You had done it. You won the Festival of Termina. But was the reward worth the cost?
Warnings: Burns, Blood and Gore, Mutilation, Rape/Noncon, Anal Sex, Barbed Penis, Extreme Injury, Dead Dove Do Not Eat
This was your reward…?
Blood poured from your open wounds, some days old, some newly opened by the razor sharp feathers that the trickster god’s puppet threw at you. Some stuck out of you, little pinpricks that jutted out of you like little flags of defeat. Two feathers pierced either of your hands, immobilizing them to the sides of your body while another pinned your ankles together. Three anchor points of agony that were slowly bleeding you dry.
Alll-mer, save me…
“No, no, little lamb…” The entity spoke, feather-covered arm hiding his lips as he looked down upon you. His eyes were upturned in a sadistic grin, even if his voice betrayed nothing of his true intentions. His feather cape draped around the edges of your vision, preventing you from seeing anything that wasn’t him and him alone.
“You call for the wrong savior! Instead of looking up…” Per’kele leaned down with abnormal grace, until his nose nearly brushed against your own.
“...you should be looking down.” He removed his arm from his face, the little sanity you had left cracking upon witnessing his terrible, twisted visage. A grin so sickening that you would have vomited, if there was anything left in your stomach to lose. A hoarse scream nearly left your throat, but it was lost amidst the pounding of your heart. You try to pull your arms up but it's useless.
You are trapped.
Per’kele crawled on top of you, taking in the scent of your fresh blood with a deep breath. You see his mangled torso, his ribs showing and old gore stinking and dripping off him and causing you to hold your breath unsuccessfully. “You will make a fine addition to my Master’s flock…” He muttered to himself, paying no heed to your cries for mercy or your pointless squirming. He twists around you like a snake, settling onto your lap as he softly hums and moans to himself.
“Yes, yes… You made the right choice in joining us…” Per’kele’s voice was a soft hiss, his long tongue flicking out of his mouth as though he was tasting the bloodied air. Panicked pants left your mouth as saliva dripped onto your clothing. The little that soaked through to your skin burned like hellfire.
“No! No, stop- STOP IT! This isn’t what I wanted! This isn’t-!” Your breath caught in your throat as Per’kele’s face loomed close to yours. He grabbed your clothing in his hands, pulling on it until it began to tear into ribbons. You could do nothing but pull against the feathers that had you pinned, screaming from pain and terror as Per’kele licked you from jaw to eyebrow.
IT BURNS!!!
It was as though acid was slathered across your face. You screamed, thrashing and bucking against Per’kele as his saliva ate through your skin and the delicate surface of your eyeball. It hurts! It hurts so much… Your skin peeled away, the delicate muscle underneath raw to the unnaturally hot night air. The visage of Rher looked overhead, face blank and unmoving as one side of your face was eaten down to the bone. Per’kele turned your head to the side, so he could better view his handiwork.
“You’re melting away, like a butterfly in a cocoon…” He stroked your hair, an almost loving gesture in spite of the pain that he has caused you. Per’kele licks his lips, tasting your flesh as he turns your head to the other side. “You’ll be something beautiful and terrible once you emerge from your shell.” He whispers against your eye as he lathers his tongue against it.
And you scream.
Your mind goes white from the pain. It’s all hot, hotter than boiling water on bare skin, hotter than the sun on a sensitive cornea. You try to kick your legs, flail your arms, but you only damage them further. You keep screaming, or you think you do, as the burning cold of Rher’s gaze hits your bare legs. Even through the pain, you know what comes next.
You’re claiming your ‘prize’ and Per’kele will claim his.
“You’re so beautiful like this…” He whispers into the air above you, barely audible under the thundering of your heart in your melting eye socket. Your diaphragm flutters and cramps, leaving you unable to take a full breath he moves to straddle your thighs. You choke as you feel… something touches your legs, scalding hot and dripping wet, leaving welting burns and blisters in its wake.
“How can I possibly just leave you like this?” Per’kele’s nails rake down your chest, shredding your clothing and cashing beads of blood to surface on your soft skin. You feel his hot breath on your burned cheek, and you whimper and cry as he digs between your legs and forces you to raise your knees. He presses the mangled tip of his manhood against your puckered hole, and you feel bile burning your sinuses as you begin to panic.
