Chapter 4: Face Your Demons

Dismissing the window and its decidedly ominous message, Erik strode forward without hesitation and placed his palms on the doors. The muscles in his shoulders bunched as he pushed, and the doors swung open on well-oiled hinges. As they did, the eerie blue light of torches blazing to life on the walls illuminated the center of the next room, casting the edges of and far side of the room in a thick darkness. Trying to peer into those shadows, Erik found the darkness too deep for his eyes to penetrate. This new room was every bit as large as the one he’d just come from, but it was entirely empty as far as he could tell, save for the torches lighting the walls. Feeling wary but knowing he needed to succeed here, Erik slowly stepped into the room. Slowly panning his vision from one side of the room to the other, always keeping an eye on the deep patches of darkness at the edges of the room, Erik carefully edged closer to the center of the room.

Attempting to keep his breathing steady and bracing for an attack, Erik nearly jumped out of his skin when the doors he’d come through abruptly slammed closed with a bang. The sound of their closing echoed in the room, followed a moment later by a loud click like the turning of tumblers in a lock. It seems the System wants to make it obvious I’m not leaving this room until I’m done with the proving, Erik thought to himself as he slowly turned, trying to keep his attention on the shadows at the edge of the room while his heart started to pound in his chest. A moment later, Erik jerked his head to the left as his eyes caught movement at the edges of his vision. When he turned to inspect the area he thought the movement had come from though, he found nothing. Erik wanted to ignore the panic creeping into his mind, tell himself that there was nothing waiting in the dark to tear into him when his back was turned, but his mind kept going back to the final words of the message he’d received before entering this room. “’Prepare to face your demons, or be consumed by them…’,” Erik said aloud. “There has to be something in here with me.”

As if in answer to his question, a sibilant and sinister laugh echoed through the room, seeming to emanate from the shadows at its edges. Erik jerked, trying to pinpoint the origin of the sound in the darkness but it seemed to come from multiple places at once. Trying to keep his breathing steady, Erik raised his hands in a ready stance as fear stiffened his spine and made his eyes go wide. I need to stay calm, I need to stay calm, I need to stay calm, Erik chanted in his head as he tried to push down the fear, his eyes flicking back and forth.

“What’s the matter, Erik?”

Fear blossomed into terror and sunk its fangs into his mind as the voice spoke from the dark, its words seeming to lash the air with malicious and wicked intent. The voice was every bit as sinister as its laugh and it was darkly familiar, though Erik could not recall from where as he tried to fight off his panic.

“Are you scared, Jabba?” Erik spun toward the new voice, which had come from another side of the room. Its sibilant words stoked his fear further, caressing his spine with talons of ire. Disturbingly, this new voice seemed just as familiar as the first, yet it was clearly distinct from it, though its tone was just as sinister.

“We’ve been waiting for you, Sasquatch,” A third voice hissed with a dark cackle. In the midst of the pall of his fear, Erik’s eyes widened as the familiarity of the voices finally clicked in his head.

“It can’t be. You…you aren’t real! You’re just some twisted memory this System has conjured from my mind,” Erik yelled at the darkness.

“Oh, I assure you, we are very real,” A final voice spoke, the sheer hostility in its words making Erik shudder. Turning towards this new speaker, Erik watched in horror as a figure slowly emerged from the all-consuming gloom. Upon initial inspection, it looked much like a corpse risen from the dead. It wore tattered leather armor, torn and stained black with blood. The portions of its body left uncovered by the rents in its armor revealed bits of gleaming bone and exposed muscle, and parts of its flesh that looked like they’d been savagely torn from its body had been replaced by patches of shadow. Blood dripped from all its wounds in a thick, steady stream as it shambled forward, a blade of rusted steel and shadow in its hand. The thing’s face was composed of damaged flesh and exposed bone just like the rest of its body but was still readily recognizable to Erik. Green-black eyes shone with their own eldritch iridescence from the face of Derek Gaunt, who by all appearances looked like his soul had fought through the gates of hell to haunt him once more.

“Long time no see you fat fuck, though I really wish it had been longer. I’d count myself lucky if I never had to see that fugly Cro-Magnon mug of yours again, but I guess I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to put you out of my misery,” The thing with Derek’s face grinned maliciously, its hand flexing on the blade it carried as it stepped into the circle of light formed by the torches on the walls.

Erik hurriedly backed away from the creature of shadow and bloody flesh as it advanced on him, stumbling over his own feet and falling on his back as he did so. Feeling terror begin to rake its claws along his mind, Erik scrambled away as the creature inexorably strode toward him.

“I’d offer you a hand up you clumsy slob, but I’m afraid you’d try to eat it. Now, do stop your pathetic attempts to escape. I want to watch the light leave your eyes when I gut you like the fat pig you are,” The shadowy creature sneered viciously, its terrifyingly familiar face twisting into a rictus of rage and hatred as it raised its blade above its head.

