Please read the disclaimer beforehand.
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I saw the image of God.
And he was burning. Burning and burning down below the earth where light dare not reach. Further and further down, until the ground itself stops and even further still.
And down he goes into the sulfur pits, where the Sulfur God lays.
And he is burning.
I saw his image and imprinted it on my mind. His charred visage, so powerful, so malevolent, so destructive and so evil. So... magnificent.
My eyes burned from just a look and my skin split to reveal muscles that began to boil.
Yet, I could not pull away. Even when my eyes combusted into flames, I could not stop looking.
With a smile, I stepped into the Sulfur pits, where I would burn alongside this God.
I would die. I knew that. But was this not better than anything the universe could possibly give me?
A fiery demise worth more than an eternity of mortal life. Better to die with it, than live without it.
And then, a spear pierced my side — just as it had done to Alll-Mer before he ascended from his death and onto the ranks of power akin to the old gods where he would reign as the Supreme one of humanity, the ascended one.
My burned body barely took it in. I looked down, finally tearing away my eyes from the visage of the God and looked onto the thing that he had bestowed upon me as a gift.
A faint whispers, akin to a moan of pain.
"G..o... aw..ay...."
And then, he dropped me.
I ascended upwards, and then, I vanished — only to appear in this frozen tundra.
Alright, let's backtrack a bit.
Deep Inhale~
"What the fuck is going on?!?!?!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, my voice reaching over the towering trees on every side and running far into the distance. The local fauna, which seemed to predominantly host birds — at least from what I could observe — was disturbed and they flew away at the sudden shout.
I looked down at myself as I rested on the snow.
I, Ethan Merrin, was a normal, 5 foot 11 inches tall male, 18 years old and had dark black hair with similar eyes. My attire at the time consisted of nothing but a simple T-shirt with a dark blue hoodie on top, simple pants and to go along with it, a pair of sneakers.
I was, in every sense of the word, not expecting to be dropped... here, wherever here was.
What I had experienced was truly surreal.
I did not do anything like pinch myself to check for a dream. I knew that everything that had transpired was the truth. I knew it for a fact.
It was the truest experience I had ever had, for it involved a God, a being truer than anything else — perhaps truer than the universe itself.
Now, the question is-
"How in Alll-Merr did the Fear and Hunger Gods become real? In the first place, why did the fucking earth swallow me and spit me in front of the goddamn Sulfur God?!" I had not planned to speak the name of the Jesus like figure from Fear and Hunger, but considering the situation, it seemed right.
Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself again. Let's backtrack a bit further.
I crossed my legs on the ground as I began to think.
I was an avid follower of the Fear and Hunger game series, completing every single ending possible in both the games with every single character. I was also a sucker for the lore.
And then, one day, when I had completed my work at the only recently joined company and vowed to complete another God of Ultra-Violence run when I got home, a rift opened up below me.
And the rest is history.
In the first place, why did the Earth suddenly split apart like that? That's not normal by any means!
Was that Alll-Merr issuing punishment for calling him Bald-Merr on the discord server?!
Fuck! I knew I shouldn't have drawn those ritual circles in my house! Is my stupidity the thing that doomed me?!
I grabbed my head as I thought about what might've led me here. Alas, nothing conclusive could be drawn from the information I had.
I shook my head to break out of those thoughts and turned to the next point of importance.
"Why did I get so happy at seeing Sulfur?" That was something that deeply disturbed me now that I remembered it. I feel an eerie glee travel up my being the moment my eyes found him. I felt... happy. Cheerful, like.
I shivered.
"Why's it so cold." I said. In hindsight, it was an idiotic inquiry. It was indeed cold. And with my less than ideal clothing, I was unsure why it had taken me so long to take note.
But not colder than the sulfur pits... I told myself. The sulfur pits burned the skin with the heat of a million suns and cold entered the body to freeze the within.
It was paradoxical. It was painful.
Compared to such unadulterated forms of suffering, this cold seemed almost laughable. Yet, as I sat on the thin sheet of snow that covered the damp mud below, surrounded by trees that shivered in the wind, I could not help but raise an eyebrow.
Why was I dropped here? I thought to myself. I get that Sulfur might not have enjoyed my company... but he just threw me out in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere? Man... I can't even curse that guy. He might just smite me from the heavens... or hell... or whatever the sulfur pits stand for.
I told myself not to waste any more time. From the small gaps of the canopy, giving way to a rapidly yellowing sky, it was clear that twilight had begun.
