Chapter 6: Death Becomes Him

He stood up, the pain of his wounds a sharp twinge lingering in the back of his mind and the weariness from exerting himself in combat finally beginning to settle into his flesh. A low throbbing in his head accompanied the mental fatigue brought on by the depletion of his Mana, but nonetheless, Erik could not help but feel a deep satisfaction. It was finally over. He had won.

He’d slain his worst enemies and faced some of his deepest fears, learning the truth of himself he’d long used them to hide. In the absence of any other threats, he allowed the cold and predatory mindset induced by Savage Grace to slip away, fading back into his mind along with the Beast, until it was called upon again.

Now that he was no longer using his ability, Erik felt the weight of his injuries and exhaustion fall upon his shoulders like a ton of bricks. Breathing fast but even, he looked down at his hands. His knuckles and forearms were splashed with the dark blood of the creatures, a macabre paint staining his hands with the brutal aftermath of what he’d done. At that moment, the words of the creatures came back to him, like an echoing whisper of his own fears. Murderer. Butcher. Monster.

Erik wanted to feel the trembling shock travel through his mind at the realization of what he’d done, flashes of the slack, bloodied, and brutalized faces of his tormentors illustrating his undeniable guilt. He wanted to feel the burning of tears in his eyes, leaving thin shame-filled trails down his face. He wanted the chilling horror, the petrifying trauma of killing to rage through his mind, wracking his body with uncontrollable tremors. He wanted to feel remorse, some small sliver of humanity. But instead, he felt nothing at all.

His mind was numb to it all, and the only horror Erik could muster was at his own apathy. His hands were steady, unshaken, and his mind was calm and placid. There were no tears waiting to fall, no faces haunting him. He was cold and unfeeling, untouched by any of the emotions others might have experienced in the wake of their first kill. This apathy was precisely what he’d feared for so long. More than the fear of others hurting him, worse than the fear of hurting others and taking pleasure in it, had been the utter terror inspired by the thought of not feeling anything at all.

The Beast was a personification of his wrath and the ever-present bottomless hunger he’d warred with all his life, and the morass of emotion that comprised it was things Erik had always felt strongly. Now, the feelings it represented felt distant from the rest of his mind, like they had been excised and then distilled into something more primal. The darkest parts of himself had merged and become the literal monster inside his head, distant and yet irrevocably joined to him.

The things that he thought he should have felt, however, simply weren’t there. Remorse, regret, compunction? He scoured the darkest depths of himself and the Beast and he could not find any of it, not so much as a single iota. The words he’d spoken to James’s doppelganger before he’d killed it had been the blind truth. He was not like them and he would never be. He was a different sort of monster altogether, one that saw only grim necessity in the killing.

There was no true satisfaction in it, and he did not feel a desire to seek others out and harm them. In the heat of the conflict, having given himself over to the Beast, he’d found himself reveling in the combat, the vicious dance of tooth and claw, the grim game of survival. But once he’d allowed the Beast to fall away, nothing of that revelry remained. His pleasure was hollow, and any hint of shame at what he’d done found no root in the barren tundra of his mind. In facing his own fears, Erik had, at last, become them, and it was the cold and utter indifference that frightened him now, not the idea of finding enjoyment in terrible and cruel acts.

Clenching his fists, Erik resolved to himself that he would not shy from what he was now that he’d realized precisely how broken he truly was. No, he would instead live up to the words he’d spoken to James’s double, and become a monster that other monsters feared beyond all else. Standing straight and relaxed, Erik checked over his own wounds, making sure that he wasn’t in danger of dying from them. Seeing that the bleeding of his major wounds had mostly stopped, he let out a low grunt in simple satisfaction before turning his attention once more to his surroundings. When he did so, another screen appeared before him once more, this one a welcome distraction from the thoughts creeping through his mind.

Quest Completed!

The Proving

You have overcome some of your worst fears and brutally murdered your inner demons. Once you are ready, simply step back through the doors you entered from and let your journey begin!

