The Twelve Apocalypses: A Damned Soul's Path to the Abyss

Chapter 1: The Gates

People like to imagine that pain has some arbitrary threshold, beyond which your senses blur and you can just sink into numb indifference.

They are wrong.

As I floated in the void, unable to move, every single moment of my temporary state was agony. Some force was slowly peeling away everything that came together to make up the very definition of who I was. One painful layer after another, that force was stripping me down to my very core.

I could feel every change. Every fragment of my being, even as it flaked away, was fully capable of processing everything that was happening.

The pain was like a white-hot blade, slicing through my essence. It kept me alert and awake and pointed in a single direction. A presence. Large, overwhelming, and so very, very hungry.

It lorded over my painful reality, readily slurping away whenever a little slice of my essence came loose. With no doubt in my mind, I could tell that once the presence was done amusing itself, I would disappear, completely and utterly.

I was desperate. I would do anything. Burn the world down. Sacrifice anything and anyone. Anything to get away from the pain. Or better yet, to flee from that unholy presence.

That was when my surroundings shimmered. A vague silhouette of a man beckoned me from the other side of the presence. I latched on like a drowning man, struggling with all my might to avoid my fate.

And somewhere, somehow, something heard my prayers. I could somehow wiggle. That clinched it. Normally, I’d double and triple check before diving in. For now, all caution was thrown to the wind. I dived towards the silhouette, and…

My eyes blinked open. I was sprawled on my stomach on hard, rocky ground.

Then I looked up.

"Huh?"

The unintelligent sound escaped my mouth on its own. Not a hard thing to justify when the first thing I saw after untold ages of torment was the angry face of a monster, looming mere inches away.

The monster had chalk-white skin and eyes that were black pools, deeper than any tar I ever knew. Its angry expression deepened into a scowl as I stared into its face. Before I could even begin to process anything, a heavy blow landed on the back of my skull. My face bounced off the ground, hard.

I saw stars. My head was in agony. Still, after the unspeakable torture of having my essence slowly stripped away, feeling physical pain was almost a relief.

"Damn it all, wasting my bloody time!" the monster growled. "If you’ve made it through, then keep moving. I don’t fucking need you holding shit up."

Its chalk-white hand grabbed the front of my shirt, dragging me up. For a moment I dangled, then it released me to totter on my feet. I only barely kept my balance.

"Yes, sir." I managed to slur the words instinctively, and they actually seemed to defuse some of the thing’s anger.

It — no, he scoffed, waving something at my face. "Move."

I did as I was told, but also managed to get a closer look at the item he held in his other hand. It was a necklace. Some sort of choker, really, like one would put on a prized pit-bull just to play up the species’ supposed aggression and fierceness. It seemed to be made of some kind of red metal. Sharp-looking spikes jutted out of it in every direction, except at the front, where there was a blank plate.

I tried to keep looking straight ahead. The instincts that drove my body onwards insisted that glancing around would be a bad idea. Despite that, I still caught a glimpse of what was happening.

There were lines of tough men and women, all in their early twenties, stretched away on either side into what seemed like infinity. At the head of each row stood a monster, though they varied in color, shape, and even size. Most were decidedly humanoid, like my chalk-white, tar-eyed friend, but that only made them more intimidating. Their job, if it could be called that, was to drive a ball of red energy into those at the front of the line.

A short-distance beyond the monsters were a series of booths, each containing one bored-looking clerk. They weren’t doing much, considering they only had to process about one in five of the people who found their way to the monsters. The other four would fall, flail, foam at the mouth, and then lie still.

It hurt to try and understand everything. My head was still pounding from experiencing intimate contact with the ground. I tried to work on the question of why some people were standing back up while others on the ground were collared and dragged away. Before I could make any progress, a voice interrupted me.

"Hrm, looked close, eh?" The red-tinted clerk spoke up when I reached him, shooting me such a vicious look that I was tempted to flinch. When I didn’t, he gave a small smile. "Not entirely useless, then. Hand."

Numbly, I raised my right arm. The clerk gripped it with his left hand. Grinning even more maniacally, he raised a stamp and brought it down on my flesh.

