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In a Distant Burning Land

Deep in the bowels of a pit bored into the earth, foul sorceries claim the souls of the damned from within Perdition and the wanderers within the Veil, pulling them upward through this planar conduit. They do not experience a reprieve from hell, bound to cursed warmachines or destined to be consumed by demons lurking within the many tunnels dotting the pit's walls. Some still living souls serve as extra spice, hurled into the pit by their fellow men, those whom have turned their backs on the world and seek its eternal ruin. The weak die swiftly, either from falling the great distance or snatched in midair by demons and flying fiends. The strong ones upon landing have no hope, finding themselves facing the merciless master of the pit. It is this cacophany that stirs life once more into an ancient soul.

A semblance of consciousness thought pulls the soul through the conduit into the material plane. Weakened by centuries of chains, it is barely more than a wisp, with appendages that only hint at the human form. After death, the act of sight is a suggestion; the dead are aware of everything that happens around them. It is aware of the bodies falling from the sky, from outside this pit of orange stone it has found itself in. It is aware of more souls, crying out or already accepting their fate. It is aware of things much stronger in presence than the souls around it. Their sounds also pepper the soul, scrambling and cackling in dark alcoves above, catching still living bodies and converting them into showers of blood and gore. And even moreso, the presence that is the strongest of all, standing in the center of the pit. A tall, hairless fiend with the head of a ram, with not an ounce of fat beneath its stretched pale skin. Muscle twitches as it spears a crippled warrior that was attempting to crawl away on its pitchfork, dueting with the dying man's gurgling final cries with its gurgling laugh. It lifts the warrior upwards, past its horned head and directs his dying soul to the pit's west wall, where it flies into it with planar warping instead of a stone collision. The Soulslaver shakes the corpse off of its pitchfork, it landing near the soul with a wet splatter of blood. The Soulslaver gives the weak soul a dismissive glance before it turns its attention to the more active souls, a few still flit around seeking a way out. Far more exciting fish in this barrel than the one already half dead.

The soul is left undisturbed for now, but with its reasoning steadily returning it knows not for long. A second, nay, a third death would be inevitable if the swiftly refining soul does not take bold action. A nub pulls the soul forward, then a jointed growth. The idea of functioning legs helps stabilize it as a reforming hand grabs the stone and grips with rediscovered vigor. The soul feels a sense of weight as its identity begins to return. It knows what it is. He remembers the sensation of stone beneath his fingertips. He remembers what he had felt when he gripped the ledge at the top of the mountain, the same as he feels now as he grabs the side of the corpse in front of him, as the fiend whirls around. He remembers when he planted his foot for the first time on that mountaintop, the Spine of the World, the same sensation felt through the corpse's twitching boot. The Soulslaver howls as it stabs at the soul with its pitchfork with the subtle speed of enochians, aiming to slay this reconstituting soul now. The sensation was familiar. Hate from above, a mass of magical might that storms across the sky. He remembers it well, standing atop that mountain, defiant in the face of the oncoming storm.

When he first declared war on the gods.

Uniform holes burst to life in the Soulslaver's chest, causing it to stumble out of its attack in surprise. It stares first at the corpse now standing in front of it, its left arm disintegrating under the strain of what transpired. Then it notices the brackish blood dripping off of its own pitchfork. Its own blood. This realization and recovering from its own confusion would have been an unnoticeable event for even a majority of enochians. But as it goes to stab again it shudders to a stop. It knows it was struck, before the corpse's leg raises and slams into the handle of its pitchfork and its arms. The impact of a dead man's leg would do nothing to it. The intensity of the soul it comes in contact with is what shatters its arms and its grip on its weapon. The leg, likewise, shatters from the strain. It breaks apart like ice, the fluids within the skin and muscle have already boiled away. The fiend lets out one final shriek before it it is slammed backwards, pinned to the earth by an unseen force lodged in its skull. The piloted corpse cannot maintain balance and collapses after the kick, but it does not stay down. It crawls towards the pitchfork, leaving scrapings of armor and soon dried flesh in its trail.

The fiends and demons in the levels of the pit above have stopped their play and are now watching the strange show unfolding below, doing nothing to help a fellow fiend incapable of slaying a corpse. Some of the humans above the pit have likewise noticed the commotion and stop throwing bodies in, watching with a hushed anticipation falling over the camp above. The soul gives no heed to the changes around him, his attention is fully on reaching the weapon in front of him, and the next body to inhabit. A different corpse thrown from the lip of the pit, that show signs of life still within it as the hand of the soul-piloted corpse touches the fiend's pitchfork. Where the Soulslaver was pinned down, the pitchfork appears with a burst of the fiend's blood, the monster slain by its own magical weapon. Pieces of its face fly across the pit, as do the remains of the disintegrating arm of the corpse. The soon to be dead man twitches awake again, paralyzed from the landing, his final thoughts consumed by the sight of a man with long black hair and searing blue eyes tearing his way out the torso of the corpse. His fear had little time to mature, as the dying man's soul is obliterated by the invading inferno.

The paralyzed man stands. The chattering of the watching fiends begins to devolve into raucous laughter and screeching howls as the new vessel slowly walks to the dead Soulslaver and the pitchfork lodged in its skull. Deadened nerves and severed spinal cord do little to stop his movements driven by the soul alone. He grips the pitchfork and looks up to the sky, seeing the burning red clouds for the first time. He does not know where he ended up, but it doesn't matter. The pitchfork is dislodged with a wet squelch as he turns fully to look at the distant figures on the lip of the pit. He does not recognize them, but they recognize him, and the slow transformation that the corpse he pilots is undergoing. He hears one of them call out something that he will soon hear again and again.

"Thriceborn!"