The adventurer guilds had it all, fortune, fame, bloodlust, and drinking problems. Many heroes, native or otherworlder, are always inexplicably drawn to the allure of adventuring. Despite most people calling them freelancers that would take whatever random quest they could take, most adventurers actually fall into their own specializations, niches if you will, that coincide with their desires.
Adventurer guilds act more as universal unions for it’s people rather than the old view that they are more a gang of wastrels and scoundrels that would easily betray others for money. Each guild helps it’s people, systemless or not, with acquiring wealth, experience, and a modicum of stability. Many factions have tried planting spies and agents in the guild over the years, yet they soon learned that it was fruitless to try dividing and accruing the powers inside the guilds. This is because the guild itself is already divided and chaotic to the point that politics and faction wars would not spark in the ashen soil.
Truly adventurers are enigmas that defy reason and logic, as they are the very few factions that could feasibly bring down the lich or a dozen ascended gods if they try, If they try. Yet it would not happen since various powerful individuals regularly traverse it’s halls mingling in the fractured tapestry of interwoven adventurer politics, further dividing an already divided front. No mere greed or temptation could seduce the bulk of it’s inhabitants, since they are as likely to assist you as they are to screw you over. Powerful individuals and factions have learned never to mess with the guilds, lest they taste it’s wrath.
Adventurers are divided into four major unofficial types, climbers who specialize in traversing towers, hunters who are reserved for acquiring artifacts or hunting special targets, heroes who involve themselves in wars and politics of historical note, and travellers who mainly catalogue and traverse unexplored places, planes, or realms. There is often a lot of overlap depending on the type of profession, i.e. Spellcaster, Martial fighter, Acolyte, and many more, and it would usually depend on the party itself to choose what they would be most suitable for.
Dennis has frequently employed their help before, but it has been a while since he has had the opportunity to physically enter it’s confines again. Mostly to deal with inter-empire trading and delivery.
They were a desperate bunch willing to do anything, anything, just to get paid. Throw in a few worthless magical artifacts and they would willingly steal from their grandmothers. It happened once. It astounds him how very few of them have pride and self-respect, despite usually being very competent.
Luckily the head of this particular branch has ties with the cult of the white dawn, a very powerful enemy of the anti-hurgin cults. With Kathzka’s connections, Dennis was allowed to post the hurgin ingredient fetch quests en masse by using several different aliases. Several other organizations and merchants were also doing the same in an attempt to get rich quick, but they were limited to only posting a maximum of five active quests.
What can he say, corruption has it’s merits.
“Next!” The receptionist said, ringing a small bell.
Dennis got up from the chairs and went up the desk.
“Hi, I’d like to post some quests.” Dennis flashed his winning smile while sliding a small blue velvet pouch, the bribe that Kathzka gave him to grease the cogs of bureaucracy. The receptionist nonchalantly took the blue pouch and took the stack of papers.
“Here’s the down payment.” He slid a storage ring filled with coins and notes. He never took his eyes away from the receptionist the whole time. Honestly it was creepy, but he didn’t back down from them.
Okay time to book it out of here.
“Dennis is that you?” A voice pierced the crowd and he felt shivers on his back.
No no no no please no
“Dennis hey!” He didn’t feel him, he didn’t want to feel him. His soulsight has been on for the whole time, but he just couldn’t bring himself to look at the man who he knows so intimately. The one he shared a night with. The one he said those words to.
A hand fell on his shoulders. He could feel it. He was just like him, powerful beyond measure, yet as weak and pathetic as can be. He left without telling him. Dennis ran away as soon as he woke up. And now he wanted nothing more than to run away again.
“Hey Dennis” He turned his back and Ogier was blushing. Somehow the kobold’s red scales couldn’t hide the reddish tint in his face that showed affection.
Please, please, please don’t
“Hey Ogier” Dennis said with a smile and rosy cheeks. His stomach twisted as he unearthed the feelings he buried years ago. The soil that was his heart, turned by the motions of what they did last night. It hurts saying his name, and it hurts even more to see him love him. He still feels love towards the one he spent the night with, but he still feels the same for Wyatt despite knowing that it is one-sided.
He feels dirty.
Ogier reaches for Dennis’s hand and locks it around his own. The warmth as inviting as the connection they shared. He told him things that night, snippets of history they had before they came here without directly telling them. He knows who Dennis is by simply listening to the subtext. He knows who Ogier is by listening to the stories they shared. He knows he’s the violent one and he told him that he was the one in the outer rings.
They shared a moment of vulnerability, a moment of where they truly meant it when they said their affections toward eachother.
He feels so dirty.
