BELOW: BIRTH 18 (Patreon)

Time moves strangely when you don’t sleep. When you don’t eat. When you can’t breathe. 

It only gets harder as the fuckass cult-bitch keeps. Fucking. Talking.

Every day. Every goddamn day, over and over and over, non-stop. The only time that he ever fucking shuts up is when he’s out doing a sermon, or out dealing with whatever the fuck else he does when he’s not busy harrassing me with his stupid. Fucking. Bullshit. 

I’d laugh if I could, now. I’ve wanted to laugh before, but now I could really fucking do it, too. 

Except for the spike in my throat. 

It digs right through my neck, through the Broken Gullet that used to make up my neck and jaw, all the way back through my spine, right up near the base of my skull. When I’m bored enough, I can actually feel the details of where it’s hurting me, right between two vertebrae so I’m literally hanging on my own spinal column.

It’s funny how quickly fear morphs to rage. How often dread can turn to boredom. How profoundly fucking infuriating it can be just to be alive when you don’t want to be, and I don’t want to be. But I’m here anyway. And the human brain can adapt to just about anything, given the right amount of time and the right amount of trauma. 

Whatever else I can say about the “Masked Father” (his real name is Cult Bitch), he’s particularly adept at generating the “right” amount of trauma. 

So I hang there, imprisoned, for a while. A good, long while. Long enough that time stops being something that I can feel in control of and starts just being a thing that happens. I drift, sometimes. It’s not sleep, that’s not really possible, and the dickhead refuses to properly carve my brains out, so all I can do is think, and meditate, and think some more, and stare at the fucking wall.

And Saranda, obviously. 

He never put her back. He’s kept her here, a little display, just for me, to remember what got me here and what I did just to get captured again. 

He’s kept her small, though. Just as lungless as I am, though in a different way.

She’s in a box. 

It’s made of stone, with every face of it closed and sealed shut somehow save the one that faces me, letting me see her. She’s swollen to fit the space, expanded to cover the entirety of it with her too-soft flesh, so that her face is even more distorted than before. 

The wound over her eyelids has calcified. Or maybe become a true WOUND. I may not understand how it works, but I understand that her eye is visible, and it stares at me now, as it always does. 

I guess I am technically more interesting than the blank stone wall. I also am directly responsible for carving her apart in a real horrific display. 

She used to try to scream sometimes. Once or twice, I’m pretty sure she tried to speak, during a moment of lucidity. The only sound she ever made was the wet sloshing of flesh as she tried to communicate something, anything, and did nothing. Even if I could read lips, she was already too alien, too distended and soft, to really make sense of. 

Now, her head has swollen to fit the box almost perfectly, and whatever’s left of her can’t even try anymore. 

So we just stare at each other, as the Cult Bitch carves away the pieces he needs to keep us here. Her, the strands of flesh that make it out of her box. Me, whatever neural tissue tries to grow around the wound in my neck. 

And he never. Shuts. Up. 

I do not fear or hate him any less, but there is something to be said for the stunning amount of annoyance he has built up inside of me. It’s a pretty useful fucking tool when it comes to keeping myself sane. 

And I am still sane. Unfortunately, hatefully, horribly, I am still sane. My flesh does not die, and my mind does not break. Not in any way that would let me escape, at least. It’s so funny, being envious of the fate of anyone who’s managed to lose their fucking mind enough to escape, to hallucinate, to create imaginary friends to keep them company. 

I try. I pretend, sometimes, that there are other people here, some of the half-remembered shapes and faces from when I was alive. Samir, sometimes. Even Bratu, whenever I want to think about any of that cool anatomy shit he’s got going on. But I always know its fake. 

The only real person I see is Cult Bitch. 

I blink, realizing that I am seeing him. Right now, in fact. He’s back in the room.

“And welcome back, darling child!” he says with a laugh. “I do enjoy it when I have your full attention. Anything less is such a waste, don’t you think? Even amongst immortals, time remains a precious commodity.”

I blink at him, annoyed at his fuckass yapping.  

“It’s a high claim, I am aware! Immortality is no cheap word to bandy about, is it? And yet here I stand, no more aged or stark than when I first awoke. There are theories, of course. Perhaps we reset any biological aging when we evolve and are reborn. Considering it has been nearly seventy years, by my estimation, since I last engaged in such an act, I find it doubtful. No, I think that just as we do not die when we are killed, we do not suffer under the horrors of decrepitude, either. I am one-hundred and twenty three years old, if I have counted correctly, and I think you can agree, I am more sprightly than ever.”

