I awakened to a bucket of ice-cold water being thrown into my face and a body screaming in agony. My legs burned from the spikes of magma puncturing the bone, my high resistance to heat magic and the powerful regenerative aura created by my cell only making the pain worse. My eyes were punctured by spikes of ice, the cold threatening to dull my thoughts despite my resistances. My arms were punctured in hundreds of places by barbs of iron sparking with lightning magic, the muscles spasming and twitching constantly as the electricity sent random signals along my nerves. My ribcage was cracked open, exposing my organs to the pure pulses of necromantic mana coming from the soul gems nestled between them that constantly fought the regenerative aura to maintain me.
“Amazing. Simply amazing. I thought they were telling me a joke when they said there was a human still alive, confined in the Eternal Prison for crimes against all the races. I will have to send some coin to their families in apology for having them turned into ghouls for my armies,” A new voice, smooth and cultured, with a German-like accent, brushed my exposed eardrums where the sides of my skull had been flayed to the bone.
This wasn’t my usual torturer, come to add to my suffering as part of my sentence. My torturer was a crazy gnome with a high-pitched voice that occasionally cut off in fits of choking due to his inability to shut up. It wasn’t one of the gray dwarf guardians, either. Their voices were universally gravelly and gruff, edged slightly with cruelty.
“It’s nice… to have… a new… visitor, on occas...sion,” I managed, barely able to get my necromantically-numbed diaphragm to expand and contract sufficiently to allow myself to speak. I was used to pain, even pain as severe as what I was currently suffering. The truth was, my gnomish torturer and I had fallen into something of a rut for some time now. He’d run out of tricks, and my screams were no longer all that enthusiastic.
To put it bluntly, I was bored.
“Yes, it must be. Humanity has been extinct, but for you, for almost two centuries now. Your race did well, for all that its start crippled it, but I never imagined that one of you would have managed to offend the Observers badly enough to be sentenced here!” My visitor’s tone was absolutely delighted, and I could sense that he was just tickled that a member of one of the weakest races had managed to piss off the virtual gods of the hellscape we were all condemned to live in.
“Always… was… good at… poking...the bear...” I rasped out, grinning cheerfully. The death of my species had stopped bothering me long ago. The truth was, I’d already lived a much longer span in the Eternal Prison than I had as a human being. My memories of my previous life were distant, though not blurred (something about the Prison prevented memories from fading… part of the punishment, most likely).
“Indeed. The Eternal Prison has less than a thousand ‘residents’, despite the fact that they are all rendered immortal by its enchantments and no one is ever released. The Observers rarely deign to speak to races that haven’t reached the 4th Tier, much less a member of a race that never managed to get past the 3rd. You absolutely must tell me what you did to so catch the ire of the most powerful beings in the Seven Tiers,” My visitor said.
“I killed… one… of them… in battle...” I answered, honestly. It was the biggest mistake I had made in my life. However, it was also the reason I was still alive. As such, I had mixed feelings about my current situation.
“That’s impossible,” My visitor said coldly, obviously thinking I was lying.
“Hah… yeah… I wish it was… humanity might… have… survived...otherwise,” I said, a smile that wasn’t quite bitter curving my lips. My arrogance in confronting the Observers out of resentment for what was being forced upon us had ruined humanity. If I’d lost, it wouldn’t have been so bad. I would have died, and the matter would have been forgotten within minutes.
Unfortunately, after a desperate and horrifically devastating battle, I’d struck down the Observer whose dispassionate gaze had so earned my ire.
“What do you mean? The Observers might punish an individual, but they have never punished a race for the individual’s crimes, to my knowledge,” The voice sounded confused, almost frightened.
“Something… you get… to find out… when you… defeat… an Observer… Forbidden… knowledge,” That was as much as I was willing to tell anyone. There were certain things I wouldn’t wish on any race, and one of those was what I had gained in killing an Observer.
“They killed your race for what you came to know?” He asked incredulously, the fear still there.
