Elurial.
***
"I warn you, Elurial. My source of rage can break your spirit. For it is a creature without substance. And yet, it is a being of infinite faces. A parasite of mind and culture alike."
With those words reverberating through my soul, I felt the presence of something special watching over me. Or… no. I felt as if I were watching over someone and yet looking through their eyes at the same time.
I was experiencing, I realized, a memory that wasn't mine—trapped between myself and what I could only assume was Amun as I lived through that horrid experience. One filled with so much pain, fear, and trauma.
One that birthed a furious rage that lasted for decades.
Two dozen years passed in the blink of an eye. A million meals of crumbs and a hundred pairs of tattered, oversized clothes were eaten and worn in a million different ways, yielding the same frustrating taste for years upon years upon years in that destructive society I witnessed. A society in which there were little prospects other than a life of crime, military service, or labor until the day one dropped dead.
It was a horrific place that I saw. A small world that contained no creatures other than humans, their livestock, and wild animals. It held no powers other than technology and physical prowess. Yet it contained all the injustices of the Mortal Plane in excess.
I saw pot-bellied world leaders, degenerate celebrities, and overpaid athletes living in secured palaces while others starved at their gates. Praised not were the… scientists, they were called. The inventors and other people who devoted themselves to making their lives more livable, to increasing their quality of life. They were nameless.
Even worse were those on the far side of that small rock who had their forests burned and their houses destroyed by the goons employed by those in power. I saw people kept poor and deprived so people in places they'd never seen could live in squalor. I saw people subtly forced into a state of desperation, giving them no choice but to fuel the fires of their demise.
I saw what Amun called the Culture. And it disgusted me.
The creatures in that world were like a parasite. Consuming. Killing. Pillaging. Destroying anything that existed in order to claim the few remaining metal scraps, drips of oil, and corners of arable lands for themselves. And if they couldn't claim them to make their fancy trinkets, build their palaces, or fatten their bellies, they employed their horrific bombs, explosive rocks, and booming clubs to leave the land uninhabitable and useless for decades to come.
Despite being the same species as the humans I called friends, there was no sense of community in that world. There were only tribes that seemed all too eager to slay one another for any reason they could imagine. Differences in skin tone, religious beliefs, or political doctrines. Even such frivolous things as preferred diets, place of birth, sexual orientation, titles or pronouns or honorifics; seemingly everything was used as an agent for hate and destruction against their fellow humans. Worse, they thought themselves to be superior to the so-called enemies, even after the fact.
I felt sickened just being there. But my disgust grew tenfold when I realized, somewhere in that hellscape of a world, Amun had lived.
He'd been trapped somewhere in the center of that spectrum. Not rich but not poor either. Not starving neither satiated. Worse, he had the intellect to understand what could have been. Thus when he saw what was, there was nothing but hate. He hated everything he saw for years upon years. He hated the fact that he had no choice but to become a part of the problem and to turn to a life of crime or military service if he even hoped to do anything for his people.
He hated the fact that the only way out of the gravity prison of poverty he was born in was to become a monster that had the power to climb out on its own.
And so, he did. But he hated it. And so, he hated himself.
He joined the private military of the most powerful organization in his country and was fed more, educated better, and trained to kill with the highest efficiency one could attain. Just like us. But unlike us, he was no longer free. And that was what he despised more than anything. He despised it more than he despised having to put his life on the line just to afford a comfortable life, for he was now one of those dogs sent to the other side of that small rock on which they lived.
It was there, where Amun faced the worst day of his life. And so it was there, where I, living through the memories of my God, experienced a new type of rage.
He was sent to some jungle where it was muggy and thick to fight a battle that was surprisingly just. A group of terrorists, as they were called, bombed a city in an attempt to assassinate several important people. Thus Amun- I went to war.
The war. That was the unjust part. There were years of it until I experienced the day that broke Amun.
It happened on the outskirts of some city. Six men and women, including me, were cramped in a lumbering truck of armored steel. A relatively peaceful night, it was. Until it wasn't.
A titan of destruction shocked my senses away in a heartbeat, reducing my reality to scattered light, dust, and fire. Then an opaque swathe of beige that almost seemed to be the source of the incessant ringing in my ears, muffling every sound except the amplified racing of my heart.
Fearful, dazed, and confused, I swayed along with Amun's field of view as mangled bits of metal and flesh cleared through the smoke. I felt… wet. But not with sweat. And that made me nearly panic.
I looked around, forcing deep breaths through my lungs while I searched for the two men and women who were just with me. But alas, they were simply… gone. Reduced to a smoldering pile of debris. Others were ducking and running from the sound of large wasps buzzing nearby. But all that was seen were sparks and bits of metal or stone shattering before my eyes. Or, on one occasion, throwing one of my companions to the ground in a painful cry.
