Abaddon

I was called to another world recently. As it turned out, a family to who I owed a favor was brought to the verge of annihilation. The survivor—a male child—discovered a summoning spell tuned specifically for me in one of the books beneath his ancestral manor, till then lost to the family - they had forgotten that which they were due. I had long wondered why I never received a summons from someone looking to collect on the debt. Little did I realize I was in for a most interesting evening. It certainly beat sitting behind a desk and doing paperwork.

The swirling vortex of energy conjured up by Aracine's descendant exceeded my every expectation, I must confess. That boy will become an exceptional summoner one day if he should choose to pursue it. He may be even more gifted than his great great great grandmother, the individual to who my debt was originally owed. Tendrils of raw magic licked at every surface of the room into which I was conjured. The gate, to my surprise, was stable enough for me to simply step through without having to exert any of my own magic to widen the opening.

On arrival I noticed a distinct quiet—the study was empty, though I could hear soft footfalls in the great mansion above. It was then that a young boy, his face wet with a mixture of tears and blood, demanded that I give him power. He knew not of the debt, however; and offered me "anything I wanted" in exchange for the power to "make them pay". I'm sure Aracine would've appreciated his earnestness, though I can't say his willingness to throw it all away on petty revenge would've gone over too well with her. I heard his demands, and I acquiesced. The boy, with no hesitation and without even needing to be told, pulled a knife and slashed his own left palm to seal our contract in blood. Our bloodied hands joined, our pact was formed.

Out of respect for for my debt to Aracine I would fulfill this contract in both spirit and letter, allowing the boy access to a great deal of my own power without taking his soul, though I would consider the debt fulfilled from that moment on. To facilitate this I left my usual host and possessed the child, albeit without taking control. This marks the first and most likely only time I have or will ever allow anyone, especially a mortal, to wield me as a weapon.

As expected of an angry child, he tore through the assailants in the manor one after the other without the slightest bit of remorse. Their blood joined his family's in drenching the walls and floors. Everything went exactly as he'd hoped right up until we arrived at his father's study, whereupon he realized that his mother and eldest sister were being kept alive for reasons even I find distasteful. Overcome with rage, the child rushed blindly into the room, believing the small amount of magic I'd given him made him invincible. Little did he realize the three opponents against whom he was coming were quite powerful in their own rights. Try as he might, he could not overcome them; they fought to a tenuous stalemate. The boy knew he would eventually fall at the rate things were going, and he knew what that meant for his mother and sister.

And I said to him, "Destroy everything." More of my magic flowed into the child. His eyes changed to become like mine as his teeth grew into small fangs and his finger and toenails became like claws. Again he attacked, but again he was rebuffed. In his fury he drew blindly from the power I'd given him—his mutations worsened. The previous changes grew more apparent whilst new ones, most notably unique markings around the mouth and eyes, began to form. I could tell that he was about to try and drown himself in power. Still, his ability to not be completely overwhelmed was certainly worthy of praise.

The ensuing battle destroyed most of the manor, killed most remaining enemies, and left both my young summoner and his three primary opponents near-collapse in a state of heavy exhaustion. Our main adversaries quickly used magic that allowed them to regain their stamina by stealing away the lives of their remaining henchmen, all of which seemed to die in the wake of the spell. Two of the three buffoons then poured all their newfound resiliency into the smallest of their number, referring to him as honored elder brother. You could practically feel the energy radiating off of him once he took in the power of his subordinates. Near as I could tell they didn't give him so much as to kill themselves, but they did lose consciousness shortly thereafter.

Finally calming down and gauging his surroundings, the child realized something terrible: his mother was dead and his sister mortally wounded. The former was partially buried under the manor's collapsed roof; the latter bleeding profusely from a wound on her side caused by one of her assailants stabbing her. He realized at this moment that he had himself been responsible for most of the structural damage, drenching his hands in his mother's blood. Opportunity was knocking.

I pulled the boy into his subconscious to speak with him. I told him simply, "Your mother is dead, and your elder sister is dying. I can save them, but there will be a heavy price." He looked confused, of course. Black, desolate landscape that was his inner psyche rippled as doubt washed over him. He was smart enough to figure out what I was talking about pretty quickly. Drowning in his agony and guilt, he would surely give in. To my surprise he did not! He resolved to keep fighting. I would be lying if I said I wasn't somewhat impressed by his continued resistance even in the face of impossible circumstances.

