You Owe Me

'Lo everyone, /u/IceFireWarden here. I'm leaving on Friday for two months, so before I left I wanted to share with you all the prologue to The Elder Scrolls novel I've been working on for the past year. While it's not official, I am working on it as a main project of mine (along with the Manaudyssey). So sit back, and I hope you enjoy it. The novel is still going through a naming process, but the current name is The Tomb of Kings.

It’s been two-hundred and twenty-two years. You left me…in that hellhole…for exactly two-hundred and twenty-two years. I was erased, forgotten, and tormented for every part of that miserable existence and not once did you answer my cries of pain, my pleas for release.

Yet I could feel you, in the back of my mind. Watching…whispering… You did nothing. Nothing! I spent my entire life dedicated to you! I lead my people against your enemies and taught them the ways of how to serve you! And when the invaders came – pouring out of their gates of destruction – I felt you rush through me, making me your Will embodied. We fought the invaders, and pushed them back through their realm, entering and invading it ourselves.

But I was struck down in the red dirt, gazing upwards at the demonic sky. Too injured to move, but not to the point of death. I laid there, bleeding, as my brothers and sisters fought and died all around me. Eventually, I was nearly covered in corpses. I didn’t give up hope though; no, I would never give up hope. I knew that you would save me.

Until I heard the sounds of my people retreating. I feebly moved a body off of my face and tilted my head, and saw them all leaving through the gates in swarms. Without me. I croaked out cries, but no one turned around. You were still in them, and I knew you could hear me; but you didn’t even turn around. You abandoned me there to die.

It wasn’t long until they found me. I thought they would simply kill me, as they did the others. But no. They wanted to use me as an example; I was to pay for the actions of you and my entire race. They brought me to their master, and I was killed on the spot. But my soul…the things they did…the sheer pain I went through…

And when he was finished with me, I wasn’t simply destroyed. Oh no, a quick end would be to kind for an offense such as mine.

I transferred from the hands of so many demons that I lost count in my misery. I was tortured in one realm, fought as a gladiator in another. The energies of my suffering changed my very appearance; my spirit itself warped and robbed. But in my anguish, I realized: the creatures of this lawless place had come to respect me. I had gone from being their toy to their servant, and at that time I knew. Haha, I knew. One of these days, they would make a mistake.

So I waited. And waited. And like I said, the mistake was made. Not even these creatures were perfect.

And in that moment – as I carved my way through my capturers and out of the ether – I heard you speak to me. You actually spoke to me.

Did you really think that after all I went through, I would return? That after all I suffered, that I would forgive? Haha, no. Oh no, no, no, no. Forgiveness is for the weak. I am far from that now. My time in the ether has left me unique. I have powers that you can’t even begin fathom, at the cost of no natural corporeal form of my own anymore. But such things are trivial; when I returned, I simply revived the pieces that I needed and stitched me a new one. Such power!

Even now, your influence wanes as my grows. My mold has infected the fertile soil that you hold so dear, and I leech into your mind. I know your hopes, your desires, and your fears. You think it hurts now? This small pocket will not be the last; I will spread throughout every part of you until I consume you.

And as your precious marsh dies all around you, as your keepers fall to the onslaught of my own children, as the mud dries out and your roots crackle and fade into dust, I want you know that I will be there.

Sifting. Through. The. Rot.

You brought this on yourself.

You owe me.