Wake up.
Darian floated in nothingness, barely aware of the fact that he was aware.
He remembered little of what had happened. The fact that he was conscious told him he was alive, but how and where remained outside the scope of his understanding. He tried to move, tried to blink, and he felt as if he were mired in deep water. The void seemed to undulate around him, compressing and supporting him in equal measure.
Wake up.
He struggled through the compression to bring his right hand to his face and touched his eyes. For all that he’d thought he was looking at darkness, he realised that his eyes weren’t even open. Another attempt to lift his eyelids told him something seemed to almost be fighting his ability to do so, and Darian pressed his forefinger and thumb to his closed eyes. With what felt like a herculean effort, he pushed up the skin.
He almost wished he hadn’t.
Darian was afloat in the infinite void of space, surrounded by stars and nebulae. He was facing what appeared to be a gothic throne room, one bereft of any anchor to the physical world. Roman-style pillars lined the open-ceilinged chamber, marching toward the throne itself at the far end from him. The royal seat, built upon a tiered dais, was a beautiful construct of black marble, with gold and silver veins pulsing across its surface.
When he raked his eyes over the open chamber again, a patch of darkness his gaze had previously rolled over caught his attention. Almost as if his attention was a desire for movement, he was abruptly standing on the marble flooring of the space, staring directly at the shrouded area. The more he focused on it, the more he noticed it started to erode—sloughing away until what was beneath it was revealed.
What he saw took him a long moment to process.
The most unearthly beautiful woman he’d ever seen knelt on the throne room floor, her arms bound by now-revealed golden chains, each one stretching to one of the pillars. The bindings danced with liquid sunlight, expelling coronas of power that snapped at and seared the airless void.
Her silver hair fell like a river of starlight, flowing down across the chest of her sleeveless black toga, which was cinched at her waist in silver and covered her central mass down to the tops of her knees.
When his eyes focused on the material of her clothing, he noticed with a sudden sense of shock and dread that phantasmal skulls were undulating across the material, each one appearing in a silent scream before fading back from sight to be replaced by another.
Darian abruptly remembered he was naked and vulnerable, and he glanced down in a panic—only to find himself attired in a simple white shirt, dark leggings, and a pair of comfortable, sturdy brown boots.
Sighing in relief, he turned back to the woman in trepidation.
He noticed that her arms and legs were clearly defined with muscle, showing him a person who not only had supernatural grace but also prominent physicality. In many ways, down to the generous proportions of her chest and hips, she reminded him of a silver-haired Wonder Woman.
The forbidding prisoner seemed to be an incarnation of beauty, elegance, and raw power.
When she lifted her head to look at him, her eyes were striking: each one was a black void, filled with what appeared to be irises forged from condensed moonlight haloed in blood. Momentarily overawed by the sight, his eyes drank in the scarlet coronas of power that bled jaggedly into the inky darkness of her sclera with stunned appreciation.
“At last…” she rasped wearily, her voice—otherworldly and ethereal—sending a chill of primal fear and disconcerting pleasure down his spine all at once. “I have waited so long for your arrival.”
“Uh, what?” Darian asked in a voice shaken by the fear that kept him rooted in place, echoing with his own confused uncertainty. “I have no idea who you are, or where I—”
“I am known by many names...” the woman replied before he could finish his sentence, her voice croaky from disuse, “...but you may call me Lilith.”
He swallowed as she said her name and forced himself to return from the strange sense of preternatural intimidation he felt just by being in her presence.
“Lilith,” he repeated carefully, while conscious of the slight tremor that remained in his voice. “Nice to meet you,” he continued, at a loss for what to say. “I’m Darian.”
A ripple passed through his body, and Darian felt something within him, something beyond the physical and beyond his understanding, reacting when he said her name. A feeling of defiance reared up within his mind, buoyed by an emergent rush of pride and discipline, and he almost thought he discerned a hand gripping his shoulder in support—until the feeling vanished abruptly.
He felt his spine straighten, his heartbeat slow, and his fear eroding.
This is Fate, something within him rationalized, and you belong in this moment.
Almost as if a switch had been flipped, the fear that had crippled him was gone.
