Twenty-seven years.
Almost three decades in this hell.
Stuck in a world of desolation. A wasteland where banished demons wound up. I am no demon but I was here all the same. All thanks to that bitch Queen who tricked me here.
Sending me back home she said.
I scoffed - how long did I actually believe that?
Twenty and some years is a long time to ponder one's fate. Especially in a hellscape like this.
Of course, now I realize I was just stupid for even thinking she had sent me here by accident.
The Queen prided herself as an expert in divine casting. She was the one who used the Convergence to summon us to her world in the first place. She used magic to hop skip dimensions for Christ's sake!
So how gullible was I to believe her portal misfired and I ended up here as a result?
I should have realized something was amiss. First - there was no Convergence this time around.
The Queen had used a legendary spell from their world called the [Ritual of Summoning Hero] to bring us forth. It was a ridiculously advanced magic that under normal circumstances would never work. The magic would always misfire and cause untold damages.
But when done in combination with a rare phenomenon, the sages said it theoretically could work. Now I do not know the specifics but apparently a skilled magic user could 'draw' upon the magic of rare events to cast spells far beyond the norm.
So why did I believe she could send the two of us back to Earth without it?
I could only shake my head of that duplicity. I was really dumb not to see that far ahead.
And the second and biggest indicator I got screwed was Radley never ported into this hell world with me.
Initially I concluded her portal must have sent him somewhere else when I tried to make sense of my predicament. I did not want to really believe that someone I considered a comrade, a friend, had betrayed me so.
However, twenty-seven years is a long time. Especially when you are alone and got only a humongous god-beast as company.
All of those eight months in the other world was on a continual loop in my eyes. Every moment a replay allowing me to see and understand the things I was blinded to at THAT time.
They were in cahoots to get rid of me. It was the only explanation.
Radley was easy enough to make sense of now. His reasons for wanting me gone were clear enough.
I was in his way.
The Queen though. Her reason for really wanting me gone was something I just could not put my finger on. Sure I had ideas but they were more of inklings than a definite conclusion as to explain away her actions.
Especially porting me here of all places.
I had just saved her country and she is gonna banish me to Hell? I mean I know I kinda 'hitted on her' but shit - this was just low for a rejection.
No, this kind of betrayal was for something more. And she would not have done it for Radley's sake.
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The Queen's country, Andalus, had been plagued by a demon infestation for almost a century. It was considered at first to be a minor nuisance due to the demons being rather weak and uncoordinated. Many of the kingdom's knights, mages, and even neighboring soldiers used these demons as target practice to hone their own skills. And since they continually respawned inside the hellmouth which then spewed them back forth, this was seen as a great training ground to level and hone one's skills.
Well that little nuisance grew dramatically when a more powerful demonlord arrived and took control of that hellmouth, turning it into an engine of war. Overnight, those weak demons suddenly grew in strength and level and no longer wandered out alone but traveled in large packs. The demons were now with a purpose - to conquer.
Then that problem grew exponentially when it was discovered the hellmouth's corruption was expanding in size and that could threaten the whole of continent, mayhaps their world if it kept growing uncontested. It grew bad enough for it to begin corrupting the great forest north of the Queen's kingdom, threatening the magic boundaries that separated the last few elf havens from the physical plane.
A great battle soon followed as Andalus aided by the forces of their rival states and even joined by a contingent of elves from Whitetree stood united against the rising tide. And their loss was severe. Almost the entirety of their combined force was either routed, killed, or taken as prisoners who suffered fates worse than death inside the hellmouth.
Andalus's King had died on that battlefield forcing his daughter to ascend to his throne. She was but 17 years of age and the first Queen to ever don their ancient crown of kings. However, how long her queenship would last with the threat of the hellmouth looming over them all was surely not much longer.
But her salvation came two months later when the sages informed her of a Convergence or in other words a rare natural phenomenon. This particular Convergence was of their planet's moon aligning directly with the Red Dwarf, the second of their planet's suns in their outer system, thus creating the Night of the Red Moon.
This rarest of occurrences, which I was told only happens once in some 100 odd years, also happened to fall on a Holy Night.