“D-Don’t… Please-“ You whimper. You gasp and begin to hyperventilate as you feel your delicate skin being set alight. No, no, not like this! Not like this! This isn’t what you imagined as a ‘reward’ at all! You don’t have the strength to thrash anymore. You barely have enough air in your lungs to remain conscious. Per’kele hummed as you trembled violently underneath him, quietly begging for… what? Mercy? For forgiveness?
Don’t you realize that this is a welcoming gift?
Per’kele pressed into you again, and you felt your lungs freeze in your chest. Whatever is dripping off his cock, precum, or some sort of other heinous fluid, burned as badly as his saliva. It ate away through your skin, causing your legs and inner thighs to become slick with blood. With one push, then another, Per’kele sighed then groaned with pleasure as he suddenly pierced you with his member.
You screamed in agony as he began to sodomize you.
It’s hot! HOT! It’s burning through your insides, turning them into a soupy mess. There was no escaping the pain. It was inside of you now, traveling deeper and deeper into your body the harder and faster Per’kele thrusted into you. There were what felt like prickly barbs jutting from his cock that dug into your liquifying walls and sliced you open, leaving you even more vulnerable to the hellish fluid that leaked out of his cursed body. It was almost akin to barbed wire, something wrapped around his member and causing him the same kind of scraping, puncturing pain that it was causing you, only Per’kele seemed to revel in that pain instead of shunning it.
“Ohh..!~ You’re so soft around me, little one…” He purred into your ear, his tongue flicking out and caressing the shell of your ear. You don’t have the energy or willpower to scream, only gagging and choking on your closing throat. You were suffocating on pain and fear, and the twisted entity took great glee in this fact. He reveled in your agony, your awareness that life as you knew it was coming to an end, and something new and terrible would be taking its place.
There was no stopping it now… All there was to do was lay back and enjoy it while it lasted.
His pace increased, and you vaguely wondered why you weren’t dead yet. Haven’t you suffered enough? Alll-mer, please… At the mere thought of Him, Per’kele dug his talon-like nails into the skin of your hip. If you could see, you would witness his twisted face darken, eyes staring through you and into your soul.
“Don’t speak of that rat here! It is only us and my true Master here, witnessing you in all your glory…” Per’kele giggled as he deepened his thrusts, salivating over you and causing your skin to slough off your chest and the remnants to soak into your top and jacket.
“Are you a butterfly?” Squish, squelch, squish. “Or perhaps a moth!” Squish, squelch, squish. “A nasty little thing, a pest…” Squish, squelch squish. “Attracted to a little light… an albatross around your neck, a selfishness that burns so brightly it scalds all those around you…!”
SQUISH! SQUELCH! SQUISH!
A gurgling cry left your throat as Per’kele fully hilted himself inside of you, groaning lowly as you felt scalding hot liquid fill your bowels. Your fight was somehow renewed. The pain was unbearable. Like Hell itself had flooded inside of you, eating you away from within. Liquifying your insides, much like a butterfly in a cocoon, and changing you into something unthinkable. You screamed, high pitched and blood curdling, only the ones that heard it reveled in the pain, the fear that you felt.
You thought about everything you had done during the Festival, all the blood you spilled, the heads you collected, the contestants you killed, the relief and satisfaction that you felt, all while doing the most heinous things a human being can do to their fellow man.
You screamed, a sound so pure and delightful, nearly rivaling the wails of agony that overtook you as you fell into the Sulfur Pits…
What is there in the face of a mother's love? It's the one thing that you wanted the most in the world and it was why you braved the dark of Fear & Hunger.
Warnings: Dead Dove, Eldritch Horror, Cults, Body Horror, Human Sacrifice, Mommy Kink?, Mind Break
“Our God-Mother, Sylvian,
Grant me what I seek
A tender embrace
Warm and true
A consanguineal kiss
An amorous gaze
Gift to me what has been promised to me
Lacking what you, our God-Mother,
Had sworn to me before the beginning of man.”
