It was a small price to pay for immortality.
The Dark One turned from the window. He thought of dead things clawing their way loose from a muddy grave. Creatures such as these rarely left his thoughts these days. He had departed the land of the living long ago, but he was not deceased; and as such, he existed between two worlds, bound to that very thing which had freed him. A strange paradox, to be sure, at least for now. But the dark magic of the ancient Vizjerei sorcerers had taught him that he could harness the same forces that controlled him, in time.
There had once been days when he had not been so utterly confident. He had been treated like scum, ignored, beaten down, and considered next to useless for most of his younger years. But with the help of the true lord of the Burning Hells and the ancient texts he had consumed voraciously as soon as he could get his hands on them, knowledge had turned to power, a revelation to him, and it had vindicated his feelings of superiority. He was a kind of royalty, if truth be told, meant for much bigger things. This was his destiny, to bring the world full circle and exorcise the plague of humanity that had come to control it.
Now it was time for another meeting.
His skin already prickling in anticipation, he swept out of the chamber and down the stairs, his robes flowing like black water across the stone. He had come to look forward to these meetings with a mixture of terror and awe, and an almost religious fervor overtook him; he trembled with it like a small child faced with death for the first time.
He remembered the moment his lord had come to him, a momentous, life-changing event, although he hadn’t quite grasped its full significance then; he had been hurrying home through the streets of Kurast with a package for his master, a powerful and cruel Taan sorcerer known for beating his servants, and he had been terrified of tasting the whip for being late, when a beggar woman had gestured to him from the shadows of an alley. He had hesitated, wary of the woman’s sheer bulk and her filthy state of dress, but there had been something in her eyes that compelled him.
His master would surely beat him, but that was nothing new. He was well accustomed to the lash of the whip. He had gone to her, and that moment had changed his life forever.
“Lɪft ðә vel frә hɪz ajz,” the beggar woman whispered, her cracked, peeling fingers caressing his cheek, and her gaze held him still, paralyzed, only dimly aware of himself as the power flowed from her and through his limbs. “Awake, my son.”
He tried to speak, but could not. Every muscle in his body had gone rigid, cords standing out in his neck. She wheezed, her smile exposing toothless gums, and whispered something else he did not understand. She pulled up his sleeve and traced the pattern of a rune into the flesh of his arm, and his skin grew hot, her touch like an iron brand. He smelled his own scorched hair and fat as it sizzled and popped. The woman’s eyes consumed him, and he fell into them like pools of water.
Those yellow eyes shone with a light that was not human. They held a sly confidence, and they were infinitely powerful in a way that made him come unmoored, set adrift from himself.
The creature behind those eyes was no beggar woman. It was capable of anything.
He felt another world opening up to him somewhere far beneath his feet. A part of him left his body behind and tumbled down, down into the fires of Hell, down into the depths where things gibbered and screamed, terrible things that he could not face and that yet compelled him to look. There were monsters without skin, their tendons, muscle, and threaded veins exposed, and others that looked like fat, wriggling leeches. There were red-faced imps with dirty claws, and monstrous, bloated, corpse-like things that moaned and shambled on clubbed feet. Creatures with tangled, stringy beards screeched at him and swung their bloody scythes. He felt as if he were drowning, his skin split and his soul yanked from his body, tethered to something monstrous, and he shrieked soundlessly from the pain as, somewhere far above, the woman clutched his flesh to her filthy, stinking breast with hands like gigantic iron claws; and as he tried to scream once again, a monstrous form rose up before him, towering over the rest, uncurling like a serpent from the swirling smoke, its three-horned head focusing a series of unblinking yellow eyes upon him.
“What you have come to understand about the world you live in is a revelation,” the beast said. “You are the most rare of humans: one who can see through the illusions that others have built. Sanctuary is not the place they would have you believe, but you are not blind to their games. Because of this, you have been chosen.”
The beast went on, igniting something in him he had barely known was there. Sometime later he hurried home and took his lashes from the sorcerer for being late, and many extra for good measure, as the man’s package had been lost somewhere in that alley. But he barely felt the pain, and he did not cry out. The sorcerer eventually stepped back from his bloody work, wary of the difference in his servant boy: the orphan who had been taken in from the streets was suddenly a man. The power the sorcerer had always sensed in him had begun to manifest itself.
From then on, the beatings ceased. He left the sorcerer’s home soon after, aware that everything had changed for him after that moment in the alley. The scarred brand of the rune that had been etched into the skin of his arm confirmed this. His soul had been bound to another, a thing of nearly infinite power: something inhuman.
It would be another few months before he fully understood the truth. The Lord of Lies himself had chosen him.
He was a servant of Hell.
The Dark One reached the bottom of the tower stairs. Below the main floor were other, hidden rooms. He opened a panel and exposed a second staircase that descended into gloom.
Moist air wafted up from below. He stood for a moment and listened. A moan echoed through the blackness, followed by the clank and rattle of metal, bringing a prickle of excitement to the back of his neck.
The staircase curved around the massive, hollow center of the tower, and his nails made scraping sounds as he let his long, skeletal fingers trail along the stone of the core, feeling the energy thrumming beneath his touch. The stone was feverishly hot and coated with a luminescent moss. As he continued down, the glow of torchlight grew brighter, and he could hear more shrieks and moans of the damned. Finally he emerged into a hallway with arched doorways leading off it on both sides. These chambers had been carefully designed, their stone floors containing a grate and piping that focused the energy of the inhabitants’ suffering to the building’s center shaft, down to the reservoir far below his feet.
The Dark One walked to the first doorway and entered the chamber. Torchlight flickered, making shadows move across the stone walls. He liked to sneak up on his prisoners and watch the fear in their faces as they found him standing there, his power over them absolute. This one was hanging by four chains running from the ceiling, their ends embedded in the flesh of his shoulders and upper arms, so that he looked like a puppet suspended by thick strings. The man’s head was down, his long hair obscuring his face, and his body sagged against its own weight. He might have been already dead, except for the slight rise and fall of his chest. This had been a villager from Gea Kul, known for a spark of natural magical ability in days past, a raw energy that had never been cultivated. Until now.
The Dark One slipped across the stone to the man’s side like a ghost. The man was relatively fresh, had not been drained as fully as some of the others. Perfect. He reached out with one claw-like finger and caressed the man’s cheek. “Awake, my son,” he whispered, thinking of the beggar woman in the alley.