52 Chapter 52

On a Saturday that the gods forgot, something not seen for a long time was born. A human, consumed by the abyss of righteous fury, sacrificed her humanity and gained power. It might be said that what she gained was far more helpful to her than anything the world could offer her. For even as the trappings of hairless apes were torn asunder, the vestiges of insanity were washed away. The result, was not human. But all the same, where there is birth, there is also death. In other words, a very dramatic way of saying that Hermione Granger was having a bad day.

"Tiggy? Is that you? What happened? Where are you? Who turned down the lights?"

Hermione stumbled. The formerly shocked elf quickly regained her senses and got her mistress to lie down. With tear filled eyes, she could not even think clearly. Something had happened and she was powerless. She had been unable to help her mistress at all. Only the command that she never punish herself without permission stopped her from destroying the surrounding junk on an elf cranium(which is very sturdy to keep the elf alive after all those punishments.

"Mistress! (sob) Bad Tiggy! Bad!"

She wailed in her misery, wishing for a way to atone. Her mistress looked slightly pale, and her warmth slowly ebbed away into the cold stone floors of the Come and Go room. But that wasn't it. Her mistress would not even die human. The magic of the mistress, the human magic was gone, but Hermione herself remained, a strand of hope for the unfortunate elf. Unbidden, memories arose, the memory of her mother telling her about the bond and the consequences of "freedom"...

And as if waiting for that thought to manifest, the bond was gone. Hermione was dead. The poor elf was hysterical. She could already feel the magical madness that was creeping in her mind, the punishment of all "free" elves, the final "reward" for daring to be free. She knew was not strong enough to resist it. Nobody was.

Of course, that particularly depressing and possibly suicidal line of thought was promptly ended when a magic circle appeared in the midst of the junk in the room and a white ring rose up above it, vanishing at a certain height like a shower of petals. What appeared was a formless "ghost". The glowing-shadow effect was highly irregular, not to mention the feel of all invasive power. Tiggy had all of two seconds to take in the scene before her primitive senses overloaded with awesome power and she blacked out.

The being that appeared was a peculiar one. It did not have a name for beings similar to it. In fact, since it was an actual shape shifter, this type of creature was never identified as a separate species.

If it had to be named though, the creature would have called itself a chaos creature. Not because of its actions or desires, but because the magical aura it produced could after a certain "age" be used to consciously defy and rewrite the laws of space and time and all the other laws that have and have not been discovered. Something that has the surprising ability to wreck the threads of fate and destiny. A god like being, if it was motivated. Immortality tends to make lazy creatures though. They were after all a remnant of the psychic imprint of the soup from which the universe was born. A being that existed from before the universe's creation and bound by none of its rules.

The few times such creatures had shown themselves to humanity, they were called demons and attacked. Since killing off idiots such as them was too much of a hassle compared to going home, they remained alive to spread the increasingly exaggerated tales of demons and otherworldly creatures. Who knew horns, tails, wings and claws were so problematic when dealing with these mortals? Didn't similar creatures exist just the while ago? Honestly! (A/N: dinosaurs in case you were wondering)

This particular creature had appeared with a purpose. One of its "seed" artifacts had been activated. Considering that the number of "pure" (by the creatures own definition of course. Mortal languages are woefully inadequate and do not make very good mediums for conveying multifaceted concepts) souls that could conceivably do that were one every couple of generations (that is, after factoring the probabilities of anyone finding these things) it was a rare event.

A millennium and a half ago, a "seed" artifact had been triggered in plain sight and it "keeper" had triggered the "ascension" of one previously mortal female human before whisking her away, in plain sight of a bunch of humans chasing said individual for imagined witchcraft. And lo, humanity was never the same again. The effects of those 87 seconds on human history and mythology will never be accounted for.

This particular creature, who for reference's sake shall be named Joe, was quite surprised when it felt the birth of a new chaos creature. Considering that this particular species do not, as a rule gain new members every other day, it was...unusual. They did die of sheer boredom sometimes though...hence the need for new blood.