Despite your best efforts, Beast Slayer, a splinter of hope remains. The very seed that brought my Beast into existence. The Dark Ember.
Never again shall it birth a life so magnificent as the Beast, yet a residue of that power still lingers. Enough to give us a fighting chance against the ravenous Kitava.
How do we obtain this Dark Ember? Three hearts were silenced, three hearts must sing again, one last time. In that final flickering of life, our saviour seed shall be born. All I need are three fine souls with which to stoke the flames.
Shavronne of Umbra. Inquisitor Maligaro. Doedre the Darktongue. Three spirits of near unfathomable resilience and vigour, freed with the Beast's final exhalation. So let us begin the harvest!
Shavronne has come home, to Axiom. We shall give her the warm welcome she sincerely deserves.
If she is to be of any use to us, the Umbra's spirit must be wrenched from her mortal manifestation and lashed to our greater cause. That is your task.
For my part, I shall negotiate the terms of her cooperation. With a tragic kiss and lasting embrace, her essence shall pass into me as if she were sweet breath from the mouth of my lover.
It is a sacrosanct sacrifice for all involved. Thankfully for you, all I ask is that you do what you clearly do best. Kill.
Ambition is the bane of mortality. It was through ambition that we gods transcended the thick mud and thin blood of our mundane birthrights. Ambition that drove us to sustain our divine selves through the subjugation of others.
Shavronne's soul is made up of one part ambition and two parts raw, unbounded passion. Such a volatile spark shall burn briefly and brightly in even the most deadened of hearts.
I shall put this simply, for in truth, everything comes down to the simple act of planting a seed in the ground. The gods are rising because you slew the one creature that prevented them from doing so. Your name for it is "The Beast."
It was I who planted the seed in the rich soil beneath Highgate, who nurtured it, who watched it bloom into maturity, even as I succumbed to its mollifying powers. We gods, we were driven into slumbering darkness, to dream away eternity whilst the gentle Beast watched over us.
I would desire that we return to that blissful state, but my brothers and sisters of deism shall never submit to banishment. They have tasted freedom once more and they shall not let go of this world until it is pried from their cold, dead hands.
The Beast was never a cruel master. It didn't want to destroy, to corrupt, to terrorise. It simply existed to exist. I made it that way.
Unfortunately, in neglecting to provide it with ambition, I made it vulnerable to the ambitions of others. Queen Atziri and Doryani. Emperor Chitus and Malachai. Others even before them.
I created a Beast that would free humanity from the tyranny of the gods. Yet all I really did was provide the perfect tool with which humanity could tyrannise itself.
From here to the Beast, the journey is long and arduous. You are strong, for a mortal, yet the beating of this war drum shall burst your human heart. So we must fortify it with something a little more divine in nature.
While a god may fall, their essence lingers, a quiet cacophony outside of your perception. That essence can be yours, to galvanise your will and invigorate your body.
I have the perfect first donor for us. Tukohama, the Father of War. In a pool once foul and fetid, he has raised a fortress now ferocious and fearsome. Best you pay him a visit before he also raises that ugly son of his, and unleashes him upon what remains of Wraeclast.
The Karui were a peaceful culture of farmers and fishermen, before fate thrust the great Tukohama upon them. It was he who put the stone axes in their hands and the hunger for conquest in their bellies.
Farmers quenched their dry fields in blood. Fishermen emptied their holds of fish and filled them with land-greedy hordes.
Battle by battle, war by war, Tukohama carved the steps that would carry him up a mountain of severed heads, and into immortality. Tukohama's axe is called Anger, his spear is called Greed, and their victims are the minds and hearts of all Karui.
I am Sin, Thief of Virtue, and it is mine to take what I will from the defeated, to make a gift of it to the victorious.
Alas, your mortal frame cannot withstand the unfettered fire of deism. It would turn your blood to mist and scorch your precious flesh black. So choose modestly and choose wisely, for there is much more at stake here than your little hopes and dreams.
I've another deity in mind who could be persuaded to donate a little essence to your ongoing edification.
Abberath, a deranged old goat with a thirst for human souls whose cloven hooves now stand astride the old prisoners road.
