The second that my companions and I touched grass at the edge of the forest we began to study our surroundings. We not only silently glanced at the entrance to the actual cave we were going to slip into, we also studied the area immediately around us. I glanced at the one soft only somewhat trodden path leading into the cave and counted various pairs of footsteps.

My draconic companions and I could also smell the powerful scent of another dragon nearby. Recalling who that was only took me a nanosecond since there was only one dragon in this adventure; a youthful creature known as Venomfang, a young green dragon who had a mild interest in this cave. 

I sensed the curious glances of my companions who turned to me and waited to see if I was going to command them to go after the source of the scent. I responded by subtly shaking my head, causing them to nod back at me and turn their attentions back to the cave entrance before us. 

I was the first person to actually step forward, though as I did I felt the soft hand of Almalexia reach out and grab mine. I turned back to look at her and she smiled at me as I sensed her magicka, the font of energy that her kind possessed that allowed them to utilize magic be diminished slightly as she cast a spell. 

A blade appeared in her hand unlike any I had ever seen, aside from in the memories of Lord Indoril Nerevar and his actual, in-canon representation. She had a scimitar that was of dwemer make and radiated an eerie flame. The blade was the gift given to Nerevar by his friend the dwemer king Dumac, and was one of two such blades. My blade was known as Trueflame, and the fires that it generated were a soft orange color.

I silently took the blade and when I touched it… I felt like I had been reunited with a long lost friend. Almalexia flashed me a truly radiant smile when she saw me touch the blade and sigh as I felt a wave of emotions washed over me. 

She then cast the same spell and giggled softly as she retrieved the blade’s twin, the legendary blade Hopesfire. Her blade was the right handed equivalent of mine, and it radiated a very gentle blue flame. Both of our blades were intrinsically linked to each other and I sensed her feel a similar wave of emotions to what I had felt when I held my weapon close to me. 

I moved close to her and silently placed my head against hers. At first she was confused by this, but after a second of contemplation she closed her eyes and relaxed, enjoying the warmth of our skin-to-skin contact. We paused and enjoyed our skinship for a moment, before I took a step back and turned my gaze towards the entrance to the tunnel. 

With my blade in hand I led the way to the tunnel, and was the first to step into it. I was followed closely behind by the dragons and Almalexia. As I stepped into the dark the blade illuminated the path forward, even as I felt a subtle vestige of the empowerment I received whenever I was in the dark. 

The soft flames coming from my sword did away with the majority of the empowerment, but not all of it. As a sanguinarch and a god of death, and the afterlife I felt good in the tight, narrow tunnel we stepped into. Behind me I could sense that my companions did not feel the same way. 

The two dragons who I had brought with me glanced around nervously as we stepped deeper and deeper into the tunnel. The light from the outside world dimmed as we stepped deeper into the world beneath the world. 

We walked for a few minutes, though the entire time my eyes could effortlessly peer into the darkness and see our initial destination. The dragons I was with possessed similar eyes, and Almalexia had the power to peer through darkness due to her nature as a divine mer.

Our footsteps echoed around us, though we could all hear the distant sound of pounding waves grow louder the deeper we crept into the entrance tunnel. The water was situated somewhere underneath us, and had I not known where we were I would have guessed that it came from the ocean. In actuality there was a deep cavern beneath us that was filled with water which was itself connected to a hot spring. 

As we walked deeper and deeper into the straight, narrow tunnel we eventually reached a point where my allies could peer into the depths and see what wait for us. In the distance their lesser eyes could loosely see that the tunnel was about to widen into a decently sized cavern with a gaping hole at the northernmost end of the cavern that led into the inky depths that were our actual target destination. 

Reaching that cavern only took us a few more minutes of walking. When we reached it we stopped out of the narrow tunnel and into a cavern that was perhaps a hundred feet wide with a natural ceiling about two hundred feet above us. Near the middle of the cave there was a thick stone pillar that rose from the floor where we stood to the cave’s ceiling. 

Almalexia scouted the cave, utilizing her elven eyes. Her eyes flitted from spot to spot on the cave floor, and she was the first to notice what I already knew was located in the distance; a pile of bedrolls. The bedrolls were made to fit a variety of humanoid bodies, not just humans or elves, and I knew what she and the dragons would soon discover; they were stuffed with bodies. 

