On the warm summer day that I got to experience my first taste of combat, I realized something incredible: that battle was fun. I enjoyed the sensation of standing over my enemies, and of using power to destructive, violent ends. And I instinctively knew that that was something that my enemies would come to hate about me in time.
The halflings glared at me when they realized that what they had managed to stab had been a potent but false illusion, an afterimage left behind in the wake of my teleportation-like speeds, turning just in time to notice me smiling at them. But only four of the five creatures were glaring at me. The other one, the one I had infected, merely feigned looking in my direction, and readied himself to lash out at his friends. He was also squarely in the middle of his squad, and thus had enemies in front of him and behind him to contend with.
“That’s it… Come at me.” I taunted, in the guttural language of the tiny creatures. The creatures roared and lunged at me, though of the five only three would successfully make it to me. The traitorous halfling pretended to lunge at me but didn’t actually move and waited until the last member of the group was about to pass him and proceeded to tackle the poor creature, ramming him hard and sending him sprawling into the dirt.
The other three managed to get to me, and I proceeded to deal with them in brutal but effective ways. The first of the tiny creatures to make it to me received a sharp, painful kick to the chest that sent him flying. The second of the creatures was impaled as thoroughly as the halfling that I converted to my cause earlier.
The final creature to reach me was dealt with psychically. My mind was in many ways my greatest weapon, and when I said “weapon” I actually meant that literally as I possessed a sort of psionic divinity that allowed me to utilize potent telekinesis, which I did to send the little ranger flying away from me. He was actually lifted into the air and hurled into my minions, who proceeded to infect him with Blacklight by mercilessly stabbing him in the neck. That caused me to feel the potency of three minds being swiftly added to my hivemind, as the halfling who had betrayed his comrades had also leapt onto his tripped former friend and stabbed him in the chest, adding him to our group.
I walked over to the halfling I had kicked away from myself and brutally reached out and grabbed his head. I lifted it into the air, and chuckled as I looked at the man.
“Hello there.” I uttered, in the harsh language of the little creatures. All I needed to learn a language was to be near a speaker and thus hear their thoughts, or to literally just hear a few sentences in the language. As I studied the creature I was holding the head of, I gained a further, sharper mastery of his language.
“All your friends are mine now. And so are you.” I said, cruelly. I felt their minds adjusting to my greatness, causing me to grow in both potency and wisdom as I scanned their minds and in doing so immediately learned every facet of their surprisingly intricate culture. The halfling glared at me, hatred visible in his utterly white eyes. I merely laughed at him.
“Be not afraid little one. You will find that I am by and large a… not randomly cruel master. But now the time has come for you to evolve. For you to leave behind things that hold you back. Like fear. And freedom.” I uttered, my voice becoming supernaturally calming. And that had quite an effect on the creature before me.
I was capable of inducing a number of emotions in mortals with ease. The three that I knew would be the most fun were love, calmness, and desire. At the moment I was exuding an air of supreme calmness, so supreme that it was in fact contagious. The halfling that I was holding was, in fact, soothed by my words and began to cease resisting me.
He began to accept what I said as a simple, undeniable truth. That simple truth was that I was his new god, his master, the sole being who deserved his devotion and his servitude. While he accepted that I sent my spores into him, and ordered them to infect him, to turn him into one of my allies.
While turning him into my newest ally I also filled the minds of each of the infected halflings with potent, psychedelic visions that revealed to them what I’d come to call “the ultimate truth”: that I was a god. This simple but earth-shattering revelation made them all begin to worship me, their minds twisting and snapping as they began to consider me their one true lord and master, the sole being deserving of their worship, even as my disease spread through their veins.
The halflings, now fully enthralled by their new lord and master, began to fully and literally worship him. As one their minds were convinced of the awful truth of his superiority and supremacy, and of the fact that they had a new purpose.
The diminutive creatures were, as one, driven insane by the awful weight of the truths that they were accepting, but due to The Dark One’s powers over both minds and madness he could sense that their insanity drove them to share the truth of his supremacy with their peers. That was precisely what their dread-lord wanted them to do. He wanted every heart to feel his power through the Blacklight virus and to turn to him as the one divinity who deserved to rule over all of existence.
