It wasn't until thirty seconds after the saber entered Aldric's heart that he
realized it had breached unto him. There was no moment of solace, nary a
flash of past failings, nor the jolt of torment that he believed would
emblazon his senses. It pierced his chest and the pitch of the void
enraptured him before another thought could enter his psyche.
Ten minutes, an hour, infinity seemed to pass. Aldric floated amid the
formless rapture that was non-existence. This was not the afterlife he'd
envisioned, neither was it the one he'd been taught by the scholars of
Bloodhaven.
Should've feigned to the left it seems, always had trouble with the
counter-step. Aldric directed his vision towards where his legs should've
been, to only be greeted by the blackness that he'd begun to familiarize
himself with. His form was no longer, yet his thoughts remained, or at least,
he believed they did. Time was omni-stagnant, chronology had lost all value,
and Aldric was beginning to understand that there would be naught else.
Coming to terms with eternity, Aldric braced himself for the end of sanity,
and then He appeared.
A beam of blinding light and searing crimson assaulted his vision, and the
form of his one true foe coruscated into existence before him in swirls of
red, iridescent fluid, culminating into the shape of an angular, jagged god.
Aldric had no reference for how big the god truly stood, the void made sure
of that, but he towered before Aldric's formless presence. The god had the
outline of a human man, tall and imposing, certainly muscular, silhouetted
in hard white pillars that contrasted his form with the unending darkness.
His eyes were pointed bands of light, hard and sharp, eyes of a cold,
unfeeling predator.
"Fulminatus, any sane man would fall to his knees in abject horror and
worship if they could see what I see. Sadly for me, I'm not sane, and at
present, I've not any knees either." Aldric sneered, if he could have.
Silence, whelp. The god Fulminatus boomed into Aldric's consciousness.
There was no concept of body or sound inside this realm of pseudo-life, but
he could sense that the projections of communication were, uncanny. I've no time for your witless banter, Scourgeraider, and I've only the time to
make you this offer once. Listen well, and you will be saved from this eternal
blight. Serve me, Aldric, be my hands and feet upon this fractured expanse.
Do my will, and you will want for nothing ever again, save worthy
challengers.
Aldric's consciousness shuddered at the thought. Never had he believed in
all his existence would he find himself bending the knee to the Outer
Presence that had stolen everything from him. The god who had made him
into the abomination that he was and is. And that was not even the worst of
it.
The worst of it, was that he considered.