Shape of Things to Come Part 1:In the Fullness of Time Chapter 1 Justice with favour have I always done; Prayers and tears have moved me, gifts could never. When have I aught exacted at your hands, But to maintain the king, the realm and you? Large gifts have I bestow'd on learned clerks, Because my book preferr'd me to the king, And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven ..........(Henry VI Part II William Shakespeare )

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
(William Shakespeare)

Fifteen years after his predecessor, as well as most of the upper echelons of demondom, were struck down and massacred by the Charmed sisters in what was known in the demon world as the Great Immolation, Tempus, Source of all Evil, sat on his throne in the Great Hall of the underworld celebrating the Birth of Evil. Tempus who was once the demon timelord, surveyed his minions with a mixture of satisfaction, irritation, and resentment as kneeling before him they worshiped the greatness of demondom that he symbolized.

Tempus had become Source of all Evil because he had been the lone survivor of the old Source’s demon upper echelons when the accursed Charmed sisters had invaded the underground realms. As fate would have it, he was not in the source’s presence on the day of the Great Immolation because a little earlier he had fallen into disgrace and been forced into exile after a defeat by the Charmed Ones.

The start of Tempus reign had not augured well. He wrested power and the demon throne from other pretenders, only to discover that the hated Charmed Ones had stolen and hidden the Grimoire, the evil book that held the secret to the Source’s power and the rituals of ascension. Without the Grimoire, Tempus could not be anointed Source of all Evil. Therefore, he did not have the powers of the source, he was only the strongest of the demons left. However, his luck held, and just before all was lost and his angry minions destroyed him, the Grimoire had been miraculously returned which was why fifteen years later, Tempus the anointed Source of all Evil sat in an elevated throne high above all other demons, graciously accepting their worship.

On this day of celebration, Tempus stared across the huge dark cavern that was the Great Hall of the underworld. It was lit only by a shadowy red light that centred on the source’s throne and flickering oil lamps that hung on long dark chains from the ceiling. Clothed in a strange black robe that glowed in the red light, the source was a small slight demon that had a cunning evil face and small pale but piercing eyes that could narrow in both annoyance and satisfaction, or flash brilliant white when he was truly angered. On this occasion his pale eyes were narrowed as Tempus surveyed his assembled underlings.

The celebration the Birth of Evil was one of the many real and not so real commemorative occasions when the Source assembled his underlings to remind them of the greatness of his power. As huge dark metal gongs, strategically placed around the edges of the cavern, were struck in a loud and violent symphony that shook the Great Hall, representatives of all Tempus’ adherents, and these days it was most of demondom, bowed to him.

His minions, carefully aligned in the strata of the demon hierarchy, chanted ritual adorations that they were told came from the time immemorable but were in fact only a few hundred years old. Most of the demons present knelt, keeping their heads low and these times none would dare look up at him. Tempus, surveying all the kneeling forms before him, noticed the highest levels of some of the sects, such as the Brotherhood of the Thorn, which gained power under previous sources, were not bent quite as low as they should have been. Only a few very high priests and priestesses stood, aligned behind Tempus, but they also kept their heads carefully bowed. Tempus allowed himself a half-satisfied smirk. It was all so different to when he was first answered his calling as source but had no commensurate power.

In those early years Tempus had been leader of the underworld but he was not worshipped as its anointed god. At that time, when Tempus sat on the source’s throne, he knew that all those demons who knelt at his feet did so only for their own advantage, and if it was to their advantage to destroy him, they would have.

Only now, fifteen years later, finally, did the lower ranks as well as great demon sects come to know that their power and their advancement was at Tempus pleasure. Should they displease him, whatever his whim, even the strongest could end in the Great Pit, miserably observing the world of evil and banned from it. In the time since Tempus became the anointed source, his underlings had more or less, learned through the fate of those who resisted, that the best way to rise power was to serve at the whim of their master and grow great on the rewards he gave them.

So unlike the early years of his reign, when known to Tempus and many of the higher echelons, whilst he was anointed source, he did not have the ability to reward the minions that his predecessor had. When the Grimoire was returned, it lacked the accumulation of the bygone sources’ wisdom and understanding. All that was left was the holy artefact and recorded oaths and rituals that allowed the leader of demondom to be anointed Source of all Evil. Therefore, at first, Tempus ruled without any of the knowledge of his predecessors and his magic had been even more emasculated because in a fit of rage, he had destroyed his window to time, the mirror that reflected his past power as time lord.

There were of course some sages and priests who knew of the balance of magic, who knew that the five-hundred-year timespan of the magic eclipses defined the extent of each source’s reign. There were even a few, a very few, who had survived the reign of several sources and knew of the pattern of each reign, as each source started weak and then slowly recorded his own form of power in the Grimoire, only for it all to be lost five hundred years later, when the source was destroyed. These ancient demons though they bowed to Tempus knew that from the second he was anointed his final defeat was written because the world of magic would always remain in balance between good and evil. Other demons, such as the Brotherhood of the Thorn, had just seen his weakness as an opportunity.

