(Heyho cotton eye Joe, my nickname btw -only Joe, not cotton eye-, how you guys 'doin? I am doing great, enjoying my time until I will beat cancer in his ass! No, that sounds desperate. I am doing fine guys, just so you know. This chapter is not much, just Myrel's new form and showing a bit of Hirahn's personality. Nahnahnah! He won't be suddenly all chill-milly, he will gradually coem to accept those around him as friends, although they are human. The plot will go forward in the next chapter, probably skip a fight between Alexander and Myrel, and then initiate the first arc. Yeah this was more of introduction and enabling Hirahn to know more about this world. Don't forget there is still the unexplored southern part of the world of Asthea, and so many races to screw around with. Vampires, elves and all those stiff guys will be smacked by Hirahn's madness. It will be so much fun! I hope you enjoy this little chapter here, sorry guys but I sprinkled a few harder words here and there to give it more authenticity. I AM SORRY! I KNOW I SHOUDN'T DO THIS! :( Anyway, I hope you enjoy! :D )
Hirahn submerged every fiber of his being into Myrel's weak and mortal body. He snaked his way past strands of muscles, friable bones, layers of flesh and seas of blood. He took in all the informaton about Myrel's body, her strengths, her weaknesses, her physical layout, even her memories were flipped through like a book.
In seconds Hirahn knew more about Myrel than she herself did, does and will ever do.
His ethereal form sweeped through her body, deformed the weak and human tissue, destructurized it and melded it with his magic power into something incredible. He willed the essences of the elements, magic and matter into the yet too weak body. Raw power ruptured Myrel's flesh and bones, imbued it with magical energy and formed her anew.
Unlike Alexander Myrel's body got a complete overhaul, she was being reborn, in the truest sense.
From the outside Alexander stared wide-eyed at the trembling body of Myrel. Blue crackles rippled through her body, her limbs trembled and her complexion turned into one of immense pain. Each jolt of staticity was flanked by a burst of power that quietly vanished. Her body began to change, from the inside out. Organs, bones, muscles, nerves, everything that made-up her body was being enhanced, or rather exchanged for denser and less fragile tissue.
Slack-jawed Alexander watched as a thin layer of scales began to breach Myrel's tender skin. The scales rattled in delight as they breathed their first wiff of fresh air. Hundreds of those silvery spikes raised up towards the moon, like tiny hands they send a prayer into the sky before they settled onto Myrel's skin and mimicked her originally tanned color.
Myrel's eyelashes fluttered, her eyes gaped open with shock. Her back arched as if possessed by a demon and the skin underneath began to crawl. Brilliant blue eyes stared at the nightsky as Myrel's hairs began to sway in the motionless air. Each strand discharged a white radiance which blinded Alexander and sent him back onto his bottom. Alexander rubbed the surprise from his unfocused eyes and sat back up. Like a beacon of might Myrel sent out a powerful burst of energy that made even the clouds scatter into all directions. The abundant energy dispersed in flashes of light around Myrel and surrounded her in a halo of blue flares.
Her body descended and Myrel was once again lying down on the ground, black ash surrounded her but apart from that she seemed normal. Her hair was back to its warm chestnut brown instead of the searing white and even her eyes were soundlessly closed, she looked relaxed and at peace with herself; Alexander couldn't detect a single difference. Though instead of using his eyesight Alexander pryed into Myrel's strength with his own instincts and his instincts told him that another apex fighter was standing right before him, one that could even shadow his own power.
Hirahn's body that was standing stock still began to move like a rusted machine, gauche and clumsy. Humpy he began to rotate his joints and flex his muscles and then stretched to the sides. "That took longer than expected.", he mumbled to himself with a dissatisfied tone. He might have said so but the whole process took at most two minutes, maybe even less. That he was even able to modify a human being was already bordering utter infeasibility.
'Why can I not enhance her any further? Are there limitations?', Hirahn wondered as he looked at the sleeping Myrel. As mucha s he wanted to he could not turn her to a this world's equivalent of a God, and this nagged at Hirahn.
"Hirahn what is... this...?", Alexander walked up to him from the side and picked up the ash from the ground. He let the black powder slide between his fingers; it somehow felt familiar to him, not its touch but the aura that was radiating from it.
"Unlike you, whose body is pretty top-notch already, Myrel's body had to be changed from scratch. This ash you are so closely examining is the shed body of the new Myrel.", Hirahn explained. "So its better to not touch that, it's disgusting.". "W-what?", Alexander stuttered and let the ash fall from his hand.
