The Thinker was marched into the depths of the labyrinth on a path he could not take time to appreciate, for his way of seeing the halls was blocked by two columns of skeletal soldiers in rusty iron armor. They wielded weapons with spears at one end and weighted hammers at the other. Each of them were a full foot taller than he and built identically to one another, without a spark of thought in their eyes. Ahead of them was the Herald from before who escorted the procession deeper into the halls.

Though all he could do to stand out was think, he had very little to think about. It seemed as though he was being marched to his doom. He’d brought a terrible bane upon the catacombs, that much was obvious. He didn’t need an explanation or heraldry to know that a gem-adorned skeleton in a fancy robe with a magical pot of divine liquid wasn’t supposed to just crumble into dust and die. And even though it was a great show of force and power, it was obviously a bad one.

The march lasted a long time, yet the Thinker never felt worn down or tired. He’d seen and experienced much, yet had no exhaustion. He had no soreness, despite having some sense of phantasmal feeling. Everything that he was, his whole body from bone to bone, just felt humorless and a bit ashamed. His emotions gave him the same reaction as a shiver from the cold or sweat from the heat. Without his skin, he somehow became able to feel much more keenly.

And he felt that of others, as well. He felt the woe of the herald up ahead, and the vacant emptiness of the soldiers at his sides, like a heat lamp on the other side of a vacuum-seal.

“Woe is you,” the herald spoke. “Oh, woe indeed.”

“I didn’t mean to -.”

The herald spun around. One of the soldiers parted to give him a clear line to point a ragged, blood-red finger with a shiver of anger the Thinker’s way. “That’s exactly the problem!”

“Kkkkkhhhhh!” he seethed in shock.

“Words cannot explain what you have done,” the herald declared. “And so, now actions must commence. Actions not from any adjudicator like myself. Your case must be dealt with by the only hand strong enough to encounter it. Oh, woe to you and us all. Woe that you would incur the might of Gozzpek.”

Thinker’s teeth started to chatter together. His fear was like a winter breeze against naked skin. The only things he knew about Gozzpek, a being which seemingly every other skeleton had knowledge and opinion of, was that he was never to be crossed and ruled the unhallowed grounds where they were pried out of the walls. It was, in essence, his king - his living God.

He pissed off the big boss himself. For some reason.

It was that blue light, it had to be. And that only happened when I thought hard about….wanting to be a hero, I guess. I started to remember some human-me things. Not a lot. I have glimpses, little fragments of that time. Important events, people who look familiar that I can’t recall or place a name to. Feelings, mostly, and small moments. But the last one, the biggest, was saving someone’s life. There was someone in the road and a car oncoming. I pushed them away….

He looked down at his bony hand. In the light, he saw the vague outline born from his memory of where a hand used to be.

Am I being punished for being myself?

At last, the march ended before a great set of stone doors. The herald touched a glowing finger to the seam between them and the doors slid open with a dusty grind of stone against stone. The Thinker braced himself to behold something terrible, but it did not come yet. Instead he was met with confusion.

They entered what looked like a treasure room. Piles of gold and other artifacts, some plucked of all their embedded gems and jewels, lined the walls of the great hall. Their brilliance shone in the scant light held up by the herald as they moved past. The herald covered his eye-holes with his hand, like the glint was too strong.

Much of the golden wares were damaged, but their luster remained. Scratch marks and dents besmirched their former glory. It was like a scrap yard for the most valuable metal around, or second most. The Thinker noticed that there was nothing else within the room, only objects made of gold, big and small. The biggest was a long lounging sofa frame with the cushions removed, and upon it were many bins and baskets of gold that held crowns, bracers, cups and little rings. Leaned against the wall was a long claymore sword with a blade that was rusted muddy-red with a golden hilt and handguard that remained pristine.

At the opposite end of the room were two greater doors that rose a full story higher than the last. The skeletons widened their position out and formed a sort of funnel-formation on all sides as the herald stood before the doors. He raised both hands up, fingers out, and waved them erratically through the air. He left red traces of light hanging in the darkness that formed unique shapes. The lights solidified, leaving behind strange runes, which aligned with the runes carved upon the doors.

Then, they opened, and the Thinker beheld a vision of awe and terror.

At the center of the catacombs, the heart of the labyrinthine crypt, the seat of the deep underworld was a skeleton some 20 feet tall sat upon a giant slab of a throne made of congealed, coagulated skeletal parts. The floor that led up to him was dirt and bony mass. The walls were nothing but half-buried rib cages and skulls. At the tip of the dome was an abyssal hole that went up, like a field of black smoke blocked any further light from invading the space that surrounded the lich.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Gozzpek sat in his throne room of death, a giant of a skeleton, and a menagerie of horror himself. His height was gained by an unnatural process. Hundreds of bones were fused together to form each of his own, all the same kinds of bone arranged into mockingly tremendous shapes. His femurs were made of dozens of femurs that were all melded together, as if they’d been welded. His ribcage was an asymmetrical lattice of criss-crossing connections that seemed to move as if he were breathing.

His head was different. It was one tremendous skull, and above his eyes were four more eyes, slightly smaller, which extended his skull upward and back into a series of twisting, curling horn-like growths. In each of his eyes was a magnetic magenta light, like malevolent spotlights, all of which turned down and fixed on the Thinker, freezing him in place. The herald stepped toward the edge of the light and bowed deeply.

