Chapter Text
One day, a young woman by the name of Aphmau left her mother’s cottage and adventured out into the world for the very first time, eyes bright and sparkling with innocent joy.
Ten hours later, her body was in the woods found by a curious hunter, checking the bear trap that had gone off. Her neck had been speared clean through.
Aphmau’s soul woke up in a white void, with a churning in her heart that felt sharply unfamiliar, yet hauntingly… exactly like the feeling of an old home. A man made of black and red smoke and swirling fire met her on the other side, as he had been waiting to do, for hundreds of years.
——
Years before this, a Prince named Garroth was reaching graduation from the Guard Academy soon, and with it, the wedding date of his arranged marriage. He had just gotten the news in the mail today, of the execution of all his freedom and bodily autonomy soon to come, the shredding of his dreams of a love-filled life, never to be achieved again. He would be chained to his corrupt and horrific family bloodline, for the rest of time, because of this marriage. His life would be over.
…So with his sword in hand and no one left to miss him but his complacent mother, he figured he might as well seal the deal, and ensure his father would never use him again.
Garroth woke up in a white void, laid at the feet of a man made entirely out of black and red smog.
——
Even more years ago, a little girl was left abandoned, alone, in the middle of the woods. This little girl would have starved to death, with no home, no parents, no family, no one left to save her—if it wasn’t for a kind old man passing through, stumbling upon her crumpled body in the grass and rushing to her aid. He took her home and took wonderful care of her, and this poor little girl would turn out to be a happy and rambunctious man by the name of Zenix, alive and well for the rest of his days.
——
“My, you’re a strong young man.” The man of smoke said, his voice a deep and guttural rumble that reverberated in Garroth’s head. He was pacing around him, watching him scramble on the floor, studying his confused and frightened bewilderment with amusement. “And quite the capable fighter. You’d hardly need any training at all, to become the perfect soldier. And Esmund’s descendant, no less… Oh, how delectable is that?”
The way this man was looking at him, assessing him, scrutinizing him and picking him apart like the beak of a vulture upon a pitiful mouse, felt far too close to how his father looked at him. “Who— who are you? What are you? Where am I?” He managed to choke out.
The voice in his head laughed at him like a purring cat. “I am The Shadow Lord, dear boy. As the the Lord of Death itself, I decide your fate. And to me… you seem like you’d make a perfect Shadow Knight.”
“…What? Shadow Knight? What’s a Shadow Knight?”
The man only laughed, louder and crueler, and did not explain a word.
The great, wooden double doors, behind the man, encircled with rune-etched stone, swung open to reveal a realm of fire and lava beneath. With the flick of his disembodied wrist, the ground of the void itself slanted into an incline, Garroth began to slide down the ramp. He tried to struggle and crawl away, scratching at the ground, grasping towards the man.
He shouted, “No, no, wait- wait! STOP! HELP ME! HELP ME—!” But it was no use. His screams fell on deaf ears, as the incline grew, and he fell down, down, down — into the mouth of hell.
——
Zenix was a young adult now, and he was itching for something new and exciting to happen. Life was good, but a good life was a boring life. The longer he spent twiddling his thumbs around his old man’s cottage, the more he was convinced he was going totally insane.
Or maybe just stir-crazy.
“Cooommee ooonnnn! Nothing even happens out here! Haven’t you ever wanted to see the world?!” He whined, quite literally dragging his heels as he tugged on his guardian’s fur cloak as he trudged through the rooms of their cottage, dragging the smaller and whinier man along with him.
“I’ve been training for years, I’ve gotten very good, and I promise I’m not gonna cause any trouble! Come on, let me go on an adventure, just this once!”
His guardian grumbled something hesitant and wary under his breath. “I just-… don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I’m not gonna get hurt. I’m practically an expert swordsman now.” Which was overselling it a bit, and his guardian knew that, but Zenix didn’t care. “I promise, I’ll be just fine. I can take care of myself.”
The older man stopped, slowing down to turn and look at his boy. Zenix let go of his cloak and gave him the most innocent of deceptively heartwarming smiles.
“…Promise me you’ll be careful?”
“With my life.”
——
“Hundreds of years…” The man of pure fire and shadow growled, voice low and reverberating inside Aphmau’s skull, her chest, her heart. “Hundreds of years, I have been waiting for you…”
She’s met this man before, hasn’t she? But… that-…that wasn’t possible, she had never left her mother’s cottage until now. The only person she’d ever met or known was her mother. She hadn’t even met any other men before, how could she…?
