“In the beginning there was nothing. Then the Old Gods bid that there be something, and so there was.”

“Sir?” A pudgy human boy with a pale face, whom I liked to call 'Irritant Number One,’ shoved a hand into the air.

With a remarkably straight face, I looked over to him, and gestured, “Please, Franko.”

“The theory of General Energy and Matter by Zi’Tau Menzies states that something cannot come from nothing. That energy is part of a process, and cannot be created, only transferred.”

I raised my brow. “And was Master Zi’Tau Menzies there at the beginning of time? Did he know the Old Gods?”

Franko, Irritant Number One, lowered his hand and frowned. “No but … neither were you sir.”

Well that was an interesting statement. One I could easily refute and give an honest answer to. Technically no, I was not there at the exact beginning of time and creation. But I was very shortly after, for the pure purpose of serving those old gods. Of course, that knowledge was very limited, few knew I was a primordial being rather than a simple demon who had taken an interest in academia and decided to live in Alerar. They presumed that I was a millennia at most, not the few tens or hundreds of thousands I actually was (I was not sure myself now). And I let that be. Once I had been proud of my heritage, but it had caused me endless pain in the past and in all honesty I could not be bothered trying to explain my entire history every time. So I let them assume.

“I was not,” I eyed the boy, “But nobody can say what the Old Gods were able to do, mayhap they created the theories that master Zi’Tau Menzies is famous for. Anything else?

Franko shook his head, the fat beneath his jaw swinging. Proudly, I smiled slightly at him before looking to the rest of the class. I had shut him up for a while. Now just to wait for the rest of the Irritants to probably speak.

I continued on.

“The Old Gods faded away with the Great Calamity, out of which rose the divinities such as the Thayne, and later the Raiaeran Pantheon. But any knowledge of precisely how the Old Gods formed the first planets, landmasses and the like, has still not been determined. How they set the sun into motion, how they used magic and science, or rather, how they made magic and science itself. Questions such as, did the laws of science always exist, or did they make those laws themselves, come to mind? Is there another universe where matter and energy, as we know it is entirely different, where existence itself is ruled by an alternative set of dimensions.”