Topic: Chaos' Call (Fan story)

[Dracula9]

So, this was originally going to be my short story contest entry, born from several specific discussions with plottwist during the discourse of planning out parts of Umbra. However, as I've spent more and more time writing it, it's wanting to go places and take directions I'd not imagined when I first thought of it, and I don't want to cause the story to suffer as a result of trying to cram it all into a much shorter piece in the small timeframe the contest is still active.

So I'm just gonna post it here in short chapters, instead.

Bear in mind that this is my own personal interpretation of the character telling it, their motivations, their viewpoints, and their philosophies on the world/existence/life/etc., as well as my own personal thoughts on certain objects and themes within the CV lore. So if I express a point of view on this or that subject or important object or weapon that conflicts with what may be more commonly accepted, or with someone's own thoughts, take it with the grain of salt of simply being my own outlook--but don't hesitate to bring it up for deliberation if you feel like engaging that given matter and discussing both sides. Since the updates are both unguaranteed as to time and finite, I see no reason not to encourage deliberation for the remainder of the thread.

With that out of the way, we can get to the fun.

(click to show/hide)

Witnessing my master’s steady rise to power has been an unprecedented delight.

What an absolute tyrant of power and destruction he has become in the time since first I became his servant. What a swath of bedlam and wanton doom he has cut in his wake on his ever-onward climb to gaining yet more power. Such a deliberate and joyous enactment of Chaos upon this feeble earth he has lain before his mighty feet.

As an emissary of Chaos myself, to watch by his side as his fist slowly closes around this world with each successive revival has been an unparalleled delight--nay, for such is the swell of ecstasy and purpose at each torrential chorus of screams in the mired agony and despair he carves into the realm of mortals, that I cannot describe it justly.

To see the humans cower in their shambled structures and flee into their flimsy homes at the onset of night, to hear their hushed and fearful whispers of doubt and suspicion, to revel in the flickering light of the flames engulfing their pitiful villages and their final wailing dirges in the howls of the very flames that take them--all is but the sweetest of music unto my ears.

For I am he who reapeth the souls of these piteous mortal beings, and my Lord and Master is he who shall supply myself and Chaos with the caterwauling essences of these weakly humans until he is destroyed, or the world is no more. I am that which begins the path of mortality, and that which ends it. I am he who cometh on blackened wings with scythe and sickle, grinning the eternal grin of decay’s embrace, to bear the souls of these fleshly beings into Chaos primordial to be born anew.

My name is Death, and to serve under my Lord has proven to be a surge of absolution to my purpose. To bear the will of one so viciously attuned to Chaos is an honor beyond expression.

I recall still that first eve my Lord called upon me, gave me greater purpose than that which I had until that moment known. I recall the glint of shrewdness in his dark eyes as he presented the Stone to me, and made his offer.

The ambition of this mere man, this human! To stare into the eyes of the incarnate abyss and show not fear, but keen fury! Many other mortals have made offers, bargains, deals over these countless millenia, but none were so driven and ambitious as this one single man.

Even as an immortal agent of the laws of existence themselves, I was taken aback by his determination and desire for Chaos to reign--but I bear no shame in being surprised by a human, not after the things I’ve seen that man accomplish.

To slay such a powerful creature as that complacent and decadent fool Bernhard--exemplary! To transmute his soul into pure vampiric essence and become an immortal with all the powers of the night--extraordinary! To harness that soul and power to create the Stone of Stones, the Elixir of Life, the Magnum Opus--unparalleled!

To think that so many thousands of mortals had spent century after century seeking how to create the Stone which bestows upon their frail forms life eternal, powers beyond imagining, the ability to evade even my own keen eyes forevermore--all the while unawares that the answer lay within the very dark creatures they dispatched so many Hunters and Slayers to destroy!

Life eternal, immortality, undying vigor and youthfulness--all sought in vain by unenlightened humans who wished for such things without considering the appropriate toll for such an exchange. Never before my Lord did they realize that the only proper sacrifice for life everlasting was their own fundamental mortality, their own human souls and beings, their very divine connection with that which they call God!

Their attempts to reach such sublime answers should not go without commendation, though their pitiful mortal existence obscured the truth from them from the moment of their very births!

None before or after my Dark Lord had ever solved the riddle, discovered the secret, shewed the truth so masterfully.

For something so weak as mortal flesh to gain such powers, the older-than-ancient Chaos itself must be embraced--for what could provide that forevermore more suitably than that which existed before such Gods came into being? Those human philosophers and practitioners sought every avenue but the ones which they considered “evil”; how laughable their petty exploits were!

Only my master uncovered the reality; that such simplistic morality cannot be allowed to hinder such a search for immortality and powers which exist in defiance of the divine order.

And thus I swore myself and my blade unto him--the King who wieldeth the Crimson Stone.

The promises of domination and wholehearted destruction were without doubt, for I knew one so sharp of intellect and keen of ambition would not make such empty pacts.

And thus our tale together began its course.