As the blade swung down, time seemed to slow around him, reality suspended in a single eternal instant. Amidst the gibbering fear and foreign terror trying to swallow his mind, dark things rose from the depths of his consciousness, rattling the chains he’d cast them in. The frigid, howling fire of unbridled fury suddenly roared through his mind, fed by the deep and voracious hunger he’d long ago learned to embrace. These shadows of his psyche met the lethal instincts imbedded in his mind by Savage Grace and merged into something infinitely darker and more terrible. This new creature, this Beast, was a personification of its constituent parts, and its creation felt like a part of Erik’s mind had assumed its own secondary persona outside of his own.

Even with the terror driving all sense from him, Erik heard the shattering of chains in his mind and a part of him felt fear that was truly his own for a moment before it was torn apart by the monster that stalked forth from the depths of his sub-conscious. Drowning in his terror, Erik desperately reached out to this new darkness within himself, clinging to it as a dying man clings to the last vestige of his life, and the world around him exploded into razor-sharp clarity.

This new thing beneath his skin felt the fear storming through his mind and knew it for the falsity it was. Overwhelmed by the cloying dread ravaging his mind, it was only thanks to this new animal clarity that he realized only a small portion of this paralyzing horror was truly his own. The rest felt foreign, like a parasite that had rooted itself in his psyche. Armed with this knowledge and the ferocity of this newly forged part of himself, Erik attacked this parasitic fear stifling his mind and body with an effort of will.

For a moment, Erik felt resistance as the fear tried to maintain its hold on his mind. That resistance shattered beneath the force of his dark resolve and Erik felt a visceral relief as the terror trying to push into his mind lost its hold on him completely. Now free to focus entirely on this threat to himself wearing the face of a hated enemy, Erik reacted almost immediately, turning his palms towards himself and tensing his forearms as he raised his gauntleted arms defensively to catch the creature’s blade.

Erik met the lambent gaze of the thing with Derek’s face with his own and he saw the flicker of surprise in its eyes, at his action in defense of himself as well as his breaking of its hold on his mind. Simultaneously turning his body and thrusting his hands to the side, the sudden lack of direct resistance against the blade and the creature’s surprise allowed Erik to guide its blade to strike the ground next to him. With both palms now on the ground, Erik raised his leg as he thrust the mass of his upper body off the ground and drove his foot directly into the humanoid creature’s liver with all the force he could muster. Despite his lack of leverage, the kick Erik landed was solid enough that the creature stumbled back. Quickly, Erik drew his legs to his chest and thrust them upwards, pulling his torso up and pushing off the floor with his shoulders and neck. As his legs swung back down, he hooked them underneath himself, managing to land on his feet in a crouch.

All of it had felt effortless, like his body had known to perform the actions almost without thought or direction. Gone was the large and clumsy man cowering from everyone around him. A predator had taken his place, and its movements, smooth and effortless with an inhuman and lethal grace, gave lie to the humanity of the face it wore. He needed the brutality, the feral strength it brought, if he wanted to survive the coming fight. Briefly, the part of Erik that was still separate from the Beast, hesitated at the prospect of hurting these creatures. He knew they weren’t his old tormentors even if these things wore their faces, but then Janus’s words flashed through his mind. ‘Do not hesitate when you face them and do not show mercy, for they will show you none’, Erik repeated to himself silently. They might only be wearing the faces of those assholes, but that’s not going to stop me from tearing them apart. This is life or death. There is no room for mercy or hesitation here and I’m not about to stand here and let someone kill me. Galvanized by the words, Erik set aside his resistance and allowed the awareness of the Beast to rise up and envelop his mind and senses. Erik rose from his crouch with deliberate, sinuous motions, and stretched his limbs, raising his arms and setting his feet in a stance that felt fluid and natural. His hesitation silenced beneath the burgeoning weight of animosity he and the Beast felt for this creature and the face it wore, Erik advanced a step toward the thing that had tried to worm its way into his mind.

“You may wear Derek’s face, but you understand my fears even less than he did,” Erik said with a calm he didn’t feel. A deep and abiding desire to break this creature for what it had attempted to do to him flooded through his mind, a pitch-dark tide of teeth and claws driven forth by the deadly persona that had awakened in his mind, and he gave himself over to the Beast’s primal fury.

“I might have felt fear when Derek and the cruel bastards that followed him tormented me endlessly. But it was not because I was afraid of what they would do to me. Deep down in the depths of my mind, hidden beneath all the things I never wanted to face about myself, I was afraid because of what I wanted to do to them. And unfortunately for you, my fears were right. I hope you can feel pain because otherwise beating you to death with my bare hands just won’t be as satisfying,” Erik snarled, peeling back his lips to bare his too-sharp teeth at the creature savagely.

