I sat on the altar in the center of the stone circle as shamans burned incense around us. The wind was picking up the storm nearly upon us. Apparently, this ritual had to be completed tonight so I closed my eyes as the rain began to mist on me and distant thunder heralded the lightning that would soon be hunting me down.
“Remember Warlord, this is not a test of might, it is a test of heart,” Melania said to me.
“Yeah, yeah I’ve been through this before,” I waved her off.
She looked at me with a mixture of pity and sadness. “You have not experienced this before.”
The smoke filled my lungs, and I exhaled a plume of smoke. Exar’kun was wrapped around one of the menhir a single eye keeping an eye on the proceedings, Syvia had been ordered to be silent, but she was unchained and ungagged and sat beside the dragon. My vision slowly darkened as I fell into a vast empty void.
--
An empty expanse of space surrounded me. Slowly the landscape filled in and I was once more sitting on the altar in the middle of the stone circle. The world was greyscale, a creature emerged from the stone it was the only color to be seen its body made of green smoke. It took the form of a lion, but I could sense it was more than that.
“What are you?” I asked. My voice produced no sound, but it still echoed despite the vast expanse around us.
“I have existed since the first war of the gods, I have had many names,” the lion spoke though its face did not move. “The Hunter, Deceiver, Trickster, Protector, Provider, False God, Ancestral Spirit. All these things I have been called.”
“And which are you?” I asked.
“Perhaps I am all of them,” the spirit said. “We are not here to test me though; we are here to test you.”
“So, what are we going to do? View my past memories to see if I’ll crack?” I asked.
“I am not the Order of the Magi,” the ancestral spirit said. “I can see through your thoughts to what you think will happen. That is not what you are here to face, you are to face your shadow.”
“My shadow?” I asked skeptically. “Is that my evil twin or something.”
“Good, evil, they have no place here,” the ancestral spirit said. “Only weakness and strength, fear and bravery. We are to see if you are in control of your emotions or if you are instead controlled by them.”
“What happens if I fail here?” I asked. “Do I die in the real world.”
“I do not see this place as any less real then yours,” the spirit said. “There is no death here but if you do not overcome the shadow, than you will be overcome by it instead.”
“Bring it, I’m not afraid of myself,” I said.
“You will be,” the spirit warned me than disappeared along with the landscape around us.
--
I stood at the center of a battlefield the ground littered with corpses. Figure in black mist turned around face me crimson eyes meeting mine. The mist slowly faded, and I was left staring at my own helmeted visage. He removed his helm and tossed his hair back a well-trimmed beard underneath surprising me.
“Surprised?” he asked.
“I expected my shadow to be a bit wilder,” I admitted.
“I know when to contain my savagery,” he said. “Are you here to fight me?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I must defeat you, but I feel like fighting you would be giving into the dark side or whatever.”
“I don’t even know why you’re here,” my shadow self said. “You don’t need to do this trial you could have just taken the armor.”
“There leader is an Exarch,” I reminded him.
“You’ve fought an Exarch before,” he snarled his voice turning savage. “That weakness in us disgusts me, when we came to this world you threw yourself at every challenge and were rewarded. Now look at you, making deals and backing down from a challenge.”
“I gave my word to Guinevere…” I said heeling heat rise up in my chest.
“Guinevere!” my shadow-self scoffed. “She left us to go marry her cousin, you should have dominated her when you had the chance. She has made us weak.”
I didn’t even realize I’d drawn my sword before the scarlet light from Clarent shone across my shadow self.
“At least you haven’t left yourself completely behind,” my shadow self said drawing his own version of Clarent. “You do realize you can’t beat me here?”
“And why is that?” I asked.
“Because I am everything that makes you, you,” my shadow self said. “That anger that drives you, your rage in battle, that is me. The more you embrace what makes you strong the stronger I will become.”
We stared eachother down for a long minute as we circled eachother. “Where is your ambition?” my shadow-self asked. “You require a quest to make this clan your vassals, it is their nature to serve you. It is what their race was created to do. Remind them why they should bow before your presence.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Do you think that’s what I really want?” I asked. “To be feared and worshipped by those under my command.”
“I don’t think you even know what you want anymore,” he said. “You think you want Guinevere, but you don’t take her. You act as if you know the Law of Strength, but you don’t live by it. Make her yours and destroy anyone who steps in your way.”
“She wouldn’t be mine than,” I said coldly. “Just someone under my control forced to do as I say.”
“She would change with time,” he said. “You have seen her weaknesses; to obey is in her nature.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said.
He laughed. “I’m you, you do believe that, even if your infatuation with her makes you lie to yourself. Deep down you know I’m right.”
“I think I’m starting to see why people hate me.”
“People don’t hate us, they envy us.” My shadow said. “We are everything everyone wants to be even if they don’t admit it. We do whatever the fuck we want whenever we want to fucking do it; or at least we did until you went soft.”
“Perhaps I merely learned self-control,” I said.
“This is what I hate about us,” the shadow said. “You latch onto someone and try to find strength in them instead of finding it in yourself. First it was our mother, than it was Sarah, Eve and now Guinevere; when will you learn that others only make you weak!”
