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"Father..... are you pleased?"
Silence. Heavy as sin, weighing on the shoulders of he who was known only (by choice, by duty, as title, as punishment) as The Dark Urge. Truth laid plain there in the only agnomen worth being known by. His Father's Urge. Peel away the chaff to expose what lies beneath, there he is. There he was. There he will ever be.
Violence.
Subjugation.
Murder.
The raw hate, born of mortalkinds innate propensity for the conquest of life through the infliction of death, given form by the blessed sacrifice of his Father's flesh, folded his hands together in tight prayer, trembling only slightly. Imperceptibly.
Rivulets of red ran in this streams languidly down his back. Self inflicted. Holy. Peel away the chaff. Expose what lies beneath. Beneath this flimsy veil of flesh lies truth. Draw it forth. Call it by name. Purge this sacred tabernacle of meat of the blasphemous blight that taints it. A god does not feel pain. It is the flesh that keens. It is the weakness.
Purge it and be cleansed.
When the red drips off his back and mingles with the stains on the floor, the liquid blackens, fiendish divinity toxic for this medium of mortality. There is nothing, save the weight of it.
The Dark Urge shifts slightly, an unconscious motion of discomfort. He does not look up to the graven icon he kneels beneath. He is not worthy. Not yet. The unworthy veil themselves before his god, so as to not incite His Urge. The Promise. The Ecstasy. Fingers clasped tight, The Dark Urge knows without being told that more must be required of him.
"I make offering of this blood, cleansed of mortal frailty. May it rejoin Your Eternal Glory, horrific, terrible, splendid as it is."
Hollow stone eyes, wreathed in shadow, bore down. As they always did.
"....I take action, my Lord. In Your Name. Your Dream, Your Vision.... a world wreathed in death. It shall be done, Father."
Far below, a lake of gore churned, same as it did the day before.
"I... The goals I pursue. They are Yours, my Lord. What-... I act as Your Hand upon this blighted earth. Those unworthy of Your Voice, whose ears shall not be blessed, whose lowly minds must settle for that most base of understandings of Your Will, the suggestions they make... I do not heed them, my Lord. I- I do not. For what can they know of Your Mind? Your Will?"
Here, beneath the bustle of the Gate, there was no sun to warm the sharp wind that wound through the stone, that scraped against exposed skin.
"They know nothing. Even I, your Flesh, your Urge, cannot know the whole of You. For what right do we have, any of us, to know You in Your entirety?"
Drip. Drip. Drip. Aching beat, after beat, of a heart that was shaped by divine intent. For Purpose. It pushed blood through borrowed veins to leak through oozing wounds, tracing winding paths to the floor. It heeded the call of a greater power, drawn inexorably down. Submisson as proof of weakness.
"I scry. I divine. Your omens, Your Will, Your Voice, Your Thoughts, ever am I watchful for them. I hunt, I chase, all so that even the faintest murmur of Your Desires shall be enacted. If... If I... If any were missed it was not for lack of effort, my Lord."
No light caught in smooth carved stone. No power shook the cold, hard floor.
"I tried, am trying, have been trying, Father. I am. I promise. For You and You alone, do you get the whole of my truth. There is nothing I would hide from you."
Drip. Drip.
"There is nothing I can hide from you, I am of One Flesh, One Blood, One Mind with you, for what am I but a fragment let loose upon the world in Your Magnanimity?"
The thin open lines splitting his skin began to ache.
"The... failure below, he who governs Your Tribunal, he who presumes Your Will, Your Mind, pushes for... for..."
A sharp inhalation cuts through the thick stagnant air.
"What does he know of Your Will? If such a thing was needed, required, then there would be no doubt in my mind, for the urge would be as my own."
Entwined fingers clasp together so tight, whiteness begins to show at the joints.
"There is no need for heirs, because, because there is nothing to inherit. I stand alone atop Your Temple, Chosen, for the simplicity of success, for the proof of command I wield over Your Faithful, as Your Will, Your Urge. I do not fail You, I will not fail You, for I presume nothing, I know nothing, nothing save that which You choose to reveal unto me, Your Vessel, Your Blade, Your Mouthpiece."
The wind stings and burns. The cuts are many, lacing his shoulders and back.
"I enact Your Will, I recite Your Words, Your Scripture, I bring to these wretched things Your Divine Truth, and I spare no extraneous prose or incessant blabbering, for such things distract from Your Purity. All that I am, all that I shall ever be, is a Blade aimed at the throat of a world given to rot and ruin. All my knowledge is Yours, all my effort is Yours, all I am is Yours, eternally, forever. My flesh, my blood, my mind, my soul. Yours, forever. You know this, and I strive to prove it thus."
