Of Gods & Champions: Book I: Fate

V. The Six Chosen

There it was, the beast of the Gods. Abaddon, the nightmare of Order, stood before me. The titan looked down on me from hundreds of feet in the air. His eyes burned with a crimson light that judged all who came before him. But it didn't matter much to me. I had already been judged, and deemed unfit. Abaddon's gaze meant nothing to me.

All my life, I thought I'd die and join Order in his grand Utopia. I made sure to worship him every day, and to make the pilgrimage to High Rock once a year. I had done everything right to please him, spare one thing. Being in control of a battalion of soldiers, I gave the order to strike an enemy encampment.

However, the Wild knew we'd arrive, and prepared for it. We were easily surrounded, and we lost the battle after losing the majority of my men.

As punishment for this failure, and for being responsible for sending them to their deaths, Order barred me from Utopia, and condemned me to Apollyon, where the mighty Abaddon stood watch, protecting the path up to the heavens, and keeping me away from it.

I was not the only one down here. There were millions of us, some wicked in nature, and others like me, who had just done a single thing wrong. Regardless of any of our morals, we were all stuck together as a single unit, fending off the encroaching darkness around us.

Humans were not the only beings in Apollyon. Creatures born of any God, including the Wild, could end up here, if judged poorly by their creator. Because of this, we were in a constant struggle to fend off the beasts that surrounded us. Every day, I'd here of poor souls who had been slaughtered by those creatures. When people die here in Apollyon, they experience the second death, and nobody returns from that. When you die here, you're dead. There's no more second chances.

Much like in the world I had just left, humans were pushed into fortified encampments here in Apollyon by the Wild. I sat around a campfire in one of these encampments, along with some of my fellow condemned souls, when one of them brought up an intriguing prospect.

An older man, who had been sent to Apollyon many years ago for some crime unknown to me, spoke up. "Abaddon's mortal, you know." His sentence was brief, but the words hung in the air with immense weight. It suggested much; that Abaddon, the beast that was keeping us from our lord Order, could be killed, and that this man likely had a plan to accomplish this goal.

Another, more critical member of our group objected, saying, "how could you possibly know that? No one has ever come close to matching the power of that- that thing!"

Unfazed by his outburst, the old man calmly replies, "Abaddon is a creation of Order. All his other creations have been mortal. Why should we think he'd be any different?"

The other man is still skeptical of his claims. "Even if he is mortal, which, for all we know, he might not be, but even if he was, what makes you think we could ever best him? Need I remind you that he's a giant monster that's impossibly high and has massive claws and teeth? He's unbeatable!"

Still collecting himself well, compared to the other man, he answers, "We stand little chance against him, but do we have any chance against the Wild? They've been pushing us back ever since we got here, and now there's so few of us left. If we stay the course, we will all surely face the second death, but if we march out and face this foe, we might have a sliver of a chance."

This did not at all convince the other man, but it did convince me. I had no interest in certain death, and this suicide mission at least promised the chance at survival, so I clung to it fiercely, as did many others.

Word of this mission moved quickly throughout the other camps, because there was little else to discuss. Soon, we found that thousands of people were rallying to our cause, and those thousands brought thousands more with them.