So, how do I know all this? And how does this relate to my being forgotten? I'll get there, but first let me tell you about my 3rd Nightmare.
Ah, I guess you wouldn't know, it seems you just got back to life after all. After the Battle of Black Skull, things went sideways. Multiple harrowing Great Nightmare Creatures of a high Class appeared. The losses were devastating, but what followed was almost worse.
We escaped into the Dream Realm, but were pulled into the Nightmare Desert due to the distortion of the Chain of Nightmares.
One of the Great creatures, the Skinwalker, had taken over the corpses of all who had fallen, and simply by existing in those bodies, each body gained the strength of a lesser Saint. That thing, it was a Great Terror, I think. From what I can tell, it had no limit in how many corpses it could take over.
It was clever too, if I could not see into the Souls Cores of people, I wouldn't have even noticed that some of the people I talked to had been taken over.
In such a dire situation, we had little choice but to flee to a Nightmare, and attempt to become Saints.
Mordret was the one to find the Nightmare Seed, it was born from a large chunk of black stone. Somehow, a chunk of the Black Pyramid had been tossed all the way out into the Desert.
And that is where our trial took place.
Inside that dreadful place, Nephis, Mordret, Kai, Effie, Jet, Cassie, Caster, and I went through hell.
That place, what was kept there was beyond anything I could have imagined.
From some Memory Descriptions, I learned that it was created by one of the Daemons, the Demon of Dread, Ariel.
He had built it out of the corpse of an Unholy Titan he had slain. And within that impenetrable place, he created a world that defied all logic.
I guess I'll explain it to you from an outsider's perspective, we didn't realize for a while the true nature of the Nightmare, but it is necessary to understand what happened.
What existed in the Tomb of Ariel was something called the River of Time. With the remains of the Unholy Titan, Ariel created a dimension removed from time on the outside world by creating something truly monstrous.
The River was a physical river of enormous size, however, it was also quite literally the concept of time.
We who took on the Nightmare were able to go up and down the river like normal, but the people who lived there, the river folk would change in age depending on where they were in the river.
Furthermore, Ariel bent that concept to create something despicable.
The whole of the River of Time was in the shape of an infinity symbol. Due to the nature of it, that meant that any who could travel it in full were forced into an endless time loop.
…As I'm sure you can guess, our first attempt at conquering the Nightmare failed, and we were forced to restart the loop.
We restarted that loop over and over and over again.
I don't know how many loops there were exactly, but it was at least thousands of times.
Ah, the river was dangerous. There were plenty of creatures of the Corrupted Rank. However, we were likely the most dangerous Masters to ever exist apart from yourself. We did amazing things, grew even stronger than we were in that crucible. Hell, I even defeated a Great Beast with the help of Nephis.
I helped out the others by upgrading their gear as well. Thanks to some scavenging, both Effie and Kai's armor is now Supreme. The old Dawn Shard, that crown Nephis wore to empower Memories, is also now Supreme. I spent a long while copying that complicated Charm that Caster had, and managed to make a replacement.
Oh, you should know that it's even better. That Charm didn't negate his accelerated time, it simply stored it, and at his current speed, it would fill up fast. I made the new version Transcendent, so he should be good to use his Aspect for a long while.
Before I left on this journey, I checked to make sure that Caster went back to the Workshop, and he did. He is holding down the fort until Oskar can Ascend. At this point, that guy is actually probably back already though, so Caster will likely be out and about hunting and gathering resources to expand the Workshop.
Where was I…oh yes, we were strong. Formidable, even. Even in that terrible place, us Masters together became a force that was one to be reckoned with…as it turned out, that was the doom of the entire River of Time.
You see, Ariel didn't just build that place for no reason. He constructed it to guard a secret. He is domain included Truth, after all, so it was only natural he knew some terrible secrets.
Those secrets, that knowledge, was what I shared with you earlier. The truth about the Forgotten God and Corruption. If one were to go to the Estuary of the River of Time, that knowledge would be implanted in one's brain all at once, and such a thing would lead to only one outcome: Corruption.
That knowledge came to be known as the Defilement, and after taking a powerful host, the Defilement spread until all life had fallen in the River. Of course, since time was in a loop, those places were restored.
However, a terrible thing happened. The Tomb of Ariel is removed from time itself. The River is a self contained flow of time. The Estuary where the Defilement lay was a unique place in that realm, for it too was removed from the River, and thus any who stood upon it would not be beholden to the loop.
That was how the host of the Defilement remained throughout all iterations of the Nightmare, it was also how we, who reached that Host and were in turn Corrupted, returned in future loops as the Champions of the Defilement.
In the process of our Corruption, those versions of us had Transcended, and so, we were all of the 4th Rank, not the third.
Mordret and I became Corrupted Titans, the same level as the Winter Beast. The others all became Corrupted Beasts, but they were each far stronger than a creature of that level ought to be. Even Great Beasts were wary of them.
There was only one reason that the Nightmare did not end, releasing those Corrupted versions of us into the outside world.
