The King of the Damned - A Tale of the Hellscape

His soul drifted through the Hellscape. Wreathed in rags of ephemeral soulstuff, he drifted on the currents of that realm, pulled inexorably towards a destination all its inhabitants knew well. It loomed before him, a great tower of swirling infirmity and malice incarnate. It was a structure more in concept than design, an idea of a place, devoid the certainty or permanence of what mortals call ‘reality.’

It was the Basilica, the destination of fallen immortals. As death is to the mortal, so failure is to the immortal. And the Basilica was their punishment. For many, their punishment was eternal. He had passed the event horizon; there was no escape now from that pull. In a moment, he was gone, consumed by the mass of eddying energy and ideas.

He found himself trapped, chained, and he could feel the intentions of the malign entities of the place on him. They oozed from the Basilica, manifestations of sadism ghosting towards their victim. They are the Chirurgeons. Only now did he, the soulrags, the vestiges of The Hammer, hear the screaming in the background. The music of sorrow, pain, and souls. The Chirurgeons drew their appendages of hurt, drawing near him. He threw back his head and added his voice to the chorus.

Time was stretched and twisted, concepts and knowledge lost in incomprehensible pain. And fury. They could not contain the fury.

The wheel spun with at a frantic pace, its motion marking the passing of eons. They tried to cripple him, keep him as just another voice in the chorus. They could not.

The change in pitch was heard throughout the Hellscape. Higher and higher the voices became, and new ones were added. Rested, the Hammer left the Basilica as the Conductor of the Chirurgeons’ Screams.
***

All was ruin. The Palace was naught but rubble and a scavenging ground for lesser creatures. The vast throne room was but a husk of its former glory, inhabited by mockers and scoffers and wasted by infinite time.

One sat on the throne, drinking deep of the power still there and surrounded by supplicant and sycophantic minions. The thing’s very presence was a leeching thing, a creature drawing power from the effort put into making this place one of the rarest entities in the Hellscape. A constant. As it drew the preserving power from the Palace, more and more of it fell away into oblivion. Cracks webbed and wormed their way out from the base of the thrown, pointing accusing fingers at the defiler of this place, both unholy and holy. There would be a reckoning.
***

Familiar deserts. This was a world long past. Last when he had been here he had been on the verge of transformation, laying siege to this place of knowledge alongside mortal men. It had been proud then. A gem to be claimed.

The Hammer looked upon the decrepit tower now with a feeling almost akin to pity. He did not know how he came to this place, only that he must enter it.

He pulled his wisp towards it. It was a towering spire of crumbling stone, somehow defying this world’s attempts to bring it low. This place would not last much longer.

He entered. As before, it was a single room, lined with books reaching up into the heavens. In the center was a single table. Standing beside it was a man, bent over with age, as though the weight of his years was slowly forcing him to kiss the ground.

“You,” the Hammer said, “were here so long ago when I first came here. You were much younger then.”

The old man nodded. “I am waning. I am no longer what I once was. Before I leave the planes of existence, I shall mould the future.” He raised a crooked finger towards the Hammer. “You are that future.” The man shuffled over to one of the walls and pulled out a book. He painfully turned around and made his way back to the table and set it down. “I made you read every one of these last time you were here. This time, you must learn them. Absorb them. You will not get a third chance.” There was a crash of stone off in the distance.

“My plane is failing. This… vision, my power… is failing. I see a god’s potential in you. Read. Then, one day, shove aside those that have brought me so low.” The old man began to cough violently and fell to the ground. “I believe you can fetch the books yourself this time.”

The Hammer nodded and pulled his ghostly body up to the table. And read. And read. Until the tower fell, and the old man had died, and all was dust.
***

The Leech felt the foreboding, but he knew not from where it came. It had become bloated, fat on borrowed power. It was a disgusting thing, of clicking limbs and many eyes. Spikes rose from its head like a crown, mocking and defying the authority of the being that had made this place.

Demons spun and danced around it, weapons flailing and teeth shining in the unlight of this plane. They were the Leech’s subjects, taken soldiers of the missing Master. It cackled to itself in delight.

Suddenly there was a wisp in the room. A little patch of soul wrapped in the rags of the lost and damned. The Leech chuckled to itself, looking forward to consuming this morsel of soulstuff.

“What has brought you hear, ragged ghost?” The fat thing on the throne said in a spiraling high voice. It was an ugly sound, forced through clacking mandibles and large probing tongues. “Do you want to join the dance?” It said like one would to a child. It gestured with a chitinous limb towards his capering minions. They never halted in their dance, fearful of the terrible retribution should they stop.

