Here lies Erolan, the terror in the night, the undying monster.

At first, his conquest of neighboring cities and systems was impressive, it piqued our interest as he was the most prolific conqueror we had ever seen. It's simply good business to be aware of the up and coming prodigies, the people that may employ you in the future. We observed one of these conquests and saw nothing out of the ordinary, it was an easy fight and he was powerful. On a whim, I continued to watch him, though looking back, this very whim may have been the mistake that led to the horrors that will plague me the rest of my life.

Now, as I write this, I wish I had just let someone else deal with it, instead I was arrogant and foolish. One of Erolan's conquests, the most ambitious I'd ever heard of, he decided to take on a long standing empire of The System. I watched the battle and it was one of the most impressive displays I have ever seen. He fought to the last breath with both strategic mastery and raw force. When the battle began to reach it's expected end, instead of simply giving up, retreating, Erolan released one of the most horrible powers I have ever witnessed. He fed upon and dominated the enemy forces until all that was left was a husk we now call, the Devoured.

My team and I, we had been together for millennia, we were impressive and fierce. Most of all though, we were family. We were called the hand and we were fairly well known. Most people thought our name was missing a word or two, like the hand of justice, the hand of retribution, the hand of righteousness. Ironically, our name had nothing to do with a grand moral standing or mission. Simply, if you lined us up, the way we usually walked, our heights matched that of a human's fingers. There was Branock the dwarf, a fierce warrior and master of all weapons, the thumb. There was Varen the elven barbarian, the most often underestimated as his lithe form masked his ridiculous strength, the index. There was Shyreth the Rhunar, tallest of us all by no small margin and master of the arcane, the trickster, the joker, the middle finger. Then there was me, a simple human who prefers to fight with his fists, the ring finger. Finally there was Reyana or Rey, the Drakene, my wife. She had trained with a bow since she was a child and never could quite put it down, the pinky.

I study souls and soul magic so when I saw what Erolan had done, I knew. I understood the pain and the terror that comes with a power like this. I ran to my wife and explained the situation. Her face hardened with resolve as she knew what a power like this one meant. The rest of the hand took some convincing but eventually their resolve was hardened as well when we described the situation to them. We took it upon ourselves to rid The System of this evil and set off. We prepared ourselves to lay siege to Erolan's city, Ky'bel, to end this vile power and stop Erolan before he became too powerful to stop, something like that had no place in the multiverse.

As we prepared ourselves, Erolan became bolder, using the Devoured from every city he conquered to grow his army and attack a different city. He was getting close to becoming unstoppable so we cut our preparation short. Maybe if we hadn't, we would have known, we could have found another way.

We tore through droves of Devoured, though they were durable, they were weak. They were worthless husks who's only strength lay in their numbers, echoes of what they had once been. As we fought our way closer to the city, Erolan became manic, devouring his own citizens to bolster his numbers and his individual strength. He scattered his treasures, foolishly assuming that was why we had come. We fought all the way to the center of the city where the final battle occurred.

We fought with him for what felt like a day before we finally started to make progress. We were exhausted and rotating ourselves in and out of combat, Erolan feeding off his army to keep himself going. Eventually though, we had a break in the fight. Erolan broke through Branock's defenses and grabbed hold of his neck. Before Erolan had the chance to finish off our brother, my wife had a break through. The horror of seeing her friend, her family on the brink of death pushed her just far enough to turn the tide. She swung her sword from a dozen steps away and the sword grew, it projected itself outwards. Through a complete miracle, she had upgraded a skill in the midst of battle and she severed the fingers from his hand, freeing our friend. It also removed the first of his rings, The ??? Ring.

His body immediately shifted from that of an average human into that of a monster. He was a vile creature but his body was created to kill. He scrambled to retrieve the ring, but my wife, the only one with the speed and wit to realize what was happening darted over and swallowed the ring, storing it in her soul space. Once his connection to the ring was blocked, the tide of the battle shifted. We slowly fought, whittling down his strength until we managed to sever the other ring from his finger, The ??? Ring. Branock, my brother, a man I had come to love and call family, ate the ring just as my wife had, once more severing and sealing away more of Erolan's power.

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The final item, the final piece was the crown. Our sister, Shyreth, ripped it off his head as my wife and I held him down. She sealed the crown within her soul space and we severed Erolan's head from his corpse. We had won.