Your body naked, bare, lacking any ornament conceived by man, offered yourself to her.
Mind, body, soul.
Love, lust, life.
Her aspects were ingrained into the human experience, into the human form. Sex, reproduction. The joining of two or more bodies in beautiful connubiality. You have dedicated yourself to her since before you were born. Human beings are designed to crave Sylvian’s embrace, her love and her gaze. You were no different. What child does not crave the love of their mother and their father? Sylvian was all to humanity, as she was to you.
You have never known the love of another, man or woman, romantic, platonic or familial. All there was your God-Mother, Sylvian. In her temple of old, you offered her not just your body, mind and soul, but your love as well. It wasn’t enough, it would never be enough for her, but you humbly offered yourself- No, no, not humbly. You were vain, selfish in your desires. You craved her affections, wishing and wanting of them for as long as you could remember. Would something as pure as God-Mother Sylvian accept such a meager offering such as yourself? Her priests and priestesses teach of how she loves everyone and all, in spite of her jealousy and hurt towards the shallowness of humanity’s capacity for fondness and adoration, but in the face of everything that all of humanity feels, ultimately what does the affections of one, singular person amount to?
The cave was dark and the air was cool on your skin. The effigy of Sylvian that was carved into the rocks was crude, as no being alive could ever hope to capture her true beauty with their mortal eyes or hands. The statue was phallic shaped, standing tall and partially chiseled into the cave’s ceiling, acting as a support of sorts. Over a dozen sets of teats adorn the statue, the shape of her many pairs of arms cut off as though broken by time, or perhaps defaced by creatures of the Dark. You run your hands over one pair of her breasts, sighing as you feel the chill of the rock seeping into your skin.
Mother, are you listening to me? Can you even hear me in this dark place?
Sacrifices weren’t uncommon to the Old Gods. Gro-Goroth, husband and other half of Sylvian, as well as their son Vinushka, were known to accept, even encourage, human sacrifices of a dark, violent kind. Sylvian only accepts sacrifices of love. Of the flesh, yes, but only when it is of love and indeed of lust too. Making love is the greatest pleasure that Sylvian has gifted to humanity, but some of her cult would only seek it from the God, herself.
Selfish, selfish little things… Not so unlike Sylvian, herself.
She was not here, but her traces would always remain, in everyone and everything, just as they did with all the Old Gods. Old monuments dedicated to the Gods held no specific importance to them, nor did they hold any amount of true power, but they would occasionally speak to their flocks through them, if only to exert their fleeting traces over them as they did in days of old.
Warmth began to creep underneath your palms, filling your cheek as you leaned it against another of Sylvian’s many teats. It was unlike anything that you had ever experienced before. Warmth exuding from stone? It pulsed subtly, as though it were alive, breasts swelling with gentle breath as the God, herself, sighed with longing under your touch.
“Sylvian… Oh, Mother… You really are here with me…”
Your entire body was alight with excitement. Heart pounding in your chest, you felt yourself becoming aroused just as you had done every time you’ve thought of your most holy God-Mother. Was this the touch of Sylvian, herself…? You caught yourself moaning in pleasure as you pressed your chest against her effigy. Would she take you? Would she? Was it so terrible of you to want such a thing?
A dull, green light tickled the back of your eyelids. You felt your heart slam against your ribs as the warmth from the stone seemed to permeate through your entire body. Is this her…? God-Mother…? You shuddered as something touched the back of your leg, gently caressing you as something came behind your head as though cradling it.
It was exhilarating. Euphoric. Everything that was Sylvian was surrounding you, entering every pore of your body, every orifice as she held you to her bosoms. She loves you… Sylvian, the God-Mother, truly loves you… It was so much more intense than any time you had touched yourself to her image, more than any time you had used your own, personal effigy that you had carved into her image inside of your body. You felt your body quake with pleasure, a shiver that ran up and down your spine in a perpetual motion that never seemed to end.
Everything that was Sylvian was within you, a love so warm that you no longer remembered what the cold felt like. You couldn’t remember what loneliness was, pain or strife, grief or hardship. There was nothing other than a mother’s love for her child, jealous and frightening but also all encompassing and beautiful. It was all you knew, and all you would know as you felt Sylvian pumping you full of her love and adoration.
