The Forging Of The Fulcrum Hammer/Part 3

The 13th Day of Ascending Wood, 762 in the Year of Our Empress.

In the Southwest of the Underworld lay the Thousand. It was an entire mountain-range carved into the personal fortress of the Deathlord the First and Forsaken Lion and it brimmed with soldiers. Its vast caverns held barracks large enough to house the whole population of Chirasciro, the Lap and Paragon put together. A wise explorer could find long-forgotten libraries, secret treasure vaults, armories of rare weapons and stranger wonders lost to this Age.

If someone brave penetrated deep enough into the Thousand, they would also find prisons and torture chambers.

There was one such room further down than the others. It was reserved for the First and Forsaken Lion's special pleasure. Victims rarely survived, for the Lion was too brutal for the usual subtitles of torture. On this specific day, it held only one occupant, living or otherwise, and the prisoner fervently wished it were otherwise.

"You do not look well."

The speaker was outside the cell and Mnemon Matthias could not make her out. Too tall for the chains that bound him to the floor, the ex-Earth Immaculate was forced to kneel and he couldn't see through the iron slit on the door. Instead, he coughed up more blood and gathered his breath.

"I'm not," Matthias answered cautiously. The voice from outside his bedroom doors sounded concerned. The mere presence of interest in his welfare was a stark contrast from all he'd experienced in the last week. It set him on edge to hear compassion, here in a place the First and Forsaken Lion had forged into the epitome of its absence.

"May I enter?" The speaker was a woman, that much he could tell from the timbre.

"I am hardly the master here," Matthias laughed roughly, which promptly triggered a coughing fit that left more blood on the floor. He didn't look at his body, at what the Lion had done to him in anger. It was enough to live in it right now.

"Thank you," the voice said, clearly taking his words as consent.

The most magnificent creature he'd ever seen swept into the torture cell. Her dress was a creamy green that glistened wetly in the watered-down light of the Underworld. A cloak of black feathers draped her shoulders and she seemed to fly like a bird as she neared him. In fact...her feet were not touching the ground...

Matthias straightened despite the pain. Her wide, sorrow-filled eyes were a green-gold crisscrossed with black stripes. Her white skin was finer than the best Dynastic china and she was every inch Mnemon's equal in command, presence and regality. If only she didn't look so sad.

"...my Lady," Matthias said, clumsy and wincing at his poor manners. "I'm Mnemon Matthias. I would be of service to you, if I were able to serve anyone." He smirked bitterly at his condition and dropped his eyes from her loveliness.

"Matthias," she breathed, as if pronouncing his name would invoke some kind of magical power. "Not for long, I think. Tell me, Matthias. Is it true you defied the First and Forsaken Lion?"

"It's true," Matthias said grimly. "He demanded I learn and perform these...rituals for a meeting with his masters. But I've been a scholar as well as a priest for more than a century, my Lady. I know Old Realm, even in that distorted form. If I do those rituals, I'm as good as pledging my soul to his masters for all time."

"Does the Resplendent Hammer of Execution fear for his soul?" Her eyes lit with inhuman intensity, with a hunger that made him think of the stories of the Fair Folk.

"It's the Descendent Hammer of Finality now." Matthias looked above his head where the hammer had once floated. The symbol had seemed right to him, fitting. But apparently the price was all his rebirths. "And yes, I fear for it. It's damned enough but at least it's mine. Why should I surrender the only thing left to me, my Lady? What would that leave me with?"

"Everlasting existence," the lovely creature said. "And honor. Glory. Power. Absolute mastery of all Creation, until the day the whole world dies and is consumed by the Void."

"That will never happen," Matthias said darkly. But that was a lie. He didn't know how, he didn't know why, but he knew it was a lie. In his tortured flesh, in his broken bones, in the seat of that Black Exaltation inside of him, Matthias knew the truth. It was a truth that would scar an undisciplined mind for life for there was no forgiveness in it.

"It will happen," his visitor said, echoing his thoughts. "It must. So it is written in the stars themselves, Matthias. So it is revealed in the dreams of those who made Creation. If they saw it come about, they can see its end."

Fitful power crackled in her voice. Mnemon Matthias groaned at the edge of agony it laid across his nerves. He shook his head and glowered at her.

"Anathema."