The fight resumed for mere moments before he saw his sister's collapse in his peripheral vision. His desperation and exhaustion grew, but the enemy did not falter. In fact, they smirked when the girl finally dropped. Suffice it to say the boy moved quickly to his sister's side to assess what he already knew: she was about to die. Again I called out to him, "Let me rescue you from your pain." The child went to his knees both in his own psyche and in the outside world, trembling. His eyes had already gone blank, the hope drained form his face. He knew the price I would exact, he knew the cost of not paying it, and he knew he would get attacked again the second he tried to heal her with the power I'd already given him.

"I can't wake up. Is this not a dream? Make it stop," the boy finally said, both questioning the situation and demanding something of me. His trembling had ceased, but the glazed over look in his eyes told me he was about to break. An amorphous black mass began to consume the boy's astral form, slowly covering it with innumerable tiny tendrils that would ultimately fuse together into a sort of cocoon, for lack of a better term. His physical body began to violently vomit a very similar black substance onto the ground in front of him. Visibly repulsed by this new development, the enemy recoiled by several steps and decided to just watch until they could get a read on the situation.

Suddenly I was in control. As I opened the boys eyes, I set them straight ahead on the man that had taken so much away from him. I quickly realized that the poor boy's flesh was already starting to burn from the strain of containing me. I hadn't much time left to act. With a wave of my hand the area was reduced to little more than a smoldering wasteland; the earth was scorched, the manor's remains reduced to little more than so much ash on the wind. That blinding light proved to be the last thing `our` adversaries would ever see, as they too burned to cinders. Only his mother and sister remained intact after the deed. I am, after all, a devil of my word.

I laid hands upon the mother and sister, both of whom were healed of their wounds. The former's soul returned returned to her body of its own volition once it was healed. I'm guessing she chose not to move on out of concern for her children, otherwise it would've taken significantly more effort for me to resurrect a fundamentally `good` person, if such a thing even exists. Regardless, the effort I'd already put in was enough to leave the boy with a smoldering, veiny look across most of his body. There was no coming back from it.

I flashed a broad grin at his family while still wearing his face. "Mom... I don't feel so good," I said to them - in his voice, of course. On the inside I was busy watching the boy as his soul slowly dissolved. It was only about half intact at that juncture. The right half of his face and torso along with parts of his right arm and leg remained, but the leftovers wouldn't last too long. I moved toward the boy and held out a hand—I had taken a form resembling that of my primary host while in the boy's psyche—in what I perceived to be a comforting, if hollow, gesture. "Yes, you're doing fine. Your remaining family is safe now. You can let go now. It won't hurt anymore if you let go."

The rest of the story is far less interesting. The child did let go. His body turned to ash, I returned to my preferred vessel, and his soul went exactly where anyone with even a modicum of intelligence would think it did. I went on to convince the mother and sister to give their souls in exchange for returning the boy to life and restoring their ancestral home to its original state. He'll go on living for now, but the damage is done. No doubt I'll be seeing him again someday, and there won't be anyone to bargain on his behalf then.

Well, it would seem that I've been reassigned. No longer will my considerable knowledge be put to use for the island's military benefit. Rather, I'll be acting as the Master of Laws from here on out--a position that, upon closer inspection, amounts to doing next to nothing the vast majority of the time. The pay remains good, however. A judge and an executioner will need to be acquired, but it's all very simple beyond that. I'll have little to no official work to do, but a great deal of free time.

For so it was that mankind was granted free will at the time of their creation, but what of us? Of me, specifically; I am gradually becoming cognizant of the fact that I, for all my pride and strength, may not actually have been entirely responsible for choosing the path my life has taken. True, the decision to oppose my creator was my own, but there came a number of highly illogical decisions after that one that I doubt I'd have made on my own. So... why? Could it be that my original sin left so profound a stain that my once-master elected to remove my ability to make decisions that would have an overall positive outcome while at the same time leaving me with the illusion of choice? I don't know. It could also simply be that my prideful nature has begun to overwhelm my sense of reason to such a degree that my judgment is compromised internally, though recent events have left me to doubt that this might be the case.

