Exposition- LOL
P.S. To any actual physicists reading this, I apologise for any errors. I'm working from a fairly rudimentary understanding of the second law of thermodynamics and I may have unknowingly broken the laws of the universe in my explanation of Pit science.
***
The Daemon halted in midair and slowly descended to the ground below him. He was standing on a motorway filled with cars. He was shocked by the horseless chariots that beeped and honked at him, and then he sifted through his host's memories and learned about more of the technological advances that had occurred during his two thousand year imprisonment in the Pit. He raised his right arm and opened his palm. The tiny mouth imbedded in the skin opened in a yawn and then began to chatter excitedly. The mouth regurgitated a ball of fluff into the Daemon's other hand. He set the ball on the road and made a complicated sign that burned in the air as he traced it.
The ball unfurled and stared up at him with eyes that were two shiny black dots. He petted the tiny creature and then pushed it in the general direction of the honking cars. As it shuffled forward on tiny legs, it hiccupped and then divided in two. A few seconds later, the clone and the original hiccupped again and two more golf ball sized bundles of fluff stood and followed the two already moving. By the time the original had reached the feet of the nearest person who has stepped out of their car, there were hundreds of the things. As the creature neared, the man kicked it hard and it sailed backwards over the rest of its tiny fluffy comrades. It lay dying on the road and as its last breath was coughed out, the rest of the creatures revealed dozens of razor sharp teeth.
Their previous slow movements were forgotten as they raced toward the cars like a swarm of wasps. The man who had kicked the first one was tripped over by the tide of furry destruction and as he screamed, they began to devour him whole. Their tiny teeth ripped at his flesh as he was eaten alive. They ate everything. People, metal, petrol, even each other. They surged on like a plague, killing everything in their path and ripping it to shreds as they did so. Every few seconds the ranks would double in size until there were tens of thousands of the monstrosities, rolling down the road like a wave.
The Daemon whistled and they began to retreat towards him. He knelt on the road and laid his left arm flat, palm up. The mouth on his left hand opened and the creatures began to file into it, disappearing back into the never-ending abyss of the Pit. When the last one was finally nudged back into the hole, he stood up and felt the maw close. He grinned as though satisfied by the needless bloodshed, then launched himself back into the air by magically curving the wind behind his wings.
***
"I hope you realise the shit you've got me into."
"I don't understand. All I did was nudge things along." Caesar refused to admit that he had forced Fenris to volunteer for the mission.
"First you take over my head, now you're taking over my body!"
It was a fair assessment; in fact, if Fenris hadn't had such a powerful mind then Caesar would have dominated it and taken over already. Caesar had stopped his efforts out of respect, but also because it was more trouble than it was worth. He could happily remain in the body until the host died. Unfortunately, death was becoming an alarmingly distinct possibility.
"Now I'm stuck in this plane to Europe, next to a crying baby and a train spotter. A TRAIN SPOTTER for Christ's sake." Fenris had spent the last four hours of the flight being talked to by the obese man sitting next to him, who seemed to equate utter boredom with incredible fun.
The baby had been blissfully asleep for the last three but the Captain had indicated that they would be passing through some turbulence soon, so the beautiful gift of life would soon be shrieking like a banshee.
"Well while I'm here I might as well find out what I'm going to be doing." Fenris had heard multiple references to the Pit, the Daemon and the Triumvirate, but he had no idea what any of it meant.
"I'll start with the easiest of those." Said Caesar, anticipating Fenris' questions by skimming his surface thoughts. "The Triumvirate of Blood was created one thousand years ago after the Ninety Day War. The war resulted in the deaths of thousands of individuals. An entire species was placed at the brink of extinction and now that Oberoth has sacrificed himself, it is safe to say that no more golems walk the earth."
"But why did he sacrifice himself?"
"When the Triumvirate was first formed, the planet had a much more resonant magical field. The age of science has reduced much of the faith in magic despite both being based on the same principles. We were able to draw energy from the very air and place it inside stone. We forged a great obelisk that contained the power of generations. In order to activate the power held within, one of the Triumvirate would be forced to end their own life."
"But why? That seems a bit counter-intuitive to me."
"To an extent, magic is and always will be about blood. Equivalent exchange and all that. Without death, life would have no meaning, and magic is fundamental to life; whether mortals understand it or not."
"So Oberoth and this other guy... Malus was it? They activate the obelisk to raise some sort of shield? But you said the shield would fail, that it could never stand against the Pit. What's the Pit?"
"The Pit is a dimension separate from our own. The universe is centred on a concept of balance, so where there is light there must also be darkness. Quantum theory tells us that it is impossible to know a particle's location and momentum to the same degree of accuracy. The more accurately you define one, the less accurately you can measure the other. Think of our universe as the 'location' and the Pit as the 'momentum'. We can coexist, but one must be dominant. For a long time our universe was dominant and the inter-dimensional barriers that protect us from them have been strong, but recently there has been a shift. The Pit is gaining strength and our own reality is weakening as a result."
"I'm sorry but this science stuff is going over my head Caesar."
"Okay... let me simplify. Us good. Pit bad. Us light. Pit dark. Us rational. Pit totally fucked up."
"You don't need to be a dick about it."
"Okay, sorry. The laws of physics such as gravity don't apply there; so in the Pit, magic is free flowing and disorderly. It's utter chaos there, as entropy decreases in our reality, it increases in the Pit. Unfortunately, for us at least, the denizens of the Pit want out. And they are finding ways of cracking into our reality. They contact mortals on our side and offer them wealth and power to help them cross over. Luckily, the really strong ones need much more power than your average Summoner possesses, so we can usually detect their approach. But someone on that side found a way to slip one past the Creator's rulebook. They sent the Daemon across as a child and by doing so, it had the opportunity to mature and create entropy on our side without causing an imbalance."
"And entropy is how they travel from one side to another?"
"Yes, they use chaos to break down the barriers between realities. The first things to come through will be tiny. Mjols probably. Nasty little critters they are. Cute and cuddly one minute and trying to eat you alive the next. But keeping them on our side for too long make the imbalance stronger and the Creator would certainly notice that. They aren't breaking any cosmic rules so long as they maintain balance."
"So if they introduce chaos to our side then they have to put some order on their side?"
"Exactly. The Daemon was swapped for a mortal child when it first crossed, which is why the Creator didn't do anything. There was balance between realities."
"But this Creator guy sounds like a bit of a shit for letting stuff like this happen. Why doesn't he stop the bad guys?" Fenris was getting funny looks because he was staring at the seat in front of him with a ferocious intensity.
"Because in the grand scheme of things, they aren't the bad guys. They simply exist, same as you or I. They act and we react. Newton's third law of motion." Caesar gave a shrug of the shoulders.
