Come Dawn or Darkness

The Abyss... A desolate, empty, endless void that can maintain neither life nor death. Perpetual darkness covers its every inch, blanketing ground, covering the sky, and distorting everything in between. There are no mountains, no hills, no valleys, no inclines or declines of any kind. No obstructions exist within the limitless confines of this pitch black prison. It simply stretches on and on, in every direction, endlessly. A flat, timeless, tenebrous path that leads to no where... and everywhere.

The Abyss is the shadow that exists in between every world that ever has been and ever will be. It separates them, ensuring that no two worlds ever intersect completely. But it also links them, acting as a highway for those who know the secrets to traversing its empty expanse. There are always those who will take great risks to make their own lives easier, as well as those who will take such risks simply to test themselves. Some travel these dark walkways in search of power, while others walk it in the hopes of stopping them. Many, if not most, who find themselves within its endless depths are not there of their own free will. Those who do not know exactly how cross this unlimited void may be lost within it for eternity, falling through what the skilled would use as solid ground, they may wander endlessly through the shadows, unable to escape and unable to die.

The Abyss, the Void, Purgatory, all names for a single location outside of time and space. Nothing can live there, yet that has never stopped those who seek worlds outside their own from utilizing it as a way to gain the knowledge, power, or wealth that one life cannot provide them with. And it is one such man, one pilgrim in this realm of shadows and emptiness, whose journey we will be following here. We will not know his name, his age, or anything of his past with certainty, as it is unlikely that even he knows those things himself. All that matters is that his story be recorded here, and that it entertain you, my dear reader... if only for a moment.

Come Dawn or Darkness

His name has been lost within the vast nothingness that is the Abyss. It happened during his very first journey into that realm; a harrowing tale of adventure and sacrifice, with a touch of romance thrown in for good measure... Unfortunately that is not the tale that you have stumbled upon today. Suffice to say it did not have a happy ending.

His journey concluded with a tremendous fall through the pitch black fog of that realm, a fall which lasted for centuries, though outside of the confines of time there would be little way of knowing that. During his time plummeting through an endless pit of unlight, insanity sank in. His memories began to fade, the darkness claiming every trace of his old life. It took everything he knew of himself when he had still been a normal man from what we might consider a somewhat more hopeful picture of what the Earth could have been before the bombs began to fall. His childhood, his family, even his name, all stripped away as he fell through nothingness and into nothingness.

It was not until the madness had successfully ravaged his mind for well over four hundred years that he finally came to understand the true nature of the empty world he had been cast into. And with that understanding came the knowledge of how to stop his imprisonment within it. His fall came to a graceful halt, his boots touching down on what was now ground as solid as the floor beneath you this very moment. Without hesitation he took a step forward, and it was then that his journey truly began. The black mists swirled around his legs as he walked, his destination unclear and uncertain. After an indeterminable amount of time, he reached that very destination completely by accident, as he was pulled from the void into a world which mirrored his own almost to the letter.

The world he entered was full of humans, men and women who recognized him as one of their own. But it was a world that had taken a different path toward its future, one where mankind's most powerful nations had dedicated themselves to the study of the arcane rather than pursuing scientific supremacy. The greatest sorcerers of this world had managed to pluck him from the Abyss during an attempt to summon forth one of the dark beasts that they were convinced resided within it. Its safe to say that conjuring a human who resonated with the very aura of the void was the last thing they had expected.

They refered to him as a beacon of harnessable energy, a veritable torrent of abyssal power. The phrase stuck in his mind, and so he chose to keep it, in an attempt to fill the one of the holes in his mind left by his centuries of falling. He named himself Torrent of the Abyss, and though the wizards who had now claimed him as their own scoffed at such a pretentious claim, none would attempt to find him a more appropriate one.

He remained in their world for a time, learning all that he could of magic from them as the wizards secretly siphoned the energies of the Abyss from his very being. When he felt that he had gained all the knowledge he could from their plane of existence he attempted to enter the shadows once more, but they would not allow it. Man-kind, in any form, craves power above all else and Torrent had proven to be a seemingly limitless spring of arcane resources. The mages who had welcomed him so openly had intended for him to remain their honored guest forever, but faced with the threat of having the living battery walk away, they chose to make him their prisoner instead. This proved to be... foolish, on their part.

Torrent had resided in the void for too long to be able to exist in a single world for long. He had become a denizen of the Abyss, and it did not easily give up its residents. And so it was that, while being pursued by the citizens of his temporary home, Torrent was reclaimed by the darkness, the Abyss piercing the mages' world in order to drag him back. All those caught within the shadowy maelstrom which sucked him in suffered the same fate that he had once before: a timeless fall through the paths of the void.