A curious thing occurred; for the first time since my creation was I given due cause to cast aside my pride, even if it was only for a moment. What I've come to realize over the past few centuries is that I'm not perfect - far from it; I am flawed, though perhaps not quite so badly as the mortals. I can make mistakes. ... And fortunately, I can also try to correct those mistakes. Others of my kind might consider this mentality to be somehow flawed or dangerous. They would of course be mistaken in that regard. An inability to admit fault results in burned bridges, closed doors, missed opportunities, and a pronounced loss of joy in life.

I hold no delusions of or desires for any sort of redemption, but it is rather refreshing to be put in a position where the outcome of an action is not immediately obvious to me - where I , for all of my many flaws and ages spent doing things a particular way, can reach out to grasp something worthwhile in in the more conventional sense instead of just blindly grasping for something like power like I always have. I may not have the ability to cease my course, but I certainly can take a few detours along the way to get some of the things I truly want.

These revelations and more have weighed heavily upon me as of late. I am forced to contemplate whether or not I should even continue to pursue my current goals--my contracts. Do I really even need them anymore? More importantly, should I even continue to split myself between my own realm and that of the Etlans? They've done everything from giving me some of their damned to feeding me enough magic to restore even my burned, broken wings. Well, the reality is that I've no plans to leave regardless. I've a perfectly valid reason to stay.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Be they mortal or monster, there is one thing all rulers can agree upon: that crown's weight is far more than most would realize. There is a certain regal strength to be found in those who stand fast in their conviction regardless of circumstances, but one must also consider that these same strong, regal individuals are themselves imperfect beings with a limited ability to comprehend when they're the ones at fault. It is this weight--the burden of the crown--that so shapes a ruler's outlook, but so too does it sometimes prevent them from seeing the forest for the trees. If all these things which I've written hold true, I must wonder if....

The substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen, or so some people would say. Where did faith come from? Why is it able to completely override all other facets of a person's being? These questions have been pondered since the beginning, and we're no closer to answering them now than we were then. Through faith many things become possible, but... what else? Do the mortals ever stop to consider how fruitless their fervent prayers actually are? They look for miracles in almost everything, when the reality is that their divinities are far too absorbed in their own perceived greatness to make any real difference in their followers' lives.

Faith seems to have been the driving force behind a goodly amount of wars. Indeed, it could be said that far more lives have been taken by it alone than any other force since the dawn of creation. Hypocrites and liars spread their holy words in the pursuit of fame and fortune, never once pausing for so much as a moment to contemplate whether or not they are making things far worse through their actions. No, these people are consumed up to their eyeballs in their own gluttonous greed. Worse still are those whose avarice gave way to blind pride and lead them to believe they are indeed favored or chosen of their respective patrons, as if that's not laughable unto itself.

It could be said that the most outwardly faithful are often times the least. They may put on a good show when they deem it necessary, but they're usually even worse than the dregs of society they so revile. Kindness and generosity extend only to those that can in some way help them - never to those with an actual need of help, even if that help should be no more than a bottle of cheap mead to warm their bellies or a small meal to keep them going. These hypocrites always manage to maintain an air of smug superiority right up until their righteous facade is finally seen through. It's always the same. This, like the rest of mankind's shortcomings, is a failure entirely of their own design.

So many religious movements include a set of rules that are outright impossible to follow, yet it seems only those people whose pockets aren't already lined with gold are expected to uphold them. "For just five gold pieces I promise to deliver healing to the sick and uplifting to the poor! Sow a seed now and reap benefits one thousand fold," the fools exclaim, their true motivation laid bare for anyone willing to look past their own nose and see it. ... And so few actually do. They're like parasites on the mortal soul. The more works they do, the more fervent and devoted their followers become.

I wonder, then, how the multitude of sheep would react if they knew it was our power enabling these avaricious hypocrites to perform mighty works? What would they do if they knew they were just as damned as the two-bit hacks they spent so much of their time and money on? Would they crumple in despair, or would they stand fast and seek to make right their wrongs? Not that they can. The soul is judged on works above all else. Those of good moral clarity and standing may still receive their reward in death, but those whose lives were spent living like the fools they follow are completely without hope.

