Toren Daen

As I stared at the Denoir heir in the flesh titan’s misshapen grip, a dozen images flashed through my mind. I remembered the man who had died in the Clarwood Forest under my protection, whose name I would never know. I remembered my failure to protect Alun, his neck twisted at an odd angle. Mardeth’s mocking smile as he told me the lives of the captured East Fiachrans were in my hands…

And Kaelan Joan sinking her blade into my brother’s chest, the slick steel moving without a hint of resistance.

I didn’t think twice. I grasped at the power slumbering in my core, drawing it to the surface as one draws water from a well. Familiar understanding rushed into the bare channels of my thoughts, my mind absorbing the knowledge like a greedy sponge.

But I could immediately recognize a glaring difference. Where before there was a fullness in using the Acquire Phase of my Will; the surety of a hand on the shoulder or the watching eye of a parent, now there was simply the primitive instincts of the Will itself.

I felt a tentative brush of Lady Dawn’s mind across my own. There was a question there. A hope and fear for my well-being that could not be contained by our mental link.

When I let the Phoenix Will envelop my mind, my asuran bond was unable to mask her emotions from me any longer and vice versa. We meshed together deeper than sense. And so as I felt her regret; her desire to help, and her fear for my safety…

I knew those feelings to be true. They were real and deep, entrenched across our bond.

I shut it out. No, I thought. Not this. I can’t think about this.

I broadened our connection, pushing away the mind of my bond. I felt a brief, sharp pang of hurt from her before it went dark.

But I had no time to contemplate my situation. I had embraced my Will for one purpose and one purpose alone.

I raised my left arm, noting the glowing chains that seemed to float above my skin. Then I exhaled, fire mana amped by sound erupted from my palm.

A beam of red plasma seared through the air, making a burning beeline for the rising flesh titan far above.

My spell burned straight through the arm holding Sevren Denoir, warping the air around it with heat as it soared into the sky.

The wretched arm began to fall as it was rent from the shoulder. I bent my knees, feeling the mana coursing through them. The cracks in my telekinetic shroud smoothed over, the increased mana flow simmering through my body filling in the gaps like putty.

I leapt. One moment I was a hundred feet below the building, looking up as the limb made of rotting corpses tumbled through the air. The next, I was right beside it.

Sevren didn’t have time to react as my telekinetic emblem lashed out at him. I wrapped my control around him in that brief instance, pressing down with my will.

It only took a second for my empowered spell to smash through his innate defenses. The white outline seemed to fall inwards on the man’s body, but I was already feeling the strain of using my Acquire Phase.

I made a brief eye contact with the Denoir heir. I wondered what he thought, seeing me like this. I thought I saw a hint of awe. There was shock, of course. And something else that wormed through my mind.

I flung him at the skyscraper Darrin and the other mages had gone into. Sevren’s body smashed through the glass, disappearing into the halls beyond my sight.

I had used more force than intended to do that. My body felt twitchy; jumpy as if I had been dosed with a dozen cups of coffee. My movements were less precise than I was used to; like a beginner driver that lurches on the gas pedal when driving a car for the first time.

I hoped the Denoir heir would be alright.

Lady Dawn had acted as a stabilizing presence for my mind whenever I used the Will, giving me a balance I didn’t realize I needed until it was gone. I’d only had the Will pulsing for a few seconds, and already I felt my consciousness struggling against the overwhelming tide of insight. A single mind was not meant to hold the weight of millennia of knowledge.

I needed to do this fast.

I pushed off the large, corpselike hand that used to hold Sevren Denoir. It smashed into the ground from the pushback of my telekinesis, and I rocketed toward the opening in the skyscraper where the rest of the mages had disappeared. I planned on making a beeline for their location.

But as I perched on the edge of the skyscraper, several things stopped me.

When I neared the mass of undead, my enhanced senses were able to better discern the blanket of intent that strangled each of the stumbling corpses. It was like focused puppet strings, affecting the ambient mana in a way far beyond even my best. This was focused and precise, even beyond my musical ability to project emotion. I wasn’t truly seeing the intent, merely the after-effects of its passing upon the ambient mana as lightning is the aftermath of electricity.

