I felt as though I was losing myself.
I didn’t quite know what had happened, but somehow my mind had been dragged along when Etienne was sent into this . . . communion of his. The problem was, I wasn’t meant to be here, I could feel it as an undeniable fact, as real as gravity and just as unforgiving. This place, what was happening here, I didn’t belong, I wasn’t a part of it. Yet somehow, I’d been pulled into it, the link I’d been using to communicate with Etienne acting as a manacle that pulled me in when he’d been drawn here.
It was like being trapped in a massive hall of mirrors, only half the mirrors were broken, half of the whole ones were just hanging loosely from their fittings, half of those were tinted in a riot of clashing colours, and scattered among the mirrors were a few odd windows that let me see outside.
Oh, and the hall was upside down.
And spinning in random directions.
The whole thing was one huge mess of confusing and clashing images and sounds. I got brief flashes of the ‘real’ world, enough to have a general idea of what was going on, but for the most part, all I was getting was a distorted reflection of my own thoughts and feelings. It was made even worse by the continuous riot of emotions flowing into me through the link.
Etienne was a mess, there was no other way to put it. There were moments when he seemed to have managed some sort of stability, only for it to fall into despair, fear, or outrage again, then he’d try and build himself up once more, only to fall again. I could feel it getting worse and worse, the attempts to recover growing more feeble, even as the falls became more torturous and brutal. With my brief glimpses of what he was seeing I had spotted that colossal figure he was gazing upon, though I had no idea who it was. What I did know was that even through his muddle of desperate emotions Etienne felt some sort of kinship to it, so I was guessing it had something to do with his bloodline.
Then I felt something more than just emotion for the other demigod, I felt something . . . growing. Something that sent chilled shots of fear through his mind strangling other thoughts and choking any other emotions.
Hunger, remorseless, relentless hunger. A hunger I had sensed before, if only at the edges.
I could feel it as the hunger grew, and I could feel it as it seemed to devour everything around it, slowly hollowing Etienne out from within. I didn’t know what was going on, if it was natural, an attack, or maybe even something that he was doing to himself, but to me, it didn’t matter.
Seeing it, seeing his mind, his emotions, maybe even his very soul, being eaten out like that . . . there weren’t the words to describe how much it disgusted me! A person’s mind is the result of their memories, emotions, and ideas, and those things should be untouchable. To break those deeply intimate and private parts of a person, to undo them, to reduce them to nothing, what did that do to the mind they made up? You could kill someone, you could torture them, but to unmake them like this . . . there was something repellent about it that went down to my core!
This, what Etienne was being forced to endure, it was like watching some helpless victim being abused, and being unable to do anything to help!
And what was worse was that I could feel it trying to reach out to me! Somehow the hunger could feel the link, the connection, and it was trying to use it as a bridge to find more ‘food’ to devour. It couldn’t yet, not with so much of Etienne’s essence in the way, but once it had consumed him . . .
I wanted to break the link, to cut off any possible channel that hunger could have used to reach my mind. I could do it too, it would’ve been easy since it was my magic that was sustaining the connection. All I had to do was will it, to consciously push the magic in it in just the right way, and then the link would break like a thread of glass hit by a lead pipe. I wanted to do it! I wanted it desperately!
But if I did, then Etienne would be on his own.
What would happen then? What would the monster become when every shred of humanity was consumed? What would Etienne be after he was hollowed out into an empty husk? That wasn’t something he deserved, of that I was sure.
More than that though, what was I going to do if I did run away from this hunger? Breaking the link might save me from it, but it wouldn’t change anything in the outside world. Out there I was still exhausted and grounded, and the brambles couldn’t keep the monster held for much longer. With nothing left in it but this insatiable rage and appetite I didn’t doubt that it would be stronger, so my chances to get away weren’t good.
Screw that!
The world about me was still a madly kaleidoscoping mess of conflicting sounds and images, but I blocked it all out as I reached along the link. I had no plan, I was just doing it so that I could honestly tell myself that I’d done all I could. I fully expected the hunger to consume my effort, but if I went down I was going to go down swinging.