Lilith’s gaze widened slightly, and a small smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Impressive,” she croaked in approval as she watched him, “you overcame my aura quickly.”
Darian’s response was preempted by a System Message that filled his vision, and through its sheer familiarity, soothed away some of his remaining concern about what was happening.
This was, it seemed, part of the game still.
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SYSTEM MESSAGE
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Achievement Earned: [Indomitable]
Despite being in the presence of the Dark Lady, you have overcome her [Aura of Death] and mastered your will.
This is a feat of legend, granting you the unique boon of complete immunity to all forms of Fear effects.
Your [Indomitable] will also protect you from the effects of [Mental Domination] and other such control abilities.
You are now able to withstand the presence of all creatures; be they Mortal, Power, Elemental, Undead, or Aberrant.
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“Dark Lady…” he muttered while reading the prompt, and then raised his eyes to look back at Lilith. “Are you some sort of deity?”
“Ah, so the System has enlightened you,” Lilith rasped with a smile. “Yes, Traveler, I am She of the End, the Dark Lady: Divinarch of Death, Darkness, Shadow, Order, and Sin. All creatures aligned to the Shadows, the Dark, Death, Corruption, and Entropy are my servants, from the lowest of ghouls to the greatest of Reapers, Abyssals, and more.”
“Divinarch?” he asked immediately, when the foreign word failed to translate.
“Divine Ruler. ‘Goddess’ is another term, albeit a trite one. I am to mortals as you are to ants, but I am neither omniscient nor omnipotent.”
“Right…” Darian said with a furrow of his eyebrows while watching the beautiful woman warily. She sounded more like a mythological Olympian, the way she explained it. He hadn’t missed the fact she had some affiliation with Sin, either, which definitely seemed like something to be cautious of.
The Biblical Lilith came to mind, and he managed not to edge away.
“At least I can understand why you’re chained up by Light, now,” he said with another glance at the divine shackles.
“Even so-called immortals fear the inevitability that I represent, Traveler,” Lilith said with a wry look at the radiant manacles. “I am the antithesis to their self-aggrandizing myths of invulnerability, for if they should fall, it is I that shall wield the Scythe which reaps them.”
“What about you?” he asked her while taking a bold step forward, and closing a small amount of distance with the goddess—it was easier to think of her that way—while ignoring his thundering heart. It felt like a victory.
“Death is Eternal, Traveler,” Lilith explained with a more amused smile, and with subtly more vibrancy to her voice, as if speaking were bringing it back into form. “I am but the chosen representative upon Eternus. There is only one world per cosmos with enough Aether to manifest Dominions, and in this one, it is Eternus.”
Darian hesitated at her words, noticing she had technically evaded his question, and his reflexive response died in his throat. Instead, he took a moment to survey the area surrounding them, and then he refocused on Lilith once more.
“Why am I here?” he asked instead, changing the subject. “This feels like something way outside the scope of a noo—starting area.”
He had almost said ‘noob zone’, but he had caught himself at the last moment.
Lilith did not seem to notice, but Darian caught what he thought was a glimmer of mirth in her decidedly unnerving gaze.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“You, Traveler, are here because you entered Eternus through a special artifact; one that the Faithful created in the hope of liberating me.”
Darian raised an eyebrow at her words, and his eyes widened in realization. “The coffin!” He exclaimed abruptly and snapped his fingers in realization. “So this is like a Hidden Quest?”
“Yes,” Lilith confirmed with another amused smile, “which leads us to the Paths before you.”
“Paths?” Darian asked carefully, fully aware that the word had been very distinctly emphasized in how she’d said it. He knew he was about to make some sort of key decision, especially if this was a unique questline he’d earned through the raffle.
“You have two options before you, Traveler,” Lilith said with a measured tone, though he noticed she still hadn’t blinked once, which was mildly disconcerting. The skulls on her attire also seemed to appear and animate with greater intensity while she spoke, and Darian tried to focus solely on the goddess instead of her creepy toga.
“The first of your options is to leave me to my imprisonment,” she continued in a markedly stronger voice, “while perpetuating the current state of affairs, and allowing the other Powers to stand uncontested as the ruling forces of Eternus and its surrounds. Doing this will likely earn you some favor with the Pantheon, as well. It will be a quick means to a favorable beginning upon Eternus.”
