[Shrine to the Dead]

Waking left the feeling I'd interrupted a conversation. Who was I talking to? A man. My father? It faded as I moved to start a new day, not that time had any meaning as a demon. Did I age? I didn't know.

The wild, hateful eyes of the boar stared at me. I stared back. It could hate me all it wanted, it was dead. I found it strange that it hadn't decayed. On the ledge bodies had begun to liquefy and rot almost the moment they died. The memory of sour rot filled me with nostalgia and hunger. How many days had passed, three? I grew hungry at the thought of old blood.

The boar had granted several levels from a single kill. If the fight wasn't so dangerous, I would go out hunting for them. If I was careful I still could. Most of the damage I had taken was from surprise after all. Even surviving a single extra impact would make a difference.

My shoulder moved fine. Sleep and levels had done their magic without me. The skin was still white at the joint, and the mottled blush of bruising still lined the tendons. Reminders. If I hadn't got it back in the socket, what would have happened? Should I have amputated?

[Your insight has rewards. Beginners Foresight has increased in ability.]

I don't even have the words.

Now that my own anger had simmered to a slow boil, I had lost the drive to eat the head. In a bizarre way, it was company. A trophy. I had triumphed over death itself with nothing more than luck.

Sitting in the alcove the head looked like some bizarre shrine to a forgotten God. The red flow from the veins of the tunnel gave the Domain a secret, religious atmosphere. I needed to learn more about the domain. How had it cut the connection off? I'd gone from not knowing that Domains existed to losing mine meaning certain death.

[System Display: Domain]

[Current Domain of the Nameless Lesser Wailing Cliff Hugger]

[Domain Space: Resting Chamber]

[Domain Relic: Boar's Head Totem]

[By acquiring a relic Basic Rites are available]

[Cultivating your domain will grant it further power]

Rites. One of my oldest titles mentioned them. Student of the Last Rites. Were they related? They must be. I had several titles I hadn't examined that I knew of as well. Something else to do. I was in no rush to go back out into the Chasm, so I set about exploring the system.

Would they demand sacrifices? Ritual? Motion? I only had the framing of a human understanding. My deformed demonic body was completely ill prepared for the task. A tool to move a mouth to prey. To eat.

[System Display: Rites]

[Invoke the power of higher demons and blessings of greater demons. Add to their power as they add to yours]

[You are unable to access writes requiring tools or language]

[Available Rite: Boar's Wrath - Surrendering to the anger of the dead will grant you temporary power. Beware the cost to observation and foresight]

[Available Rite: Last Rite - Granting a merciful death grants you mercy in the Eyes of Keres]

More titles. I received the Eyes of Keres right after the boar died. Titles and rites seemed linked on a deep level. How did one surrender to the dead? Boar's Wrath seemed more like a dangerous curse than a boon. As an experiment, I tried to move my maw with intent, forcing air over the razors of my teeth. The guttural screech sounded like an animal skinned alive with a dull bone. No language indeed.

What did the new titles offer?

[System Display: Titles]

[Active Title: Sinner of Greed]

[New Available Title: Bonded by Bloods Kinship - Empowered fighting with demons you have spilled blood with in the past ]

[New Available Title: Anointed of Rosemary - Call upon the blessing of the demon that brought you into the world]

[New Available Title: Eye of Keres - You have borne the grace of a greater demon of violent deaths. Fate will intervene in a moment of need if you have performed their Rite]

Violent death. I thought back to the moment I could see my own fate in the boars. That last impossible charge. The venom finding its heart. A careless act of mercy days ago had made the difference. How strong would a demon be to change fate? How strong could I be?

[Your wonder has rewards. Beginners Foresight has increased in ability.]

A strong sense of foreboding washed over me. This wasn't a game.

What were demon's after all? I'd accepted my new life without thought to what it implied. Afterlife. It wasn't too much of a stretch to think that hell was the next step for a lost soul. I remembered so little about before.

The boar gazed at me.

A totem. The wrath in its eyes now seemed very real. But it was no higher or greater demon for sure. I had seen my mother. I knew the great divide between what we were and what existed outside the Hunting Grounds. I had a mother. Did this boar have a creator? Was its first moments as terrible as mine. Forced eat the flesh of its own kind to justify its existence to an unforgiving hell. What had it offered up to become such a monster?

I leapt to the ceiling when the hot steam of breath left its dead mouth.

Its black lips contorted its already wrathful image into a dark sneer.

Weren't you angry? You died, helpless. You died worthless. Weak. Do not forget. Do not forget when your skin first cracked with power. Do not forget the contempt for your brothers. Do not forget what I will give you.

Remember the first time your tusk tore them open. Digging deep into their entrails, the damp matting of blood against your face. Victory. I gave you that. I gave you the power to tear apart your own skin. To let the pain take away the thought. Take away the sorrow. I left you strong.

Wrath is pure.

These thoughts were not my own. Memories not my own. I remembered the first time I had given into wrath. How the anger had tempered me. How weak my brothers were to lose to madness. They deserved their weakness. I enjoyed being able to desecrate their stomachs with my flat grinding teeth.

These were not mine.

I came back to myself, still clung to the ceiling of the Domain. The totem lay inert, as motionless as it had always been. It sat in its puddle of drying blood, edges undisturbed. Its gaze steady, unblinking, aimless.

What had I brought back with me?

Its memories, the boars. They were clearer than my human life. I could still taste the first tear into a pigmans stomach. How they wailed, still alive, while I worked my flat teeth deep into the cavities of their bowls. How angry I was to be like them. How angry I was to be weak. Then only anger.

I remembered the demon that had sired it. A distorted recollection. The memory was old. Even to the boar they were old. A large beast, its glowing eyes. Low and heavy, lumbering on all fours. Tusks that looked like the sharpened ribs of a great whale, vast against my own. The demand and contempt. We, they, had fought through its brothers in front of the greater demon. When one refused to kill another he would kill them both. He hooking their innards and pulling them up towards the sky. The pull was slow. He hated us. Hated them.

Hated me.

It felt like even in these others memories the Boar King could see me watching. Could feel me pulling from its aura. That it was coming for me. Charging through the memory ready to burst into my domain and get revenge on the murderer of its spawn. The wrath against one who showed that its prodigy was weak.

And it was over.

The traces of memory were already fading. The head was a head. I was myself. The domain sacrosanct, untouched by other demons. Each breath from my own body, the only sound in an otherwise quiet space.

I was afraid.

It was a long time before I came down from the ceiling. Longer still before I could bring myself to cover the boars head. Like its eyes could be windows to its father. To think that, somewhere in this chasm, a demon like that stalked the ground for prey. That it ruled here breaking its own hoping to draw out wrathful creatures like the one I killed. That it demanded you give over to white hot mindless rage.

I couldn't shake the feeling that if the memory had lasted even a moment longer it would have been here. The small domain would have shattered under it. The very walls crumble against such old power.

It was out there, moving, a demonic force of nature bent on shattering the ground under its hooves. Delight in digging into the gore of the world's wounds. And that wasn't the worst part.

The worst part is it knew me.