Apparently this was another rare magical event that comes around once a century that is largely seen as a symbol of the Faith carried by those in this world. It could also coincide as a Holy Day.
The people of Earth would call this an aurora but in this universe its roots is somehow magical in nature. Akin to it being a mystical veil that appears for short periods of time.
The lore is that magic performed on a Holy Day or Night would be elevated to higher degrees of power and so the new Queen used these Convergences to empower the magic of legends - [Ritual of Summoning Hero]. It was a grand spell that could reach out across the cosmos to summon a man (or woman) of destiny to answer the summoner's call.
Atleast that is what the legend of it is suppose to be. No one knows how or even why but the Queen got two people of destiny that day. Two men from Earth and who were in a video game no less.
I will never forget that moment. I was sitting there in my chair, VR helmet on playing the new Farscape mod I downloaded when all of a sudden I am hit with a feedback. The strongest I ever felt. It was like being electrocuted.
Next thing I know I was laying prone before the feet of possibly the hottest girl I had ever seen in person. Her long dark hair had a tinge of violet, her eyes the same shade, skin like alabaster, and she had quite the nice rack.
It was funny when I thought back on it, even in this hellish place. I still thought I was still playing in the mod at first and what I had just experienced was a crash and some glitched upload. I mean how could any of this really be real.
There was no way magic was real.
However, it soon dawned on me what was happening was real. I (somehow) was summoned to another world. It was like something straight out of my favorite animes.
And that was happening to me. Well and another. His name was Todd Macy. He was some hotel doorman from New York City. Although MrRadley was the name he used for his Farscape avatar.
I should have known Radley was not my friend. It was all right there on the first day we met. Of course I did not see it at the time because I was so caught up in the excitement of what just happened.
But Radley was immediately plotting against me.
You see he tried to bully me. After the Queen and her delegation explained the reasons of our summoning and imploring for our aid to save them, she put us in a recess while she and her advisors conferred amongst themselves. It was in that room that I missed it.
Again, twenty-seven years is a long time and every moment of those eight months in the other world was on a loop in my mind.
The moment we were alone in that room, Radley bumped right into me like the typical schoolyard bully would. Our faces mere inches away as he told me not to get in his way and not to do anything stupid. I actually laughed in his face because I thought it was a bit of a joke and quipped if he was twelve or something.
That was when Radley took a swing at me. This was the moment we both realized we had become stronger in this new world. Radley's swing was a punch that was faster than anything I had ever seen in my adult life and I watch many of those best of boxing knockout vids on Utube.
It was almost like those high speed punches right out of a manga, and his plated fist was heading straight to my face.
Yet somehow my eyes could keep up with the trajectory of the swing in this weird slow motion. I could even see the look of pure joy forming on Radley's face as he swung his fist around.
But it did not stop there. My body reacted as if it was the most natural reflex, like blinking. I took my artifact weapon - Celestial Champion - that was resting in my left hand and aimed the head of it towards where Radley's attack would be.
It was such a casual movement that there was no possible way the near translucent staff could have halted a blow of that magnitude, yet it did. Not only that but my weapon stopped the blow completely. My arm barely flinched while Radley's whole body shook from the combined impact. It was as if his punch was nullified because there was hardly any noise made.
Alot could have been gained in that single moment. I had missed it at the time but Radley did not. He knew that I was somehow stronger than him. Much stronger.
The idiot me, now further caught up in the moment, had to exclaim about how cool that was just now. I felt like I was ten years old seeing a magician do a card trick for the first time.
That was when I went into some detail about my character build from Farscape, about how in the mod I was playing in - all my stats were maxed out and how that must have transitioned into physical features in this new world.
I then asked Radley about his build setup because he was clearly that in that cookie cutter Blackguard + Lancer combo because of his gear selection. He was equipped in a mythic plate set that had stats best optimized for Blackguards and his weapon was Gae Bulg, an old legendary but one that was still ranked among the best for Dragon Knight spec raiders. Radley did not talk about his character setup too much other than confirming what I had already said and instead wanted to know more about my own.
Yeah I know - alot of missed signals there.
