As the darkness enveloped his entire body, he could feel it writhing and moving across his face smothering him, and as he struggled to breathe, he panicked, realizing he was slowly being suffocated. In his fear, he could feel a cold sentient and terrible intelligence within that darkness. Something hungry for his life and something hungry with desire to live again. As the darkness enveloped his entire body, he could feel it writhing and moving across his face smothering him, and as he struggled to breathe, he panicked, realizing he was slowly being suffocated. In his fear, he could feel a cold sentient and terrible intelligence within that darkness. Something hungry for his life and something hungry with desire to live again.
Luca screamed in fear, a fear that he would be consumed by that hunger. A fatal mistake as he finally lost his battle for control against the darkness that was trying to consume him, abruptly his screams cut off as the darkness forced its way into him through his mouth, choking his voice in his throat. His choking and muffled screams the only sound to be heard, and as he passed out, visions flashed before his eyes.
In his vision he saw a man with a face like his own, but older and heavily scarred with an impossible body that was beautiful, yet twisted and mutilated. A million hands grabbed onto the man, tearing at him, clinging to him, hands that could not be seen that tore through his flesh and his bones as they removed piece by piece of what had made up the core of his being.
Luca could not look away as morbid fascination took hold. He saw the hands work as the body of his elder self was thoroughly and mechanically dismembered. The cold precision was terrible to behold as the butchering continued.
The body’s wings were clipped and torn off, not from his back, but also from his spirit, in this life, and the next, he no longer would fly as if those hands belonged to the enemies who feared he might come alive again.
Instinctively Luca knew what this meant. Those cold hands were not so impartial. The power behind those hands fearing the resurrection of the man. Even as a corpse he was feared, he would be crippled and hobbled, his power sealed away, lest he become something far more terrible if he was to rise in undeath.
The man had skin that glistened like steel marred only by the numerous wounds throughout the body, wounds that no longer bled, the blood thick and blackened in coagulation. The butchering hands working quickly as they peeled back and flayed the skin of steel without effort. In response, as Luca watched, he held his breath and screamed in revulsion as he felt those hands peel skin, but it was not his. The sensation of pain was for but a moment, and then it passed while the hands continued their grisly business without pause.
The body of the man that had built up to be like a god on Earth was torn apart piece by piece. Casually dismembered to be used and cataloged. This man Luca realized, was the version of himself he had long fantasized about growing up to be. Yet, he watched himself be reduced to mere meat and nothing more. A terrible end to the being, the idol he had made of himself. Luca was conflicted as to the meaning of this vision, and as the images rapidly faded into nothingness, he found no answers, only darkness awaited. Though the dark did nothing to quiet his consciousness and quell his wild racing thoughts.
A voice came to him from within the darkness, a voice beyond space and time, a voice beyond his understanding.
"This is you, Luca. This is what you become. Look at what your desires have wrought. Look at the ways your hands have been stained." Said the voice without anger, but rather matter of fact if not something morose in its robotic delivery. The voice was familiar like a forgotten memory, but he could not quite place it, it was unrecognizable, and he did not know why.
"Remember what you have done child, remember these faults, remember these sins, and learn from them, grow from them. Do not allow yourself to make the same mistakes."
A sudden memory came to him, but the memory confused him for it was not his own, but he still remembered the voice, he recognized it as the spirit of the dungeon though did not know how he remembered visited the dungeon of this memory or meeting this spirit as they had never met before. He knew the memories belonged to someone else, in his mind, he recalled slivers of knowledge about the voice and memories of a life that had never been his.
"I promise I will remember." Luca responded.
The spirit of the dungeon responded, "It is not a promise you can make until you've witnessed who you were, watch what you have done, dream the dark dreams, and remember what has been forgotten." As the voice spoke in the dreamscape, an image began to form, the images of a memory from a life long-lived, and a flashback to the memory of a bloody handprint on an Altar and the death of the version of himself named Seraph. Though Luca had some more recollection, he knew that he was not him, he was not this Seraph, those memories belonged to someone else.
In his dreams, he dreamt of hellish green fire that seemed more mist than flame, a fire that both descended to the Earth from the heavens and erupted out of the belly of the abyss. The green fire spreading out from each pole. Slowly in all directions, consuming all things and leaving the dungeon for last.
That infernal green fire, that green mist that would come to cover the entirety of the Earth, consumed every nation, every country, and every state. The fire consumed the Earth but did not burn it, and from within that green mist, Luca could see gigantic grotesques and rotting abominations moving, the dead and the damned following behind them straining to be unleashed on the world as they crawled up from the hell beneath, and descended from darker realms above.
Mouths ravenous with saliva and hunger, their talons sharp to rend flesh and carve muscle. Cruel alien intelligence behind rotting eyes that shone green, these were the Infernals. Each carried and dragged away every man, woman, and child who had not escaped from that dark storm. They screamed, cried, and sobbed in terror, knowing that only pain and suffering awaited them. Luca cried out to them, reaching out to them to save them, but his hands passed through them. Here he was only a watcher. Tears rolled down his eyes as he could see many had suffered terrible wounds, but he knew they would not die. These monsters that captured them appeared to feed without mercy but that they did not kill most outright. For Luca, this was the fuel of nightmares.
