Do You Believe It, Can You Receive It?

There existed one last member of the bandit crew. He stood in the way of our egress.

He did not hear our approach.

We looted the corpses. We looted the graves. The dead have no need for the tools of the living.

I found books. Books of the gods.

They may have been forgotten. They may have been useless. But they sparked my interest.

I am a conduit of power for the gods. It would be foolish to discard information.

The Unclaimed - the story of a priestess. She worshiped the Lady of Loss, Shar, the goddess of the moonless night. She sacrificed everything for her faith. Her beliefs. Ultimately, even her memory was discarded for a greater purpose.

The only thing left to her was her passion. The belief she was a part of something greater than herself. She was its servant.

Blind faith.

The story did not end with her death.

She arrived at Death's domain. Her goddess should claim her soul. She would be rewarded for her actions. Her life.

She stood at the Wall of the Faithless.

She waited.

Shar never came.

Her soul cried in torment. Her sense of self rotted to nothing.

Her eternal reward was not thanks. Not appreciation. Not even continued servitude.

It was knowledge, and experience, that the pain of forgetting everything she once was paled next to the pain of having been forgotten entirely.

Perhaps I am walking this path. I have no memory.

The urges within me fit what I know of Shar. She is a goddess of greed. And loss. And destruction.

Perhaps it is wise to keep my former faith obscure. To not push too deeply. To wonder overmuch.

I shall look after my own interests. My own concerns. Worry not for some higher power. Some higher cause.

In death, I would have only myself to blame.

Not the abandonment of one I trusted.

Death & Divinity: A Godly Guide - Death is a powerful force. Too powerful for even a single god.

The ultimate, the changing of state from living to dead, needs an overseer. Even as the causes sheer away and merge together anew.

Jergal, the Lord of the End of Everything, held this position. Until he grew bored.

He relinquished his responsibility to three younger deities: Bhaal, Bane, and Myrkul.

Myrkul oversaw death.

Bhaal, the most cruel forms. Murder incarnate.

Bane... was there.

Jergal, his duties passed on, had finally freed himself.

This temple must have belonged to Jergal in the past. This is the second mention of his importance.

There is one final warning in the book.

Everyone can die. Even the gods. Those closest to death should keep this close to mind above all others.

I wonder if this was left for me. To caution me from my urges. Lest I fall prey to their darkness. Their consequences.

How I'm Supposed to Feel

The broken walls of the tomb led to a cave. The cave led to a ladder. The ladder led to the surface. To a cliff that would punish a misplaced step with certain death.

Would-be certain death. If a dream-drow failed to intervene. Again.

I was not tempted to test her kindness.

The facade of a crumbling temple welcomed us. Confirming my suspicion that this was a holy place. Not merely an abandoned grave site.

Perhaps it was both.

Regardless, it was a place of import. Long ago.

A heated argument from a pair of would-be grave robbers quieted. We had pulled ourselves into their sight. They nervously wielded weapons. Attempted to brandish threats.

Neither were warriors. Neither wanted to fight.

How might it feel for my newly acquired blade to part their flesh. To bathe in its first blood in perhaps centuries. To be baptised as I tested its edge against the living.

The two tried to force a decision. Shadowheart looked to me. Curious. Calculating.

They were the same as the elf. They smelled of fear. They could do no lasting harm.

They were not worthy.

I did not reach for the blade.

I stretched. I yawned.

Their eyes lingered. They knew I could crush them. They saw the weapon on my back. Longer than they were tall. More deadly.

They understood how effortless it would be.

They had no chance.

I told them they had only one thing: their lives. They should value it while they could.

They fled.

Shadowheart offered her first genuine smile. It shifted to a smirk as she saw my gaze. She complimented my finesse.

She was pleased the aura I exude was capable of doing more than mere slaughter.

She claimed us to be kindred spirits.

I could only think of this aura.

Do my thoughts seep into the world? Hint at what I might do? Does she see what others might not? Or is she merely wary?

I would be.

I was broken from my reverie. A rock crashed to the ground. It broke through a roof, revealing the room below.

A rush of footsteps came to investigate.

The pair of thieves were not alone.

We left the scene. Returned to the grave with the lich. He had wandered off.

Good riddance.

We went to the only path in the tomb we had skipped. It was a small alcove. A secret passage.

We opened the door. There were five people. Focused on a room opposite ours. Where the stone fell.

A mage stood nearby. Staying far from the danger of a stationary stone. He noticed us.