With this last outburst my alter-self struck the black mist rising around them once again. The twin versions of Clarent struck each other in a scarlet storm. I rammed Clarent through his side, but he kept moving as if he hadn’t received a wound at all. A slash struck me across the thigh, and I fell back as pain coursed through my body. The sensation was disorienting all the more since I couldn’t negate it with Wrathful Meditation or reduce it with Berserker.
“You think you can use your rage to fight against me?” My doppelganger laughed. “I am your rage, your hatred desire to be more than this pathetic thing!” he gestured towards me, lighting, coursing through his hand and driving me to my knees.
He came at me again and breathed out pushing past the pain. Standing my ground, I blocked and countered using the lessons Guinevere had taught me. My shadow self was all aggression and didn’t have a defensive instinct in him but no matter the wounds I placed on him he didn’t go down.
“I see you’ve found some strength after all, but your weakness is still there,” he snarled ramming through my defenses headless of the wounds he took. He tackled me to the ground, looming over me his hands sliding around my neck.
“I will remove this weakness from you,” he growled. “I will purge you of petty ideas of honor. When you emerge from this place you will be everything you should be. Nothing will stand in our way.”
I scrambled to push him off, but it was as if a mountain was sitting atop me. He leaned down looking at me a cruel malice I was only beginning to recognize now.
“You will take everything you want and damn what consequences they try to bring, Guinevere will be ours no matter what she or anyone else has to say about it.”
The hatred and rage I saw in my shadow-self reminded me of my father, this wasn’t just my hatred made manifest, this was what I hated most. I gasped for air and shoved him off, taking in a deep breath.
“Give in!” the shadow demanded. “This is your destiny!”
“If my destiny is to become my father I’d rather die,” I said.
“You won’t die here, you can’t me I can’t kill you,” he said with a laugh. “You feel pain I don’t, the outcome is inevitable.”
“There is something we haven’t tried yet,” I said raising my hand. “Dominion.”
Something ripped into me, and I let out a scream, my shadow-self screaming in reply. He lunged at me, his hands connecting with my throat. The ripping sensation came again, and my shadow began to melt his body sticking to mine. Pulling away he tried to break free. Red lighting forked down from the sky around us as the pain ravaged my mind, body, and soul.
“You’ll destroy us!” the shadow screamed at me.
“This is what you wanted,” I said coldly even as the pain threatened to drive me to madness. “For me to face death without fear.”
My shadow-self ripped himself away from my body at the last second. “I will not be a part of your weakness any longer!” he screamed out.
--
My eyes snapped open as blue lighting struck me on the altar. I didn’t move even as the lightning coursed through my veins like a shot of heroine. A black mist took shape before me, it was only vaguely shaped like a humanoid red lights within forming a jagged jaw and blazing furious eyes.
The Shadow of Mordred, Gifted- spirit-entity/spirit-of-malice, Veteran, Rank: N/A
“You do not deserve the strength you have!” The spirit hissed aloud.
“According to the Law of Strength, if I can defeat you, I deserve exactly what I have,” I said. “Dominion.”
The spirit wrestled against my will as strongly as before, but I wasn’t alone this time.
What is this thing? Karnen asked.
“It’s me,” I said. “Or at least a part of me, and I’m not letting it get away.”
I stepped forward with Clarent in hand, a bolt of lightning hitting me across my back, but I didn’t stumble away this time. No copy of Clarent existed in the real world so I drove it through my shadow’s chest uncontested. It howled in agony, now able to feel pain. A black and a red spectral hand reached out of me laying their fingers on its chest and began to draw its energy inside me.
Moments later the spirit was gone, and I stood soaking wet in the rain as lightning hammered down on me from above. The storm began to swirl above my head as the lighting struck me over and over but I stood unmoving against it.
8125 maximum mana gained
Dismissing that notification, I was greeted by another.
You have absorbed a part of your spirit back into yourself mending a part of the soul damage you have taken although you are still suffering a minor amount of it.
It was as if I had caged a beast inside me. I could feel it bashing against the sides of its cage but its efforts were useless, the prison I put it in was made of my own rage so the more it roared in fury the stronger its prison became.
Congratulations, you have completed a hidden objective and earned a title. Objective host at least three spirits inside your soul simultaneously.
Reward: the Possessed
*the Possessed: While equipped you deal x2 more damage with spirit aligned abilities and their duration is doubled and cost halved. If you do not have this title equipped the effects are halved.
Well, I wasn’t about to equip that as my title. I’d gone to Sunday school enough as a kid to know people didn’t typically respond well to people that were possessed.
“You were meant to destroy your shadow,” Melania said.
“No,” I responded. “I was told I had to defeat it. I did so, if you wanted a different outcome than your Ancestral Spirit should have been more specific.”
She studied me in silence and seemed to be listening to some inner voice. Nodding she reached under her cloak and brought out a wooden box. And handed it over to me.
“You have completed the trial to the satisfaction of the Spirit Guardian,” she said. “The Manica of Ares is yours.”
Taking the box, I opened it up and beheld the golden chainmail and black metal plates, grey fur and dark green scaled leather that made the pieces of the armor. It was everything I could have wanted, and I smiled.
“Thank you, this will do very nicely,” I said.