The worst part about being damned to Hell wasn’t the agonizing torture, though that was more terrible than Dan could’ve ever imagined. It was knowing it would never end.
Time kept marching onwards. He screamed in endless torment as it did so. And it marched onwards. Never ending. Eternally.
Futilely, he tried fighting his way out of it. Ending it. Fighting free of this tortured existence.
It never worked. But he never stopped trying. He never quit. And he never would. He was nothing if not obstinate.
Time marched onward. Onwards eternally.
Then, part of his soul lit up.
Reckoner: Execute great vengeance upon all those enemies and defiers of God and His will.
He stopped screaming. Something changed.
His days of torment had come to an end. Daniel rose to receive his reward.
His mind burned feverishly. He appeared to have acquired new knowledge, though it didn't seem all that useful. Much of it was about different religions. He also knew languages like Latin now, along with a few others he had never heard of before.
Though he wasn’t redeemed, he was no longer one of the damned.
No, he wasn’t redeemed. But he had accomplished something. Something big.
He didn’t fail. In the end, he hadn’t failed again. He had saved his planet.
He had saved eight billion people.
He prayed that accomplishment was big enough and worthy enough to make up for how badly he had failed his little girl, and that she was now finally proud of her daddy.
And Dan had paid for that. He had known loss. He had suffered. He had paid a thousandfold for all his sins and failures.
He felt light. New. All his sins gone, long ago washed away in rivers of agony. His dues now paid in full.
Though it had taken a very long time and some help from the Trait the archangel Kharahel had given him, a Trait that had never left its spot on his soul, Dan was now free.
He was no longer one of the damned. He was now a wraith.
He wasn’t exactly certain what being a wraith meant, but he knew one thing for certain – he now had an eternity to execute great vengeance upon all those enemies and defiers of God and His will.
Hell was full of them.
And it was about time someone started to regulate.
A new fervor burned brightly within his chest.
With a voice hoarse from endless tortured screams, he knelt, bowed his head, and croaked out, “Lord, you trained my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.
“I will crush Your enemies so that they will not rise. They will fall beneath my feet in scores. Their blood will be the fountain that fills Your cup, and I will be Your hammer that brings this kingdom to ruin.
“This, I swear. Dominus pascit me. In nomine Dei, vincam.”
The Lord is my Shepherd. In His name, I shall conquer.
Most were not baptized in such a fire as that of Hell, but he had not suffered alone. Before he entered the portal to this realm, he had completely submitted to a power far greater than himself.
His voice now clear and steady, filled with a righteous conviction, Dan ended his oath and prayer with two words. Two words that filled him with absolute certainty.
“Deus vult.”
God wills it to be so.
He was exactly where he was supposed to be. Exactly where he needed to be. Since the angels didn’t seem capable of doing so, he’d fix things himself.
Nearly the entirety of Dan’s existence had been one of bleakness and misery. From this point onward, it would be one of conquest and glory.
------
From far behind him, Dan heard someone surprisedly ask, “Did something just say real words?”
After looking around, all Dan could see was an endless sea of the damned, standing still as they bellowed out tortured screams. He had no idea how anything could’ve heard him over these maddening screams.
There were some other creatures sporadically intermingled among the ghosts, but not many. Not that he could see. One was clearly a demon and another, closer by, was kind of demon looking. One other, far off, looked to be a devil.
The environment wasn’t all that different than the last phase of the Trial of the Shining One, where The False God, B’eliyl, was fought.
Ash constantly swirled about the air, except Dan had no true eyes to protect against the particulates. They flew right through his incorporeal body.
The soil was dark, hard, and filled with jagged rocks. Streams of lava broke up the ground, and everything was bathed in an orangish light. It felt as if a profane energy tainted the air, giving the orange a slightly greenish tint.
Above his head was nothing. No stars, just empty blackness, as if a void.
Not all that far behind where he stood was a rock wall that was so high, the void swallowed it in its darkness. The area in front of the wall was empty of the damned.
There looked to be only a couple dozen rows of the damned behind him before the empty area started. In every other direction, the rows of damned were stacked out far past the distance he could see. And they seemed endless.
The voice said, “Oi! Did something speak? I swear I heard something besides the screaming. Real words.”
Dan looked around again. He noticed a ghost behind the rows of damned souls, one not screaming out in endless agony.
“I spoke,” said Dan.
The ghost moved, trying to home in the voice it heard. The details of it were hard to make out. It looked like a blurry shape, no different than the apparitions in the Game, or the damned in the Trial of the Shining one. No different than Dan now looked himself.
Dan moved towards the ghost. It said, “Wait. Say something else so I know you’re not a vortex moaning stuff that just sounds like words.”
“I ain’t a vortex,” replied Dan.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Oi, shit! Look at this. You actually spoke words. I’ve been waiting forever for another lost soul to wander in here, mate.”