My senses were keen enough that even if I had lacked meta-knowledge I would have noticed the bodies, thanks to the fact that the blood belonging to one of the deceased individuals was hidden underneath one of the bedrolls. The dragons noticed this upon taking a few steps forward to investigate them, and they both hissed in annoyance when they realized that the bedrolls had bodies, causing Almalexia to turn to them curiously.

“What’s wrong?” She asked, as she stepped forward and her nose began to pick up the metallic scent of blood. She rose her blade in the general direction of the bedrolls and when the light emanating from the sword touched the bedroll closest to her she saw the scarlet color that covered the thing. 

I stepped close to the stone pillar that rose to the ceiling and reached into my hammerspace inventory. As I did I rifled through it, until I came across one of my most potent tools; the Elder Wand. I grabbed the thing, metaphysically placing my hand on it and pulling it out of my inventory in my right hand. 

I held the wand tight for a moment as I felt it quietly acknowledge me as its rightful owner. The sapient object pledged a silent vow of loyalty to me, one in which I could feel it dub me a rather ominous title: “The Master of Death”. 

The fifteen-inch wand was made of elder wood, and the thing’s core was made of the hair of a powerful and mysterious creature from Harry Potter’s Earth, a thestral, a type of magical creature that was only visible to those who had seen death at least once. The wand itself was a mythic artifact created by the manifestation of death itself from that particular world. 

I pointed it towards the cavern’s ceiling and chuckled. I was about to do something I had seen many people my age do, when we were children, spurred on by the potency of their imaginations: I was about to cast a spell from the land of Harry Potter’s Earth! 

“Lumos!” I uttered, although the second that the word escaped my lips I felt unbelievably geeky. Nevertheless, the spell worked and my wand began to radiate a significant amount of light. The light spread throughout the room and quickly covered it, allowing everyone to see the room fully rather than relying on imperfect things like darkvision. 

As my wand began to glow I quietly uttered the incantation for mage hand, and called the spectral hand into being clutching the wand. The nearly transparent hand appeared and with a thought I commanded the object to clutch the lightweight wand. The disembodied limb did as I asked it to do and I smiled at it as I let go of the wand and it continued to float. 

“Fucking… Magic, man.” I uttered, still not truly used to my powers. My companions ignored my remarks, though I could certainly hear the muscles on the faces of the dragons twitch upwards. 

I stepped deeper into the cavern and actually approached the bedrolls. As I did my wand floated lazily in the air near the middle of the room. I pointed my newly freed hand at one of the bedrolls and reached out with The Force. I felt the solidity of the bedrolls and visualized them lifting into the air, uplifted by the force of The Force. I gritted my teeth and felt my mind focus on the bedrolls with a vise-like intensity. 

The top bedroll began to shake for a second before lifting off of the top of the pile. I smiled when the thing actually responded to my intent and continued to focus to pull it closer to my two draconic pets. They looked at it curiously, though they knew that I was responsible for its floating. With every passing second I felt my control over The Force increasing, thanks to my tremendous training boosters. 

The powerful cosmic force was a mighty part of me that I wanted to master before I went anywhere near a Star Wars jump. If I had it, the Phoenix Force, and the powers of the God-Emperor of Mankind under my belt even settings like Star Wars and that of Warhammer 40K could be doable for me without relying on my grandest power sets. 

The bedroll began to slowly descend to the floor. When it touched it one of my draconic pets, the red-headed woman, approached it and began to investigate it. She unzipped the thing and scowled when she saw the dwarf inside of it. He was deceased, and thanks to meta-knowledge I knew exactly who he was; Tharden, the brother of the man who had initially hired the adventurers who’d be the player characters in this campaign back on Earth. 

He was dressed in ruined miners clothes and had been dead for several days. His corpse stank, and the dragon rushed to zip the bedroll back up. I chuckled and approached the woman. When I was beside her I placed my hand on the bedroll and activated the power of essence of the black hole. 

The instant that I did the bag and all of its contents vanished. They were consumed completely, absorbed by my ebony maw. That particular essence was one of my absorption essences, with which I could absorb matter, magic, or anything else that existed and add the mass, physical or otherwise, of whatever I absorbed into me. Things I absorbed made me stronger and at some point I’d even be able to do more than just absorb things with the power provided by this essence. 

“Feels… Weird.” I muttered, as I took in the feeling of having absorbed, and effectively consumed, a bedroll and the body inside of it. I even absorbed the magical boots that Tharden had been wearing, boots which enabled him to move faster and also not take fall damage whenever he had a nasty fall. Without turning to face my allies I began to speak to them. 