“S’right… by the rules… I am… punished. But… if I pass on… knowledge? Fear this...” I tried to explain, the necromantic soul gems once again corroding my lungs just a little too much to speak clearly, even in gasps. My punishment was my punishment. My race’s destruction was an emergency reaction to the possibility that I might somehow have spread the forbidden knowledge to others of my species.
It didn’t make sense unless you had the knowledge that came from killing an Observer. Observers are bound to certain absolute laws that they are incapable of disobeying. One of them is that the Eternal Prison is the punishment for those who have killed an Observer. Then there are certain imperatives that all Observers share… and the biggest one is that the knowledge I’d gained should never reach any of the races competing in the Seven Tiers.
In truth, I understood perfectly why it was done. At the time, I’d fallen into despair, even as my punishments began. Now? I didn’t really have despair left in me. It wasn’t apathy… it was just that I’d never really cared about humanity as a whole in the first place. I’d cared about my circle, the family I’d formed in the Tiers. It was rage born of that caring that had driven me to kill the Observer. I’d succeeded in using all the power I gained by killing the Observer to send them somewhere where they couldn’t be reached… but I would never know what happened to them after.
“Something the Observers fear...” Desire was in the voice’s tone now. I wanted to snort with amusement, but that would have required a rather precipitous gathering of air that my lungs were incapable of, at present. The sensation of suffocating for years on end was something I was accustomed to, but the inability to give a good reaction to others’ words was sometimes a little depressing.
“Don’t… try… it. Not… worth...it,” I managed to warn. Some things really are best left alone.
I felt cold hands… too cold hands on my temples, and I suddenly realized what my current companion was, Oh fuck… a vampire lord.
Despite the legends, vampires weren’t humans. They were a humanoid race that fed on the fluids of other races, drinking in the essence of what those races were along with their lives. They were also mind-readers.
With an effort more painful than is possible to describe, I activated some of the forbidden knowledge I’d gained, and my companion screamed in agony. I couldn’t see it, but I knew that the green worms would be burrowing into his soul, tearing out his personality, devouring his mind. If there was one thing I agreed with the Observers about, it was that no one had any business possessing that knowledge.
I listened to him scream indifferently for several hours as he was devoured. Vampires are a Tier 5 race, meaning that they are ridiculously tough, both in body and soul. Even the cursed magic I’d just used would take time to eat away at his essence enough to kill him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use any magic that might end him faster in the state I was in.
“Interesting. I hadn’t thought you would act in a way that benefits our cause,” The cold, mellow voice I’d last heard on the day humanity was sentenced to death pierced the vampire’s agonized screams like they weren’t even there.
“I’m not the man I was. Knowledge is a much greater burden than most realize,” I managed, suppressing the surge of old, old rage that threatened to rise at the voice of the Judge.
“Indeed. However, this was an unanticipated service… one that merits reward. Your punishment is considered sufficient, and you haven’t been driven to madness by the pain or the knowledge within you. Normally, I would simply release you to your race, sealing your ability to use magic, but...” He sounded regretful, more at the fact that he couldn’t follow procedure than anything else.
“Can’t release me to a race that doesn’t exist,” I said, finishing his thought. Over the centuries, my anger at the Judge had never really faded. However, such intensities of emotion no longer disturbed my mentality. I was constantly raging with emotions that I felt but never reacted to. Buffering my mind and spirit had allowed me to survive the forbidden knowledge I’d gained relatively intact, but I was fairly sure I’d lost my humanity in the process.
“Exactly… moreover, you seem to have mastered our creator’s gifts to some extent. It is unlikely that a seal would function correctly,” The Judge sounded regretful.
‘Eldritch Gift’ was one of several cheap ‘upgrades’ offered to individuals right after they are summoned to the Tiers. At the time I’d taken it, I was simply curious and unaware of the value of such upgrades. However, its power was one of the greatest of the gifts offered in the lower Tiers, one that would grow with use and mastery. The side-effects, however…
“It is far too late to change the path I chose,” I replied dryly. If I hadn’t chosen a different path in my Eldritch development, I would have ceased to even look human even before I was imprisoned. The path of Eldritch magic had three major paths… Mastery of the Spirit, Mastery of the Body, and Mastery of the Mind. I’d chosen Spirit, which was probably the biggest mistake I could have made. Body would have made me into a Horror, Mind would have led to insanity, but Spirit made me… different in some undefinable way, while granting me access to magic that put the other two paths to shame.
