The Journal of Khorgar -The Black Tear

The lake should have been quiet.
 
Water, reeds, the slow creak of the boats, nothing more. Yet the surface was wrong. Thickened. Blackened. As if the world itself had bled into the water and forgotten how to remain pure.
 
I felt the pull before the eye could see it.
 
Beneath the jagged shoreline, a wound glowed pale blue, sickly, unnatural a tear into the Abyss itself. Oil and tar drifted across the lake like a funeral veil. Then it came.
 
The Wastrilith.
A leviathan of slithering corruption.
It reeked of the same abyssal hunger that never leaves my blood.
 
It fought as beasts fight without vision, without will, it was weak. The party struck it down, I plunged into the water. Desperate. Obsessed. If power bled here, I would bleed with it.
 
I found the tear at the bottom.
 
The flame in my chest roared as I plunged my arm into that wound between worlds. Pain tore through me like lightning. My body shut down. The lake closed over my head.
 
I drowned.
 
I woke.
And drowned again.
 
Death came for me in repetition but every time my heart surrendered, the fire dragged it back to motion. The Abyss would not let me go. I felt it then the weight of countless eyes upon me judging, measuring.
 
And one gaze pierced deeper than the rest.
 
Demogorgon.
 
I felt his anger ripple through the water. His recognition. A tentacle lashed toward me, more a projection than substance, an assertion of presence. I struck at it in spite, but my blade found nothing. It was never meant to be fought. Only endured.
 
Rage burned what little life remained in me. The flame in my chest became a furnace, hammering my heart into motion once more. I swam blindly for the surface dying again on the way but refusing the stillness of surrender.
 
In the end, I broke through the water. The party hauled me onto the boat, while the tear sealed behind us, the wound sewn shut as if the Abyss itself had decided I had taken enough.
 
I am changed.
 
I feel....stronger my horns itch with fresh growth, sharper, twisted no longer merely inheritance, but declaration. Even my bare flesh strikes with the Abyss now.
 
The blood in my veins is not fully mine anymore. I am not demon.
Not yet. But I am no longer wholly man.
 
Demogorgon saw me and did not crush me.
That knowledge weighs heavier than fear.
 
I hunger for more.
 
On another note, I took part in a frivolous activity that the common man enjoys: fishing. It has its charms, but ultimately I found it rather dull. I also found I have a displeasure for swimming. The water does not suit me very well. I'll take my displeasure out on Philip later tonight.