“Go ahead and head over to the hole. I’d normally tell you to go ahead and head down it, but I want to go down it first. There’s a slime there that I want to try and tame.” I told the dragons. They both nodded at me, as I walked over to the other bedrolls that were heaped onto one another. 

I stood over them for a moment and examined them. They were also filled with dead bodies, which was strange because in the actual adventure this was not quite how it happened. Nevertheless I easily placed my hand on the topmost bedroll on the strange pile of the things and with a grunt activated my power. 

The bedroll my hand was on top of vanished underneath my touch. The instant that it did I simply moved my hand lower and touched the next one. I absorbed that one in an instant as well. I would spend the next forty five or so seconds doing this, casually feasting on the dead. 

When I was done I turned to face my “Party”. The three women were studying the hole that we needed to enter in order to progress further into the cave. I got up, dusted off my pants, and began to walk towards them. As I moved towards my mage hand followed me, still clutching my wand. 

It only took me a few moments to reach my party and when I did I simply walked past them and leapt down into the hole. I fell for a few seconds before performing a superhero landing at the bottom of the hole and caused a bunch of still dust to flow into the air around me. To my left and to my right there stretched a number of tunnels and passageways. My mage hand floated down behind me, while my companions followed my lead and also leaped into the hole. 

They were graceful and angelic as they descended. A true bevy of beauties were coming down from above me, and they gave me time to scoot out of their way. I felt like I was in a scene from a cultivation novel wherein the first members of the protagonist's harem were appearing for the first time. If I flexed my imagination I could easily have pictured flowers blooming around the three of them.

They landed daintily, pictures of grace and class, and none of them even used any sort of powerful magic. They relied on their own grace and natures as a pseudo-divinity and as a pair of dragons to effortlessly and gracefully fall. Their levels of active grace and dexterity weren't higher than mine but they were better at using those attributes consciously than I was, no doubt due to their own innate skill with those things. 

I was more of an active superhero, and they were like duelists out of a fencing academy. I fought with rough power and they moved with calculated grace and precision. It was impressive and helped me understand the differences between the four of us.

I turned in the direction of the tunnel that I knew housed the slime and I quietly activated a number of my powers at the very same time. The first that I activated was the forcefield power I knew to belong to Dr. Cecilia Reyes, and I kept the ochre slime that was wandering the tunnel from advancing any further. 

When I activated this power I saw a number of plasmic forcefields generate in the distance, and I saw the ochre slime approaching the forcefields almost mindlessly. The creature was on the move, not fast but it wasn’t stopping. This made sense since the thing had no real mind and relied on blindsight to move, but fortunately I didn’t just have to rely on something as basic as my mutations. 

One of my more fun and creativity-inducing essences was the essence of the overgod. This incredibly creative essence allowed me to effortlessly replicate any action that any creature from the Dungeons and Dragons multiverse could perform and this included the act of awakening an ooze. 

I rose a hand and pointed it at the ooze. As I did this I channeled the power of a spell that was now seemingly long lost in modern day Abeir Toril: “Awaken Ooze”. I silently cast the spell, not needing to worry myself with things like material, vocal, or somatic components due to my particularly powerful magic. 

A wave of dark purple energy exploded out of my finger and sailed through the air between myself and the creature. It stuck the ochre slime in the back, relatively speaking, and caused the creature to freeze as it felt the potency of my power filling it and bestowing it with intelligence. 

My companions peered into the tunnel and curiously watched as I awoke the simple slime. The thing’s mind was expanding and I was even being kinder than it looked and actually increasing the thing’s intelligence in minor ways such as by using a blessing power that I had to increase stats like intelligence, wisdom, charisma, strength, dexterity, and constitution. The slime began to vibrate as it gained a level of awareness that it had previously lacked. 

When the wave of energy emanating out of my finger stopped the slime continued to vibrate, almost as if doing a little dance all by itself. And then it abruptly froze. The creature had just gained awareness! I called out to it, by silently utilizing a component of the essence of the dungeon master, though instead of aiming that ability’s calling power at a dungeon I aimed it at myself. 

The creature turned, and I could sense that it had just become aware of me. The thing began to ooze towards me energetically, almost eagerly even. I smiled at it as it scooted its way towards my party and I.