Spirit was irreversible, unlike the other two paths, because Spirit was the base of all paths, the source of true power. The effects of Spirit made themselves known, if slowly, on both Mind and Body. My body became resistant to the elements, my mind resistant to controls and illusions. My spirit… became twisted with Eldritch magic. A user of the Mind could be broken down and built back up, at the cost of their original personality. A user of the body could be severed from their flesh and installed in a new avatar. However, a user of the Spirit aspect of the Eldritch was doomed in ways that were indescribable to anyone who wasn’t also of the Eldritch persuasion.
“You do know you are the only human to have chosen Mastery of the Spirit and survive long enough to actually master its gifts? I was surprised. You acted almost perfectly human at all times, never giving a hint to your fellows about how… different you had become, until you challenged and slew Radalaha. You realized your reactions to emotions were becoming skewed, so you began to simulate how a human would react, how a human would think, what expression a human would have in any given situation. It was… entertaining to watch,” The Judge reminisced.
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“So what’s the point of this trip down memory lane? If you just want to hear yourself talk, could I get back to being tortured?” When he entered, the Judge had removed the soul gems, most likely so he wouldn’t have to listen to my wheezing. It was oddly… disturbing to be able to breath freely. I was unsure if it was a pleasant sensation after so long a time deprived of breath.
“That’s just the thing. There was a certain number of Punishment Points you had to achieve to regain your freedom, and by killing a man who was thinking of freeing you, you earned enough to go over that number. I have no choice but to free you… but if I freed you now, there is no telling how you would disrupt the Game. As such, I have been authorized to take… other measures,” The Judge replied.
“Other measures?” I asked curiously.
“To make you an Observer, of course. Allowing you true freedom is too much of a risk, and your spirit has been sufficiently altered to make the racial transition. Please hold still,” The Judge said, placing a cold, seven-fingered hand on my forehead.
Immediately, I focused and tore my right arm free from my bonds, calling on another scrap of Forbidden Knowledge as I plunged my hand into the space I knew his core to be.
The ancient being screamed, its voice suddenly like nails on a chalkboard, a voice that would have driven a normal human mad in an instant. However, I’d spent centuries carefully building up the power for a moment like this, never wasting even a single scrap of mana on anything other than my preparations.
I plunged my hands through the hardened and strangely dry insides of the ancient being and grasped the smooth orb of energy that was its core. I could feel the Eldritch might of a being far more powerful than myself pulsing beneath my hand, but it was no match for the more-focused power in my fingertips.
My fingers sank into the orb, and I sent tendrils of pure corrosive power into it through them, obliterating the Judge’s identity, piece by piece. The Judge was an Absolute entity, normally invulnerable to anything a slave of the Tiers could do… unless they were using a Forbidden Method to alter the nature of Eldritch power in the correct way.
As I erased his identity, his struggles eased, and I began to tear away bits and pieces of his power, feeding them into a space I’d created in my Spirit long ago for the purpose. Eldritch might far beyond the means of mortals flowed into that space, devoid of identity or purpose. I greedily continued the entire process until the last scrap of the Judge’s identity, the center part of his soul, was all that remained.
With a quick motion, I focused the last of the built-up mana I’d been concealing and crushed it, burning it with
I slumped briefly before reaching my hands down and forcing my ribcage back together with a grunt. I then slowly unwound the enchanted barbed wire entwining my arms before dropping it to the floor. This was followed by the removal of the ice spikes from my eyes.
Once that was done, I merely sat back for a few moments, recovering quickly as the room’s power restored my eyes and the flesh of my torso, pushing bones back into their proper place, healing the last bits of necrotic organs. I coughed out pieces of blackened flesh for several minutes as this occurred, my body purging the disgusting remnants in the best way it could.