"Once," she said agreeably. "Tell me, Matthias. How does it feel to be one of the Anathema yourself?" Her dry humor made her seem far more alive than she probably was. Her cloak of raiton feathers drifted in an nonexistent wind. It made him think the black feathers were alive still, gruesome as the thought was.

"A year ago, I would have killed myself. Several months ago, I would have invited my death in the sands. Today..." Matthias shrugged in his chains. "I can't condone the destruction of Creation, my Lady. But it's hard to call the Anathema monstrous when my own kin have done something much worse to me. All I did was serve the Realm at the expense of a drunk. For that, my soul is damned for all eternity. I suppose in that light...being an Anathema can do nothing more to me than has already been done."

"Unusual sentiment from a Realm-born," the woman with green eyes said. The black mesh of lines across them seemed to spin as he met her gaze. "But true."

"May I beg your name, my Lady?" Matthias asked politely. Those eyes widened slightly at the edges, not at the top and bottom. It was something no human's face should have been able to do. Somehow, it only enhanced her beauty.

"I am the Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers." Her head tilted to the side, twisting ever so slightly in an unnatural way. "Have you heard of me?"

"...I have," Matthias said, in an awed whisper. "You're the Deathlord of Great Forks, or you were. Histories record that you ruled near there centuries ago but vanished...never to be seen again. Until now, naturally."

"You please me," she said in a voice that was both cold and intimate at once. Her face became cruel but her hand touched his arm as lightly as a feather. "I know you also, Matthias."

"You do?" He frowned at her. "From the Lion?"

"You don't remember. I would have been disappointed if you had but I find myself disappointed that you do not. Tell me, Matthias...do you remember the Ghost Knife of Thiokol? Do you remember...the Fulcrum Hammer?"

"The Fulcrum Hammer?" Matthias said, astonished.

"I've been waiting for the Fulcrum Hammer for some time now," the Princess Magnificent said. Her voice emptied of what compassion he had heard, becoming as cold as the chill wind inside his soul. "You are he. And I mean to see you wielded as you should be."

The Fulcrum Hammer.

From years and years ago, from distant memory long forgotten, that name woke in Matthias' fragmenting mind. That woman, the one he'd forgotten, she'd called him that. A woman who...now that he thought about it...looked just like this woman did.

"You...you are the Lady in Green!" He hadn't doubted her, exactly, but it was a humbling prospect to be brought face to face with the entity that had made him what he was today. The First and Forsaken Lion might have turned him into an Anathema but the Princess Magnificent was responsible for a century and a half of his life!

"I am. I've waited for you...so long..." Her small white hands cupped his face as she drifted close. "Why couldn't you have come a century ago?" Tears gathered in her large night-green eyes. "Why not fifty years ago? Even ten and I could have been spared..."

A tremor moved through her jaw, disjointing the bone. Matthias almost pulled away, revolted, but her grip on his face was not to be contested. Those green and black orbs hardened into something like black emerald and her voice cut tiny lines across his chest when the Princess Magnificent spoke again.

"But you're here, Matthias. You will obey the First and Forsaken Lion...but you will serve me. You have a destiny, my poor one, and I gave you a century and a half to grow stronger for it. You owe me your life, Matthias. If I had not interfered, Fate would have claimed you that night and you would be just another ghost now, trying to fulfill prophecy with only your Arcanoi. Are you grateful?"

"Yes," Matthias said softly. His lips felt unexpectedly numb. So did his body, for that matter.

"Then consent." His head bent involuntarily against that voice. "Trust our Masters. Is it truly such a different thing? Tell me, Matthias. Do you own your soul? Is it yours to keep? Can you tell it which way to go when you die?"

"Those who die may be born again," Matthias quoted from memory. "The Dragons judge us out of love and guide our souls on the path they should walk."

"But your Pasiap doesn't love you," the Princess Magnificent sneered. "He condemns you forever for not bowing your head to a drunkard. What could my Masters do to you that is worse than what the Dragons have done? Nothing, Matthias. What could my Masters do to you that is better than what the Dragons have done? Everything, Abyssal. That you bear such a title is the first proofs of what loyalty gives you."

"Pasiap didn't demand my unquestioning obedience," Matthias said angrily.

"But he punishes you for not giving it to him," the Lady in Green said, almost sadly. "We all wear chains, Matthias. The difference is that our Masters show you what they are, rather than pull you to the ground with bindings you could not have seen."

