BELOW: BIRTH 11 (Patreon)

I find, to my pleased surprise, that I can scroll back my notifications. 

+39 SIN

Not bad for a feast of only a few minutes. Fifteen or so for that first cannibalistic bite, as usual, then a whole twenty-four for how thoroughly I devoured that thing. I’m sure that the bonus of my status as a Hungering Ghoul helped with that, the 3% increase in SIN from cannibalism that it offers. I thought it at the time and I still think it now; three percent can be a lot, especially over a long period. 

Plus the one that I got just now from breathing, that makes forty. That last 1 that I couldn’t get rid of leaves me with a total of 41. 

Enough to push two Aspects up by another point.

Is that all, though?

I don’t know. 

I’m here, aren’t I? Samir is busy meditating away the pain, the big fucking golem is standing guard over us, and there’s nothing else in the room. Sitting still, though? I can’t fucking stand that. I can’t fucking stand it, not after spending so long doing it. I have to do something, so I’m going to. 

HUNGERING GHOUL: LOWEST TIER

THAUMIEL

SIN: 41

ASPECTS:

VIOLENCE: 4One’s ability to cause Harm and Suffering

DESIRE: 6One’s ability to Perceive and Influence indirectly

CONSUMPTION: 5One’s ability to Devour and Endure

COWARDICE: 6One’s ability to Avoid harm and find Escape

TYRANNY: 3One’s ability to Command and Dominate

SALVATION: N/AOne’s ability to Exist

COMMANDMENTS:

YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

GNOSIS:MANIPULATION OF SIN (1st TIER)By touching upon one’s truest essence, a SINner may drink of their vileness. One’s being is defined by SIN, but through comprehension, through will, a SINner may shape that definition, turning their acts of un-grace into specific steps, specific changes, and further distance from the ABOVE.

WOUNDS:BROKEN GULLET (COMMON)Shattered pieces of what was a face, what was a throat, forcing one’s hunger to overwhelm and allowing them to shovel anything into the wound that causes it.

MANIFESTATIONS:YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

Ok. So let’s review, shall we?

Aspects shift and change things, but I’m not sure by how much. The maximum amount of SIN that I can hold without hitting that sort of weird evolution-threshold of 151 is enough to bump any of them by a solid ten points, so that must mean something decent, but I also don’t know what my maximums are, or what exactly they all do. I definitely feel a difference from before and after I went into my little forced seclusion, and it’s not all the fact that I’m healed up. But between the healing, having food in my stomach, and it being a surprise ambush, it’s hard to properly calculate.

Still, I have a sneaking suspicion that they’re not traditional stats.

I used to play a game. It involved dice, people sitting around a table or online, heavily focused on roleplay. The mechanics of it had stats, like strength, dexterity, that sort of thing. Straightforward, sure. Easy enough to assume, then, that these Aspects would be similar, would govern over similar things. 

I think that’s a fallacy. A bias from my “living” life, assuming that they’ll be straightforward at all. And even those stats had hidden things in them, like how much you can carry, or what types of items you’re allowed to use. 

I think they’re as literal and as hidden as they look. I don’t think that the VIOLENCE Aspect makes me stronger any more than a strength stat would make me lift weights better and nothing else. There’s nuances I’m missing, that I haven’t had a chance to explore yet. Not enough data, not just yet.

But! There’s something else that I do have data on. 

GNOSIS and WOUNDS. 

I’m sure there’s some infinite layers of bullshit there, and plenty of other people who’ve been here a few centuries or whatever that know better. Superficially, though, I know just enough to make some basic conclusions, hopefully without assuming too much.

WOUNDS are physical. Mutations of some kind, which directly affect one’s existence in the world. Maybe they also work as psychological tools, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised, but the basis is the same– something that malforms you directly in exchange for something else. 

My Broken Gullet means I can’t speak, can barely taste, don’t have lips, and can’t ever seem to close my mouth. I can’t sing, can’t communicate properly, can’t even stop fucking drooling, and my throat is always a little cold because it’s open to the air. If I had to guess, it probably plays a factor in my hunger, too, though starvation is a fucking bitch, so it’s a bit hard to tell. In exchange, I’m capable of sawing through most anything I can get my new face around and swallowing whatever I tear apart. 

Not the best tradeoff. Not at all. I’m not sure I’d be willing to trade it back, though.

So. WOUNDS are things that break stuff, or take things away, and, in exchange, shape how you interact with the world. I figure that the big bone bitch over by the cave entrance has some of his own, maybe one that trades having skin for all that exposed bone and muscle. 

