On the way toward the entrance, it struck Cyril how well-maintained the area was. Even the individual pieces of shattered marble were spotless, and had been arranged into neat piles, like cairns marking the graves of the honored dead. In a way, perhaps they were.
The djinn must have continued its duties until recently. Interesting that it hadn’t attempted to repair the broken statuary. That type of labor must not have been part of the commandments it was bound to follow. Since there were no gardens to attend to, it had returned to the basics of tidying up the premises. Apparently it didn’t count the luminous moss as appropriate foliage; no traces of it existed within the palace grounds, its creeping growth suddenly halting at an invisible boundary around the perimeter.
The intimidating set of marble doors remained intact. Intricate diagrams of geometric shapes and runes decorated their expanse. While he was struck by an urge to study the design, he had a far more pressing concern. The gate was wide open, as if someone had anticipated his arrival. Cyril tightened his grip on his spear.
Maybe it had always been open?
The reassurance felt hollow.
A glimmer near the doorway caught his attention. He bent over and inspected a bronze scale, noting the small trail of indentations in the stone. The Half-Ascended Wyrm had definitely passed through here, but the placement seemed a bit too convenient. Signs of its venomous blood stopped there. It was bait that would attract monsters, but not a grown human. Perhaps it served its purpose either way. Knowing he was probably walking into an ambush wasn’t going to stop him from doing it regardless.
The Wyrm may have a surprise in store for him, but he had gained a few himself for their next meeting.
His Flickers investigated the entrance hall. A colonnade of pillars lined the passage, framing the room around the centerpiece: a stone table displaying a veritable feast. Slabs of meat, piled high and covered in thick gravy; dark grapes so plump they looked like they were able to burst open; bowls overflowing with dates and dried nuts; loaves of soft, crumbling bread stacked atop folds of velvet cloth.
Cyril rolled his shoulders, loosening up the tension in his body, and took a deep breath before entering the palace. On his way past the door, he brushed his fingertips along the marble, but nothing new appeared in his list of Transmute options. It must have been the same material he had already acquired from the plinth holding the Library’s crystal orb.
The warm, delectable aromas washed over him like a wave. His stomach cramped, and saliva flooded his mouth. If the marble of smoke wasn’t telling him he was heading straight in the direction of the Wyrm, he may have convinced himself it was an enchanted feast left behind by the gardener djinn. The disturbing part was that it was still a possibility, twisted to serve the purposes of a malevolent will.
Ignoring the painful spasms in his stomach, he dragged himself past the banquet table. The tantalizing scents followed, insistent on torturing him.
Maybe he was imagining things, but the marble of smoke had begun to subtly vibrate, as if it was shivering in anticipation. That worsened his dread more than anything else he had encountered within the palace so far.
He extended his domain at minimum strength, more for the additional perspective on his surroundings than anything. It confirmed his general vicinity was empty, save for the occasional bit of old decoration.
The marble of smoke led him to a large atrium. Tidy piles of broken glass occupied the far corners of the room, likely the remnants of the window panes that once lined the open ceiling. The atrium looked like it had once served as a botanical garden, now reduced to a maze of pathways and empty plots.
Even hollow and ruined, the opulence of the palace left a deep impression on Cyril. It must have been glorious in the halcyon days before the Fall of Beljeza. Cyril yearned to return to civilization, and maybe one day visit some faraway palaces, full of life and wine and beautiful princesses.
He shoved aside a twinge of loneliness and refocused.
Like the entrance to the palace, the doors of the following room had been flung wide open. Cyril glanced at the marble of smoke warily--it was vibrating like a core on the cusp of an evolution. His Flickers darted into the next room, illuminating a sight that stopped him in his tracks.
Bones littered the floor. Countless bones, of all shapes and sizes, many of them cracked open up the sweet marrow. He recognized the skulls and elongated bones of the humanoids, but others looked like they belonged to nothing he had encountered in the Underdark. Other species of monsters that had gone extinct from the ravenous gluttony of the wyrmhorde?
As the Flickers swept through the graveyard, he realized it was a royal audience chamber. Faded murals decorated the thick pillars, displaying fragmentary tales of battle and myth. The pathway led up to a raised dais, and upon that dais stood a throne of dark, glossy metal. It blazed so brightly under his spiritual sense that, for a moment, he disregarded the figure curled pitifully around its base.
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The Half-Ascended Wyrm looked like it had suffered during its retreat to the palace. Other monsters had taken advantage of its weakened state to tear and devour chunks out of its sinuous form, greatly diminishing its overall size. The humanoid upper body had been reduced to an amputated midriff, unable to regenerate through the blackened crust of cauterized tissue. His farewell inferno had scorched its scales to halfway down its length. Raw, angry flesh peeked through the gaps.
He sighed in relief, though his mind remained alert and he lingered at the entrance.
His nemesis hadn’t been finished yet. The situation still struck him as too fortunate after all his worrying. Their first encounter had ended with a decisive victory, but he had expected more. Was it playing too much into the attempted ambush and feigning death?