“I was wondering where you went. Tell me what are you here for?” Ogier mockingly pouts at him. “And why didn’t you tell me where you were? You suddenly disappeared haha.”
He feels so dirty.
Dennis swallowed his spit. If only he had the same degree of numbness he had when he was undead. If only he didn’t feel this way.
“Sorry I just had to go somewhere, you know haha. I had to go back to the inn I’m staying at.” He’s slowly turning pale. He feels like his soul is thrumming with emotion, thousands of years of emotions bottled up, hidden, and repressed. It was coming, the freedom he felt was not just a moment he felt the weight of the world lift, but the crack in the wall he maintained.
He was losing balance. The spells he activated did not listen to him. The words in his heart refused to speak. He felt bile rise up from his mouth. He was alive again, and he had to face the same pitfalls of something that was one.
“Hey Dennis are you okay?” Ogier looked at him with concern.
He felt his soul disconnect from his body. The world felt horrid, repugnant, painful and he was rotting. His fingernails fell off and he saw the flesh underneath them.
It was red.
He felt his heart thumping. Something was singing at the back of his head, something horrible was singing. Four voices resonated with his very core, more than his soul, more than his mind, more than the name he possessed. And it hated him.
“Healer! Healer we need a healer!” Ogier yelled. Ogier cut an artery from his hand and fed his blood to Dennis in a vain attempt at healing him. It would usually heal any wound. It was an ichor that kings and queens coveted, yet it was useless here.
Dennis felt the ring that his Godess gift him spin. What once was a wheel that promised stability, now felt like something that shred him from the inside. Tumors grew from his body, pulsing and throbbing as veins broke down and regrew at an unsteady pace. He was being reincarnated and revived in place. The flesh would heal and kill him again. His emotion bearing the weight of his shattering mind and it was falling apart.
He looked at the man he shared a night with. His mind was breaking. He was losing so much. Four voices, loud enough to shake the ground spoke at the back of his head. He was forgetting things.
“Dennis! Dennis stay with me!” Ogier yelled.
Dennis was losing his mind. He was mixing memories and stimuli. His thought patterns were breaking and recreating. His body, mind, and soul were drifting apart and was repeatedly smashing with each other in a desperate attempt to stay whole. Four voices sung and harmonized in malevolent glee. The plants that hid him burned. It burned and turned to ash.
This was worse than oblivion, than death, than the things he feared most. He looked to his side and saw the man he cared about. He was scared, but somehow he was glad he could share the last moments of lucidity with someone he cared about.
He spoke the name of the one he loved most. Dennis was struggling to move.
“I love you Wyatt”
Ogier stared at the scene with tears and shaking hands. One of the most powerful people he held was so, so very fragile. What he heard felt like a blade that stabbed him. A cold blade that refused to be ignored.
Then Dennis felt his soul expand. The control he felt burst through the borders of his pulsing flesh and let go of his expanding soul. The flesh prison that kept him in place was turning him into a bomb, as the shards of his broken self tried so desperately to form new copies of his soul in an attempt to fill the emptiness. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough space for the hundreds of souls slowly shattering and multiplying in his tumor filled body.
He was a bomb, and he was reaching critical mass. Soon, he will wipe out korilstadt for his very presence alone.
Four voices filled the air. The sound of a hundred, million screams uttered with malevolent glee.
::YOU WILL RETURN WHAT YOU STOLE FROM US.::
He was exploding. The first blast charred the floors. The second burned two people behind Ogier, just by the pressure of his soul. It would not kill the ones who were truly powerful, but it would vaporize everything that had lesser or no souls. And what a pity that this had to be from the lich. Four voices sing.
The third blast carbonized four people and a guild officer. Ogier caught on and shed his kobold guise. His wings sprouted from his back and covered Dennis. The fourth blast transformed the surrounding area in ozone. Ogier formed a field that broke the blast trying to escape. He was using the very essence of violence to stop the exponentially increasing soul pressure.
“Run! Everyone out!” He yelled. Everyone, through years of adventuring experience, knew that when someone told you to run you run. So they ran. A fifth blast, stronger than the last pulsed. It was still weak for now, Ogier could deal with it. He compressed the space, breaking the space between them. He made sure not to break even one piece of the soul, lest it create another set of explosion outside his control.
The sixth blast burst and a shock wave slipped past Ogier, breaking the pillars that held the building. He broke the ceiling, making sure he wouldn’t be smashed as he focused on keeping the soul in place. The soul burned him. Memories slipping in his mind, stories unsaid. He sees the same things Dennis has seen before.
He felt tears flood his eyes.
He saw thousands of friends rise and fall. Close families suffer shame and defeat. Many falling from the fate they were unjustly given. He saw thousands of years of suffering and dedication.