So I went into detail about my setup of being a Wizard + Cleric combo and how most of the mods I played on allowed me to run all four specializations of each class at the same time. While my class combo was poorly optimized for the legitimate servers, in the mods it was excellent for solo play when you had nearly every single class feature unlocked. It also helped in having all epic feats in my primary class unlocked coupled with every bonus feat gained within the game's PvP tracker as well as a full 455 in mastery levels for the Wizard, the max obtainable at the time.
One could say it was ridiculously overpowered when compared to even the best optimal character setups on the retail end. I was pretty much a 1-man raid team.
And Radley had realized that in that one moment between us. Sure he acquired the power of his optimized build made real in this new world, but it was a candle before my inferno.
He offered his hand to me after that and spoke of combining our talents to help free this land from the terror of the demonlord. I shook his without even thinking.
The events that would become known as the War of the Demon King soon began. The demonlord who had commandeered the hellmouth had proclaimed himself the Easter King several days after we were summoned. It was a gaudy title to be sure as the 'Easter King' sounded silly to me and Radley but the Queen would inform us the Easter Kingdom was once the whole of their continent when the High Elves, who had the blood of gods, ruled most of the continent.
The Queen's army that was formed with the two of us as her champions was an army in name only. Most of their kingdom's military force had been slain during the massacre that took the King's life. I cannot lie and say us *heroes* were not a bit dismayed when we saw the army at hand. It was less than 800 troops in all and over half were recent conscripts taken from peasant levies. So less than half was actually a trained force.
But the young Queen's beauty and her captivating speech received a roar from the gathered crowd and stirred our hearts, giving us the courage to move forward. She gave her summoned heroes her favor - it was a platinum medallion bearing her family's royal crest on a beautiful linked chain. It only provided a minor protection buff, but we wore it proudly all the same.
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And then, well, off we went to war.
It was called the War of the Demon King however the battles we fought were more like glorified hunting sessions. But instead of hunting deer or turkey, we were hunting demon. It was nothing like those old World War documentaries.
So in other words, the war was more of a subjugation, reclaiming lands that had been taken over by the demons.
We heroes summoned proved to be the deciding factor in turning the war against the demons. In the very first battle our army came across, we killed over 300 demons without having a single casualty. With both my Wizard and Cleric classes at maxed capability, I was able to use alot of support magic to enhance our troop quality. That and my spells usually one-shotted the demons we encountered.
I had not need to use a single one of my top ranked spells.
Radley would one-shot most of the demons as well when they got in range of his legendary spear but my spells were faster and long range to boot when compared to his melee oriented specline. It became a friendly game between us during the war to compare kill counts when we encountered a wandering pack. I usually won by a sizeable margin.
As the war got into its late stage, Radley was in a mad rush the moment we even glimpsed a demon pack in the far distance. I would still win those too.
Of course I thought it funny then but it really was not a game to Radley. I can see it now - he wanted to 'outperform' me during the course of this war and in his eyes, I was making him look bad.
However, much of the war was actually spent not chasing and killing demons but helping those who were affected by their expansion. It was a period of healing and reconstruction and my huge repertoire of spells helped the people on that road to recovery. It was an area of the campaign that Radley could offer little assistance due to the nature of his classes.
The last of the subjugations was in the great forest of the elves where the influence of the hellmouth had infected the plant and wildlife into something monstrous. While getting rid of the demons was easy enough, it was curing the corruption that was the real task.
Looking back at it now - this was probably where Radley really wanted me dead.
Us two heroes joined a band of elf rangers for the job at hand who then guided us to each corruption in their forest home. It was usually found in areas of desiccation where only bad things were sprouting. While I had no nature magic in all my speclines, I was able to systematically purge the corruption away through my list of anti-magic and purification spells. I was even able to de-curse many of the infected creatures, helping the elves save much of the wildlife they had bred and raise.
The elves honored me greatly for those deeds and while Radley was given a place of honor at the banquet they held, it paled in comparison to the treatment I received. I was showered with gifts and praises, though I did my best to turn most of the gifts down as I felt I did not deserve all those possessions.
That probably angered my compatriot even more.
