Anubis sat at his desk, staring at a tube of glowing black liquid. He was running out and making more was a time-consuming process. He sighed as he realized it could be avoided no longer.
"Welp...this one had a good run. Though I guess an upgrade would be nice...humans have made several upgrades to their bodies in terms of quality, so maybe I can get one that's even better than this one was." Anubis snapped his fingers and opened a black, goopy portal in the wall. He walked through it into another world.
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Jackson's day had been pretty good. He'd just gotten a pay raise, breezed through his tests, and was walking back home. He passed by the various different stores and apartment buildings as he neared closer and closer to his family's apartment building. All of a sudden, he was yanked into an alleyway and shoved to the ground.
Jackson tried to get a good look at who was assaulting him, but he couldn't see anyone. He felt something wrap around his waist and throat, pinning him to the ground. Jackson could hear footsteps walking towards him and tried to pull himself up. Then more things wrapped around his legs and arms, leaving him completely immobilized.
Eventually, a figure appeared in his vision and leaned over him. Their hair was a gradient of red fading to blue, and their eyes were two different colors, with each being an inversion of the other. They wore a simple black jacket with blue trims and a white shirt with a blue devil symbol on it. Their pants were just plain grey sweatpants, with a red cloth tied to their right leg. But what caught Jackson's attention was what was on their head.
On their head they wore a black crown with red gems on the tips, and there seemed to be some kind of energy swirling just beneath the surface. Jackson didn't like it one bit.
The figure smiled, revealing a mouth of sharp teeth. When they spoke, it was with the practiced words of someone who had done this before. "My, what a nice specimen...tall, intelligent, and handsome too." They closed their eyes and Jackson could have sworn for a second their form flickered, showing an emaciated corpse wearing old Greek battle armor. Then Jackson blinked and the figure was staring at him again hungrily.
"Yes, you'll do perfectly..." The figure lifted their hands to their crown and began lifting it up.
Jackson opened his mouth and barely got out a whisper, whatever was around his throat making it difficult to speak. "Please don't eat me."
The figure laughed. "Eat you? I wouldn't call it eating you, more like...perpetual feasting." And before Jackson could ask what they meant the figure lifted their crown from their head entirely.
Their form disappeared revealing the corpse again. It opened its mouth and Jackson heard the tiniest of whispers. "I give you the crown...and I can be free. I can finally die...Hades have mercy..." Then the corpse put the crown on Jackson's head, allowing it to disintegrate and causing Jackson to pass out.
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Jackson woke up in a dark room, a creature suspended from the ceiling in chains. The creature looked vaguely humanoid...but it wasn't. The proportions were all wrong. Its limbs were long and emaciated, like it hadn't eaten in years. It was grey, with sections of its arms and legs having blue on it, and its hands and feet were red. But the most striking part was its head.
The creature's face was elongated, the mouth filled with sharp teeth. Its eyes were closed, but Jackson swore he saw a soft glow from beneath the eyelids. It had blue hair that faded to red, much like the figure that had assaulted him. That weird...corpse. Jackson couldn't get that thing out of his head. What did it mean? Was he just having a nightmare?
Then he noticed what was on the creature's head. A black crown with red gems, energy swirling below the surface. Did that mean this creature was-
Suddenly, its eyes shot open, casting a red and blue glow across the room. That's when Jackson saw the skeletons.
There weren't too many, but enough to be concerning. There were big ones, small ones, some were even animal skeletons. Then Jackson looked the creature in the eye. Its eyes matched the corpse's former eyes, the red and blue matching perfectly. Then the creature turned its eyes to him...and smiled.
It spoke in a quiet, raspy voice. "Well, well, well. What have we here? Has my new Vessel finally awoken? Fantastic...now we may proceed."
Black tendrils shot out of the wall and grasped each of Jackson's limbs, pulling them in various directions and bringing him to its eye level. The creature then pulled out its tail, which Jackson hadn't seen before, and jabbed it into his side. He screamed, causing the creature to smile.
"Oh yes, you'll last me a long time...so delicious."
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Anubis woke up next to a dumpster, his eyes shooting open. He slowly stood up and cracked his joints. He hadn't felt this good in centuries! Always a rush when he woke up fo a new Host. He looked down at the pile of dust that was his former Host. He leaned down and blew them away. "Thank you for your willing service, oh Soldier." Anubis then opened another dripping black portal and walked through it, the only evidence he'd been there being the bag his hew Host had been holding, now lying on the ground.