Why Are We Here, Just To Suffer?

I stared into the cloud of dust I had kicked up, listening for the skeletons I knew to be in front of me.

As I heard the rattling of bones and clanking of metal, I knew where I needed to go.

And so I stepped forward, keeping every sense besides sight on alert so that I can defend myself from a surprise attack.

{We do not believe that these skeletons have the guts to attempt a sneak attack.} The Gods commented.

I moved to nod my head before stopping halfway through my first nod.

My glare at the air returned with full force, focused on something outside of my sight.

'Can you be serious for just a single moment?' I asked.

{We'll be serious the day you die.}

I looked into a random direction with an annoyed look.

'I'll take that as a no then.' I replied dryly.

{You asked us to change our best character trait.} The Gods replied. {We don't change.}

'You sure about that?' I asked with a hint of uncertainty.

{Not in the slightest!} The Gods answered.

I shook my head and sighed at their antics.

'I should've expected that.' I thought.

{You know what they always say.} The Gods piped up.

I did not know what they always said.

{Expect the unexpected.} They said in a tone that held much less excitement in it.

And then I saw blue.

A lot of blue.

I immediately ducked under the volley of projectiles aimed at my head, still none the wiser as to who fired at me due to the dust cloud still hanging in the air.

The blue balls whizzed over my head with a simple 'whoomph' to signal that they were even there in the first place.

"The fuck?" I wondered out loud, confused as to why I was suddenly attacked.

And then I looked around the area, noticing that the blue spheres had somehow cleared a bit of the dust, making it a bit easier to see.

As I was looking around, though, I was assaulted by another volley of blue magic bolts.

I ducked under it once more, noting the fact that whoever was throwing these at me was not the smartest.

The dust had cleared some more and I was able to see a bit more of the area I was in.

As I observed the area I noticed the... unique... decoration choices.

The walls were covered in all sorts of skeletons, some human while some very distinctly not.

One of the skeletons was what looked seemed to be a person who had their body proportions shuffled, leaving them with mismatching bone sizes.

I grimaced at the thought of whatever it had looked like while it was alive, as it painted a gruesome picture in my mind.

'How does something even evolve into that?' I wondered.

{It didn't evolve into that.} The Gods said with a slight amount of disgust. {That is the result of someone trying to be similar to us.}

I looked around the room and noticed that a good percentage of the skeletons had some kind of obvious physical deformity, making me realize just how creepy this room is.

'What kind of person would do this?' I contemplated, disgusted with the blatant disregard of ethics.

{A person who has reached the point of no return.} The Gods answered.

As I was contemplating the discovery of the room, I heard an unfamiliar sound to my left.

As I turned to see what the sound was, I saw an unexpected, yet entirely expected sight:

A skeleton.

But this one was much smaller than the ones I had encountered earlier, leading me to believe that the skeleton was still in their teenage years when they died.

They were also wearing a robe, leading me to believe that it was the one who threw the blue spheres at me earlier.

I stared at the skeleton with a bit of surprise, but I quickly began moving towards it in hopes of striking first.

I was a bit too slow though, so I had to quickly dodge what I assumed to be a water bolt, as it looked almost identical to the one I hit myself in the face with.

As the bolt approached me, I quickly rolled out of the way, leaving the bolt to fly right past my head.

{Of all things, you chose to roll.} The Gods said dryly. {This world may be a pain in the ass to live in, although we have absolutely nothing to do with that, but we did NOT make a souls-like.}

I was confused at the outburst, but a thought I had brought a grin to my face.

'Are you jealous that those games were able to make people more annoyed than you ever will?' I said with more than a bit of mocking in my tone.

Before the gods could answer, I had to dodge another water bolt.

{We are not jealous!} The Gods said in an angry/sulking tone. {We prefer the kind of world that makes you question your sanity than your mental fortitude.} They said semi-seriously.

I nodded at that, knowing fully well that they were telling the truth.

{So are you going to kill the 'kid' or what?} The Gods said patiently, obviously annoyed with me. {We have all the time in the world, but you have a lot less than that.}

I knew that as a fact, and decided that I had spent enough time dillydallying.

'Dear god did i just use the word 'dillydallying' in a sentence?' I thought with horror. 'It's like I'm a different person?'

{That's what makes you question yourself? Really?} The Gods said, disbelief clear in their voice. {We've tried so many things to make you question yourself, and all it took was you saying a weird word.}

'Yep.' I answered.

I couldn't help but smirk at the sound of the Gods sighing in disappointment, though I had no idea who they were disappointed in.

{Enough monologuing.} The Gods ordered. {We have a plot to progress.}

I just nodded, as I was thinking the same thing.