His screams drew his companions.

Shadowheart took aim at a barrel. It was filled with oil. It exploded as her flame breached the wooden barrier.

She retreated into the hidden passage. She grabbed my arm and pulled me along.

One of the surviving thieves began to scream in rage. He led the charge while others kept their distance.

I called upon the power of thunder in the doorway. The raging human kept his footing. Others were blasted into the burning rubble. They died.

The door slammed. The mechanism that had opened it broke with my spell. It gave us the advantage.

The human did not know his situation. He drew some blood. Lightning coursed from my veins to his weakened body. His corpse crumbled.

Shadowheart was not pleased. She was too close to the blast. I forgave her prudence in fleeing from the human. Given the situation.

Arrows thumped into the securely shut door. We left.

After salvaging what we could from the body.

We returned to the crater Shadowheart had made. We lowered ourselves into the room. Saw the same situation as before. With our positions reversed.

Shadowheart threw a bomb at the remaining grave robbers. One of the archers survived. She rushed the priestess and hit her point-blank with her bow.

I heard Shadowheart's response. Her whimper. I felt a familiar anger.

A few minutes later I saw a corpse at my feet. Both the halberd and my hands covered in dwarven blood.

No one hurts my Shadowheart.

I'd Die To Find Out

I am not a savage.

I soaked in the gore of the illithid for but a few moments.

A few minutes.

An elf stopped us on our way to clean the blood, claiming an intellect devourer had fled the wreckage. I followed his direction and found nothing but a boar.

Turning back, I found another bore. This one had taken a dagger, ready to slit a throat.

He blustered, but stopped as the worm within his head stunned his senses. He attempted an apology. I do not take well to threats.

But I am not a savage.

I understand the weak experience fear.

I would not reward his cowaradice with execution. Not yet. Not if he kept his knife to himself.

But I would not reward his paranoia with acceptance either. He had his own problems. Let him solve them.

Alone.

A huge structure lay a short distance away. The door was much too sturdy to break down with the small axe I had at my disposal.

I searched for another path. I was found wanting. I turned the way we had come. My mind turned toward the elf. I did not want to walk by him again. I did not want another confrontation.

Shadowheart smirked at my hesitation. She brandished a small pack of tools she scavanged from the wreckage. Within moments, the door was open.

We were welcomed by several sarcophagi.

Defiling the dead was fine. They no longer needed their tools. Or riches.

Shadowheart stopped me as I attemped to move into the room. She pointed out traps on the ground. The dead, or their relatives, did have issues with aiding the living. She bent down to work.

Perhaps I was too hasty to judge. Shadowheart may not have the brawn to hold her own in a fight. But she still had her own value.

Among the dead I found a halberd. It was good to hold a weapon that required both hands. I could put my weight behind the shaft. Revel in the resistance and give as flesh rent from bone.

Shadowheart broke the tools on the grave in the center of the room. It likely belonged to the most important of the dead. A king or leader. There was writing. It was inscrutable.

The tools had been scavenged. It was only a matter of time before they broke. I did not blame her.

There was a button on one of the pillars. It was likely a trap. It was not worth risking. Not now.

Shadowheart led the way through the darkness. She continued to open doors along the way. We reached another tomb. It felt holy. The name "Jergal" - an ancient, forgotten god of the dead - rose to mind.

Several bodies littered the ground. There did not appear to be any sign of struggle. We found a scroll to protect against the un- and supernatural. And a key.

Just outside was a cave and a ladder leading to the surface. An escape fashioned after the structure had fallen to ruin? Or perhaps an exposed secret?

We searched the crypt for more secrets. I asked Shadowheart of the trinket she kept hidden. She refused to speak of it. I attempted to learn more of her; more than a name and that she worshipped a god. Just as I did... probably.

She refused again. It would serve no purpose.

I thought of myself. My lack of memory. The ecstacy I felt as the life of the illithid drained away. The ever-present flickers of death and blood that filled my mind. The urges that tempted my every action.

I did not press her further.

A button was hidden at the end of the corridor. Shadowheart felt it safe to press due to the lack of traps.

A hidden room appeared. The dead rose.

I pushed Shadowheart into the room behind me. I stood in the doorway as the skeletal scribes approached. As I wait, I cast the spell in the hopes it would protect from the dead.

A brute held my attention. The weaker cast spells, silencing and blinding both of us, and stymieing Shadowheart's ability to help.