Matthias bowed his head again, for his logic was failing. Everything she was saying was true. The cold whispering wind inside his soul knew it too.

"This is what you will do, Matthias." The Princess Magnificent knelt before him, anointing her green dress in his blood. Then she told him what he would do, why he would do it, and what he would demand in return.

Mnemon Matthias listened. He listened because he was without strength before her arguments. He listened because he had no other choice. And he listened because, in his heart, he knew what she was saying was the right thing to do.

The First and Forsaken Lion freed Matthias when he gave his consent. Slave demon-children with fierce hatred etched across innocent features tended to him, stripping off the remains of his breeches, bathing and cleaning him in deep black pools, caring for him. His wounds were bound, his hair groomed and trimmed, and he was sheathed in magnificent robes of the finest embroidery. Every need was cared for by things that wanted to rip him apart. In a place like this, it felt natural.

For days, Matthias struggled to master the procedures of self-subjugation, vows and oaths of fealty and the hundred small rituals for proper conduct. He knew his time was short to learn them all correctly. For nights, the Princess Magnificent had come to him in the spacious quarters the Lion had granted. What she did to him on those silken sheets defied his morals, his conscience, and his comprehension.

An Immaculate Monk's life could not be any more different than his life now. Much of him despised it, hated the necessity of the rituals. He was sickened at losing his virginity to a Deathlord, to a ghost. But a growing part of him knew it was right.

"Abyssal! Attend me!"

The doors flung open and the monster in soulsteel chains took two steps into Matthias' bedroom on the forth day of his freedom. The Abyssal started awake and leapt to his feet before his brain caught up to him. He was standing in the Third Position, characteristic of an Earth Immaculate before his sensei. He was also not dressed.

"Princess..." The Lion looked past his shoulder and Matthias looked with him. Sure enough, the Princess Magnificent knelt on the bed, thankfully clothed. She was positioned in such a way that she must have been watching him sleep. It did not make him feel comfortable.

"My Lord, I..."

"Silence, Abyssal." The First and Forsaken clenched his fist and the cracking of soulsteel plates closed Matthias' mouth in a second. "You overstep yourself. Her station is far above yours and you are not to trifle with her."

"Yes, my Lord." Matthias bowed his head, relieved that the Deathlord was turning his attention away from him. It wasn't the Heretic that the Lion was really thinking about, that much was obvious.

The Princess Magnificent rose from the luxurious sheets and drifted off the bed and toward the Lion. Her face was an ivory mask, as unmoving and unfeeling as the Lion's own black helmet. Matthias wondered if he was going to be put to death soon, the contested pawn in an obvious struggle between these two.

"Why?" the First and Forsaken Lion demanded.

She said nothing, merely looked up toward the space beneath his visor.

"Do you remember your place, Princess?" the Lion said cruelly, condescendingly.

She nodded once.

"Go."

The Princess Magnificent drifted from the room without a backwards glance. Matthias had the presence of mind to slip back into his robe while the Deathlords were talking so when his Lord turned his attention back to him, at least he was presentable. The Lion made no motion to step further in, instead standing as still as a statue.

"My Lord?" Matthias ventured.

"Have you learned all you were instructed?"

"I have, my Lord." Matthias bowed his head respectfully again. He knew the price of disobedience now.

"Good. Come."

Matthias felt awkward and out of place as he hurried after the giant Deathlord. The feeling grew when he saw the corridors flanked with hundreds upon hundreds of war ghosts, elite fighting spirits every one. The undead saluted the First and Forsaken Lion as he tread by and they cast envious looks at him as he followed in the Lion's wake.

Deeper and deeper into the Thousand they descended. They walked down stairways, short corridors and then dark stairwells with an ill-used look. Matthias kept pace and did his best to memorize the route. Soon, it passed beyond even his considerable powers at memory and observation as the hours of travel stretched on longer and longer.

Uncomplaining, with the discipline that had made him a formidable warrior for Pasiap, Mnemon Matthias persevered. The passage of time seemed to lengthen into a stretch as infinite as the stairs. They passed through several sets of doors, passed too many patrols of ghosts to number, and still they dropped lower into the depths of the mountain range. Throughout the whole journey, the First and Forsaken Lion did not speak and Matthias did not disturb his silence.

