Low-Fantasy Occultist

Nick knew that pitting his soul against the Southern Guardian wouldn’t be as simple as when he had defeated the others.

Not only was it mainly a spiritual being, merely trapped in a flesh prison, but its true power lay in the merging of souls. He was basically stepping into its home field and challenging it where it was strongest.

That, too, was part of [Chesed], at least according to his interpretation. He needed to grant the Guardian the mercy of oblivion, and to do that, he had to understand it and take on a part of its suffering.

One moment, Nick was standing at the edge of the physical world, with the Shard howling with power in his hands; the next, he was drowning in a sea of gray, viscous thought.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in a village made of wood and stone, burning with a colorless fire. Around him, hundreds of faceless figures scrambled in the mud, screaming silently as they fled from a golden figure.

At first, he thought it might have been the Feral God itself, or its avatar, but his senses quickly disabused him of that idea.

This mana… I recognize it. It is the same one I found in the chamber below the swamp.

It shouldn't have been surprising that a healer so skilled as to impress Semreh could become powerful enough to pass as a god, even if just for an instant. But given what Nick knew of his purpose, seeing the glowing figure torture the souls of hundreds, cracking them apart and merging them back together just to see what would happen, was still shocking.

“Save us,” a thousand voices whispered against Nick’s mental barriers. “Don’t let us end. Don’t let us fade.”

Their pressure threatened to crush Nick’s individuality and turn him into just another brick in their wall of flesh. They believed that living, no matter how painful, was better than facing the void.

The battle had long ended in the real world. The healer had gone mad with the power given to him by the Feral God and had already left the site of the massacre, yet in the ether, its echoes were so strong that even now, centuries later, it felt as if it was still happening.

Nick ignored the screams for help, at least for a moment. He planted his feet firmly on the ground, centering himself, and feeling the Tree of Life anchoring him. The roots of Malkuth dug deep into the bedrock of his identity. The trunk of Yesod channeled the raw mana of the dungeon, filtering out the corruption until only power remained.

“It is over,” he said. “I see your pain, your anguish, but know this: the battle is over.” Alongside his voice, concepts echoed out, strengthened by his now mighty spiritual presence, and they rippled through the mindscape, weakening the golden figure’s power enough to give the tortured souls a moment of respite.

His surroundings changed abruptly, dissolving into swirls of multicolored mana until the souls merged into a single entity. The healer was no longer present, but its influence lingered, manifesting as a massive hydra that now stood in its place, bound by its own soul to haunt the swamp forever.

It lashed out the moment it was whole, with tentacles of pure grief, trying to infect him with its trauma.

Nick didn't dodge, allowing the attack to hit his spiritual frame.

It burned. It felt like dipping his soul in acid, a pain so deep it was impossible to truly put into words. But the crystallization he had experienced, the arduous leveling, the Steps he had taken, all had hardened his soul into a mighty bulwark, something as close to solid as a soul could become without reaching the final steps. He didn't break.

This was the true test. He had to understand, to genuinely feel mercy. To render a true judgment, he needed to experience everything the Guardian embodied.

And so he let the incredible pain, sorrows, hatreds, and the relief of still being alive wash over him, fill him up, and glut himself on them until only the mighty fortress he’d built as a structure ensured he wasn’t swept away by the tides.

Flashes of memories passed through his mind’s eye. He saw everything, from scenes of the villagers' daily lives before their fates were so deeply warped, to simple monsters haunting the swamp in search of their next meal.

He watched the healer do his job correctly, setting broken bones and assisting in delivering children into their mothers' arms.

He also watched the same man descend further into madness as his experiments continued to fail, and he started searching for the answer in something greater than himself.

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Finally, he saw the peak of that insanity, how the man who once was a protector became a hunter, how he used the powers he’d developed to heal to instead cause harm, drinking from the fountain of forbidden knowledge to complete his masterpiece, the Well.

The flood faded away with one final scene, where the fractured amalgam of souls saw the warped healer realize, if only for a moment, what he had done, how far he had fallen, and turn his own power inward, binding his soul to the Well to prevent further massacres.

The last piece of the puzzle finally clicked into place, and he understood why so much time had passed since the healer’s life and the current events without any new appearances.

The dungeon’s appearance must have granted the Feral God enough power to start influencing its servant again, even if the Inner Guardian remains bound by his own power.

But that was for later. For now, Nick absorbed everything he had learned and all the emotions he had received from the hydra, making them his own. He expanded the definition of his own soul to include the suffering, while at the same time stripping the Guardian of its raison d’être.

“Let go,” he whispered. “I have this.”

The concept of Chesed blossomed. It was a blinding light, acting like a surgeon’s scalpel, and cutting away a gangrenous limb upon the necrotic darkness that was the hydra. It was the absolute, overwhelming authority of Mercy.

The Guardian screamed, but for once, it was not in anger, but in relief.

The village vanished. The gray faces looked up, their terror easing as their suffering finally ceased. They dissolved, transforming into motes of light that floated upward, passing through Nick, leaving behind whispers of thanks that imprinted themselves on his soul, carving new grooves and giving it greater strength.

“I am the Gate,” Nick chanted, accepting it all. “I am the End.”

The hydra dissolved last, taking the mindscape with it.