That night, we camped in the city, resting and recovering within Erolan's home to protect us from the droves of devoured wandering the streets. We slept restlessly plagued by nightmares of Erolan's form ripping us to shreds, except for one of us, the nightmare was reality. My sister had taken the crown out to inspect it, out of curiosity and unbeknownst to her, to us, resurrected Erolan. His body, where we had left it, had reattached itself to his head. He reclaimed the crown and devoured her mind pitting her against us. We were forced to fight our own sister, our family. The fight was easy as we knew her every strength and weakness. The fight was hard as we had grown to love each-other, love her, she was family after all. After a mostly emotional battle, I finally managed to muster up the courage that was necessary to cut her down.

We chased Erolan through the city as he recovered, throwing his devoured at us in droves to slow us down. When we eventually managed to catch up with him, we slew him, once again. This time we severed his every limb, cutting him into tiny pieces and Varen sealed the crown within his soul space. Amongst the four of us, only I was left without a piece of the devourer within me. We slept and rested, hoping and praying that it was finally over. I do not know who, but one of us must have taken out a piece of the set for Erolan returned once again, his strength renewed. We dreaded this, but we also expected it. We knew it might happen, so we were ready. We fought tirelessly until finally we incinerated his corpse. Surely, this must be the end.

We left the city and camped in the fields outside just before departing the planet and yet once again, for the final time, Erolan returned. This time I had seen my wife remove the ring from her soul space, she had shown it to me, I had asked her too. It was my fault. I recognized the pattern, I realized what was happening. This time we slew Erolan and chained his body deep within his own filth. We camped once again, the others managing to find sleep through the aid of some simple soul magic of mine. I lay wide awake in bed, rolling around as the horrible realization of what had to be done set in. I knew soul magic, I studied it and now I knew why Erolan kept coming back, I had an idea of what was happening. I knew what to do, and I was the only one who could do it.

That night I sat up in bed, no cold resolve coming to me, instead tears and shakes rattled my body as I knelt over my wife, the one I loved more than anything. I knelt over her and I performed the ritual, I cut and violated her body, slitting her throat to ensure no sound would be heard. I sealed her soul in a gem, her soul that contained a piece of Erolan, the devourer, within it. The worst part of the entire endeavor was not her pleading eyes looking up at me. It was not her mutilated body torn open with runes carved into her flesh. It wasn't even the gurgles she made as I performed the ritual, before she died. It was the screams I heard when I held her soul, when the ritual was complete and I felt the hate and betrayal radiating from within the gem. I cried. I sobbed. I listened. I took it all in, every last feeling and emotion as punishment for what I had done. I did not allow myself to wallow for long though as I had a mission to complete.

My wife was the hardest, once I had completed the ritual with her, completing it on my brother and sister was easy. I loved them, but my mind, my heart and my soul was already broken, nay shattered. I sealed their souls, containing the other two pieces of the set within three seals and scattered them in the filth. I waited a month, camping outside of the city, to be sure it was over. I left Erolan's body chained, just like one of his own experiments.

I tell you this not so you pity me, but so you know the horror that is fighting a creature like Erolan. I write this to plead to you, whoever you may be, whoever found his body, to leave him be. Let this evil rest, let his memory die. Let the vile experiments, the devoured army and the corrupting items of pure evil be. There is no power to be found here. The set itself will corrupt you just as they had him, I had studied the ring long enough to see, it is worse than a curse. It is pure evil and it is impossible to resist it's influence. It will worm it's way into your soul and consume you, as you consume your victims.

Take his treasures, loot his experiments, ravage the city. Just please, leave the seals be, do not let the sacrifice of my sanity be in vain.

Felix stood straight, a little more comfortable he wasn't going to accidentally break any seals. He looked around the room with renewed confidence and less caution, this time spotting a book lying face down, partly in the pool of blood on the floor. He knelt down and carefully picked it up, the pool of blood flaking away as he did so. Luckily, the blood had only seeped into a couple of pages and didn't appear to damage any of the information contained within.

Felix flipped back to the start of the book and began reading. The book was an experiment log, likely Erolan's. Each experiment had the number at the top followed by a journal of sorts where Erolan described his theories, experimentation and methodologies. Felix stowed the book in his inventory then walked back out into the large circular chamber containing the experiments themselves. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .