Hell Comes to Mordor 1 (MeSoM/CYOA) (Patreon)

I apologize for the lack of posts, I got Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor/War as a Christmas present for myself and got a bit caught up in them. This particular story loosely uses TroyX's Incubus Transformation CYOA.

Talion felt the skin of his neck part and split, his blood rushing out as he was held in place by the two men fighting alongside the uruks. Even as the man who slit his throat turned around, his gaze fell to Dirhael and Ioreth’s bodies. Lying, still and lifeless, on the ramparts of the Black Gate, their lifeblood spreading out to stain the stones surrounding them. The edges of his vision blurred, as Talion felt the cold specter of death claiming him.

Not quite yet, Ranger of the Black Gate.

A voice, cool and rough, echoed within Talion’s mind, and he tried to lift his eyes to focus.

The Black Hand of Sauron has used the deaths of you and your family to summon a wraith. Should I not interfere, then the wraith will bind itself to you. You will suffer in unspeakable ways, commit atrocities that would horrify you, and in the end, you will become one of the Nazgul answering the Dark Lord’s each and every command like a broken dog.

“Wh…” Talion tried to ask, but was unable to force the word out of his throat, instead coughing up more blood as he felt something in the air around him shift.

I am a spirit that has lost my home, my body, and most of my power. I cannot prevent this ritual from completing, I cannot affect the physical world, merely communicating with you is taking most of what little power I have left. What I CAN do, is ensure that your soul leaves. I can sever your soul’s tenuous grip on your body, and you will move on to the afterlife to be with your wife and son. In exchange, I will inhabit your body, I will endure the events that are to come, and have a chance to regain my old power. All I require is your permission.

Talion tried to speak, to ask for more information, but the shifting in the air grew deeper, and he felt something sliding into him. Realizing he was out of time, Talion did his best to think, to impress, his acceptance of the unknown spirit’s offer.

Enjoy your rest, Talion, Ranger of Gondor. You have more than earned it.

Darkness overtook Talion’s vision, and he let out the last breath he could. When he opened his eyes, it was in a tranquil, beautiful field, in front of a towering figure. They were at least half again Talion’s height, a long, sinuous tail whipped and twirled behind them, their skin was a dark blue that matched Gondor’s flag, and six gnarled, twisted horns grew from the sides of their head. Talion’s first thought was that the figure was some creature of Mordor, before realizing that they lacked the grotesque, misshapen form inherent in all the foul things that were of Mordor.

Before Talion could speak, to ask where he was and the whereabouts of Dirhael and Ioreth, the figure fell to a knee, his hand pressed tightly against his side. The figure held up his free hand, and said through grit teeth, his voice that of the spirit that spoke to him, “I know what I promised you, and you will be with them shortly. But I wanted to speak with you, face to face, before you passed on. To give you my thanks in person. Had you refused, I most likely would have faded before I could find another person to make my offer to. So for that, know that you have the gratitude of Urkamig Arzas, Grand Incubus and Archlord of the Seven Rings of Sheol.”

As the figure, Urkamig, finished speaking, he faded from view, and Talion saw his wife and son in the distance, running towards him. All thoughts of the spirit he made a deal with left Talion’s mind, as he rejoined his family.

[hr][/hr]

I gasped, air filling my new-to-me, mortal human lungs. Pulling myself to my feet, I took in my surroundings. Blackened stone, brown stains, and the bodies of Talion’s wife and son. I sighed, moments before the world around me shifted, and an entirely white figure stood before me.

“You do not belong here,” they said, glaring at me.

“And you do, wraith?” I shot back, a little surprised that the dead elf had noticed.

“I felt the spirit of the Man leave and something else take its place. I don’t know what you are, but I recognize that you are not a creation of Sauron’s. Who are you, and where do you come from?” the wraith demanded.

“You may call me Dante,” I told him, no way I was giving someone this untrustworthy my actual name. “I was born a mortal man, but I later became something else. I will explain more later, when we aren’t in a place liable to be crawling with people who wouldn’t mind killing us.”

The wraith stared at me, before turning around and fading from sight. I rolled my eyes at that, before setting about getting off the Black Gate and finding a place where I could do some rituals to secure my soul’s hold on Talion’s body. At the moment, the connection with the wraith was the only thing keeping my hastily woven soulbind intact. The moment he left, my soul would unravel and I’d be worse than dead.

Fortunately, I managed to find an isolated cave without running into any orcs. That was step one done, now to start on step two. I sighed, Fáelán was always the most mystically inclined of us. My interests were more in the martial and carnal than spellcraft. I still knew enough to do what I needed, but it would be nice if I had the fae lord’s help.

Still, no point in wasting any more time, the set up was going to take forever as it was. Kneeling down, I got to work. First was marking an encircled pentagram, then came the runes in Infernal. As I finished making the last of the markings, I felt the wraith’s presence behind me, not speaking but simply watching. Sitting in the center of the ritual circle, I closed my eyes and gathered what scraps of power I had available to me.

Taking out the broken sword that Talion would have used as a dagger, I cut the palm of my left hand and let the blood within flow onto the ground in front of me, sending the power into it as I spoke an appropriate incantation, “Zat’zk’vikt kt’ka venzt’ka z’k’kat.”

There was a flare of power, as the patchwork spell anchoring me to Middle-earth strengthened. For all intents and purposes, Talion’s body was now my own. All it took was a little blood, a few words, and about twelve hours getting the ritual circle ready.

“That was something dark,” the wraith mused aloud, “yet it was different from the sort of magic that called me here.”

“You aren’t wrong,” I told him as I stood and rolled my neck. “It was a ritual to make my borrowing of this body a more permanent arrangement. Interfering with the cycle of life and death isn’t exactly the lightest of arts. Though in my case, it was more of a reaffirmation than a full interference.”

Seeing I had his curiosity, I elaborated, “I made brief contact with Talion, the man whose body this originally was, and made him an offer. I could sense what it was you were going to do, and offered to sever his soul’s grip on his body a bit earlier than it otherwise would have. He got to pass on to be with his wife and son, and I got to use his body as a vessel as I recovered from a battle that nearly erased my soul from existence.”

My gaze remained firmly locked with the wraith’s. There was an old adage about deals with the devil, but I preferred to be upfront about any and all bargains I made. Not only did it make repeat business more likely, but it was always more satisfying when smug, holier than thou asshats insisted that they’d never go so far as to sell their soul, only for them to end up offering it up themselves after a dozen different lesser bargains.

“So what exactly is your goal for Middle-earth? I have no desire to aid the next Dark Lord,” the wraith eventually asked.

I scoffed, “I have no need or desire for world conquest or anything like that. At most, I will conquer Mordor, and that’s liable to be the result of a long chain of actions taken in self-defense. But to answer your question, I am weaker right now than I was when I first had my mortality burned out of me seven thousand years ago. My ‘goal’ is to rest and recover my strength, much like any warrior fresh off a defeat.”

“What manner of defeat?”

I let out a heavy breath through my nose, considering how much to tell him. In the end, I settled with, “The kind that left me metaphorically bleeding out on the battlefield. Now, shall we see about assessing the current state of Mordor, and dealing with those that summoned you from the void?”