I felt so many things at that moment. Helplessness. Fear. Despair. Sorrow.
Rage.
Through it all, Amun managed to compose himself, rise, and join them in their noble cause of pulling their wounded to safety. It was not unlike an orc's berserker state, how he channeled those primal feelings into his adrenaline to surge forward.
Despite a few of them being dead or dying, they dragged their fellow bodies and pulled the triggers on their booming clubs to cover their exit. They moved systematically from cover to cover, just as Amun taught us. Tree to rock to tree. Firing at people they couldn't even see through the thick brush while their partner moved. And then they moved, trusting in their partners to cover them in turn.
The fighting lowered in intensity as they gained their distance from the chaos. Still, though, another fell. And when yet another fell, Amun and the last remaining soldier had a choice to make.
Noble or stupid, I had no right to say if their decision was either one. I could only say that I would've done the same. From what I saw of his memories, though, Amun never tried to distinguish which of the two his actions fell into. He simply made a choice and that was it.
That choice was to destroy their gear to prevent the enemy from getting their hands on it, should they be killed. Moreover, their decision was to give their comrades a proper burial. But, being in a warzone, there was no time to dig holes.
I felt some sense of hope build within Amun as he and his partner took off their gear. It was heavy, so its weight was a relief in itself, giving him a beacon to set his sights on, a thought that he might survive this ordeal. But then, I felt sickened once the thought of living with these memories surfaced.
Then, I felt like a hypocrite. For a thought that seemed ingrained into my mind crept forth. And yet, I acted vehemently against it.
Amun wanted to die, I realized. He was… suicidal, but never tried. He wanted to die, desperately so. But hope- hope and a pipe dream and perhaps something more forced him to live on. It forced him to go back out into that hell to drag the corpses of his friends to their burial pyre, a mere mound of firewood and hay contained in the back of some farm.
One by one, they went, trading places until the blood of the last man stained his clothes.
"PUT IT DOWN!"
"No." I felt a weak mutter escape my lips as the cold grip of a thousand hands took hold of my heart and pulled. Losing all sense, I dropped the body and ran with my weapon raised high, desperate to get to my last best friend. Only for my heart to shatter once I cleared the brush.
Comedy and tragedy. That's what I came face to face with. My friend, wide-eyed and pale-faced, pointed his rifle down at a little girl who couldn't have been older than eight. In the girl's hands, a 'rifle' pulled from the dead. Pointed right at my friend's head.
And… she was, smiling. Laughing with half amusement, half unbridled hate.
It all happened so fast. A step. That was all it took for my friend's head to balloon into a cloud of red and pink mist. That was all it took for my mind to be painted with a permanent pink mist and that fucking smile. To plague my ears with a concussive slap that would send my nerves awry. To leave the wet warmth of a ghost on my skin for the rest of my days.
That was all it took for my body to twitch.
It all happened so fast. A twitch. That was all it took for that child's sternum to be thrown back and opened on the backside in a show of gore. That was all it took for my soul tainted, tormented, and plagued forevermore by a bout of silence that ended in a haunting, gurgling laugh.
The silence stretched infinitely as my eyes traveled an equal distance to gaze upon an unrecognizable form. A body without a head that could only be verified as my friend by a scrap of imprinted metal stuck between the laces of his boot.
The silence ceased at the behest of a haunting laugh that saw my mind snap to a girl of tan skin, brown hair, and vibrant blue eyes covered in blood, clutching at a sucking chest wound while she cursed my name with her dying breath.
Years. For what felt like years, I was trapped in that moment. I keeled over- no, I collapsed, feeling as if every organ and bone in my body was erupting from my mouth like a great volcano of searing blades. I heaved and hurled bile and blood into the mud for what felt like hours as I sobbed. Cried in despair and anguish and sorrow until the tears turned to blood and the blood dried to dust. Burning, raging dust.
There, on the cold ground of that distant jungle; just like Amun, I poured out nearly every emotion I had until only a few things remained.
Hate was not among them. We- me or Amun, could not hate her. For, just like us, she was attacking her enemy. We were no different than the terrorists who attacked our country. We were all forced into being what this cruel world of death forced us to be.
Rage was among them, but it was paired with despair, at first. Despair birthed from the knowledge that, no matter what was done, the world would not change. People would not change. The Culture that drove the powerful to oppress the weak in an effort to consume ever more would not change. And so, that knowledge was used as a temper. Stockpiled and reserved- contained under lock and key in a lightless dungeon, to only be released for the inevitable or the uncertain.
To only be released for The Culture that drove us to our living deaths.
