Role

Chapter 3

The first time I heard that terrible roar was the moment I knew the true
nature of my folly.

There is a river, dear reader, deep within the Inferno. A boiling torrent
within which the damned do scream, and Phlegethon is its name. Some say
Cocytus is a fate most dire, and perhaps they are right: but the burning
waters thunder was a thing to set my soul to trembling in a wind as cold as
the Prince of Darkness' breath and more besides.

I was free of biological imperative, dear reader. No chemicals which course
through my veins, no impulses to set me shuddering in that thing we name
fear.

But the terror I knew in that moment is a thing transcendent of such
physical trappings. I have not known its like since, and pray with the
fervour of a thousand priests to never know its like again.

The Phlegethon came for me, a raising wave to sweep away the damned.

And I did not go quietly.

Up through sandstone halls I fled. Beneath graves of long dead kings and
over uneven stone I drifted. The ghouls gave me no mind, for I was of their
like now. A thing of death and decaying, though without the bond to tie me
to this world. No boiling waters to send them fleeing, no roar of a beast
as old as time.

Into my guild did I run, the heat of Phlegethon at my back. With phantom
spray that burned as fire upon my remnant did I fall upon the lone student
within the crypt in a moment of abject desperation, and though I know it to
be so I know not the confluence which manifested.

Perhaps it is the Hallows Eve approaching, that time of strongest death.
Perhaps it was simply luck, an abberation of chance and nothing more
besides. Perhaps his soul was weak, or perhaps the hand of some higher
power was at work, for I know only that as my spectral remains fell upon
him with the desperation of the soon devoured his soul was thrust free of
living flesh, swallowed whole by the monster at my back.

I opened my eyes. I breathed the air.

I lived. Diminished, yes. Hollowed out, yes. A pale shadow of even the
lackluster thing I had been before, yes.

But I lived.

And the beast retreated, sated.

For now.