He punctuates his last sentence with a spin, the long horse-hair growing from his limbs and chest twirling along with him. 

I roll my eyes at him. This time, instead of carving them out, he laughs. 

It’s sort of a 50/50 gamble with him. 

“Eighty years I have been a part of this Home, and I have seen many come and go, but rarely have I given a true education. In a long life, one must treasure the moments of surprise and of novelty alike. Do you remember our lessons?”

He knows I can’t answer, even if I didn’t have this spike in my spine, but he doesn’t bother waiting for the silence either. Instead, he strolls over to Saranda’s box, his claws coming up to gently carve away chunks of her too-soft meat to keep her contained. 

“I imagine you do! Quite vexing, isn’t it? I’ve failed to forget almost anything in this place, in spite of the blurriness of our past amongst the living. If I had to guess, this too would be a form of harm. An inability to ever forget one’s traumas, a system to ensure no erasure can ever truly take hold. Or perhaps I’m just lucky. But without much to do, one’s memory refines. So tell me, why is it you have gained no SIN in my home? Am I so graceful? Am I flush with the light of Salvation?”

Two blinks, though he still has his back turned to me, carving away. 

“Quite right! It’s all in the breathing, and the stomach, of course. SIN enters the body from without, after all, and if one is unable to breathe or eat, one remains static. It’s why so many untold billions likely lie trapped in their original stone wombs– those who fail to overcome the limitations set upon them to breathe never gain any SIN. Instead, they simply waste away, gradually becoming a part of the same matter that birthed them. And isn’t that interesting?”

It is, but I hate him. 

“It makes me wonder, is that the true quiet? The true rest? If one were to starve themselves of any SIN, would that be the escape we all crave?”

He turns to look over his shoulder, his mask shifting back into place as a trace of blood decorates its edge, as flesh slides down his throat. 

“I surely hope not. I do think the decay of my SIN would take oh so many centuries.”

Another spin, slower this time, showing off his physique. 

“Especially as I’ve gained so very much. All that SIN, feeding every aspect, one after another. I’ve nearly approached the maximum, actually. Have I told you about those?”

Probably. I do my best to ignore him whenever I can, even if it would probably be smarter to keep trying to figure out useful information from his rambling.

“Distinct for each realm we inhabit. THAUMIEL entities, such as yourself, can build each of their aspects up to a lovely total of 50, after which no more can be placed within. Beings of GHOGIEL, such as my own esteemed self, can double this amount, but oh, the cost! It grows rather significantly as one crosses that threshold. How much is it for you, to change yourself? Fifteen SIN? Seventeen?”

He leans forward, as if being conspiratorial. 

“For me, it takes sixty three. More than triple that amount, simply to upgrade the same thing as before. Is it any wonder I’ve so languished? If I am to fully perfect all of my Aspects before I advance, then surely, eight decades is merely what I must require.”

Actually, I’m pretty sure he’s, like, really slow. Especially if he’s as cruel as he seems, as he acts, as I’ve seen him be. Maybe something’s weird about him, or maybe he’s missing something. Or maybe BELOW just knows a loser when it sees one. 

I cope how I can. 

“But it’s a dangerous world down here, darling child. A horrible world, full of terrible predators. What is a fish such as myself to do, save swim in a school? Amongst a Family? A pity, that it dilutes my SIN so. Oh, some is received for transgressions caused by others in your name, under your will, but it’s a slow process, dreadfully slow. And once one advances a step, the SIN of the air is no longer quite so potent, no longer quite so capable. And that’s why you fascinate me so.”

He leans forward again, making me smell the stink of Saranda’s mutilation on his “breath”. 

“Someone that can move SIN from within to without. Who can suffer and violate and consume and harm and then, as if by magic, simply offer it up, fresh and complete. Why bother with so many of these other no-ones and nothings when I can have you, darling child?”

He runs a hand down my cheek, caressing me and leaving a mark of muddled red from his claws. 

“I so look forward to when you understand.”

And then, with a sigh, he turns from me, strolling over to the bed and the other figures on it.

“Patience, dear. Patience, self. Soon, we shall all have what we need.”