You have been named a full Traveler by the System and now have access to its Obelisks and resurrection

+15 Experience

All around him, the creatures he’d slain began to disintegrate into pools of shadow and ectoplasm, their bodies crumbling into nothing. Quickly, Erik focused on one of the corpses and then used Inspect, feeling a small burst of information fill his head before he pushed it to the back of his mind. When the bodies of the creatures finished dissolving and the pools of inky darkness and ethereal matter that remained evaporated, they left behind a small globe of white-golden light and a few objects perched atop a small scrap of cloth. When Erik stepped closer, the globes of light suddenly rose into the air and sped towards him. Before he could do more than tense up defensively, they crashed into his body and briefly suffused it with a dim glow of the same color before fading.

In the corner of his eye, Erik noticed the flash of the gold exclamation point once more resume its urgent signaling for his attention, but he ignored it momentarily. Moving over to the objects left behind in the wake of the vanishing corpses, Erik picked up a large stoppered glass vial. Examining it carefully, he saw it was filled with a viscous, translucent green substance. Triggering Inspect didn’t provide much more information, though it did confirm his suspicions that it was actual ectoplasm.

Ectoplasm

A translucent green goo

With a thought, Erik opened his inventory, briefly noting the window with a five by five layout of boxes that appeared and the one box that was already occupied by a small crate marked ‘basic supplies’ before he focused on attempting to store his loot. “If I only have twenty-five spaces, I hope all this shit stacks,” Erik grumbled.

Thankfully, it seemed all that was required to store the objects in his inventory was to touch the object in question and focus his intent on storing it in one of the slots. And the items did indeed stack. He wasn’t sure about keeping them as loot otherwise since he didn’t know their value. He was hoping the ectoplasm would eventually prove useful or that he could find someone to sell it to, but until he ran out of space or found something of better value, he was keeping it. Turning his attention to the rest of the items the creatures had dropped, Erik picked up the last vial resting atop the cloth in one hand and then picked up the cloth itself in the other. With them in his grasp, he used Inspect on them both.

????

An unknown substance

The ‘unknown substance’ in question was in a similarly stoppered vial as the ectoplasm but instead of the translucent green goo, it held an inky stygian-black substance. The pitch-dark substance seemed to swallow the light that touched it, and Erik thought this particular item was probably of some actual value. Unfortunately, it looked like only two of the creatures he’d fought had dropped a vial of it.

The cloth, in contrast, was obviously of little to no monetary value but was more immediately useful. It was a ragged and torn strip of rough, dark fabric, a description that was reflected by the System.

Ragged Cloth

A simple strip of torn cloth of low quality. Not of much value, but could be used as a makeshift bandage of sorts

Stowing both in his inventory, Erik moved to each of the other corpses and collected the loot from them as well. Overall, he looted one more vial of the unknown substance, another six strips of ragged cloth, and another four vials of ectoplasm. When he’d finished collecting his spoils and storing them in his inventory, he flicked his attention to the lingering symbols at the edge of his perception. Once he focused on them, they enlarged and came more thoroughly into his field of vision. Mentally selecting the flashing exclamation point, he was greeted by a cascade of messages

You have gained an Ability from one of your Traits

Ravenous Appetite

Your body hungers endlessly for something it cannot name, its insatiable appetence and need constantly pushing at the limits of your self-control. This ravenous, gnawing craving knows no mercy and sees neither friends nor innocents. All is food before the yawning pit of its appetite.

+25% Stamina regeneration for 3 hours after consuming a sufficient quantity of food

You suffer no negative effects from over-consumption of food

Satiety decreases significantly faster

+200% to maximum Satiety

Do to possessing two or more Abilities typically belonging to monsters and having at least two Traits attributed to monsters, you have acquired the unique Trait, Monstrous

Monstrous

You might be human, for the most part, but there lurks a darkness in you. It speaks to others’ sub-conscious minds through your eyes, it flashes its teeth with your every step, and it snarls when you smile. Others can sense this darkness, and when they look upon you, they do not see a fellow human. They might tolerate your presence, but they will always look upon you with fear and deep-seated unease, for they know you are not truly one of them.

