H'taed's Story

He was burning. Fire raged about him alongside the sound of carapaces bursting and soft innards turning to ash. His form dissolved into a swarm of writhing insects in an effort to dissipate away from the flames of the furnace. There was no escape, and the bugs burst in the heat, leaving H'taed screaming in fury as two pairs of eyes stared down hatefully.
Two children. Two mere children! They had been his end... The end to his killing, his legacy, to his life.
The flames rushed to consume the rest of his form, and the darkness encroached.

Birdsong awoke him, and H'taed found himself laying on his back, clothed in his robe and mask as he usually was. The insects were back, his form renewed. He smelled not of ash and fire as he suspected he would have. The smell of green grass was all around, and as he sat up he found himself in a field of green, ghastly life.

Was this what the Afterlife was? After such a deranged creature as himself had killed, and killed again, he was saved? Given to the higher lords as a good creature rather than the demon that lurked within him, and sought to kill any being that crossed his malevolent red orbs.
Certainly there had been a mistake. He had spent all of his existence doing evil, and yet here he was in a paradise...

H'taed eyed the surroundings uneasily, still not certain that all of it was real. More likely than not, this was a hell designed just for him. Life in paradise was hell to a creature that thrived on destruction. Utterly boring without something to kill. Yet, there were these people here in the clearing... they could die. Probably. Just the thought of a gruesome death gave him a shudder of anticipation, a quivering of a thousand pairs of wings, the rustling of spindly legs over hard carapace. The insects increased their pace, giving his robe an odd look as bumps traveled beneath it.

Then the winged creature spoke, his words resounding and authoritarian. H'taed found himself shrinking away from his with an insectile hiss. The God, for that was surely what he was, embodied everything H'taed was not. They did not mix. They were two sides of two completely different coins.

As if to purposefully attract his attention away from the winged entity, there was a fanfare of thunder behind him. Turning quickly, H'taed whirled around to brandish his hands from inside his sleeves, maggots dripping from the larger collection of bugs making up said hands. Spells would lurch into being before slowly dying out on his hands.
The creature that settled here was utterly magnificent.

The brilliant bird attracted H'taed's attention more than anything else. It held him in astonishment and awed silence. The land, the misconceptions about how he'd gotten here, the other people, all of it could be forgotten while he marveled at her. Wordlessly, the creature conveyed it's power, it's magnificence by merely being here in this grassy landscape.
With a great snap of her beak, she locked H'taed in a brief state of... happiness. It was a entity to be worshiped. People would be sacrificed to this beast if H'taed had his way. Crimson blood would spray the fields of this never ending plain. The very sky would crack with lightening and thunder every minute of every day if H'taed could help it. And all for this wondrously horrid beast, the beast of beauty, though terrifying in every way to the unobservant eye.

Every creature here with him would go up to it in a lovely arterial spray.

The Entity of Creepycrawlies nearly fell to his knees as the monstrously beautiful Roc began to dissolve before him. Overwhelming emotions struck him, something he hadn't known in life. Nothing had left him so horribly empty. Nothing but death.
The monument to savagery and defilement was nothing now but black goo and blue smoke. Crestfallen, H'taed turned to the man who had approached him. glancing him up and down, before looking past him to the odd bird-dragon lady staring in awe at Endrykas. H'taed did not see the allure. The god was lord over nothing if death did not intervene.

But then, in a swirling blue mist, the goddess emerged. She commanded all of the insect-creature's attention, enveloping him in the aura of danger that surrounded her. When she spoke, the monster gave a step back, his iron mask slipping as the bugs beneath lost their grip on it. She was too much to be real. It was the embodiment of everything he worshiped, everything he was.
She was Death.

As Endrykas spoke again, H'taed snapped out of his trance, looking to the god. The man kneeling before him was a fool. He was pledging himself to an inferior god. There was no higher existance than that of Death, no greater peace. Life was horrible and short. Death was forever.

As the goddess left, he caught a nod from her, a glance that could have been mistaken as her looking to the treeline behind him. He shuddered blissfully with the thought of this goddess having taken interest in him. Insects tumbled from the long sleeves of his robes, the millipedes and worms finding solace in the ground below, wriggling into the soft loam with gusto. And with that, she was gone.

"Might I take this moment to introduce you all to Neviru, the Goddess of Destruction. Her realm is over those mountains of which she came from."
H'taed whispered the name, enjoying the feel of it. Even if this was no afterlife, he would find happiness here, through the pain of others. He was certain that the goddess would feel the same as him.

Turning to the god of creation, H'taed stood up tall and straight, growing taller and taller as the bugs climbed on top of each other. His robe seemed to deflate as he grew thinner, and a mound of writhing bugs could be seen where the hem of his robe no longer reached below his form.
"What is the quickest path to the lands of Neviru?" His words were cold and precise. There was no hint of jest or insecurity, only resounding resolve.
"And what is it that you want?" He asked Artegal, growing shorter now. There was no need for such height when he wasn't speaking with the god.