortal wisdom anew. At my old nest, whenever I sat watching the rain, my servants would turn up before I knew it, chattering "Ten years have passed," "Another ten years have passed." And yet, remarkably, since I had moved to this new nest it had only been... hm.

"Today... it is exactly one month, Master...."

"Only that?"

I could not believe it. They had to be lying to me.
But the way he bowed his head, as if he knew I doubted him, looked sincere.

In the end I withdrew the suspicion. My judgment is often wrong. I tend to reach the conclusion before I have laid down the reasoning.

"Perhaps space and time are warped here."

"Quite so, Master... yet it is my understanding... that Master's own perception is absolute...."

Slither, slither. Ugreuja spoke in a voice like a snake crawling. He was one of the few servants whose name I remembered.

Sometimes I forget it.

"I believe... Master is not touched by such distortion...."

"Then why has only a month passed?"

"Perhaps... it is only that Master has been... busy...."

That was persuasive.

"You are always so wise."

The memories of the past month flickered by.

True enough, I had been busy. I had spied on dimension after dimension, searching for candidates. Out of the one million three hundred fifty-four thousand and thirty-one that were easy to reach, I narrowed it down to three.

The real trouble began after that. Each had clear merits and clear flaws, and I agonized over them again and again. In the end I chose the nest by rolling dice, on the dimension where my interference would reach least.

It was a delightfully entertaining game.

I seriously considered rolling again, but decided to obey the will of heaven. After moving to the chosen dimension, I watched my servants work.

Regrettably, I could not lay a hand on it myself.

My talent for making things is catastrophically lacking. Waiting quietly while feeble creatures finished my nest was an agonizing ordeal. The more I wished for the work to be done, the slower time crawled.

That was why I was so weary now.
One might also say I was on edge.

Moreover, there is a phenomenon I abhor.
The reflex, the body moving of its own accord.
For instance, like now, when I frowned without meaning to.

KRRRBOOOM!

White lightning cracked, and a strange figure came crashing down before me.
A man wrapped in thunderbolts glared at me with fierce eyes.

Like me, he resembled a human, a bipedal vertebrate.
Unlike me, he was twice my size, which made him look like another creature altogether.

By the results of my prior research, one could call this man unusual. I am slightly smaller than an adult human male, but he was excessively large.

[Who are you?]

A will carried through the air, communication that bypasses language. After a brief deliberation, I moved my lips.

[Saha.]

When I gave my name, the man said "Ugh" and stepped back half a pace.

My voice must have sounded very close to him. I had met the reaction before, so the cause was easy to guess.

[Like a snake whispering.]

Soon the man snorted.

[And I did not ask your name.]

[Was there some trouble with the communication?]

[Insolent, to run your mouth like that! This Mount Karuraklaf has been my domain for five hundred years!]

KRAAAKOOOM!

Thunder began to roll with his booming shout. On an ordinary day, perhaps I would not have minded. Today the noise grated.

[I shall grant the trespasser who dares invade my territory time to kneel and beg for—!]

I will say it again: I was tired, and I was angry.

.
.
.

Before I knew it, the sky had gone calm.

The only sound was a crunch, crunch, teeth biting down on something hard. Razreu, a glutton, liked to gnaw on skulls after a meal, as if savoring the afterglow.

A vulgar habit.

[You said this was your domain.]

No answer.

Once only the skull remains, even a constellation cannot usually speak. The loud, rude man had become one more specimen.

[It no longer is.]

One day in the year 1355,
a constellation from beyond settled on the continent.