The hellish seeds had fed well.
Days had passed since they had been buried in the pool of power the young demigod had accumulated, and in that time they had greedily soaked up what they could. The flecks had grown, but they had been unable to spread. Undirected as the energy they existed in might be, it was still potent, too potent for them to corrupt. All they could do was feed on the scraps they could nibble off, subsuming them into their tiny existences and then corrupting them from within. It was a loathsome parasitic existence, but the mindless shards of hell-born energy strove only to endure, regardless of the method.
They were stronger now, having swollen with their gorging, but even so, they were but a drop in the lake, unable to act lest they be swallowed up. All they could do was continue to feed and grow, in the hopes that with enough time they would become potent enough to corrupt the pool of power and usurp it.
However, now their time was up.
Heavenly power flowed through the demigod’s system, removing blockages, clearing pathways, and allowing a stalled ascension to once more resume its course! There was a brief moment of stillness, then the pool of power that had been placid as a lake roiled like a sea in a storm as its power began to be channelled. The tiny shards of hellish energy could do nothing about that though, not when they were struggling to survive.
The catalysation of the process would normally not have been too great a threat to the hell-born energies. By their very nature, they were a corruptive force, one that was suited to remaining dormant and slowly allowing its taint to spread. With another sort of demigod, they could have slipped into the ascension, become a part of it, become the kernel of greed, lust and ambition that could have led such a being to become a monster. Here that was not the case.
This demigod was tightly linked to the High Heavens, and that nature was flooding through his being as he rose to a greater state. There were other powers there as well, but it was the heavenly aspect that burned the seeds as it made contact. Under other conditions the shards of hellish energy would have been purged, erased by the flood of power inimical to them, only one thing saved them.
The torrent of energy was moving outwards, an expanding expression of power rather than a cleansing deluge through the demigod’s body. Rather than fleeing the seeds mindlessly pushed themselves inwards, struggling to go deeper in order to escape the divine force that sought to scour them from existence.
Deeper they burrowed, forcing their way towards the core of the pool of power, the furthest point they could reach from the outpouring of power that seared away at them. Still, they burnt, the energies about them tinted by the demigod’s transformation into a being of divine power, but they endured, they survived. And they met.
All the tiny shards had been forcing their way in the same general direction, all aiming for the same goal. As their unthinking struggles continued, they encountered one another, and when they did so they merged as though they were drops of water. Again and again, they met, combined and carried on, until the disparate seeds had become a single whole.
The aggregate of the hell-born energies was still minuscule, but it was stronger than the seeds had been, able to better survive the heavenly power that still burnt at it. More than that, what had once been a collection of mindless shards now had a will of its own. Its ability to think was nearly insignificant, more akin to an insect than anything else, but it was there, a driving force that had not existed before.
With all the tenacity of a tick clamping onto warm flesh, the combined mass of malignant power began once more to feed. The energies it tried to consume burnt at it, but as long as it did not allow its appetite to override its instinct to survive, it could devour a steady trickle.
Without words, without images, with only a drive that could not be quenched, it continued to advance towards its goal, the death of the demigod that served as its host.
Hidden in the depths of the demigod’s being the newly born creature remained unmindful of the ascension of its host, but the rest of the world was not so uncaring of what was taking place.
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She felt it before she saw it, the massive swell of power coming from the direction of the farmstead where he was staying!
She’d been sitting in a wall-side booth in the restaurant of the hotel she was staying in, thanking her good fortune for how things had turned out. Her financial situation had improved greatly, thanks to a lucky find of some rare herbs, and the discovery that the owner of the local hotel was sick with some sort of stomach infection. It had been remarkable how things had fallen her way, from her hearing some of the town gossip while in the herb store, to the owner himself being willing to hear her out. She’d just needed a bit of fast-talking, a small demonstration of power, and the application of a quickly made potion and the owner was back to full health. She had a room and full board for a week without having to pay a single coin.
The place wasn’t the height of luxury. The bed were a bit hard, her room was a bit dusty, but the food served at the restaurant wasn’t bad at all. She’d slept like a brick that night and savoured every bite of the breakfast and dinner she’d ordered. She’d actually been enjoying her supper when the first wave of power rolled over her.
She didn’t hesitate for even a second. Had she had the strength she would have thrown the table before her aside in her haste to get out. Since that strength was sealed, instead she scrambled around it, unmindful of the dishes she overturned or the food that stained her clothes. There was a clatter and crash as plates, cutlery and glassware were pushed onto the floor to break, drawing the attention of both the staff and the other customers, but she couldn’t have cared less.
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All her focus was on getting outside, on getting a line of sight towards the source of the great swells of power she could feel rolling towards her!
There were some cries of protest as she dashed for the main door, but she ignored them. She charged through the door with such force that it rattled upon its hinges.
Once outside she immediately turned to face the direction of the power, drawn towards it as surely as the needle of a compass would point north. Behind her, she could hear others following her, hear shouted demands as to what she was doing, but again she ignored them. All her focus was upon the distant feeling of energies growing and fusing, merging, and condensing until a critical point was reached and-
“Hey! Hey, are you listening to me?!”
