Chapter Text
TESTIMONY OF THE FRIGHT KNIGHT PERTAINING TO THE ALLEGED TRUTH BEHIND PARIAH DARK, CE 2004
Every ghost, in the Zone or in the world, knows the legend of Pariah Dark. He was a tyrannical ghost who enslaved his closest friend, and killed all his others. It took the power of the six strongest sorcerers in the Ghost Zone to seal him away-- for good, in theory. Nobody still in existence could say the truth of the matter, until now. I was there, and this statement I make today will detail my account of Pariah Dark’s fall from grace. As a knight of the Ghost Zone’s former Old Kingdom, I give my complete and honest word.
Statement begins.
Pariah, too, was a knight of the Ghost Zone. His name was Tarran, and mine was Amaku. For centuries, we served the High Court of the King Achilles as brothers. You see, a king did not rule without a court and a parliament of ghosts dubbed Observants to remove him if his power grew out of control. Checks and balances, one might say.
Knights were employed much in the way police are now-- they stopped ghosts infringing on the rights others claimed. It shames me to say that it enabled knights themselves to infringe on those rights, further so to admit that my brother and myself were once those knights. We pushed ghosts who could not defend themselves out of their rightful lairs and claimed it as the King’s land, thinking we were doing a good thing by expanding his empire. It was during one of these raids that we discovered a portal, a natural one, that led to the year CE 1769 within the World of the Living.
Tarran was the one who hesitated entering-- Even now, I am rather impulsive and hot-headed. (Forgive the pun.) But I convinced him to journey past the portal with me and explore what life was like now.
In a word, it was breathtaking. We had found ourselves in a country that hadn’t even been a concept when we were alive. The people did not speak in Greek, and they did not write like it either. It took us years to learn their language. But there were two things we knew quickly. This country was the heart of an empire, and its people were in the midst of an industrial revolution. Technology like we had never seen before now existed, and entertainment to go along with it. Stageplays with women, games played with paper cards, paper , and, most importantly, the circus.
Many people knew we were ghosts and avoided us, some even tried to fight us, but we paid them no mind. They couldn’t hurt us-- or so we thought.
No, we soon came across a very strange man, one who I later learned to be named Philip Astley. Normally, he would not have been a problem, but the wretch had crafted himself a very peculiar staff, the very nature of which was terrifying to Tarran and myself. It made short work of taking control of our willpower.
When I first came to, Astley was there, but Tarran was still under the staff’s spell. A hostage, he explained. And soon, an act at his circus. He explained that the best performances come from authenticity of character, and he would be expecting me to be authentic. So I was… for a while.
But Astley had discovered the portal, not yet and perhaps not ever closed. And from there he drew other ghosts.
Some were ghosts I had never met before. Farmers, hunters, gladiators, even the occasional prince. But worse were those I had met. Fellow knights, ghosts whose land I had stolen, members of the parliament. Each of them went under his spell and became part of the circus. All but me.
Astley was a craftsman, I learned, and he had a fascination with the supernatural. An expert craftsman, I must stress-- he made talismans that were indistinguishable from artifacts made in the Ghost Zone. Many fell into obsolescence and became spread around the world, but three persisted. The first was titled the Soul Shredder. It was a sword that could rend anybody cut with it into a dimension of their own nightmares. This he granted to me.
The other two belonged hand in hand. They were called the Crown of Fire, which burned with the life force of its possessor and restored it tenfold, and the Ring of Rage that diverted latent energy into the body of its holder. The two of them only worked when they were both worn-- that much energy could incinerate somebody unfit.
As it was, I was deemed unfit for it, and the artifacts were given to Tarran. With them, his power became immense-- stronger than that of King Achilles. And he was renamed accordingly: Pariah Dark. His act? Entertaining the people of London with a brilliant light show that, at the time, could only be done with the signature ray attack every ghost has. The living folk were amazed at this, and at the targets these attacks struck. They seemed to vaporize into thin air, with no remnants. The truth was, they were. Those were ghosts I knew, and ghosts I didn’t know, being eviscerated without a second glance in their direction from Tarran. Me, I looked every ghost I had to banish in the eyes and hoped they would know I was sorry.
In the beginning, at least. Over time, banishing ghosts to their own personal hells became less of a burden, and more of a simple task. They were no longer people, but simple obstacles to be overcome. Slowly, I began following Pariah’s lead.
And then, it happened. At the turn of the century, Pariah overwhelmed the new ringmaster-- not so well-versed in the ways of ghosts, he was--and took the staff for himself. The portal we had arrived through itself had not closed, for its anchor in the world had failed to deteriorate even after millennia. So was our return to the Ghost Zone.
But my friend Tarran had changed-- such, he no longer existed. No, instead, Pariah Dark existed in his place. And he made me his knight, under threat of my own evisceration. And so we conquered the Ghost Zone. We deposed the king and put the Parliament under control of the staff, and as such we ruled. He was close, very close to taking over all of the Ghost Zone, and the world was in sight. But he made the mistake of encroaching upon the Super-Sargasso Sorcerers.
These sorcerers lived in the corner of the Zone where lost worldly items tend to end up, and because of this, they were not easy to find. But once they had been disturbed, their retaliation was not merciful. They fashioned a sarcophagus to seal Pariah Dark within and imprisoned me within my sword.
The next time we were both released, the staff was missing, but those under its influence remained that way. It was in the ensuing battles that I turned sides, allying myself to Vlad Plasmius. Following this, Pariah was sealed away and remains imprisoned to this day.
I notice now that the influence seems to be fading from Pariah Dark's soldiers, for they act less like soldiers and more like people nowadays. Eventually, I hope the same will prove true for Tarran.
Statement ends.