Orbquest

The End at the Beginning

Time. How long has it been? A second? A day? A month? A day? A year? Perhaps decades, centuries, or even millennia? He has no way to know. All that he knows is that which is in the back of his mind. Pain. So much of it, even he is not sure how he came to feel it all. Was it something he did? Perhaps this was some form of punishment? He had done something wrong.

But to merit this? What could possibly have led him so far from who he once was? He had known pain before, but never such as this. Never searing into his very soul, corrupting his once high spirit. No, where he once sought the best for others, sought to bring about what good he could, this pain was more than even his own reserves of goodness could bear.

As time passed--whether seconds or millennia--he feels the transformation descend upon him. His past sloughs to the ground as dead as his heart now is. He looks back and sees a lifeless husk, resembling what he used to be. He feels a tingling sensation, and glances up to seek its source. His eyes are forced shut as a strange hardness dries and cracks his skin, beginning at his head and continuing slowly, inexorably downward, turning flesh to a living stone, organs to rocks, fluids to mud.

The pain is welcome now, for he is used to it. No longer does his mind race, his heart ache, or his being flounder. Who he once was is gone. His humanity has been destroyed even as his body is corrupted. He takes a tentative step, and finds this new body respond quickly. Turning around, he thrusts out a hand, and shatters the bars that once imprisoned him. Another step, a kick, and a wall of foot-thick metal is destroyed.

For what price has he gained this strength? His love, his compassion, his very soul he has given up that he might ascend to this new state of being. Where once stood a human now stands the first of a new race. A man who once looked, and laughed, and loved, and lifted has died. In his place stands a being unable to comprehend the idea of love, of selflessness. All that remains is a living stone golem thankful to be removed from his former life of pain.

At what cost this transformation? In the days to follow, a world will look upon what should have been their greatest hero, and shudder in fear as he seeks no longer to save or protect those he once loved and would die for, but seeks only to destroy.

The magical energies are expended. He is loosed from his prison, strides purposefully toward the voluminous shape of the Blood Dragon. Gazing upward, the golem meets the gaze of the Dragon, and kneels.

* * *

It’s taken years for the Dragon to bring his greatest foe here, to kneel before him. Years of cultivating the pain and suffering that would ultimately drive the pure goodness of a great champion to give up their mortal guise and become a servant for death and destruction.

Here, now, his foe kneels transformed into the first, and potentially the most powerful of the Dragon’s army. Looking outward, the Dragon knows with absolute certainty what he has suspected since this campaign began those many years ago upon his release: the world trembles, for it knows that Darkness has at last found a grip on the world, and with but a squeeze, the world shall die...

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