Then I felt . . . something unexpected.
It wasn’t the hunger, it wasn’t the link, it was something else, something that ran through the link, but wasn’t a part of it. Something that had let the link form? Something that had responded to my magic? For a moment I felt my fear fall away, a stunned kind of fascination replacing it. This . . . this whatever it was, it ran past the hunger, and the all-consuming appetite couldn’t touch it. And it ran into Etienne’s essence, the deep and as yet untouched part of him.
I felt completely certain that this was something . . . something that I might be able to use to save him!
I reached along it, both my mind and magic following the path. It went past thoughts, past emotions, past the notion of consciousness, down and deep into something old, something primal, something born in that instant in the womb, when a collection of cells tipped over the point of being a dependant growth to being an independent life!
My focus narrowed down, everything else falling away. The whirling chaos of sight and sensation, the onslaught of outrage and despair from Etienne, the relentless pressure from the hunger, none of it existed to me anymore. All that remained was the new link, the connection that was reaching out to something I couldn’t name, but which was something I’d known my entire life.
Instinctively, I reached out with mental fingers, my magic responding and connecting to the distant point that seemed to be both the darkness of beginnings and the light of creation. What I felt was overwhelming!
There were shapes, concepts, hues, and sensations that I’d become vaguely familiar with as I learnt to use my magic. But rather than standing alone or in distinct groups, they were all merged together, bleeding into one another to create something that was strangely greater than the sum of its parts. It was huge, it was complex, and it was powerful, potent in a way I’d never seen before.
It was also . . . wrong, broken, twisted in a way it shouldn’t be. This . . . this essence, it was massive and incomprehensible, but I could, intuitively, sense something not right in it. The flow of it, the configuration, it should all be moving in a certain way, feeding into itself, processing, a repeating pattern as natural as the beat of a heart. But it was blocked, misaligned, crippled even. Here . . . here, and here, the points of fault just leapt out at me as though they were screaming for my attention! The essence there was stained, putrid, a miasmic muck that seemed to clog and rot the channels and flows it clung to.
I didn’t think, and I didn’t hesitate, too much of my attention was being taken up by this strange experience for me to do either. Instead, I just reached out to the first of the distortions, trying to get a better understanding of what they were.
*RAGE! PURE UNTHINKING, UNMERCIFUL RAGE! RAGE AT THE TINY MORTALS! RAGE AT THE ARROGANT GODS! RAGE AT THE DISTANT SERVANTS OF THE OLD ONE! RAGE AT THE CORRUPTED ONES FROM BELOW! RAGE AT ALL! RAGE AT THE WORLD! RAGE! RAGE! RAGE ETERNAL*
My mind tried to recoil from the sheer venomous vitriol that smashed into me. How could any mind possibly experience such impossible heights of fury and retain any sort of rationality? I tried to pull back, to disconnect the thread of magic that I had used to probe the knot of wrongness, and found that I couldn’t!
The thread remained in place, despite my efforts to break it! More than that, it was changing! It took me a few horrified instants to realize what was happening, and as I did so my earlier fear and disgust returned in full force. The wrongness of the distortions, whatever it was that was letting them warp the primal essence they were a part of, was infectious. It was working its way along the line of magic like rot eating away at a healthy limb.
And I couldn’t break the thread!
I panicked. In the face of the oncoming corruption I mindlessly thrashed, lashing out with my power wildly as I tried to find something, anything, that could save me!
More lines connected to the distortion, wild efforts that were caught like the first thread. There was some effect though, as the rot slowed its progress, its speed seeming to disperse between the multiple threads. But it wasn’t stopping, and as I watched the corruption continued to advance.
