Mortal Souls

Prologue: Day of the Invasion

This prologue is entirely optional. I am actually hesitant about inking it because it's about an embarrassing oversight I had. So if you’re the type who hates them, just skip straight to Record 1: Harmony. You'd be doing me a favor.

Frankly, I don't even want to burden myself with the memory. Yet, here I am, thinking about it for a thousandth time. I don't remember the exact day we invaded Terra. I just know it was about twenty-five of their solar cycles ago. Time feels a little strange when you're in between worlds. Not alive in the traditional mortal sense, but not fully dead, either. I erected the portal when it was dawn on Terra, and we finished razing the first human settlement just as their star was beginning to set.

Kaozul was leading the assault with his usual gleeful devotion. I remember when I made him. Just as I remember spending three months in the void grafting extra optic nerves onto his shoulders so he’d stop letting enemies flank him, though the idiot still insists on evolving smaller, redundant eyes sporadically down his shins and back. "My lord, I offer this masterpiece to you as tribute," he monologued, basking in a village that was painted crimson. "These smoothskin bipedals are fragile and primitive. This will be our greatest conquest yet!" He said that about every conquest. And somehow, the bastard was always right. Every slaughter did feel grander than the last.

But there was a survivor in the slaughter. A human with a giant gash on his chest, his legs trembling as if he was moments away from collapsing. His hands gripping a pair of blacksmithing tongs he intended to use as an improvised blunt weapon. When Kaozul noticed him, he asked, "Oh dark one, what about this one? Could this one prove to be a worthy subject?"

The civilizations of the material plane are nothing like the primordial soup of Reverie — the afterlife. They are diverse, yet concrete. They all operated within a universe script: self preservation. If I was that human, I would have played dead. May have slipped by. But I had seen what happened earlier; I see everything my demons see. I saw how quickly the humans died. They were amongst the most fragile species we had ever encountered. Before I could give Kaozul further instructions, the human charged Kaozul and swung his tool at him. Kaozul effortlessly side-stepped him, and the human swung at air. He tripped, his momentum throwing his fragile frame face-first into the soil.

See, that should have been my first warning sign. A creature that overrides its own survival code is a broken machine.

The second one was the human getting up. He turned around and gazed at Kaozul with what I could only describe as otherworldly rage. It made no sense. He was outmatched, broken, and his environment dictated he should beg for his life. Instead, he spat blood and prepared to charge again.

But his defiance was short-lived as Kaozul raised his hand, all fingers pinched, and made an exploding motion, splaying them outward. The human's torso combusted and his innards painted the last green patch of grass red. Kaozul cackled unethically, after which he spread his arms out once again and embraced the sky, "Oh, great one! At last, my magnum opus, my divine offering to you, is complete!" A model commander, right there. And a gifted artist. I preferred healthy test subjects anyway. He practically read my mind. The demons under his command tolerated his theatrics, but I could tell they would rather go back to Zunoth and read the unholy scripture I wrote for them.

That human. What I thought was just a fluke. An irrational actor. So I wrote it off as a non-factor. What I realize now is that he wasn't a fluke. And it only became apparent to me after I had peeked into the thoughts and memories of a human who unwittingly let me access them. The first and only of their kind, as they all resisted conversion even if it meant dying in agony. Truly baffling.

So here I am. Floating in the aether, biding my time, hiding inside of the living carcass of a soulless demon I have almost no control over. She doesn't seem to mind. Not that there is anyone to mind, anyway. Nobody's home. I am confident the body will hold; it is unusually tenacious. Best thing I can do right now is transliterate some notes, gather intel on what went wrong. Run a post-mortem on my own mortem, you could say.

One thing worth noting as it could be the linchpin of my return: someone, somehow, breached the veil and struck me down from between dimensions. I had thought that the Reverie is somewhere you only go to after living beings die, that it's a one-way door. That this is the only way to get in, and that path was forever sealed for me. To get out, well, the Reverie decides when you leave. For centuries, I have operated with this assumption. And somebody proved me wrong. When I return, I will find out who did it, eliminate them, and use that newfound knowledge to force my way back. I will finish what I started. I will seal the gates and turn Reverie into my solitary safehaven.

Let's start with that human I mentioned. Her name is Harmony of the kingdom of Solaria. I admit, this is beneath me, but it is necessary. I expect those memories will be important.

Oh look, you just finished reading the prologue. I must go. This bitch is eating dirt again.