But beyond that, something that the god wasn’t aware of was how being worshiped empowered him. He was a newborn divinity, one that was still at the level that being worshiped was something that could easily empower his connection to the material world and solidify his strength.
The moment that the halflings began to worship him their piety began to reinforce his existing powers, causing him to shudder and his “armor” to bubble, briefly, as he adjusted to the slight but palpable increase to his holistic might that he was acquiring. The dreadful overlord himself began to smile, his eyes glowing a sinister shade of scarlet as he acclimated to his new powers and learned of the might of being worshiped, due to the timely intervention of his gauntlet.
“Yes, master… Revel in the power of piety.” The thing on my arm, the living gauntlet, uttered in the back of my mind even as I felt the incredible potency of the utter and devoted worship of the halflings. The energy I felt in the wake of their twisted, corrupted minds and hearts turning to me in humility and acceptance of their unimportant place in the omniverse was immense.
“I… see. This must be the power of worship.” I intuited, as I mentally spoke to the potent gauntlet attached to me.
“It is… It is the might you feel in the wake of asserting your place atop the pecking order of the omniverse, and they are experiencing the bliss that comes with accepting their natural place in existence, beneath you. Worshipping you. Serving you.” The gauntlet whispered, pridefully.
“You are a divinity. As you are not an overgod you can gain power from worship, and being worshiped is vital for you if you wish to become a mightier and mightier divinity.” The voice explained, informing me as to some of the nuances of my divinity.
As the artifact on my hand did that, I reached out to my minions, all of the ones that I had infected, and ordered them to go out and infect every other member of their kind, as well as revealed the reality that I was a divinity. To do so I caused them to experience equally mind-bending psychedelic visions, and felt their hearts begin to turn towards me even as they proceeded to dash towards the minions who had yet to feel the potency of the Blacklight virus feeling them with purpose, unity, and clarity.
“That’s it, master… Unify all things as you have unified myself with your dark consciousness!” The gauntlet exclaimed, revealing that it was every bit a part of the hivemind as every other person inflicted with Blacklight, as it sensed more and more of the creatures being to forcibly join my potent hivemind.
Over the course of the next few moments I felt the total weight of my mind expand as several of the minions who had not yet been infected with Blacklight began to be blessed with the sacred illness. Even as their minds joined the immense hivemind that bound and unified every person suffering from Blacklight I began to mentally formulate the very beginnings of what I hoped would one day become an omniversal religious movement, one where the ultimate honor was to be bound to the hivemind and for one’s consciousness to become a part of something greater than themselves; myself.
Though the nightmarish creature known as The Dark One was not truly paying attention to this aspect of himself, with every mind that was subsumed into the vast psychic ocean of his hivemind, he grew greater and greater. Every mind that was mercilessly absorbed by the dark lord’s hivemind caused the mind’s true master to swell in might, intelligence, charisma, and ferocity.
The dark being himself was visibly swelling in power as more and more of the minions fell, and those of their kind who were outside of the hivemind dwindled in number. Those who could see him noticed this, and were enraptured by his divine beauty. He may have been a malevolent disease on the inside, but on the outside he was an impossibly beautiful being, one whose allure was fully supernatural, transcendent and impossible to ignore or resist. He possessed the sort of hypnotic beauty some might have attributed to one of the few divinities known to the people of the world he was in; the Mother Goddess herself.
That said, to stare at such beauty unpreparedly would invariably cause those who did so to lose themselves in it, and the fierce and hateful being who possessed that sort of ethereal beauty was well aware of that. In the wake of his defeat of the halflings he only smiled at his former foes, now having turned them into minions of his who, if he commanded it, would gladly die for him. Their devotion to him was absolute and unquestioning, once the Blacklight virus was fully active in their minds.
