Devour Hope

Prologue: Monitor and Abuse

There's no point in a crucible where the ending is already written. One day, we will die. One day, the Entity that watches us all will eat us whole. Every time we escape, we delay that ending a little longer. Why delay the inevitable?

For Its entire existence, It did not understand.

Why would It?

It isn't human. It never will be. Its intelligence is almost animalistic, able to understand cause and effect and very little else. That's how Its game works. It knows that by giving them an escape, It gives them a little spark of hope. But that spark is dying.

Oh, It knows that they might feel a surge of hope when they evade a killer's swing, or they jump through the hatch at the last moment with the killer bearing down on them. But it never lasts. The meals are transient bursts of food, barely there. Their souls are torn asunder, tatters, and some of the survivors are barely there anymore.

The skinny, pale one with the glasses - he's a husk now. It won't be long before It has to decide whether he is to be remade into one of Its servants, or to simply take him for all he's worth, to join Benedict Baker and Vigo and countless others into Its Heart, where they would serve as fuel until they were gone forever.

Even the entry of new, fresh survivors were doing little to help Its current predicament. A new infusion of hope and succulent soul practically vibrating with life could only do so much. They were an attempt at staving off the inevitable, and for a time, it worked. But it was a delaying tactic. It had a truth to face.

The Entity was starving.

Its food had seemingly given up, and all that kept them attempting to evade the grasp of its servants was simple, primal survival instinct. And some of them had lost even that.

It couldn't understand what was happening. Not really. It understood cause and effect, certainly, but that meant that It believed that as long as It continued doing the same thing, no change would come. But come change had, and now its source of sustenance was running dry. It needed to change the game. But if It could not understand why the survivors' hope had faded, how could It solve the problem?

It struggled with this question for years. Trials passed beneath It, and though It collected the sacrifices dutifully, It began to abandon its servants. The survivors grew accustomed to their powers, and the Entity did not interfere, did not rebalance the scales. The servants languished, and the Entity watched from above. It watched the survivors, trying to understand them. But that was the issue. It never would. Not simply because of Its lack of human intelligence, but because of Its inability to feel empathy. The Entity was an extremely powerful being, but in the same way that humanity would never truly understand It, It could never understand humanity.

One trial melted into the next. The survivors suffered less and less as the Entity ceased taking the side of its own servants, but their hope did not grow. A quiet, weary resignation was all that described them best, and though It struggled with the very concept of emotion, frustration was the closest It had come to that.

It could see them. Surrounding the warmth of the campfire, as though the heat would save them from the next trial, one in a series of endless battles that nearly invariably ended in suffering. Battles that could never be truly won.

It watched them. For a long, long time. It paid less attention to the trials. What use were they when they did not feed It? It had enough to last It for centuries more, certainly, if It were content with a state of half-life, like the dead gods of other realities were. But the Entity wanted more. It could bring in more survivors, but the infusion of their scarlet sweetness was a temporary fix. It needed a more permanent solution. It needed to learn a lesson that could be applied to all survivors in the future. It needed to know its prey.

It watched the hands of the dark-skinned woman tie a strip of cloth around a long, jagged cut that had been cleaved into the flesh of the runner with the red hair. The fast one. The runner made sounds of quiet pain, but she seemed almost… accustomed to it now. The dark-skinned woman tied off the length of white cloth, touching the runner on the shoulder. They smiled at each other, and the Entity sensed…

Something.

What was that?

It wasn't hope, but the sensations that came with it were strangely familiar, an echo that tugged at Its perception and guided It within Itself, to something that had died long ago. The Entity looked inwards, staring at Its Heart, and the face of Benedict Baker emerged. He was smiling, too. It was a small, sad expression, as though he felt anguish and happiness in equal amount. The Entity could not comprehend why the remains of Baker felt anything for creatures he had not encountered in life.

But… Baker understood them.

In a flash of insight, the Entity realized something vital. Something It had been missing.

Despite taking humanity within Itself, the Entity had never used these remnants of souls for anything more than food. But what if it could use them for other purposes? If there was enough left of him… yes… yes, it could be done.

The blonde, the one that shared blood with the Shape, seemed to notice that something had changed. Her eyes flitted about the campfire, and she hugged herself, as though feeling a chill come over her.

The Entity watched them with the eyes of Benedict Baker, and subsumed his mind, using it not for sustenance, but for translation.

It understood them.

It heard them speak of home. It heard them speak of the little things they missed. They missed the smell of their house, they missed the feeling of hot water, they missed their pain-in-the-ass dog, they missed their loved ones. The corpse of the dead man missed home, too.

It listened. It learned. It… felt what they felt.

It wept with them for their families and friends. It laughed with them as they recounted stories from home. It fell quiet as they remembered that the people in those stories would never be seen again, and had a moment of silence. Not for those people, but for themselves, doomed to die.

It banished Baker to the Heart, and It thought to Itself.

They had never wanted a simple escape. The reason they had, at first, fought with such zeal and struggled with such inhuman strength was because they had thought that the escape meant home. Now they knew it just meant temporary reprieve.

The survivors have grasped that they will never escape, It realized, and that was why the hope had faded.

And with that realization came another epiphany.

It knew how to give them hope again.