So härkən to your false prophets, little sheep. Walk with them hand in hand into all-consuming flame.

Because of your heart, you covet.
Because of your heart, you feel lust.
Because of your heart, you know rage.
Because of your heart, you scorn others.
Because of your heart, you drown in hate.
Because of your heart, you swallow sorrow.
Because of your heart, I can never forgive you.

... But what is a heart? Some believe it is nothing more and nothing less than the organ responsible for pumping blood through a mortal's veins. Others, however, believe that the word has another meaning - that it is, perhaps even more so than the soul, the very center of their beings. Even still, what is it? Where is it? Will I find it if I tear open your chest? What about if I open your skull, will I see it then? What and where is this thing you have that we do not - this unknown that is supposed to make you so much greater than we who came long before you?

You endure much because of that accursed heart. You fight even when you've no chance, and you continue to struggle long after your allies have died and your bodies have broken. If indeed this too is because of your heart, then the heart must beget suffering. The heart is not love; the heart is misery. You delude yourselves into believing you possess some great gift, when in reality you've been cursed with something that assures your lives will be full of cynicism and loneliness.

Because of your heart, I will always hate you.
Because of your heart, you have a dark side.
Because of your heart, you choke on pride.
Because of your heart, your pain is great.
Because of your heart, you cannot rest.
Because of your heart, you do despair.
Because of your heart, you are empty.

Envy is a core part of the mortal experience, and yet their creators frown upon it so heavily. "Why is that?" one must wonder. Envy, like pride, can lead one to do a good many terrible things. Good men have been damned by it, and wicked men often drown in a sea of it. "Why can't I have this thing that I desire - that this other, more wealthy person has obtained?" they cry, foolishly believing the gods above will hear their prayers. "I work harder than him, therefore I deserve all that he has been given," say the mortals, choking on their own envious tongues.

The manifestations of envy have remained unchanging throughout all time. No matter who you are, what you do, or how you choose to live, there will always be someone coveting all that you have. And someday, if their willpower should falter, they may even try to take it from you - all that you have acquired in your days, perhaps even your very life. There is no escaping this inexorable truth. All mortals continually alternate between predator and prey in their envy of one another.

Envy - invidia; the very heartbeat of history. Cast in the image of their makers, mortals are truly the perfect reflection of those that breathed life into them; the creators are themselves quite the envious entities.

If hope is its venom and wrath its fangs, pride would be the serpent in the garden.

Pride is an usual thing - one of the very few traits the divine has in common with mortals. Pride allows ordinary people to endure much in the interest of their own glorification, but it also limits their achievements on a grand scale. Nearly everything they ever accomplish is eventually undone by their unmitigated pride. They aspire to greatness, but they always falter once they gain it. They revel in their accomplishments, heedless of all those that, in their envy, might seek to lay them low. Indeed this has been the downfall of many a monarch. Nearly all of them, actually. Precious few rulers throughout history have managed to overcome their pride and retain the totality of their holdings, and fewer still relinquished their crown of their own accord when the time came for it to sit upon their successor's head. This is how the practice of a monarch not being replaced by their eldest child until their demise came to be.

Individuals become so assured of their own righteousness that nigh anything can be justified if it will add to their perceived glory. Many of the most abominable acts ever performed were born of pride. It sits at the heart of so many of the other sins, not unlike hope. Even wrath is often motivated by some manner of pride. A person's boasts will incite those around them; pride giving rise to envy, envy to wrath, and wrath to violence. The gods as well fall prey to this hilarious cycle of their own making.

Even mighty Atlantis crumbled beneath the weight of its own hubris. A civilization so advanced that it could have conquered an entire world with minimal effort - so endowed with ancient knowledge that their capital city was a nigh impenetrable bastion; wholly self-sufficient, not needing any kind of imports to prosper on a scale not seen before or since. And what did they do, drunk on their own might as they were? They destroyed their own nation. Its island capital and most of the adjacent continent sank beneath the seas never to be seen again. Their king was so convinced of his ability to control powers far beyond even his ken that he never stopped to consider the consequence of failure. Similar scenarios have played out in numerous other nations, though it usually takes the form of overextending one's military might and crumbling beneath the strain of maintaining borders too far from home rather than some grand catastrophe.

