BIRTH: CRAWL 07 (Patreon)

Checking my sheet is one of the first things I do once the beast is done feeding and leads us back to its lair. 

HUNGERING GHOUL: LOWEST TIERTHAUMIELSIN: 57ASPECTS:VIOLENCE: 14One’s ability to cause Harm and Suffering

DESIRE: 20One’s ability to Perceive and Influence indirectlyLust’s Blinders: 

CONSUMPTION: 11 One’s ability to Devour and Endure

COWARDICE: 10 (9+1)One’s ability to Avoid harm and find Escape

TYRANNY: 10One’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 (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.

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.SUFFERING STOMACH (Uncommon): Torn open and made to drench flesh in pain and acid, an organ birthing violent digestion that burns through living and Still matter just the same.

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

ACTIVE TITLES:

“ONE WHO ENDURES STILLNESS” (COMMON)Trapped, 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%

INACTIVE TITLES:

“ONE OF THE BREATHLESS” (COMMON)In spite of the presence of breathable air, the SINner has decided to willingly forgo respiration for over a month during their time BELOW. +1 TYRANNY+1 DESIRE+5% SIN intake from Breath

If life were a game, I’d say I have a pretty solid setup. There’s a vile sort of irony to how I feed the beast a factor of my SIN, just as the erstwhile ruler of the Home wanted me to, but the cost is more worth it, in my opinion, and for more reasons than just my disgust with the Masked Father. For one, with the beast, I have the occasional moment where I can act, fighting against opponents that would annihilate me if I were on my own. I have my fellow SINner, without having to explain or ask permission from the cult. And the beast’s attention is a momentary thing at best, and doesn’t carry the burden of constant analysis, judgement, hunger. If I fail it or irritate it too much, it’ll just rip me apart and eat me, not leave me on a hook for weeks while I–

Hmm. We can leave the details of that memory behind for a while. 

 Setting up communication with my fellow SINner is interesting. It’s weird not being the youngest and most ignorant in the room at all times, watching someone else go through the same revelations I have. The biggest victory, though, was when she decided on a name, after having remembered and communicated more of her original identity. 

“Laroia”. 

It’s a beautiful name, and one I don’t think I ever heard back in the normal world. I think it’s one that she made up, but I haven’t asked. 

We spend time, while the beast is in its cave, just… talking. Comparing our memories. Telling stories as best we can, when I still can’t speak and am not-quite-fluent in her native tongue. 

Laroia tells me about her childhood. She tells me about her family farm. About her husband, her children, her grandchildren. She has to stop for a long, long while when she realizes that can’t remember their names, that she only has the barest hints of their faces, but when she comes back she only seems more determined to talk about them. I watch her hands as she talks, always active, holding nothing tight to her chest like the effort of her hands can keep what she does remember of her family locked tight inside her chest. 

And she asks questions of me. Questions that I didn’t think to ask, that I never even realized I’d avoided. 

I remember the taste of my favorite food. I remember the recipe for my mother’s feijoada. I remember my pets, the dogs and birds and cats I had through my life. I remember how much I loved driving but hated being in a car, the dichotomy between the freedom and power of the act with the fear of hurting others and the background anxiety of how others might slip up and hurt me instead. 

But eventually, we reach the question I was dreading. The one I’ve been wrestling with for a while.

My name. 

Just like Laroia, I don’t remember what I was called in my life. Not one of the names I went by, and I think there were a few. She asks me what I would like to be called, and I find myself lost. 

There’s a freedom in being nameless. No gender, no name, no identity beyond what I do and the moment I exist in. It feels almost relaxing, sometimes, like the parts of me that I need are what I have and the ones that I don’t are left to the side. 

But there is a logistical challenge with that. If my new companion needs to call me, what should she use? How can she find me, if sound is all we have? 

There’s other shit too, obviously, but I’m not going to worry about that. I’m not in civilization now, I’m in the tunnels, with a beast, and there is a safety in that, a safety that would be wounded by thinking of contracts and conversation and social niceties. So I focus on the logistical challenge. 

I hesitate at the name that comes to me. It’s silly. Stupid. Weird. 

Except it’s none of those things. Because I’m in hell, and the only one who can decide if it’s silly or stupid or weird is me. 

So I tell Laroia the name I have chosen. 

I tell her to call me “Worm”. 

The rest of our conversation turns to the more practical knowledge I’ve gained since being here. 

I explain to her how most actions cause SIN, but that breathing and eating are the simplest. That SIN can be used to grow her Aspects, that it can be used to shape her body, that she can learn to control it with meditation and care. I explain to her what little I know of the threshold evolution, of the few ranks of the denizens of BELOW I know. I describe what a Gnosis is, what a title is, all the details I have that I would have wanted someone to tell me when I woke up.

I am as surprised as I am amused by the notifications that arrive as she nods her understanding, limited though it may be, one subject at a time. 

+9 SIN

+5 SIN

+6 SIN

SIN: 77

Literally the instant that she claims to have understood, they arrive. One after another, little pings from the system of hell, telling me of my supposed transgressions. 

Apparently, telling her how hell works is half as bad or worse than eating a still-living person. How delightful, that. Whatever criteria the BELOW and/or the system has for its judgments, it’s clearly biased, just as vile as the torment it forces upon everyone. 