It always smells like death here. Death, and blood, and rot. Old bones and flowing blood and fetid meat.
"....I. I may... It is possible that... that... Disconnected as I am, for in Your Wisdom have You sent a wolf among the sheep, I... entertain the thought, at times, of the perfidious influence such distance may inflict. I purge my doubts through blood, but at times... Have I strayed from Your Mind? The path set before me, have I wandered, by the means of a thousand imperfect steps in Your Direction?"
The temple was the work of some many dozen zealot masons, and each carved brick remained as empty and silent as the day they were laid.
"I am Your Son, Your Purest Spawn, and we are of One Flesh. Your Displeasure would be known to me. Wouldn't it?"
Sunken eyes set in a mask of death whispered no words of reassurance, and the lonely stone remained inert.
"I feel only what You desire of me.Your Pleasure, acting in accordance with Your Will. I act upon those fleeting whims with perfect calculation, so as not to disrupt the efforts to bring Your Dream upon the world. It's true. I would not lie. I cannot lie, not to You."
How many hands had painstakingly polished the granite here, lovingly carved into this symbol of murder? How many hands had brushed gently against its rough surface, devotion in their hearts? Did they strain their ears, the way the Dark Urge strained his?
"Orin is not worthy. Not of the rite. Not of the duel. Her death would bring only a fleeting night of glory and honor to Your Name. Her bloodletting brings many hundreds more to Your Ravenous Maw. Her death is not worthy of the glory she brings to Your Name alive. I feel this. It is Your Will, isn't it?"
Quiet.
"The Banite is a tool. The Banite is a method, a vehicle. Promises and saccharine words are all his kind need to bring themselves to heel, for they foolishly ascribe power to the machinations of the frail in their systems of false obeisance. The power the Banite craves is ephemeral. Pathetic. It means nothing. I know the truth Father. I know what he is, and it is without shame that I bend him to Your Aims."
Emptiness.
"He is nothing to me. Nothing."
Silence.
The Dark Urge kneeled, alone in the dark, penitent, and there, swallowed in shadow, did desperation drag itself from his lips.
“I am holy. I am pure. My Father, my Lord, all that I am is yours. Nobody else’s. I heed not the words of hollow vessels, he who flew heedless on wings of ambition and crashed headlong into the sea of Your Wrath. You alone occupy my thoughts, my slaughterkin a fellow blade in Your Hand, whose edge I hone for Your Glory. The Banite is a tool! Through me, he is graced with the chance to serve a holy cause, and for his sins I will carve him into a monument to Your Glory. He will serve Your ends fair better than he ever served the Empty Tyrant.”
His throat choked on a sob, bubbling up through his esophagus.
“Am- am I not enough, Father? Have I trespassed, somehow? Have You forsaken me?”
The stripes of split skin, torn asunder by his own hands, seemed woefully inadequate.
“Where have I gone astray? Was it my thoughts? My deeds? Scour me, Father, see that I am willing and able, purify my putrescent soul into Your instrument.”
When not even this garnered a reply, the Dark Urge raised his head at last.
“All that I am, Father, is yours. I am Your flesh! Your weapon! Your vessel!! There is nothing within me, save Your Will, Your Desires. I have no mind, save that which You have blessed me with. I-I will kill them all Father. There will be no repentance, no atonement, save a mountain of corpses.”
“I will murder all of them, Father. For you.”
Silence.
Then.
An overwhelming feeling of dread. The weight of an ocean, pressing down on his shoulders. His hands, clasped in prayer, trembled uncontrollably, muscles losing grip. A pervasive tightness, within the chest. Pain, radiating down into his arms. The sensation of suffocation, every shaky breath insufficient to fill his longs. And there, tightly nestled within his ribs, an all consuming stillness.
Father. Father’s love. He was near, He was close. Father’s love was upon him.
The Dark Urge wept.
“Father, Father, I hear you, I feel you. I understand, Father, I obey. They will die, all of them, for you.”
Grateful tears streaked down his cheeks as he bowed his head in supplication once more. Overhead, carved tenderly into the stone, the graven icon of a fleshless skull loomed lovingly above the purest spawn of murder, framed by 16 perfect tears of blood. No light burned in its eyesockets, but nonetheless its gaze burned down, down, towards the hopelessly small figure who had painstakingly whipped his own flesh open in repentance, now trembling in relief.
“I hear You, and obey, my Father, my Lord, my God. Your Will shall be done. Your Omens, heeded, Your Words, recited. Your Love, tender and cherished.”
“As ever, I shall do as You command.”
Within the temple, here far below the earth, Bhaal remained silent.