That done, I reached down and began methodically removing the magma spikes from my legs and feet, tossing them into the bucket of Primal Water set aside for those times when my torturer was forced to actually release me from the pain for one reason or another. Last of all, I reached inside my ragged loincloth and tore off the cursed rings constantly sending jolts of agony through that area, tossing them to the floor with prejudice.
After centuries of suffering, I was completely free of pain. It was… less overwhelming than I thought it would be. My raging emotions, which never quite reached the surface anyway, subsided into near non-existence without the pain to stimulate them.
I frowned. This wouldn’t do. I bent over and picked up the rings, placing one on each hand and two in my ears. That was better. The pain from the rings revived my ability to feel somewhat, telling me that I had gone quite a bit farther down the path of Spirit than I had thought during my confinement. The pain would serve as a reminder of the path I’d walked, not letting me forget my past as more and more of my humanity slipped away.
There were alien emotions inside me, the result of the more minor alterations to Body and Mind that had occurred naturally over my extended lifetime. I hungered in odd ways, ways that would be incomprehensible to most. The Eldritch power even now beginning to form the beginnings of a Core in the space I’d set aside for it in my Spirit called to me, and I had to shake my head to free myself of the temptation to take it in just yet.
I walked over to the thick iron door of my cell and smashed it off its hinges with a single kick, sending it smashing into the body of my torturer, the little gnome squealing in agony as bones cracked throughout his body. When I casually pulled the door off of him, I could see him squirm with pain as the healing magic of the Eternal Prison sought to repair him.
Unlike me, for him this process was slow. My body’s regeneration rate was as powerful as that of a vampire, meaning that most wounds would close in minutes, even without the Eternal Prison’s magic. The torturer was just a gnome who had gone a few steps too far down the path of the Mind, driving him insane and giving him a desire to see others suffer.
I called up a small flicker the black-limned green of
It was surprisingly unsatisfying to see the little monster erased from existence… but then, my emotions toward him had never been as strong as those toward the Judge and Observers, in any case.
I made my way into the depths of the Prison, occasionally killing guards and torturers along the way with darkfire. The good part of the spell was that it instantly incinerated the current existence of the individuals it was used to kill, meaning that only a deity or a carrier of souls would realize they had died. If used on a soul, only the god it was devoted to would know it was sent into oblivion.
So convenient, if a bit of a mana hog. Not that my mana regeneration wasn’t up to the task, what with the Prison being seated on an intersection of no less than forty-eight leylines.
In the depths of the prison, I found what I was looking for… the Vault. There were two guards, one of them an elf with eyes filled with the green worms that told of higher Eldritch contamination and the other a draconian with a staff flickering with black lightning in his right hand, his body covered with fine black silk robes. The elf was dressed in mithril chain armor, two swords sheathed at his side.
I considered what to do. Killing them would be easy, but that would not serve my purpose. I needed one of them alive for what I was thinking of.
It was really no choice at all, in the end. A small bolt of darkfire took the elf in the leg, and my fist, encased in a gauntlet of pure black
The elf’s body was already gone, though his swords had survived, glowing with the bilious green aura of corrupt Eldritch blessings. I’d chosen the draconian because the elf’s contamination would have likely made any attempt at what I was about to do meaningless. Someone as far gone into Mind that they had begun to display the green worms in their eyes would be invulnerable to the spell I needed to use.
I tied up the draconian and sat down to meditate, breathing the mana in and transforming it into energies I could use… mostly Eldritch. Once, my essence had been a mix of elemental powers, but now most of it was made up of the power I’d gained by going down the path of the Spirit. All magic I used was tainted with the power I had pursued, and there were entire fields of sorcery I would never again be able to touch.
I had no regrets, though. I no longer had anyone I needed to impress or protect.
