Hi guys.
This is the ending to my main char’s story. Sort of a destiny while I still play out the intervening time in game.
I have also reposted some of my char’s stories from the old forums, as they will be lost forever pretty soon.
The stories are posted backwards with the end first and then goes to the beginning at the end.
Enjoy!
P.S. Please post comments, if you wish.
Summoning the darkness
The Gunderman half-breed who was called Jansensen straightened and examined the occult circle he had chalked onto the floor of the filthy rented room on Tarantia’s wharfs. He would not have to stay even the full hour he had paid for.
He sighed and thought how close he had been to redemption at one stage in the recent past. He thought of his comrades, the brave few who waded through rivers of blood and still kept their vision and drive.
But he knew himself. When among them he could believe that he could be a good person, an honourable and worthy companion. Yet, when he was alone, his thoughts turned back to darkness, to oblivion. Ah, the sweet nepenthe he sought: freedom from responsibility.
This ritual would cut his very soul from his walking corpse and replace it with a dark soul from ancient Acheron.
It would give him immortality, of a sort, and power. Not him, as such. His brief spark of a soul would be snuffed out. But what continued to walk in his body would wield the power every warrior sought: freedom from death. A soldier could usually only fight until his last strength; this ritual would enable the night-weird to draw on nigh-limitless sources of cosmic power. And all it would cost was his dark, twisted and wounded soul.
A bargain, he thought.
He cursed the tears welling up in his eyes, cursed himself, cursed the universe. How could he betray his comrades who had invested so much trust, time and effort in him? But they could not see the darkness inside him.
He smiled and sniffed through his tears. Now, at least, the darkness inside would no longer be him. It would be another being, a twisted monster from the outer dark. He still felt that its soul would be less black than his tarnished, miserable and skulking one. At least the terrible acts that it commits will not be his doing any longer.
He pulled out the black Stygian dagger he used to draw life and power from living and dead creatures, and gashed his arm with it. He dripped the dark-red blood in a uniform pattern around the circle, muttering ancient and foul names of things that would have been gods had they been even remotely rational, instead of coldly alien and terrible.
He felt the magic of the dagger draw his life out, felt himself weaken but knew that the life energy had nowhere to go. This was a key part of the ritual, the summoning of the darkness into an empty and receptive vessel.
He chanted the names of a host of lesser demons and gods, building up to those beyond even the realms of the gods proper.
From out of his eyes, his nose and mouth, a darkly glowing cloud was drawn, wine-red and flecked with specks of pure darkness. It roiled in front of his streaming eyes. He could barely see it and was unsure if it was because of the cloud emerging from his tear ducts, or the tears themselves, obscuring his vision.
He had gone to such lengths to save that part of his soul stolen by just such a ritual. Now there would be no redemption, no matter how much he fought because the first ritual was forced upon him; this one would be voluntary and eternal.
Would they know it was not I walking in this sack of flesh? Would they see that it is not I? Would they forgive me? Would they be merciful and kill me?
He stood holding a burning match to light the final candle that would precipitate the ritual, held it until it began scorching his fingers, held it until it burned out. Then he stood in the dark, on the verge of summoning even darker darkness into his soul…. He stood like a statue, his life slowly leaching from him and dripping onto the floor to merge with the other rubbish and filth of humanity.