More! I needed more! The thought wasn’t rational, it was just a kneejerk reaction to the oncoming threat. I saw it coming and just threw all the magic I could at it, madly cycling through the colours as fast as I could think of them. They streamed by in an endless rainbow, one composed of pure chaos as the hues followed one another in a nonsensical order. Blue, red, purple, orange, violet, white, green, grey, and every variation of shade that could be imagined, all of them rushed past my mind’s eye as I shoved them up the infected threads, desperately trying to keep the rot away.
Nothing worked though! The colours, the magic, ran into the infection, only to be corrupted and consumed themselves.
Chnnk!
Chnnk chnnk chnkk!
The now familiar sounds startled me as they suddenly echoed around me. The short, sharp, metallic noises shouldn’t have been here. How could they be? Here I had no body here, not really. All I had was my awareness and my magic, driven by my will, so why could I hear my halo forming?
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Chnnk! Chnnk! Chnk chnk chnk!
I felt it then, the presence of the divine construct as clearly as if it were hovering over my head. The difference wasn’t great, but it was there, something lending my magic greater potency, making the colours come more easily. With renewed vigour, I drove my magic up the threads again . . . and nothing changed!
Regardless of how much strength I was pushing along the connections, regardless of what type of magic I was using, nothing slowed the creeping advance of the rot. I struggled, like a fish caught on a line, trying to break my own threads of power, and without any success.
What made it worse was that there was a growing sense that there was something I could do, some way I could save myself, but I couldn’t think what it was! It hovered just out of reach, like a name on the tip of your tongue. It was there! And I couldn’t find it!
Instead, it found me.
It was in the instant the rot finished consuming my threads and made contact with my consciousness. For a moment I felt that rage again, that dirty, cruel, selfish rage that seemed to soil all it touched. Had I had a mouth I would have screamed. Had I had a body it would have trembled.
Then . . . darkness welled up, drowning everything, swallowing me, the corruption, the essence of Etienne, everything. For a moment I wondered if I should be scared, but somehow I couldn’t muster any fear. The darkness about me was absolute. And yet . . . I didn’t feel threatened. This darkness, this void, it felt comforting, safe. There was something almost familiar about it, though I could not explain it.
For a moment I just existed there, the comforting darkness about me simply holding me suspended. It was an instant of respite that seemed to last, but which took place in the space of a couple of seconds. Then that perfect moment of tranquillity was broken, the edges disturbed as the rot that had been advancing on me tried to break in. I didn’t know how I knew it, but the knowledge was just there, in my head. I knew my name, I knew how to breathe, and I knew that the corruption was trying to encroach upon the perfect void that I existed in.
That was when I felt a change in the darkness around me. Before it had been calm, passive, welcoming. There hadn’t been anything remotely human about it, but I had felt something from it, something alien and inhuman, but vaguely recognisable nonetheless. It had felt . . . happy? Content? Satisfied? It had been something like that, but whatever it was, it had felt that due to my being there. The feeling was passive, a state of being without motion or action.
When the rot intruded though . . . the reaction was not passive.
The corruption didn’t stand a chance! One instant it was there, trying to corrode the edges of the space in which I existed, the next; gone. Not destroyed though, I knew that. Instead, the intrusive force had been consumed, utterly devoured by the nature of this . . . place? No, it wasn’t a place. This was a . . . a concept, an undefined idea forcing itself into being. A thing rather than a place? No, that wasn’t right either.
Still, whatever it was, I felt welcomed here. This emptiness, this void, this . . .
Abyss . . .
The word rose up in my mind, not my own thought, but not an intrusion either. It was just there, meant as a greeting and an identifier by this blackness which I found myself within.
Abyss. The origin. That from which all arose, and that to which all shall eventually return. Birthplace and grave, the starting point and the final destination. The realm of the Firstborn.
It wasn’t words this time, more like concepts, images and associations rising up in my thoughts in response to some gentle prompting. All of it led back to an image though, a sight I’d seen during the dream I had before waking up as a demigod. That dream of watching creation come into being. I remembered the first thing that was made, the abyss, the void that had replaced the nothingness that existed. Was this connected to it somehow? And why was I . . . here now? Did it connect to Etienne, and if so how?