"Wouldn't that mean that you killed Myrel?", Alexander asked worryingly.
"You know, the soul leaves the body when its beyond repair, when you are dead and your body won't work anymore. But with you as my first guinea pig I found out that if you gradually change and destroy the vessel of the soul, the body, and replace it with a stronger vessel at the same time you can keep the soul contained within. Memories, emotions, everything spiritual is residing within the soul, or in other words, your ego and self are your soul. I did not kill Myrel, I just gave her a new body.", Hirahn crouched down and poked Myrel's face with his finger. "Wake up Myrel.", he whispered into her ears. "So I was only a guinea pig.", Alexander mumbled dejectedly at the side, unheard by Hirahn, and sighed.
"Mhmhm...", Myrel groaned while stretching her cramped limbs. Her eyelids fluttered and slowly openned to reveal her originally rich green eyes. Confused her sight darted between Hirahn and Alexander.
"W-what happened?", she asked in a hoarse voice as if she was asleep for many hours although she lost consciousness for only a few minutes.
"I finished modifying your body. See for yourself.", Hirahn pulled her onto her two trembling legs with ease.
Expectant Myrel felt with her hands over her skin, face, limbs. Her fingers traced down over her body and yet they couldn't feel a difference. From her hairs to her nails to her teeth, everything stayed the same. Her eager expression turned into a frown and even more confusion. "Hirahn, I don't feel... different?", Myrel asked and looked at Hirahn with puppy eyes. "Do it again.", she said with a whimper. She needed the power to prove herself, that she was not just some tall brute, but a competent person; but it was even more so to stay at Hirahn's side and support him, only with strentgh she could achieve such a feat.
"Pahahahaha! Myrel let me show you something.", Hirahn raised his hand upwards and a slim dagger began to form inside the empty air, clenched by his hand. The dagger had a diaphanous blade, as though it was made of glass. The shiv was razor sharp and exuded terrifying danger. Myrel gasped in surprise, surprised about the floating dagger and the next action Hirahn took.
With a lightning fast strike Hirahn's hand gripped the dagger and at the same time curved with a horizontal slash downwards. Myrel cried in terror as the glossy steel began penetrating into her skin, at least it tried to. Though there is a difference between trying and straight out failing; knowing it will fail but struggling in desperation.
The moment the powerful and mystical steel came in contact with Myrel's tender and silky skin, so weak and fragile, thin cracks began to spread from its tip. Despite being able to cleave other high grade metals in two, this dagger was not able to pierce Myrel's skin, on the contrary! It shattered after Hirahn applied more pressure to it, like the fragile glass it looked like, just like that! Later Hirahn would find out that he created an even harder metal than mythril and adamantium combined, and all that just on a whim.
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Fragments of the dagger shot into the air. Myrel ducked with extremely fast reflexes to the side and avoided each and every splinter of crystalline metal; not even those pieces that barely reached the size of a grain of sand could touch her. Her eyes managed to keep up with the ricocheting glass fragments, although they were lightning fast, and her brain had enough time to sent out orders and calculate the trajectories of those glass bullets.
Hirahn now held onto the hilt without blade and let it drop to the ground. The remains of the dagger vanished before touching the stone ground; swallowed by a gust of wind silvery ashes were scattered into the air. "This is what you are now.", Hirahn pressed with one finger against Myrel's chest. "This will hurt a bit.", he added.
A subtle spark of aether smelted with Myrel, the blue tether swam through her body and reached a blue core of immense power. Acting as a catalyst to jump start Myrel's aether core it infused itself into the blue globe which was rotating around itself in absolute stillness.
Myrel wailed as a sharp pain assaulted her body. Her skin began to show cracks in a repetitive pattern, vaguely reminding of scales on a reptile, they looked the same as those scales she showed while Hirahn transformed her! Those same scales flipped around themselves to display their blazing white underside and turned Myrel into an angel clad in purity. It all happened so suddenly.
Two thin and light grey wings penetrated through Myrel's shoulder blades. They sent a volley of golden blood splatters to the ground as the wings unfolded to showcase their true beauty. Trimmed with spikes at their edges and half-translucent the wings were an odd combination of a butterflies dapperness and a dragon's fiercenss. Even Myrel's eyecolor changed from its rainforest green into a piercing blue, as did her chestnut brown hair. Its warm brown colour tuned into an equally warm white that could soothe a mad man's heart.