Minus the whole plot part.

And so I pulled out the sunfury and smacked it against the magic skeleton child.

I have never seen something shatter so spectacularly, even if it was the skeleton of a deceased teenage magician.

I looked around me to see if there were any more threats in the vicinity, but noticed that the area was eerily silent.

Minus the background music that had started to become annoying.

The Gods seemed to have heard my thought, as I heard a quiet {Ungrateful brat who can't enjoy quality music...} somewhere in the back of my head.

And suddenly everything was very quiet, leaving me to wonder just where all the skeletons and 'spinning wheels of death' went, as I was sure I heard quite a few earlier.

I decided to look around the skeleton coated room, trying to see if there was anything of interest.

And an item of interest I did find.

It was a very bland looking notebook, which I assumed to belong to the long-dead student I had recently re-killed.

I decided to flip to the first page, and read the first entry.

"Day 1 of living in the city: Everything is so bright and full of magic. This is a heaven for anyone seeking the knowledge of handling magic.

This day couldn't get any better!" I read out loud, wincing at the familiar words that I had uttered earlier.

I continued reading.

"Apparently one of the skilled mages of the city saw talent in me and decided to send a servant to inform me of their request for me to learn under them!

I'm so excited, and I can't wait to be able to actually perform magic!"

The diary seemed to be quite normal to begin with, so I decided to flip a bit farther in.

"Day 240 of living in the city: I finally learned a powerful spell!

The mages called it the water sphere, since I held an uncanny resemblance to the water bolt spell. It's too bad that it's got quite a few drawbacks compared to the elusive spell it resembles so much. It only fires in bursts of 3, and it has a long preparation time."

'That was informative, I guess.' I mentally commented. 'Let's see what happens next.'

I flipped further into the diary.

I knew exactly where to stop the moment the handwriting became rushed and messy.

"Day 424 of living in the city: We're all doomed." I muttered solemnly.

'Well isn't that delightful.'

"The cultists have taken over the city and forced everyone to worship their deity, Cthulhu.

I know that there are many that objected to it, but they have all gone missing soon after.

Some reappeared later, but they seemed to have become a whole different person entirely, easily angered and quick to violence.

I'm scared and I don't know what to do."

'Jesus this got dark.'

I flipped a few pages down and noted a very distinct change in the time tracking:

"Day ??? of living in this madness-inducing prison: We've failed. We tried to rebel, but the cultists were too strong.

Now they've trapped us here, leaving us to rot in our own failures.

I've also heard murmurs of the city being cursed with the ire of their god, something that only means horrible things.

I'm no longer scared of dying now, as I have already lost everything.

What more could I lose now?" I read, wincing at the final words on the page.

I was already invested in this tragedy, so I flipped the page once more, reading the next entry.

"I was wrong." I read, noting a lack of the normal introduction. "I thought I couldn't lose everything, but I forgot one thing I still had: My master.

I knew there was a curse set upon us, but I never expected it to be so vicious." I noticed some stains marking the page, and I assumed them to be tears.

"It is painful to see the last thing you have left waste away, and this style of wasting away is the most vicious.

The curse finally explains the actions of those who returned from protesting, but the curse seems to have affected my master differently.

It has taken me quite a few days to notice, but my master is slowly losing his sense of morality and idea of right and wrong.

It hurts to see someone you respected and treated as the closest thing to family degrade into a monster who only cares about furthering their research." The tearstains seemed to have grown in volume at the end of the entry.

My face was locked in a frown at this point, and my hands were gripping the book tightly. I had to free myself to keep reading.

"I can no longer look at master after what he has done with his research. he has explained it as forcefully causing high-speed evolution, but I can only see it as a perversion of the natural order of life.

I do not believe that master even sees me as a person anymore, as all I see in his eyes is both interest and excitement."

I flipped the page once more.

"Master took me into his workshop today." I looked around, grimacing. "I was horrified at what I saw, since I recognized several of the creatures pinned upon the wall.

'A wall of failures' he referred to them as, and I immediately threw up at the sight of what master had created.

They were the equivalent of a tumor that had been made out of a person, only leaving the faintest image of what it had once been.

I had been hearing of disappearances within the city, but I simply passed off as someone committing suicide in some dark corner, an occurrence that is quite normal.

But now I knew why the disappearances were happening.

Master had been kidnapping test subjects from the city."

I flipped the page once more, a look of horror at the bloodstained paper.

"master has finally decided to use me, and I only have one choice now.

If anyone is reading this, I have only one request: If I or my master are still alive in any way when you find this, end our suffering.

It appears that this will be the last entry in my life."

And that was the end of the pages.

{Now that's just fucked up.}