Darian raised his eyebrows at her honesty, but he nodded. “Okay… and option two?”
“You free me,” Lilith intoned with an indicative rattle of her gargantuan chains, “and I shall deliver you to Eternus as a potential successor to the title of Dark Autarch. You will be my champion, my agent, my blade, and my shield. Through you, I will once again bring balance and Order to Eternus, and levy vengeance upon my treacherous contemporaries and their sycophants.”
The goddess’s eyes lit up as she spoke, and a flare of wrathful power ignited within the crimson patterns bleeding from the edges of her moonlit irises.
“This path will be the harder and more grueling of the two,” she continued as he listened. “You will be hunted by the servants of the other gods, outcast from society, and thrown into a conflict you are ill-prepared to face. Your chances of success will be slim, and your chances of survival slimmer still—Death may very well be your only fate.”
“I see,” Darian said with raised eyebrows. “You’re not exactly selling that option.”
“I am not,” Lilith agreed with a smile that sent another shock down his spine. “But should you overcome adversity and proceed along that path, you shall receive powers and abilities beyond your wildest imagination. You will become a Power—”
Darian noted the emphasis on the word but did not interrupt.
“—the likes of which Eternus has not seen since the days of the last Revenant-King. Wealth, influence, women or men, even me: whatever you wish for, it can be yours. Every vice shall be yours to explore with impunity, and every indulgence shall be ripe for your plunder.”
Darian stared at her for a long moment, and then cleared his throat when he realized his brain had gone to some truly depraved places. He knew Eternus Online was a strictly adult game, but the unvarnished hedonism of what Lilith had offered was staggering. Goddess of Sin was a damned accurate title.
“And how, in theory, would I achieve these things?” he asked directly.
“Through the only Law that truly matters,” the goddess answered simply. “Might.”
Before he could say a word, however, a screen appeared before him.
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SYSTEM MESSAGE
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Quest Issued: Fate of the Dark Lady
The Dark Lady, Lilith, has offered you a choice.
Two paths now lie before you…
1: You may choose to abandon Lilith, leaving the Dark Lady trapped in eternal imprisonment, and receive rewards from the rest of the Pantheon in return for such a selfless act. Your name will be lauded as a Hero of Virtue by the Powers that imprisoned the Dark Lady, and you will doom Lilith to a slow Entropy in the Realm between Realms.
2: You may choose to free Lilith, breaking the Dark Lady’s bonds and releasing her back to Eternus in a greatly weakened state. Doing this will allow you to pursue the path of Dark Autarch and grant you the ability to wield Dark Mana. This will also trigger a follow-on Quest with unknown rewards.
WARNING: Both actions have irreversible consequences for both yourself and the world of Eternus. Choose wisely.
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Difficulty: S+
Success: Variable
Failure: N/A
Rewards: Various
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</table>
Darian stared at the screen before him in silence, then looked up at the stars as he mulled over his options. On one hand, Lilith had all but admitted to being the ‘evil’ god in the mythos of Eternus, and pretty looks aside, she seemed every bit the temptress archetype. Her name, even, put him on alert given the reference to the biblical mother of demons.
He could just ignore her and dive into the game with a great head start, some potentially unique loot, and a sterling reputation.
Alternatively, he could accept her offer and start the game being hunted by beings of the highest levels, and what was most likely a whole legion or more of crazy zealots, each intent on claiming his head.
On paper, there was only one sensible option, but…
Darian frowned and looked back at Lilith, who was watching him in silence.
Something about the implications of chaining away a goddess, regardless of what she represented, spoke of cowardice and duplicity to Darian. He’d seen and read enough fiction to know that screwing with the natural cycle was terrible. If Lilith were to be believed, which the System implied she was, she was the goddess—or Divinarch—of everything that fell under Darkness, including Death. When had chaining away Death ever ended well in any fictional universe or game? Exactly never, in fact.
There was also the matter of his agency in the game.
Being a hero would probably reap him some great benefits, certainly, but there was the converse impact to consider: he would be surrendering a path wholly his own, where he was essentially starting his own faction within the game from the outset, and instead giving away that chance to be a glorified peacock for the Pantheon to parade around as needed.
