The small gray figure like that of a man bowed before Ren, he fell down from a crevasse in the wall. Stepping towards the small shaman, he slowly reloaded the six spent rounds within the cylinder. Ready to kill the small man, yet hesitant to break the man out of his odd behavior, Ren stood before him. Bowing deep to the earth below Ren, the man hardly reached the height of Ren’s knees. If standing the figure was hardly above waist height on Ren.

“Stand, and tell me where I am, and who you all are.” Ren tried to mask his fear of fighting a far stronger enemy while already wounded. Though, if this creature was to bow to him, things may take a far better turn.

“Yes Lord, we have long awaited you within the fallen realm. We here know and remember you; do you remember us?” The small being stood, looking into Ren’s half lidded black eyes with reverence.

“I remember nothing… but just recent times, when the men and women above tried to slaughter me for what I am. Of you, I know nothing, of your Lord, I know nothing.” While pretending to be this little ghoulish goblin’s God did sound appealing, he had no desire to be tied down to such creatures.

“Oh, but of course you do not remember, for the war was so long ago, and you have returned. The rebirth of the Lord is all that matters.” The small gray man smiled with ragged and rotten teeth. “You are the fire that ruins, and the poison that rots all things, the man in black, Alkyri.”

I will not be this rotten fanged creature’s false God.

Ren steeled himself and played along. “Of those three things, I am.” He nodded slowly and the small creature’s smile only widened.

Ren felt the small words be uttered from the goblinoid wretch. They thrummed, echoing as his translation skill did not recognize them. With the words the goblin spoke, he felt the thrumming enter him, his body vibrating as his wounds slowly sealed.

He looked down at his side that had been almost nearly torn open again. The spoken words, a whisper, had healed him. He looked down at what he believed to be a stupid, and barely humanoid creature and felt the falsehood of his preconceptions.

Before him, this small, huddled form was powerful. Far too powerful for him to be at level fourteen, the brink of the second ascension. Activating eldritch eyes alongside his passive analysis, he looked deep into the being called the Marked Shaman.

A black mass flickered and swirled, mana corrupted and an oddly flowing stream around it. The blackness, it could not be his soul, or could it?

Like a burned husk of what should have been a soul, it was the opposite of what he had seen in the souls of the paladin and master cleric. They had been monumental, an unnatural vertigo had overtaken him at looking into them. The being before him was far from being such as them. It was the opposite, tiny and blackned, rotten to the very soul of its being. Yet, when this creature with a ruined soul looked at Ren, he saw a God.

What kind of fucked up monster is made out to be a God of such as these creatures? I am apparently…

The flickering energy around the blackened soul was like a reinforcing barrier, the man had turned his own mana slowly into crackling energy that infused his very being allowing him to be far more than what such a weak and ruined soul should be capable of.

Both terrifying and amazing, the potential of such a being was nothing but a slow and cruel death, yet he had empowered himself to find the brink of a second ascension.

“How did you manage to get so strong with your soul so withered?” Ren looked down at the figure below him.

“My faith in the great return, by my faith I have been sustained for generations beyond my time. We are born broken by the old mark, unable to ascend further until you return to us.” The small goblin bowed again and striated to smile at Ren.

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“Marked? A mark did this to you? Burned your soul and turned you into… what you are?” Ren hesitated to insult the being far stronger than himself. An insect stronger than him was one thing, an intelligent mage was another. The shaman had an unknown set of powers, that of all Ren knew, could burn him to ruin -just as he was supposed to be able to.

“Yes, Lord. We have been forgotten to time in your absence, now we may again return from the Underdark and take our rightful place when you usurp the false Goddess!” A gittiness, almost like that of childlike joy, spread across the goblin’s figure.

“Men will likely follow behind me, can you help me to hide away from them? Escape into these caves, some of them were far beyond any strength I have yet to see before or again. They could eradicate anything in their path. I don’t fully understand yet why they have not found me.” Ren spoke, slowly assuming the mantle this shaman had placed upon him. He did not want to be the monster these things worshiped. To be the ruler of blackened and destroyed souls, the marked ‘men’ of the Underdark. But he would be what he must in order to survive what was to come.

“We will deal with them in time, let me guide you to the home of your people so you might be crowned again. Oh, my Prince of Venom, my Lord of The Pyres, Rightful Lord Alkyri, let you again assume the throne.” The withered figure gestured Ren into a great maw of darkness that only grew as he stepped onto a forbidden path.

Through endless caves and the dark, damp depths of underground rivers, the path went unending. Small groups of scavengers and hunters carried strange plants growing along thermal vents, fish from the waterways, and flesh and chitin of the insectoid abominations that dwelled deep within the depths. Faint lamps made of glowing fungi were strewn throughout occasionally. The path had no straight direction and constant twists and turns changed with the environment of the cave.

On one occasion they passed an abyss where the shaman quickly hurried him along before a low growl and disturbances of something titanic stirred the cave. At the rumbling of its deep hum, the being within the abyss caused stones to shiver on the ground, while loose rocks fell from the ceiling on the walls.

“What is that thing?” Ren asked, his black eyes wide.

“It is one that is better left alone. When you again become as the Lord Alkyri, and only then shall you know the truth of things. For now, to tell you the secrets of the abyss would be meaningless.” The shaman nodded forwards, and with a bow guided Ren onwards.

Within what could have been hours, or days within the depths of such blackness unknown to all but those who brave it, he found himself in a place that reeked of death and ruination.

The streets were lined with gnarled figures at the brink of collapse, the old and infirm, the sickly and dying. Between them moved the children sized to be infants, women who looked to be far too old to be mothers carried them and tended them. Men worked at the stone and bone structures, water and waste were haphazardly thrown into the streets and rodents and cave insects delighted upon the wastes.

Ren looked at it all, his disgust pulling at the depths of his stomach to spill across the ground before him. He held back the bile, knowing that it would only bring the sickly scavengers closer to him.

They passed countless of the gray and wither people, those who were long marked by and cursed by the name Alkyri, the name of their Lord, the name to be christened onto Ren.

They continued with the inhabitants becoming confused, staring and even one of the elderly people falling onto the ground clutching at his chest. Ren was taken aback, the sight of a human, the sight of Ren killing a man. The shaman stopped with a faint smile upon his face. He watched as the elderly man went limp on the stone beneath. Within the cramped and vile streets, the shaman spoke.

“Today shall be marked, marked as well all long have been. For today, today is the day of redemption!” The shaman raised his staff as the goblins fell to their knees. Their confusion had died as they looked into the black cloaked figure before them.

“The Lord Alkyri, Lord of The Pyre, Lord of Venom, Lord in Black, The King of Despair, the Ruin of Salvation, has returned for the coming of the Underdark.”

The shaman’s voice echoed in the streets as he infused mana into his voice. Women, children, and even the men wept openly on the ground as the declaration began. When the hate came into his voice, and the shaman spoke again, they screamed for blood.

“Again, shall the Marked walk unto the surface and raise the earth with his flame, poison the rivers with his fang, and slay the false Goddess! Ruination shall come, as the lands are salted beneath our feet, and the children of our enemies die in their streets!” The shaman stopped as Ren looked into the bloody murder in the eyes of the goblin around him.

What the fuck did I just get myself into?