A wind blew through the palace, strong and unyielding. On it was a voice, deep like thunder and its words were rage distilled and given shape. “Why do you sit on my throne, creation of an idiot god?”

The demons stopped their dance, retreating from the wisp. It seemed to grow, swelling in presence, and they feared being drawn in. The Leech drew itself up to its full height, bladed limbs forward. It was not a stance of the defiant. Nor was it a show to intimidate. It was one of fear.

“My dogs do not forget the leash. I am the Master of the Palace.” The wisp raised an unformed limb and the Leech exploded, its carapace bursting open with a sickening crack before the thing fell inward and was gone, leaving only a stain of purple ichor in its wake. Its essence was ripped asunder and cast from the world. It would wander the empty spaces for all eternity, given no succor and no company.

The demons gathered around the being, now massive and luminous. “Come,” bade the voice of the Hammer. He looked out across the desolation and randomness of the Hellscape. Before he had built a bastion, now he would build a nation. “We have much to do.”

Already others, feeling the shift in balance power of the Hellscape were gathering, flocking to him, like moths to a flame. He would burn them, as one must fuel the fire.
***

Spoiler:

It hung in the chaos, the great primordial fruit first picked at the dawn of sentient life. To look upon it was to know madness, to know that this thing in the days before it had spoilt had given the power to simply know. It hung now in the chaos, spoiled fruit, the only knowledge it gives now radiates from its petrified sides or its bare rotten flesh: that it is ancient beyond all reckoning.
***

The Voice filled the air with its cries of frustration, and its servants, the metal workers, the scurried away to avoid his wrath. Another suit of armor was brought before the throne, at its seat the luminous essence that was the Hammer. He poured forth his light into the suit, forcing the entirety of his self within. This suit had been made by a master of his craft, an old creature fashioned itself from metal who who had spent eons in his craft on this suit alone.

The last of the light was gone, tucked away inside the suit. Thousands of on looking demons of every form watched their master try to walk among them again. For a moment nothing stirred. Then light began to build in flaming eyes of the suit and it awkwardly raised its hands to look at them. But the burning light did not stop building, and in a moment two suns were flaring in the helm. With a yell of impotent rage, the Hammer exploded form within his shell, again becoming the disembodied essence. Shards of metal flew in all direction, shredding several hapless demons.

Another suit was brought forward and the process was repeated.
***

“My lord,” rumbled the creature at the foot of the throne. It was the Master of the Forge, an amalgamation of demon and machine sporting a burning forge in its belly. “The greatest of our craft has failed.”

The Voice returned, shaking the foundations of the city made in its name, “You have failed.” That was all it needed to say. The condemnation and eventual punishment in the words were palpable.

The Demonforge shifted uncomfortably. He knew he must choose his words carefully, as one misstep would lead to the most total of damnation. Such was the wrath of the Voice. He searched frantically through all his knowledge of the craft, his millennia of expertise in the art of metalshaping. As his thoughts spun the embers of his eyes flickered in tandem. His thoughts were interrupted when the Voice finally came.

“It is time we take a different tack. We must find something suitable for containing my majesty,” the Voice rumbled. Its depth knew no bounds, the incarnation of the grinding power of creation.

As the echoes of the Voice died away, or more moved away, for such a voice can never die, the Demonforge looked up at the luminous cloud that was his master. “Order and I obey, my lord.” His voice sounded small and inconsequential even in the echoes of the Voice.
***
It hung in the chaos, a world of its own. For so long it had been unmolested save by the cruel winds of the realm. Now, it was under siege. This primordial thing, giver of the lost gift, stood resolute in the chaos, burning projectiles bouncing from its vast petrified flanks. This was a thing of instinctive fear for all creatures of all planes. Yet, it was under siege. Only a greater fear could urge others into an attack on the fruit.

Its attackers were many. The lowly denizens of the Hellscape, lesser things of base intelligence armed with crude clubs and claws. With these they tore at the holiest of unholy flanks. There were the demons, armed and armored, wicked and cruel, cunning and vile. They ripped at the fruit with reckless abandon, with cursed weaponry and powers unknown in the mortal plane. They fought, bound to the will of their master, the glowing being held aloft in a palanquin. His light broke out from under its ethereal folds. The Bearers of the Voice shrugged under their burden, basking in the light of their lord. They knew not of the greater tower within the mass before them.

