As soon as I blew apart the door, I started calling Can’Z’aas for power. This one is about the only power I know I can safely plan to have show up eight minutes later. I’ll have to stay conscious long enough to turn back afterwards though. I can’t risk falling asleep in the form I’ll be trying to take. He’s too dangerous, conniving.
Apparently mid-conversation, from beyond that wall of radiance, the pustulant figure gloats, seemingly continuing a taunt directed at Dawn, “It started of course with your life force, your soul’s outer shell. Stripping that away, like the skin of a potato, was child’s play, exposing enough of your soul to anchor you as the linchpin for my spell. It was supposed to leave you an immobile husk decades ago already, your personality trapped inside, but no matter. My vengeance for all that you’ve done to me is just as sweet seeing you like this, hopeless, driven to futile efforts. Relying on strangers.”
Dawn, gripping their head this entire time, shrieks, mortified, “All that I’ve done to you? I don’t even know who you are!”
The corpulent, bloated man in priestly robes calls back, “Oh, no? Think back, you know who cursed you. You know it was he, I, that did it. All I asked was that you renounce those abominations and join me. My time in The Brook was when in your company. I was at ease despite those bumbling abominations, the grotesqueries of nature shambling about as we shared meals.”
Ugh, this pus-bucket was trying to date Dawn while crapping on their whole belief-structure? Appearances aren’t everything, but seriously ragging on someone’s entire country’s faith? One that actually is basically a proven reality? They can preserve bodies by animating them! How can you deny them their faith? Some stupid holier-than-thou attitude. Oh, wait, Dawn was indicating that they either recognized or remembered him just now, more importantly, they never shared meals, at most ate at the same inn. I need to stop spacing out in anger at this moron.
He drones on and on, “I was prepared to comfort you through the grieving and separation from your false ideals, to help guide you to the light. Instead you spurned me and my affections, then shunned me and my faith, so I gave you a special place in all the hells that make up this spell, one nearly a century in the making. Every you in reality, or realities if there’s more than one. You, each possible you are part of a hand to play in washing the slate of all your detestable shambling ancestors. Them and their unholy, foul stench. They’ll be wrought to dust.”
A villainous monologue? Seriously? This guy really doesn’t let up as he continues, “It has of course already been cast, long ago at this point, its effects will occur whether you like it or not. Unless, perhaps you could find a way to completely obliterate your own soul from all of existence, before the spell finishes claiming it.”
He cackles maniacally momentarily before resuming, tauntingly, “You do feel it closing in, don’t you? You feel less and less of the outside world, the peeler edges closer and closer to what was originally the center of your hapless, disease-ridden potato of a soul. Your senses leave you, maybe momentarily, maybe long term, one by one. By the end, they should all be stripped from you, trapping you senseless in your husk until the final moments.”
Dippy and I are edging closer along opposite walls of the perimeter, but the sickening radiance covers everything from floor seemingly up to the unseen ceiling above. I’m bleeding like crazy, my wounds have even disintegrated or expelled some of the crossbow-bolt heads stuck in some of my joints. Just, breathe air, breathe Reggie. Stick with the spell. Stay awake, alive. It might be just enough to make the difference in this situation’s outcome.
Dawn yells, “Stop it! Shut up! Just, just shut up!”
Poor Dawn. But also, what is it with his awful potato peeling metaphor? It’s so half-assed. He’s had Dawn cursed for decades, and couldn’t think of a better metaphor? I suppose that’s not important. What was it he said about every possible reality? Does he actually know about multiple realities, or is he talking out his arse? Whether there’s only one Dawn, and he did this to them, or infinite Dawns, and he did this to all of them, it doesn’t matter. This is worse than anything I’d imagined.
I didn’t even know what we were tracking down was the source of Dawn’s curse. Dippy really hit the nail on the head. He’s a good guy, smart in his own ways, and an excellent tracker. He said it smelled like Dawn had been here before, right? Well, the person behind us, the disguised soldier who turned out to be Dawn anyway. Well, even if they hadn’t come physically, their soul was stretched in this direction, apparently.
The horrid, putrid man jibes, “What’s the matter? Your ancestors no longer mean that much to you? You’re not willing to make one measly little sacrifice to save all of them? I thought as much. You know as well as I that they’re abominations, even your cursed existence is worth more than all of them put together. Don’t worry, just let it happen, it will all be over soon. We don’t even need your soul any longer to complete the spell. Nor mine for that matter, hah. One or the other would do. It is in its final stages. And, as a precaution, whichever of us perishes last will still trigger its final act. Not that we need such a backup plan anymore, with the spell being moments away from finishing.”
I shudder at the abhorrent figure’s choice of phrasing as he continues, “You’ll join them in being unmade, lost for all eternity. If the spell really does its job, it will even strip you from memory. It’ll be like you’d never even been born at all. The best part is, even if I hadn’t lived long enough to see it, it would still have happened. I pinned the spell to the outer shell of your soul after all, and that’s already been claimed by the woven fabric in the magic of reality.”
