Looks like I have another chance to make Tristan feel useful huh? I never thought I'd be glad to see Paimon, but hey... I can turn this surprising battle into a neat chance to see how Tristan fights, and to bring her another step closer to my worship, since the last time I tried it didn't particularly work.
With the unexpected appearance of his enemy, in the form of a possessor making a skin-suit out of Tristan's foe, Althos saw a chance. He saw a thin opportunity to make Tristan feel useful. Althos quickly came up with a scheme to make his servant into his worshiper, but it would require her being at his side during this battle.
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Althos mentally readied himself for the coming conflict by first exploring his H.U.D. It was an odd choice, but it was not without reason, for he noticed two new updates to it.
The first update he noticed was a barely visible icon located in the upper corners of his vision. This icon's picture was of a stylized building and Althos knew, instinctually, that this was the dungeon master's icon. He was tempted to click it, but recognized that that would give his enemy time to attack.
The second update he noticed was one in the lower-left corner of his vision. This one just contained a number. At the moment the number was 7.
It took Althos a moment to figure out what it was, but he quickly put together that it was a menu for his party members, after he mentally tapped on it and it expanded to reveal the names of his allies who had come to Infernius, along with health bars that revealed various injuries on each of them.
The titan continued its slow yet steady ascent, and Althos had no doubt that the devil possessing it was readying something of his own. At this point, it had risen a meter off of the ground and was still rising higher.
Althos raised his hands in front of him, mentally speeding through the vast codex of spells he had accumulated over the course of his escapades. Internally, the young deity found a few suitable spells and memorized their details. Then he spoke to the possessed form of the titan in front of him.
"You'll find that I'm not as weak, or as scared as I was when we first met."
His voice was cold, betraying no emotion, and as he made eye contact with the fiend who lorded over the city he had escaped from days ago, his eyes began to glow a deep scarlet.
He silently healed his party members using a combination of mental magic and healing magic, but only awoke one of them: Tristan. Then the deity refocused on the matter in front of him.
At that moment Paimon, possessing the titan, opened the titan's mouth. From the titan's mouth, a massive, at least meter long, icicle formed and then suddenly was fired at Althos. The deity waved the icicle away, using a power provided by one his favorite sub-domains: teleportation.
The icicle had been hurtling towards the deity, but after the deity waved the attacked away it was redirected and instantly vanished. It went from hurtling towards Althos to crashing into the pit and shattering into millions of tiny shards.
He rose a single hand in the direction of the meat-suit Paimon was using as a puppet, and from out of his hand shot forth a dense explosion of vividly green radiant energy. Before the edge of the explosion could touch the possessed titan, Althos spoke again.
"And the decision to face a god while possessing something is a bold, and stupid, decision."
[Spell type: Healing
Spell Name: Dark Exorcism
Description: This spell uses radiant energy to target and weaken or if possible outright expel possessors from those hit by it. The radiant energy doesn't heal the possessed person, but in exchange for that lack of healing the radiant energy that hits the possessor is considerably stronger.
Spell cost: 500 per cast.
Note #1: This spell lingers for a few moments, dealing radiant damage over time to any possessors who happen to enter the area where it was cast.
Note #2: How this spell is aimed/manifests depends on the will of the user. If the user wants it to manifest like an explosion, it can, but if the user wants to fire it in a thin, straight line, that also works. As do countless other sorts of manifestations.]
The burst of radiant energy was dodged by the devil, but the titan's expression soured greatly while the devil threw the body it wore like an outfit backward out of the way. Its eyes maintained their lock on Althos, even through the fading burst of green energy. Althos grinned, his eyes glowing as he opened his mouth to speak.
"Did you think this was going to be easy?"
The devil willed the hand of the titan to rise and then twisted the unwieldy thing in the direction of the god. The titan silently mouthed a spell, and gouts of frigid air, complete with stinging pellets of ice and snow, shot forth from its hand in the direction of the deity.
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Tristan had been knocked out of sight by the titan in the wake of the devil possessing it and unleashing an area of effect attack. While away from the new battle, the young priestess had been healed by the power of the deity she served, even if she didn't worship him just yet. She had been rendered unconscious, but the deity's healing magic fixed that, just for her though.
She slowly and steadily got to her feet, just in time to hear the loud noises that came from the titan's fingertips as the thing expelled jets of freezing air at her master.
She looked in the direction of the deity and saw him locked in battle, against her hated foe. She looked at Althos and saw that he was smiling, and watched as immense jets of flames suddenly shot out of them. The deity looked like he was having fun now.