The lesson here? Pride is quite healthy in moderation, but it will utterly destroy all that it touches if allowed to reach a state of excess. A creature can be as prideful as it likes so long as it doesn't allow that pride to override its ability to reason.

I am reminded of a very old song written by mortal hands. The bulk of the lyrics escape, but I do recall a handful of lines. Of those, only two bear relevance:

My chains are gone
I've been set free

The ritual was far more successful than I had originally anticipated. They gathered more people than I thought they would, condensed more magic than I had believed them capable, and even provided the necessary time for me to fully assimilate their `gift`.

My vessel was not merely restored. Oh no, they have in essence granted me the perfect corporeal form. Its aging is greatly retarded, it does not crumble from the burdens of containing my glory, and I suspect that it is quite capable of withstanding the strain of channeling my magic so long as I am mindful of the fact that it is, however enhanced, still a human body. In truth, I find that I am quite grateful to the old fool that said yes to possession when I came knocking. Humans are far more magically potent than the bipedal animals, often possess greater physical attributes in short bursts, and generally hold much more potential. It is a safe bet that same ritual would have destroyed one of the filthy talking animals.

I have chosen to sever my ties with Hell. While this has cost me a fair bit of power in the meantime, it opens the way to seeking restoration of self in the long run. Moreover, it means the flow of souls from Etla Isle will no longer have to be shared with others of my kind. The power they provide is now solely mine; and though it is far less than what I had whilst connected to the Nine, it will grow with time. Besides, those five mortal champions that marched into my domain and sought to do battle with me provided much. I could not keep the archdevils from claiming their souls after a time, but I did manage to steal the the spark of divinity that had been divided up amongst them at the time of their rise to power. Indeed, they would surely have become heroes of legend had they not chosen a hopeless battle. Had they but waited to grow, they might have destroyed me.

In any case, my presence in this tiny pocket dimension is no longer necessary to further my plans. I will hang around long enough to make certain my end of the bargain is upheld, after which time I will depart these waters for good. Feigning care and conscience requires an immense amount of effort from beings -- celestial and devil alike -- that do not inherently possess some level of them.

Be not deceived, whomever should find this documentation. The celestials do not care for your well being, nor that of any mortal. They care only for upholding the natural order and continuing to combat the very evils they themselves gave rise to. Mortals are a mere convenience - a source of troops, for many of the stronger "good" people that find themselves in the upper planes after death are either drafted as they are or transformed into a celestial themselves, depending upon how well they served their faith in life.

I often find myself contemplating the realms of the afterlife and how the flow of souls is divided between them. Many of the creatures we use to judge the dead are devoid of free will, and most lack even the most basic shred of emotion. Every soul is subjected to a set of uniquely tailored conditions meant to draw out and expose its true nature; and in so doing, to permit the arbiters to make decisions based not just on an individual's moral inclinations and prior actions, but also on behaviors observed in the here and now. It's a system that has worked since time immemorial, but the wisest of minds should take pause and wonder: Does it really work?

Objectively speaking, there are many possible flaws with the way things are done right now. A great many judgments are informed almost entirely by actions taken in the heat of the moment, for many of these judges believe drawing out the darkness in a mortal soul is the most effective way of coming to know it. The use of pure logic in determining a soul's destination wholly disregards the fact that mortals, on their most fundamental level, are creatures of emotion. One cannot truly weigh the worth of a soul if they are unable to grasp this most basic concept, or so would be my opinion.

Souls fortunate enough to be judged by the gods themselves receive far more appropriate judgments in most cases. Like their creations, the creators are quite well capable of the full range of emotions, albeit in far more subdued fashion than the mortals they tried so hard to shape unto their own image. Even then, fundamental differences between divinity and mortality make failures of comprehension an absolute certainty. If the gods and their first creations cannot truly understand, what meaning is there in any of it? Even beings made specifically to pass judgment fall well short of the mark.