Her body rose upwards as though it was lifted by invisible strings and halted in mid-air. Power surged from all around the amalgamation of angelic and draconic features. The moon's rays seemingly increased in intesity and shrouded Myrel in a dazzling gown of beady light that was thrumming around her floating body.
The divine light eked Myrel's sacred appearance. Her gaze, wide open and awake, turned callous and yet contained its unblemished beauty -both aspects stood contrasting with each other- as it washed over the walls and the city beyond. Only when her sight stopped on Hirahn did it change from impassiveness into an adoring if not even venerative and loving gaze. She was a cold beauty with tyrannical power but there was only one person in her heart.
She turned into a fierce warrior, bristling with astuteness and duty, but at the same time her frail buterfly-like wings, her beautiful unsmeared skin, as though even the air did not dare to touch, and her wispy frame made one think of a fabled fairy. One wanted to protect her but at the same time go with her into an arduous battle. There was a kind of thrill and longing one experienced when watching Myrel's new form. She was a goddess of war and beauty.
Hirahn turned towards Alexander and pointed with his thumb backwards. "Alexander, you got a name for that race I created?", Hirahn asked, unaffected about the fact that he created a whole new race that was in strenth close to the Gods themselves.
"N-no... I think only angels could be comparable to... this.", unlike the first few times Alexander was now quite calm when facing an impossible miracle created by Hirahn, he simply accepted that such a being existed. A being that could make the impossible possible.
"Hum..... I will baptize this new race as Valkyries. I bless you with future success and hope you will have many descendants... Pahahahah!", Hirahn laughed out loud, it was the first time he created an entirely new race and the absurdity only hit him now. Thinking back about how he modified Alexander's body and turned the High-Human into something beyond those limitations he looked at the old and yet, compared to Hirahn, young king.
"Alexander, you are not a High-Human anymore; you are this mankind's genesis, you are their Prometheus. A Primordial, you shall now be named as such!", Hirahn commanded and clapped with his hands, delighted about his superb naming sense. This too just happened in a mere second. There was no room for debate or anything. Hirahn said it was so and that was it. 'The sun spins around the earth', if Hirahn said so then it was true, it HAD to be true. After all those words came from a real God.
"A-alright, I think?", Alexander could only scratch his head, certainly he was not a High-Human anymore but it still felt wrong to have his race changed so abruptly.
"Ah! I think her body should ahve accomodated to the changes by now.", Hirahn clasped his hands together for a final time, at the same instant Myrel's body began to plummet, her eyes closed and her body relaxed. It was surprising how swiftly Hirahn could change subjects. It just went to show how much of his uncaring attitude still remained, deeply ingraved in his heart, he would be no fool to just go and accept some humans as his 'best' friends, they were comrades for now.
"Hyup!", Hirahn jumped and catched the winged girl before she hit the ground, breaking through serveral floors in all likeliness with her new and more sturdy body.
"Tsk, now I have to wake her up all over again!", Hirahn grumbled as he observed the peacefully sleeping Myrel in her new form, in her new body, the body of a mighty valkyre!
As he began to tug at her nose and pinching her cheek Hirahn started to revel in thought. In just a few days he would leave this kingdom, this continent probably and all he could do was to bestow his comrades with power. 'Comrades... or friends? No, not yet. But some day.', Hirahn mused happily to himself. The darkness took a heavy blow from the white orb that was spinning and brimming with new-found power, giddily bouncing up and down inside Hirahn's heart. He finally realized, he finally acknowledged those around him. It was hard for Hirahn to show it but aside from his apathy he also felt something else now that he could not explain, it could only be the warmth of companionship, to share a bond that was beyond race, ideologies or anything that made on differ. (For God's sake if anyone misunderstands making friends with being able to be 100% empathic and then tells me it contradicts with what I said about Hirahn I will fuck a hole into my laptop!)
For the second time in just a few minutes Myrel woke up from a sudden fit of weariness. Her fair hands rubbed the sleep from her eyes, her tall and elegant body wriggled in Hirahn's strong arms and her mouth openned up to release a cute yawn. Her wings shuddered, openned and closed like window shutters until they leaned closely onto Myrel's back. Smacking her lips Myrel woke up, feeling literally like new.
"How are you feeling, my little valkyrie.", Hirahn offered the awakening Myrel a large smile, showing his brilliant teeth in folly.
Thinking about it, Hirahn was not only a being of cold, hard, apathy but also chaos. He was ever-changing, chaotic and a lover of the unknown. What might that mean for the future?