Amanita Lucifera

In those older games you can get lost levels back. But it's so expensive, like America healthcare expensive, just to claw back one experience level. Or you could regain the lost experience the hard way.

get back on the treadmill and grind it out

Maybe that's your plan when the spectre brushes your cheek with her cold fingers and an experience level evaporates. You can't afford to dump a wheelbarrow of gold into the collection box at the city temple to have a restoration spell cast. So you decide to deal with it, until she touches you again.

That's two levels gone. Twice as much of your irreplaceable time and investment gone because this fucking monster can just arbitrarily take it from you. With every touch, the spectre robs you of everything that you earned with your experience. Your maximum hit points decrease. Those spells, attack bonuses, special abilities start to grey out one by one.

And the more she smothers you in debt and weakness, the easier it is for her to take even more from you!

Isn't that hot? Some tabletop developers must have thought so in the eighties and nineties. Half of the level-draining monsters in the Monster Manuals were some kind of sexy inveigling bikini demon. Ravenloft was scary and fascinating because of the irreparable harm the monsters in that setting could do to you.

Drain levels. Drain stats. Permanent hit point loss. Bit by bit, little pieces of you, measurable but intangible, all flowing into the smirking mouths of pretty monsters. How could anyone not be captivated by such a fucked up thing?

Even if you survive the encounter, you mark down the negative levels on your sheet. They're impossible to forget, the way you never forget the most money you ever had in your bank account. The debt warps every other motivator. You're adventuring and gathering gold in the hopes that you can pay the arbitrary, expensive fees to remove the weight of one of those lost experience levels from your balance sheet.

The rest of the party understands your frustration on an intellectual level. But the spectre never hit them. They still get to quest for the magical gems or whatever was the point of your silly campaign.

The experience you lost defines you in a way that doesn't apply to them. Maybe you grind enough to restore one of the stolen levels, or you gain it back the hard way. It's nowhere near what you lost, but you can feel a little sense of relief.

Over time, the scope of your motivation shrinks. Get back what you lost. Except you can't, it's too expensive, there isn't enough time. So if you can't do that, then maybe you can confront the spectre again. Destroying her won't bring back what she took away. But you want to make sure no one else suffers like you have. Or maybe you just want revenge. Probably both.

You sneak away from the party one night. You've grown apart from them, anyway. You have more in common with the spectre now. You've spent most of your waking life thinking about her and what she took from her. And she's waiting for you in the cold ruins where you first encountered her.

The spectre isn't surprised you wanted a rematch. Neither of you are surprised when the battle turns her way. You don't have your friends to support you this time. Her flanged, iron mace batters at your guard. She knocks aside your blade, bludgeons you to the ground, but doesn't raise her weapon for a killing blow.

The spectre holds out her other hand, inviting you to shed pretense. You crawl forward and lift your chin, pressing your still-warm cheek into the cup of her life-stealing hand.

She holds you there for a long time. More abilities go grey. There's no stopping it, now. This isn't mercy. She's giving you what you want.

More soul-debt, more exhaustion. Let it crush any memory that you were anything but leaden emptiness.

The spectre smiles. She withdraws her hand. You feel the lines of frost left by her fingernails scraping your cheek. She lays down her mace. She won't need it to seal your fate. Its strikes were feather-light compared to the crushing weight that is to come.

How badly do you want it, now?

She touches your lips with her finger. Still on your knees, you open your mouth. She laughs at you. Snowflakes and cold mist steam from the cruel turn of her blue lips. She slips her finger inside your mouth. You coil your tongue around it and suck. Your grateful whimper makes her laugh again.

Obscene. You draw her chill into your weakening body as her touch pulls at the wan flicker of your potential. You feel the doors to possible futures, avenues of escape, close one by one. You can almost hear the soft click of the locks.

The tomorrows flow out of you. What would you do with them? Try to claw your way back to a high water mark you'd never see again? The spectre cradles the back of your head with your other hand. You feel a thin line of drool freeze on your chin while you suck her finger. She has given you so much soul-debt, now. The weight of it will bar you from any afterlife the gods had prepared for you.

She pulls her finger free from your mouth with a gentle, wet pop. You sigh out a plume of freezing air and snowflakes. She purses her lips and blows a matching trail of cold in your face, eyes bright and mocking.

Then she kisses you, and now her hands dip into your chest, between your legs, groping as she frees you. Only from your old body, not from what you now owe her, which is everything, until the stars turn into dust. Now she is so much brighter than the sun and moon ever were. You were something bright and magisterial and alive before she left her first mark on you. And now you've thrown every bit of it away.

The reward for surrendering to the pressure of her will always be more pressure. There are no levels left to drain, so now she takes your ability to choose. She uses debt to carve you into a more useful shape. You cede more of yourself to her with every touch. There is so little of you left.

Your new, ghostly form kneels to her, because it is what she demands. She straddles your face and uses your mouth. More debt pours into you, squeezing out the capacity for thought.