“Lord Gozzpek,” he announced, “I have brought you one who has troubled your great domain, and with his power, did turn the high inquisitor of your court to dust.”

Gozzpek moved. His movements were heavy and shook the air. The ground beneath him crackled with the shifting and fracturing of bone. His voice blasted into the air, even though he spoke with a sagely, aged tone.

“What am I to call you?” he asked.

The Thinker froze up. He didn’t want to say a wrong answer, or he might die. And he didn’t know his own real name. But silence was incriminating, so he couldn’t say nothing.

So he began saying something, “K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-.” but stuttered ceaselessly, until Gozzpek stopped him with his gargantuan sigh. The great lich leaned forward and braced his hand on his giant knee.

“Ozzy,” he declared. “Do you know this name?”

The Thinker shook his head.

“It has a meaning,” Gozzpek explained, “in a dead language. A language which suits you, one lost to living tongues above. One left to ruin, and thus, inherited by myself.”

The Thinker - now christened Ozzy by the highest authority he knew - nodded fervently in agreement.

“It means one with nothing,” Gozzpek explained. “One who has no value or worth. In the scalar sense, one with zero. Ozz’ii. To remember you and what you’ve done, that is what you shall be called.”

“Y-yes, sir,” Ozzy said, internalizing his name immediately. If he had a better one, it was gone now. Gozzpek brought his hand up and stroked his massive chin with it.

“You are very strange to me,” Gozzpek admitted. “It is as if I cannot reach you.”

Gozzpek slowly maneuvered his hand forward. His giant figure stretched across the bone-covered room. His great digits, each the size of Ozzy’s body, hovered over him. One came down gently and tapped Ozzy on his head. He tried to hold himself together as much as possible. “Kkhh!” He leaked only a tiny amount of startled fear as the weight of the massive finger pushed on him like a stern head pat.

Gozzpek leaned back in his chair. His eyes wavered away from Ozzy and spread the deep purple light into the rest of the room. “What bore you into my domain?”

Ozzy felt himself blink back as he was given the clearance to speak. He turned his head in distraction, like he’d been freed from paralyzing binds and had to test his new movement. Once he was shaken loose, he tried to shake some thoughts out of his head and answer to the best of his ability.

“I came out of the wall,” he said, plainly. Gozzpek seemed unamused. The silence bade him to go on. “And I helped another one out too.” He turned to the herald. “The one you killed.” The herald refused to raise his head in Gozzpek’s presence, which reminded Ozzy that he should do the same. When he turned back to the lich, he did so with his eyes fixed to the ground at the base of his mighty stone seat.

“I’ve really just been dragged around one way and the other to get here. I don’t even know what happened, and it definitely wasn’t my intention to do whatever it was that I did - or didn’t do. I’m not sure...I was just trying to do what I was told and the high priest or whatever told me to do a thing so I did it and then a blue light shot out and he died….again. Since, I guess, he was - we’re - I’m already dead.”

“Hmm,” Gozzpek huffed. He put both his great hands on the arms of his throne and turned a beam of his eye light to the herald. “What was this one’s purpose meant to be?”

“I believe,” the herald said, “he was positioned to be tested in arcane aptitude, oh great lich, master of the tombs.”

“I see,” Gozzpek said. He leaned back, and his eyes became busy. Ozzy continued to stare at the ground.

He seems more confused than irritated. I mean, he literally gave me a name that means worthless, so he’s not thrilled about me. And he hasn’t killed me yet.

….I really hope I don’t jinx myself by thinking this might not end up too bad.

“I see no need,” Gozzpek said, “to keep this one around.”

“KKKKKHHHHH!!!!!”

Gozzpek turned with a start to Ozzy’s strange, pained sound. “What was that?”

“Sorry!” Ozzy exclaimed. “I just do that when I’m nervous it - it’s like a sigh but I can’t open my teeth!”

“Nervous?” Gozzpek repeated, curiously. He leaned forward to inspect Ozzy again. Ozzy stood back-straight and hands snapped to his hips. He drew closer and closer to the six eyed skeletal behemoth and felt like he was about to fall into the shadowy depths of his evil-shaded eyes. “You have ambition, don’t you?”

“Uh…do I?”

“Identity,” Gozzpek hissed.

Ozzy started to shake his head slowly, then threw his face back and forth with a pitch of fear.

Gozzpek receded to his chair and threw forward his arm with a righteous wind from his motions that shuddered the fire lights which surrounded him. “Take him to the surface! Exit the labyrinth! Uninter him to the graveyard above!”

“Oh!” Ozzy said, with pleasant surprise. He turned to the herald, who remained static, and then to the skeletal knights who marched forward and seized him under his arms. “Oh,” he said a bit more disappointed.

This is probably a bad thing, then.

Ozzy was taken away from Gozzpek’s vast presence and was led back through the catacombs with the promise of a surface world ahead. He would no longer be bound to the hypogean realm of dirt, brick and boney appetures, but would instead be thrust into a terrible unknown where the sky itself may take on an unfamiliar shape for all he knew.

He was not leaving hell, just replacing the scenery.