An eighth blast shook his skin, slightly nicking his scales. He saw a life of a scared prince witnessing the death of his mother. He saw him abandoned by his father. He saw the shame he felt and the inadequacies he experienced.
Ogier was crying. He was just like him. He was the same.
A voice that hated him spoke.
“you will give it back”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The twelfth blast filled his ears, four voices singing and one desperately praying. A voice so starved and hungry spoke. A rope appeared slowly circling Dennis’ soul, desperately trying to keep it all together. Ogier saw this and reached out and tried to figure out what this is. Maybe it could help him.
e-JUST ANOTHER ROPE PIECE HAHA
&&&&&&&&^^& Soulbound
Immutable (breaking). Allows#_to s$_tore nin@!_objects %$#$%_roperty, be it _^&^)^%__($#$
Current objects stored (???????>>>>>>>?/9HAHAHAHAHA):
-Yinu(unlocked=====THIS GOES KABOOM
-Port City Magia Kapool (????locked???)
-CORPpse of Yi Goronac, the depraved god
-Devourer System( THIEF, YOU HAVE STOLEN IT FROM ME!)
-OOOOH WHAT’S THIS????
::A NEW AGE IS COMING.:: - YOU KNOW WHO
“What the fuck?!” The twentieth blast came and it made him bleed. He felt the memories of dishes eaten. The first time Dennis felt the snow. Memories of books and notes. Candles that flickered in a dark room. The taste of grapes shared by a mother’s side. Memories flooded and hit him so violently that he almost lost his focus.
Twenty one, the voice of a man he looked up to. And the dream he had to take up.
Twenty-tree, the fear of war and slaughter and hours hiding in the dark.
Adventurers quickly alerted the authorities, and they began quarantining the area. Massive barriers were erected as the expanding soul burned the building with it’s pressure alone. It vaporized the ground, rubble, and the buildings’ foundation. Fifty three more died.
Military grade barriers were propped up, attempting to halt the continuous explosions.
Twenty-eight, the wishes of a dying man and the look of a disappointed father as he disowned his son.
One hundred and fourty more died. The city block was shaking and the barriers were shattered. By this point, notice of the calamity has spread through the whole republic. Mass evacuation protocols were enacted.
Thirty-two, a memory of a broken heart and a burning kingdom.
The blasts kept increasing and Ogier’s body was taking the brunt of the damage. Ogier’s scales were chipping off one by one, piercing his body in soulfire. Though his body was being damaged, he felt no anger, only sorrow. He saw someone who went through the same things as him.
Thirty-five, years spent tracking down a drunkard monk, a roach kin, and a bat.
Fourty-nine, memories of salt and waves. Memories of nights spent doubting and crying.
Fifty, memories of ice and sacrifice.
Ogier remembers this scene, one of the battles he lived through when the world was still young and beasts from the inky blackness of the void still came. He remembers going through the same pain as this person, the same sacrifices, the same failures. The reason why the walls were left alone.
Fifty two, memories of a barren wasteland. Millions of children to feed, those who ran away from the wars. The rope that held it all together was fraying.
Five individuals in the sky creating layers of spatial distortions and teleporting people out of the subsystem. It mattered not, as the layers were dissipated by the sheer energy of the billion, billion souls copied and forced to collapse on itself. Two thousand more died.
Fifty six, an ocean of dust filled the sky. It was already bad, it was only going to get worse. Portals ripped out of the fringes of the republic. Leagues of demons spilled forth and flooded the areas holding the most vulnerable people. The ones who ran away from the blast were now sandwiched on both sides by overwhelming violence. Sixteen thousand more died.
A woman ran past the broken barriers. She quickly ran to the center of the calamity and shrugging off the soulfire as it ate her skin. She pierced her finger to where Ogier held Dennis and bled the damage out to the sky, creating a hole in the atmosphere. She redirected the energy through her body as fissures ran through her form much like magma flow from an eruption. She bled the damage from her body to the air itself. She did the same for Ogier.
Miles of ground flipped like tilled soil as earthquakes ravaged the land. They could hear the volley of spells in the horizon as demons flooded the sky. Many were fighting the hordes of demons boxing them in, and many more were screaming and pushing in an attempt to enter the teleportation circles. Flashes of light pulsed through the sky as Ogier and the woman, who he assumes is Judith based on the memories of Dennis, did their best to contain the increasingly escalating series of damages.
Seventy four, the memory of rain in a slow day and the droll of paperwork. Three hundred thousand more lives have perished.
