A horde of the gray goblinoid creatures had gathered. Flames, festering scents, and every sort of savage shout came from the crowd. The celebration had just begun.

Looking across the crowds Ren saw figures all lined up and pawing over an item at the crowd’s center. They were the shamans descended from all the nearby tribes that have come to gather for his crowning. All of them possessed the same strange and twisting soul as the original Marked Shaman he stood next to now. Though, their levels varied from eleven to fourteen.

The first shaman beckoned Ren towards the crowd with his fanged smile. The rotten breath leaking forth caused him to scowl while he walked towards the amassing goblins. With long, heavy steps, he pushed into the crowd that parted like a great sea of half dead faces.

As he was again and again, he was reminded of what these were. The creatures discarded and lost to a dead God, ones that were so totally ruined and corrupted they could even worship him.

Step after step, his black eyes remained nearly closed, only a small amount of the voids showing. His head was bowed as the ebony of his clothes blended him into the black stone beneath. Regardless, he was still the object of every eye within the great mass of creatures. They writhed around him excited and giddy with a childlike joy.

The mass of small gray humanoid beings slowly parted and closed, and he passed into the middle of their crowd. Looking around himself, he saw all of the shamans standing at attention. Quick words passed amongst them as Ren tried to contain himself.

The shaman who found him presented Ren before the others while one of them showed Ren the item they had been pawing over.

A black bracer with a ruby at its center shone within the darkly lit cavern. The shamans swarmed around him as they spoke and chanted. Energy surrounded Ren as the bracer was brought closer to his arm until it flowed. The bracer changed into a pseudo-liquid and poured across his arm where it sealed itself in place unmoving and tough.

The shamans continued their ramblings as he did his best to simply ignore them all. Soon, this would be over. Soon, he would flee them.

I will deny these vile little men, I will find the humans here and use them to make my escape. These gray little men have no power over me. He tried to reassure himself, yet he felt so entirely wrong about letting this get so far.

A roar came over the crowd as he heard his shaman speak. “The beginning has already begun, the false kin of Alkyri are dying at this moment. Those who never were marked by his blessing. Those who never had true faith, they are being purged tonight as we celebrate his second coming!” The Marked Shaman smiled his rotten grin. The goblins all around them roared and shouted with excited calls.

Fuck! I should have gone with her; I should have followed her to her people!

Ren’s heart sank imagining the little gray creatures in a horde tearing away the last vestige of humans who have struggled so long in their fight for life.

Ren empowered his voice with a heavy amount of mana. “Shamans, is your ceremony over? For I will go now and seek out the betrayers of the past, I still ensure with my own hand they are slain.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The booming power of his voices quieted the goblins all around him. The ruby on his new bracer shone when he infused the mana into himself, and he felt a dreadful power.

A thousand glowing sets of red eyes stared into Ren as the ruby shone. With his eldritch eyes he looked into the souls of the goblins around him. A red energy pulse at the core of their souls. The mark…. This device is linked to the mark on their very souls.

The shaman who found him spoke. “Lord, you command so quickly, as impressive as hoped. We may now evolve as he had in the past, ascension is no longer a dream but a reality. Please, do what you must, our souls have already been saved, Lord.” The shaman spoke with an empty stare, he had no rotten smile nor any sign of emotion as the redness pierced into his very soul.

Ren stepped away from the shamans towards the crowd. The feeling of having dominion over the very souls of these little creatures sickened him, yet what could be done but use it to find his own freedom.

He walked into the blackness and began heading towards where the woman had instructed him. The caverns were true blackness, completely devoid of any color or light.

In the long nothingness that was the great blackness, he wondered. The great thing in the underdark that the shaman had refused to speak of. His time amongst other humans at the surface, and his persecution. Would it have been better to live as a slave to the clerics? Or would it be better to die some false God in a deep network of caves far beyond the reach of light?

As the darkness began to recede, the light of a single fungal lantern hung unwavering and unchanging. It hung on the entrance to a second branching cavern that shot out from the one he was passing through. It was half a miracle to find himself this far, yet the woman had made it obvious they lived in secrecy, so why would a lantern be hung?

The answer donned on Ren as he saw the signs of a large group having passed through here. Small bits of litter and half rotten food bits lay around where the gray goblins must have rested before making their attack on the humans. His step hastened as he charged into the cave beyond. After many long minutes of passing through the dim cave, the long distant echo of crunching and tearing came to him in soft, wet slaps.

His stealth was activated as he moved closer to the noises. Corpses littered the stone ground where fungus had grown in manicured patterns. Blood of both goblinoid and human figures soaked the mycelium network from which the mushrooms grew.

Ren watched as the remaining goblins ate away at the flesh of their enemies and their own alike. It seemed there was more of a preference for the humans over their own kin. Regardless, he was disgusted. Breaking his stealth, he allowed mana to pour into his voice and activate the ruby gem.

“Die.”

The gray figures feasting on the dead paused as their eyes began to glow. A red light glittered forth from their very souls as the mark was activated.

Several of the weakest amongst them simply went slack and unmoving, the red light piercing out of their souls and leaving them. The stronger half of them began to slice and stab at themselves, the command unable to be disregarded.

Nearly a dozen of the goblins was unmoving, they did not respond to the command to die. Instead, these remaining were motionless and unable to neither fight back nor move. For these dozen Ren released a full six shots of his revolver. The number halved, he summoned a flame to his hand, four piercing beams of fire launched into all but two of them.

Two remained, one shook attempting to move and disobey Ren’s command. He felt his mana being drained as the willpower of the far inferior creature was far higher than the rest. Perhaps some of these could have become mages or shamans in the future. If they would have had a future that is.

Ren used his blade and gave mercy to the last two of them.

Skill: Eldritch Tongue, has merged with

Item: Arm of Alkyri (Mythical)

Acquired: Emperor’s Dominion (Skill)

Effect: Manipulate The God Emperor's Chosen, efficiency based off willpower disparity