It was after his experience with the mages that he began actively seeking new worlds to explore. He limited himself to only spending a few years in any given location, having been pulled forcefully back to the Abyss after just one decade in that first realm. He saw wondrous places and learned a great deal about himself and the nature of the universe. Specifically, he learned that his mere presence was enough to amplify the natural traits and abilities of those around him, as well as the supernatural ones, should they possess any. This, in turn, taught him that no matter where he travelled to, someone would always wish to harness his power for themselves. The Abyss became his only safe haven as more and more worlds furthered his distrust in sentient beings. Until he eventually learned that, even there, he was not safe from grasping hands.

During his journey through the darkness his unending sense of loneliness was occasionally interrupted by by an overwhelming sensation of all primal fear. Yet nothing ever presented itself as a threat to him as he walked between worlds. It was not until he made his return from a disheveled, broken world whose apocalypse had come and gone long before, that he came face to face with one of his stalkers. The creatures who call the Abyss their home are really little more than poor souls who have lost themselves in their journeys from one world to the next. Still, that does little to alleviate the fact that the majority of such creatures actively hunt those who wander the void, devouring them in the hopes of regaining some semblance of the sane mind they abandoned during their own travels. It also does not make these twisted abominations of what were once intelligent beings any less horrible to behold.

The creature that had hunted Torrent in this particular instance was a near indescribable coagulation of oily black tentacles, protruding from three gaping maws on that opened and closed on different parts of its body. The mouths shifted to different points on its body each time they closed, giving it the illusion of having thousands of jaws, with only three ever being open at a single time. It moved slowly, inching forward on a mass of what were once dozens of human legs. This creature seemed to be made of the combined corpses of over thirty different people, all collected together and broken down into some misshapened monstrosity. The tentacles had human hands protruding from them, grasping at the air in front of the creature. Its legs twitched and folded as it slowly rolled toward its prey. It was a thing to be pitied as much as to be feared. Yet all Torrent could do as it approached was slowly back away in horror.

The creature increased its own speed, approaching the traveler with its dozens of arms outstretched from its mouths which opened and closed constantly. Torrent was unable to run from it, nearly frozen by a growing sense of hopelessness that threatened to freeze him in place entirely. He continued to back away, but now the hunter was approaching faster than he was retreating; it would be upon him in a matter of moments. Finally realizing what was at stake, he began using whatever spells and incantations he could call to mind to slow the creature down. Most of his attempts failed to delay the beast, barely hindering its advance in the slightest. A few spells hit their mark and made the creature flinch away before continuing forward after a few seconds. These he proceeded to hurl at the dark mass of limbs and flesh over and over again until he realized that their affect of his pursuer was diminishing with each successful hit.

He knew he could out run it if he were to turn and flee, to simply sprint off and not stop until he found another world to hide in; but he feared that, should he show some sign of competence by exploiting this advantage, the creature hunting him would simply rush toward him while his back was turned. He feared it would simply into some unforeseeable source of speed that it would not bother wasting unless its prey were truly about to escape. So he continued hitting it with everything he had learned in his travels, suddenly wishing that he had trained his body as well as his mind during his journey. One good swing from a sharp or heavy object would sever those tentacles and blunt weapon could easily flatten the fleshy mound that housed the beasts innards. Yet he was unarmed, ill-prepared, and caught thoroughly off-guard when it had appeared.

It was in that moment that he first glimpsed another of his own kind within that shadowy realm; two of them, in fact. The pair stepped out from behind him, as if they had been waiting patiently for this moment for hours. They were clad in strange flowing robes, pale grey and fitted with bits of black metal that shifted colors as they walked. Black, then grey, then pale red to white, the bits of armor bolted to the robes constantly changing with each step. One carried a long, twisted sword, the other had a massive axe propped upon his shoulder. Both stepped into the path of the monstrosity that had been hunting Torrent, causing it to reevaluate its prey and determine if these newcomers were worth the effort of a fight. Before it even got the chance to come to a complete stop the pair were upon it, blades flashing in the darkness as they drove into the fleshy mound that rose before them.

Torrent decided that he had either given the idea of a sword too much credit, or this monster not enough. While he had assumed that he would have been able to cleave it apart in few swings of a normal steel blade, it took over a dozen swings from both of the massive weapons the hunters carried in order to bring the beast down. As the final blow was struck the blades of both the sword and axe began to glow with a sickly green aura. They turned to face the grateful wanderer, the pile of decapitated skin and bone twitching slightly as as the weapons were removed from it. They approach the one they just rescued, imploring as to the nature of his journey in the Abyss, but he has little to say of it. As they converse, the weapons they carried disappear into the shadows, reclaimed by the void that forged them.