It also convinces me further of a theory I have about this place. About the nature of SIN. Not enough to confirm anything, but enough to give me hints that I might be on to something. 

Eventually, though, Laroia succumbs to the pain. The effort of continuing to breathe, and the pain that it brings, overwhelms her, and she curls up in a ball inside the divot that we’re hiding in, collapsing into numbness. She can’t sleep, can’t fall unconscious or fully break from reality, I’m familiar enough with those facts, but the pain overtakes all of her focus. 

I wish that I could do more to help her. I am glad that I can’t. I can’t afford to sacrifice all I have for someone else, no matter how much I’d like to. Not having the option is… almost kind. At least for hell’s standards. 

As she shivers and gasps, suffocating literally and figuratively in the pain, I find time to focus on my own efforts. 

CONSUMPTION +2

COWARDICE +2

TYRANNY +1

SIN: 2

Another five points are added to my Aspects, pushing them to a more balanced spread:

VIOLENCE: 14One’s ability to cause Harm and Suffering

DESIRE: 20One’s ability to Perceive and Influence indirectlyLust’s Blinders

CONSUMPTION: 13 (11+2)One’s ability to Devour and Endure

COWARDICE: 12 (10+2)One’s ability to Avoid harm and find Escape

TYRANNY: 11 (10+1)One’s ability to Command and Dominate

As loathe as I am to add anything to my Tyranny Aspect, I can’t afford to neglect any of them, no matter how distasteful or outright disgusting I find them. What’s worse, I’m almost totally sure that Tyranny is the stat most associated with SIN manipulation, my most important skill of all.

I’m proven right as my two points of SIN swirl and spiral in my mental grip, churning ever-so-slightly easier. My titles float there, one of them somehow still filling a relativistic lake of ooze, the other bobbing unopened and unplanted on the surface instead. 

One point of SIN is always the “center”, unable to leave the core of me. Which one that is, though, can be changed at will, so long as there is always a single mote of the fundamental building block of BELOW defining the core of me.

So. In review.

I have food. I have a steady intake of SIN, despite the beast taking the lion’s share of it after every feeding. I have an ally, who may or may not be useful in battle or overall, but which has the distinct advantage of offering me consistent droplets of SIN as I help her to exist in the world as it is. I have theory and skill, both less than I’d like, both more than most at my level. 

A little part of me wonders, traitorously, if I can delay my planning for a bit. Delay my advance. I have something steady here, albeit only a few days of it yet. I can exist like this, building up slowly and without chaining myself to anything unrealistic, idealistic, self-harm rife and unlikely to work. 

It makes perfect sense. In fact, if anyone else told me that was their decision, I’d think it completely alright. Finding a niche to survive in, one that protects you and lets you heal and grow, is a near ideal result for such a shitty situation. Demanding that a victim keep, or even worsen, their own victimization just for the sake of a potential better future is the kind of thing that should only be said by those who have the power to help, to offer guarantees, who are risking themselves alongside said victim.

Guarantees were rare enough before BELOW. Here, they might as well be nonexistent, save for the one that holds this place up.

It’s going to hurt. 

Whatever I do. Whoever I am. However long eternity is.

It’s going to hurt. 

And that’s a BELOW guarantee, that is. 

It’s not enough. 

And I’ve always been more of a “do as I say, not as I do” sort of girl. 

So. Plans. 

First things first. I need to get more Aspects up past 20 points, to see if I can gain more skills like Lust’s Blinders. Considering how much of a game changer my first one is, I can only imagine how dramatically gaining more will affect me. But there’s more to it. The higher my Aspects, the higher the likelihood that I’ll unlock something fancy during my next threshold evolution. Maybe it’ll even evolve my skills directly, transforming them or offering options about them. The stronger and wider my foundation, the better off I’ll be, the more options I’ll have, the more possibilities I’ll find. 

Probably. Almost certainly. 

If I’m going to break hell over my knee, I need strength. I need SIN and accomplishments both. More titles, more skills, more WOUNDS, more GNOSIS, more everything, until I have overfilled the cup of the Thaumiel gate and broken it open to something worthy of my suffering. 

And I have exactly the tools I need to pursue my suicidal goals. 

Lust’s Blinders is as much of a curse as it is a blessing, probably more, as is the case with everything in BELOW. It restricts my freedom, cripples my ability to improvise if I overcommit, and offers me everything I want without giving me even a hint about what might be on the way, or right after, or what the consequences might be. In all ways but the most obvious, it feels like an elaborate tool of self destruction, the kind that the devil hands out like candy on the assumption that its victims won’t see the trap. 

But if I can put my hands through the teeth of that bear trap, the reward will be exactly what I ask for. 

A path forward. One that can drown me in SIN, such that I will be able to dig and roil through it until I emerge fat and horrifying, the scavenger worm turned conqueror.

I scroll back my notifications, first to the SIN I gained for explaining things to Laroia, then all the way back to the beginning. To the judgment that screamed at me as I awoke here, telling me that I deserve this place.

No one deserves this place. This place does not deserve this place. 

I will not stop until I have changed what is into what I think should be. 

And then I have to stop myself from laughing, as the system itself acknowledges my determination.

TYRANNY +1