A hand seized her shoulder and shook her, almost breaking her concentration. It took every ounce of her will not to lash out at the fool daring to distract her at such a moment. Instead, she reached to the side, not shifting her eyes from the direction in which they were locked and grabbed the shoulder of the person accosting her. There was some exclamation of protest, but she ignored it, she just pointed to the horizon with her free hand.
“Look!”
She forced every bit of authority that she could manage into the single word, and the person she had seized paused in their struggles, probably following her gesture. It wouldn’t last long, not with her in her current state. The fact that her left leg was dripping soup and her jacket was stained with spilt wine wouldn’t help any effort she made to seem commanding, but she didn’t need them to stay quiet for long. Already she could feel the final reaction commencing, her trained senses feeling it as the divine powers collapsed inwards, towards something akin to a singularity event. Just a little more, just a little more . . .
“What? What is it? I can’t see anyth-”
The irritating jabber was cut off as a great white light suddenly bloomed into being in the distance!
“YES!!!”
A single word of exultation burst forth from her in a great shout! Yes, it was done! Adam was Awakened, the divine blood in his veins brought forth to full manifestation and his divine heritage invoked! She’d been so afraid that something would go wrong, but here it was, proof that she had been right, that he was the one that she’d been looking for!
She gazed into the white brilliance as it grew and let a joyful smile spread across her face. Yes, this was proof, and it was also proof that he was going to be strong, so very strong. The power that was being radiated now was incredible, greater than she’d dared to hope for. So much so that it seemed overwhelming.
In fact . . .
Her eyes widened as she watched the light continue to grow, the white brilliance reaching up into the sky higher and higher. But not just that, it was also reaching out. Out towards them here!
She took a stumbling step backwards as she watched the white light swallow up the night, ceasing to be a flare in the distance and instead becoming an onrushing wall. Even as she looked at it, her mind tried to understand what she was seeing, the pieces were there, but weren’t fitting together. She knew that what she was seeing was an Awakening Flare, the natural aura that a demigod spread as they transitioned from being mere mortals to being semi-divine beings. She knew how far away the farmhouse was. She knew how fast the wall of light was coming. And she knew how to put all of these details together into an equation, but the final answer she was getting simply didn’t make sense.
“So huge . . .”
It was said as more of a prayer than anything else, her mind unable to believe that something so massive could be the result of a simple Awakening. Yes, prophecy and her own research had shown that Adam was to be a powerful demigod, but this . . . this was insane!
Before she could think of anything else the approaching wall of light went past and through her, leaving her in a world of white. To her surprise the power didn’t burn, or push, or even blind, it just existed about her, as though it had taken the world.
This . . . this was more than she had been expecting, but she didn’t think it was a bad thing.
Sitting down upon the ground she basked in the light and waited for it to fade.
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The robed figure stood beside the scarred man on the balcony as they stared out into the night. Under normal circumstances the view from this part of the castle was quite splendid, looking out over the wide valley to provide a panoramic view of not only the lands but also of the sunsets, and at night the stargazing could be breath-taking. However, it was not the stars or the moon that the pair of magic users were staring at this particular night. Rather it was the massive orb of white light that dominated the sky and the horizon to the west of them.
“W-well, I think it’s safe to s-say that we failed in our task.”
The scarred man’s tone tried to be nonchalant, but it did little hide to the clear tremble in both his voice and his limbs as he stared up at the gigantic sphere. The paleness of his skin was not solely attributed to the white light shining down on him.
They had both felt the waves of power, despite the miles separating them from where the Awakening demigod was and had dashed out onto the balcony to get a line of sight towards their source. What they saw had chilled them to the bone.
Their patron had told them that the demigod they sought was special, but to see the sheer magnitude of power unleashed by his mere Awakening had been . . . humbling. What they were seeing was power on a level that dwarfed anything they could have thought of. This was something that they knew their patron could have done, though it would have taken much of their power and cost them the anonymity that had been carefully built up. For it to come from simply the Awakening Flare of the young man they’d tried to capture boggled the mind.
“We tried to capture that?”
The robed figure couldn’t help but ask the question as they stared up and the growing sphere that continued to dominate the sky. It was growing upwards and outwards, so it would not be touching the earth except for the local area around its base, but already it filled the sky. They could not even begin to guess at its size, but it had to be enormous. The demigod had been somewhere in southern France when they had sent their servants to try and capture him, and this castle was built near the border between Germany and Poland, hundreds of miles away. Yet here it was the behemoth globe ruling the night as though a second moon had fallen from the stars and come to rest upon the earth.
“So . . . do you think our patron will forgive our failure in the face of the power the target possessed, or will he grow angrier at having lost the chance to control such potential?”
The scarred man’s question was pertinent, but the robe wearer could not bring themselves to care all that much at this point. Yes, later that was a question that would be of severe importance, but for the time being the display of power was more captivating than worries about the future.
Such power, such scope . . . it filled them with both awe and envy.
They wanted it, wanted that power, wanted that level of significance. They stared into that light and craved what it represented, even as the purity of it made a buried and shrivelled part of them weep.
The pair of mages stared up at the great sphere, each of them lost in their thoughts, each of them wrapped up in their own fears and greed, each of them thinking of how this would impact their future.