People will sense your underlying nature and experience general unease in your presence, more likely to react negatively in dealings with you

“They always say dogs have a better sense of people. Well, the dogs might like him, but I don't think it's because he's harmless. It's because they know he's more wolf than man, more beast than human, and the old part of themselves that remembers hunting prey under the light of the moon recognizes a brother in arms.”

You have learned the ability, Feral Rush

Feral Rush

Level: 1

You surge forward with a savage and feral intent, closing the distance between you and your prey nearly instantaneously with a burst of supernatural speed.

Range: 5 m

Stamina Cost: 25

You have unlocked a new Technique from your Combat Proficiency

Inquisitor’s Aegis

Through a combination of magical theory and application of martial skill, the creators of the Witch’s Hammer fighting style designed this technique to allow less-skilled novices to block damage from spells and enhance their defensive prowess against non-bladed weaponry.

-60% Damage from blocked spells and other weapons

Cost: 35 Mana

You have learned the skill, Throwing!

Throwing

Level: 1

This skill defines your ability to apply precision and power into hurling objects over a distance. If you put your mind to it, anything can become a weapon.

Stamina cost of this skill is dependent upon the item being thrown and the distance necessary to hit the target

You have performed extraordinary feats both mental and physical in combat, overcoming your own limitations to decimate your enemies.

+1 Willpower for facing your fears and not allowing yourself to be controlled by them

+1 Dexterity for performing a feat of agility beyond your ability successfully in combat

+1 Strength for physically overpowering multiple foes in hand-to-hand combat

+1 Wisdom for gaining insight into your own nature and acknowledging your own fears

+1 Constitution for deliberately allowing an enemy to injure you to defeat her

Lesser Nightmares

Lesser Nightmares are a lower caste of fear demons. Though physically weaker than the average human, they possess the ability to take on the form of their foe’s fears and induce terror in them. While their victims are caught in the throes of their mindless dread, they are easy prey and quickly dispatched by the Lesser Nightmares. They are a very literal personification of the phrase ‘face your fears’. Face them with caution, for if your will is not greater than theirs, they will break you.

Information added to the Bestiary

You killed a Lesser Nightmare x 4

+30 Experience

Your Combat Proficiency has increased in level!

The Witch’s Hammer: Level 1 --> Level 2

Your skill has increased in level!

Feral Rush: Level 1 --> Level 2

Your ability has increased in level!

Savage Grace: Level 1 --> Level 2

Erik frowned after finishing the messages, pleased at his gains and discovering the creatures he’d fought had been called lesser nightmares. The new Trait he’d gained seemed like bad news considering the negative effect his abysmal charisma was already bound to have on his interactions with other people but protesting it wouldn’t do him any good. And the so-called ability wasn’t really much of a surprise. He remembered reading something about it in the description of one of his Traits, but he hadn’t paid much attention to it otherwise.

The description applied to the deep-seated and eternally unsatisfied hunger at the root of his eating disorder was an uncomfortably dark and accurate one, that he had already been well aware of. The System acknowledging it seemed like overkill now, after having lived with it for so long while it remained nameless as no doctor had been able to figure out the cause of his problem. So, he chose to ignore it, in favor of focusing on things of more immediate importance.

What he really needed, that he might actually be able to accomplish, was some way to make the System’s messages a little more…concise. He wanted to know what kind of progress he’d made in combat and out of it, of course, but some of the messages, like the ones showing him how many enemies he’d killed, seemed superfluous. Almost as if in response to his thoughts, Erik felt a prickling sensation wash through his senses.

Erik blinked and suddenly the messages were just as he’d wished. The increases in level for his skills and abilities were shortened greatly, leaving them only displaying the ability or skill with its new corresponding level. The message about the number of creatures he’d killed disappeared entirely. Nodding in satisfaction, Erik dismissed the windows.

When he returned his attention to his surroundings, Erik was startled to realize someone else was in the room with him. He almost instinctively slipped back into the cold focus of Savage Grace, but this figure was different from the creatures, the lesser nightmares, he’d faced. Its eyes glowed with a shifting kaleidoscope of light and not green fire, for one, but its presence also carried with it an unmistakable weight, as if the power and age of its existence weighed upon reality like the mass of some colossal giant.

