Dalen could feel it focus on him, its devastating gaze judging him, then suddenly the pain ceased, the eyes moving onto the next enemy. Dalen gasped, finally able to breathe again as whatever bound his sight to the mirrors was gone but looking around the room the rest weren’t so lucky. Leo was frozen, reaching for his sword. Melisia was standing just inside the tent, her face aghast in horror, all color gone from her face. While all the while Traya screamed, Dalen got back to his feet and staggered over to the woman. He had to stop this. He shook the woman but he couldn’t even move her, her attributes must have been much higher than his. Then he went to cover her eyes even though he didn’t think it would work but when he reached down to try Traya grabbed his wrist with shocking strength making him gasp. Suddenly everyone else was free of the spell, staggering to try and regain their composure. Leo turned and vomited, throwing his sword to the side. Melisia simply fainted, and Nyx closed her eyes tight and began to cry while muttering something too quietly for him to her. Jaliete was the only one that had managed to keep her composure after the vision and move up beside Dalen.
But it was over. Traya continued to scream, her eyes wide, staring into the middle distance. Suddenly she pulled him in close and stared into his face. Dalen cursed as he felt his wrist crack with the force of her grip but he fell silent when her eyes burst into crimson flame that quickly began to spread across her face and into her hair.
“Gods! Stop! Stop!” Dalen cried out, but he knew she couldn’t hear him. Her expression went from horror to something even worse, the sides of her mouth tore open as more flames surged up from her throat but somehow she began to speak. Her voice reverberated with an otherworldly dissonance.
“The world will cry tears of blood as the crimson dawn rises. He who kills walks across the lands of a man reviled his blood salvation, his life anathema. The bound free, an empire shattered at the will of He who kills, the slayer, the calamity.”
The crimson flames raged on, spreading over the rest of the woman’s body. Dalen began to panic as the flames spread towards his wrist but before it reached him she finally let go and crumbled, falling to the ground and writhing in pain.
Dalen hurried to back away from the still-burning woman. Jaliete looked shaken but she quickly recovered and waved her hands in a wide arc and suddenly the flames were gone. He called out for a healer before turning back to everyone in the tent, “Well it appears your friend is very much alive.”
They were all looked over by the camp's healers before they discussed what they saw. Jaliete said that she wanted to be sure that there would be no long-lasting effects from the visions they had experienced. Apparently, it was some kind of potent mental attack that could be extremely dangerous or even long-term if they weren’t seen to quickly. Flashes of what he saw still flashed through Dalen’s mind, but it was pretty clear that he had been the least severely affected by the attack mentally at least. He would be sore for days even with healing. Leo on the other hand was badly shaken by it all, which didn’t make much sense to Dalen but maybe the man’s higher attributes let him see more of the fast-moving vision. Dalen shuddered, he was relieved that Kal was alive but what he had seen was terrifying. Was that really Kal? How did he get so terrifyingly strong? Dalen was dragged from his thoughts as Jaliete reentered the tent after Traya had been removed to one of the medical tents.
“Elder Traya will recover in time, so there is no need to worry for her. Let us discuss what happened here today.”
Nyx was still kneeling where she had been for the whole spell but now her expression was ecstatic, “It’s him isn’t it, I knew from the moment I felt his anger at the empire’s camp.”
Jaliete said nothing and turned to Melisia, “Ex-Daughter I see that you have decided to join us once more. Do you wish to return to your family, or are you just here for personal gain? Hmmm?”
“I am here because I believed you had captured Kal, but I see that once again the order’s methods were not good enough,” Melisia replied, her tone irritated.
Dalen hadn’t spoken to her yet, he was still pissed about it all. But he had to admit, at least she had come here to find Kal. She couldn’t have known he had been lost for days now and he could tell she was still shaken from the spell.
“I assure you Ex-Daughter, Our team was quite capable of extracting him under normal circumstances. I’m sure you are aware of what happened at your empire’s camp,” Jaliete said, smoothing her robes, her expression back to the calm neutral it had been before the spell.
Melisia frowned, “You are talking about the abyss spawn? Was Kal involved with that?”
“Never mind all that. I can fill you in later. What I want to know is, what the fuck was that!?” Dalen said, waving his arm towards the mirrors. He wasn’t going to sit around and explain something that was pointless now if Kal was alive, “You said something was wrong, so I’m guessing that isn’t how the skill normally works.”
Jaliete was clearly taken aback by Dalen’s sudden outburst, but she shook her head, “No Dalen, that isn’t how it normally works. At best the skill would normally give us a glimpse of his location, and any further detail would only be perceived by Traya.”
“Then what changed? Why was it like that?!” Dalen couldn’t help but shout as more memories of the vision came back to the forefront of his mind for a moment, “Sorry,” Dalen squeezed his temples trying to dispel the images, “Thank you for finding him if that was really him. But I want answers.”
Melisia nodded followed by a slow nod from Leo who was only now starting to regain some color. Nyx continued grinning, which was really starting to freak Dalen out. What the fuck was he getting himself into?