There was also no guarantee that such a fate would not come with its own restrictive chains, and looking at the ones binding Lilith, it occurred to him that whichever god had imprisoned her certainly wouldn’t be against shackling a ‘hero’ that got too big for their literal britches.
Lilith’s path was rife with potential for permadeath. Still, he did have a free bonus life, and more than that, she seemed pretty upfront about the fact he could expect little in the way of guidance or hand-holding—but that also meant he could expect little in the way of compulsion or control as well. As long as he wasn’t directly working against her interests, Darian had a feeling Lilith would probably let him do whatever he wanted.
“I have a question,” he said.
“Ask it,” the goddess responded calmly.
“How much agency can I expect, assuming I become your, uh, Champion?” Darian asked directly. “I’m not interested in being someone else’s pawn. I came to Eternus to write my own story, not be a side character in anyone’s glorious tale of revenge—not even if they’re a goddess.”
Lilith listened while he spoke, and when he was done, she laughed.
It was a musical laugh, one that surprised him in its brightness, and excited him in more physical ways that reminded him exactly who she was—as if he needed the reminder.
“The Faith of the Dark is one of self-determination, Darian. You write your path. You dictate your future. You control your destiny. All I care for is that you restore my influence. I am Death, I am Darkness, I am Order—but so, too, am I hedonism and indulgence.”
The goddess smiled at him lasciviously, and he felt himself shiver again.
“I am the reaping scythe, and I am the temptation that sends the weak spiralling into the madness of their own lusts. I do not care what you do, nor what you choose to create for yourself in the mortal plane. All that matters, to me, is that I am given worship, I regain my influence, and you never allow another deity to sit above me in your places of reverence.”
Darian listened to her until she was done, then folded his arms while he considered what to do next.
Choices, choices.
“So in short, I can do whatever the hell I want, as long as you are the only deity I worship, and so long as I don’t let anyone in my faction, domain, or whatever I eventually create put other gods, or Powers as you call them, before you in their worship—well, knowingly, at least.”
“Correct,” Lilith said with another smile. “I do not expect you to be omnipotent, but I do expect your fidelity insofar as Faith is concerned. If you find my worship being displaced in your area of control, I expect you to act. But, there will be measures in place to help with such things, which you may learn later, if you walk that path.”
Darian nodded in thought, and Lilith continued after he didn’t reply immediately.
“If it reassures you, dear Traveler, know this: by agreeing to free me, you are setting yourself at war with the entire divine pantheon anyway—and all of their followers. I will be your only option, and you, in turn, will be mine. Autarchs are neither easily nor quickly replaced. If you succeed in gaining your place as mine, we will be stuck with one another for quite some time. It is in my best interests to see you happy, especially given the degradation of my Faith, far more than it is in yours to obey me. Betraying me may even win you mercy from the Pantheon, though I cannot speak on that factually.”
“At least now you’re actually selling it,” Darian said with a faint smile.
“I am not ashamed to say you are my only hope, Darian,” Lilith admitted, seemingly without concern for how it made her look and with a shrug that rattled her radiant chains. “I need you far more than you need me, for now. Whether that balance of power changes depends on your choices.”
It was probably manipulation, but Darian found himself resonating with her reasoning. Lilith struck him as someone who was quite skilled in the arts of coercion, but there was a matter-of-fact manner of speaking to the way she explained things that worked to set him at ease. Even if he was being manipulated, he still had a bonus life. Theoretically, if things went south and he found himself in a truly terrible situation… Well, he had options.
There was something else to consider, as well, though it was less important.
In video games, he’d always played the ‘hero’: the virtuous paladin or heroic knight swooping in to rescue the ‘people’ from the ‘blight of darkness’ or whatever. Every MMO had been rife with the light versus dark motif that made for standard fantasy fare, and he’d always chosen the side of the good guys, mainly because it was easier and he didn’t want to deal with the annoyance of the ‘hard’ playthrough.
In many ways, this was his chance to upend that fundamental cowardice.
That idea spoke to him powerfully after overcoming Lilith’s [Aura of Death].
Hadn’t he wanted something fresh from Eternus Online?
That was it, then.
He had made his decision.