It burns.
I am the Highfather. Chosen by the divine powers to represent them. For one year I am their devoted servant, their archpriest. As such I am privy to their thoughts and motivations more so than any other priest could ever hope to be.
It burns. My robes turn to ash. I can smell my soul on fire.
At least I thought it was the divine powers. Now I think something else moves me. The gods may not even be aware it. No. I think one does. I think he does. I think –
It burns. My eyeballs are boiling in their sockets. My beard is smoldering. What little hair on my scalp has caught fire like dry wheat in a field.
I can see them. The living. The cattle. Half shuffling towards promises in the sky. Half being dragged down into the depths by deception and violence.
IT BURNS!!! The flame engulfs me. Not from without. It burns from within, setting ablaze all I ever was, and ever will be.
I’m ablaze in a grand hall. A hall of bone. The floor, ceiling, all of it, made up of skulls and bones. Looming over me are thrones, arranged in an arc. Seven thrones that I can see, but they shift and move and as they do shadows form on them. I can make out figures seated, watching me. It is the one, the large skull floating above its throne, with purple flame billowing out of its mouth and sockets, that demands my attention.
It burns, ever hotter, ever brighter. The heat and flame dancing deep within me. I watch as the skin turns black and peels away, leaving only blazing bone underneath.
“You. Are. Mine.” The words hit me like blows, sending me prone. The words are divine, but wrong, twisted. I feel the words as much has hear them. This creature before me is a god of some sort. A name begins to brand itself into my brain, my mind, my very soul. Narsex.
And I BURN!!!
I kneel, a fiery skeleton in the hall before Narsex. My master for the next year. In that moment, I am aware of all Narsex was. He was once a powerful archmage who sought immortality, as wizards often do. He became a lich, then something more. Darkness incarnate, even the flaming skull I see is just what he wishes me to see. I can taste his hunger.
The burning, it no longer hurts. Or more accurately, the burning is so constant, it has become tolerable. I stand.
Narsex fought the gods many times, and in time they managed to bind him to the Pit. Though he stayed out of infernal politics, he slayed many demon lords and princes to claim their power for himself, establishing his own city , Nar’dilith, as a Duke of that realm. Eventually he drew the attention of the Demon King Karaanx, who invited him to join him as a fellow king of his Infernal Court.
The burn intensifies for a moment. Do other mortals know this? That there is a 3rd axis vying for their souls. And what’s worse, I am tied to Narsex, for the year at least. He hungers. And will direct me to feast on power, divine, arcane, infernal, innocent or guilty. Yet my mind is my own. He is in here with me. Is amused by my free will. Yet he has not taken it from me. I don’t know if he can, or if he does I won’t have the value he needs from me.
The burn flickers, and in the flicker I can see the Aether. In that moment, I know two things. One, the Aether, or someone, something within it is watching me. And judging by the surprise in my mind. Narsex doesn’t know where I went.
That bears investigating.
A Darkness Rising 