There was no use thrashing about as we gathered the corpses and gear into a pile. There was no use cursing names or even the Culture itself as we released a pin from a crimson canister and threw it on the pile. There was no use offering feral screams or songs of retribution to some warrior god as the great flame burned the bodies to ash and melted the equipment to slag.
The Culture would not yield to such paltry offerings. And there were no gods of this world to care for the souls of mortals. The only thing we could do was what had already been done- to take our despair and use it as a temper for this rage, simmering deep within this mortal shell.
That temper made for a level-headed berserker's state, a silent rage. One that pushed me to look around my environment in search of answers, rather than take off in an aimless search for blood. Ash and slag. A hand axe. A knife. Mud and blood. Drugs.
Each sight served as fuel for the fires of rage. But the temper yielded ideas. And those ideas yielded tools and tactics that would benefit this burning rage. Ash to conceal my scent. Slag rocks to make distractions. Bladed weapons to use. Camouflage. Amphetamines. Coffee. Cocaine.
We fought more beasts than men in that deathworld of divine violence. High off a cocktail of drugs and adrenaline and seething with rage, we sprinted through the dark jungle, uncaring if the big cats or water beasts sought to ambush us. Not noticing the short cliffs and drop-offs until we were sprawled out across the ground, scrambling to return to our feet. Never fearing while we evaded the bangs and flashing lights and shouts in the distance.
I forgot who I was, up until the time we returned. I was Elurial. A half-high orc and founding member of the Legio Noctis, living through a memory that belonged to my God. I only realized that after being forced to feel through the similarities. If only so that I could see the disparity between… everything.
Our bodies both shook from residual adrenaline. But mine shook from fear, awe, sorrow, and despair. Our hearts both murmured and fluttered, but where his was from the drugs, mine was from shock. I both worried about and yearned for the support of my distant peers as they approached from our base to give aid. Amun didn't even want to see them.
I worried if I'd ever recover from the many lacerations, gunshot wounds, fractures, sprains, overextended joints, swollen wrists, broken ribs, bites, stings, and most importantly, mental trauma. Even the ears were mangled, the left being cut by… something and a piece of the right being shot off by either a bullet or ricochet.
The only thing Amun was worried about, he voiced in the form of a demand to his peers. "Give me a fucking smoke."
The last solid memory was through Amun's eyes, who received a smoke from his peer. They wore black spectacles to counter the coming dawn, giving Amun a clear look at his crudely pointed ears, his reddened eyes, and the thick veins bulging from his blood and mud-caked neck and brow.
How sad they looked, when Amun focused on their glasses. How horrible, Amun felt after what they said.
"Damn, dude. You look like a devil."
Many more years passed by after those words. All in the blink of an eye. Yet, the word was repeated a thousand times over in a fraction of the time.
Devil.
Devil.
Devil.
Devil.
Devil.
Devil.
In one way or another, Amun looked like a devil when he came back. As drinking was detrimental to his depression and mental health, he smoked almost constantly, giving him the same red eyes he returned to base with.
In one way or another, Amun became a devil before he came back. Whatever the rumors surrounding the now-broken Amun seemed to be the common opinion among his peers. He died over there. Since then, he fought like a devil. He laughed in the face of death as only a devil could, leaping into its embrace in a state of desperation. Only to be shunned.
He wanted to die.
But… he was a hypocrite. The pipe dream of ending the Culture remained. And so he fought on until the devil went home and took up other things to occupy his time.
For the rest of my days, it would serve to be the most heart-breaking, terrifying, gut-wrenching, and yet awe-inspiring account me and my subordinates would come to witness. Such trauma, helplessness, weakness, and despair were things I've rarely felt and would rarely ever feel in a dozen lifetimes. And yet never to such a degree as he, the one who lived for nearly a century in a half in that universe, so deadly and so without magic.
More importantly, that memory served as the catalyst for both my personal growth and my spiritual devotion.
I had always wondered how Amun seemed so aloof and uncaring about nearly everything. Almost impossible to anger, I assumed he was. But in those bottled memories, I saw the heart of his ire, born in a universe outside of our own. And by seeing those memories, that ire- that tempered rage, had been passed on to me.
He made himself vulnerable. And so, I felt him. All that Opal said about him. All I'd seen of him. I felt it develop over the course of both of his lifetimes. The unmerciful malice paired with a good heart. His skill in battle and warfare coupled with his advocation for peace and prosperity. His love of exploration, discovery, creation, and partying- of life; and his obsession with death that wound up not being hereditary after all. I understood how he came to master something he could hate so much. War.
Most importantly, I understood his reluctance to protect people with his own hand, no matter how strong he would become.
Amun was a God, I truly believed that now. But it went far beyond that. He was my God. One that I knew on a personal level, and I was one of his blessed chosen. One who was untethered from the bonds of life and death. One whose fervid rage burned with silence.