She quickly checked herself out, making sure she had sustained no permanent damage and then began to move in Althos' direction.
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Althos noticed Tristan recovering, sensing it more than seeing it, and for a second he stopped expelling jets of flames just to help increase her chances of joining him unscathed.
He pointed a single finger at Tristan dashing towards him and rose a hand in the titan's direction to cast a pair of spells.
[Spell Type: Illusion
Spell Name: Targeted Invisibility
Description: This spell sends out a ray of illusionary power. Anyone hit by that ray is rendered invisible until they attack or cast a spell.
Spell cost: 750 magical energy per cast.]
[Spell type: Mind
Spell name: Enrage
Description: This is a taunting spell, purposefully designed to infuriate anyone hit by it causing them to force their energy on the caster. This spell can be resisted, but resistance to it when it comes from a god is virtually impossible unless the resistor is also a deity.
Cost: 250 magical energy per cast.]
Althos fired a spell directly into the brain of the titan, and the ray of invisibility that shot forth from his fingertip smoothly hit Tristan, who felt it wash over her and continued her dash towards her master, unaware of what it did but also unafraid of it. Tristan vanished, and the undying titan's odd, physical yet spiritual form, glared at Althos, then reared back and roared in deep anger.
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In his lair, a gigantic building that towered over the infernal city of Bastille, Paimon hissed in annoyance as he felt the mind of the undying titan attempt and then fail to wrest back control of its body from him. He audibly heard the titan's roar, as the dumb mortal attempted to snatch back control of its body from the dark devil currently possessing it.
"Stop it you stupid beast!" Paimon hissed, clutching his head as the mental roar of the titan rattled his skull from the inside.
Paimon was seated beside a strange device. In the center of one of the rooms within his tower, there was an arcane invention, one of the few the devil had installed in his lair. He was seated beside it and looked down on it.
It was a massive crystalline bowl, over a full meter in height and half as wide that was currently filled with an odd red fluid. The red fluid wasn't blood, but rather an alchemical mixture designed to function as a powerful, perpetually active, scrying spell.
The tool that the devil used to keep tabs on his opponents and occasionally as a material component to possess someone or something to send a message or assassinate a rival.
Paimon recovered and resumed control over the titan after reeling from its attempt to take its body back, just in time to enter the thing's vision and see Althos leaping at it, while a ball of vivid green radiant energy lit up his palm.
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In the few seconds that the undying titan was attempting to become the master of its body, Althos cast another iteration of the dark exorcism spell. He willed it to function like he had seen the imp's white-hot bolts had functioned: as balls of energy that he could hold and aim before firing.
The spell manifested as a swirling orb of vivid green energy that clung to the deity's palm. The deity grinned and launched himself at his enemy, wondering if his foe would manage to dodge the attack.
He sailed through the air, quickly crossing the distance between himself and the titan, and his grin grew wider with each passing fragment of a second.
When he was a few meters away from the thing, he rose his hand in its direction and hurled the orb forward. The titan roared, its voice furious as it threw itself back to try and build some distance from the orb before the thing exploded. This time, the attack didn't miss.
The moment the orb left the deity's hand its glow intensified. And then the thing burst open, suddenly unleashing its stored energy. The resulting intensely green explosion as the energy expelled outward was so strong that Althos was knocked back, but the deity was grinning as he sailed towards the ground.
While in mid-air he looked at and saw the facial expression of the undying titan contort in pain as the energy bit into the devil possessing it. That made the deity grin wider.
Before Althos' eyes, even as he fell through the air, the green orb created a strange, grass green, cage-like area to trap the titan in and to immolate the devil lurking within the titan. The energy seared the newly made flesh of the titan's once ethereal form, and as Althos watched it the creature began to bleed from the intensity of the attack.
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In his lair, Paimon roared in pain as he felt the effects of Althos' spell pierce through the decimated remnants of the brain of the titan, and attack the tenuous connection he had established with it that allowed him to dominate it in the first place.
Then the spell turned on the devil himself, sending mystical shockwaves through the connection he had made with the titan and attacking his mind and body through it. The devil had to swallow devilish ichor, the blood of all devils, that he would have otherwise vomited out.
At that moment Paimon learned a harsh lesson: the spell called "Dark Exorcism" didn't just target and slam a connection a possessor made, it attacked the possessor themselves. That was a painful lesson for the arrogant devil to learn when he just wanted to tease Althos with the knowledge that he could see the young god wherever he went through the layer.