Coldly assessing its stance and the way it moved, Erik decided his best course of action was likely to close the distance, block its first blow, and then kill it by using Executioner’s Mercy. Much as this new part of himself would have liked to take the time to enjoy beating the shit out of the worst of his childhood tormentors, he also knew he’d need to finish the creature quickly if he wanted to avoid being surrounded when its friends realized one of their own was dying. Feeling a feral anticipation shudder through him, Erik threw himself into the fight.

Erik tensed the muscles in his thighs and shifted his weight forward before he launched himself toward his opponent with an unnatural burst of speed. In the back of his mind, he felt a slight surge of fatigue as a chunk of his Stamina disappeared, likely at the triggering of an ability or skill of some sort. A soft flickering glow seemed to emanate from what looked like an exclamation point in the edge of his vision, as if confirming his thought, but Erik dismissed it from his mind and focused his attention on his opponent, trying to anticipate its movements while also remaining aware in case its friends decided to join the fight.

He crossed the intervening space between him and the creature in seconds, his form blurring slightly. When Erik was within striking distance, the creature let out a howl and struck at him wildly with its blade. Erik planted his feet and blocked its manic strike with his right gauntlet, swinging his tensed forearm into the arc of the blade. The impact jarred his arm, but the blade was stopped cold, lacking the driving force of a more coordinated swing. When he moved to attack, Erik felt as if his movements were guided by another’s hand, and he knew with perfect certainty where to place his feet, how to contort and position his body properly, and exactly where and when to strike his opponent. Performing the Executioner’s Mercy felt instinctual and automatic, like something he’d done a thousand times before, and Erik fell into the smooth, practiced motions of it effortlessly.

With the sword’s blow halted, Erik stepped forward and twisted his upper body, putting his full weight into his swing as he folded his fingers at the second knuckle and drove the blunted metal ridge they formed directly into the creature’s right kidney. Whatever the creature really was, hitting it felt no different than hitting any man, though the blood coating its body made an odd squelching sound when his fist impacted places where the crimson liquid clung to its mutilated flesh. Though he would’ve liked to, he knew he couldn’t afford to revel in the solid contact of his fist on its flesh and Erik instead turned his attention to the next part of the dance of fist and blade with his opponent. Having successfully landed the first blow, Erik threw a wide right hook at its head. Barely avoiding the blow, the creature jerked its head and shoulders backwards and out of the path of Erik’s fist.

Unfortunately, its wild movement had left it off-balance and so it was unable to avoid Erik’s follow up blow as he reversed the arc of his swing and drove the edge of his elbow sharply into its right temple. Disoriented from the blow, the creature stumbled back, and Erik followed it, delivering a brutal palm-strike with his left hand by driving the heel of his palm into the underside of its jaw. As its head snapped back from the force of the hit, Erik took a half-step back, twisted, and drove the heel of his foot into its diaphragm. The move felt almost awkward thanks to his low dexterity, but the creature’s disorientation had slowed it enough that the kick landed solidly. The creature bent over, dropping its sword to the floor as the breath was forced from its lungs. Erik stepped in close, standing behind its shoulder as he wrapped his arm around its head. “I want to draw this out,” Erik said through gritted teeth. The muscles in his arm and forearm bulged as he tightened his hold when the creature began to struggle, trying to pry his arm off of its head. “Out of everyone who tormented me, you deserve a quick death the least, but I don’t have the time to give you the kind of death you really deserve. Needs must when the devil drives, I suppose.” Gripping the creature’s head with both hands, Erik twisted sharply down and to the side. The soft crack of bone breaking echoed in the silence of the room as he snapped its neck and the creature’s struggles suddenly ceased. When he released his hold, the limp corpse dropped to the floor.

Erik’s heart pounded in his chest as he looked down at the still face of Derek Gaunt, the light having left its eyes, and he felt a dark satisfaction at his victory muted by a sense of disappointment. Of all his tormentors, Derek had been the cruelest. He enjoyed causing people pain, physical or otherwise, and took great pleasure in manipulating others into doing the same. Without him, the humiliation, abuse, and vile ridicule Erik had suffered would have been far less severe. Derek had been the one to unify and organize the rest of his tormentors, turning them from an inconsistent and occasionally vicious disparate group into a well-oiled machine built to perpetuate hatred and malicious intent. Erik had hated them all, but Derek especially. Having to deny himself the pleasure of taking his time with Derek’s death only stoked the Beast’s anger and resentment, and he was more than prepared to tear into the rest of the group. After all, if Derek had been the first to step from the darkness, the others wouldn’t be too far behind him.