“Damn baneworm venom…” he cursed, instead pointing his gun at the cut-open source of the aforementioned substance. A single shot ripped it in half, a wrathful thunderclap echoing through these ancient halls. Thoughts of suicide elicited only fury within Audun, knowing that they were not his own.
In his state of delirium, desperation overtook reason and he left the gun behind in favor of taking up a notebook bound in black dragonskin. He took none of his myriad precautions, made none of his myriad preparations, drank none of his myriad warding elixirs. Instead, the delirious wizard paged through the tome until he found the pages which detailed his incomplete interpretation of a long-forgotten rite.
In his other hand he took a great key wrought of bone and inlaid with gold, its shape blocky and geometric. With it in hand he strode to the center of the chamber, which was separated from its remainder by a narrow walkway over a bottomless pit. There an eldritch altar stood, its form being narrow and waist-height with a flat, seven-sided top, in its middle a narrow slot. A keyhole. The heads of seven silver serpents surrounded the altartop’s edge facing inwards, their bodies spiraling down around the altar and into the pit. By the altar’s side waited what was to be his new body, should the ritual come to fruition: A perfect ideal of the human form, muscular, symmetrical, and over two meters tall.
“O Chernobog, Darkest of the unfathomable Dark Ones, Oldest of the ageless Old Ones! I ignite this beacon and demand an audience, demand that you fulfill thy ancient accord! Trespassing the boundaries of mortality, in this great city of Jas’raba where thy kin once ruled, I now brandish Key of Amrakas, ancient and immortal!"
Holding up the key in an icepick grip, Audun funneled every shred of his immense arcane might into the artefact. It came ablaze in a swirling vortex of emerald light, coalescing into its form until only the gemstones along its spines shone, even the slightest motion rending through the veil of reality as if it were paper, forcing sights inconceivable into the wizard’s eyes. He brought the key down upon the altar, feeling it demand more and more of him, and more he gave. Everything he could, he gave to the key, and his efforts were rewarded by the eruption of an upside-down waterfall all around him. Rising from the bottomless pit surrounding the altar came a flood of eldritch light, an utter blackness surrounded in burning outlines of every conceivable and inconceivable colour.
The altar’s serpents sprung to life, winding themselves around Audun’s arm until they reached his shoulder, where they sunk their silver fangs into his flesh. There was no turning back, now.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
----------------------------------------
The next time Chernobog woke, it was as if it had barely just closed its eyes; less than a moment by the Old God’s reckoning, a flicker on the cosmic scale of things.
There had come the call of another defiant soul. It was the call of one who had already reached greatness, yet now sought to avoid the downfall which his own hands had wrought. The foolish mortal had awoken Jas’raba’s great machinery, the World Needle piercing an infinitesimal pinhole into the artificial veil which shielded that world from Chernobog’s grasp. Chernobog had no choice but to react, for it had an accord with Jas’raba’s long-dead builders in exchange for receiving its inhabitants’ souls upon their deaths.
The mortal demanded his soul to be taken from his wretched flesh and placed into a new body by Chernobog’s great hand. A feat as petty as that was well within the Old God’s ability, but… That incantation had nothing to do with the exchange of a soul from one body to another. Rather, it had been written to facilitate the exchange of a soul from this world for a soul from another. Such was the agreement the kings of Jas’raba had forged with Chernobog, and an Old God could not act counter to its own word.
Chernobog took no exception to fulfilling such an erroneous deal. It supposed that, in the end, even the Wizard would get what he wanted in one way. Whether he would like the world he ended up in… Chernobog did not care.
“Transcending beyond worlds, through the howling vortex, let the astral door reveal my chosen fate! Grant me another chance to face the shadow of endless night, o great Chernobog!” so incanted Audun Sorun.
The ground shook underfoot. Instead of what he’d hoped for, Audun received a tsunami of unworldly energies ripping through his form, the Key of Amrakas turning to stone in his hand. Vein-like trails of orange light spread up his arm, shining beneath his skin as the cosmic force flowing through him seared his flesh into something akin to living charcoal. His skin melted into a wax-like consistency and seeped into his robes.
What took only moments felt like an eternity; in an instant his very soul was ripped from his body, carried away on the same cosmic current that deposited a soul from another world into his flesh. He panicked, and in a desperate, animal-like attempt to free himself, the last act of Audun Sorun became reaching out for the artificial body… Only to cause its supporting gurney to roll off the platform. It met its annihilation in the wall of cosmic nothingness surrounding the platform, swallowed by Chernobog’s waiting tendrils.
The chamber fell into darkness, and the altar’s serpents retracted. What was left standing there as the light died down was not a wizard, or even a corpse, but little more than a humanoid cocoon. Skin baked to a hardened shell, the flesh within half-molten, already coalescing into a form fit for its new inhabitant.
A being corrupted by the touch of an Outer God, suffused with eldritch knowledge not meant for human minds… And these were not that woman’s most dangerous traits by far.
----------------------------------------
It felt like waking up from a bad dream into an outright nightmare. She had felt herself fade out into nothingness. Then, it had been nothing. Now, it was this. The image of that nuclear fireball remained imprinted in her mind’s eye.