The Blacklight virus was a potent weapon in my hands, and an incredibly powerful tool that I intended to use to shape all of existence and bend all that is, and all that will ever be, to my will. As it surged into every genetic nook and cranny of those it had infected I felt my powers expanding, and knew that I was well and truly growing, becoming even greater than I had been when I first exited the sarcophagus I had awoken inside of.
“Feed me.” I growled, as I felt the immense hunger of the halflings begin to fill my own endless maw. This caused one of the tiny creatures to fall to the floor in front of me, and offer himself as a snack to sate my hunger. I chuckled, cruelly, as he did that, and then knelt down and offered the creature my hand. As he took it, confusion on his face, I smiled and began to speak.
“No, little one. You will not sate my hunger. At least, not by yourself. There are entire villages of halflings, all of whom deserve to know about my glory. All of whom deserve to be brought into the fold.” I explained, cryptically. My eyes blazed with a sinister, crimson glow for a few seconds. As they heard me the eyes of the halflings grew wide with amusement and with sadistic delight at the thought of forcibly recruiting their neighbors, their friends, families, and even their most hated foes.
“Yes… For now, your purpose is to spread Blacklight as far as you can. The more and more people we can add to us the better... “ I explained, fully intent on uniting all life under my banner by making every living being become a part of my hivemind.
The divine being was filled with potent power as all of his minions, and every other living being he had infected with Blacklight began to enact his machinations. Over the course of the next few minutes the halfling raiders were sent back home, filled with a grim purpose, the human farmer was informed as to minor spells that would boost the deliciousness and growth rate of his crops, and the small army of orc-like minions left the farm and began to make their way towards the outskirts of the tiny town they had come here to invade.
The crafty divine being was more than willing to use his potent servants as intermediaries and as the first carriers of the virulent disease that he was composed of. The halfling communities set up outside of Spree would make delicious food for the deadly divinity as their considerable numbers meant that they would be able to spread effectively, and their small stature meant that creating fortifications against them would be a challenging task, since they were graceful climbers and expert travelers.
Meanwhile, even as he attempted to organize his own thoughts, his body and the spark of divinity nestled within his soul were becoming more and more perfect and transcendent. He was growing as a god as his followers swelled in number, their devotion and the certitude that they possessed being so potent that it was detectable to him as well as to any properly empathetic being.
When the creatures reached the diminutive river that separated the town of Spree from the other half of the region around the tiny town, a pair of the town’s local law-enforcers, the ever present backbone of any sizeable settlement, guards stood up from their posts atop the fortifications that helped keep the two walls safe and not in danger of any of the myriad of threats native to this part of the world. They turned to face the minions, just intending to converse with each other for a moment, and cried out in shock as they immediately realized that the weapons and armor the creatures wore was a sign of their loyalty and their allegiance to the mighty, and mysterious Dark One.
“Hey! O… Ov… Over-,” One of the guards began, before the Dark One turned his hateful, fear-inducing gaze on the mortal, mercilessly allowing the figure to attempt to warn his people, nobily fighting against the potent psychic presence of the dark god he had had the misfortune of encountering on this, particularly auspicious day.
The Dark God simply smiled, and stepped towards the river, before kneeling down and placing his hand in the river, effortlessly inspecting the water system and of course infecting it with the porent disease he was made of. As he did, his connection to the disease he was the master over, and his senses, were greatly expanded, thanks to him gaining an intimate awareness of all of the fish, plants, and more in the river.
As he did the human guard began to stagger back, in shock at the weirdness of what he was doing.
“Wha… What? What are you doing, oh strange creature of darkness?” The guard asked, wanting to understand what the town’s newest “Visitor” would be interested in.
“Men… We have visitors! The Overlord, or some knockoff, has arrived!” The human shouted, his voice carrying faster and farther than it had any right to be or do. And the Dark Lord smiled, readying himself for a fight to come. But one that would not be won with violence, but with words. As he smiled, the guards who stared at him began to take in his strange, inhuman beauty and supernatural, unfocused charisma and appeal.
The overlord was about to use some of his localized perks, ready to sow confusion and discord among those he sought to eventually rule over.
great chapter