Three billion four hundred ninety two million joules of energy per second that came out of Dennis burst out, all contained by both of them. Judith saw the rope fraying and panicked. She bled the damage from the rope to other dimensions and heard the voices.
::DO NOT STOP US LOTUS, EVEN YOU CANNOT BLEED US ALL.::
She heard the million voiced beast and she grit her teeth. The damned gods were resonating with the system inside the rope and were using the abilities of Dennis against him. She needed to get rid of the artifact, the only problem is could she stop an object the size of a solar system from spontaneously appearing? Never mind the other stuff like the God corpse.
Then even more screams flooded the air.
Her eyes widened as she looked around and saw the demons spilling out of portals. She quickly stabbed Dennis’ chest, the location of the box that would let them escape. She took it out and smashed it.
Several shadowy copies of the lich emerged, defying the light around them. Each of them, to a lesser extent were capable of the feets the original one was capable of. Then she gave out a command.
COMMAND (ASCENDING PRIORITY): PREPARE FOR ARTIFACT DESTRUCTION.
EVACUATE EVERYONE. KILL ALL DEMONS.
As if given new life, the copies quickly chanted spellscript a thousand lines per millisecond. If they cant stop the damage, then they could at least seal it in ice before she could dispose of the artifact.
Ogier transformed into a true dragon demi-god proceeded to absorb all the heat and energy emitted by the blasts. His tail stretched for a mile and his wingspan was twice that. He shielded most of the soul damage caused by the blasts, but some still slipped through and killed hundreds of fleeing families.
One hundred and eight, the joy of finding out who you are. One million eight hundred thirty five thousand more lives have been lost.
“Dragon! It’s the rope! Take Dennis and kill the demons, I’ll destroy the artifact” Judith ripped the rope off of Dennis’ soulbound artifact, bleeding the connection to the dragon instead as he seemed to be the only one around capable of handling the ratkins bursting soul.
Ogier flew at a speed that defied friction. With one flap he reached the clouds, with two he reached the cusp of the atmosphere, with three he passed the moons orbiting Korilstadt. The explosions of the slowly inflating soul pulsed in a corona around Ogier. He looked like a miniature sun as the bursts quickly grew past the limits of nuclear fission. Magic and average systems utterly refused to form due to the sheer
He saw thousands and thousands of ships depart the atmosphere in an attempt to survive the chaos. They were chased by demons as big as mountain ranges and ships of hellish design. Cataclysmic spells littered the horizon as Heroes eliminated waves after waves of demons escaping through the portals.
He siphoned the energy of the explosions and formed a spell so potent, space and time itself shook. For a moment there were no stars, only blood red plasma filled the sky. Hairlike strings of fire flew out of him in multitudes, avoiding the ships and people with the learned accuracy and precision of experience.
Vernietiging en redding
Billions and billions of laserslike projectiles spun and danced in the sky, eliminating every portal that spewed out the horde including the multitudes of beasts and armies that walked past it. He created thousands of miniature blackholes that traveled inside the portals and collapsed the other side in light speed. He beat his wings and created a wave of destruction that affected information, essentially an infohazard death wave, that only hit demons and nothing more. That should buy him some time.
For a moment he temporarily destroyed the idea of demons in the area, giving the adventurers much needed rest. He destroyed more of Dennis’ increasingly overflowing soul till any memory of it being part of a whole disappeared. He converted the destroyed pieces, now just energy runoffs, into an incredibly dense point in his claw. Then he fired it into the adventurers, ships, heroes, and several weapons.
He destroyed the very idea of pain, damage, and debuff. Healing and repairing all it hit to a significant degree.
The adventurers sighed and took a small break, catching their breath.
It did not take much of a toll on Ogier to do it. Somehow the energy he siphoned from Dennis’ soul slowed down the inflation, probably due to the nature of his concept that defies physics and destroys energy itself.
His smile quickly turned to a frown as four voices sung a different song.
The earth shook and the air hummed. Four voices sung in anger as the portals reopened, this time exponentially increasing the armies flowing out of it. The demon gods may not be able to pass into Korilstadt, but they could easily connect the place with all hells from all of the different universes linked to Korilstadt. They weren’t just fighting hell, they were fighting ALL hells.
One hundred and twenty five, the memory of the kiss he gave to Ogier. The night that they spent together and the pain love Dennis has for another.
Ogier siphoned more energy and destroyed the space miles away from the evacuating ships, effectively warping them away to far off into the safety of space.
Now he has room to breath. He charges up a breath in his throat and feels the pain of the man he’s holding in his arms. Several Lich copies were creating a prison of impenetrable ice around the planet. It was still incomplete, and would likely require more time.
Looks like I got my work cut out for me. Fucking hell.