That thought was enough to fully rouse me from the musings I’d fallen into. Etienne! What was happening to him? That corruption, had it consumed him? Had it consumed me? Had what I’d sensed earlier been some sort of trick?
In response to my thoughts, the void about me parted. Or rather, the Abyss that I’d hung in didn’t so much part as it . . . turned inside out. It might sound absurd, but that was the only way I could think of to describe it. The void of absolute blackness that had hung around me reversed itself, and suddenly it was as though that vast emptiness was hanging within me. Not physically, of course, rather it was as though it had entered the part of me that wasn’t physical. It wasn’t quite my mind, nor my soul. Maybe it was some part of my mana channels, or maybe my chi system. Regardless, that all-encompassing Abyss now just sat there, as tiny as the head of a pin, but still somehow vast enough to swallow up the world.
The huge pattern of Etienne’s essence hung before me again, still vast as ever, but somehow seeming smaller after my brush with the void. The distortions were still there, and my threads were still connected, but the earlier creeping miasma was gone. With a thought I broke the connections, freeing myself, but I didn’t run. Part of me desperately wanted to, but another part of me felt that somehow, things had changed. The Abyss within me, it wasn’t simply sitting there, it was tinting my magic.
The point at which it sat . . . it was something of a nexus in the flow of my internal energies. As they ran through me they passed through that spot, and as they did so that pinprick of absolute darkness touched them, and left them changed. It wasn’t a negative change. What was happening was a good thing, but at the same time, I had no idea what it was.
Still, it was enough to keep me from leaving. Instead, I tried to reach out with my magic once more, much more carefully this time. The thin tendril of power extended slowly to the nearest of the distorted points, careful not to make contact, but close enough that I could ‘feel’ through it. Before I had felt nothing, that was why I’d been so careless in connecting to the crippled and rotting sore in the pattern. Now, something had changed. I pressed my awareness through the magic, trying to use it as an extension of my awareness, concentrating on the distorted sore of corruption.
I could see it now! I could see where things had gone wrong!
As I focused closer, I could see that the twisting, the distortion, it wasn’t something that had happened by chance. This was something deliberate, something that had been done to him with both forethought and malice. It had been meant to change him, it had been meant to run out of control! That monster that had grown out of him had been no random mutation!
I felt the eyes that I didn’t have narrow as I reached for my magic again. I could feel the Abyss threading through it, veins of darkness running through it like lines of metal ore in stone. It didn’t corrupt though, rather it reinforced, leant strength, leant potency. I should have been scared, given what happened with my earlier attempts to touch the distortions, but there was no fear, not now.
Contact, and I could feel the corruption trying to take hold again, but this time my magic wasn’t alone, the veins of the Abyss gleefully devoured the rot before it could take hold. The wrongness vanished into it, disappearing down into those unfathomable depths. I felt a savage glee as my magic cut through the corruption, reaching out and touching the essence beyond it.
As soon as I did so I could see just what was wrong, and also how to fix it! It wasn’t hard, the essence wanted to function properly, it wanted to flow as it should. These changes were aberrations, things that it struggled against. All I had to do was give it a bit of power, and a small push, just a nudge, in the right direction and then . . .
I felt satisfaction as the corruption, the wrongness, gave way. There was a moment of resistance, then it just collapsed before the pressure I was applying. For a moment the remains just sat there, then the proper flow resumed and what was left of the corruption was dragged along the pattern, breaking up into nothing as it went. Reaching out I repeated the process, each time the twisted knots of rot and sickness resisted, then broke.
With the third one, I was sure I heard something, some distant note or rage that seemed to echo the emotions I’d found within the corruption. I didn’t know the origin, I didn’t know who’d done this to Etienne, but if my actions hurt them in any way, then I felt nothing but vindictive pleasure at it. Anyone that does this to another living being, crippling them in such a cruel and destructive way, deserved every scrap of frustration or pain I could inflict upon them.