They spoke for a long while in that place, with many questions being asked by both parties, yet few ever being answered. In the end, Torrent learned that they were knights of some distant world, a world which had been all but erased from existence, engulfed by the Abyss itself. Now they act as guardians and hunters, gathering the souls of the beasts that hunt weaker travelers, though they went into no details on what the souls were used for. Torrent thought it better not to ask, and instead implored them to take him them when they returned to their world. This they did, hesitantly enough, after he assured them that he possessed knowledge that their people would find useful; knowledge he had obtained during his time with the mages.

Their journey took years, but in the timelessness of the void it was little more than a casual walk to the world that his rescuers had come from. No fatigue plagued them as they walked, nor did any other creatures waylay them on their journey. The hunters arrived as the sun rose within their own world, the traveler close behind them. It was in that world that he would spend the next chapter of his life.

The knights and scholars who protected this world did not provide him with a particularly warm welcome. Suspicion and distrust were all that that poor, mistreated world had to offer for outsiders. Yet over time, the wanderer proved that he could be useful to them; providing the scholars and old masters with the knowledge he had gathered throughout his long travels. He taught the spells and rituals he had learned to those who knew the ways of magic. He even entertained the masses with tales of the worlds he had briefly called his home. And eventually, he was taught the ways of the abyssal knights whose order had saved him so many years before.

During his stay in that dying world, Torrent learned to better understand his own powers. He still had no control over the influence he had over the natural abilities of those around him. That would forever remain something he would struggle to comprehend, involuntarily enhancing the talents of those within his proximity, friend and foe alike. He was gifted with a sword, made of the same strange metal that all the warriors of this world used. As he slowly began to master it, however, he quickly became aware that his grasp understanding of magic and the arcane was slipping away the more skilled he became with the large, clumsy weapon. He eventually settled stopped learning new techniques from the masters-at-arms, in favor of maintaining his own knowledge of the mystic arts.

This world had finally accepted him, finally given him a place where he felt he belonged, felt he could be safe and happy. It was a place that, given the choice, he never would have left. Yet all good things must come to an end in time, and not always the sort of end that one may wish for. In the case of this dying world, the end came in the form of loud, earth-shattering CRACK as the final remnants of its existence gave way, and the shattered remains of what was once a beautiful plane of existence fell head-long into the Abyss. Thousands were lost in the fall, sent hurtling into the darkness without the knowledge of how to escape its lifeless embrace. The few hundred whom had learned the secrets to traversing the everlasting shadows did all in their power to save tho they could find. Some allowed themselves to be swallowed up so that they might reach loved ones who had fallen through the void. Many left to track down those who had clung to fragments of their old world. In the end, the order of knights and hunters, the defenders of those lost in the dark expanse, dispersed, vowing to continue their work, even without a home to return to. They would continue to safe-guard travelers and guide the lost souls who found themselves hurtling through that nightmarish plane. And Torrent, having taken the same oaths and vows as the rest of the Order, followed suit.

Centuries passed. Worlds formed, thrived, recessed, and fell. Countless beings fell victim to the void's cruel snare. Many were rescued, many were not. Yet still he wandered on, not knowing where he was going, slowly forgetting where he had come from. The path before him stretched on like a dream, wavering on the brink of reality with each step he took. He stopped to rest in many different worlds, learning what he could from each and sometimes providing them with knowledge of his own.

Of the numerous souls he had saved from falling through the Abyss' dark reaches, several chose to travel with him. These he taught the vows and lessons he had himself had taken, effectively growing the Order, as he was certain the other knights were doing as well. Most whom he rescued begged to be brought back to their own worlds, and he did his best to fulfill that wish. During this part of his journey, he found that it was often easy to trace someone back to the world they had fallen in from, though he also learned that it was nearly impossible for one to trace that path for themselves; a second party always had to be present, another living soul who could see the strands that connected a person to their home.

Those who chose to join the Order eventually set out on their own, often without the security of true weapons or armor, and never equipped with anything as magnificent as the blades the knights Torrent had once trained with had used. The beings that he rescued from the cold clutch of the Abyss generally wished to thank him for their safe return in some way. As such, he found himself taking rest in many strange and wonderful worlds, exploring and learning from each realm that he brought any lost beings back to.

It was during this time, when safe-guarding those lost in the void was his only purpose in life, that our story takes place. Yes, at long last, this annotated history is at an end, and the real story can begin. And it shall begin right where we started originally: traversing the dark and deceiving path that is the void between worlds.