Lancaster’s phone rang shortly after he reached the car.
“Rissa? What do you need?”
“Is Serenity still with you? He’s not answering his phone, and...“ Rissa didn’t continue, but she sounded worried.
“No, he’s still in the building, should be following me out shortly. I’ll go back in.” Lancaster re-locked the car and headed back to the apartment building.
“Thanks. I’m sure he’ll be fine, it’s just - I worry.” Rissa didn’t sound sure.
----------------------------------------
From what the Voice said, Serenity knew he had “mental abilities” that weren’t on his Path or his Abilities list from Void Sovereign that he should be able to use. Unfortunately, he didn’t know what they were or how to use them. That meant he had two choices: he could attempt to discover them and figure out how to use them while in combat with something that already knew what its abilities were or he could use an ability he already knew he had and had some idea how to use.
He wasn’t sure if Take Form would even function here, but it was the first thing to try. He doubted he’d be allowed to since it seemed antithetical to the goal of the combat, but shifting into his own form and clawing the Worm Queen to death was far more palatable than the other option.
As expected, it didn’t work.
He had to get closer. He drifted closer and closer to the Worm Queen.
It seemed to become nervous at his silent advance. It threw attack after attack at his mind, quickly. Eventually, it slowed down a bit as if it was getting tired and spoke. “Are you going to try to take me over? That won’t work. These aren’t our real bodies, they’re constructed for this combat.”
Serenity didn’t stop or speak. Nervous was fine with him. It was likely his next option - suffocating the worm with his body - wouldn’t work even if this were the physical world, but he was going to try.
Strangely, the Hegemon Worm didn’t move away. It flailed around as if it were trying to, but it didn’t get anywhere. “How can you move?”
Moving was simple; it was easier here than it had been going through the door. Serenity didn’t understand the Worm Queen’s problem; it wasn’t like it was difficult. Perhaps it didn’t know how?
Or perhaps this was one of the Void Sovereign abilities?
It didn’t matter. Serenity had finally reached the Worm Queen. He spread his smokelike form around the Worm Queen. It couldn’t harm him like this, and this was the only chance he had at a physical attack.
A few minutes seemed to pass. The Worm Queen stopped flailing and seemed to relax; unfortunately, it wasn’t in any apparent distress. “You can do nothing. I will take you over; you will become mine.”
Creepy.
Not as creepy as what Serenity was about to do, though. He didn’t have any other options left. He didn’t want to use Merge, but he was out of choices from the very, very small list of options available.
Or was he? Serenity had just assumed that “innate abilities as a Sovereign” included only what he knew about and things he hadn’t discovered. What if that wasn’t true? He couldn’t even use Take Form, and he knew that was from Void Sovereign. What if it was fuzzier? Could he use magic?
Serenity started building a basic attack spellform, but the moment he touched it with his Death Affinity, the spellform dissolved. It clearly wasn’t a failure in the spellform itself; instead, it looked like outside interference that was simply too fast for him to respond to.
Death Affinity isn’t allowed?
[Correct]
It seemed like it was an Affinity restriction, not a limit on all magic. That was a bonus. He knew his opponent was using Mind-based attacks. Maybe that would work.
Serenity rebuilt the spellform; it was basic, and would work with any Affinity, though not necessarily well. His Mind Affinity was passable, but he’d always used it more as a defence than anything else - a defence he could spread to his mindless undead servants, but that still wasn’t an attack.
When he fed it with Mind-affinity mana, it energized the spellform correctly and the attack sizzled into the Worm Queen’s defences.
Unfortunately, while its defences weren’t as good as his, they were better than his attack skill; even worse than that, his attack gave it a route past the part of his defences formed by his Affinity. He took the next attack straight on his Mind Resistance. It hurt.
That wasn’t going to work. It was a way to attack, but he wasn’t sure he’d wear the worm down before it wore him down. He needed another method. It was too bad he didn’t have any physical attacks; he couldn’t exactly pick up and hold a weapon right now, and he didn’t seem to be able to exert any force in his Void Sovereign form.
Another mental attack from the Worm Queen hit; he’d managed to get partial Affinity coverage back so it wasn’t as bad, but he was starting to feel a bit battered. Definitely still in the fight, but he didn’t want to let it drag out any longer if he could help it. He needed a solution, and he was getting closer to having to use one he didn’t want to.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The only other option he could think of was his soulblade. It was a physical attack, which seemed to be disallowed (or at least not possible for him), but it was formed from his soul. Serenity thought there was a chance it would get around the restriction. Just as importantly, there was a chance he could move it, even though he didn’t really have a physical form.
It was too bad he wasn’t practiced with it yet.
Serenity reached for his soulblade. It wasn’t easy, especially not while taking glancing blows from his opponent’s mental attacks, but eventually he managed to materialize its crystal hilt. The magical blade fountained out of it as the hilt dropped towards the nonexistent floor, stopping as it hit the edge of Serenity’s aura.