Have you ever tasted a soul, Beast Slayer? No, I imagine not. The poets all speak of sweet souls, bitter souls, enlightened souls and twisted souls. You know what most of them taste like, really? Regret, with a lingering aftertaste of 'should've known better'.
A renowned alchemist, eroded by his lust for distilled spirits - and not the alcoholic kind. Abberath the Scholar King, dancing upon a stage of chemicals and fire.
He used his knowledge to burn away the flesh so as to liquidate the life force within, a libation he consumed with both frequency and alacrity.
It started with animals, goats specifically, and thus his own cruelty became his curse. The Scholar King became the Cloven One, Quaffer of Souls. Some say he turned to the dram of Man in order to cure himself. I believe his thirst simply grew with his burgeoning immortality.
And perhaps he still retained some of his scholarly nature, for he seemed fair determined to share his hard won wisdom. He took himself a princess, a lovely thing from a local tribe, and nine months later she gave birth to something rather unlovely.
The Faun, as wild and wicked as the shaggy god himself. Schooled in his father's ways, the Faun would carry off many more virgins in his time, and thus, the race of goatmen found their footing.
The Puppet Mistress was a revered matriarch who nurtured her tribe into greatness through love, peace and fecundity. That is, until her children were slaughtered by Tukohama's brave warriors.
Dissolution and desperation, they do troubling things to the spirit. And given enough time, what one believes, one becomes.
The Azmeri believed that, one day, this world of ours would collapse under the weight of Ryslatha's offspring. A frightening thought, and thankfully, a mistaken one.
A maggot that festers and writhes in the fetid mud of the wettest lands. Ryslatha, the white worm that corrupts the very earth while her heart yearns to replenish her slaughtered brood.
Hers was a prolific tribe once, fat with peace and fecund with love. Then Tukohama's fire swept across her sacred land and her children were butchered by the madness of war.
Now the immortal mother has one waking thought. She will also ensure that her children are never harmed again. How? By making everyone's children, her children.
Old, salty Tsoagoth, pickled in a thick brine of ignominious carnality. Vanity was Tsoagoth's downfall, and I think he grew his shell just to shield himself from the shame of it all.
It's time you sailed out to that reef refuge of his, cracked his carapace, and dined on the divine meat beneath.
And thus the Lord of Salt and Scale sinks to feed the fishes that flit amongst the ruins of Tsoatha. Come, ingest of his divine juices while they are all washed away.
When I first met Tsoagoth, he was a seafaring chieftain, the beloved leader of a prosperous and sprawling fisher tribe. It was the curse of legacy that made him into the blasphemous Brine King. An endless madness of propagation and disappointment. All in the vain hope of recreating himself.
Fishwife after fishwife he took, and every one of them spawned a monster. A truly noble king would have surrendered his kingdom to cleaner blood. Alas, although Tsoagoth had many fine qualities, generosity was not one of them.
I am Sin, Thief of Virtue, and it is mine to take what I will from the defeated, to make a gift of it to the victorious.
Alas, your mortal frame cannot withstand the unfettered fire of deism. It would turn your blood to mist and scorch your precious flesh black. So choose modestly and choose wisely, for there is much more at stake here than your little hopes and dreams.
And so it begins. My aetherial veins now run with dark ambition. Let's turn that trickle into a torrent. Let's harvest ourselves a Grand Inquisitor.
Just as Shavronne's spirit chose to return to comfortable climes, Maligaro's essence once again dwells in his very own Chamber of Sins. Though I hasten to add that Maligaro's sins are not my sins. I prefer transgressions of a more natural order than does he.
I'd carry you to Phrecia if I could, yet I expended too much of myself when I snatched you from the jaws of Kitava. You will need to find your own path, as will I. Make the journey, and please survive it. We two have much work left to do.
The Azmeri believed that, one day, this world of ours would collapse under the weight of Ryslatha's offspring. A frightening thought, and thankfully, a mistaken one.
And thus the Lord of Salt and Scale sinks to feed the fishes that flit amongst the ruins of Tsoatha. Come, ingest of his divine juices while they are all washed away.