The worms, keepers of the fruit, soon wiggled their corpulent way free from the fruit. They were sightless creatures, all pale flesh and hungry maw. They consumed the slow and unwary, but still the minions of the Voice fought on. The sound of rending flesh was horrendous, muffled and wet.

In avalanche of rotten matter, the fruit began to slough away, polluting the local area with its substance. The creatures stopped, pulling back from the rolling mass. All was clouded by the miasma.

There was a susurrating sound, like rasping scales. Hundreds of thousands of millions of scales, scraping together as something older than the fruit moved for the first time since the dawn of sentient life. A whisper, faint and malicious wound its way through the creatures gathered before the ruin of the fruit.

“Who dares to disturb the Primordial Tempter? The Most Damned?” The miasma began to clear, and a shadow of a being became visible. It slithered on its belly for it had no legs. It was the Serpent, old when creation was yet young.

It reared up, rising above the cloud, rising higher and higher until it could not be doubted that it was beyond them in any understandable magnitude. In a breath it had consumed it, showing itself in its entire splendor. Its skin had no colors that could be named, foreign even to the creatures native to the Hellscape. It had no eyes, just pits of ruin from which damnation flowed. Thousands died under its gaze, their very essence unforming under their scrutiny.

Its teeth were revealed in a wicked grin. Once this creature had swayed and condemned in the beginning. Now, awoken from its sleep, it visited only destruction.

The bravest attacked it. Wielding their petty weapons and lowly powers, they did nothing to harm it. They broke themselves on its scales or served to sate its eons old hunger. So distracted was the army of the Voice that even the bearers of the Palanquin did not notice when their load had lessened.

Slowly, and then quickly, a light began to gather before the creature. In a moment it was a giant of luminosity, of power inchoate. Next to him, the Serpent did not seem so godlike. Hands of light reached out, grasping for the Tempter. In response, it snapped at them, tearing deep into the unformed being.

But, even as it pulled back from the blows, the being’s wounds would fill again with light, as though unharmed. The Voice came. “I. Am. The. End.” It was unrelenting, unfaltering. It was the voice of a being now ancient in its own right. The Serpent could not know fear.

It surged forward, a length without measurement, trying to constrict the being. He coiled and tightened and tore with its teeth. An incomprehensible roar came from the Voice, of fury or pain, none could tell, and wounds blasted open along the length of the Serpent.

The hiss issued from its throat, unholy ichor spraying in all directions, “I cannot know the end. How can a creature that has survived the Beginning die before its Ending? It is cruel.” It was plaintive, the cry of a creature not meant to have such power, one that should have passed from the realms long ago.

Two colossal hands wound their way about the Serpent’s throat, and with a crack like the sundering of worlds, it was ended. The being cast the corpse to a plateau, floating in the chaos. It splattered molten blood everywhere along its path.

The Demonforge and his servants worked quickly, bringing their supplies forward and cracking open the beast’s carapace. Laboriously they pulled from the corpse the heart, the fruit of their efforts. Their skins burning from the heat of the blood, they scythed open the heart, plunging their materials within. Like lightning, hammers strike and their work began to take shape: a grilled helmet, gauntlets that would serve as hands, plates for the body, and boots with which to trod on the corpses of enemies.

The suit stood, empty and perfect, forged in the blood of a fallen god of the Hellscape. It was unscathed by the nature of its violent beginnings, newborn, and ready for the ancient being that would inhabit it.

Like water without volume, the light flowed into the suit. And flowed. And flowed. Until finally the light was gone, replaced by a burning fire in the eyes of The Hammer. Finally the Voice and the body were one, all the power of a god in a point the size of a man, and all the more terrifying for it.

Without a word, he turned and began drifting back towards the nation, built by his will. Following him were his multitudes, chanting his name. “Hail, The Hammer! Hail, the Young God!” they said.
***

The Hammer sat at the throne, looking out on his realm sure that his will was being done. He looked up at the crystalline glass above him. In the shattered panes were the depictions of his great feats. He called out to the glass. “Prepare,” rang out his voice, the sound of thunder, “Prepare for the King of Damnation.”
***
A dimension apart and in the darkness, the Wraith looked on through broken glass. He turned away, shifted, and was gone.

The Nation of The Hammer hung in the chaotic space as an entity of its own. It was a continent, a flat slab of rock with dense clusters of otherworldly spires on its surface. Here, entities went about their daily struggled working to advance the will of The Hammer, the god they’d come to worship. Great clouds of black smoke swathed the city and spilled out into the local space, roaring out constantly from the forges in the belly of the continent. The armies of The Hammer were always ready.

