text: Chapter I *-* The birth of Avatars *The age of Gods predates the history of men. In fact Gods created men with all their flaws and desires. Envy, greed, boredom - the thirst for something more; it's not just the nature of men - it's an inherent desire inhabited from their creators: Malchior - the self righteous, Alriar - the ostentatious and Velryon - the spiteful. Humanity was nothing more than a mood, a contest of who was the most powerful, most creative amongst them. A rare sight, a unified endeavor of creation. Yet also a joke, a sneering and twisted kind of being constantly torn apart by the desires inhabited from its creators, who in return would find amusement in their creations' arguments, quarrels and wars. Amusement in wondering what Godly trait those worm-ish creatures would give in to.* *Centuries passed, wars were fought, peace lasted for a while until new wars arose. The world kept turning, humanity kept repeating its mistakes and the Gods eventually grew bored of them. The Gods' gazes fell upon each other again, had they seen war and human creativity in the most gruesome and despicable ways. The Gods were entranced by it, longing to experience this state of being themselves instead of being nothing more than spectators; thus the War of Gods began.* *The heavens exploded in clashes of lightning, continents broke as mountains were tossed around like marbles, the earth burned as tsunamis of magma devastated the lands- and humanity stood by, powerless, unable to defend against it or even comprehend the sheer destruction ravaging the world.* *Humanity, like cockroaches hiding in the cracks of a run down shack, however survived this Armageddon - the Gods did not.* *Too wounded to recover Malchior, Alriar and Velryon fell from the heavens and turned into stone. A gruesome reminder of history. Their grace however - the source of their power - rained upon the earth, granting humanity - or rather: a hand full of humans - more power than any man should have. Those humans were called avatars. Had the world just survived the Armageddon, the lands were thrown into chaos by a new age of war, a fight for grace and even greater power.* *Those days should be remembered as the Age of Avatars. This shall be the record of how I remember them.* &#x200B; EDIT: Feedback welcome, both content related and linguistically (as I am not a native speaker). If you guys are interested I might write more. I have a lot of ideas to expand the universe and base a story around it, but this might very well exceed the proportions of a short story. So for now I'll just leave it at the world's introduction and listen to whether it's something anybody here might be interested in reading :) If somebody knows a more fitting sub to post the story in if I should expand it I'd appreciate the link. Neither r/WritingPrompts r/writing r/stories nor r/fantasy really seem to be the correct audiences for it.