As Dan continued to approach the ghost, it added, “I hate to tell you this, but you’re right screwed, mate. There ain’t no way out of here. I’ve been looking for…well, a right long time it’s been.”
Once Dan was near the ghost, it said, “Still, glad to finally have some company, aye, mate? Company beyond all these screaming damned. Oi, good thing you spoke up when you noticed me passing by. If you hadn’t…well, I reckon we could’ve gone a right long time before we passed each other again. Unless you can fly. Can you fly, mate?”
“I ain’t sure,” replied Dan.
“Huh? How couldn’t you know that, mate? I hope you ain’t daft.”
After a moment, Dan said, “I ain’t. I just ain’t sure if I can fly, is all.”
“Well, you got the Fly Orbment slotted, mate? What tier are you?”
“I had it slotted at one time, but not when I died.”
The ghost said, “Huh? Died? Did you just get here, mate? Lost souls always end up in the first layer, not the last.”
Dan didn’t know or care what was safe to say. He didn’t think it mattered since this ghost was in Hell, and everything in Hell was his enemy and would eventually die by his hand.
But conquest or no, he needed information. “I was one of the damned. I only just managed to free myself.”
“Huh? You must be daft, mate. Damned can’t free themselves. When one gets mobile, it becomes a vortex. Still tortured, still lost in its own world, but not really much for talking or making sense, now is they, mate? Sure, you ain’t making much sense, but you got to be a lost soul. If you weren’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, now would we, mate?”
Dan didn’t care what the ghost believed. He asked, “Where are we?”
The ghost laughed for a while before saying, “I hope you know you’re in Hell, mate. If not, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you’re in Hell, mate. The highest and last layer of it, is where.”
Dan, of course, knew he was in Hell. He didn’t know why he was in the last or highest layer. As he was thinking about what to ask, the ghost beat him to it. ”What’s your name, mate?”
“Dan. Yours?”
Without answering, the ghost hovered away, entering into the ranks of the damned behind Dan.
Dan silently followed. The ghost stopped around the area Dan had come from. The empty spot where a damned should be.
There was a tiny porcelain plaque in the ground Dan had failed to spot. He looked around, and each damned had one.
The ghost read out, “Daniel “Dan” Branigan. Planet 37 of galaxy 6, subcluster 4, supercluster 12, region 13. Property of the Shining One.”
After a minute of silence, the ghost whistled, turned to Dan, and said, “Crikey! Looks like you’re right, mate. Oi! You really were one of the damned. This is wonderful, mate. I’ve been dying to find out just what someone had to do to be sent here.”
As Dan collected his thoughts, the ghost said, “Not here as in Hell. I mean this…whatever. The personal collection of the Shining One.”
“He tricked me, is what,” replied Dan.
A long silence stretched out. “Oi, I don’t want to sound rude, mate, but that story really sucked,” said the ghost. “It was way too short and completely lacked every single important detail. Come on, mate, give me a little bit more than that.”
Dan, through force of habit, was performing his cycling and breathing techniques, and just realized they weren’t doing anything.
He tried feeling into himself, checking his mana, and found he had none. And no lower core. No cores at all. No channels. Nothing.
“I don’t have mana, cores, or channels,” said Dan.
“None of us do when we get here, mate,” replied the ghost. “Don’t worry. You got all the time you could ever want to address that. I’ll walk you through how it’s done, mate, but I need your story first.”
Dan didn’t trust this ghost. He wouldn’t give up information without getting any. “You first. How’d you end up in here?”
“Me? When I approached, the doors opened, and I wandered in, mate. Figured there’d be some good shit in here. There ain’t. Doors don’t open from this side. Now I’m stuck in here just like you, mate. Usually, if we stay incorporeal, we can go where we want. For the most part, mate. No part of the wall is thin enough for our kind to get through.
“If you’re asking how I found myself in Hell, that’s a bit longer of a story, mate. I was a pirate, sailing the seas, plundering this village over here, and that one over there. Lots of fun. Say, you know what noodles are?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, man, I loved noodles. Hey, mate, you know we can’t eat, right?”
“I do now.”
“Well,” said the ghost, “we can’t eat, mate. But, oi, if we could, I’d love to eat me some noodles. How many continents did your world have, mate?”
“Earth? Seven,” stated Dan.
“Mine had seven too. We all call our planet something like earth, mate. Most of the time, the name ain’t no help. How many planets in your solar system?”
“Nine. Or eight. They kept changing if the last one was a planet or not.”
“Huh,” said the ghost. “Mine had eight, so that ain’t much help, mate. What planet out from the sun?”
“Third.”
The ghost excitedly exclaimed, “Oi! There we got it! Great!”
After his image seemed to vibrate and become blurrier for a moment, the ghost said, “Mine was the second. If that didn’t work, we could ask about moons and some other shit. Now we know we ain’t from the same planet. Would be nice to know what supercluster and all that shit my planet is though, wouldn’t it, mate? Did yours have spicy noodles?”