I call out, “So what you’re saying is, there’s nothing you can or will do while you’re alive to end Dawn’s curse. You being alive doesn’t matter because the spell has a contingency tied to the final person’s death, and even if we kill you, that doesn’t end the curse placed on Dawn?”
Suddenly aware of my presence, he turns towards me to gloat, “Quite right indeed! Begone with your futile efforts, and maybe my hallowed lord will spare you as his light washes clean these lands! Well, my lord won’t spare that one of course, Dawn there will never have existed at all. Muahaha.”
Oh that is it, I’ve had it with this jerk. He does not get to live. Teuila, I hope you can sense this hatred I’m feeling, and I hope you’re getting close. If this were an action film on Fakeworld, Earth, we’d have ear comms, and her fiery bow would be a sniper rifle with incendiary rounds, and I’d tell her some quip like, “Smoke this a-hole!”
He’s hiding behind that nearly tangible field of energy, knowing we’d be consumed in radiance if we tried to cross it. The smug pile of feces thinks we’re just going to wait it out while Dawn is erased from existence, or chooses to erase their own existence? Think again dickweasel.
Screw it. Just screw it. I’ve been concentrating since we got here, and eight minutes have almost passed, I’m already bleeding, and bleeding light anyway. He probably can’t even tell that radiance is flowing out of me through the fog of his own unholy aura before him.
Erase Dawn from existence? Pin a spell on them that wipes out all the peaceful peoples’ ancestors? You don’t get to do that to my friends. I’m used to burning alive from radiance. The radiant area might be larger than my telekinesis range, but all I have to do is rush in a ways. Even if it has some sort of magic-stopping properties that strips spells, I should be able to keep my spell hidden deep within me. Hell, I’ve been through anti-sorcery before, and psychic connections still worked, so psychic telekinesis should too.
It’s like I was made for moments like this. I rush forward, Dawn gasps and shouts for me to stop, sensing what will happen as I cross the line. The priest cackles as he thinks I’m going to either be caught, screaming in pain until I die, too hurt to move, or instantly vaporize and die. He thinks I didn’t already know the agony of this exact power, that I wasn’t already in the middle of channeling this sort of torture. Yet I enter the field, and push through the pain, summoning every ounce of willpower or power I can from Can’Z’aas to protect me long enough to make it through. Hellspit, it tore my telekinesis spell off of me. It was too weakened already by having cast another spell while trying to maintain it. I knew that would come back to haunt me.
I have to make it to the other side. I push against the fabric that separates our realities, willing my body’s mana to reinforce my passive skills, and further enhance the electrokinesis I’ve always got running through my nerve system. I force my pain nerve response time lower and lower, fighting back the pain signals, slowing them down. Screw it, it’s fine. I’ll push through. It feels like a million deaths compressed into each moment that I trudge forward. I weep while suffering agony and rage, but I push through. My Can’Z’aasian transformation spell goes off, perhaps a bit late.
King’s voice worms its way along my mind in that smoky, suave yet sickening tone, “Long time no see partner! What is, what, Ahhh!”
King appears to have been vaporized from inside the form. It appears to be something quite like radiation poisoning to have freed me of his influence. But my form also dissipates under the magic-stripping effect of the radiance. Hellspit. It bought me a grand total of two steps under this killing-pressure. I return to my feminine, burly-armed form, not cherubic Reggie, which should be my default state. Perhaps because my mite-hulk king transformation was a spell technically cast from inside the aura. I wonder if there are any remnants of King within that form. Based on Queen mite-hulk, even a single cell, hell, a single strand of protein was enough for her to respawn from.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
During his cackling, the corpulant man notices my continued existence, “Hahaha, hahaha, hahaha, eh? What in the?”
That’s right you feculent turd. Everything hurts, as bad as the worst levels of my mana sickness, combined with the time I swam through lava to reach Lord Agni. Somehow, this sickening radiance, it’s not disintegrating my flesh, just corrupting it, infusing it, scaring me internally like radiation poisoning. It has left me feeling exhausted. I barely have the strength to take another step, let alone find a way to end his life. Whatever, I don’t care. I don’t even have to kill him.
I make it through to the other side, my wrath pouring out, enveloping me in the ephemeral cloud of some sort of wraith, an almost tangible presence of all my rage, hatred, fears, mistrust, and paranoia. Even without the aura-sensing spell active, I can feel my hostility generating an aura around me thicker than I’ve ever seen before.
I grip the front of his robe, and pull his puffed, pestilent face towards mine, dragging him toppling from the dais. He shrieks and tries to scrabble away, but I simply walk back through the wall of agonizing energies, hauling him with me. I hold him within it until every last atom of his being is lost to eternity. Too bad it can’t wipe the stain of him from our memories.