I even danced with a young elf maiden that night and though I am a terrible dancer and a bit of a wallflower, she did not seem to mind it too much. I lost myself that night in the beauty of their great haven, the wonderful music in my ears, and the sweetness of their food and drink.
It captured the wonders of my deepest imagination I always had of the elves in fantasy and that was still one of the few memories that still could calm my heart in this terrible place I am in now.
After the last subjugation, our little army made our way back to Andalus's shining castle city. Seven months had passed when we first left to embark on this war.
We were given a hero's welcome on our return - it looked like a parade taken straight out of those old medieval movies. The Queen greeted her champions as we made our way to the palace gate and she praised us openly in front of the masses for freeing the lands from the demonlord's control.
A victory celebration was then announced to be held, although I tried to inform the Queen and her advisors that the war was not yet won for that hellmouth still remained. But the celebration was still held anyways and it was much bigger than the one the elves had given us the week before. It was as if the entire city populace was in the great palace.
Me and Radley received many honors that night. The Queen first bestowed her champions the rank of Knight in honor of our victories. But then she gave us a special emblem that is only ever awarded to those who have done a great service for the people of this kingdom. Almost everyone in the room, especially the nobility, were hushed when the Queen herself placed those emblems on our dress shirts.
The two of us would later be told this emblem marked us with a status near equal to the royal family themselves. So we became more than a Knight of low nobility that evening, we gained the title of a national hero.
The feast and dance went on but still I was troubled by my previous assertions. Again I brought the topic up, this time to Radley during a recess and he agreed saying that the demonlord himself had to be taken care of to put all of this behind us.
He made the case that I should go to the hellmouth, because I had teleportation and invisibility spells, to enter and scout the location and come back to make detailed reports about it with the Queen's war council. Radley was explaining it in a way that made it sound like I was gonna draw a dungeon map to help better plan a future raid on it.
I had to agree, it was a pretty good plan. For Radley. I think this was his last attempt to triumph over me by secretly entering the hellmouth and killing the demonlord himself but he was too unsure of what he would be facing if he ventured in alone.
Radley's last goof was telling me to enter that hellmouth myself.
Because I did end up taking his advice to go scout the hellmouth and its region the very next day. Thing was, the demons I encountered were as weak as the ones we fought in the war but now I had no army whose safety I had to worry about. So I kept going, killing every demon I came across and progressed deeper and deeper into the hellmouth.
My raid on the hellmouth did not last even 40 minutes until I reached the demonlord himself. If I were to be honest, it was a little disappointing. I almost laughed out loud when I first saw him but I managed to reel it in just incase he was using some kind of deception skill.
This 'Easter King' turned out to be nothing but a taskmaster demon who was barely five feet tall and wearing a crown too heavy for his head, a cloak that was too cumbersome, and a potbelly. The only thing menacing about him was the whip he was wielding but even that was contrasted with his constant trembling.
I judged him as a baseline lv.55 opponent if he were a Farscape mob. He looked almost too pathetic to kill now and I figured since he was the leader of this hellmouth he would have an idea of how to destroy it. So I triggered my Celestial Champion's staff form auto-attack to do some damage to him so he would just surrender to me without a fight.
Only problem was... it critted to one-shot him. So I had to improvise.
The demonlord was now dead so that would end the demon's coordinated efforts but the hellmouth will continue to spawn them and another more powerful demon could again come to take residence here, thus creating another cycle of war for this land and its people.
So the hellmouth had to be destroyed. I thought of the bunker bombs that were used to attack the terrorist hideouts in the Middle East and I had the perfect spell to duplicate that effect.
It was called [Ultima] and it was the strongest damage dealing spell in the entire Farscape franchise. It cost a ton of mana to use, in this case almost a third my mana bar, but it dealt an insane amount of Typeless damage which could also be boosted by the user's own magical ability. My own [Ultima] spell could one-shot many lv.60 dungeon bosses in the Farscape game but how strong would it be in a world made real.
Would it be too strong? I mean its spell effect in the game was a giant green explosion.
However the hellmouth itself was like a bridge to the hell dimensions themselves, atleast that is what the sages had said. So any explosion like effect inside it should not affect the world outside it too much. Atleast that was my general line of thought.