Jaliete sighed, “Talking of such things is forbidden for those outside of our order. But, since you are seen as a friend by Kal I am willing to make an exception,” she moved over to a small desk much like Melisia’s and took a seat before continuing,” We have only experienced something like this once before, many years ago. That is how were learned of the seventh tower’s original purpose, and how it has been altered in more ways than we may ever truly understand.”
“What has that got to do with what’s happened to Kal?” Dalen asked.
Jaliete ignored him and continued, “Twenty years ago, we learned of the grand deception and that someone like Kal would appear. On that day, we saw Fyborh…”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
----------------------------------------
Carnage was all that he could comprehend. Flashes of blood and viscera bombarded him at all times, he was the slaughter, he was death. The lives he reaped of the pathetic demon kin around him were not even close to enough to sate his burning wrath.
Wrath provided: 45430/73000
The slayer's body churned as countless wounds were healed instantly and the blood of the dead soaked into his being. Flames of his manifested hatred spread across dozens of the living rendering them lifeless shells, their potential now burned away in the inferno of his wrath.
Wrath provided: 55230/73000
The slayer sensed something gazing upon his righteous slaughter, the fate they would soon experience. The presence continued to watch him as his slaughter continued and the enemies remaining will crumble as they should.
Wrath provided: 67700/73000
His wrath continued to grow, his blood thirst unending. The slayer felt the gaze once more and stared into the eyes of another pathetic fool. A blast of will pulsed from his soul and he watched the pathetic thing squirm in agony, but he felt the distance between them and his wrath flared once more, nothing was beyond his reach. Eventually, the pathetic thing disappeared and the slayer moved on continuing his birthright.
----------------------------------------
Kal awoke drowning, his mouth and lungs full of liquid. He frantically flailed his arms and opened his eyes thinking he was underwater. His eyes burned immediately as the liquid sunk into them, but when he moved he realized he wasn't underwater at all. Kal pushed himself off the ground, wiping his eyes to see where he was. Wiping them barely helped but it was enough for him to see that he had been lying face down in a pool of dark blood. All around him were dozens and dozens of horribly mutilated corpses. Many of them were even burned somehow, their eye sockets now charred holes.
Kalum Lesta
Status
Class:
Slayer [Epic]
Level:
25
Race:
Human?
Health:
1850
Stamina:
3000
Wrath:
470
Attributes
Strength:
256
Agility:
122
Endurance:
300
Vitality:
185
Intellect:
109
Perception:
147
Will:
278
Wisdom:
133
Available:
6
Titles
Ascendant, Core Bane, Core Smith, Defier of Dhinir, Planeswalker, Planar Appetite, Slayer of the Strong, Endurance Elite, Strength Elite, Will Elite, Demon Slayer, Paragon of Man
Skills
Soul Forge [Rare], Wrathful Regeneration [Common], Wrath Incarnate [Uncommon], Abyssal Consumption [Rare]
Race
Birthright: Confined
He quickly checked his status expecting to find himself once again near death, but to his surprise, he was in perfect condition. He had managed to survive his class evolution completely unscathed but one thing immediately came to mind.
“Why am I still level twenty-five?” he muttered. To get enough wrath to complete his core he would have needed to kill far more garghounds than he had up to this point but he hadn’t gained any experience at all. He didn’t even have any notifications confirming he had killed anything, but judging by his surroundings he clearly had. Before he did anything else Kal decided to look over his new core and make sure there wasn’t some glaring flaw like the last one he made.
Entering his core space was even easier than it had been before. This time it was almost instant, one moment he was closing his eyes, and the next he was floating above his new core.
The new core was beautiful, it hung before him like a perfect crimson sphere. The membrane of will mixed with his attributes, as well as his vital and physical energies pulsed with power and surrounded the burning inferno that was his wrath and birthright. Seeing the two confined this way blurred them together but Kal knew that they hadn’t changed. His wrath was his to control but it would always be channeling a small portion of his birthright’s power. What he had done after he shattered his core for the second time was almost completely beyond his grasp but some small flashes of insight had carried over. It made sense that he hadn’t been able to gain experience during that time, he didn’t have a core so how could he? But the sheer amount of wrath required to reach tier one was already horrifying. How many would need to die for him to reach tier two? What if he was back home when he reached that point? Kal discarded that direction of thought, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that again. It was insanely risky. Apparently, his birthright was strong enough to keep him alive here but he couldn’t be sure that would always be the case. But even worse he had no idea what a tier two core even looked like and how he could even go about building one. If he couldn’t rig his core to be compatible with that level... Hopefully, if he made it home he could inspect someone’s there. He knew there were people over level one hundred back home. How many exactly though he wasn’t sure. The empire’s armies were renowned for being the world’s most powerful but did that mean there weren’t that many people over level one hundred? Either way, there was no point worrying about it now so Kal looked over his core one more time.