Additionally, there’s the little note in parenthesis. “Common”. So there’s rarities. Whether or not those rarities correlate to improved benefits, more serious harm, neither, both, I don’t know, but they offer me something to work towards. Another thing to fill my mind and time with.

Now GNOSIS is a different beast. 

For one thing, it doesn’t offer me a rarity. It has tiers. That implies that… I don’t know for sure, actually. My first and main assumption is that they offer me a clearer pathway. Maybe, instead of having an element of chance to them, all GNOSIS is equal, or equally accessible? And tiers means that there’s higher and lower ones. I don’t know if a Rare is intrinsically better than a Common, or if there’s tradeoffs, but a first tier versus a second tier? One’s better than the other. 

Maybe. Assumptions. 

And what’s more, a GNOSIS is sort of like knowledge. I remember that word being associated with magics, though not any details therein. 

GNOSIS is magic knowledge. WOUNDS are harmful alterations that offer an advantage. 

I earned a GNOSIS entirely on my own. Purely through thought and will and effort. That implies that I can earn, or make, or uncover, more. 

Can I do the same with a WOUND? Can I make one?

SIN: 41

Not a lot to experiment with. But a start. 

Do I want to start? 

No. Probably not. My first and most central thought is to start carving myself open or hurting myself and then try to sort of… move the SIN into place. I get the feeling it would probably do something, even if I’m not really sure what, or what the nuances would be. I just sort of get the feeling it would have an effect. 

But I don’t want to start doing that, do I? Because it means carving myself up. It means ripping into myself. And it means getting comfortable with that idea, at least enough to use it. 

Besides, 41 SIN isn’t a lot. If I’m going to do that, if I’m going to hurt myself, then I should make it worth it, no? I should at least do that much, right? 

Right. Not an excuse to avoid it. Not an excuse to do it either. Just a reason. Just a good fucking reason to not do it yet. Not do it now. 

GNOSIS, though. 

MANIPULATION OF SIN (1st TIER)

By touching upon one’s truest essence, a SINner may drink of their vileness. One’s being is defined by SIN, but through comprehension, through will, a SINner may shape that definition, turning their acts of un-grace into specific steps, specific changes, and further distance from the ABOVE.

I reach into that dark pit at the center of myself and… shift it. 

It’s like roiling pitch. Touching it, even in my own mind, feels like touching something oily. Not clean cooking oil, but the sort of oil out the back of a car, like the oil when your hair is so greasy because it hasn’t been washed in days, because you hate the thought of even the slightest care being put into your own well-being. It feels gross to the touch. 

And it’s slippery. I can move it, but it’s more like… not sure. The very core of it, that one single point that I can’t get rid of, that, I can hold, though it’s also a bit too slick for comfort. Feels like it could slip free at any moment, but it does feel like I can at least wrap my will around it. Once I have, it moves around freely, easily, but only within the mass of SIN around it. If I move it to the edge of that oil-slick, the rest sort of gravitates into it, falls inside it and surrounds it again. 

It’s like the gross cousin of a gravitational pull, loose and amorphous and strange.

If I move that mess of oiled-up sand towards where my mind thinks of my Aspects as being, then it starts to slip into them. It slides through my metaphorical fingers, crawling back inwards and outwards at once, but the Aspect is like a downhill slope to it, forcing it in an intended direction. 

Can I do more with it? 

I can’t control it very well, obviously, I just spent however long that was exploring that to myself, but I can move it. I can push and pull it into my Aspects, but I haven’t really had a chance to try moving it anywhere else. 

Two points of Aspects would be useful, but also not so useful that I think I can’t risk them. 

Slowly, I try and move my SIN out. 

I reach towards the end of what feels like my “stat sheet”, around the contours that draw me towards the Aspects, towards the “edge”. It’s not real, any more than my metaphorical description of it is, but there’s that same feeling of downhill versus uphill. 

I follow the direction of “uphill”, finding the path of most resistance. 

It never gets as bad as when I tried to push it into SALVATION, but it gets worse. 

More and more of it slips away. Even that one central point I can kinda-sorta hold onto starts to slip away, like pushing two magnets together but one of the magnets is covered in snot. I lose it, and it falls back in towards the center of me, down into the dark. 

So I try again. 

I keep breathing. In and out.

And I try again. 

And again. And again. 

Each time, it escapes me. Each time, I take a breath and come back to it. 

It’s not like I have anything else to do. 

So. I keep working. 

At some point, I think that Samir says something, or shifts behind me. He doesn’t poke me or repeat himself, though, so I leave him be. I don’t hear the big brute shifting yet, so I leave that be to. 

