I'm Actually Quite Selfish

[Tearen Wover]

Nealaphh walked through the garden beneath the thousand moons, its smooth black face devoid of the three green eyes that usually heralded the coming of its dread might. The round, blank canvas was marked only by a jagged, cracked seam that had once served the sole purpose of screaming, yet now, had sealed itself shut again. Despite once again having only its mind by which to speak, the sharp slice across its jaw was a stark reminder of the effect that human emotions could have on its body. It wasn't as if Nealaphh was blind; it had never really observed the world through those false viridian swatches in the first place. They had been an allegory; a maddeningly poignant reminder of what it once had been and what it had lost. The two eyes joined by a third below the right was the mark of the Order of the Enigma, Nealaphh's erstwhile adoptive family.

Now though, it didn't even have that ironic reminder to bind it back to his old self. Who was Nealaphh anyway? It no longer wanted to be a God, but the idea of being just a mundane tool in the machinery of Omni's universe still did not sit well with it. The middle path had never really suited Nealaphh; it was either fully dedicated or fully abstinent from a course of action or belief. The garden around it was sort of similar in that regard. The plants that had been carefully planted in the brimstone pots were either bursting with vibrant colors or twisted and black. The bleary, red-purple sky over head looked down dolefully on the scene, with the light of countless unnamed and lost orbital bodies lending only a begrudging light to the stillness of the scene.

Nealaphh had been in the Underverse for several hours now, and he had yet to encounter any sort of demon or spectre that wished to torture or disembowel him. Honestly, Nealaphh would have welcomed the reprieve from having to tackle its own thoughts and insecurities. Perhaps the hordes of Diablo aware that leaving it to itself was the greatest torture that could be invoked upon the god-mind.

Or, perhaps, they were just too busy trying to deal with the Arch Dragon Queen that Nealaphh had banished to this forsaken place, not minutes before arriving here itself. Neither possibility was comforting...