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Bless me, An Ainsguide, for I have sinned

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Not against the Herald of Annihilation, never against my God.
I have always carried out my duties, my service faithfully

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Like any good cultist in an Ainsguide's service,
I long to be free from the burden of flesh

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the toil of our mortal existence.
Being a writer is a life of confessions

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Every drop of ink I put to page reveals a
bit about myself, whether I wanted to or not

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But now I have the honor of spilling blood in the
service of a great god in this Pikmin-esque cult builder

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And I am enjoying myself, but
I feel kind of bad about it

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My demo of worship puts me in the robe
of a cult leader, sward to Aen Ainskeid

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Herald of Annihilation, the most compassionate of the unseen-depth gods, who is
determined to end our suffering by bringing an end to our pointless existence

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Sick. My job is to gain an
Ainsguide's favor and expand its cult

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After playing a brief tutorial that gives me an overview of the controls and introduces me to a sassy and utterly deranged
in its own words charming and witty talking grimoire that services my guide I dropped into a run an Aen Guide service

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I don't start with any cultists,
which is a bad look for a cult leader

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Luckily, an Aen's Guide starts me with some
godless who just need something to believe in

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How do I convert them, you ask? I stab myself with a dagger
and smear my blood across the ground to create sacred symbols

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This whole thing is a ritual, you know. A circle
to draw the godless within it to our cult

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I press my hand to the bloodstained ground to activate
its power. A square to summon the execution edict

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A fraction of my god's power so its mighty hand
might judge our enemies and find them wanting

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I press my hand to the bloodstained ground
to activate its power. It awaits my command

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I am patient. I am powerful. But it
does hurt to stab myself so much

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I fret not over my hand, which is probably little
more than a bloody pulp, but for my mortality

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To drain my life's blood across the ground
for An Ainsguide is an honor, but it leaves

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me diminished, at the mercy of my enemies.
All that to say, it literally drains my health

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And I want to be freed from this mortal coil but in An Ainsguide time not our enemies And
we have so many enemies The godless stand mute unmoving uncomprehending They pose no threat

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Converting them to our unholy causes is as
simple as surrounding them with a circle

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But I fear the others. No
conversion will take hold of them

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The beheaded man with their rapiers that
cut down my cult is like so much kindling

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the black creatures who do not
serve my god and spew bile at us

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Once there are enough of us, they pose no threat. I raise my hand to
mark what needs to die, and my cult descends on them like locusts

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I wonder if Anain's Guide, Herald
of Annihilation, is a Pikmin fan

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Probably not. Gods are not concerned with
such trivial things as the Nintendo Gamecube

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but it reminds me of it all the same.
That's not to say our followers don't die

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Oh, they are resilient. They fall, dizzy, stars swirling
about their heads, but they often rise before they are killed

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But inevitably, some die, brought
low before they can rise and recover

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Early on in our ventures, I learned to avoid our enemies. I searched instead for the godless converted them to our cult It is only when I have overwhelming
numbers that I challenge our foes and they fall before Anain God glory Sometimes my followers perish That is inevitable But I try to keep them

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alive. A good cult is a strong cult, and
a strong cult is made up of many bodies

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They are pliable. I can pick them up by the throat
and throw them to ring bells, or gut them and use

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their blood to perform rituals instead of my own.
I have no problem throwing them at things. They'll

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be a little concussed, maybe, but they'll live.
Once you use them as a resource, though, it's

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lights out, curtains, game over. I don't like
killing the cultists, partially because it leaves

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me with one less cultist, making my unholy army
a little weaker. But partly because it doesn't

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feel right. I brought them into this. It's my
job to keep them safe. They're my children

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religiously speaking, and my children, metaphorically
speaking. They follow me around like little dogs

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Besides, there's no shortage of blood for me to
absorb. I can call it back from a botched ritual

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where a circle too closely resembles a square, from
my cultists who fall in battle, from fountains

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plants, and even stones. Yes, viewer, blood
from a stone. When my cult kills our enemies or