Ramblings of an Augur

Delayed Apotheosis

The Lord stretched his fetid limbs outward, shaking off the aches of motionlessness. He looses a loud yawn, rubbing at his eyes through the ebony mask. With his vision unobstructed, he looked around his throne room, pausing at the fact he recognized almost nothing.

He definitely didn't recognize the star-struck strangers looking up to him in awe.

"...who in the hells are you?" groggily mumbled the Lord to no individual in particular.

"He has awoken!" a knight in black exclaimed.

"Our Lord has awoken!" another, identical soldier shouts, the room beginning to ring with cheer and other such shouting. "It's time for the Danse Macabre!"

"The what?!" the Lord snaps, rising from his throne, hovering in the air above it. "Who are you people?! What is this 'Danse Macabre', what are you doing in my Malady?!" The room went quiet at the Lord's rancorous tirade, allowing one of the black knights to step forward. His armor was gilded with a fine auric filagree, what seemed to be a distinguished Imp sitting dutifully upon his shoulder. He had a little purple dress coat on, and a miniature monocle.

"We are your royal advisors, milord," the fanciful knight claims, the Imp upon his shoulder sitting himself up straight to look more official. "For the five-hundred years you've been at rest-"

"Five-hund- no. No!" the Lord interrupts fiercely, "I should disintegrate you where you stand for your fallacy!"

"Well," the Imp finally spoke up in his raspy chain-smoker voice, "What year is it, mister lord?"

"Uh..." The Lord fell back into his throne, itching his head in contemplation. After a long pause, he spits out, "998 Dale-Reckoning."

"Wow," the gilded knight hums as he exchanges a curious glance with the Imp. "On the dot!"

"You see, mister lord-"

"Stop calling me that," the Lord quickly demanded, "either 'mister' or 'lord', just pick one. Both gives me conniptions."

"...well. Mister, then," continued the Imp, "the year is 1498, the Year of Black Regalia."

"What kind of easterner calendar did you use to get that result?" huffed the Lord in his relentless skepticism. "I took one nap. One nap! An hour at most!" In his desperation, he began speaking with his hands, the reeking digits making evocative gestures that just had to make their speaker truthful. "How would I have even fed my phylactery if I was asleep for 500 years? I'd be a floating skull thing!"

"Uh, sire," the gilded knight spoke up, "The city-state of Malady automatically fed it's dead souls to you. And, uh, you kind of stopped needing the phylactery some time after you became a god."

"...okay, now I know for sure, you're lying to me," the Lord sighed, rubbing his hands together before mumbling the verbal component for Disintegrate.

"Wait, wait!" the Imp shrieks in his horrible voice. "He's not joking! You got clerics and everything, this place even doubles as a church, I mean, c'mon! You got thousands of worshippers out there, hundreds of thousands, maybe!" The Lord pauses at these claims. He looked up at nothing, trying to listen to 'prayers' he was supposed to grant, or something.

'Lord of Mortality, please rid my village of this plague.'

'Lord of Mortality, grant me the strength to raise a horde to overtake the cruel Patriars of Baldur's Gate.'

'Lord of Mortality, give me the secret of Lichdom! I know damn well you have it!'

"This is a lot at once," the Lord sighs, pinching his brow. "Have I... seriously just been a god for five centuries and no one ever thought to wake me? What kind of royal advisors are you?"

"We honestly thought you weren't wholly asleep," spoke the knight. "You've been sending avatars across the Material Plane, we really thought you only took the form of slumber so that we wouldn't disrupt your grand machinations."

"When the hells have I ever sent out avatars?"

"Don't you remember the Dragonchess game with Orcus? Or the Three Grand Wars of Iggwilv? The Fall of the Slaughtermind?" The knight just kept listing and listing these incredible events, and the Lord grabbed his own head, his glowing eyes bulging from his blacked skull.

"I thought those were dreams!" the Lord yelped. "I didn't think any of those actually happened! I've been making a gods-forsaken ass of myself for five hundred years!"