“It’s funny, really. How high-and-mighty you claim to be, how above me you wish you were, and yet once your immortality fails you… Even you end up in my domain eventually, Irene.”
“Irene?” She pushed herself to standing. Her head hurt. She looked around, looked behind her, but there was no one else around he could be speaking to. “My-… my name’s Aphmau.” She said, apprehensive and nervous.
“Liar!” He rushed her, and suddenly the inferno of a volcano was blazing an inch away from her face, towering over her with all the anger of the gods combined. She clutched her head with a wince of pain, his reverberating, demanding, bellowing voice cutting into her brain like a dagger and cutting her open to dig inside. “How dare you lie to me again, to my face! Do you think I’m the same naive fool you knew when we were young?!”
“I’m not lying!” She yelled back, voice strained with panic. “I’ve never seen you before! I’m not Irene, I don’t know who you’re talking about! I’m not Irene!”
“SILENCE! If you lie one more time, I’ll—“
Aphmau’s own anger began to boil. “For the last time, I’m not lying! I don’t know who you are, I don’t know who Irene is, my name is Aphmau, I am a mortal human woman who was born in a small cottage in the woods, my mother’s name is Sylvanna, she raised me, I only just left her house to explore the world, but I- I died and I ended up here— I’ve never met you before! I don’t even know where I am, or what’s going on, or who you are, or- or—“ She sucked in a sharp, quick breath through her teeth, scrunching up her nose and face into a furious, exasperated, anxiety-backed scowl. “Damn it, you can look into my mind, can’t you?! You can get in my head! I don’t care! Get in my goddamn head and look for yourself and see that I’m telling the truth!”
She didn’t know how she knew he could do that.
He stilled, drawing back slightly. “You’re giving me control over-…?” He seemed almost at a loss. Clearly he hadn’t expected her to offer up her own mind for his to invade and likely control. “…Very well.” He bore his fangs, each a congealment of the flickering orange light and flames, outlined by soot, in an expression that was neither a grin nor a snarl, but threatening nonetheless.
Aphmau shut her eyes tight, as his form pinched into a ray that pierced directly into her forehead and into her brain. It felt like someone had done far more than just turn the faucet on in her mind, a switch cranked on and she was being flooded with the overwhelming energy and heat of another being. She could feel his hands crawling on the inside of her skin, grasping on her bones and clutching her nerves in his fists as he climbed through each of her limbs, slowly filling up every limb and joint. He seeped into her brain like water on paper, itching, burning, searing with heat, she felt congested with a pressure that wasn’t mucus all over, until the transformation had finished—and she felt thrilled.
“Finally…” Her mouth moved, but her voice was not her own. She flexed her fingers and looked down upon her uncalloused, dark-skinned hands. “Oh, what a beautiful opportunity, to—…” She(He?) stopped in her(his) tracks. “…Wait, where are your memories?”
She could feel the equivalent of hurriedly rummaging through desk drawers rustling through her brain. It was unpleasant.
“Sylvanna? Who—… She’s real?” His voice, coming out of her mouth, sounded incredulous. “You’ve never-…”
And in an instant, all of the heat and pressure and presence she could feel in every inch of her body sucked out of her like a straw, as he pulled out of her mind and flowed out of her forehead in a stream of fire, his previous, destabilized, spirit-like form materializing in front of her. He looked at her in horror.
“…You’re not her.” He whispered, ghostly hollow.
“Wow. Yeah. It’s almost like I’ve been saying that, smartass.” Aphmau huffed, fixing her posture as she’d stumbled and lost her balance on his way out. “I’m not a liar. I don’t lie. You would know that if you gave me a chance and listened to me, before jumping to wild and crazy conclusions.”
“You-…” His mind seemed to be in another world entirely, completely lost. “How could you be-…? But- you- your soul feels like her, you have the roots of her relic, you are her chosen-…” It dawned on him. “…You’re her reincarnation.”
“…What?” She squinted at him. “Please start talking sense, and start talking now.”
“Oh, Gods, okay.” He reeled, dropping his face into his hands and rubbing his palms up into his “hair,” as if he was going to pull it straight out of his “skull.” “Okay… You-… you really don’t know anything?”
