Resisting the not yet insistent call for it to return to its elder kin in the infinite potentiality, it sunk a honed portion of its vast awareness and being into the toys it had buried within the sand box of existence. Using these toys, it could interact with the small and simple creatures that came into contact with them. Such toys facilitated a more intricate kind of play than the random flailing about it no longer derived much pleasure or satisfaction from.

Each one of the kin who became drawn to more refined playtime before answering the call of it's elders, tended to find greater enjoyment from a specific type of play that distinguished it from other kin. Clues to these differences could be found in the shape and function of the toys it used. Some liked tools of war or symbols of authority but this ent.i.ty liked to shape its toys of interaction into books. Regardless of the shape and individual function designed to lure its controlling ent.i.ty's preferred prey, nearly all had a common principle, power.

A small amount of shed essence, a little superficial insight the ent.i.ty possessed, and scarce few of the creatures that encountered these toys could resist or escape them. And of those hapless creatures that became entangled with the playing ent.i.ties, fewer still walked away having gained more than they had lost. Aside from a nearly unavoidable varying degree of madness, however, the book using ent.i.ty in question considered itself relatively fair in treatment to the creatures it interacted with in comparison to its fellow enthusiasts.

It reveled in observance as it sent inspiration for wonders and horrors in equal measure. If one of its inspired creatures would unleash a threat capable of destroying all life, often its next manipulation of another would be to create solutions. In the midst of the violently tipping scales there was much to behold and learn for not only the ent.i.ty but also among the scholarly of the world so affected, at least those fortunate enough to survive.

It looked fondly upon itself for it's breadth of generosity in copiously sharing the revelations of structured reality it had gleaned, frequently anguis.h.i.+ng about the pitiful limit a single one of its pets could contain. Incessantly it pushed against this limitation for the sake of driving the pets beyond the mortal creature's contemporaries to reveal richer intellectual rewards. It eschewed, plotted against and ignored fellow kin and mortal alike that spoke against it's acts of generosity in anything other than a positive light.

As a being that treasured knowledge and understanding, it was aware in a way some of its young kin was not, why they were not allowed to push very far past the inner edges of the maelstrom and beyond the calmer void around structured reality. Doing so would damage existence and limit the other's ability to interact, a fact that most would not care about even if they knew but there were more reasons than that. To enter structure was to be shackled by it, the instinctual resistance against which was the source of the damage but more importantly, while under it confines an ent.i.ty's expression of self and ability was significantly diminished. In such a state, the ent.i.ty could be harmed.

Because of this chance of harm, the elder ones would not stand idly by. Once noticed, an elder would be quick to react. The placid call to migrate back to the endless potential would become an unavoidable and irresistible demand. Because of such a consequence, those who couldn't resist the temptation would exercise cunning and guile to sneak their tendrils further in than permissible for more intimate understanding and experience. Among those who did and escaped notice was a tacit understanding. Don't snitch.

If one was nicked or sc.r.a.ped and cried out alerting the elders, the others would break or hide all the toys close to their own. Without toys, the crybaby could only leave the sandbox or flail around until the elders called it away. In fact, if any ent.i.ty started crying and flailing about once it had learned to play with toys it would find itself quickly ostracized or bullied by the others until it was forced to leave.

In older sandboxes, like the one the book using ent.i.ty belonged to, one might find a forgotten or abandoned toy. If that happened, it was finders keepers. In the sandbox, no ent.i.ty wanted to follow any rules but the constant threat of being called away kept most conflicts to a certain level and nothing would end playtime faster than toy s.n.a.t.c.hing turning one of them into a snitching crybaby. Sometimes the older toys weren't safe and the resulting hurt could end playtime too. Still, few ent.i.ties could resist playing with an other's toys so sometimes even cautious ent.i.ties like this one would make the mistake of playing with a potentially dangerous abandoned toy, risking its own and its playtime in the process.

Careful not to alert other ent.i.ties playing in the world it had found the abandoned conduit, conveniently in it's favored form of a book, the ent.i.ty plotted to move it from owner to owner with barely perceived whispers and urging until it landed in the hands of an unstable and soon to die man. In another world dimension, the ent.i.ty had urged its two strongest conduits together in the hands of that world's chosen champion. Sadly the champion, in his grief over lost loved ones and desire to find closure and other emotional concerns, had never used the two books. All the careful crafting of scenario almost seemed lost effort until a mad mage began a dysfunctional ritual close to the ent.i.ty's conduits.

Using the impetus of the nine day ritual and the beacon of its two books, the ent.i.ty subtly wove new ethereal geometries into the surrounding environment. As the man unknowingly sacrificed himself to the object of the ent.i.ty's desire in one dimension, a child within the other was coaxed to draw upon the ent.i.ty's conduits. With the appropriated ritual of the mad mage relaxing reality's laws around the child who was currently in a doubly strengthened bond with the ent.i.ty, it felt safe enough to move a portion of itself into reality. With a cautious tug, it attempted to pull the abandoned conduit to its own two, using the sacrificed man's soul as the guider. Alas, time-s.p.a.ce froze as the ent.i.ty's tendril of condensed essence snagged on a sharp protrusion of causality that the abandoned conduit suddenly produced.

The ent.i.ty had been duped. The conduit was still bound to another and that other ent.i.ty had set up a malicious trap to cause intentional harm. In rage and pain it was unaccustomed to, it pulled itself free. Leaving behind a part of itself in the sacrificed man's reality and bleeding another portion around the now soulless body of the child in the other, it managed to retrieve its tattered and reduced tendril before letting out a bellow it could not contain. Before the ent.i.ty could issue even the weakest of protests, its elder had called it in full force. Unable to defy, the ent.i.ty sulkily withdrew from the maelstrom and into the infinite potentiality.

Inside the dead man's apartment, a dusty looking old man covered in rags consumed the ent.i.ty's shed essence as his book consumed the two other conduits. Once finished, moved by whim or pity, the old man used a small amount of the causality power his book possessed to nudge the dead man's soul into a chance for new life. One last look around the apartment to ensure nothing of importance might be left behind, the old man realized that the game the dead man had been playing showed older dissipating signs of his book's power upon it. Signs, he thought, that were possibly stamped upon it right from its very source of development.

Before melting into the shadows and off to parts unknown, the old man took another look at the book he had penned in madness countless years ago and thought, "Causality, a power that can even threaten Them. Why would a madman like me be inspired to create and be entrusted with such a thing?" It was a question he had asked many times before and doubtless would ask many times again, for he never did and never would receive an answer.