But as I traced the disturbances in mana to the source, I felt a strange determination settle in my gut.

The flesh titan stood twenty feet tall, watching me with a gaze that burned purple. But what made me pause was the burning lifeforce in the undead’s chests all around me.

There were singular, tiny embers. They looked like a candle flame on the verge of extinguishing. A slight breeze should snuff it out for good.

Yet the flames weren’t the deep, bloody red I was used to. They were slate gray, an empty, dead color. The embers of heartfire that stared back at me were the color of tombstones, and where I had grown accustomed to seeing lifeforce flare and pulse in time with heartbeats, these didn’t even flicker.

It was like watching a still image. It was instinctively revolting in a way I couldn’t explain. This was a perversion that scraped against my soul and understanding of lifeforce.

But the greatest source of this… anti-lifeforce was the towering amalgamation of flesh that glared at me balefully. Instead of an ember, this one held a bonfire in its chest. And from that bonfire, all the intent nearby streamed.

That thing is what's making these undead more intelligent, I realized. It’s affecting their minds somehow. Does that mean the creature that slew Alun is inside it?

If I could kill this flesh beast, then these creatures would go back to their bumbling, predictable selves. Darrin, Sevren, Jana, and the others would have an easier time escaping a reckless charge as opposed to an organized hunt.

In the time I’d taken to run over all of these realities, the flesh titan’s hand had begun to regenerate. In a macabre display, flesh puddled and oozed toward the severed hand, slowly creating a new gray appendage.

I wasn’t going to let that happen. Oath floated up to my side, allowing me to wrap my fingers around the swept-hilt saber.

Then I rocketed toward the flesh amalgam. Plasma burned along the edge of my blade, creating the perfect instrument of death.

The monster recognized my assault. The tendrils of intent around it shifted, a silent command going out through its network of undead. They turned to me, raising their hands and focusing on spells.

Too slow. As I blurred toward the flesh titan, balls of fire, sound, and plasma appeared around me spontaneously, smashing into anything nearby. Corpses were consumed in an inferno of spellfire, their own hastily conjured shields breaking before my attacks. When something wasn’t fast enough to burn before my might, it was smashed out of the way by my telekinetic pushes.

The flesh titan swung a meaty fist at me, but I saw it coming from a mile away. I pulled on the monster’s barreling strike, sliding under the blow. Simultaneously, I brought up my plasma-edged saber against the arm. It sheared through the putrid flesh like a hot knife through butter, severing the arm completely.

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I slid between the monstrous thing’s legs, spinning as I drew the edge across its leg. The foot offered no resistance.

The creature buckled, falling with a groan onto the pavilion roof. The rooftop, already shattered in several places and structurally damaged, shuddered from the impact.

But I wasn’t about to let my advantage go. I marched up the beast’s back, ignoring the squelching, rotten feeling of putrid flesh beneath my boots. I loomed over the static gray heartfire, a flame that simultaneously burned and did not covering what must have once been a heart. I raised my saber, preparing to drive it down into the amalgam’s heart.

Then I felt it. A deep, hungry darkness inside my body. Something twisted and churned, unfurling in the presence of its anathema.

My core burned. I stumbled to the side, gasping as the basilisk in my blood began to wake.

A hand burst from the back of the flesh amalgam’s wide back, gray skin seeping off the arm. I felt a buildup of mana from the thing, but I was too focused on the adverse reaction my blood was having with the Will suffusing my mana.

A blade of wind cracked against my jaw, sending my head reeling back. My telekinetic shroud hadn’t even been damaged by the blow, but I was disoriented enough already. The red chains on my arms flickered to black, then back to red.

The flesh monster hit me with something hard. It impacted my gut, splintering my telekinetic shroud. All the air left my lungs as I shot off the edge of the rooftop, careening toward the ground a hundred feet below.

