Drunk on the glory of my most recent victory at the arena... and the strongest booze I could buy at the tavern with the money I'd won, I had been flirting with a nice piece of girl I had seen a few times around these parts before.

As I offered her a drink, the small brunette leaned closer on the smooth and white wooden counter, looking disinterestedly at the sculpted walls of clay and glass. She definitely only wanted my newly filled purse, and not the lonely one but the one that jingled.

Last woman wanted the same thing. If one thing's for certain, it's that they aren't attracted by my style. My hair and eyes are the color of depressingly ordinary mud, and some of the people I had been closest to would have described me as unsalvageably or repulsingly ugly. I'm still debating on which one is worse, knowing both of them are true.

Not that I would complain about why she approached : it's no bad bargain in my book. I get what I want, they find a way to get my money, everybody's both happy and disatisfied . That's how you know a deal's truly good.

I Just gotta be careful not to be outright robbed. After a few extra glasses of firewater, we slowly stumbled out of the tavern, pulling on its entrance's orange curtain only to reveal a pitch black breezy night past the soft dark red of the ground.

While we started drunkenly walking, she pressed herself against me, saying in her too high-pitched voice

" How far do you live ? "

" Hunter's third ". I winced inwardly. This was almost as far as the Wall.

" Oh mud that's ... I'm not sure I can walk that far ... Would you mind coming to my place ? I'm at Clay's 2nd ".

I smiled " Sure ". It was much closer. And housing was easily trackable.

I let her guide me, her soft hand gently pulling me in a smooth dance towards the inner city. The air was fresh, the alcohol warm and life good. We took a turn to the left as I realised this wasn't-

"Slumber" a gruff voice whispered a few steps away.

As my hand reached for my knife, I fell flat on the ground, my vision swimming and my sense of touch fading away.

I was willing to bet the booze had done two-thirds of the work and I had been done in like a damned sludge-head...

Hiring a mage would take as much coin as I had won, who could I have pissed off that knew this spell ?

The scrawny librarian ? Maybe whoever wanted a piece of me had hired them.

I was neck deep in trouble either way. As my thoughts slowed and my consciousness faded I heard the girl's shrill voice getting further and further away

" Well that should be the last one. Next time you'll have to send someone else, the tavern owner wasn't looking at me very friendly-like... "

I awoke groggily to a fresh bucket of water being poured on me.

I was in what looked to be a dimly lit yellow and windowless room. A basement of the Bone district then.

I was ... naked and roped to a table, a tall, hooded and shadowy figure standing beside me. My blurry vision wasn't helped by the fact the light was so faint.

" Not too cocky now are we ? " said the gruff voice from before.

Yeah, well neither would you be if you were as drunk and weaponless as I am.

" You know, I usually prefer to be on the controlling rather than the roped down end of the coitus ."

Some of the despair I had tried to hide with bravado seeped through a voice crack. It was not the smartest thing I'd said, but it would make for good enough last words.

He chuckled "Nevermind then. Well you look awake enough. Let's wrap this up" Gagging me, he shouted " Acolytes ! Bring him to the altar ! ".

Oh so this was about faith ?

I'd never been much of a Flame-worshipper but I'd always done the very bare minimum of sacrifices I could get away with in order to not be visited by the Inquisitors.

Four shady people of varying sizes dressed in (you guessed it) black robes entered the room and untied the ropes keeping me attached to the table.

I struggled briefly against my bindings, but was only rewarded with a knee to the side.

Living long enough to complain about the bruise it would give me didn't seem likely.

My knee-dispensing carrier whispered " Hold still, lamb. No need to make this painful ".

Dramatic are we ? I was brought to a large and dark windowless room where around 15 people were tied on to a gigantic slab of marble in the middle of the room, in front of red and gold tapestry.

Things were looking pretty grim for me as I was tied alongside my new hardship companions.

To my right was a somewhat bulky and scarred red-headed guy who ... smelled very potently of sweat.

I just had the worst luck.

A few dozen more people dressed in black entered the chilly room and bowed deeply, always eerily turned towards us.

A disturbing dark blue light began to glow from what looked to be their leader, his robes lined with gold, multicolored trinkets and a skull hanging from his belt. He was the only one standing and rapidly approaching the altar. Menacingly.

" Brothers of faith ! No more will we suffer the oppression of the Flame's cult ! No more will we have to bide our time in the shadows, always scurrying and cutting our losses ! No, Today we ascend ! Today, we step closer to God ! "

The cultists all stood back up and unleashed a deafening roar of approval. With enough luck, it was daytime and a passing Inquisitorial squad was coming here to investigate the noise.

Yeah, fat chance.

With a dramatic (and probably practiced) flourish, the leader brought up what looked to be a big black leech with pulsing turquoise veins that absorbed the nearby light, and put it on the solar plexus of my furthest new friend on the altar.

" Begin the ritual ! "

As the crowd of cultists began indistinctly chanting, the headman held up another leech and repeated his actions.

Muffled screams came out of the first sacrifices that got leeched. No need to make this painful, my ass !

Dread slowly crept up as my turn came, one blood-sucking parasite at a time. The many shadows of the perfectly immobile chanting cultists danced across the walls.