The only thing that kept me from screaming was instinct. It was like a voice had suddenly surfaced in my brain, whispering advice. Make noise, and they’ll only hurt you worse. Withstand it. Let it pass. Move on by meeting their tests perfectly, and claim your rightful place.

The thoughts were all extremely helpful as they pushed their way through my mind. They were also distinctly not mine.

And the instinctive thoughts were not alone. They brought with them a flood of scattered memories, each one almost overwhelming. I could smell the despair, taste the sweat, and feel the tears. Each memory came with its own emotion, overwhelming my mental barriers. In those memories, I had passed far worse challenges, knowing I would die if I succumbed.

To be silent while a leering bureaucratic sadist drove a burning brand into your skin? According to my new memories, that was child’s play.

The memories also helpfully identified the race of my tormentors. These weren’t generic monsters. These were demons.

When the demon clerk in front of me pulled away his diabolical stamp, he shot me a look of deep disappointment. A memory surfaced. Someone screaming in pain and then getting slaughtered for being weak. The demon had been looking forward to making that my fate.

He was just going to have to get over it.

"Hmm, that’s the marking done. You are now officially part of the legion," the demon said like it was all business as usual. "Let’s see… Here it is, recruit number 18234 of Ao. Taken name of Hayden Hall. Ah, I see. You’re a legacy. No wonder you managed to pass in spite of such a pitiful reaction to infusion."

An intense surge of dysmorphia swept through me. That was not my name, and Ao was not my home. I was… who was I? Fear kept me rooted in place as I cast about for an explanation and came up short.

I knew the name of ’Hayden’ didn’t fit me. I also knew that my arms weren’t supposed to look toned and trained, and that my chest wasn’t broad and muscular. I knew all those things, but I also didn’t know what the alternative was supposed to be.

My new instinctive wisdom advised me to keep my mouth shut about this identity crisis as the demon rummaged through his paperwork. I tried to focus on why demons needed paperwork to begin with, especially since he seemed supremely annoyed by it.

This was good advice. But the moment I finished ignoring my mental anguish, I started to feel uncomfortable in other ways.

I was wearing only a thin shirt and pants. The clothes did nothing to shield me from the alternating waves of heat and cold rolling through the air. As one sensation reached a peak, it felt as if I could acclimate and push through. And then it would flip. Hot to cold, back and forth, never giving me a single second of comfort. Each wave was agony. So much so that I was surprised my body wasn’t taking actual damage.

The clothing was also getting too rough and scratchy. It irritated my skin and made me squirm, even if I knew squirming was a horrible idea.

To top it all off, sweat that was generated by the heat and chilled by the cold dripped into my eyes. It was all I could do to keep my hands still, away from my face.

"A waste," the demon spat. I was thankful to the red clerk demon for reclaiming my attention, but I didn’t like the scowl he was giving me. "A total waste. I can’t believe… Urgh, if it weren’t for the Laws, I would not be doing this."

The demon kept grumbling as he stood from his seat, bent down, and started rummaging around the underside of his booth. The only wise thing to do was wait. For one thing, I knew nothing about what was happening. Another important fact was that this clerk could likely kill me with trivial ease.

At least, my new memories believed that to be the case.

Finally, the red demon popped up from under the desk, dragging a long, rectangular box and a simple drawstring bag attached to a belt.

"Here. This is your first and most important piece of equipment. If you’re stupid enough not to take care of it or fail to use it, you deserve to die. It’s just natural selection at that point. Do you know how to bind it? Of course, I can also… assist you."

The demon raised another stamp model as he flashed crooked teeth. I didn’t know how to ’bind’ anything. But saying that was obviously inviting more trouble. Trusting my new instincts, I raised my hand, forced something to well up from within my chest, and brushed my hand across the bag. The bag glowed briefly, then settled down.

"Of course. Legacy." The demon spat at the ground under my feet and threw the bag at me. I caught it awkwardly, tying the belt around my waist as he turned his attention to the box. "You are lucky. Oh yes, so very lucky. Stuck with it, through life and death. Just to make sure you understand, no one can steal this from you, not even claim it after your death. Well, unless they’re in the reacquisition department. Or they’re in the will. Understood?"

He shot another crazed smile and pushed the box forward. In one swift motion, he had both locks on the front of the box disengaged. Then he threw the cover back.