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Althos hit the ground hard but quickly recovered from the shock of slamming into the hard ground of the arena. He got up and turned just in time for Tristan to reach out to him, place a hand on his shoulder and then quietly speak.
"I'm right here with you. Let's defeat this thing... Paimon, presumably... together."
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When she placed her hand on his shoulder, she reappeared and grinned at him. He smiled at her, his smile a much softer one than the usual predatory expressions that crossed his face, and nodded.
"I haven't had time to check out your new abilities... mind telling me what you got? The ones that aren't obvious, anyway."
She laughed and began to mentally scan her newest powers. The titan was still in agony, still dealing with the aftermath of the spell it got hit by, so she felt safe talking for a few moments.
"Sure! I got a variety of traits. In case you can't tell, I got... moth-like traits from my father as my physical traits. There are a few traits that aren't plainly visible that I got, that I'll tell you about later. It turns out my mother was a cleric too, and through her genetics, I got a lot of powerful cleric-abilities."
Althos heard her voice and tone change slightly when she spoke about her mother and he wondered about that. He knew from the knowledge of hers that he had taken she didn't know much about her mother, so perhaps it was a bittersweet surprise for her to gain stronger cleric-sourced powers through vestigial resurrection. She wasn't done talking though, so Althos quietly continued to listen to what she had to say.
"I learned about these things called 'domains' and 'sub-domains', that you probably already know about. One of my new abilities allows for a god or creature of similar power to grant me access to any of their domains or sub-domains. That's probably the most... immediately useful ability."
She says, grinning at Althos, while the two of them hear their foe gradually trying to gain the strength or the rage needed to bust out of the area it is trapped in.
Althos wondered how to do that, but quickly figured it out.
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The deity mentally went through the process of opening up his menu that allowed him to see the status of his allies. It only gave him basic information, but it was enough for now. By mentally clicking on Tristan's name, a pop-down menu revealing various options was shown to the deity.
He quickly clicked on her class, it was revealed to be "Cleric", and then he was shown a variety of abilities.
[Party member: Tristan
Class: Cleric
Class-Related Abilities: Divine Domain Usage, Heal The Living, Heal Extraplanars, Channel Radiant Energy, Channel Dark Energy, Miracle, Bless, Desecrate, Conscerate]
Althos tapped on the ability called "Divine Domain Usage" and found that when it was expanded to reveal information about itself, it was empty. Althos quickly selected one of the subdomains he had the ability to exert influence over, the sub-domain of teleportation, and granted her access to it.
She suddenly giggled as she felt a wave of power surge over her body, her voice quiet and soft as she shuddered from the quick investment of power Althos had just performed. Althos turned to look straight ahead and saw that the cage holding back the possessed titan was starting to fade, and the titan hadn't yet been freed from the possession.
Paimon, through the titan, now glared angrily at them, rage permeating his gaze. The devil, gaining an ever-increasing tolerance to the pain of the spell began to chant. The distance between Tristan and the titan was too great for her to be able to hear and understand what it was saying, but Althos could hear it. Althos came up with a scheme at a record pace, and shared it with Tristan.
"I'm gonna force Paimon out of the titan. When I do, I need you to use your new power to expel him out of the dungeon. Then I can kick him out, while not kicking out the titan's spiritual body."
The priestess, upon hearing Althos' plot, nodded at her master.
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The undying titan was quietly muttering words of power.
"I am calling out to the twisted blizzard, the unending winter, the mightiest lords of the glacial worlds."
Around it, the temperature of the air was beginning to drop suddenly and dramatically. The power it was gathering was significant, and the two who stood below it, were aware of that fact.
"Allow me the chance to wreak havoc upon the world using your eternal frost, and the power to freeze my enemies and feed their souls to you."
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The scene in the arena was a dramatic one. A humanoid and a god stood on the ground planning a powerful strike to bring an end to the battle they were locked in, while above them their foe, a large creature with the basic body-structure of a humanoid but impossibly pale skin and towering height floated through the air.
The humanoids wore the clothing of a priestess, the god wore the clothes of an adventurer, and the towering humanoid-like creature had no clothes on. There was an aura of power coming off of the god, and an aura of winter radiating off of the towering humanoid-like creature.
The two on the ground readied themselves for the next stage of their plan, and then Althos brought his hands together and took aim at the titan.
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Once Althos felt comfortable knowing that his attack would hit its intended target, the deity activated an unexpected power. Althos sent out a mental link so powerful that it manifested in the form of a long, silver chain that shot out of the deity and pierced the undying titan's possessed mass. The titan ignored this unorthodox form of attack.