The scroll bent their attacks from my body. My own divine castings turned their bones to dust. We triumphed.

I felt proud.

Any strength they may have had in life likely drained along with their blood.

I was disappointed.

A lot of effort was taken to protect this specific tomb. A plaque claimed it held the Guardian and that atonement came with knowledge.

Shadowheart stood back. I lifted the lid. A dessicated corpse - a lich - flew from its confines. I lifted the halberd.

Instead of attacking, he appeared civil. He asked the cost of a single mortal's life.

I owed him nothing, and said as much.

He accepted my defiance and claimed we would meet again. At the proper time. At the proper place.

I expected him to vanish.

Instead, he wandered off. Complaining about filth and mess.

We Can Make It If We Try

The woman I saved from the pod - Shadowheart - lay mere steps from my own spot on the beach. I thought her dead - I saw her die on the ship from dragon flames. The artifact she seemed so intent on saving miraculously landed in her outstretched palm.

I thought to satiate my curiousity and reached for it. But she awoke and instantly grasped the object, hiding it amongst her person as she eyed me, suspicious of my motives. I claimed to be checking on her vitals, to see if she still took breath.

She did not know why we lived. But she also did not seem to care, only that we did manage to survive.

I did not disagree.

Even as my mind turned back to the memory of the drow, and a voice.

Shadowheart wished to stay together.

I did agree.

It was worth having a companion, even one I knew little about, in an unknown area with unknown threats. She looked weak. I doubt she could succeed at any attempted betrayal. Even so, she was a second set of eyes.

I tried to move forward. She stopped to thank me for my actions in rescuing her from the pod. Perhaps her suggestion to travel together was more sentimental than practical.

She likely thought she would be dead without my assistance. The pod would have likely proved a safer vessel to the ground than having little more than the wind as a cushion.

The wreckage of the ship was nearby, and a handful of intellect devourers scampered about. They fled into the ship as they sensed our presence. I stole into the darkness to investigate further, but Shadowheart stopped me, wrapping me in the shadows of her goddess.

Perhaps she would prove more useful than a mere second set of hands.

Corpses of both the illithid and their slaves were scattered throughout. Shadowheart's supposition may have been correct - she could have been among the dead without my intervention.

We could have all been among the dead - in hell - had she remained trapped. She was the one to force the ship to safety. Relative safety.

The intellect devourers waited in ambush.

I attempted a reversal. I failed.

One of the three attempted to bite into my flesh with its tentacles. I felt power suffuse my body. The lightning that had built up in response to the threat channeled into the creature on contact, frying the synapses of the gigantic brain.

While Shadowheart took on her own foe, I rushed forward and felt an alien power fill my body, aching for release. Lolth filled my soul with pure pain, and I unleashed it on the creature. It fell to the ground, dead.

While it felt good and proper to accept this power into my soul, something felt off.

Perhaps I am uncomfortable serving as the conduit of another. I do not like to be a mere servant. I need to be something more.

Is that what I was before? A servant?

Was I satisifed with that?

One of the illithid still lived. Its breaths were weak, and its blood pooled beneath its crumpled form. It would die soon. On its own.

I felt compassion for the creature, a need to aid it. To heal it. I noticed something, and my thoughts shifted to self-hatred of the weakened, pathetic, mortal creature I was.

It was all an attempt to distract from my own growing malice of the creature. It was in vain.

Even the suggestion my thoughts were other than my own did little more than fill me with rage. The illithid met the disgust I offered as I fought off its control with undisguised loathing of its own.

I left it, bleeding out on the floor. It should have thought it would suffer a slow, painful death. An ignoble end, perfectly suited to its life. I felt its despair well as it realized it would recieve neither help nor mercy.

Its attention unfocused as the only thing that filled its consciousness was its labored breathing. Its weakening breathing.

I smashed its skull in a single strike, opening the horrible creature's mind to the world. Both its body and mine were drenched in the juices of viscera and gore.

Sweet, delicious juices.

A perfume of perfection.

Despite how it started, today will be a good day.

Bring Me To Life

My name is Damien.

I know a dark elf, a woman, from my dreams.

Everything else is blank. Emptiness.

I thought, perhaps, freeing myself from the illithid would knock loose whatever was blocking my mind. I was mistaken. I fear, given the visions of holes piercing my brain, that what is lost will not return. Perhaps it is merely the influence of the worm within.

Keeping a journal might help maintain something of who I am. Who I was. Or at least keep me from getting worse.