Cyril shrugged and poured mana into a Pressure Cantrip until he almost lost control of it. A quarter of his reserves empowered the technique. Like a fist from heaven, a pillar of force smashed down into the Wyrm.
It imploded.
Bits of tissue and loose scales rained down throughout the room. With a casual wave of his hand, he summoned a shield of stone to protect his face from the gore. He dropped it after a few seconds to better appreciate the sight of the pulverized Wyrm. The dais had cracked and caved until it was almost level with the floor. Within the small crater rested the flattened remnants of the Wyrm, clinging to the unaffected throne. Most of the abomination’s scaled hide remained intact, but its squishy viscera had burst out like water from a stepped-on canteen.
To think, he had once feared its durability.
“Disgusting,” Cyril muttered, brushing off the front of his spotless tunic.
Torrents of the Half-Ascended Wyrm’s death energy flooded into his core. It seemed endless, a storm that battered at his soul as he struggled to stuff as much as possible into himself. He hadn’t even figured out what he planned on doing with the spoils of his victory. Truthfully, he had half-expected to die in a hopeless rematch.
He stared at the hundreds of points worth of accumulated essence in quiet disbelief. Though he was staring at ample evidence of its death, he set the Flickers to work along the Wyrm’s unmoving hide, infusing as much heat as possible into them. Even from across the room, the sweltering brilliance made him break out in a sweat. The drain on his core eventually snapped him out of his reverie and he stopped desecrating the pathetic corpse.
Cyril felt..strange. The act of revenge had brought him no satisfaction. His mind was blank, as empty as the palace. Maybe fortune was finally starting to smile on him? With enough perseverance, he had overcome his nemesis. Time to reap the rewards.
Gravity had served him well, and each point he invested increased the strength of Pressure, which had quickly risen up as his favorite out of his pantheon of abilities. While his immediate thought was to dump everything into it, the Dominion of Earth was Behemoth’s primary affinity from which everything else sprung. His Transmute Cantrip also offered far more utility than Pressure, and the results should be more pure and efficient compared to before.
Frowning, he absently funneled all of the death energy into the Dominion of Earth, raising it to 319/1000. Immediately, the ambient glow of the dark metal throne intensified, and his awareness of the world around him increased more than it had from ascending to the Second Sphere. After all, he had more than tripled his previous investment into the Dominion, even if he hadn’t broken through into a new realm.
The influx of power made him sit down, his head spinning from a sudden blend of ecstasy and disorientation. As much as he wanted to meditate and consolidate his gains, a nagging worry continued to infect his thoughts.
After he regained his composure, he stood up and stepped into the throne room, carefully attempting to navigate his way through the bones without stepping on any. It soon proved impossible. He slipped and shattered a humanoid skull underfoot; sharp cracks echoed eerily throughout the throne room.
Wincing, he gave up on attempting to be subtle and crunched his way along, though for some reason he felt compelled to avoid the humanoid bones as much as possible. He lingered near the glowing pit containing the throne and the Wyrm’s hide. Once the metal cooled down, he knew he needed to lay his hand on the throne and add its bizarre material to his Transmute list.
A sudden crack of bones pierced through the silence.
Cyril froze in place. He hadn’t moved.
He whipped his spear around, returning his attention to the entrance. There, at the threshold of the doorway, stood a human figure carved from pure darkness. Both of Cyril’s Flickers shot out, casting their ethereal glow far and bright. None of it pierced through the shroud of shadow..
His first mad thought was that he was staring at Hosjin Yaserath in the flesh, returning to see what delinquent had disturbed his dead bride’s sanctuary. Then he thought it was perhaps the gardener, having acquired a Dominion of Darkness due to countless years trapped beneath the world.
The truth slowly occurred to him. Beneath the shroud of darkness, around the area of its dantian, rotated a spiritual core the size of a fist. His own core dwarfed it, though that meant nothing in isolation. Throughout the Condensation Stage, one refined the quality of their mana more and more, until the liquid energy crystallized and finally evolved into the Foundation Stage. Based on the dense swirls of black energy, tinged with crimson and silver, the entity was either at Late or Peak Condensation.
He pointed his spear at the black figure. “Announce yourself.”
The words came out harsh, grating. The entity had demonstrated no hostile intent, but he couldn’t help himself.
The figure lifted one of its hands. Before it could form a mudra, he waved his free hand in front of him and summoned a bronze shield large enough to protect his entire body. When nothing happened, he shrank the construct down until he could peer over it.
The dark figure was staring at its own hand in apparent fascination, head tilted to the side. Its fingers ended in long, curved claws, stained with crimson energy.
Finally, it answered in a deep, sibilant whisper that made his skin crawl. “Hunger made alive. God among prey. One you end, my brood. A sacrifice for me. Was. Mine.”
Cyril cursed. Of course.
The Half-Ascended Wyrm had an elder brother.