After waking, I find Janine's ring binder to retrieve the letter tucked safely inside. I open the message we found in a secret chamber inside the Dungeon and begin to read...
She was the first. He chose her when monsters were myths, and mankind still ruled the world. I remember because I was there. I was her friend before she became the first Echidna, when she was just a woman named Eve.
We were a couple of whores if you can believe it. The two of us found him trapped, stuck beneath a dumpster. A chance encounter? Fate? I suppose it matters not in the end.
We freed him together, but she was the one chosen. It should’ve been me, not her. It’s not fair… Though I doubt that would have changed the ultimate outcome. She was a good woman, back then. Anyone might have been corrupted by such power.
Needless to say, we weren’t able to find anyone who could’ve actually helped us until it was too late. We didn’t know who to turn to and told some scummy journo who turned the story around for a quick buck. It ended up in the tabloids as a CE3 (close encounter of the third kind).
I've heard plenty of theories since then. An alien. An inter-dimensional traveler. A primeval god. No one can say for certain.
We didn’t know the tattoos did anything, at first. Just a souvenir. Then they changed after her next time with a John. She told me she could read the marks. I didn’t believe her about the tattoos until she showed me her cock.
I’ll admit it, that first night Eve and I spent together playing with her new tool was… magical. Something I’ll never forget.
I also won’t forget my first nine months pregnant, and then Eve having some John’s kid in half the time. The next few years were our last happy ones. I eventually discovered she was cheating on me with all the other whores in town. I wasn’t special to her.
We didn’t break up, though. I loved her… No, I still do.
But she started changing for the worse. I liked it fine when her boobs got bigger, or her waist wider, or her dick bigger, but that was the least of it. She became obsessed with churning out babies and getting girls pregnant, even if she didn’t have the means to support them. She’d drop the newborns off at people’s doorsteps like it was nothing.
My daughter grew up fast. Too fast. Eve must have done something to her while she was in my womb. I learned later that was, in fact, one of her abilities. My offspring looked like a full-grown woman in a mere handful of years. When I caught Eve fucking our 'adult' daughter not long after, I knew something had broken inside my lover’s mind.
Her perversion grew by leaps and bounds. She started… experimenting with her children. They came out with oddly colored skin, long ears, shockingly short, terrifyingly tall, or even with horns and hooves. One ‘medical marvel’ after another.
And then she grew that damn creepy tail. That was the beginning of the end.
One night, she pinned me down, and for a moment, I thought the old Eve was back. I thought she was going to ravish me like before… but then… her tail… ate me.
I don’t know how long I spent inside her. I only know that when I was reborn, the apocalypse had already begun. The taint of her children had already spread wider than any bomb could cleanse.
Eve’s offspring kidnapped the locals and raped them to bolster their numbers. The changes she’d wrought in her descendants became more extreme with each generation. By the time I awoke, an army of bulletproof reptilian men was terrorizing the city.
It was far too late when the government finally realized the true threat Eve represented. The more troops and weapons the soldiers brought to bear, the stronger Eve’s children became. The first Dragon made short work of the helicopters and fighter jets set against it, and then leveled a city.
Eve continued to fuck her inhuman children, growing less like herself by the day until she became more terrible than any monster. The world gave her many names. Patient Zero. The Beast. The Whore of Babylon. But the name that stuck was Echinda, the ‘She-Viper,’ otherwise known as the Mother of Monsters.
'Echidna' contentedly fucked her progeny while successive generations of her children gradually expanded across the world. This went on for some time.
Meanwhile, my rebirth granted me certain powers. I used them to protect humanity from Eve’s children for many years. They called me a Saint. It wasn’t enough.
I eventually buried my daughter and grew estranged from my descendants little by little until I lost track of them entirely. All the while, the apocalypse raged on.
Over countless years, the final bastions of humanity fell one by one. I saw the Great Wall crumble before the largest Incursion in history. I saw Monster-worshiping cults open the gates to the hordes. With their best efforts foiled, pockets of humanity defended their borders in isolationist countries.
Then, when old humanity had truly fallen, and all hope seemed lost, there came another—the Second Echidna.
She rallied the scientists, the scattered militaries, and pockets of resistance with promises of peace. She conquered monster tribes and brought them under her banner, uniting man and monster. She fought Eve and her champions to a standstill, banishing the First Echidna to the darkest corner of the world.
Decades passed in uneasy peace. Some humans and monsters lived together while others fought against one another. And yet, it was not so bad a time. Flowers bloomed in the wreckage of the past. We thought the worst times had gone… Until He came again.
The Third Echidna undid all her predecessors’ work and walked in the path of the First, killing, raping, and sowing the seeds of chaos across the land. It was she who created the Demons.
This second apocalypse was perhaps worse than the first, if not in scale, then in sheer horror. Her Demonic hordes inflicted a terrible contagion that stole the very hope from the scattered peoples. Corrupted individuals turned on their former lovers, their parents, and even their children. It seemed the dark tide would sweep over everything until not a spec of light remained.
But dawn came regardless when He selected the Fourth Echidna. Her light smote the dark, and the Angels were born.