Soon, the sun would break dusk and the moon would come out, bringing with itself colder winds and the promise of a frostbite. A chill crept up my spine as I thought about freezing to death in the middle of the woods. All around me were towering trees of all varieties. Sentinels, ironwoods and soldier pines, all covered by flakes of snow, spears of green and white jutting out from the ground and pointing to the sky as if in defiance. The soft snow gathered along the thick network of leaves and twigs shimmered under the twilit sky. Distant noises reached my ears. Howling winds, rustling leaves and the distant howl of a wolf. The branches scratched at each other with wooden fingers. Frozen sap hung on the branches and the little light that filtered through the canopy fell on the snow sheet below, casting a beautiful pictorial scenery.
I breathed a plume of mist in the woods and rose to my feet. I stilled.
Focus eluded me for a moment as I searched within myself for something I had been feeling ever since I arrived here.
I closed my eyes, and felt a tug in the pits of my stomach. Or was it my chest? My head? I couldn't tell. It felt itchy all over and inside; beneath the skin and over it.
And then, a phantom heat bloomed at my hand as it grasped something.
My eyes opened on reflex and silently stared at the object that had appeared in my right hand.
It was a long, red, metallic spear, red as flames and shining with power. The entire thing was metallic and had an undescribable weight to it. It was a large, tipped weapon that resembled more a double edged glaive than a traditional spear, holding a large cross like symbol at the hilt from where the blade rose. It's edge was frighteningly thin, enough to the point one might consider it barely the size of parchment when observed from edge face. It gave the illusion that it might break from the slightest exertion. Yet, even so, somehow in my heart, I knew the edge was not only razor sharp, but also durable enough that no object made my machinations of man or beast, mortal or god, could ever hope to scratch it.
The blood red metal, emanating heat and made steam rise from it's surface was emblazoned with various runic symbols on it's handle; caricatures that looked eerily similar to old god symbols from it's native universe.
I knew what this was. Longinus, the spear that pierced Alll-Merr's side before his ascension, and the trace of his shadow — Sulfur God — that he cast aside into the sulfur pits.
Despite the initial heat that accompanied it's appearance, alongside the constant steam that seemed to rise upon contact with the surrounding moisture, the spear was cold to the touch. And yet still, it burned when I held it.
It was nothing that would be harmful, much less fatal. It hinted at the place of it's origin, the sulfur pits, where heat and cold burned a man from the inside out. I twirled the spear in my hand, careful with the edge, not to chop of an arm or a leg. It was heavy, but not the usual kind of weight one could expect from a weapon of this size.
The spear was a head taller than me, and being made out of a supposed unknown metal, it was unknown how much it really weighed.
But as I held it in my hand, something was wrong.
I stepped forward and sweeped the air with the spear. With the denseness of the forest around me, the spear, which I held 2/3rds of the way along the shaft, barely missed slashing into a trunk. And so, I felt it again.
A strange density seemed to accompany the spear as it moved. The spear lacked any of the weight usually seen. In fact, it would not be wrong to say that the spear was almost weightless in my hand.
It did not quite equate to moving underwater. This feeling was... something else.
Difficult to explain. Boggy, like, but not quite.
And there was another, more prominent feeling. A sensation. A stream of motion that my muscles followed as if by instinct.
Odd... I mused as I slammed the butt of the spear on the ground. The snow which had begun crawling up my sneakers, upon close proximity to the spear began to melt.
Around 2 centimeters away from the spear, the snow dissolved into liquid, soon to be filled with more snow to be dissolved yet again.
I barely noticed this strange detail, for my mind was somewhere else.
Why did this come with me? From what I understood from the lore, and confirmed from my brief encounter with Sulfur, this spear was a trace of Sulfur himself.
I knew what traces were. They were the dust and dirt left behind by the old gods.
Something like the lingering smell you leave behind after prolonged stay in a room.
Traces were, in essence, the same. Yet, they were undeniably powerful. A singular trace of an old Deity could overpower any new God and lay waste to the human world through a mere infinitesimal fraction of their powers.
There was no true way to defeat a trace of a God. They could only be expected to grow bored of your presence and fly away. The only traces one could encounter in both the games were — the traces of Gro-goroth, the Destroyer of Man, the traces of Sylvian, the Goddess of Fertility and the traces of Rher, the Trickster God of the Insane.
This spear, Longinus, was also a trace. At least the item description framed it as so. And now, I had confirmed it after a brief meet up with sulfur. I could only silently thank that God for healing me, otherwise, one could only imagine the extent of the damage I had recieved after staring at it and gaining knowledge beyond human understanding; though most of it was beyond my mind to comprehend.
One could summon a replica of this item through their own blood in the game to aid in battle, commanding devastating power.
I could only draw shaky theories on how powerful the real deal was.
And so, the question was, why had Sulfur given this to me?