I awoke aboard a ship, flying through the sky. Damage had wrecked much of the area, likely breaking some mechanism in the pod that kept me in stasis. I easily ripped through the flesh of the container, took stock of my surroundings.

I grasped at my memories. I spoke already of everything I could remember.

But I did not speak of a... belief I had. Something that wasn't solid enough to be knowledge, not quite. But a... feeling I knew to be true. A... faith? In what, I do not know. I have decided now - given this dark elf, I would later learn was called drow. I have given myself to Lolth. I am not confident this is correct, but there is little use in second-guessing now. I will follow her and take from her what I can.

To survive. To thrive.

To get vengeance on whatever did this to me.

My surroundings were oddly organic. It felt wrong. Bodies were scattered throughout the room. All dead. I was the only one to survive. This felt right.

My mind attempted to wander. To reach out to... something familiar. Would the flesh of the room, of the equipment - both broken and whole - yield to a blade? Would it bleed?

Perhaps I would have sated my curiosity. I had but a glorified club.

Bruises are boring. Blood is... intoxicating.

I suppose it is fortunate I did not have a blade. I had no desire to ponder my circumstances. Not then.

The next room held a trove of knowledge, centuries of history of the planes and gods and Abeir-Toril. Approaching these... brains(?) implanted everything in my own. I have yet to internalize everything, and I trust that I won't need to.

It is how I learned of the drow, and of Lolth. At least now I can have a name to give to this abstract concept of... faith.

A voice pled for help.

It was a brain, somehow living, within the skull of a dead human. It claimed to be a new life, a servant of my captors. I crushed the skull, releasing it from its prison. I imagined carving my fingers into its fleshy body, creating holes from which its blood could pool.

I forced my hands to lower the creature, denying my instincts. For now. We needed to get to the helm, to escape the hells. Its name was "Us."

The worm in my brain reacted. The larva of an illithid, attempting to make me its host, its pupa, its egg. It is only a matter of time, days at most, before I succumb. Before I become something I am not. Or was not. It must be responsible for my lack of memories.

Thinking on such matters would do nothing. First to the helm, then to safety, and then I could deal with the worm.

As I left the room, the extent of the damage was clear. What should have been a corridor was demolished. The tentacles of the living ship attempted to fend dragons from destroying what remained of its crew. Below armies of devils marched to war.

A gith attempted to slaughter me, coming from behind. The worm in my brain stopped her, speaking with the worm in hers. As I recognized she was in my situation, she recognized that I was in hers. She, like Us, required my assistance in getting to the helm.

We ran into both invaders - devilspawn - and illithid defenses - thralls. Someone from another pod, undestroyed, called out for help. The gith was in favor of ignoring the captive, that there was no sense in dying for a stranger.

I saw no harm in spending a few moments to release a captive, especially one who could prove useful. At least as a distraction. I sought out a switch or panel and, despite her complaints, the gith did not leave us behind.

There was a socket on her pod. Attempting to smash it did nothing.

Further in the ship was another pod with a rune powering it. An unconscious woman slept within. A liability. The rune was simple to remove and fit the socket of the other woman's pod. The illithid within my mind reached out, forcing the pod open. The woman fell to the floor of the ship.

She was wary, not of me nor of the brain following us, but of the gith. I felt the parasite within her head. She saw it in her best interest - and ours - to help each other escape. She introduced herself as Shadowheart, grabbed some... device(?) that she claimed was nothing important, and prepared herself to fight to freedom.

The four of us approached the helm and the gith attempted to take control. Shadowheart fought back against her commands. We entered the helm, which was similarly damaged as the corridors behind. An illithid fought a devil, much larger than the imps we'd seen before, and assumed us thralls. We were ordered to connect the nerves of the ship, allowing our escape.

Shadowheart ran forward to the controls as the other three fought off the waves of devilspawn pouring from outside the ship. As she connected the synapses together, a dragon flew into the damaged gap in the ship and spewed forth a gout of flame. Her corpse flew from the ship as we... vanished.

I woke, outside of hell, falling to the ground. Headfirst. I should have died.

A force halted my fall, inches from impact. It gently lowered me to the beach.

My memories are still a void. There are numerous corpses around. Not captives from the ship. Something within me, something that feels alien, delights in the death. Feels comfortable. It must be the parasite making a home of my mind.

The part of myself that I know is me shouts for vengeance. For payback to be dealt to those who left me to death. Or slavery.

Onwards.