[WP] What's the worst thing that could happen?

...

There is a voice within every living man and woman. An inner-self that represents the the most human elements of a mind, representing the good within them.

In some, this voice is the same as the body which it resides. Of words, it speaks through their lips and tongue, and lives a life of blatant honesty to be witnessed by any and all who pass. For others it is a silent thing, seen only to speak through actions, deeds and duties. For others still, this voice can only find itself among the word in written ink, laced between thin sheets of paper or parchment.

For others, it is all but murdered. Crushed beneath the weight of sin through unholy purpose.

Of his conscience, the Dark Lord Gillian often listened to his own like one might overhear a drunken wailing of a stabbed man in a distant alleyway beset by cut-throats. It was not consulted or affiliated with, certainly not a concern for his own thoughts- though even he might acknowledge that the voice was once a far louder thing than presently stated in the recent centuries.

Faintly, as if through a thick fog which blocked all but the faintest of noise and light, his memory might occasionally stretch back to when it held a place of respect beside his actions. Back in the earliest of his youth, when the conscience was a companion to his true acts upon the world. A voice of respect that spoke of morals passed, taught and instilled by long dead kin.

A voice soon silenced in his youth by fires, battles, and war. A thing to be shut away and forgotten to die.

There were other voices too, those that held him in their embrace with power imbued: Of anger, resentment, hatred and cold logic. Those were the forces that guided him, saved him time and time again where the conscience might have brought him towards death and ruin. Those were the tones that he came to trust

Yet even in the present times, that small and pitiful voice of righteousness had not left completely. A buzzing gnat of whatever moral compass left to him, it seemed persistent to nag at his choices, trying to press him into a direction of what was once good and just. Much as he would have thought the odd force have given up and met the reaper long ago, it seemed a small but core piece of his identity: Immortal, just like him.

On the setting sun distant, face cool in the wind of Western plains, Gillian briefly considered the tiny voice that resided in his mind as it screamed.

Lords and light, did it scream.

Desperate, like a child reaching for its mother's corpse: Its volume was faint but ever persistent to Gillian's ears, screeching as it tried to bring whatever doubt it could to his focused mind. Hoarse whispers of contrary suggestion pressing in, again and again.

"Stop!" It seemed to shout. "Stop!"

What a wonder after all this time, that he might still hold such a line of thinking. That oddity of proof he wasn't completely corrupted by the passage of time while reigning terror upon the land. Perhaps as the years ran by, even with the powers that granted him an eternal life- his mind was running adrift of some unseen and unknown condition.

Or perhaps not.

With a smile, Gillian crushed the crying voice beneath the massive weight of reason and knowledge founded though several thousand years of boredom, raising his hands and began the chant of power. His eyes glowed, then his flesh, then the very air around him, as the hue of the eastern tower reacted, strange abominations beyond the veil between worlds watching curious- unable or unwilling to interfere.

The Spheres of Chaos resonated deep within that strange path of spreading gloom. Its absence of light seemed to be a draw- as if that which entered did not return of its own powers and capacity. As his eyes caught faint glimmers of the coils and unfathomable things which lurked within, Gillian did not doubt the truth of such assumptions. Still, he had come so far, invested more time than one might comprehend to reach this point. He would have his desires made reality.

His hands parted, fingers each clutching a rune of their own creation- mana and power pulsing with the ever-drumming beat of his immortal heart, pinpricks of electricity slamming along the channels beneath his skin- just as the shut away voice shouted once more, begging as if upon its knees for mercy.

"Stop!" It seemed to scream, withering beneath its own exertion. "Stop! Stop before it is too late!"

Again, Gillian crushed it beneath a smile, letting the final rush of his castings erupt from the aura that surrounded him. Why should Gillian: The Dark Mage of Death and Drinker of Souls, stop?

What's the worst thing that could happen?

Then he ripped a hole in the fabric of the universe, and his question was promptly answered.