Well, this probably doesn't amount to much in sulfur's face.
Think about it. Would any normal person care about the dust off their feet? Or the dandruff that falls off every now and then? It was quite possibly also the same with this.
Or maybe he just wanted to get rid of this... for an old god, any weapon is basically useless. I did not continue my stream of thought, throwing it to the back of the mind as I had everything else till now. I needed information.
Where was I? Is there civilisation nearby? If so, are they violent? Can I even understand them? Is there a clean water source nearby? What about food? Question after question welled up in my head, and for a moment, I wondered when I had grown so analytical.
Heh. Such a level of brain power was normally only reserved for games. Now that my survival is at play, it seems the brain is working extra hard. As much as my privileged ass wanted nothing more than to start back home, get into a cozy blanket and watch youtube until I fall asleep, it was quite clear, clear as crystal, that it was not going to happen.
A part of me was anxious with nervousness. But another part of me was strangely numb. It were like nothing could faze that part of me, a visage of myself that had come face to face with a god and lived to tell the tale. Surely, nothing here could be scarier than facing sulfur, I thought to myself. Whether it was to calm the other part of me, or a genuine belief I held was unclear even to me.
I looked up at the canopy. The sky was darkening, fast.
Then, my eyes travelled to the spear in my hand. Again, I closed my eyes. A familiar surge of heat ran through my arm and into my body, yet, I did not feel the same itchy sensation I had felt prior. Instead, I was overcame with a sense of fullness.
My eyes opened again as I clenched my fist over and over again. The cold sensation of the spear was gone.
There's something else too... My eyes narrowed as I placed a hand on my chest and felt my heartbeat. I felt nothing wrong.
So I walked up to a tree. A giant sentinel with the lowest branch a head taller than mine, and began to climb. The bark was cold and laden with cool sap. My hands felt sticky as I climbed up it, and there I disappeared in the domain of leaves and thorns.
The grey green needles grabbed at my clothes, as did the creeping branches like tendrils seeking to gouge into my flesh.
I was not a professional tree climber by any means, but I had my fair share of such sport when I was a teen. In the back of my late grandma's old house was a large sacred fig — a towering behemoth almost 700 years old. I used to climb up the branches, grasping at anything I could and stay in the canopy to escape house errands or punishments from my mother. It was suffice to say such a thing had not happened after I moved to the city.
As such, I was unsure of my capabilities. As I climbed higher and higher, I was now about 5 and a half meters off the ground. I looked down. I did not feel any fear. Only a strange sense of indifference. My muscles were also in surprisingly great shape. I could haul myself up the branches with little effort, fully confident in my grip strength.
It would seem meeting the old god made more changes in me than just my psyche, I thought absentmindedly.
I can still feel emotions... but I don't feel the unease that comes with doing dangerous things. I've accepted everything at face value until now. Normally, I'd be freaking out. Instead, there's just this lingering nervousness, but no panic to speak of — aside from the momentary shock I felt at suddenly appearing here.
And my strength seems to have increased. To what extent, I have no idea. I couldn't have been able to climb a tree so readily. I might go to the gym, but I wasn't exactly built for such movements.
Avoiding the branches and thorns was one thing. It was another thing to get to a proper vantage point to scout the surroundings. The canopy obscured the surroundings, making it especially difficult to see anything unless one went up way higher. I stopped when I was somewhere between 40 to 45 meters off the ground; about 4/5th of the way up.
The sentinel I had picked was not on the smaller side, yet, I clearly remembered that sentinels could grow far larger.
White and green.
That was the first thing that came to my mind as I stood nimbly atop a branch, careful not to fall.
A giant, sprawling mass of trees greeted me. Twisted branches coming together to form a mesh in the form of a canopy that extended far into the distance where jagged mountain peaks rose. From the position of the sun, it could be inferred that the mountains were west. The twilit sky was darkening. It was now a shade of purple, like an old wound, and shades of black crept in from the opposite horizon. The sun was almost over the mountains, save for the smallest bits of a gap that still allowed it to peek through like a curious child.
The green canopy was marred with sprinklings of white, powdered snow and flakes drifted down hither and tither at rare intervals. One came and landed on the leaf directly before me.
For an unknown reason, the figure of Vinushka came into my head. The God of nature, formed of the union between creation and destruction, Sylvian and Gro-goroth.
I smiled wryly before looking around in the other directions.
I needed to make use of the little time I had left of the lingering light. Once the sun came down, I would be effectively blind as far as scouting went. As of travelling and scouting on foot, it was an easy choice.
I would not be doing it.
Predators came out in the night. Not to mention the cold. Just from where I stood on the tree, grasping at a thick branch with my right hand, I felt the south blowing winds tearing at my skin.