For each person not consumed by those monsters would be taken elsewhere to become just like them. It was theorized but never known that these unfortunate people would be transformed through some otherworldly ritual. Everyone who was lost within that mist only made the Infernals stronger.
He watched as people ran to escape the green curtain of death that descended on them. The masses panicked, aware of the snapping mouths and gnarled hands within that green mist that reached for the slowest and the infirm. Reaching for those who could not stay ahead of that darkness. Reaching for the weak and those who lost the will to save their own lives. Hell descended on them, and no matter where Luca looked, and no matter how hard he tried to avert his eyes, all he saw were the faces of terror.
A shadow flew over him, and as Luca looked up, he saw an older version of himself, the Black Seraph. The face he saw was aged and weathered, a younger uninjured version of himself then what he had seen previously. This version had eyes of the deepest crimson that lacked any hint of human emotion or compassion within his face.
As Luca watched, the man’s eyes glowed red as if to emphasize his inhuman nature, spread out impossible wings that gleamed of metallic black before flying towards the green mist and then into it. As he went, he called down massive pillars of fire from the heavens unto the Earth, destroying every Infernal that it touched. He summoned tempest winds to keep the mist from spreading faster and grew glacial shards in the streets to impede the movement of the chasing Infernals as they ran onward to overtake the fleeing refugees.
The first of the Infernals reached the fleeing refugees with clawed hands stretching out, metallic wings responded in attack. The Black Seraph tore into the infernals, severing arms and limbs as he went. His wings like blades flayed and ripped flesh while he thrust over and over with his
great spear. This was a warrior in his element, in the chaos, fighting with fervent resolve - not observing from above, and for a moment, Luca felt pride in this vision of his future self.
A pride that fled once the Black Seraph returned to the skies and Luca heard an emotionless and cold voice begin to call out to minions and guild mates, pointing out fleeing refugees from his aerial vantage. Choosing who would be saved and dragging them away from their families as they tried to cling together and leaving behind those who had been judged to be too weak to be saved.
As some of his minions drug away survivors, others followed different commands to work the crowd of fleeing refugees as they fled the green mist. Killing outright and slaughtering the sobbing weak, unwilling to let the weak be consumed and transformed by the Infernals approaching in the dark, not out of mercy for the fleeing refugees as cries for mercy went ignored.
That dark visage of himself that Luca had been watching had decided the monsters in the dark were a threat he did not want to strengthen. He would not feed them the weak. The weak would not join the Infernal hoard. He would not allow the weak to interfere with the survival of those strong enough to survive within the dungeon. This was a cold and calculated culling. On those streets, both men and monsters expunged lives in the tens of thousands as the dark curtain of green moved ever forwards.
Luca looked at himself in disappointment, yelling in anger as loudly as he could. "Say something, do something, this isn't me. This can't be me. You aren't me!" But no matter how hard he tried to get his own attention, he could not stop what had been set in motion, what had already been done, to his other self he was just a shadow, an outside viewer, he didn't exist.
Hooded men and women moved among the crowd, their Carrion Crow emblems showing their guild affiliation as they struck down the refugees who had fallen to their knees, unable to get up. Tears ran down Luca's face as he screamed and begged for it to stop.
After hours of watching unable to interfere and unable to save anyone from the horror of the bloody spectacle before him, an end unfolded, as the climax of the slaughter was reached.
The massacre ended as the surviving waves of refugees arrived at the dungeon in their vast multitudes. Millions of survivors pouring in from every corner of the world, some recently displaced while many others had fled their homes weeks prior as the infernal mist spread. Every human on Earth, knowing the last bastion of safety was to be found in the dungeon.
All of the refugees fought against each other, fighting as they tried to push past each other and forced their way through each other. Walking over empty cars and shattered glass on broken roads and over the broken bodies of those who had simply given up, unable to flee any longer, those who had succumbed to fatigue, sickness, and terror.
In thick lines and thicker groups those survivors all started to pour into the maw of the great gate that lead into the dungeon. The dungeon that had appeared years before out of the wreckage and ruin of the Mall of Atlanta. Giant and dominating the entry could be seen for miles.
Seraph, the Angel of Darkness, as his other self was known, descended before the refugees landing in front of the entrance to the dungeon, disturbing the dirt beneath him as rock and rubble were thrown in all directions in a minor show of power. He was to be the final gatekeeper against the flood of wretched humanity. In this moment, he was judgment. Though billions had already died, died as they fled the dark storm, or been seized by the monsters within the darkness, or killed outright for being judged as weak, millions still remained, straining against the bottleneck to make their way into the dungeon, down into safety.
The multitude, panicking and encumbered by sheer numbers as far as the eye could see, would be caught by the green mist long before they finished moving into the dungeon, and Luca knew they would not be fast enough. He looked back to his other self and knew that he had reached the same conclusion. A flash of irritation was the first human emotion he had witnessed. Luca saw the dark visage of himself, move his hands as tendrils of power spread around his fingers. Luca recognized what was about to happen and screamed: "No! Please, don't do it!" But if anyone could hear his cries of protest, they didn't respond or refused to notice, and all he could do was watch in horror at what was unleashed.