You had nearly made it. Surrounded by the precious few survivors that you had found in the dungeon, you all had nearly made it out. One knight needed to be carried, her wounds so grievous but she was cognizant and very aware of the fact that this nightmare was very nearly over.
“J-Just… Just a little further, Ser Seymour… Please…” Her face was pale but the other knight carrying her had long since set his jaw, determined to get them all out of there. It was a fool’s errand, traveling so deeply into this accursed place. But it hadn’t killed them. Not yet…
The dungeon was lost but they weren’t just yet.
“Keep up, mercenary! We can’t stop now!” Lord Buckman was behind you, wheezing much more loudly than you were but his spirits were far, far higher than yours. He was a portly man but he didn’t dare to find the selfishness to beg for respite. Not when it was just a few cell blocks away…
“R-R-Ri- H-HA- -ight-!” Your breaths came out in short gulps. Every inch of your body burned with effort, your lungs felt as though they were about to either collapse or burst from the strain placed on them. Ser Seymour cursed, calling out a closed door that was dead ahead of the party. You don’t know how, but instead of crumpling your already fragile resolve, the obstacle only hardened it, causing a surge of determined energy to course through your body as you ran ahead of the group.
STEP
STEP
STEP
CRUNCH
Your gait crumpled but you managed to reach the door before your legs had failed you. You threw it open and urged the others to quickly abscond through, falling behind Buckman as a seering but undefined pain suddenly shot up through your leg.
Did you twist your ankle?
Perhaps you had finally hit your limit.
No, you weren’t about to die here. Not when you were so fucking close-!
Even after the bright sunlight hit your eyes, utterly blinding you and the rest of your companions, you didn’t stop running. None of you did. You didn’t recognize the place that you all ended up in but none of you gave a damn. Not even Jeanne, who had lost the most of you all, felt anything other than burning relief now that you were out of the dungeon of Fear & Hunger.
“A-Ahh… Ah…” Everyone was collapsing to the ground, Ser Seymour collapsing the hardest, slipping Jeanne off his shoulder and onto the ground, near a boulder she was able to prop herself upon. Buckman vomited loudly, nothing but bile and some blood expelled from his gut. All you could do was wheeze, desperate to breathe in spite of the burning pain in one of your lower extremities.
At first, you could ignore it. There’s any number of reasons as to why you were in pain. Ser Seymour believed you had a nasty sprain, perhaps even a broken bone. You were inclined to agree. By the time there was a moment to check yourselves over, your foot and leg had begun to swell something fierce, until even unclasping all your armour completely couldn’t give you enough room to slip your limb out of your shoe. The pain was unbearable, the thought that you would have to amputate a limb at the forefront of your mind but it didn’t scare you nearly as much as the possibility that you would still die at the hands of that terrible place.
“W-Wait-! Wait a moment! Perhaps you won’t have to remove the limb!” Ser Seril had grabbed you by your wrist as you dug around for the bone saw that you had carried with you. Just in case, you promised yourself, just in case… This was the moment that you had been preparing for and he held you back from unnecessarily cutting your foot off from above the ankle but far below the knee.
“Civilization is just beyond the mountains! In a day and a half’s time, you won’t need to resort to such drastic measures!” In your heart, you didn’t want to remove your limb. You didn’t want to live your life as a cripple but…
You would rather live a cripple than die a fool.
As night fell, a fever set into your body. From head to toe, you were warm to the touch, pallid and flushed at the cheeks with a thick film of sticky sweat that soaked through your clothing. Pain was spreading up your leg, threatening to spread to the rest of your limbs. Once it became apparent that the fever refused to break, the party did what they should have done from the very beginning.
Even though you begged for it, it didn’t soften the agony that washed over you as Ser Seymour grabbed your lower leg and began to cut the clothing from your lower half. It quickly became apparent that what ailed you was aggressive: a painful, dark flush spreading from the confines of your foot all the way up to just below your knee. The need for amputation was far worse than any of them had realized. Ser Seymour struggled to apply a tourniquet, your thigh was already beginning to swell from the rotted blood that pooled in your lower leg. Perhaps once the limb is removed, the rest of the bad blood would follow? Your fever was already beginning to muddle your mind, the words you spoke were strained and slurred as though you couldn’t open your mouth or operate your tongue.
