Vulso

“A thousand years and a thousand times that many fools have died, and they still do not understand the futility of their struggle. It is a shame that so many more of them will die before I get a chance to refine any of them into something worthwhile,” Vulso mused to himself as he sat on a throne fashioned for him out of human bodies, hundreds of hell-cursed creatures prostrating themselves below.

He was still annoyed that he had been forced to drag himself several gygaaxs away after his short-range teleport took him from the annoying creatures at the portal and their pitiful weapons. He would have killed all of them if he hadn’t been nearly cut in half by the portal disruption. Instead he was forced to locate the local emissaries of the Demonic Faction, only to find them little more than semi-evolved reanimated corpses.

“Your benevolent concern toward those from my former species is without bound O Classed One of the Old World, but they may not be deserving of such mercy,” implored Cynna, Vulso's closest servant on the wretched planet. Cynna was once a human, but upon her transformation into one of the hell-cursed, she had managed to climb her way up through multiple evolutions to the point where she had not only regained her previous sentience, but had achieved the intelligence of a hell-cursed field commander and would have been one if the flailing mess of mindless fools around her ever evolved enough to be organized into anything more than a braindead mob of morons.

“I do not need the advice of one as unevolved as you,” Vulso retorted after a moment, leaning back. “If I want your opinion, I’ll inform you of such. ” He paused, the jet-black eight-foot-long horns that adorned his head nearly scraping the ceiling as his eyeless face glanced over at what evolutions had occurred among the local stock and remained dismayed. A partially decomposed zombie had brought him something to eat. “Uhhhg. Brains?” Vulso imagined the unthinking wight saying as it stared up at him dumbly. The lowest form of hell-cursed often had a predilection for consuming the most unique and useful part of the local species. With there being nothing outstanding—in his opinion—about the entire human race, that meant the organ responsible for their intelligence, mediocre as it was.

“Understood,” Cynna said, bowing her head as she awaited further instruction.

Her pathetic, servile demeanor annoyed him. “Have you made yourself useful yet?”

“I . . . Yes, yes, of course. I found a source of fissile material to aid you in your regeneration. There is only one small complication . . .” Cynna cowered, her back parallel to the floor beneath her as she remained bowed to Vulso. “There is . . . There is a group of humans who have created a large military structure near the fissionable material. They are using it to power their base and the two other bases around them.”

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“I see, so you’re saying you’re too weak to deal with a couple of low-level, unevolved natives?” Vulso’s words caused Cynna to tremble in place as she bowed even further, refusing to straighten her back and look at him.

“Not at all sir! I swear, I’ll die if I must to—”

“Do not die!” Vulso interrupted her, waving his clawed hand as he dismissed the suggestion altogether. “That is what those unenlightened humans will do. They must die if they cannot be reformed, not the other way around. It is for their own sake. But, if you’re that worried about it—or you are insistent that this lesser species can put up a proper resistance—then I shall send something else more capable of combat in your place.” He reached out with his hand. It only took a moment to perform his intended task, siphoning off the life force energy of the two-hundred-plus hell-cursed humans waiting on bended knee to serve him. Their bodies shriveled and cracked before collapsing to the ground as he used a skill to rip their power from them to form a ball in his hand.

Seeing what was happening, Cynna was terrified. She began to shake even more while Vulso beckoned with his free hand to one of the hell-cursed that wasn’t as evolved as Cynna. When the brute got close enough, Vulso took the ball of energy and pushed it into the brute’s chest.

The hell-cursed brute ground its teeth to keep from crying out in pain even as the energy that had been forced into it caused its body to change. The brute’s skin burned away, revealing an almost perfect anatomical model of the muscular system, and his great physique by bodybuilder standards seemed to grow more compact. The brute fell to the ground, writhing in pain. His body was ripped apart and changed, as he absorbed the energy of two hundred plus of his brethren. Muscles detached from joints and became more dense and refined before reattaching. Bones broke and were infused with glowing energy before reforming. When the transformation finally ended, the hell-cursed brute, who was now so much more than he once was, lay panting. He stood and looked down at his new body. Where once he had resembled a bodybuilder, now he looked like a lean swimmer. When he moved, his muscles moved with more power than even the greatest weightlifter could ever hope to have. He looked up at Vulso and bowed at the waist toward his lord, two four-inch horns peeking through his now-white hair. The hell-cursed brute had finished evolving into its final form: a hell-cursed general.

“You, whom I now name Atilius, carry with you the potential and life force of hundreds of your kind. Grow, evolve, and prove you are worthy of their sacrifice,” Vulso instructed the brute in front of him.

“I shall honor them, my lord,” declared the transformed creature.

“Go and bring me back what I require so that I may be healed of this disgusting injury and use my full power to spread the hell-cursed blessing to these uncivilized animals,” Vulso commanded.

“It will be done,” Atilius, the hell-cursed general replied, bowing once before turning to accomplish his goal.