The Hammer leaned back in his throne. It was massive, made for a giant easily fourteen feet tall and raised up high into the air so that he could be seen by his subjects. He was only roughly six feet tall now, though his presence dwarfed that of any other being. Above his head the skull of an incomprehensibly vast serpent hung from black chains. Even then, the empty eye sockets radiated malice and judgment.

He was not used to this. He was fond of the idea of being a god, being worshipped, but not like this. He stood on a throne, watching the ages pass, doing… nothing. His fury began to boil at the thought. He was not cut-out to be an inactive god.

He was in this mode of thought when the war started. It began with a rumble, and soon the news came from outside the palace, the rumor flying through the crowds of demons. He was above such lowly conveyances of information. He was a god.

He let his consciousness expand and rise, higher and higher until it soared through the roof of the palace, a looming entity over the city of the Damned King. A forest of crystal filled the void. Small creatures flitted about between them, letting death loose on The Hammer’s people. Many were of the lesser kind of the Hellscape, barely better than… humans, and were screaming in panic. He focused on one of the little creatures.

It was a tall elegant thing, like the nightmare of an elf. These things were exaggerated, with wicked eyes, and wide grins of pointed teeth. Interesting, he thought. The one lonely creature couldn’t bear the strain of The Hammer’s focus, and was sundered by it. In a moment, The Hammer pulled his consciousness in its totality back into his body, shedding the godlike omniscience.

He did not move from his throne. It was not the place of a god to personally go to war, he thought bitterly. Quietly, but with infinite depth The Hammer spoke for the first time in several hundred years.

“To war, fools."

Do gods dream? The Hammer pondered this as he reined in his consciousness, fighting down his omniscience. He did not see as he once did, in truth he could no longer call up the memory of fleshly vision, so thoroughly buried under lifetime after lifetime of existence in his metal shell. The burning pits in his helm that served as his eyes burned brighter as he looked out and down from his throne. Here in the Hellscape, his vision was much clearer than in the mortal plane. In the mortal plane all was misted over by the transitory nature of worldliness, masking the little lights of soulstuff. Here, he could see into the very hearts of his subjects, all that they have done, and all they will do. He sees his entire kingdom in a glance, every nook, workhouse, home, and chapel erected for his worship.

But so much is lost in his allsight. The motivations of those around him were beyond his comprehension, so far beneath him that they were akin to not more than dust motes. He assumed that their motivations were like his own, a lust for power and annihilation, but at the same time he had trouble attributing any real motivation to them, in the same way he would have had trouble giving a motive to an insect. He shrugged tiring of the tangent.

He looked down at the crystalline blade leaning against his throne, watching for a moment as the pool of blackness at his heart writhed under his scrutiny. Again, he wondered, do gods dream? The war against the elven nightmares had gone predictably. The Hammer’s forces had responded remarkably well to the sudden attack and returned the assault with reckless abandon. They had both slaughtered each other equally before the Hammer took to the field. It had been… unsatisfying.

The Hammer twitched his shoulder pauldrons irritably. His armor, forged in the blood of a primordial god, served well, allowing him to demonstrate the full breadth of his power as he ripped foes to shreds across the field. Even his battle with the Elven Crystal-god-thing did not serve to alleviate his restlessness, his all consuming boredom. He had ripped out the thing’s heart and crafted it into a blade simply for his own amusement, what little of it there was to be had. It was all so… predictable. He felt he could wage these wars by wrote.

He wondered what the entrapped god thought, forever sealed within the sword of his better. Would it live out its memories for all time? Would it sate the needs of its existence with the soulstuff and minds of the slain? He wondered if it still perceived the world around it, left to be taunted by the very power it once had.

He stopped questioning it. He did not care what the godblade felt, so long as it served, and it had no choice but to serve. Instead, he again wondered if gods dreamt. Or more accurately, he asked if he dreamt. He, who never rested, who exists in a manner so far from that of the mortal, did he dream? He found his vision twisting before his eyes as of late. Assaults by visions of shining armor and green pastures were becoming regularity. It was all culminating in a sort of yearning he did not wish to abide.

Even after all these millennia, time in which galaxies are born and wither away, he could not shed his connection to the mortal plane. He let out a bark of laughter, drawing stares of fear and awe from the lesser demons around him. He would have to find other ways to amuse himself in this begotten realm.