Its intricate night-black armor was partially hidden beneath a winding swathe of cloth that wound around the figure’s body like something halfway between a ceremonial robe and a Roman toga. The cloth seemed to be made of some ethereal substance, for it looked oddly insubstantial, and it wound about the figure’s body like a pall of smoke, its indistinct and blurred fabric shifting oddly, as if it were held in place by the presence and will of the figure who wore it and nothing else.

When the figure moved, the night-black armor seemed to ripple, glowing lines of pure white crawling across its surface before it was covered once more by the phantom shadow of the creature’s robe. Though his appearance had been heavily shrouded before, the towering figure was unmistakably the same one that had greeted Erik and his fellows on the Proving Grounds.

“Janus,” Erik acknowledged curtly. He thought about continuing to speak, but Erik decided that it was probably better he converse only when necessary and let others lead conversations for the most part, at least until he was more confident in his interactions with others. His low charisma score was almost certainly a reflection of his lack of social skills, and years of being a socially awkward and paranoid introvert had left their mark on him. Now that he was being forced to step outside those bounds, he needed to learn how to interact with others, but he still needed to be cautious about it.

A part of him was tempted to just let his old reticence and social ineptitude take over but he decided against it. That anxiety and awkwardness had been a part of his old self, a crutch of old fears, and he wasn’t about to take any steps back on the journey he’d made in embracing his true self. Of course, that didn’t mean he was about to abandon any of the lessons he’d learned from it. For instance, the drawn-out bumbling conversations and tongue-tying anxiety had taught him the value of patience in conversation, in letting others try to fill the nervous silence.

He was also trying to be considerate of Janus’s status. Whether or not he was what he claimed to be, one only had to stand in his presence to know he held a great deal of power. Titan or no, Erik wasn’t willing to take a chance on saying something that might have been considered impertinent. So, for a long moment, they both stood there in utter silence, Janus’s incandescent gaze falling down upon him from two feet or more above his own height.

Erik waited patiently until, finally, Janus broke the silence. “Congratulations on defeating your Proving. Not many could have faced the darkest part of themselves and come out victorious as you have.” Janus stopped as if waiting for a response from him, and Erik waited a long moment before responding.

“I don’t know if it can be called that—a victory. I’d expect you to be disappointed with finding one of your vaunted heroes covered in blood.”

Janus’s eyes met Erik’s and seemed to peel back Erik’s skin and sear into his soul, but unlike when he’d met Janus’s gaze before, there was no drowning in the infinity of Fate reflected in Janus’s eyes and no struggle to free himself from it. “When I called you and the others to this world, I knew that I would be summoning more than just those of a more…heroic…persuasion. There would be some among you who served a different, and yet no less necessary, function in restoring the Balance.” His stare shifted away as if looking at a distant and far-away future.

“I did not bring you here to inspire the people, unite the kingdoms, or resolve conflicts. There will be enough heroes among your fellows, Erik. What this world and its people need from you, what I need from you, is to be the monster you were always meant to be.” Janus waited a moment for his words to truly sink in before continuing.

“I believe your people have a saying, ‘Fight fire with fire’, do they not? There will be some things that your fellows will not be willing to do, enemies they will not have the ruthlessness to deal with, creatures they will not be able to overcome for fear of doing what’s necessary to kill them in the first place. You are my answer to that problem, Erik. You will not hesitate to kill, to do what you believe to be necessary to stop your enemies, accomplish your goals, and protect what you care about. If you stay true to who you are meant to be, you will be a monster like no other. One that walks among the light but does not fear the dark or the shadows cast from it.”

He gestured to the iron-bound wooden doors Erik had walked through to enter the room. “Remember that as you venture out in the world, Erik. Now, hold out your right arm. I promised you a gift to help you when succeeded in your Proving and you shall have it.”