She and I fought side-by-side for many years, pushing back the corruption, uniting the land’s peoples once again, slaying the Third Echidna, and becoming lovers. However, the corruption couldn’t be contained. The Demons were now in the world, and their spread was virulent.
That didn’t mean they couldn’t be stopped.
I proposed the solution. The Fourth objected at first, but eventually relented. I was willingly bound by every vow and White Magic spell we could conceive of, and then I submitted to the very corruption we sought to stop. For you see, Eve had once purified me, and so my fall transformed me into an existence unlike anything in this world.
Normally, all Demons owe their allegiance to a hierarchy of power, and that connection cannot be denied. However, as a Light-bound Demon, I was able to slip the chain of command, fighting ever-stronger foes until I stood at the top. I became the Demon Queen.
Only a Demon can stop the spread of corruption. Only a Demon can command their vassals to stand down. Once I had control of the Demonic Army, I sued for peace. It was the end of the fight the Third Echidna started, with the leaders of the Light and Dark forces united as lovers.
And that lasted for some time, but the real War was not yet done. By then, I thought I understood our true enemy. Evil and good, light and dark, those He selected swung the balance of the world back and forth. We had established Order in the world, and He wouldn’t let that stand. I knew a Fifth Echidna would follow the Fourth and acted accordingly.
We did everything we could to prepare. We united the peoples by blood, diplomacy, or through conquest. We founded the Monster Tamers organization. We imprisoned, sedated, or killed as many of the God Beasts as we could.
It worked.
For centuries, it worked.
The Echidnas came one after another, and whether He selected them by whim or some greater strategy I cannot say, but still they came. I spoke with each, attempting to convince them to join us. Each Echidna succumbed to their desires, choosing their indulgences over a higher purpose out of cowardice, indifference, or sloth. No matter their original intent, each in turn became monstrous, their bodies warped beyond recognition by their magic.
We killed them all to prevent the world from falling into darkness, but each successive bearer of the tattoos brought new species of monsters into existence.
The Fifth Echidna filled the seas with her spawn.
The Sixth Echidna conquered the skies.
The Seventh Echidna hollowed the earth and poisoned its blood with mana.
And so on… And so on…
And yet, the Echidnas themselves are not our greatest concern. They leave behind something far worse.
God Brands.
We discovered that each Echidna in her time creates a new God Beast. It is the sign of her apex to bestow her God Brand on a favored companion, wreaking the final evolution upon an individual. We did our best to suppress this knowledge, but some know.
Then, we learned the ultimate truth that dooms the world… The God Brands cannot be destroyed.
God Beasts are immortal until slain. Each dying God Beast transfers their God Brand to their slayer. The end of this world is inevitable as long as He remains, as long as He continues creating new Echidnas. We cannot rid the world of the God Brands. We cannot hide them forever. One day, there will be a war of the God Beasts, and the world will be destroyed. That was the goal he had in mind all along, that bastard, Typhon.
The realization of our futile struggle struck both the Fourth and me hard. The weight of years and our bleak future became an immense burden. I coped as best I could, continuing my work from centuries past, cataloging the many monsters of this world into a book you very well may know.
The Fourth, though… she committed herself to the task of preventing the next Echidna uprising from overthrowing her to the exclusion of all else. She delved deep into the Breeder system of her tattoos, searching for more ways to acquire power, gaining new and perverse abilities that she experimented with on her followers. She spiraled, gradually becoming more and more like Eve until I could no longer bear it.
She was not the woman I fell in love with. Not anymore. So, I found it in myself to take her life and seclude her collection of God Brands as best I could. Where I hid them, I will not say.
I continued our mission alone
I continued our mission alone
I continued our mission alone
I’m sitting here writing this letter because I can’t keep doing this. I’m tired. The corruption screaming in my head gets worse every year and the constraints on my demonic inclinations become ever more tenuous. I’m losing myself.
When Typhon sends his Echidna this time, I will not hunt her down and slay her. That may mean little at first—the world is a dangerous place. The Monster Tamers are all but forgotten. Monster Rulers vie for control of the territories. For all I know, the next Echidna may die in a ditch at the hands of a hungry Hobgoblin. But, whether it’s this Echidna, or the next, or the next, one will come who knocks over the first domino and starts the final war.
I left my book where anyone could find it not out of hope. Trying to understand the magic Typhon brought to this world has always been a hopeless endeavor. All I've determined is that its nature is boundless and ever-changing. No, I simply couldn’t bear to destroy the work of millennia after having invested so much of myself and the Fourth into it. I leave whether it is used for good or ill up to fate.
As for this letter and the pages of the God Beasts I tore from the book, I doubt anyone will ever find them. At least, not before the end. Let this stand as a testament to the true history of the world before the last eye-witness succumbs.
Reader, if you can find me in this land, do not expect overmuch. I make no promises that any of what I once was shall remain.
However, I will hold back the Demons from spreading their corruption until the last vestiges of my sanity crumble. I await the dissolution of my restraints or the sweet release of a slayer who can end my suffering. As for you, whoever you are, Reader, I hope you enjoy the time you have remaining.
‘After me, the flood.’