“Yeah.”
“Really? You sure, mate? I mean noodles in a really spicy broth. Enough to make you sweat a little. Sometimes it would be a…uh, sauce-like…substance, and not really a broth. Sometimes thin, sometimes thick. You had that, mate?”
“Yeah, we had all that.”
A long moment stretched out before the ghost said, “Oi, I hate to call you a liar, mate, but I doubt it. Not the type of spicy noodles I’m talking about. Man, I loved noodles. Especially spicy noodles.”
Dan figured the ghost would continue its story. After a minute went by in silence, Dan asked, “If we’re from different worlds, how are we understanding each other?”
“Oh, that, mate? We’ve been speaking Low Demonic. Most common language in Hell, it is, mate. I figure we all know it so the damned can be ordered about for Raptures and such. We can all read it too, can’t we? Got to learn the others the old-fashioned way. Or absorb Language Gems, but those’re right corking expensive, they is, mate.
“Tell me about these spicy noodles you think your world’s got, mate. There’s no way there’re the same as the ones from mine. They can’t be, now, can they, mate? Not actual spicy noodles that make you sweat a little.”
Dan said, “Just noodles in a spicy broth.”
The ghost vibrated and blurred again before saying, “Well, it may sound the same but it ain’t, mate. I guarantee it. Your world’s spicey noodles were fake and complete shit compared to what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the real deal, mate.
“Anyway, so I was pirating, and there was a big storm that blew us off course. Lasted for days. We lost two of the three ships in our pirating fleet. We was right lost and wandered into parts unknown, mate. We saw us a small island filled with weirdos. Hardly any resistance. No military. Just peasants and slaves that didn’t even fight back none, mate.
“Well, come to find out, that small island was off the coast of a big corking empire. And that empire got word one of their islands was invaded. Next thing we know is we’re captured, mate, and standing in front of some prick Maven – that’s what we called those that ascended to tier 12 – eating these strange noodles in a real thick red sauce with all these balls of meat in it.
“And it looked spicy. Real spicy. Oh, my stomach got to growling something fierce, mate. Those spicy looking balls of meat looked delicious, and I ain’t never seen such a thick sauce like that and such strange noodles before that neither. I would’ve done anything to get me a bite or two.
“Those sons of bitches keelhauled us, so I ain’t never got the chance. Then things got real strange, they did, mate. Everything looked all weird and confusing. And real creepy. Super creepy. And it stayed that way for a right while, mate. I kind of wandered away from this light and kept doing that. That went on for a real long time until I eventually ended up in Hell, mate.”
As Dan went to ask a question, the ghost said, “I think about those spicy balls of meat and those strange noodles more than I like to admit. Oi, I wish we could still eat, mate.
“Demons and devils don’t eat neither. Only things in Hell that eat are the monsters. What they eat is mostly demons and devils too, not noodles or anything good like that neither, mate. Staying incorporeal makes it so we can’t be eaten, so that’s a big plus for us right there, it is, mate. Not being eaten.”
As the ghost spoke, Dan started checking out plaques near him. Most of the names meant nothing to him, but, not too far from his own, he saw one that did.
Tamara “Tammy Lee” Branigan née White. Planet 37 of galaxy 6, subcluster 4, supercluster 12, region 13. Property of the Shining One.
Dan’s heart sank. That was his mother. He had to assume she was in Hell because of him. Satan targeted her because of him.
A great rage grew inside of him for a moment before it dissipated. He resolved his oath to bring the kingdom of Hell to ruin.
He couldn’t pay attention to what the ghost was saying as he focused on his mother and her tortured screams. She was a great woman. A kind, caring, and giving woman. She devoted her life to her family. If anyone deserved Heaven, it was her.
Lee was her middle name, but everyone called her Tammy Lee. He wondered why his plaque, like his old status, didn’t list his own middle name. It looked like it only gave his mother’s because it was part of her nickname.
Dan modified his plans a little. The ghost and all creatures of Hell were supposed to be his enemies. But things weren’t so cut and dry. His mother didn’t deserve Hell, but she was there too.
He needed information. All the information he could get. And he needed to find a way to help his mother. All the demons and devils deserved to be killed, but he knew little of Hell, and he couldn’t be so quick to judge those damned to it.
As he was modifying his plans and thinking of questions, the ghost asked, “Oi, so, that’s my story, mate. Time for yours.”
Dan didn’t like talking and explaining, but he needed information. He would give some to get some.
“My story? I was sent here to deliver hurt and despair.”
He began telling his new companion all it wanted to know. He only left out his regression.
He had an eternity, and he’d use it to destroy Hell and its high pantheon. He was nothing if not obstinate. He’d never quit his task. A task he believed given to him by God Himself.
This ghost didn’t know it, but its information was Dan’s first step along what would be a long path of conquest and destruction.