All at once, they came out of a moldering flight of steps and into a spacious hall. Ghosts were packed into tight fighting formations. Curious siege-like weapons were set into the walls, manned by more ghosts. The door at the other end of the room seemed a simple enough affair, all crumbling wood and tarnished brass but every inch of firepower here was directed at whatever might come out.

The two of them flew past that room as quickly as they had every other place in the Thousand but what lay on the other side was markedly different.

Past the door lay a realm of broken chains and iron.

The air itself felt different and Mnemon Matthias experienced a most curious sensation. If he had to put a label on it, he would have said he'd just walked into a waking nightmare. There was nothing immediately threatening in the tunnel the two walked down now but danger was ever-present in the air.

This place felt surreally real. The chains protruding from the wall, the ancient and worn racks and clamps lining the floor, even the disintegrating black rock of the walls bore the weight of history. This wasn't an intentional choice of hallway decoration, designed to elicit fear or terror. Instead, fear, terror and pain lingered in the winding passageways with the old metal, as if neither had faded after something horrible had happened long ago.

"Stay close," the First and Forsaken Lion said, still striding without fear or hesitation. Strangely, he never seemed to need to stoop, although Matthias had to duck parts of the ceiling frequently to avoid braining himself on a loose rock or a set of broken manacles.

"Yes, my Lord."

"I have words for you, Abyssal." The Lion didn't slow but his voice carried the tone of one with something dark to say.

"Yes, my Lord."

"I don't trust you."

"My Lord?" Matthias wasn't really surprised. Actually, what surprised him was that the First and Forsaken Lion was bringing this up with him at all.

"You are an unknown quantity to me, Day Caste. I have not tested your mettle in battle, either against me or for me. You spent several lifetimes serving your religion, serving your Realm, serving and belonging to a people I have nothing but undying hate for. There is every possibility that you will be crippled by conscience in the future. You could break."

"My Lord..." Mnemon Matthias paused, halting over what to say next. This was the first that he'd heard of the Lion's personal hate for the Realm. Did the ghost mean to attack the Blessed Isle itself?

The Deathlord had a good point, though. Where were his loyalties? Even if he swore his everlasting soul to the cause of this man's Masters, could he really sanction an attack against the whole continent? For with the Legion Sanguinary, there could be no other use for such a tremendous army but to invade en masse. "I am what I am," he said, hoping the ambiguous answer would pacify the stern warlord.

"It is good you do not lie to me, Abyssal!" the First and Forsaken Lion snarled. "I know the weight of your weak heart. A pity I do not have the decades it would take to grind in the edge I need. You will have to do, though."

"If you don't trust me, my Lord, why did you Exalt me?"

"Because They wanted me to."

The ominous reference to the First and Forsaken Lion's masters was bone-chilling, especially down here. Occasionally, the black rock gave way to decaying flesh. Sometimes it was bone. Every so often, it was a vile pus they had to step around or a churning mix of quicksilver and acid. What could exist down here, other than the Neverborn? ...unless the dead Primordials and the First and Forsaken Lion's masters were one and the same.

Strange moans and screams resonated across the labyrinthine tunnels but they met no one. Hours more passed before they broke clear of the maze. Mnemon Matthias was relieved to be out of the cramped halls until he saw what lay in front of him.

An immense stairwell spiraled endlessly down into darkness before the Abyssal. Large enough for troops to march down it, the cracked and breaking stairs slid downward along the circular wall like a ruin slowly crumbling in. The Lion started down. With just the two of them, there was plenty of room to walk but the emptiness filling the space encompassed by the walls had a vicious taste to it.

"My Lord?" Matthias asked as the long descent wore on. Perhaps it was fatigue that accounted for his willingness to question the Lion. He'd been awake for at least a day, probably two by now. But it was more likely that his lack of control accounted for it. Mnemon Matthias was not used to being so powerless, to be so uninformed when he had so many questions.

"You may speak, Abyssal." The Lion's voice was neither angry or pleased.

"What happens after this meeting?"

"Your training begins in earnest." At least the Deathlord sounded satisfied about that.

"Who will I be training with?"

"With me." The Lion marched on for another dozen steps before continuing. "When I do not have the time, you will perfect your fighting techniques against my best Nemissaries. Your evenings will be spent in tutelage of Necromancy, from me or from the Princess Magnificent if I have other obligations."