As he dies, the energy barrier drops, so too, does Teuila. She falls from the very top of the cathedral’s domed roof beyond sight range in the sickly glowing fog. She’d been caught in a bad way, barely hanging on just outside of the barrier’s reach apparently, it still must have been sapping her vitality the entire time. He might have been holding her up there with a longer range, weaker telekinesis spell, or a spell effect that messed up her gravity control, sending her falling upward to the roof. It couldn’t manage to draw her closer, but still trapped her.
I want to leap to her aid, to cushion her fall. With Te being hurt, it reminds me that she sensed my sluggishness ever since the clothier, and now I’m feeling hers. Her own pain and exhaustion are what are preventing me from putting my all into it to move faster. I can’t generate any speed. I’m too destroyed. I begin to cough and double over as I struggle and stagger towards where Teuila will be upon impact.
I’m not quick enough, but Zippy is. The little fellow is trying to slow Teuila’s fall. Teuila’s mostly, usually effortlessly light, but Zippy is tiny. Thankfully Dippy helps with some sort of net tosser. They’re really, truly, great friends to have. Dawn looks like they want to sob, to cry, to scream, to rail against the priest’s statements, to claim they were all lies.
I reach a hand towards Dawn in comfort, and they shriek, swatting it away. I recoil, unsure of what’s going on. I won’t be able to comfort anyone in a few moments, the pain is catching up with me. I’m sorry Dawn, I don’t know how to help, and right about now I’m going to vomit a torrent of blood and mana. I loose up the sick that contains far more iron content than should be coming from anyone’s stomach, its red splash staining the cathedral floor a crimson that aches to be called what it is, a cathedral of blood.
The cathedral of blood, a fitting name for such a horrid edifice. It’s definitely a place one shouldn’t let their guard down in. It’s a tad hard to keep my guard up at the moment however. I think I might be screaming in pain, or maybe I’ve already passed out, I can’t tell. I think the senses of that partially broken, fully stripped telekinesis spell I used, and the fact that I reached towards Can’Z’aasian power once again, combined with my danger wraps, is keeping me in a semi aware state.
Dippy is freaking out that none of the three of us are responding to him. Hey, Dippy, you goober, don’t, oh you bozo, Teuila doesn’t need cardiopulmonary resuscitation. You little punk. You know you can’t form a seal to get air in our lungs. Wait, no, I don’t either.
I can’t believe he might be about to try what I think he’s about to try. Now he’s running towards Dawn who is still freaking out. Is he going to try to give them CPR while they’re still standing? And, technically already dead. Dawn seems to shriek, and they knock one of the large decanters that likely hold holy water towards Dippy. Dippy takes a moment to take the hint as the porcelain shatters on his cranium.
It’s a good thing Teuila and I took the brunt of everything physical this last day or two. It’s also a good thing that we critterkin bounce back just as quickly on Rayileklia as we did on Can’Z’aas. Still, this feels ungodly awful, and I worry I may have made my mana sickness even worse. It feels like there’s some kind of presence, somehow it’s external, and knows where I am, because it’s also partially inside of me now. I’m terrified to think of what unholy, but supposedly hallowed, entity that jerk had bargained with for his power. More terrified that if I don’t figure it out, it might find me and my friends first.
I fight and claw my way back to awareness, to wakefulness, as pain screams through me like lightning on rails. Hells, my eyes are clouded with the red fog of blood mixing with tears. It has been a long time since I was certain that my eyes were bleeding. I’m pretty certain when the thermite-like compound exploded in my telekinetic grasp, that I popped blood vessels all around my optic nerves, based on the sharpness of the migraine that hit. And now the blood from those popped vessels is just swishing all around my nasal cavities and eyes. Hrk, koff.
I must look like a horrifying sight, because Dawn recoils as I stand, their face a mask of utter terror. I slump, and falter as I edge slowly towards Teuila. I pick up her nearly-weightless frame, unsure where her equipment is, and drape one of her arms across my back as I plod towards the exit. I don’t want to spend another second in this place. If I had my magic, I’d destroy the whole thing in an instant once we left it. With the staff’s magic, I can probably ruin its entrance at least. We scared off, or slew most of the cultists, probably. Any that are left wandering these halls can die for all I care.
Dawn is at least willing to follow us out of this hellish reminder of their curse. I knew their existence was harsh, but they’re in more turmoil than I’d ever even imagined I might see them in. Dippy is asking questions in his usual nervous chatter, but I can’t respond to him at the moment in my broken, nearly-dying state. Thankfully the little guy doesn’t take offense even if perhaps he might be feeling ignored. I guess kobold society might be kind of like that, the chatterboxes get ignored, but they’re still happy to just chatter away. It’s probably easier in Draconic. Maybe that language even has a way of not being ignored, or being responded to more easily even if exhausted. Kozzurth was able to speak it without control over much of her tongue, while mostly dead.