Hesitating for only a moment, Erik held out his arm and Janus turned it over, so the underside of his forearm was exposed. The shifting glow of power in Janus’s eyes brightened as he placed two fingers against Erik’s forearm. Erik almost attempted to jerk his arm from the Titan’s grasp when he felt the flesh of his arm ignite in a fiery agony, but Janus tightened his grasp ever so slightly on his arm and he knew it would probably be futile to try. Gritting his teeth, Erik watched as glowing lines etched themselves into his flesh.

The light on his forearm bent and curved, as it carved out a large glyph in a looping, spidery scrawl that bizarrely resembled a cross between some sort of arcane calligraphy and the tribal knotwork style he’d seen in some tattoos on earth. The pain intensified as several lines appeared around the central glyph, forming the twisting and intertwined bounds of a knotted circle. Once the circle was formed, it branched out suddenly in eight directions. The branches positioned at the cardinal points stretched longer than the others, twisting and curling until they eventually formed barbed arrow-heads. Equidistant between each of the cardinal branches, a shorter branch formed, mirroring the position of the intermediate directions on a compass.

The ends of these smaller branches formed into arrows as well, and for a moment, Erik thought Janus’s gift was complete. Then the light flared, and Erik released a guttural scream as the searing pain erupted into utter agony, spiking through his mind. A moment later, the pain vanished, and Janus released his arm. Looking down at the finished product, Erik saw that the light had added several, much smaller glyphs at the ends of each point. For a moment, the lines continued to glow with power but slowly, it faded, leaving behind the matte-black lines of a tattoo. After a moment, those too faded back into his skin, leaving the tan-grey flesh unblemished.

After finishing the inspection of his arm, Erik leveled a glare at Janus’s towering form. “You couldn’t have warned me that it was going to feel like pouring fucking acid onto my skin?” Erik snarled.

Though his features were concealed by the deep shadows of his hooded robes, Erik could have sworn he caught the edge of Janus’s lips quirking into a smirk before he replied. “I could have, but better to let you learn the lesson on your own. Trust no one, especially those offering you power or gifts. Everything in Terra comes at a price, and its usually not one you’re going to be happy about paying,” Erik nodded grudgingly, acknowledging Janus’s point.

“As to my mark and what it does…well, I wanted to aid you in the best way possible, but it would seem the abilities and Proficiency you chose are quite complimentary in combat. Rather than simply grant you a blessing of power as I did for many of your fellow Travelers, I had something different in mind. Instead, I decided to give you a bit of guidance. I cannot tell you much more than that its use and purpose is quite literal to its name. Heed its warnings well, Erik, and be true to who you are. That is all I ask,” Janus finished, his final words echoing in the stone room.

It took a moment for Erik’s mind to process the fact that Janus was no longer present—he had vanished as if he’d never been present at all. If it weren’t for the message that suddenly popped up and the throbbing pain in his arm where the mark had faded, he would have thought he’d just had a very real break with sanity and hallucinated the whole thing.

You have been granted a Mark of Power!

Fate’s Compass

Gifted to you by the Titan, Janus, the precise purpose of this mark is unknown. In time, its powers may become known, but for now, its usefulness is both unclear and questionable.

Dismissing the window with a sharp gesture, Erik turned and strode to the doors leaving the room. He had some idea of what the Compass might do after Janus’s ‘hint’, but the general idea was nebulous. If Erik’s mind were given over to being more blithe, he would have thought that the name ‘Fate’s Compass’ could also have been ascribed to a watch. But if its name was as literal as Janus claimed, then it was more likely the Compass was meant to give him a general direction for where he needed to go to accomplish whatever it was he needed to do to help restore the Balance.

I suppose I’ll found out if I’m right soon enough, Erik thought to himself briefly. When Erik pushed on the iron-bound doors, they swung easily in the opposite direction, just as they had when he’d entered the room to face his Proving. What he found on the other side, was not the room he had come from. Instead, it had been replaced by a massive blank expanse of formless white light. Remembering the message from before and hoping to hell he wasn’t about to kill himself, Erik scowled before taking a breath and stepping forward into the endless expanse.