It would serve me well if I found a light source somewhere nearby, otherwise, I would need to make one for myself with the small amount of knowledge I held over survival in the wood by watching Bear Grylls. And if I had anything to say about it, I would most likely fail.
I brought my free hand to my chest and made a motion.
I stroked my finger in a clockwise semi-circle, then, I made an eye like pattern, continuing on in two anticlockwise semi-circles that intersected with the clockwise one.
And thus, formed the sigil of Vinushka.
I would like to admit, I was a bit of a nerd. I had every single skill, spell and name memorized, every single important or un-important piece of information in fear and hunger. Among them, sigils were things I had practiced many a times.
I did not know what I was expecting to gain from drawing Vinushka's sigil on my chest, but I still prayed.
Oh Vinushka... may the forest go easy on me today...
With that, under the rapidly darkening sky, I made to get back down.
...
Turns out, I was better at climbing up than getting down.
I was about halway down when it happened.
"Fuck!" My foot slipped, as did my hand.
And so, I plummeted.
The snow laden ground sprang up to reach me. And then, came panic. Real, unadulterated panic for the first time since I reached here.
Desperately, I reached for the nearest branch.
Crack!
And the branch came right along.
A familiar heat bloomed out from my hand as I extended it towards the trunk, and a cold rod extended from it. A grating sound, akin to the screeching of wood under a storm rang out in the forest and my descent slowed, if only slightly.
The ground came to meet my body.
Bam!
Aught!
I groaned, heavily in pain.
My left arm, upon which I had landed on seemed like it were on fire. Same for my hip.
I felt a sticky sensation on my right forearm, and embedded into it was a large, grey green thorn. It had pierced into the skin and ran a small gash, half a centimeter down my forearm as I had failed my arms in a panic.
"Auuuu..." I groaned again.
My body felt as if it was on fire, but that did not stop me from getting up. At least it was better than the sulfur pits...
Why do I keep comparing everything to my experience in the pits?! My legs wobbled as I stood up and looked at the tree.
Some 8 meters up from the ground, a large gash, akin to a crevice between mountains had opened in the center of the trunk. It ran all the way down to the ground, sizzling with a strange heat, where a red spear rested, it's blade still held by the grasp of the wood.
In the moment of clarity, I had thought to use the spear to slow my descent.
Clearly, that had not gone well.
"The edge was too sharp... it cut through the wood like it was paper..." looking at the trunk, a chill ran down my spine.
In hindsight, it would have been far more effective if I had used the edge horizontally rather than vertically. Stabbing at the trunk in a vertical manner had led to the spear cleaving straight down the middle and only slowed down the fall by a margin not even worth referring to.
If I had even a bit more knowledge of what I was doing, I would have aligned the edge horizontally, making me stop completely.
I groaned again as fresh blood poured from the wound on my arm. The hoodie had a small patch dyed red from the blood. I reached in and pulled out the thorn. It was not too deep.
Thus, I reached for the spear. To my surprise, it was not at all hard to pull it out.
"The act of swinging the spear is... almost unnervingly natural. It's as if my muscles have a strange memory of operating the spear. But the act of using is another matter... I'm not at all familiar with the spear. And that led to miscalculations like this..." I looked again at the tree, feeling a bit speechless.
Then, I looked above at the sentinel tree. The branches tangled in the air to make a net of green. Looking at the broken branch, I was sure I would have fallen from a height not less than 15 meters.
How had I survived that with minimal injuries?
Come to think of it, why do I only feel pain. That fall would have broken a bone at the very least... not to mention the thorn. With the velocity I was falling at, it would have no doubt dug deep into the skin and cut a large gash through the length of my arm. Instead, there barely any damage. It can be equated to a mere skin injury, when normally, I should have been bleeding out from my arm. It would not have surprised me if I died right then and there...
The more I thought of it, the more I began to suspect that the sulfur pits had changed more than just my psyche and the spear. I looked back at my arm. The small gash, barely deep enough to cut into the dermis was already closing and a scab had formed through natural healing.
Wait.. my blood!
At that moment, my eyes widened.
Longinus was stained with the blood of Alll-Merr and contained traces of Sulfur. And yet, it had stabbed me and resided inside of me.
What if...
My heart leapt with part joy and part foreboding as I considered that possibility.
Then, as I desummoned the spear, feeling the already familiar warmth course through me, I looked at the small wound on my forearm.
I had just the right idea to test it out.
"Blood Sword." I whispered. The forest was what answered me. The howling wind between the trees, the swaying branches and rustling leaves and a distant hoot from an owl who had woken at the darkening sky.