Vecna

He smiled, exposing teeth yellowed from years of incarceration. A million times, going over the phrases, the gestures, the twitches of his gnarled hands and mutterings of his wrinkled mouth he would need in painstakingly precise measure. Runes scored the ground around him, some scratched in by his browned and cracked nails, some scribed by his captors, magically binding him. He gave yet another experimental tug on the fetters that bound his hands, halfheartedly hoping that after years… no, decades, as death was not an escape he had the luxury of in this oubliette, the chain might finally come undone. But alas, it held firm in its mithril socket, imperiously mocking him from upon the spiral-mosaiced wall.

He thought back. Himself, dressed in flowing robes of grey and brilliant blue and shimmering white. Standing atop a cliff, on a stone podium, feeling the spray of sea salt in his tousled half-elvish hair. Throwing his arms wide as he emphatically and didactically preached of the sublime divinity of the flesh to the mass crowded in front of him, drinking every word like a fine elvish wine. Running his heterochromatic blue-green eyes over the invigorated, youthful faces in front of him, chanting his name, asking for him, goading him to lecture further on his vision of the Kin ascending to the heavens and slaughtering the old gods.

Not yet. Dry, cracked lips rustled out like whispering bellows squeaking into a dwindling fire. It had been a very long time since he had heard his own voice. The feeling was strange, almost otherworldly, in the crypt-like silence of his subterranean cell. It reverbreasted against the lead-reinforced marble, sending tremors through the inky darkness. He rehearsed every gesture, every word, every moment in his mind again. He repeated them over and over again. It must have taken hours. He did not know. Hours meant nothing to him. He had nothing but time, and discipline. Three more rehearsals and he would indulge in recollection. Two more rehearsals. One.

Seated placidly on the patio of the veranda, looking outwards towards Lunus. At his side were three of his practically effervescent attendants, feeding him fruits and rubbing his muscles with oil as his piercing mismatched eyes scoured the heavens, as if looking for some secret. The notes were almost done, the research nearly finished, the ritual nearly complete. His apotheosis was imminent. Damn the Iron Treatise, damn it to Inferno, he would raze the heavens from inside out. The mockery of the gods would be no more. The Age of Kings would fade into the Age of Flesh Made God, and his ascension to divinity would be the piece de resistance. The world would tremble as it never had before.

They would cry my name. One more rehearsal, two more rehearsals, three more rehearsals. The darkness was as deafening as the silence was obfuscating. He shifted, his worn muscles creaking in protest as the chains on his limbs rattled their overbearing retort. Years of agony. Years of agony. Years of agony.

He once stood on the circle. The claret warmed the pads of his feet as he strode to the center, careful to avoid the littered corpses of the unworthy in his path like necrotic debris. His most loyal attendants, no, cultists, stood about, feasting on the flesh and chanting vile words from the text he assembled for them. He smiled gazing upwards one last time to the stars above. Soon he would join them, up above in their sacrosanct courts, and he would profane their halls with their blood as he profaned this hall with the blood of the Kin…

He winced, remembering the swords that cut into his flesh that night, the scars still burning in his body, an eternal reminder of how close he was to his prize. His attendants slaughtered, his precious Book of Vile Darkness locked away, him led away in chains to the deepest dungeon he could be kept in, he and his disciples declared a travesty against the laws of the universe. Years… no, decades of this unending darkness. Had it been centuries? Had it?

He knew. There was a time for everything. When the time is right, they will weep, kiss his feet, worship him as the ionoclast he knew he was. He would make them say his name.

I am the flesh made god.

I am the one who will slaughter the heavens.

I am the half-breed, the mongrel.

I am both, and I am none, and I am greater.

This is who I am.

Vecna.