The answer? There is no meaning, not really. It's all one massive cosmic joke. Arbiter, celestial, or deity; none truly know -- and most care not to learn -- the heart of man. Ultimately, they exist only to fuel our immortality and magic. The more they suffer, the more they believe - their belief gives us exactly what we need. I may not be in a position to benefit from their love and devotion the way those denizens of the upper planes may, but I have certainly learned to subsist off of their pain and fear. They will always fear death, they will always know pain, and they will always be terrified of being punished in the afterlife. My kind will never cease so long as mortals are... well, mortal.

The supposedly flawed methods employed in judging them serve only to deepen their fears. Fear begets pain just as pain begets fear. This is the endless, self-ensuring cycle that maintains the status quo. Mortals claw through their suffering to find hope, but even that only serves to sow the seeds of even greater torment in the future. Is it not glorious?

Having now put these thoughts to written word, I believe it is prudent to again touch upon my original observation. Is the system flawed? .... Not really. It keeps everything going on exactly as it was meant to be, and it does this quite to the detriment of mankind. I strongly suspect that the existence of mortals was not for any truly altruistic purpose. The gods simply wanted creatures that would worship them of their own accord rather than doing so because they were programmed to, as all but the most powerful celestials had been.

What even is hope? By definition it is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing or things to happen. Mankind's take on it is far broader - more far reaching, if one will. They treat it as some sort of ephemeral force, capable even of moving the very mountains if only to see to it that those hopeful souls attain what they so desire. Hope gives them motivation, strength, and a sense of purpose they might otherwise lack.

Hope is... a tool. It is the perfect carrot with which to bait the stick. Lacking substance, hope is much like faith; possessing one often demands possession of the other. The way these two things intertwine makes it entirely possible to twist an individual's faith merely by giving or denying a source of hope, or vice versa. What the mortals do not see is that hope is not the key to their salvation - not the light that will guide their path when all else has become shadow.

Hope is that which shackles mankind to fleshly means. Hope limits insight, deprives one of logic, and in many cases has even lead men to their deaths. Hope prevents them ascending beyond their station - from realizing, even if only for a moment, the sort of potential they were "blessed" with at the time of their creation. Hope is a weighted net strewn across one's soul, dragging it inexorably downwards into the dark places mankind so fears. Hope is pain. Hope is the ultimate lie, and our greatest creation.

Hope is a disease of the heart that eats away the soul. When hopes falter - when dreams die, men break. It is the root of all war and suffering. They, those wretched creatures of flesh, embrace their "hope" as if it were a lover. And in so doing, they become blind to the devastation wrought in its name. Whole empires have fallen merely because others saw a glimmer of hope that things would be better without the current regime, system, or governing body making the decisions.

It was hope that doomed Julius Caesar, and it was hope that cast Brutus as one of the most notorious traitors in his world's history. It was hope that saw the ancient libraries of Egypt burn, setting that world's development back at least several centuries, if not a thousand years. It was hope that saw Abeir-Toril split into Abeir and Toril; Lord Ao, the reigning overdeity of that cosmology, hoping the constant warring between mortal and immortal would stop if a single, unified planet became two identical worlds with the differing races divided upon them based on relative lifespan and power.

Lord Ao was wrong. The denizens of Abeir and Toril eventually found ways to come back into contact and resume their petty warring, though on far less grand of a scale... for now. Still, nothing was solved. The death of Caesar threw his civilization into a spiral of chaos that it never truly recovered from. Brutus' hope for a better future -- the hopes and dreams of the senate to regain their previous standing -- amounted to naught. Each of them now occupy their own special place in Cocytus, frozen with the rest of their history's worst betrayers.

I wonder, then, if their precious hope would remain even if they understood the scope of things. Would it still matter if they knew their worlds were nothing more than specks? Would Brutus have joined the senate in their ill-fated act of regicide if he had known their home was just one country on one tiny blue planet in one otherwise uninhabited solar system in one of the numerous arms of a galaxy barely out of its diapers? Would the utter futility be incomprehensible to such small minded creatures, or would they perhaps be self-aware enough to realize where they stand in their respective spheres?

I invite whoever eventually discovers these writings to contemplate not only the words written here, but the utter lack of worth of their own life as compared to the grand scheme of things - and those of their ancestors, descendants, comrades, friends, and other loved ones. Consider how little it all means when weighed on the scales of reality.