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Prologue
Zack's existence was never meant to be. It's not hard to guess the difficulties of growing up as a tiefling, a half-blooded fiend, as most cases all suffered the same, and ended the same; pitchforks, angry mobs, and those who would use him to their benefits.
Still, there is so much more wrong about Zack than his inhumanly wide mouth, beady eyes, devilish gnarled and pointed ears, shark-like teeth, forked tongue, or horns. These problems were deeper than skin, deeper than blood, into the very mind and soul.
Most assumed, at least those who put thought into it, that Zack's half-blooded nature was in perfect balance between two creations, a human and a fiend, gaining the quick learning of humans and the feared power of the fiend. They believed his mind and soul to be in perfect harmony with each other, but neither hold to be true... far from it, in fact.
What are you when you are not monster enough to be a monster, and thus are rejected from other monsters?
What are you when you are not human enough to be a human, and thus rejected from other humans?
When part of your being lusts for power, dominance, and violence, disgusted at notions of compassion and understanding, and the other part desires communication, companionship, and understanding, where is the balance? Do you give in to the feral desires, giving merit to the pure-blood's views of tieflings, so they will seek to usurp you? Or do you pursue companionship, allowing your back to be exposed to the racists, while the very blood in your veins boils in protest to weak, goodly actions.
These are difficult questions which hold different answers for each person who chooses to answer them, but these were the questions Zack is forced to answer. These are the questions he was plagued with for many years, while hiding from the world. He had hidden himself for so long that he could not remember when he started. Was it years? Decades? A century? How long does a tiefling live, anyway? Maybe he had lived longer than a generation of elves. Every time his wandering brought him to the same place, it was either changed entirely or no longer existed.
Perhaps numbers do not matter past the period in time where solitude warps the mind, where it shapes reality in self-defense, to justify its owner's existence. Zack created so many truths to stay alive, a beautiful existence of his own where Zack was immortal, and was the only thing that the world needed. Everyone else was a passing memory, the planet's way of showing Zack how important he was, by showing him how fragile they were in comparison.
"All the world needs is Zack..."
The page is the only part of a whole that seems to still exist in Faerun, and it is signed by its author, Sodom.