“No. Like I said, I’m not a liar. I wouldn’t lie about that.”
“Well, that’s new.” He scoffed with a tired, exasperated chuckle. “Alright. Maybe… sit down, this is going to be a while. I’m-… glad I at least found you before she did. Who knows what she would have told you…” He winced. Strangely, he seemed much more relaxed now, all things considered.
She sat down criss-cross-applesauce on the floor of the empty white void, and the fire-man joined her, sitting directly across from her with his hands on his thighs. “I am The Shadow Lord. My domain is the realm of the dead, I am a powerful entity some refer to as a God, others may call me by other names, but at the end of the day all of my power is drawn from a-…” His voice faltered, and he broke eye contact. “A relic. Permanently attached to my soul. But before I got this relic, I was a human man named Shad. Refer to me as such.”
“Shad…” That still sounded strangely familiar to her. She extended out a hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Shad.” It wasn’t exactly nice, but it was better to be polite and have good manners than to be rude and impolite, especially to a higher being.
He visibly tensed. He strained with a cringing expression, like this was extremely weird to him. “It’s-…uh…” He shook his head, backing out of returning her formalities. “I’m not shaking your hand. Put that away.”
She pouted, and set her hand back down in her lap.
“I used to be a member of the Divine Warriors, a force of powerful formerly-human beings selected by The Goddess Irene to fight by her side for-…’good,’ or whatever the hell it was she said we were doing it for. She was our leader, immortal and all-powerful and divine, and-…she was my wife, once upon a time.”
Well, that made things feel a little weird for Aphmau.
“She always argued that we were doing things for the good of others, that we were helping people with our power, and yet the very power she had imbued in us… These relics were created from the souls of others, and she made them firsthand. To make my relic,” He curled his lips back in a spit, his grip on his thighs tensing bone-tight, until his hands shook. “She used the soul of our daughter. My daughter.”
Aphmau covered her mouth, mortified.
“She used her, killed her, took her from me behind my back and fed her soul to me without ever telling me a word about what it meant. Maybe she had been kind one day, when I met her and fell in love with her, maybe. But her heart withered over time, she drew cold, distant, unfeeling, and in it… any sort of compassion or love she held for others died with it.”
The flames of his being sparked to life, burning hot with rage. “When I found out, I screamed at her, I confronted her and fought her as hard as I could, demanding she put it back, demanding she bring my daughter back to me. But she refused, and I rebuked her. She was not the wife I loved, she was not the mother of our children, she was a monster, and I was going to kill her then and there. But the Divine Warriors turned on me. Esmund, that goddamned snake- bastard of a man, he stopped me and rallied the others against me, defended her and her crime. Menphia turned on me, even the few I considered the closest approximation I’d ever had to friends, Gal’Ruk and Enki, they all turned on me. They betrayed me, and sealed me away. They murdered me, and Irene cast me into the Nether, where I have been trapped ever since.”
His flames began to die down, as if drawing within himself with a mournful resignation. “She meant everything to me. My daughter meant everything to me. And now the world sees her as a hero, as a savior, and not the vile, backstabbing murderer she truly is. I am now the monster in her story. But it doesn’t matter. Because I am going to tear down everything she’s built in her lifetime, I am going to destroy her legacy and raze the world she oh-so-tenderly favored over her own.”
“That’s who you think I was…?” Aphmau whispered, distraught. “She sounds horrible… I would never do anything like that!”
“You are her reincarnation. It seems Irene finally allowed herself to rest, and now her soul and her power has been recycled into a brand new being. The other Divine Warriors are the same, for hundreds of years they have been recycling into new beings descended from their bloodline. Mortals may die, but relics have a much longer lifespan than we do, when fused with the right power. They continue on, forever searching for the next iteration of the holder they bonded with, to become one with their vessel once again and return to power. Her relic has chosen you now.”
“…B-but I-…” She swallowed, tense. “I don’t have any magic. I never have. I’m ordinary!”
“For now, maybe. But if you ever found her relic again, you could very well become as powerful as the original Goddess herself. Most reincarnations don’t, however. Relics do wither over time, until they are fully consumed. And not everyone has what it takes to be able to…let’s say handle the sheer amount of otherworldly power relics hold. They can-…do things to you and your body, irreversibly damage you in ways that only a potent, strange, wily, unimaginable power could. If you were to try to embrace every ounce of Irene’s power in one sitting, immediately, you would be swallowed whole, eaten alive from the inside out. You would never be the same again.”