He willed his own divine energy out of himself and along the silver chain, until it infused the possessed creature. The titan, who hadn't reacted to the chain piercing it, did react to the act of being infused with divine energy.
The creature stopped chanting. And then its skin began to darken. Althos' dark divine energy began to quickly surge throughout its body. And then Althos' mind invaded the titan's once again.
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Althos felt his mind entering the titan's once again. He found himself in the strange void-like area he had been in before and marveled at the sight before him.
In front of him, he saw the house and pond he had seen earlier. They weren't on fire anymore. Instead, the pond was dried up, and the house was burned down. And Paimon was there too.
The true-devil grinned at Althos as he noticed the deity's intrusion. His cat-like eyes were aflame with intrigue and curiosity about the deity.
Althos examined the devil before him, actually taking in details about the devil's form this time, unlike the first time they met.
The devil had a deep blue skin tone, the color of the deep seas. He stood about two and a half meters tall and had horns jutting out of his head. His body was covered in the mental approximation of rich, silk robes he wore loosely.
He spoke to his foe, his cat-like eyes sparkling with over-confidence.
"Well hello there."
Althos didn't speak to his foe. Instead, the deity without an iota of hesitation cast a spell.
[Spell type: Mind
Spell name: Punishing Possession
Description: This spell, when cast on a creature who is actively possessing another creature punishes the possessor by prohibiting them from returning to their body until a few minutes after the spell has been cast.
Cost: 5,000 magical energy per cast.]
Althos grinned at his enemy as he the devil realized what had just been done, and then Althos used magic to forcibly expel the creature from the remains of the mind of the undying titan.
Then the deity sent a mental message to his servant, commanding her to be ready.
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[Tristan! Paimon is about to appear! Ready yourself, and teleport him out of the dungeon the instant you see him.]
An instant later, the titan's mouth opened and a surge of magical energy flooded out of it, accompanied by a new ethereal body. This time the ethereal body wasn't of the titan itself, but an ethereal shape belonging to the overlord of the city of Bastile, who came surging out of the titan while roaring in irritation.
Tristan didn't suffer from hesitation, and instead the girl mentally zeroed in on the true devil's see-through visage and activated the divine sub-domain she had access to.
She pictured the devil's thought-form vanishing from sight and slamming into the sandy ground right outside of the dungeon.
Her ability took a second to activate, during which Paimon was alerted to the fact that he was being targeted by the ability and turned to look at Tristan in shock, while dramatically shouting "NOO!" at the half-devil just in time to vanish from sight.
I... I did it! Paimon, our most dangerous foe is gone and it's because of me! YES!
Tristan's mind was an excited place at that moment, and she wordlessly watched as the titan's body reacted to being empty of any intelligence. It did so by beginning to fall, slowly and harmlessly.
The titan's unconscious form slowly descended to the ground and then lay still on the floor. It was still, not breathing but definitely still alive.
Althos's mind returned to his body, just in time to watch the last bits of Paimon fade from the dungeon. The deity grinned and immediately pulled up the dungeon menu.
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[Hello! Welcome to the dungeon menu! Given the situation, we can tell this is an urgent moment. What would you like to do right now?]
Althos quickly read through the notification and informed it that he'd like to lock the dungeon to anyone not currently inside of it.
[That is absolutely something we can do. Shutting down all 1/1 dungeon entrances right now.
3...
2...
1...
All dungeon entrances are now locked. No creature not in the dungeon can enter it. Would you like to summon the dungeon-aide, one "Floating Skull" to your side?]
Althos grinned upon reading that notification and was immediately met with another.
[The major battle is over. Paimon has, for the time being, been defeated and has decided to retreat to plot his revenge. Processing rewards for completing the quest right now. The first and most vital reward is now yours: the ability to promote soul-orbs and transform them into imps.]
Althos took a deep breath upon reading that, and chose to summon the floating skull to his side. It came into existence next to him, exactly as it had looked before but now it silently waited for its new master to talk.
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Rather than talk to it, Althos approached Tristan. He smiled at her, but his voice contained a dizzying mixture of emotions.
"You did it. You and I defeated our shared foe, and now... how do you want to handle the titan?"
She looked at him wordlessly and then walked over to the undying titan. She held out her hand and spent some magical energy to will a thick, mystical sword, with its point facing the ceiling of the chamber, into existence in her hand. She walked over to where she could look down on the titan's head and then flipped the sword so that its point was facing the titan's unconscious form.
She examined the thing's face. It had handsome, masculine facial features, and skin that in some places was dark and in others was impossibly pale. It had an impressively thick neck, matching its remarkable height which was why she had summoned an impressively thick sword.
