Dismounting my trusted steed I have taken a few uneasy steps into the ancient building. The Avernus Cathedral is as far as I was told by my fellow citizens the oldest building in the city. The symbols of old age are always observable. The crumbling pieces falling from the walls, the spider webs hanging in the corners, the stinging smell of heavy dust, all reveal the countless years this building rezisted as the prize of this city. The oldest and most crumbling building in town, yet everybody respected it. And so did I, above all else, as this place with its crumbling walls and foul smells is where I was truly born and became the warrior I am today. For this place holds the greatest secret we have ever had, the secret that has helped this little town prosper into a city, the secret that sent hordes of attackers cowering back to their homes... Inside this ruined Cathedral lies the fountain of this city's power: the Mist. Ah, the Mist... A friend in need and my only companion since I parted from this god-forsaken place...
For hundreds of years the Lords and Protectors of Avernus have been baptised in the darkness of the Mist to gain the power and courage to hold any invader at bay and protect the lands from evil. It was our sworn duty and we have done so honorably. It was later revealed that it was not the city we protected, but the Mist itself and all of us foolishly did so without hesitation... It was a masquerade but we did so gladly nevertheless...blissful ignorance, yet highly effective.
I remember the day I was first brought by my father, the former Lord of Avernus, to the Cathedral to undergo the ritual baptism customary to my people... As the black-robed priest has grabbed me from the loving embrace of my father and proceeded to make me meet my destiny, I couldn't help but be affraid. He sunk me into the misty pool in the middle of the cathedral, at the lowest of levels, and I was overcome by its protective darkness. The Mists choked me, they overwhelmed me, they joined with my body and spirit and, in the blink of an eye, the little baby that entered the darkness crying was no more, and a true Lord of Avernus rose from the Mists...
As I took a few more uneasy steps, burdened with the weight of nostalgy, approaching the very source of the power I now came to posess, another painful memory has unlocked itself from inside the void of my past...the tragic day when finally, the masks fell and the true nature of the Mists was revealed, as the sworn protectors of the city would either refuse to or lose all power and courage the moment they crossed the outer edges of a circular area of influence surrounded by the city's unusual fog. Then the people knew the Mist protected not the city, but itself alone and so they started leaving... I have to admit that I am partly to blame for the initial waves that parted, as I was too absorbed in my studies and interest of this incomprehensible yet extremely efficient power that the Mist had to offer. When I took up my responsibilities as Lord, many people had already forsaken the city, and despite my newfound power the fall of this city and its disgraced Lord was inevitable.
I myself was the last one standing, the last to leave the ruins of a once beautiful legacy. There was only one thing still holding me there, as I lost everything...my family:dead...my people:gone... All I had left were the swirling Mists of the Cathedral, now even more depraved as before.
"Such a waste..."
I told to myself as I laid one last gaze upon the shadow in the middle of the Cathedral. But as I was about to leave, the unthinkable happened...the very Mists crawled towards me and in a split second I have undergone the baptism once more, only that this time , I have never left the Mist. The swirling darkness is a part of me now as much as I am a part of it. It obeys and I can shape it. I have taken my most valued posessions, the armor and cloak of the Avernus Lord, as well as my father's ceremonial Runeblade, passed down in our family for generations. Upon equipping them the Mist consumed my physical form and all that was left were two glowing ghastly green eyes in the unending darkness inhabiting an empty suit of dark armor and wielding a my father's sword, now glowing in the same color as my eyes.
As the memories have faded, I have mounted yet again my old horse, my most trusted steed, now also a ghostly form encased in an armor of Mists, and departed the wretched ruin of the place of my birth once more...
It has been twenty years since I have last left this cursed place and even then my only confort is that, although my form that once imposed respect now only inspires fear as I ride in battle, I am still myself.
Despite the downfall of my body, the Soul of the Knight and the Honor of the Lord I have once been will never fade...