It took me a moment to gather myself. The ground was approaching fast, and there was nothing I could do to quell the basilisk inside. I had to try and focus on keeping myself alive.

I thrust my hands out, pressing against the ground with telekinesis as it approached. My halt slowed immensely, but my control was still erratic without Lady Dawn’s measured hand to guide my own. The stone under my feet shuddered when I finally hit the earth.

I looked inward, inspecting the state of my body. I could distinctly feel my blood surging, the Vritra lineage in my veins rebelling against the renewing power of the phoenix.

A few undead nearby tried to pile onto me, attempting to keep me pinned down by their weight.

I snarled, pushing out with a nova of fire. The scrabbling, worn hands went up in flames as they neared, unable to contend with my fury.

A thundering crash drew my attention to the flesh amalgam. The two-story tall monstrosity had leapt from the edge of the building, cracking the concrete below with the weight of its body. It had regrown both its arms and the leg I’d severed. The purple eyes in the smooth, pale skull watched me with undisguised malice.

“You’re a persistent bastard, aren’t you?” I said with a slight wheeze. I felt the bruise forming across my abs where the monster had struck me, the crystalline shards of my shroud reforming at a snail’s pace.

The fleshy creature roared at me. A dozen mouths appeared on its body, screeching in tandem. The sound of a putrid crowd washed over me, rotten teeth and decaying lips all echoing at once.

And then a dozen hands separated themselves from the body, rising up and pointing themselves at me. I had a brief moment to widen my eyes as spells erupted from the hands in a volley. I hastily pressed outward with telekinesis, creating a barrier of pushing force.

Most of the attacks were diverted by my hasty defense, pushed off course by the flow. A few nearly reached me, but a few flew straight and narrow enough they clipped off my telekinetic shroud. Yet the attacks did not relent, continuing in an unending stream. I felt my feet grind into the stone as I was slowly pushed back.

I grit my teeth, then hurled Oath to the side. The saber arced outward like a boomerang, guided by my precise telekinesis. I could vaguely sense the impact as the blade sunk into flesh creature’s skull, a sickening thunk vibrating along my channels. The attacks stalled for the briefest of moments, allowing me to breathe.

I jumped, twisting midair as I arced over the stream of projectiles. I felt another pinprick reaction from the basilisk blood in my veins. I could almost imagine the beast was awake, groggily observing its surroundings.

Lady Dawn had worked to suppress that, too. Without her, it slowly rose to consciousness.

I needed to end this fast.

I dodged under another wild attack from the giant titan. Instead of trying to cut its body, I wrapped my arms around the massive thing’s elbow, planted my feet, engaged my spellform, and pulled.

The momentum from the colossal beast already sent it slightly off balance. With my strength enhanced by a mostly assimilated body, the greater understanding of mana from my will, and my telekinetic shroud, I was able to do something I would’ve never thought possible.

The monstrosity lifted off the ground, then shifted as it was thrown bodily over my shoulder.

I felt the fangs of the basilisk glistening in my blood, ready to drip their poison into it themselves like a wretched promise. I keeled over, gasping for breath as darkness stretched across the edges of my vision. My red chain tattoo darkened to an inky black.

Then something sharp punched through my telekinetic shroud, digging into my thigh and tearing itself through. I screamed, the agony making me fall forward as thoughts of the basilisk were forgotten. Looking up, I noticed what had attacked me.

A single arm had reached through the flesh of the amalgam. In its hand was a familiar, red patterned single-edged dagger. The creature inside had stolen my dagger from where it had been lodged in the stone. And now, Promise had left a jagged cut along my leg.

But the monster had miscalculated. I focused on my spellform, wrenching my dagger from the monster’s grasping hand. The blade flew up, poising itself in the air over the still prone form of the flesh beast. I heaved for breath, feeling a drop of sweat break against the cobbles.

Then the blade streaked downward. The hands around the amalgam’s body tried to conjure shields, but I made sure to blow them apart with bursts of flame and telekinesis before they could fully form.