I spy Teuila’s massive backpack tucked away a fair ways up a boulder shortly past the exit. It blends right in with the rock. It makes sense that she abandoned it way over here to sneak inside. The murder-holes are too small for it to fit. I’m glad to see it, so I snag it, coughing and sputtering more blood as I can barely heft it. Now that I have our gear, I seek a spot on the leeward side of some independent cliff-facing. This stone makes a branch in the path, maybe it’s an enormous boulder that’s worn down to a vertical smooth face in the ever-present rains of pain. I set Teuila down and ask Dippy to help prepare camp, and tell him how grateful I am that he caught her.
While Dippy is helping me take care of camp, Dawn disappears off to the west somewhere. I can’t do anything for them until they’re ready to accept some comfort that I might offer. I can however make a very big noise as I blow the everloving hell out of this craphole’s architecture. I start weaving magic from the staff, drawing into existence a series of fissures, and conjuring several fireballs. The combined effect is several explosions and the toppling in of the front face of the compound that houses the mockery of a cathedral. My combination of spells even drags down a significant portion of the cliff facing, burying the front of the buildings in enough rubble to obscure them entirely from view. I’m tempted to unleash a stone elemental inside of any tunnels that might be left standing, if the magic could reach, but I shouldn’t get close to something collapsing so heavily.
See what I mean about not getting close? The rubble actually causes a chain reaction, caving in more of the cathedral’s compound, which loosens more rubble along the supported cliff face, which caves in yet more of the compound, all the way back towards the cathedral itself by the incredibly long series of sounds of it. More effective than I had planned honestly. Any cultists left within are either crushed, or likely to asphyxiate or starve. Screw ‘em. That’s fine by me at this point. Wrath, that deadliest sin of mine once again crawls along my back.
Hm, that little display took abit over half of the staff’s magic, when it was already down a ways, whoops. It should be fine by tomorrow or maybe the day after though. How much energy it can leach from Rayileklian air seems kind of random. Or maybe less how much it can leach, but how much it can purify into castable mana. I’ve never let it drop this far. There’s barely a trickle in it. I’m afraid of what might happen if I use up all of its power.
What if it takes energy to draw in and purify mana? It could become a simple walking stick, completely non-magical. I’m going to have to be even more careful with its expenditures. Lets see, what have we used since it last had a chance to recharge. I’m pretty sure it fully recharged in the Derbrightmine Dominion, I know I cast telekinesis once on the way here, a fireball inside and four fireballs and one fissure-quake spell to bring the place down. So we sort of know its limits. The quake spell definitely used the most energy, but the fireballs surprisingly used more than the telekinesis even individually. I could maybe use six fireballs and one telekinesis in a day when the staff is fully charged. I’d better keep count.
Dawn returns, quite possibly drawn in by the terrifying sounds of explosions and the quaking of the ground. They spy my handiwork, but simply mill around the edges of camp. I want so badly to help heal their hurt, to break this spell that’s supposedly rending their existence, but I don’t know how. Maybe they hate me, because I acted in haste, and didn’t even really interrogate the guy responsible if there was some other way to reverse it. Then again, that crapmonger was all too happy to let Dawn believe their only choice was to erase their own existence, or be erased as their own soul finalizes a spell that will destroy the Aasimovian’s beloved ancestors. Also, Teuila was nowhere in sight, and it turns out he had magically pinned her to the ceiling at the edge of the radiance. I don’t know how badly off Teuila is right now, but I fear how much worse it could have been if I had waited any longer to act.
The Sister that sent us on this path must have known what she was sending us to if they’re as oracular as everyone claims. The fact that she was able to find us in the wilderness seems to indicate she was. If she had such potent foreknowledge, she must have known about Dawn’s ties to the prophecy she laid out for us. That if we didn’t seek out this trail, that a great calamity would befall Aasimovia, and the grief it caused, well the Aasimovians would never recover from it. Still, it sounds like even though we followed the trail to its end, Dawn’s fate is sealed, and so is that of the Aasimovian ancestors.
The spell still hangs in the air, and the aura-vision from the staff shows me Dawn’s soul still bleeding away. I knew the Sister referenced my “doomed” friend for a reason, but I couldn’t have possibly imagined this. How the hell are we supposed to have stopped it? Were we just too late? That disgusting, entitled, crapsack high priest talked a lot about the spell. He probably felt pretty safe behind that aura of sickening radiance. It feels like my insides are bubbling, boiling, melting, and the migraine from the thermite-like compound blowing apart my telekinetic muscles is excruciating on top of all that. Urp, ugh. Yeah, more iron content in my vomit. Not a great day to be us.
He wasn’t lying about having set it up so that he didn’t need to be alive.