“H-Huuuut ick… H-Huuut ick… P-Puhlesh…”
“G-Gods-!”
Buckman turned a pale green and screwed his eyes shut in anticipation. The… consensual removal of a limb wouldn’t be the worst thing that he has seen in his brief time in the dungeon but to see it performed on someone that had saved his life so many times? He couldn’t watch. Perhaps that makes him a coward but even Jeanne was gasping in shock and frozen in fear as Ser Seril pinned down your shoulders and stuffed a rag in your mouth.
“Just do it, man! Do it and don’t stop once you start.” Ser Seymour’s attention was snapped back to attention by his companion’s words. He was right, of course. Ser Seril was right…
“I-I- I’m sorry, my friend…”
How could something so necessary be so unbearably difficult…? Ser Seymour had to call Buckman to aid in holding you down, your body seized so terribly from the pain. Even in his notoriously heavy armour, Ser Seril was nearly thrown backwards from the buck of your body. Even with his notoriously heavy weight, Buckman could scarcely pin down your other leg, even with the deadweight of his body straddling your uninjured leg and his arms strewn about your writhing waist.
“HOLD THEM-! FOR GODS’ SAKE HOLD THEM-!!!”
“WE ARE-!”
“I-I- OOF-! -C-CAN’T-!!!”
Your skin was burning hot before the teeth of the saw touched your skin. The moment Ser Seymour grazed it against your thigh, you wailed with pain. It was more akin to the cry of an injured animal, haunting and inhuman. It chilled your companions to the bone, nearly making Ser Seymour hesitate as the saw became caught in your femur. The knight had to use all his strength to sever the bone, mouth filling with thick, bile infused saliva as rivers of purulent-soured blood gushed out of your wound.
“I-IS IT OVER?! GODS-! PLEASE LET IT BE OVER!”
Tears flowed down Buckman’s face as you repeatedly kneed him in the diaphragm over and over again. He barely felt the pain at all, only gasping and struggling not to vomit or allow you to stop Ser Seymour before he had finished the deed. A noise like you were choking on your own tongue rose from deep within your chest, causing Ser Seril to yank the cloth out of your mouth for fear that you were swallowing it or your tongue. As Ser Seymour sawed through the remnants of your thigh bone, your jaw snapped shut and your eyes were wide and glossy with pain and terror.
It wasn’t enough to save your life. The sickness had already infected the core of your body. No amount of blood letting would be enough to alleviate the blood that poisoned your body. None of your companions could understand why. How could this have happened to you? What… What did they do wrong?
In the last hours of your life, your remaining limbs continued to seize, some with enough force to snap the bones within. There was no way to soothe you as you were in your death throes. Your body contorted in unnatural ways, muscles hard as steel and jaw set so tightly that it cracked your teeth.
During that final hour, Jeanne screamed and shook violently, begging one of her companions to do something- anything- to help you! To just make it stop! Buckman covered his ears with his hands and buried his face into his knees, struggling not to weak and scream as Jeanne was. Ser Seymour could only watch in horror, frozen for the first time as the realization that the dungeon truly had the last laugh with them all. As chaos reigned around him, Ser Seril forced your amputated limb out of the confines of its armoured prison, desperate for an answer as to why this had happened to you of all people.
There must be an explanation! There must-!
Your shin was mutilated from his attempts but he managed to free your limb in the end. As he pulled your foot up and out of your armoured boot, your foot became stuck once again. Pulling and pulling, Ser Seril no longer needed an air of gentleness, as it was no longer connected to your person. You would understand… You would want them to understand what happened to you-! With one last impressive pull, he managed to pull your foot free with tremendous force. In the final moments that he pulled it free, he realized that he felt something was pinning your foot in place against the sole of your boot. As if… almost as if-
No… No, it’s not- It couldn’t be such a-
But it was. Something so simple was the cause of your untimely and terrifyingly painful death. Ser Seril first looked at the sole of your foot, face grimacing at the smell of rot that permeated your hours old amputated limb. Even with as much discoloration and swelling that was present, he could see it as clear as day, even in the dim dusk light: a single hole in the bottom of your foot.