I quickly tested some of my teleportation spells just to make sure I could make a quick getaway. While basic teleports in and out were blocked, [Circle Teleport] was not and so I backtracked outside the hellmouth to where I placed a preset [circle] far enough away. Then I rushed back into the chamber where the taskmaster laid dead. I lifted the demonlord's crown and cloak to offer as proof of his demise and stored it in my inventory.
I then used [Ultima], boosting it with the metamagic modifier +Widen hoping the magic would 'hit' enough of the hellmouth to destroy it. But even I was surprised at the intensity of the spell just casted as it cascaded upon its target environment. This was going to have a powerful effect.
At that the moment when I saw the rushing green light, I recalled myself to the [circle] outside to witness what looked like the erupting of a volcano. It was like a column of green flame shot out from all directions from the mountain cave.
The explosion did not last all that long, about five seconds, and the entirety of the hellmouth that once looked like a small mountain was now a gaping crater. But it really was not all that deep considering the spell that was used to destroy it. Much of the damage from [Ultima] was indeed limited due to the hellmouth being cross-dimensional.
My tactic was a success and so I returned to the capital.
The Queen and her advisors were flabbergasted when I told them I had killed the demonlord and destroyed the hellmouth which had plagued their lands for over a century. Perhaps the only one more shocked was Radley.
Of course - I had not seen it at the time.
There was no celebration that night or the next but one of the kingdom's scout parties soon returned several days after and confirmed the rumors of the destruction of the hellmouth. There was much festivity in the coming weeks, day and night, for those demons were finally vanquished for good.
It is difficult to describe the weeks after I destroyed the hellmouth. I thought that the Queen and her council would be ecstatic but instead the tone was more somber than I expected. About a week later I would receive a private summon from the Queen where she invited me into one of her private chambers. I could tell immediately the tone of this meeting was very much different from every other time we had met.
Alone save for two of her handmaidens present, the young Queen genuflected to me and thanked me for my great service. I was in a panic and said she need not bow to me and tried to explain how I was only fulfilling my duty to her as her summoned hero. The Queen's face was in tears and she gave me a weak smile asking what reward I would claim from her. She was so clearly overcome with emotion that I could hardly ask her for anything.
The Queen was insistent that I should be rewarded but my mind was a total blank in this moment so I blurted out the first thing I thought of and asked her for a hug. I know I must have sounded really lame and looking back on it now was so self-deprecating but atleast it made the Queen's smile seem more heartening.
And it was a nice long hug as if the Queen was thanking me for all I had done. Sometimes when I closed my eyes I could still feel that embrace. Her head on my neck, the smell of her hair, and even the feel of her large breasts buried into my chest.
That is what made the Queen's betrayal even more of a conundrum.
It was not like she had every reason to get rid of me like Radley would have. Because what did she really stand to gain from it?
It was unlikely she was being controlled by Radley because one of the Queen's guards, advisors, or even handmaidens would have surely protested his actions. There was no way that could have been kept secret.
I mean she was usually surrounded by a litter of people.
But it was not long after our hug that the Queen held a secret meeting between herself and her summoned heroes. She thanked us again for our service but implored for us to consider going back to our homeworld.
I should have realized something was off here. Because none of her previous actions would make any sense if so. Why bestow us any titles at all if she had intended to send us back to Earth once our task of defeating the demons was completed?
Although I did not accept the dismissal meekly. I protested to the Queen I had nothing really left to go back for as much of my family had already passed and my life there was nothing like it is here. I knelt to the Queen actually begging to remain her champion.
How pathetic that was...
But it was not the Queen that ultimately convinced me but Radley who agreed with her sentiment that we summoned heroes were too big an obstacle for her kingdom to move forward. We were too powerful you see and he explained it in a such a way that our mere presence would hinder their recovery and would sow fear and discord among the populace.
I tried to counter-argue every point Radley made but the Queen then confessed that she would want nothing more than to have the both of us remain at her side as her champions but her advisors have been informing her of the civil unrest happening in the countryside where our powers were shown when we were subjugating the demons.
