I’ve been playing a whole bunch of Dark and Darker recently and had the idea for this short little story. Enjoy.
Death would not release him. Even after hundreds of years laying in these forgotten crypts, his soul would not leave. A force kept him there, a malevolent force trapping him for eternity. But yet, there was hope.
He could feel it, feel the magic of the crypts flow through his weary bones. Feel it urging him forward but yet he rest, biding his time, waiting for the perfect moment. It might have been years, decades, centuries. Time had no meaning anymore. There was only the waiting, the inhuman patience that consumed his existence.
Slowly, the energy filled him, he could feel it. It gave him power, it gave him life, it gave him hope. And yet he waited. Waited until his day of reckoning would arrive.
And it finally did, with a foot step.
Soft at first, he could barely register it, but after a millennia of the same eerie groans of his tomb, the sound stood out like thunder. It grew louder, closer. This was it, his moment. A thousand years of waiting, of praying for vengeance for the souls who wronged him.
The steps grew louder still, until the faint click of a door, the creak of the ancient hinges filled the stale rotten air. They were here.
The creatures moved toward him. They were only creatures to him now, his mind was blinded by time, by his hunger for vengeance. They drew closer still, shattering and destroying anything in their path, desecrating his family’s resting place.
He channeled all the energy he had, all the power he had gathered through his endless waiting, his infinite patience. The universe rewarded him. The bones that had sat dormant for generations stirred, twisting and sliding back into a form that resembled what he had once been, in a time before time.
He took up his sword, the anger and hatred of a thousand years escaped him in a snarl that exploded from him like a shout. He lumbered forward, the metal blade dragging and scrapping the ground behind him. The closest creature faced him, large and brooding, a massive ax held in both hands.
The creature saw him and it roared, a terrible shriek the likes of which he had never heard before. The walls of the tomb shook, and he felt fear, such deep and utter fear that drove straight through him. Fear beyond anything else he could imagine. Everything inside himself forced him to turn and flee, to preserve something of the time he had gathered, but it was too late. The creature’s ax came from above with brutal swiftness, shattering the thin threads that held his physical form together. His bones screamed in anguish as they collapsed in a heap once more on the floor.
He lay, waiting, waiting for the moment when he would be free, free from the torment of his endless suffering.
And yet, death would not release him and he began his waiting once more.