A nail was standing straight up through the sole of your boot. It was a single nail, rusted with blood and other bodily fluids. It pierced your flesh through your shoe, having been torn from what was most likely a stray board, which there were more than a numerous few strewn about the dungeon’s floors. Ser Seril blinked as he pushed it through the sole of your boot, plucking it in between his fingers and held it against the failing sunlight.
This would be your ultimate killer…? It left a bitter taste in the knight's throat.
It was such a tragic end to your heroic tale…
They would never forget you and they wouldn’t let the world forget the service that you had done for them, one good human being to another, and for the crown of Rondon. You would die here, in the wilds and underneath the night sky but your name would live on for an eternity in the minds and hearts of the people of the country that you inadvertently defended with your life.
Ending H- “It was just a prick…”
AHAHAHAHA!!!! APRIL FOOLS! HA! DID YOU SEE THE LOOK ON YOUR FACE?! YOU ACTUALLY THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO GET OUT ALIVE!!
😂😂😂
I'm going to post a big ass poll sometime because I have a LOT of recommendations and I'd like to know which one's y'all would like to see next! I'll be doing both the first game and Termina so feel free to recommend more!
And it would end up being the last mistake you would ever get to make.
The split second you hesitated, the dogs reached both you and Frederick. They did not give you the chance to unsheathe your weapon, two of them instantly sinking their jaws into the flesh and bones of your leg and your throat as the other two skirted around you and pounced onto a slack jawed Frederick.
There was no time to fight back. You weren’t dead before you hit the ground but you might as well have been. Unable to breathe, you blindly grab at the Jaggedjaw’s muzzle, weakly pushing your fingers against the beast’s teeth and finding no purchase that would allow you to pull it from your windpipe. The agonizing pain that you felt swiftly morphed into something hot but heavy, like death itself had thrown its own shroud over your convulsing body.
Your death was relatively quick, with the pain you felt being brief and far from the last thing that you would remember. Brief glimpses of light tickled your eyes, the gooseflesh that had been ever present on your body lowering and relaxing, as though the sun had finally burst through the heavy layer of cloud that had chilled your blood since entering this terrible place. You could almost remember home, how it looked, how it smelled and how it tasted… It’s a shame that the true shape of that familiar place never took form in your mind before you died.
Frederick, though, wasn’t nearly as lucky. One of the Dominating One’s hounds had latched onto his thigh, dragging him down so that the other could sink its teeth into his face. Once the pulse had died in your throat, the Jaggedjaws that had ended you pounced onto your still screaming companion, one grabbing hold of the arm that was still flailing his sword wildly and the other sinking its teeth into Frederick’s flank, its jaws strong enough to puncture through his armour and to cause the metal to shred his vulnerable torso underneath.
The screaming only lasted mere minutes, falling to a low gurgle before a wet silence filled the temple. The aged Dominating One hobbles out of his kennels, a sickening glee spreading through his gut as he looks upon his hounds’ handiwork. An insignificant part of him was a little disappointed, though. Curling his lip, he spits on the corpse still being mangled by his loyal beasts.
“‘An old fool’, indeed… How utterly disappointing.”
You didn’t even put up a worthwhile fight. Exactly how did someone like you get so far as to reach the dead city of Ma’habre? The disappointment is fleeting, as the new god watches the Jaggedjaws tear into your companion’s armour? What was his name again? The Dominating One was more disappointed that he didn’t get the chance to assert his dominance over you while you were still alive.
When you were still alive?
He grinned.
Oh, he didn’t need you to be alive to assert such a thing.
Ending H (Fear & Hunger) Ch. 13.0- Wizened or Witless?
I'm doing something a little different this time and making what I guess could be called a 'multi-choice' chapter. The parts will be finished soon so I hope you enjoy!
