"The ancient walls are all but gold, rotting; and decaying in likeness."
~~~
It was a very taxing day for Mr. Chase Holdings, a self-employed artist. Mr. Holdings has just realizing that being an artist is harder than he thought it'd be, he had recently booked into an apartment using the money his uncle gave him to ease the loss of his mother; who had sadly passed away just last month and was finding no luck in paying his rent.
Chase, who was at the moment trying his best not to stress himself out, decided that maybe he had been going about his life all wrong; maybe he should find a real job like his dad said. He can still remember the exact words his dad said to him one evening.
"Chase, I know you love this artist stuff. But you're not going to make it in the real world if you go about it like you are, maybe find a real job."
That was a big contributor to why Chase was so shaken after the first day of his new career, his mom was always so supportive of the choices he chose and that made him wonder why his dad couldn't be like that too. He shook his head trying to think of anything else.
"I guess I could try doing this artist thing for a bit longer, you know; see what happens." Mused Chase while heading out the door.
He decided to take a walk to clear his head of any negative thoughts, but little did he know that he was going to be the victim of a godly mistake.
~~~
Up high in the sky, well the sky of the godly realm; lay three gods in a tense sense of companionship.
"This planet's so boring, it doesn't even have any untapped mana to play around with." Sighed a god as she spared with a stubby looking partner.
"Antera was way more exciting and that was just watching plants eat each other." Whined the god while performing an upward slash.
"Alice! What did I say about your constant complaining?" Inquired the sparing partner as he easily blocked her sloppy attack.
"Oh go screw yourself Josh, I'm not in the mood to listen to your crap; so deal with it." Snarled Alice while dodging an attack from Josh.
"Exactly, I can't wait for the next century to pass so I can finally be rid of you... wait, what did you just say to me!?" Questioned Josh while barely managing to get a hit on Alice.
"I'm sorry, please don't hurt me; I beg for your forgiveness!" Cried Alice as she dropped her blade to the floor.
"Stop it!" "Could you both shut the hell up, I'm trying to figure out how to make a godly blade of penance; your bickering isn't helping!" Growled a god while slamming her book shut.
"Just stay out of this Bella, your presence is not needed; or even valued in the slightest." Sneered Josh as he glared at Bella with a growing rage.
"Don't start this again Josh, you know I'll beat you until you're an inch away from death; so don't test me!" Raged Bella while throwing her iron bound book through Josh's shoulder in a fury.
This provoked Josh to run at Bella with his sword held high, causing him to unleash catastrophic power with but one swing; and decimate several shining gold clouds. His rampage was ended short though as Alice knocked his blade out of his hands with a jab to the back, the silvery sword of incomprehensible power dropped through the clouds and landed into the mortal realm.
"You imbecile, we're all screwed now; that blade landed in the mortal realm!" Screamed Bella as she picked up Alice and shook her like a leaf.
~~~
While Chase was walking down the street, he looked up to tell the weather; it was a clear; blue sky. But he faintly noticed that the sky above him was darker than the rest and was getting darker by the second. Curious, he strained his eyes to see what it was; coincidently it happened to be a giant sword that crushed him before he could even tell what it was.
~~~
The plates of time are moving, when one looks up; they'll see a sky void of gods. For gods are dying faster than they're created, creatures of all sorts have shunned godhood in favor of their mortal lives; soon gods will be a distant memory drifting away into the void.
While gods have broken through the shackles of mortality, pieces of their past lives still cling onto their souls; preventing them from ever truly becoming immortal. There will never be a true god, true gods are only tales for mortals to believe and then forget about when they realize their life is limited.
Gods may seem powerful and capable of incredible feats. They may seem equal and limited only by skill, but in truth; there's no fact to any of that. When mortals break through to godhood, their journey does not end there; but is the true beginning of existence.
Gods are separated by tiers, unlike mortals and there's no known end to how far they can go. Each time a god breaks through a tier, their power jumps in a fashion that's incomprehensible to mortals; it's so unfathomable that even a thousand newly awakened gods couldn't lay a scratch on but one second tier god.
And the gap becomes bigger with each passing tier, for instance a fourth tier god couldn't even stand in the presence of a fifth tier god. Though, power isn't the only thing that changes when a god progresses a tier, it so happens that their maximum life span also increases; meaning that they have a semblance of immortality.
Indeed gods are powerful, but they're not as powerful as mortals expect them to be. Most can't even crush a planet with their bare fists, or annihilate an entire mountain range with only one finger.
But they're still incredibly stalwart, the jump from a demi god to a god is as big as the difference from a fifth tier god to sixth tier god. It's suicide for a demigod to fight a real god, but strangely enough; not all cases have ended in the demigod's defeat.
"In some cases, a being can end up so overwhelmingly powerful that they can kill another of a higher tier; such is the mysteries of life. Out of the infinite amount of different planets, the number of them that have produced a Tier Defier; can be counted on two hands.
Some may think it'd be good for one to end up a Tier Defier, but they couldn't be any farther from the truth. Disregarding the side effects one would have for being able to harness so much shear power, the other gods would fear them enough to hunt them down before they became an impossible problem.
So far, not one Tier Defier has made it past the tenth tier; if there is a tenth tier that is. They've all been hunted down before they could cause any real havoc, most even being snuffed out while still a demigod.
This begs the question, are demigods a tier of god; or something else entirely. The answer to that would be neither, demigods are still technically mortals and are classified as such; for being a demigod only means you're close to godhood.
A strong mortal who's not yet classified as a demigod could go head to toe with a weak demigod and come out on top easily enough, for any creature; no matter how weak can become a demigod. These so called "demigods" can only become as such when they figure out who they truly are, shear power is only required to break through to godhood; or higher.
But in the end, none of this is important; the gods are dying and they'll never come back. Such is the way of creation, all beings will soon fall back into the aether and be consumed by the void; nothing is forever after all.