Now that was a bald-faced lie if there ever was one. The capital itself would have been the first to show this "civil unrest". After all they had seen me heal and resurrect people and cast all manner of magics. If the people had become so afraid of my power, they would have not have greeted me so openly on your streets would they.
Eventually I was verbally beaten down to consider returning to Earth and finally relented when Radley agreed to be sent back. The Queen thanked us again and had us swore to keep this as much a secret as possible. She would inform us at a later date when the preparations have been made for her to send us back home.
The next time I would see her was the day she created the portal to Earth. Of course it was not a portal to Earth but a hell world but I was unawares at the time.
About a week later, me and Radley received word in secret that the preparations had been completed and for us to arrive at the designated location. It was a ruin almost a hundred miles from the castle city. In one of its basement chambers was this weird looking altar with strange glyphic markings about it.
The whole place had a very occult vibe to it. I pointed this out to the Queen but she said it was an old place of worship long abandoned.
I should have trusted my instincts there.
The Queen looked to use the altar as a focus to create the portal that would bring us home. She then asked me to be the first to step through and go back.
As I approached the portal, I turned back to look at the Queen who was beautiful as the day I first saw her. Her face this time was strained as though she did not want me to go. I bowed to her hoping this image of her would forever be implanted into my mind.
Then to Radley, whom I nodded my head to.
No further words were exchanged between the three of us.
Then I stepped into the portal without looking back.
The betrayal was complete and I had walked right into it.
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Twenty-seven years is a long time.
But this hell world had not claimed me the way those two had hoped.
The god-beast of this world devours those who enters its domain but I have managed to evade its maw and even destroyed it a number of times.
I suffered and suffered and suffered in this hellish atmosphere where the heat is all encompassing, the air smells and tastes of sulfur, and where only desolation stretches to the eye can see.
But I did not die.
Instead I did what they had not expected - I survived.
Surviving here made me stronger than they (even I) could have ever imagined. Because there was not much to do here but to survive.
That and try to find a hobby to help pass the time.
Going over my current predicament was one of them.
I looked at the object in my hand. It was the platinum medallion the Queen had given me and Radley as her favor when she saw us off to war. She had ask us to leave everything we had obtained in her world behind when we entered the portal home. I guess it was her way of saying it would be better for us to leave her world the same way we entered it.
But I entered the portal with her favor clutched in my hand, hoping I would still be holding onto it when I came back to Earth. A memento, to know that my life meant something and that those past 8 months was not some wild fantasy.
Another hobby I had picked up in this hell world was skygazing. I was never much into astronomy back on Earth but looking at this dimension's multicolored horizon was a sure improvement over the vast desolate wasteland I was stuck on.
It was a bizarre sky to be sure, especially when compared to that of the Earth or the other world I was summoned to. This Hell's skyline looked to three different skies as though they were somehow fused together. Each sky was red but had clear differences to the other.
Shades of purple could also be seen melded through them like a fog lifted on the morning air.
And the lights that danced in the farthest distance were taunting. Were they other hell worlds? Or were they worlds outside of this hell dimension?
How many times did I try to escape into that horizon only to yanked back by that strange gravitational force? Too many to count.
Like I said - I had to try and keep my mind off of things and skygazing became one of them. One of the things I noticed in these past twenty years is the three skies moved with a fluidity like that you would see in a lava lamp, albeit much much slower.
That meant that even after all these years, the horizon never looked the same. It was ever-changing.
The purple fog that seemed to flow between them moved in the same manner. But it took 27 years to prove me wrong.
Those purplish lights were not like a fog, they were like a stream. An aurora dancing upon the skies.
I did not notice it at first but what I thought to be a dense mist was actually three distinct wavelengths that intertwined with the others forming a complex blur across the red skies that made it hard to tell where one began and one ended.
But in the past few years, those three streams had begun to shift into a strange pattern that I had not seen in the near thirty years in this hell world. It was as if they wanted to be clear and distinct lines separating the three vistas from the other.
It was not quite there yet but it would not be long now.
I looked again to the platinum medallion in my hand. I held it up by its chain to the red horizon above.
The queen's favor and this Convergence - they were going to be my ticket out of here.