The last of the Fellowship is the current reigning king of Ma'habre but it couldn't be the old man that stands before you, could it? Still... there's an undeniable power in his eyes that makes you shiver in disgust. Is there a point to delving any deeper, or should you just give up while you still retain the remnants of your sanity?
“You’d do well to stay clear of that cursed, rotted place.”
You had already delved too deep. Could you simply just… leave? The man before you was old, ancient, with dark, leathered skin and an iron-grey beard that spilled over his legs and onto the ground. He was hunched over as though pained by the years that he carried on his back. There was… something about him, what, you were uncertain of, but whatever it was, it made your stomach twist into knots and made your fingers reflexively tremble and reach for your weapon. Your companion, Frederick, already had his weapon drawn and was pointing it at the stranger, who didn’t even spare him a glance as he stared a hole straight through to your core.
“A man cannot attain true godhood. The souls of men are too wicked and tainted, too frail to do so.” With the heel of his foot, the old man tapped on one of the cages behind him, the dog within barking loudly and lunging against the metal walls that contained its feral fury. Every time the cage jostled violently, your heart sank to the depths of the Abyss and came surging back up whenever the beast remained locked in place.
“What do you know of godhood, old man?! You’re nothing but a fool! A fool that-” As Frederick spoke, the man burst out into laughter, though it was sharp and cruel and lacking any warmth of joy.
“‘A fool’! Yes, yes! A fool, indeed! Though a fool that you will not best, methinks.” His eyes finally shift away from you and land on your companion, his shoulders visibly bristling under the old man’s gaze.
“What was that?! You think I am incapable of killing the likes of you-?!”
“D-Don’t-”
“-do not TOUCH me-! You little wretch-!” As you reached for his sword arm, Frederick pulled it from your grasp. He never turned away from the stranger and spat in his direction. Phlegm landed on the man’s steel-toed foot, his facial expression never wavering as he watched your companion turn to walk away from him.
“-you aren’t worth the effort it takes to raise my sword arm. Come-” Frederick beckoned you over his shoulder as he left the kennel. His footsteps were wet in the urine-soaked floor and echoed against the temple’s walls. A knot formed in your stomach as you watched him walk away.
“...fool. A fool’s ego is a terrible thing, indeed.” The old man was staring at you again, almost as if he was sizing you up. You feel that, if he weren’t so enfeebled and you armed, that he would have inflicted some sort of evil upon you. Sensing your discomfort, he smiled, again void of any warmth or friendliness, just as most things in this accursed place was.
“Are you a little weasel? Or are you capable of something more?” He was looking you up and down, his eyes raking against your body with enough intensity that you could feel his gaze on your bare skin. It made you shudder in disgust and fear.
“Hmph- No, I doubt very much that you could do more than be an extension of a foolish man’s dominion…” The old man’s laugh was harsh and kicked your body into motion. You left him, gooseflesh covering you from head to toe.
Rounding the corner, you can still hear the man’s laugh ricocheting off the walls around you. Frederick was already down the hall, not having bothered to wait for you to follow him. He knew that you would follow him and you did, blindly and with your head down as the old man’s words still repeated in your head.
‘I doubt you could do more than be an extension of a foolish man’s dominion…’
In between the clacking of your and Frederick’s heels, a loud, metallic clank snaps you out of your thoughts. It must have started Frederick too, as he stopped mid stride and exclaimed aloud-
“What the hell was-?!”
The sound of claws scraping for purchase on the urine-slick floor and barks loud enough to reverberate throughout your bones nearly deafens you and freezes you in place. Four large, ragged and frothy-mouthed dogs barreled down from the side room that the old man was standing in. Cold fear freezes the blood in your veins. W-Why would he-?
Frederick was frozen too, eyes wide and limbs stiff, unable to raise his sword. You both only need to flee deeper into the temple to reach the end of it all. The end…? Or… another path? The temple was the beating heart of this old, decaying place and the entire reason why he journeyed to this terrible place. He couldn’t even remember what the country that he hailed from looked like. What it sounded like… What it smelled like… You were just the same as he, losing what you once were every passing second that you are in this terrible black.
If you remain in place, you will die, but you will die as yourself and not what you could possibly become should you fall into the shadow of the last withering new god.