It was because of Cassie.
She knew, perhaps even before entering the Nightmare, what the River of Time would do to us.
She also knew what would happen after we all were Corrupted. You recall Neph's Ascended Ability, right? It grants her an incorruptible soul.
So while the rest of us turned into abominations, she alone remained human. And time after time, loop after loop, the Corrupted versions of us slaughtered her.
…The thing is, that version of me who was Corrupted, I became truly terrifying. Even in that warped state, I refused to let Nephis die. So I restarted the loop, again and again, retaining all those memories and that experience. Over a thousand years of hell.
The loop would restart, and due to the uniqueness of the Estuary, there were two versions of us on the river.
The Masters who were pure, and the Seven Plagues. That was the name granted to the Corrupted versions of us by the people of the River.
Effie became the Devouring Beast, a giant whose insatiable hunger led to wide scale devastation.
Jet became Undying Slaughter, an incorporeal wraith who appeared in fog and reaped the souls of all who came near.
Mordret became Soul Stealer, the entity who wore thousands of faces, and was never once seen.
Caster became the Unseen Scream, he traveled across the River of Time with wild abandon, and wiped out entire settlements in seconds.
Kai, was the Dread Lord. It is quite unsettling what that Ascended Ability of his, that power to command with his voice, can do when not held back by morals. He was a dragon with scales of night, and was widely considered the chief amongst the Plagues.
Cassie became Torment, nothing was known about her except for the fact that when the creature appeared, the humans she visited would be erased.
Finally, there was me, the Mad Prince. That version of me, as well as Torment and the Dread Lord, were the most lucid of the group.
We could speak and plan at the very least. Though not a single rational thought could be formed.
I told you of Shadow Bond. Kai knew of it since our 2nd Nightmare. So when the Dread Lord was born and Nephis died, he was the first to utter my True Name. Even while I was Corrupted I was bound to him, a slave.
Unfortunately for him, an insane version of me with thousands of years of experience was much more than even a terror like him could handle.
Torment and the Mad Prince were both tortured by the loss of Nephis, even Corrupted our twisted obsession worked to forge a plan in which we all left the Nightmare as our Corrupted selves, while also saving Nephis as well.
The terrifying thing is, they actually almost did it.
I won't go into detail about everything that happened, but the Mad Prince managed to capture and contain each and every one of the Plagues, putting them in specific places where the Ascended versions of them could find and defeat them. Each gained a great boon when defeating their Corrupted selves, and that power allowed them to become even stronger than they were initially.
Each of the plagues fell one by one. Devouring Beast, Undying Slaughter, and Unseen Scream each were trapped in a separate, smaller time loop that existed within an island affixed to a whirlpool.
The Dread Lord and Soul Stealer were trapped in a large city and frozen in time due to an old runic device.
Meanwhile Torment and the Mad Prince went to work.
However, they were not on the same page. The Mad Prince fully intended for his Ascended self to get past a certain area, only to then re-corrupt him and rebirth the Mad Prince via Defilement.
However, Cassie had seen further ahead than even that, and put restrictions in place on Torment, ensuring that her plans would lead to an end result in which all would escape as Saints, and not Corrupted.
In the end, the Ascended version of me, or, I suppose it's just me managed to learn the secret of Defilement by using a Memory. It was actually the one I got for killing Goliath.
…Ah, you can't remember that.
Don't worry, the details aren't important. Just know that I had powerful Memory that allowed me to copy and imbue a single Aspect ability onto myself for a short period of time.
The Ability that I chose was Nephis's, the one that allowed me to become immune to the Defilement.
With that, I reached the heart of the Estuary.
While the rest of the Cohort defeated the Host of the Defilement, this time not allowing themselves to become Corrupted, I made my way to what I thought was freedom.
Cassie had promised me that day that she would be repaying me.
You see, Nephis only found out about my True Name, I only became a slave, because Cassie had seen it in a vision.
But in that Nightmare, Cassie gave me the choice to cast off my chains.
…and I did.
It was my most ardent wish and I got it. I received my freedom thanks to the horror that had nested in the heart of the Estuary.
A Cursed Terror, the Vile Thieving Bird, it's talons reached deep inside of me, and tore away my Fate at the same second that the Nightmare was completed.
I was free then, not only that, I was Transcendent, and escaped that hell while still being myself.
…but I was Fateless.
…I explained the whole story of the universe to you, not just because I thought you should know, but also to help you understand a very important fact.
Something else I've learned on my travels.
Fate is absolute. It is above the Divine, it is above the Gods and Daemons, and it even exists within the Void.
I do not know if it predates it, or if Fate caused the Flame of Desire to be born, or anything other than the fact that it is the pinnacle of all concepts.
That vile bird pulled quite the trick, normally no god could even touch the strings of fate, but its domain is theft, and it is uniquely powerful.
So I am Fateless, unrecognized by existence, and thus, everything that has to do with my existence has been erased.
It is gone, well and truly.
…I got what I wished for. I am free.