Novels2Search

4.

I am a curiosity.

Some call me an accident. The accident.

Others call me a perversion, and the result of all of that greed that made me.

But I was here before you were, and I will most likely still be here when the last of your kind leaves this world.

Deal with it.

I was born in an accident, true.

An accident so terrible that people still talk about it.

I am the result of what happens when someone tries to capture a little Greed before it can enter it's host.

My surroundings suffered from my creation.

The whole world did really.

I am the collection of millions of souls, their memories and their Demons.

All of their Envies, their Gluttons, their Greeds, their Lusts, their Prides, their Sloths and their Wraths.

I have no collection of how I became.

One moment I was not, the next I was.

Easy as that.

There was nothing much left of civilisation for the first couple of centuries of my being.

Luckily some people of all kinds survived my creation.

Would have been really boring without living beings around.

The first couple centuries nobody came to me, so all I could do was re-live a small portion of all those memories that made me.

I experienced life as a man, a woman, a child, a slave of any of the races that made me.

I was a dog, a cat, a rat, a bug, a fly, a spider, cattle, horse, sheep.

I used and abused and I was used and abused in return.

I experienced a lot, but I have yet even more ahead of me.

Possibly another millennium or two of memories of all those beings that were consumed in my creation.

Some memories are very short. Others are as long as a century.

That's why I have more experience with being an animal then a person.

Lack of time.

But whenever I got some free time I continue to watch and learn.

And then at some point when people recovered enough they came looking for what was left of the site that their ancestors did their little experiment.

And they found me.

They didn't know what to make of me.

And when they learned what I was made of they started to make demands.

They DEMANDED their ancestors knowledge.

From ME.

For FREE.

I refused.

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First they tried to hurt me, and take from me by force.

I may be bound here, but I am not made of flesh.

Fire.

Cold.

Poison.

And many more insidious methods.

But I laughed at their attempts.

They still persistently tried for a long time.

Then they tried to move me.

But when one group tried, another attacked them.

Afraid that the other group would keep all my knowledge for themselves after securing me.

So for half a decade I experienced war from a front row seat.

Amusing at first, but numbingly boring after the first couple of months.

They all curse, they all scream, they all cry and they all bleed when they get hurt.

And eventually they die and just remain silent forever.

Then they came to bargain.

But I had no use for their gold, gems and slaves.

I did not need a palace.

I had no desire to be worshipped in a temple.

And I did not find their short-lived, domesticated zoo and circus pets entertaining enough.

Thought, the diplomats they send were an amusing bunch.

Especially how they interacted with each other when they believed I could not see or hear them.

And finally came the day I was offered something new.

Something I did not learn from my memories up to that point.

An old scholar was the first to make a deal with me.

He found an old notebook in a ruin when he was just a boy.

He spend his whole life chasing those wonders described in the book.

And finally he made a discovery that was not described by the author of the book.

But he was afraid of never finding an explanation for his discovery.

So he came to me.

And we struck a deal.

His discovery and all his future discoveries for my help in explaining it and helping him with his problem.

A good deal.

And for the next 15 years I received monthly reports from him regarding his progress and his other discoveries.

Sadly he had no disciples.

My second deal was with a Baron. An unimportant noble from the western region bordering the cursed zone, my area.

He offered me a comprehended history of his region and a slave to read it to me for my knowledge regarding how to raise cattle.

His offer amused me, because before he came I had just re-lived the memories of a cow.

And therefore I accepted, not knowing what to expect.

And for the next year I had a slave sitting next to me reading to me from census data, tax data, birth and death registers, and so forth. Who married whom, correspondent with their liege lords, police reports. Blablabla.

I had never known how utterly boring a yearly collection of governmental data really was up to that point.

Luckily the Barons family only ruled that region for the last 250 years or so.

Needless to say that I did not accepted a similar deal for a long time.

My third deal was with a church that was rather influential at the time.

By now they are barely a footnote in history.

One of their Saints, the first high clergy I met, offered me a very detailed map of the known world and the promise to have it updated at least once a year.

In return he wanted to know everything I knew of the ancestors religions and their beliefs.

And for nearly 800 years I was able to enjoy the sight of how the people recolonized this world, how all those lords and ladies tried to shift their borders by war and by marriage.

I still have those maps. Even thought the latest is out of date for nearly 2000 years by now.

A very good deal.

Then, somewhen around the time they started to research the cursed zone, the first researcher that wanted to get my input on an experiment similar to the one that created me appeared.

Even thought his offer was good, he failed to ask for all the details I knew.

And so he never returned from conducting that experiment.

Sometimes a century passes without somebody trying to get my help in creating another one like me. More often than not there are two in a century that ask for my help.

And even thought they pride themselves with their knowledge they did not learn a thing from all those that came before.

I am made from millions of mortal memories and all of their Demons.

The whole world offers me their knowledge, their newest discoveries and their dirtiest little secrets for a little bit of my own knowledge.

Why would I want to share this position with anybody or anything?

Never give in to pride. Only ever feed your greed.

Only by wanting for more, reaching for more and fighting for more will you eventually become more.

Only by becoming more, can you potentially escape from your Demon.

Only by escaping from your Demon can you possibly reach immortality.

And only with immortality can you possibly turn into a Demon yourself.