It had a muscular body, even in its physical form. Because of its flesh and muscles, she wondered if she'd have the strength needed to kill it in a single blow.
She shook her head, doing away with the hesitation she felt as she stood over the thing, and then swung the sword. She aimed to decapitate it and brought the sword down over its neck for that express purpose.
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And with this... I finally avenge my father. With this single sword strike, I take my future and make it my own!
She felt a variety of emotions as the sword plunged through the air and towards the titan's neck. But when the sword bit into and then, rather quickly, through the creature's skin she only felt one emotion: elation.
No longer is my future defined by ties to my past. With the help of my allies I have removed this dark stain on my history, and now... I can move to remove the dark stains that are harming Infernius.
Thank you Althos... I'm glad you're the second dark saint.
That moment was the very first moment Tristan truly believed that Althos was the second dark saint. It was the moment she went from being hopeful that he was destined to unite and rule Infernius, and the moment she became convinced that that was part of his destiny.
She unsummoned the mystical sword she had used to decapitate her hated foe, and then she looked at the headless corpse of the spiritual form of the titan. She grinned as she watched the bodyless head begin to drip blood.
She visually confirmed that the head was fully detached from the body, and then considered what to do next. There was a part of her that wanted to sit down and take a second to breathe and process what she was feeling, but she knew she'd have a chance to do that soon. So the priestess turned to go to the physical, unconscious, half of the undying titan.
As she walked, she noticed her allies beginning to awaken from their assorted states of unconsciousness. She wasn't all that interested in them though, mostly because she suspected that Althos would have been saved them if they had been in real danger. The fact that he wasn't worried about them, probably meant she shouldn't be.
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Althos had quietly left Tristan when he watched her mystical sword slice through the titan's neck. He was grinning as he walked towards the undying titan's physical body, accompanied by the floating skull that once stood against him as a foe.
Information was flooding his brain at that moment, information about and information from the undying titan as he approached the unconscious, physical form of the creature. And the more knowledge he processed, the more excited he grew.
He was hoping that there might be a secret reward waiting for him, a reward he would be able to see with the usage of his "detect souls" spell once he got close enough. The deity quietly re-cast his necromantic "detect souls" spell mid-walk, a spell he would normally wordlessly cast during his downtime but since he had been battling constantly for the last few minutes he hadn't had time to cast it during the fights.
Upon the spell reactivating his eyes began to glow and he was filled with eldritch knowledge. When he reached the pit, he began to float above it rather than taking the long route along its side.
It wasn't until he was flying over the pit that he saw something he had been hoping to see. Inside of the physical form of the undying titan, there was a variety of undigested souls. Souls that Althos could identify even from outside of the creature's gullet.
Althos began to look through the souls within the titan's stomach, searching for two souls in particular. The souls of Agowraith the Kingwhisper and of Nefarious Devil-Kiss. The maker of the tomb, and Tristan's father respectively.
The deity quickly found them, having had to search through just a few souls before tracking them down. Althos, floating above the physical form of the creature pointed a hand at the thing and then cast "Harvest Soul" twice.
And then he thought about it for a second and began to cast the spell over and over again until he had acquired a small fortune in souls and the titan's stomach was empty.
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Tristan, walking along the edge of the pit to get to where the other half of her hated enemy awaited her, watched as Althos floated over the thing's unconscious body. She watched as he rose his hand and began to just float there, still.
She was too far away from her master to be able to see the spurts of darkness that occasionally leaped from his hand to the stomach of the creature, invading it and stealing away the souls it had stockpiled and was slowly devouring. She was too ignorant of the potent magic the deity possessed to imagine that the creature was in-effect saving the immortal essences of hundreds, possibly even thousands of people.
She never, in her wildest dreams, imagined that the deity had just acquired the souls of both the tomb's legendary maker and the soul of her father. And today was not the day she'd learn about this mysterious fact.
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Althos helped himself to the contents of the undying titan's immense gullet. He eagerly scavenged the defeated titan's undigested meals, exploring and finding souls from a variety of different creatures while he was floating over the thing and spamming the spell over and over.
It took him several minutes to finish the process, more than long enough for Tristan and his other followers to get where Althos' victim had crashed and passed out. Once he finished the process, Althos received a surprising notification complete with a question.
[Alert: The soul domain wants to initiate a conversation with you. Would you like to allow it to do so?]
This notification shocked Althos, who took a second to recover from it, and then immediately told the system that he was fine with the domain talking to him.