Smile Like You Mean It: Prologue

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The world was on fire, and all he knew was agony as his skull was pierced.

For an eternity the flames continued, eating away and devouring his mind, body, and soul as they left nothing behind. Inflicting a level of pain and agony unending so great that his mind shattered again and again as it tried to futilely piece itself together.

But it was in this state of shattered sanity, that some tangential part of him had looped around through the pain, feeding the rest of his mind into the flames in an attempt to try and salvage some piece of himself, retaining only that which he would never give up even if it meant the death of everything that made him, him.

Those things were far more important to him than any thought in his head, any bit of personality that described his ego, or even all of the power that he'd accumulated over the years.

Which is why the hellfire consumed all of it, everything he was, before they could touch that which was precious to him.

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Sadly though, this was not enough to stop the hellfire from eating away at these things that he clung to more in insane instinct than any conscious thought. Dimming recollections of what he was after, what he desired more than life itself, what he'd make his own even if he had to raze all of heaven and hell to the ground to do so.

But still he clung on to what he could, even as all that remained was the knowledge that there was something out there that he desired with all of his being, something that he could acquire if he found it once more.

Something that he knew he would find so long as the desire to do so remained, that longing emptiness that would drive lesser men to the abyss, it would push him to find what he could not even remember any more and he would make it his.

Which is why, as he hit the ground, his consciousness fading into the darkness, his power brought down to that of a lowly worm, his sanity a figment of the imagination, his body broken utterly, and his soul barely a spark of existence…

He couldn't help but smile.