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While I tried to rationalise that this was an end as good as any, my body began struggling against the restraints instinctively, only managing to scrape my back on the uneven stone of the altar.

When the cult leader stuck the leech to my chest, I got a glimpse of his white and ... slightly purple, gnarly skin. The leech looked even worse up close, and as I felt its slimy surface unnatural shivers started to run through me.

Then its teeth slowly poked against, and pierced through my skin, digging in my flesh.

At first, they just went deeper, a sharp pain coming from what felt like a circle of long needles being almost sadistically pushed in my thorax.

The wait was agonizing, and each time I thought the teeth were fully in, it just kept pushing inside, until it moved, stirring my insides.

Animalistic noises of fear began to escape unbidden from my throat while my body started convulsing.

When the fangs were extended completely, they pushed up towards my skin from the inside in a circle whilst the leech burrowed in me, akin to some kind of devious barbed harpoon.

I screamed, tears filling my eyes and snot my nose. I panicked while my body kept struggling ineffectively.

My powerlessness and fear were pathetically clear.

After a few minutes of stilness from the blood sucking parasite, I began to calm down as had most of the others.

Only a few still panicked, though their screams still decreased in volume, slowly but surely. The circle of cultists' muttering died down too.

When silence finally fell, the ink blue luminescence diminished until the last things cutting through the dark were the electric blue veins of our passengers.

I could hear the other sacrifices' ragged breaths, while I let go one I didn't know I'd held.

Some blessedly quiet time passed, and even the small azure rays faded away ... right as I felt something being injected through each of the teeths in my chest.

My body started convulsing as a deep penetrating cold took hold of me.

Everything felt progressively more distant.

A turquoise shine began coming from ... bulging, visibly growing veins in just beneath the surface of my skin, arranged in a net with the now lustreless leech at its center.

Heh, at least everything was numb now.

The gleam quickly died down, and so did everything I felt, except the cold.

Dying like this wouldn't be too bad I thought, as a wave of lethargy took hold of me.

Just like going to sleep, really.

I heard a wet gurgling noise, followed by another and turned my head to look at what disturbed my peaceful rest.

The leader had slitted the throats of the furthest sacrifices from me, with a nasty looking curved dagger.

A violet sphere of dusky radiance appeared between the two tapestries and expanded slowly into a ring mid-air.

The leader mechanically and efficiently slitted the throat of four more of his defenseless victims.

I was too numbed to feel anything except resignation.

I was tired. Too tired.

I'd lived my life and this looked like the end of the line.

The inside of the ring now beamed of black light darker than anything I'd ever seen.

" Yes ! Yes ! Hahahaaaha... So comes the Abyssal ! "

Manic laughter escaped from the throat of the leader who had stopped taking lives, perhaps too stunned by what appeared to be the accomplishment of his life.

He shook himself, as if to reign in his focus back to his task.

He efortlessly took one more soul to fuel the realization of his mad dream, and an intense pressure fell on the room as ice and frost spread along the ground and climbed the walls, the temperature dropping even lower.

Every acolyte collapsed on the floor except the leader who fell to his knees.

It was a completely crushing, absolute weight, akin to being deeper underwater than I thought was possible or ... more accurately, being pinned as mere insects being studied.

The Abyss stared.

The sheer dominating fear that surged in me cleaved through the hazing numbness I had fell into.

I was a hunter and calling the thing that lied beyond this world's apex predator would be unaccurate.

It was a term so weak for such an absolute and overwhelming power.

My cold sweat froze as it poured, and despite the burningly fresh air stinging my eyes, I knew deep down I couldn't blink.

If I did, I died.

My thoughts were as still as me.

What I had taken for black rays of light now appeared more akin to eldritch appendages, eating away at anything they could, consuming the very air and light of the room.

The portal grew in size, coming inevitably closer at a steady pace.

The out-of-breath and shivering cultist spoke up, not out of courage but unholy veneration and twisted adoration.

" Your Highness, my Lord above all, my God ... You whose mere presence shatters kings ... shakes the Titans and unnerves the other gods ... I have here for you some robust sacrifices, humans strong amongst their peers, though we are naught but fractions of specks of dust before you. I humbly request a boon to spread your faith amongst the heretics. To herald your dominion over all that is and will be. To fight for your truth against the impostors of the flame, meagre ember that it is in front of Your Highness. "

The pressure increased ever so slightly as a beat passed. An eldritch voice boomed cavernously as a chorus of silent screams were whispered in my mind.

"No. "

Reality fractured like glass as a maelström of its pieces howled around us, even lesser than ants in this world-bending hurricane.

" I have a better idea. "

My conscious shattered with reality, my mind a gaping hole, defined by absence.

Only the void remained. Eternity passed in a beat.

A sudden jolt ran through my body floating in the black, as if I had been woken from a deep nightmare, the stream and currents of whisper-screams gently brushing against me.

" I have a gift for you. A boon, if you will. Adapt and overcome, my child. Survive, thrive and above all, strive. "

Something that felt like it had always been waiting stirred and surged from deep within me.

For the third and hopefully last time today, I passed the fuck out.