He rejoins the quiet things he touches and uses in lieu of me, and I do what I can to neither see nor hear. I don’t know why he’s comfortable disclosing all this information to me in front of them, but I have suspicions, and none of them are particularly nice for the people he uses alongside me. 

I stare at Saranda as she keeps dribbling blood from her little prison.

Her eye meets me, staring back with unyielding, unnerving focus. 

I am still hanging. Still powerless. Still uninformed. There’s so fucking much more that the Cult Bitch could teach me, if only he got out of his own ass and actually wanted to help. Instead, he’s complaining, whinging, trying to indoctrinate me, telling me what I need to do to gain his approval, and with it, some measure of freedom greater than what I have now.

As the rooms fill with the sounds of slickness and more intimate depravations, I keep using the freedom I do have to keep working. 

Amazing what the brain can get used to, given enough time and trauma.

When I broke through the stone, I had eighteen SIN left. Now, my core holds only one single point. All the other seventeen swirl inside me, flowing like tree-sap caught in a blender, refusing to fall in towards where gravity demands it go. 

I have done this every moment of every day for the last…

For as long as I’ve been in here.

And there’s something else he hasn’t mentioned. Something he might not know. 

SUFFERING ENDURED

+2 CONSUMPTION

+3 DESIRE

+5 TYRANNY

No SIN required. I hung here, in pain and misery, and eventually, I learned to cope. And when I did, I saw those words flashing before me. 

There’s a way to upgrade Aspects without burning through SIN. Fueling them is just the easy way, but they can be trained. I can even pinpoint how. 

I have Endured the suffering. +2 CONSUMPTION.

I Perceive and Influence him as best I can, tracking every possible moment of him, of Saranda, of this place, of myself. Every moment is spent in contemplation, examination, distraction. +3 DESIRE.

I Command myself. Every instant I am here, I Dominate my instincts and Command myself to hold together.

He does not break me.

+5 TYRANNY

Months, maybe, to get so much. But there they are. Something he may not be aware of. I wonder if, perhaps, he’s simply gone too long without properly suffering. Or if, perhaps, he made it to that GHOGIEL tier before he could notice any such increases, and now is trapped, requiring significantly higher realms of torment before he gains anything. 

Or maybe the suffering isn’t the point. Maybe enduring it, surpassing it, controlling it, is what grants the increase. 

That sounds like something Hell would do. Punish and empower you at the same time, all for the act of daring not to break beneath its merciless horrors.

And those aren’t the only notifications I’ve gotten as I hang here.

GNOSIS COMPREHENDED

MANIPULATION OF SIN (2nd TIER)

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. More than just a thing to imbibe, the true manipulator can wield SIN as fuel, as lubricant, as multiplier of harm.

La-di-dah. Implications. Hints. Nothing clear, but a reward nonetheless. The second tier replaces the first on my character sheet, keeping the whole thing neat and tidy.

And one last one.

SUFFERING ENDUREDTITLE GAINED

“ONE WHO ENDURES STILLNESS”Common TitleTrapped, unable to move or even breathe, this SINNER has maintained their consciousness, has kept their sanity and self, refusing the erosion of Stillness. +1 TYRANNY+2 CONSUMPTION+15% STEALTH WHEN PERFECTLY STILLSIN DEGRADATION SLOWED BY 7%

Doesn’t seem particularly impressive. I got more out of enduring the thing that caused the title to appear than the title itself. The stealth thing is interesting, proves it’s some kind of stat in the system, but that doesn’t help me very directly. The SIN degradation is interesting, too. Something about the decay that the Cult Bitch talked about, the fate of rotting into the stone itself? Not sure I even want that.

But it’s information. Context. Stolen from the world, rather than drip-fed by my captor and abuser. 

The sounds of crunching bone and screaming comes from the bed, and I do not look. I keep staring at Saranda. I keep the SIN moving inside me. 

Like a whirlpool. Like a rip-current, down beneath the surface. Like possibility.

More than just a thing to imbibe, the true manipulator can wield SIN as fuel, as lubricant, as multiplier of harm.

That’s what the second tier of comprehension tells me. But fuel for what? Multiplier of harm how?

I have only a few things that it could ever be used to fuel. 

One of them has a spike going through it right now. 

The other lies untouched, coiled about in my lungs, full of acid vile enough it can burn even me if it’s not used carefully. 

I have been very careful for quite some time. I feel I am approaching the limits of that particular behavior.