"Will I be training with other...Abyssal?" The new name of the Anathema wasn't one he'd heard before but the Deathlord had called him almost nothing else.

"Hardly," the First and Forsaken Lion chuckled. "You are the First. But you will not be the last. Remember that, Abyssal." The Deathlord chuckled again and said no more. Matthias wondered then what the Anathema really were...and if he was less damned than they or more.

At last, just as the decay on the stairwell became so marked that Matthias stared fearing to walk on them, they reached one last tunnel. The Lion turned into it and moved through drifting links of chain that swayed like curtains from the ceilings. Behind him, the child-demons slowed and had to be pulled several times to keep their pace. Mnemon Matthias didn't feel all that comfortable here either.

The passageway took less than fifteen minutes to cross before it widened out into the edge of a vast cavern, broken up only by a great sepulcher. The further the First and Forsaken Lion walked, the further Matthias followed him, the bigger the place seemed to be. It was easily the largest underground opening he'd ever heard of. By the time they'd crossed half of it, it was very obvious that it was larger in size than the Imperial City.

It was also obvious that the tomb ahead was as large as the whole grounds of the Imperial Palace.

It could be nothing else but a burial building. The ornate carvings were full of iconic representations of the dead, symbols of warding and reward for the afterlife. Great sections of the wall were carved to show unspeakable torments, some that made Matthias physically ill to see. Everywhere he looked, he found a new blasphemy, a new perversion, some new portrayal of torture and torment and the depravity of evil.

Finally, he just kept his eyes on the ground.

Still, the memories of what he'd seen resonated in his thoughts, creeping out from behind his eyes to tease his mind. Matthias ground his teeth. Seen through his mind's eye, the torture seemed seductively agreeable. It was right for the master to dominate his lessers and the statues of horribly flayed people almost smiled with pleasure they refused to show.

What was wrong with him?

"From the moment you set foot in this mausoleum, you must begin the rituals you were to learn. For your sake, you had best perform them perfectly. He Who Holds in Thrall is not a forgiving Master."

The First and Forsaken Lion paused outside of the tomb. Matthias stopped too, until he realized the Deathlord wanted him to go in without him.

"My Lord, I thought you were presenting me to your Masters."

"I have," the Lion answered. "Now go. He wishes to speak with you. Do not keep Him waiting."

Mnemon Matthias did not know how much time had passed when he finished. From the sweat dripping off his body and from the grinding ache of his worn body, it was obvious that the exacting rituals had taken some time. Exhausted, Matthias knelt before the interior tomb of He Who Holds in Thrall and awaited his Master's judgment.

"I see you."

The Voice was a curious chorus, belonging to the broken bodies of half a dozen...things before the inner sarcophagus. The actual coffin was large enough to fit the biggest sailing ship in the world inside, implying something disturbing about the size of it's inhabitant. Arranged before the single small door leading inside, the damned dead lay and it was to them Matthias had been instructed to worship.

"I see the one Heaven calls Mnemon Matthias." The unearthly voices issued from torn jaws and mouths, each deceased creature speaking a single word picked up by another, as if rehearsed. Matthias was glad he was required to look down. He didn't want to see their monstrosity nor what had been done to them.

"I see the one the Realm calls the Heretic." Matthais felt nervous but knew better than to speak. His fate was entirely in the hands of this creature, this master that the First and Forsaken Lion served. His only comfort lay in the fact that nothing he could do, nothing that could be done to him would be worse than what had already been pronounced by the Mouth of Peace.

"I see the one the First and Forsaken Lion calls Abyssal." Kneeling, Matthias waited submissively for the Master's judgment.

"Do you offer Me your life?"

"Yes." It wasn't doing him much good anyway and he had nothing to look forward to but a few dozen lifetimes as a beetle somewhere in the East.

"Do you offer Me your soul?"

Matthias winced. It had come to this. Now that he was here, could he really go through with it?

He couldn't help but look up at the wrecked corpses of the indescribable creatures that lay before the tomb. They were looking at him...and there was something wonderful in their gaze. Join us, they seemed to whisper inside of him. Experience this perfect state. Connect to the perfect quiet of death. Bend your head and give us your soul and we will care for it as the priceless treasure it is. Be our slave and become free.