Before me, the huge pattern of essence was finally moving without obstruction. It was beautiful to watch, like an artistic masterpiece slowly coming together before my eyes. I could see as portions of it that had been obstructed began to move, those movements then causing other portions to move in different ways. Flows that had been forced into incorrect channels finally were able to move as they should, thus freeing other flows that had been obstructed by their diversion. As I watched, the flaws faded, and the essence returned to a perfection of form that took my breath away.
For a long moment, I just watched, allowing myself the pleasure of seeing the transformation taking place before me. Then I felt the world around me starting to fade at the edges, like a dream collapsing just before you wake. I didn’t try to fight it, instead, I let myself fade, content in the knowledge that I’d managed something. Something good.
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The titan struggled in his confinement, rage giving him a strength that he’d lacked for centuries.
Anger was no stranger to him, rather it was an old friend, or perhaps a familiar tormentor. It had been with him for so long, keeping him warm, never letting him forget, never letting him rest. However, even an immortal could only sustain a certain level of rage for so long before those fires banked and were reduced to merely glowing embers. Yes, they still burnt, but they lacked the fiery vitality they once possessed. Time had drained them of fury, and now they simply simmered, waiting for the day when the titan was free and he could rage across the world once more.
This was not that day. He was still trapped, still held down by literally millions of tons of rock and dirt, the only light he could see was the dull red of molten lava. More than simply the material, the magical binds holding him trapped remained as strong as ever, tying his essence to his prison, so even his soul was chained to these caverns.
With the reopening of the Paths Between Worlds, he had begun to regain his old power, but the same power that revitalised him also served to empower his prison. He was no closer to escape than he had been a century ago.
Still, a thought had warmed him, a seed he had planted millennia ago would now be able to blossom forth in all its vile glory. Yes, the gods had returned, and they would find his legacy waiting for them. He had felt the tremble in the ether when his bloodline had awakened. No other would have felt it, but it was his power that had stirred. Even beneath the mountain that held him, the titan had sensed it as clearly as the roar of one of his children would sound in an abandoned graveyard.
That signal had filled him with malicious glee, knowing that in less than a mortal year the gods would find themselves facing a monster worthy of his bloodline. He’d eagerly anticipated it, waiting for the day when he could watch through the eyes of his progeny as the works of mortals fell, and the gods fought to save the remains.
He knew that this monster would eventually fall, but before it did, rivers of blood would flow. The gods would know the pain of their precious mortals being slaughtered by the legion, they’d know the pain of battle, as their flesh was shredded by fang and claw. It was not the final battle he longed for, but it would hurt them, it would remind them that even in his prison he could reach them. That would be enough, for now.
So, he had waited, his patience devoted to that distant moment when his progeny would rampage. Patience was not a part of his nature, but it was something he had learned over the ages of his captivity. So, he had waited.
And now . . . it was gone!
He had felt it as the work upon his bloodline had come undone. Ensuring that the demigod born of his lineage would be the beast he desired had been difficult, but not impossible. Aspects of the blood had been strengthened, others weakened, all to ensure the birth of a monster. It had been tied to him, his blood ensuring the ascendance of bestiality over humanity, so he had felt it when all his work came undone.
Those glowing embers flared into life then, rage such as he had not known since Prometheus was still free burning up in his heart as he roared and struggled! Above him, the mountain creaked and groaned but held despite his greatest efforts. Even so, he continued to thrash, stone breaking into shards that cut into his flesh, drawing blood like magma from his dark skin. The pain only served to enrage him further though, and he howled into the darkness of his prison.
Who had done this?! Who had destroyed his plan?! Those words echoed in his mind, the only coherent thoughts amidst an ocean of bloodlust and fury. He wanted to lash out, to crush the one that had foiled him, to make them suffer, to feed on their entrails, to hear their screams of pain!
Locked in his prison, Typhon of the Titans raged impotently.