Making Demons

Prologue

I wonder, thought the Potency. How fragile are they?

Of course, it did not refer to humanity's material fragility—doubtless, that amounted to nothing; a mere breath from the Potency could unravel their physical being in a moment. Rather, their will of morality was at question here.

The Potency was far above man. Yet it wasn't precisely God or a god either—though such a description was truly quite warranted. It was simply a being of prodigious power, omnipresent and always watching and listening—both upon the material world itself as well as its inhabitants' private minds.

Perhaps it was something of a god, after all.

How would they react...? it pondered. If they ascended to even a fraction of my divinity, what would man do with themselves? Would they in a moment make abuse of the power? Would they even realize their newborn potential? Or would their psyches simply crumple under the weight of the prospects at once before them?

It knew all too well they fawned over the idea day and night; after all, the mortal was an inherent disciple of power until he becomes the figurehead himself. But it insisted that there was not ill possibility alone in the notion.

Surely, there was something that differentiated the man from the fox or the snake, it concluded. They are not animals serving selfish instinct and little more. They are beyond their primal nature.

What the Potency would do to know! Its yearning for an answer was as endless as its own ethereal expanse.

And then it thought...

I could learn...

The Potency shifted in its position above reality and took a moment of silence.

I could learn for myself... And let humanity learn right with me... After all, it may even prove a step forward in man's state of pity... Even for their folly, I do pity them... And if they do decide to make a mutiny of the opportunity, the blood will lie solely on their hands, and I will have my curiosity quenched nonetheless.

In short time, the Potency had made its mind.