"Yes," Matthias said at last. He couldn't help himself. The wicked allure of their eyes was more than he could stand. Dropping his eyes back to the floor, he felt a little clearer but the images on the walls still burned away at his conscience. What had this place done to him? What was he now, really?

"Do you offer Me your name?"

"Yes," Matthias said slowly. That was unexpected. Why would they care what his name was?

"Do you offer Me your allegiance?"

"Conditionally," Matthias said.

A great roar of rage went up and something black suddenly pressed upon the Abyssal from all sides. The world itself caught him and its grip promised absolute destruction at its wielder's wish. If the Underworld was a dream of the Neverborn, as some scholars said, this Neverborn was God and Matthias was without hope.

"You dare!" the corpses shrieked at him from somewhere beyond the blackness.

"For the Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers!"

A ominous silence settled over the tomb. Matthias waited for his end but it didn't come. That was a good sign, he thought.

"Continue," the Voice said at last.

"I do not ask for my freedom for I stand before you a condemned man!" Matthias cried out. "But she is a devoted servant of the Void. The reason I kneel before you at all is because of her! My only condition is this; that when the time is right, you free her from the First and Forsaken Lion. Allow her to carry out this prophecy she spent a century and a half shaping!"

"Done," pronounced the corpses with a finality that made Matthias tremble where he knelt. So easy? Was he truly so valuable? Or was her freedom so small a thing? "I claim you as My own. Come to Me."

Matthias rose to his feet as the blackness fled. He was helpless before the irresistible force of that Voice. Slowly, he stepped over the broken bodies. As he passed, they clamped manacles around his feet, around the stumps of his hands, at last around his neck. He paused without knowing why and he didn't even shiver when they pulled his robe from him.

Chains slid over his naked flesh, the cruel soulsteel cutting his skin where it passed. Loops of it locked into place at each manacle, from toe to hand to head. Matthias stood passively as, link by link, his body was encircled in a loose mesh of chains.

In a second of unbelievable agony, the chains suddenly snapped rigidly into a cage of soulsteel built across his whole body. The metal tore into his flesh in every place and quickly his skin darkened with freely flowing blood. Matthias had been an Earth Immaculate. He was no stranger to injury. But this...this was a pain-wracked sovereignty he would never escape from.

And yet, as he stepped beyond the bodies to the door, the chains moved with him. Over the pain, beyond the red streaks he was leaving across the decaying stone floor, Mnemon Matthias felt a power he'd never imagined. The chains seemed to bleed away his fear and fill him instead with strength.

Opening the door was difficult without hands but Matthias managed it. He closed it behind him once he was inside. Then, he was face to face with the Truth behind that Voice. Comprehension slipped from his mind and words wrapped around his denial at the sight.

"You are Mine. The Fulcrum Hammer comes to Me at last and he is Mine. You are late but not unexpectedly so. And now, I will tell you your new destiny."

The Prophecy of the Fulcrum Hammer.
Dragon’s byblow by a blow,
Honor, disgrace and depravity and discontent,
War he will bring, against the Pivot Child he stands.
Before him life falters, green dies, color fades,
With hands that scream, he will bring forth screams,
And through them, destine all of Creation to die. 
A Hinge of the world, upon him fate turns,
To light or the darkness he’ll deliver existence,
But for him, the choice is already made.

"You will destroy Creation. You will kill the world and bring it into the Void. This, I dreamed an Age ago. This dream touched the dreams of the Five Maidens and the Pivot Child took shape, your adversary, your nemesis. But by giving rise to your opposite, they accepted My dream and allowed for its reality."

"This is your fate and not even the entire combined might of Heaven can turn it aside. You will triumph. The Void is inevitability and you are the Hammer that will drive Creation to it."

Mnemon Matthias felt the Voice root itself in him, driving past his flesh and spirit to chain him inside as he was already out. He screamed as Its voracious hunger chewed his identity apart until there was nothing left before the Neverborn but the shattered pieces of what had been a man.

The wreckage that was left shuddered and bled upon the cold stone, waiting for a name and a purpose.

"The First and Forsaken Lion will give you your new title in time but I name you Dissent. You are the Fulcrum Hammer, Dissent. Become My weapon against the world. Obey the First and Forsaken Lion but serve Oblivion."

"In the end, there is only the End."