A red sludge spread out from those dark hands, low to the ground and hard to see. But Luca saw, and he saw wretched and terrible faces, within the sludge, moving, slithering and hungry. Searching for victims and finding plenty. The sludge quickly spread out among the crowd of refugees and as it moved among them, the screams of torment rang out from those who had been judged. Their end one of excruciating pain that seemed to last for an eternity to those who heard it.
It was an advanced spell that used a basic constitution check and a summoned slime monstrosity to remove those who lacked the strength to begin their journey within the dungeon. For those who failed that check, their skin began to bubble and fall off as it rotted from within. Liquefying as the spell moved among the crowd, those who died further fueling the spell, joining those vicious faces trapped in the red sludge, further culling the weak. For every person that the sludge passed without harm, five more died. Before the night would finish, the remaining millions would be reduced to thousands.
Luca could only watch in horror as the red sludge moved among the survivors back towards his other self to be consumed by the man. As the refugees fed the sludge, so too did the sludge feed the Black Seraph, and at that moment, he absorbed the strength of the millions he had decimated.
With his voice amplified by a power so everyone could hear him, Seraph began to yell into the crowd, "Move faster, or I'll kill more of you. Death comes with that storm, and I won't allow the weak to burden those who want to live. Trample who you need to, push through whom you need to, just move." The crying continued as the refugees pushed forward even as the red sludge continued to kill many among them. Seraph may have been a ruthless tyrant, but they knew some safety could be found with him. They would rather have the safety of the murderous tyrant than the unknown of the monsters of the storm they still had not yet escaped.
Millions died while fleeing the dark storm, and thousands more died by Seraph’s hand as he unleashed more of his power, summoning a pack of Hellhounds from the abyss to collect those worth saving and with orders to kill all others. The Hellhounds carried survivors in their great jaws, mauling and mangling the survivors’ bodies. Justified in Seraph’s mind as they would survive, they would heal within a day, their lost flesh and limbs would regrow. As his hounds worked, so did he. He resumed his purge of the weakest of humanity as his minions and guild mates worked to shelter and contain those, they had found worthy of survival in his name.
"This was the darkest of moments." Said the voice from before, the voice of the dungeon as the vivid memory Luca had been dreaming started to unravel and fade. "My dungeon was the last bastion of safety on the Earth, and you, Luca, killed so many. Yet, you saw it yourself, did you not? The Infernals can be killed, and if one man's power could kill so many, what about an army? The same Infernals you find on the final floor of my dungeon are the same Infernals that overtook the Earth. My dungeon does not exist to kill you, but to challenge, to help you to grow, humanity must survive Luca. Remember this."
Luca nodded in understanding. What he had seen, those images overwhelmed him, and as the dream faded, he was thankful, but exhausted from the ordeal of what he had seen.
The dreams were not yet over as he saw himself barely older than he was now maybe a few years into the future if that. His skin glistening like iron with wings of black silk powerful but not quite as powerful as that other version of himself. He watched as this version of himself began to kill bound prisoners outside a burning guild hall as he held their guild standard in his hands as a trophy. The guild’s leader head impaled on the standard, his face a permanent fixture of shock and terror.
In his cruelty, his shadow-self cast a magic spell to prevent the head from decaying, and another to trap the spirit of the deceas
ed guild leader into the severed head to prevent him from passing on to the next life.
As for the guild members, Seraph remorselessly ignored their pleas for mercy as one by one, he killed his captured enemies, consuming most of their power as he did. He didn’t just take their power. He consumed their souls and destroyed their spirits. As his enemies passed into the void of oblivion, he grew stronger with every kill. Seraph, in his cold and remorseless voice spoke, resolute, determined, and angered: "If you will not serve me in life, you will serve me in death. "
The scene Luca had just watched unfold faded to black. Replaced by another memory of something yet to occur. This time he saw himself as he currently was, a near mirror image of himself. Laid out on the ground, unable to move from the shadow of the gate of entry into the dungeon. A dungeon whose birth had destroyed the grounds it had been birthed upon. Signs for sales could still be seen hanging off of jagged rocks and rebar that protruded out from the great doorway that had torn and created itself from the Earth.
Luca saw himself in his lowest moment, wearing clothes familiar to him. Weak, orphaned, desperate, crippled. He saw his body fall through the air after being thrown through the dungeon gate by a mob of scared people hoping to appease whatever dread deity, they thought controlled the dungeon.
"Please accept this sacrifice and spare us, Lord." This the mob had said as they ran away unable to look their victim in the eye or say his name in regret as they attempted to trade his life for their own. As for him, he lay bound and alone in the dark of the dungeon’s entrance. Shivering in fear and waiting for death, his blood poured from numerous wounds throughout his body as bones protrude, stabbing through his skin after being thrown. This version of himself knew agony.
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