True to the pattern of all source’s reigns, over the fifteen earth years since his ascension, time had been a friend to Tempus. The Charmed Ones destruction of highest-level demons in the massacre of the Great Immolation meant that no evil creature existed that could challenge him so he was able to enjoy some security in his position. Over time, ever so secretly, he had sent the scribes and lore masters of demondom the length and breadth of the realms to search through the hidden annuls and myths, even gaining access to some of the recordings of good. As they brought their findings to him, Tempus had begun to record his own legacy in the Grimoire and the evil book was slowly becoming thicker. However, his power was based not on accumulating knowledge and technological advancement that had been the foundation of his predecessor’s power, but on the concept of time and complex ideas of realms and overlapping dimensions.

By the time of this feast of the Birth of Evil, the Grimoire contained spells and chants that changed the order of hierarchies, spells that allowed the source to destroy at a glance any wayward minion and descriptions of rituals granting ascension to those whom the Source wished to reward, as well as chants to diminish those who failed him. Recently he had found the words that permitted him to extract any evil creatures’ powers and now he had accumulated a horde of powers taken from those who had offended him, powers that he could grant to other minions at his pleasure. Also written in the evil book now were spells to summon the evil doers of the realms that were part of the source’s provenance, the ones who had sold their souls to evil and he was starting to accumulate an impressive number of souls waiting at his pleasure in the Great Pits. Such was the power of evil recorded in the Grimoire now, Tempus a patient and subtle demon, finally felt strong enough to reek havoc and revenge on all those who had dared to consider opposing him in the early days of his reign.

The acquisition of all this magic had greatly encouraged the lower-level minions to view Tempus as the god of evil. Even those in the upper levels of the hierarchies were mildly impressed when, after a slow start, they saw his early plans to create evil through the manipulation of the institutions of the mortal realms, particularly financial and now extending to educational and government ones, succeeding. Many marveled at Tempus’ wisdom, as understanding time, he had slowly allowed demon sects such as the Brotherhood to infiltrate many of the institutions of the earth realms, there to insinuate themselves and wait until the opportunities arose to do the most evil.

However, staring down on his minions on the feast of the Birth of Evil, Tempus never a fool, knew that despite his increasing power and their consequent gains, not one of the sects assembled before him had any loyalty. Their fidelity was to evil, not the being they worshipped as the Source of all Evil, and most particularly not to Tempus. In the wisdom he had been granted as source, Tempus knew that nothing would ever sate those minions search for power. For all the overt worship he received from the demons who had all served his predecessor, there was not one who would not destroy him if it could lead to their own elevation. Demon that he was, Tempus wanted revenge on those servants of the old source. Whilst he could destroy them he wanted more, he wanted to watch their agony as they realised what their lack of fidelity to him cost them.

By the Celebration of the Birth of Evil, he had found the means to do it, so it was a gracious Source of all Evil that acknowledged the worship of his adherents. Tempus knew that in a short time many of those kneeling before him would be rotting in the Great Pits knowing what they had lost.

Despite the great success as evil slowly infiltrated the institutions of the mortal realms to take advantage of their innate malevolence, Tempus, never a fool, knew that for the recalcitrant sects of demon world, quiet cleverness would not suffice. For sects such as the Brotherhood of the Thorn to bow as low as they could there would need to be eruptions of violence and war to assert themselves, and Tempus would have to destroy in the most horrible way possible any opposition. Whilst demons now obeyed his every dictate, including the one to keep away from the Charmed Ones which he was not about to rescind, Tempus understood the time would come when his wisdom would be viewed as weakness. His solution was to find a creature so evil and so ambitious that without any consideration it would annihilate anything that became between it and power, including demon sects, and minions of good such as the Charmed One. And when this creature was done, Tempus would annihilate it.

Due to the success of his predecessor’s accumulation of evil souls, the Great Pits of the underworld were filled with those taken from the realms of the earth regions during his reign. Suffering in their depths were mortals, magic creatures of all types, and demons whose powers had been claimed by the old source. These agonized creatures rotting in the pits included great sinners and despots, the cruelest of the cruel, as well as the less noted souls whose evil had struck havoc on the near-earth realms during the old source’s reign.

When Tempus wondered why very few souls from the epochs of much earlier sources existed, a sage, whose soul now rotted in the lowest levels of the pits told Tempus that the old source could only accumulate evil from the souls condemned by HIS predecessor but not form the ones he condemned himself. The sage had suggested the great evil Tempus’ predecessor acquired at the beginning of his reign was gained from the lost souls of HIS predecessors.

Tempus believed the sage because to his disappointment, he was unable to extract the evil of those he condemned to the pits, even that of the priests whom he annihilated for telling the truth of the source’s powers. However, another now rotting scribe recorded how the source could extract the evil of the souls collected by his predecessor and then swot the remains into oblivion. A further scribe also rotting in the pits then discovered spells that enabled the source to resurrect selected lost souls condemned by the previous source. Tempus now had the power to grant a demon corporality, so creating his own evil adherents, whose existence and therefore loyalty was to him alone, although the basis of their evil was rooted in his predecessor’s reign. To his delight and, for a short time, satisfaction, Tempus realised that he had a huge resource in the old source’s evil stored souls, either to take their evil as his own or to use them as minions.

Slowly Tempus was sorting through the evil stored in his pits, destroying many, making his own evil greater and granting reemergence to some of the most evil souls. The ability to create his own dependents meant that Tempus for the first time in his reign could plan the destruction of accursed witches who inhabited the realms shared by good and evil, and perhaps even though he tried to block the thoughts, the hated Belthezor’s witch who was recorded as his being his final nemesis and her equally accursed sisters.