My dagger struck like a guided missile, digging into the body and sinking deep into the tombstone-gray heartsfire.

Immediately, the creature stilled. I watched with bated breath as the gray fire slowly broke off into smaller embers, disintegrating at last. The intent that laced the air, connected to uncountable undead, frayed at the edges.

Before I could witness the final gray ember of anti-lifeforce dissipate, my grasp on my Phoenix Will winked out, the power retreating back into my core. But as it went, I was struck with another sensation.

My core seared as the Will departed, tracing a path of fire across my body. I groaned from the pain, staggering backward. My mana faltered, my ability to control my own power shaking from the agony. I coughed, falling to the pavement as my limbs spasmed.

Distantly, I knew I needed to move. The undead were all around me, reeling about aimlessly at the death of their hive-mind’s leader. If I didn’t get myself to high ground, I’d be taken. Taken like Alun’s wife had been, and turned into one of these monstrosities myself.

I blinked my eyes open, trying to fight against the burning at my nexus of power. My leg was bleeding copiously, staining my trousers a deep red. All around me, fires raged in the ravaged street from the aftereffects of this battle.

A shadow loomed over my prone form. Above me, a haggard, burned, and broken body looked down. Its eyes flared with weak violet light, and half the face was burned to unrecognizable sludge. A handle jutted from the creature’s chest like a dead prayer. The black leather of Promise seemed to offer itself to me, the blade embedded in this monster’s heart.

Alun’s wife–or what was left of her–had slowly hobbled toward me. It seemed to be slowing down, but not fast enough to die before completing its mission.

The thing grasped the dagger in its chest and ripped it out without a hint of pain. It slowly, creakily, raised the dagger over my pained form.

I needed to move. This thing was on death’s door. If I could only get a few feet away, it would keel over before it could finish its task. I simply needed to move!

I screamed internally, demanding my legs obey me. But the searing pain from my core made that nigh impossible. They twitched weakly, unwilling to obey my commands.

The red steel glinted. I thought I saw an inkling of emotion in that corpse’s eyes. It never spoke, but I saw a measure of triumph there.

Then something blurred into my field of view, drawing a line across the creature’s neck. For a beat, nothing happened. Then I watched, transfixed, as the zombie’s head was severed from its body.

Sevren Denoir’s dagger returned to his hand, a slight tug on that wire giving him supernatural control. He gave me a concerned look, rushing over and trying in vain to help me to my feet. But my body slumped, the overwhelming pain from my core making my nerves unresponsive.

“C-can’t,” I said breathily, each word that of a drowning man. “Need– need your help.”

Sevren grunted. “I’ve got you. Don’t worry.”

Misunderstanding, he hauled me over his shoulder. I groaned as he held me fast. My blood streamed from my leg, dripping onto the ground below. The Denoir heir picked up Promise, then wrenched Oath from the skull of the amalgam.

He turned toward the skyscraper, ready to jump with me on his back.

“No,” I creaked out. “Core… going to shatter. Mana,” I ground out between shaky breaths. I felt tears pool at the edges of my eyes, my ability to think dispersing before the utter agony. God, had I ever felt something so horrid? It was as if a hundred and one needles laced with capsaicin constantly thrust in and out along my nerves, lighting them in smoldering fire.

“What?” Sevren said, stalling in his steps. “What about your core?”

How could I make him understand? Using my Phoenix Will before my body was fully assimilated always pushed forward the timetable for my next assimilation session. But now, I didn’t have Lady Dawn to help me.

I brushed away the thought that I just might. Her regret and earnest desire to speak which I’d felt over our bond was undeniable.

“Assimilate,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “Mana needs to be held. The body will absorb it. Else– else I’ll break. Scatter to the wind.”

Sevren looked at me as if I were mad.

Yet I didn’t have the time to explain anymore. Even though I had let my Will recede; even though I had released it back into my core, I could still feel the basilisk in my blood.

It was awake. And it was watching.