Part of me thought the box would hold something horrifying, like a pile of innocent souls all screaming and begging for mercy. Another part of me expected gold, jewels, and other precious metals.

No part of me suspected the box would hold a sword that looked like it belonged in a junkyard.

The weapon might have once been beautiful. It still had sections that were a soft lemon-green color. Whatever metal it was made of was obviously some magical bullshit. I could tell just from the way it refracted light.

All this, however, was overshadowed by the general state of the weapon. The sword looked like someone had done their best to destroy it.

Most of the blade was blackened, chipped, and brittle. There were actual cracks running all the way down its length. And when the demon jostled the box impatiently, the blade rattled audibly inside the setting of its pommel.

Now, I was by no means an expert, but I was pretty sure that the only thing you could do with a sword like that was scrap it. So why was the creepy demon looking at the weapon like it was a sumptuous meal he had to hand off to someone else?

"Well, boy? Are you going to bond with it or not? Or would you like for someone else to catch onto the fact that you, of all people, have a blade like that?"

None of this made sense, but I was not a fool, at least never to egregious levels. If the clerk demon was showing such obvious greed, delaying would do me no good. So, as I’d done with the bag, I bonded myself to the blade.

I almost staggered when the weight of its connection settled on me.

Unlike the bag, this sword was not to be underestimated. Hoping for some relief, I rushed through the motions of grabbing the extremely plain scabbard from the box and slamming the sword home into it. The feeling of weight on my shoulders ebbed, but didn’t disappear entirely.

"Lucky bastard," the demon muttered, then motioned to a stand with weapons on them. These, I noted, looked much better than the weapon I had just claimed. Gleaming daggers, swords that looked sharp enough to cut through razor wire, and shields that could both take and give a beating. "Pick your standard-issue weapon."

It wasn’t a hard choice. I grabbed a blade that was something between a dagger and a short sword. It didn’t look particularly deadly, especially in comparison to some of the other stuff on offer, but my body gravitated towards it. The second I took it, the demon clerk loudly shouted "Next!" and motioned me aside.

For no other reason than a lack of better options and a desire to get away from the demon, I complied.

Thankfully, ahead of me stood a line of people who looked to be in circumstances much like my own. They all held a weapon of some kind and had a bag hanging from their hips. They were also eying me hungrily, twigging every single self-preservation instinct I had.

Violence wasn’t on the menu, though. In fact, as I stood there, slowly feeling a pit of hunger build up in the pit of my stomach, I realized that nothing was on the menu.

I didn’t complain. My new instincts were telling me to stay still, keep quiet, and wait for instructions.

For a long time, nothing happened. It was boring enough to sleep, but not safe enough for such a luxury. Eventually, I settled into some kind of half-awake trance. I must have zoned out for a while, or for a very long time indeed. The next thing I was aware of was the booming voice of a demon ringing through the cavern.

"Listen up, you lot." The demon stood on a small stage beside the line of booths. He swept his head, so thick with horns that it looked like he was wearing a crown, over the gathered humans. "Today, you join the glorious ranks of the Duke of Torment! You will spill blood for him, you will fight for him, and you will claim souls in his name!"

He paused, like he was daring anyone to say something to contradict him. No one did, on account of not being idiots.

In what was ostensibly an endless expanse of cavern, his voice should have been devoured by the sheer amount of empty space. Instead, the words were echoing. It sounded like he was standing right next to me.

"And you will claim souls," he continued angrily. "If you fail to bring ten souls on your way back to hell, I guarantee that you will be unmade. My best torturer will have their fun with you, and by the time they’re through, you’ll regret not extinguishing the everlasting flame of your own soul sooner. I hope we are clear on this."

We were. The demon radiated so much bloodlust and rage that I would have obeyed him even if I’d been perfectly free, in control, and fully cognizant of what the hell was happening around me.

"Good. In that case, let’s get this started. I declare a war of conquest against the plane of Berlis!"

With those words, the demon spun and slashed one arm in a wide arc. His claws tore through the very underpinnings of reality, opening a rift directly onto a stretch of enchantingly picturesque grassy fields. Beyond the fields, I saw a scary fortress in the distance.

"Charge!" The demon released a guttural scream of pure violence, and countless throats echoed the sound.

Including my own.