He hadn’t aimed it well; the only damage it did was as the blade initially emerged and sliced a patch out of the worm’s side.
Serenity still considered it a success. He’d found a way to hurt his opponent where it couldn’t reply. It even worked despite the restrictions he was under. Now he just had to do it again.
There was supposed to be a way to dismiss a soulblade at a distance and resummon it, but Serenity thought it would be simpler to try to control the one he already had out. If that didn’t work, he’d try resummoning it at a better angle. He was pretty sure he knew the trick, even though he’d never actually done it. He also knew just how different theory and practice could be.
So, how to pick up the soulblade? It wasn’t like he had hands, but he could sort of reach out and touch things. Sort of.
Serenity flowed down to the soulblade, which continued floating where it had been even as his aura moved “downwards”. Was that an actual floor or was it just because he thought of it as one?
It was probably better not to question that in this strange place; the blade might fall farther.
Serenity engulfed the grip, but when he tried to pick it up, he simply moved past it. He tried again with the same result. He then tried engulfing the entire sword, sputtering blade and all.
The good news was that it didn’t hurt him. Unfortunately, it still didn’t move.
He was about to desummon it and try again when he had an idea that was either stupid or brilliant. Yes, Merge’s description said it worked with other beings - but wasn’t this a part of his being, only separated from him? Many Path skills could be stretched; it was one of the ways he knew to trigger new Paths that took a slightly different direction. Even beyond that, the descriptions often left small details out.
Serenity was pretty sure by now that Merge wasn’t exactly a Path skill, either. It was an innate ability of the Voidling race that the Voice had tried to quantify. Could the Voice have left something out, or only mentioned the major parts? Serenity doubted most voidlings had much to do with soulbound items; it seemed unlikely they did much with items of any sort at all.
Merge
This time, Serenity was awake. He could feel as what passed for his body slipped between and into the soulblade; he could also feel that it wasn’t quite real to begin with, and was less so even now.
Serenity was the sword. He knew the sword. It had no memories, yet something about it told him how he’d formed it. It was the skill of his past-that-never-was wrapped around his hopes for the future. It made him yearn to see what the future would bring.
It wasn’t exactly the feelings he’d expected from a sword.
Serenity found that he still moved naturally in this space-that-wasn’t-really-space. He could feel what it was and wasn’t, and he knew that the only reason he could move here was that some part of him was made for a place much like this. He knew he’d be able to move no matter what form he was in, because movement here wasn’t about physical action at all.
Serenity staggered, slipping to the side as a particularly nasty mental attack hit. The Worm Queen seemed desperate. It was probably wise to be desperate.
Serenity maneuvered himself so that his blade was against the Worm Queen’s top - where the head would be if it had a head - and pushed himself in. There was little resistance, and he could feel himself sizzling against the Worm Queen’s blood.
It was a very strange feeling.
Unfortunately, the mental attack that came right on the heels of his slice told him it wasn’t immediately fatal. How did you kill a worm anyway?
Serenity settled for slicing the Worm Queen into pieces. It was the best he could do, and he was certain it had to eventually do the job.
[Sovereign combat concluded]
[Winner: Void Sovereign]
[XP Gained]
[Core Progression Gained]
[Swarm Control Granted]
[Temporary Skills Granted: Dominate, Observe, Command, Breed (Disabled), Transfer]
[New Form gained: Crystal Hilt]
Serenity felt overwhelmed for a moment as dozens of images and situations flickered in his mind before he pushed them away to concentrate on himself. He was … buried to the hilt in something, burning it away as he slid. There didn’t seem to be any remaining danger, so he relaxed and his blade flickered out.
Serenity pulled up his Abilities list to check one in particular before anything else.
Take Shape
Take Shape - You may assume the shape of any Form you know. Your personality and goals remain those of the Void Sovereign. Number of forms that can be known is affected by Ambit. Accuracy of learned forms will decrease with time; rate depends on Ambit.
Current known forms: Serenity (Chimera), Serenity (Hatchling Essence Dragon), Serenity (Void Sovereign (Kernel)), not-Liam (Human?), George Miller (Human), Robert Johnson (Human), Crystal Hilt
Void Dhampir of Essence and Mana
Not-Liam was only questionably human? That was interesting. It seemed like his Ability display was responding to how he thought of the different forms. Serenity wondered what would happen once he cleared out the memories of the two other humans he’d killed at the same time he killed Liam.
That was for tonight, when he had time after the warehouse. For now, it was enough to know that the Crystal Hilt now appeared as a form itself. Serenity wasn’t certain if he’d be able to summon his soulblade now; his best guess was that he wouldn’t be able to, but it was still worth it. He had other tools than a soulblade, and if he ever ended up in “Sovereign Combat” again, having an actual weapon he could wield would likely be just as useful as it was this time.