Aphmau gulped.
He grinned, the act closer resembling the decaying pull of a carcass’s lips than anything disarming. “But I found you first, before she did. Which means you might just have a chance to fulfill a wonderful potential, Aphmau…”
“And what potential is that?”
He held out his hand. “Join me. Work with me, become my vessel. My physical form was destabilized in my elimination, so now I’m left to fend as nothing but a spirit, where I am a weakened husk of my former self. But if you make a deal with me, we can combine our forces. We can work together to rid the world of all her lies, corruption and deception.”
Aphmau felt a chill consume its way through her bones. “…I-… I don’t know…” She leaned away. “What would this-… working together entail?”
“You would help me dismantle her empire. Teach the world the truth. You can either right the wrongs that she taught to history, or you can reject my offer, and I will allow your soul to return to the underworld. You will be dead and gone for the rest of eternity, and I will have to wait for the next iteration to be born, live, die, and return to me, in which I will have to give them this same speech all over again. I can tell you’re a kind and compassionate woman, Aphmau. You want to help others, you want to fight for what’s true. Your successor may not be so kind.”
“…Would we-…be hurting anyone?”
He fought the urge to roll his eyes, his grin dropping immediately with a disgusted, exhausted scowl. “Inevitably, yes.”
She fixed her expression into a bitter, disapproving frown. “Then I refuse. I will not be hurting any innocent people for your own vengeful anger’s sake.” She turned her head away from him.
He growled out a broiling, festering grunt through his fangs. “The people we would be hunting down wouldn’t be innocent, Aphmau. These are her greatest supporters, her devoted followers, those that refuse to see the truth, even if it helps them. They would rather be lazy and complacent than change for what’s good, do you really think people like that would be a good influence upon the world?”
…Aphmau had never seen the world. She didn’t know what “other people” looked like. She didn’t know what it needed, or what it didn’t. But… “Would they be-…bad people, then? We would be stopping bad people?”
A proud, satisfied grin returned on his lips. “We would be stopping the bad people, dear Aphmau. Every single bad person in the realms, they would finally have to face their punishment through us. Doesn’t that sound nice? We could make the world a better place…”
Her intuition cringed with apprehension, but admittedly, she also didn’t have any perspective for what lying would look like. And honestly, it made sense… There was this clear bad person who had this godly control over a world that had been told the wrong tale, and all of that was based in cruel and vicious lies. Only the victors were the ones who wrote history, and clearly this was a history that had been written incorrectly. She didn’t know if Shad himself was a very trustworthy individual…but his story was. His cause was.
She wanted to help. She wanted to make everything better. She wanted to fix the wrongs of her predecessor, she refused to be complacent and fade away into the underworld, choosing to do nothing despite what she knew now. She refused to do nothing, she refused to follow in this Goddess’s footsteps. She would be different, she would make things right.
She extended out her hand…
But she wasn’t going to be recklessly blind, either.
Her hand froze, hovering in place above his, fixing him with a stern glare. “I’ll work with you, on two conditions.”
“Oh?” He forced himself to humor her, though visibly irritated by the obstruction.
“1. You’re going to use me as your vessel, right? Then I want control. We share equal control of the reins. It’s my body, I want to be at the forefront unless I need you. You’ll stay in my head, but I’m the one in charge of where I go, what I say, and I choose to do, alright? You get my permission before using my own damn body for anything. I’m a compatriot, not a puppet. I’m a person too, just as much as you, and I deserve to live my own, independent life alongside our cause.”
She then held up two fingers. “2, We only hurt bad people. No needless destruction. Any harm or damage we cause will be mutually agreed upon, calculated, and intentional. The only way we can make sure our job is an effective one is to act with precision, not chaotic mass destruction everywhere we touch. Get my permission before you use me to kill someone, and make sure you do it with a good cause.”
“I never said kill.” He smirked.
“Hush, you. Do we have a deal or not?”
Now he rolled his eyes. “If only you had inherited a little less of her caution… Fine.” He took her hand, the warmth prickling against her palm. “It’s a deal.”
They shook on it.
“Wonderful.” She smiled. “Now, what’s next?”
Everything went black.