I’m not here. I’m not trapped in a cave I can’t escape, alone and hurting. I’m not alone, after all, and the pain is normal, and I’m not really trapped entirely cause maybe I can leave. Eventually, maybe. Kind of.

Instead, where I am is inside me, deep down, focused on something I can do. 

It’s that old myth all over again, isn’t it? In the face of absolute ennui and horrific dread, in the face of suffering and loneliness, hey, here’s a rock. Here’s a hill. 

And for want of something to fucking do, why not, right? Get rolling. 

So I try again. And again. And again. 

I spend time as I feel myself breathing, the pain of it looping back into some kind of focus. I track what comes into being inside of me, forming like condensation made of black tar.

With every breath, a bit more pain. With every bit more pain, more of that beading in the core of me, black tar dew that slips like congealed blood to the piece of myself I hold. 

+1 SIN

+1 SIN

+1 SIN

And I try again, and again, and again.

And eventually, I make it. 

It lasts barely a fucking second. It slips away the instant that I let go of it, but that’s long enough to feel it reach higher “uphill” than every other time, to feel it brush the edge of something. 

It hits a wall. Not resistance, not a magnet, but some kind of barrier, something that I can’t quite escape. The tar presses against the wall and slips free of my grip, too slippery to hold, and it’s gone. 

I open my eyes with a growl, sighing. 

Samir turns to look at me from where he lays. Without much hunger, day, night, etc, time remains a fickly bitch, but he hasn’t been laying there more than a day, not with how unhealed his legs still are. He hasn’t moved much, though, which is good.

Faced with my blatant ignorance of his language and my even more blatant inability to use any language, he raises a brow at me. 

Man, Wretches are ugly. Shit, that’s a rude thing to think.

It’s just… so rubbery. Like a human made by someone who’s only seen bad wax sculptures that got left in the sun, and also painted in gray. I think. No colors, so.

I put my hands in front of me and cross my legs into a lotus position, making my best approximation of a humming sound (which comes with a lot of spittle, unfortunately). 

“ध्यान कर रहे हैं? बल्कि आप पर पवित्र हैं।”

Ok, so maybe he didn’t really get my ignorance. Or maybe he doesn’t care? He is a Wretch, which isn’t exactly a very potent thing to be. Even I am past that, even if we occupy the same tier of the food chain, whatever THAUMIEL means.

I find that I don’t really mind. Better than silence, at least. It reminds me I’m not alone here. So I just shrug, then nod, then shrug again. 

He makes a little wheezing sound, something of a laugh. He seems to take my acceptance as permission of some kind, starting to talk idly while laying still. I might not understand him, but I still leave my meditation behind for a bit and just listen. 

A voice. Someone that doesn’t want to hurt me, that isn’t in a position of predation above me. Someone that just wants to share. 

Apparently, Samir enjoys the company as much as I do, because over the next few hours he occasionally breaks into idle chatter. I let him carry me with his voice, enjoying the sound of it, enjoying how it fills the muteness I’ve been damned with and echo off the cave walls. 

Being more present, I notice more about my surroundings. Past the goliath at our door, I see movement as other Wretches and stranger forms of damned mill about. Every now and then I see people pass by, usually in groups of two, looking like half-melted mannequins but…

But smiling like people.

This system-thing calls them Wretches. It calls me a Ghoul. But people are people. Appearance aside, names aside, these are people.

We might be wretches, but I don’t have to only think of them as Wretches. 

It’s so strange to see smiles here. Most people don’t have WOUNDS that I can see, don’t have any visible damage, and they stagger about from one place out of sight to another.

Activities? Work? Socializing? I don’t know. No one looks happy, really, but there’s comfort in being surrounded by others, in being safe. 

Even though it’s relative. If not for me, would Bratu, Samir and the other door guard have been able to hold off the not-jaguar person? Would it have crawled up here to feast on all the defenseless members of this village / cult / den? 

Not exactly an angle I want to push too hard on, but I can use that. See if I can’t get some proper goodwill later. 

Eventually, I sink back into meditation. 

It’s on the third or fourth time pressing my SIN against that outer barrier that I feel something new. Like a divot.  The “uphill” feeling gets even harsher, almost pushing against the little granules of dark that I’ve managed to keep a grip on, but I push forward, trying to wrap my will around the metaphor and sensation both. I push, tuning out Samir’s voice, tuning out my theories and thoughts and everything but an objective that I can track, something I can use to progress, to not feel so trapped and powerless-

I push, and it slips out of my grip. 

It slips out. 

–1 SIN

SIN: 43

My eyes snap open, meeting a cold stone mask inches away. 

“A fascinating specimen indeed.”