Once I had enough power to spare after what I intended to do, I reached out my right hand and placed it on the draconian’s head. I called up one of the more (for lack of a better word) ‘evil’ spells I’d created from Forbidden Knowledge and sent it through my hand and into the draconian’s body. I ruthlessly severed the bond between the reptilian creature’s Spirit and Body, leaving only the Mind and Body linked. I then filled the gap left behind with the Eldritch construct I’d just created.
The draconian’s body twitched several times before it opened eyes filled with green flames.
“Open the Vault,” I commanded.
“Yesss… Master,” It rasped as it came to its feet and placed its hands on the smooth metal of the Vault’s seal.
After several minutes of chanting, during which layers of magical locks, each of them symbolized by a circle of azure runes on the surface of the seal, vanished one by one, the seal vanished, revealing a vast room with walls lined with shelves full of treasures and abominations of all sorts.
I killed the draconian with a bolt of darkfire, then I entered the Vault, running my eyes over its contents intently but indifferent to most of what was there. Greed for loot wasn’t alien to me, but I needed a certain object I’d possessed before my arrival.
The Vault was massive, easily twice the size of the Prison itself, contained within a pocket dimension that could only be accessed through the seal. All possessions of beings confined to the Prison were sent there to be cataloged and stored upon their arrival, without exception.
I caught sight of my old armor, its silver surface blackened and cracked, melted in places from the battle I’d fought so long ago. However, it was of no interest to me now. I had no use for armor in the plans I had made.
My sword, a black-bladed beauty made out of a demon’s soul welded to deep mithril, sat on a rack near the front, but I didn’t reach out for it. Like the armor, it was of little use in my plans. Its power was permanently depleted, in any case, used up to provide the energy to overwhelm the Observer so long ago.
My wedding ring, a simple band of platinum enchanted to provide a boost to health and regeneration, I also ignored. My wife was long dead, even before my imprisonment. It’s presence could no longer move me.
I found dozens of other artifacts and objects I’d once possessed, all of them irrelevant to my plans. Each of them had been powerful beyond belief in the 3rd Tier before my defeat. None of them would survive me exercising my power while using or wearing them now.
Finally, I found what I’d been looking for, a simple tarnished copper necklace with a cracked emerald the size of my pinky’s nail set into a simple tear-shaped pendant at the end. Obviously, no one had understood what it was, or it would have been destroyed in an absolute panic. Even the Observers would be unlikely to tolerate its continued existence, had they known about it.
“The Pendant of Rasvti’Arckva,” I said aloud, taking it in my hands reverently before clasping it around my neck. I felt the pulse of acknowledgment from the soul-bound artifact. It was almost sentient, a creation of a lesser Outer God made for his mortal bride. Anyone who knew its secrets and was bonded to it could insert their essence into any point in the past, present, or future, at a cost in power that was prohibitive even for many higher beings.
Thus, the Judge’s essence.
I sat down on the floor, and I felt a truly evil smile curve my lips. I felt a dark delight at the thought of what I was about to do, ancient spite toward the beings that dragged me into the Game twisting in my soul, burning with Eldritch flames that now merely felt warm to me.
I activated the pendant, feeding it the larger portion of the Judge’s power. I ignored the sense of loss that came with giving up such an immense bounty of power, but if I succeeded, I would likely lose even more soon enough.
The pendant, suddenly fully awake, attempted to devour my Spirit, as it always did when I used it. However, with an absolute will born of my chosen path through life, I forced it to obey.
My body faded away as I sent my Mind and Spirit through time, seeking the point I wished to arrive at. I saw the time I’d spent in the Prison gradually rewind, a mostly monotonous period save for the beginning, when the gnome, now a drow, had tormented me so skillfully. I saw a Judge, of a different race from the seven-fingered, yellow-skinned demi-lich I’d destroyed, condemn me. I saw my fight with the Observer, the death of a good friend that preceded it, and all the events of my time in the Seven Tiers rewind.
I went back into the time before, when I was just another young man of Earth. The fat man in his twenties, sitting on a computer chair while watching anime and playing rpgs, the man I once had been, I winced at… and forced the pendant to insert my essence into that period of time.