Chapter 216
Crimson threads tore out from the treasure and into Riven’s soul, but he didn’t scream - nor did he feel pain. The threads were soothing, caressing his damaged core and the obliterated Blood Subpillar that’d been reduced to fragments.
He watched as they intertwined with each of them, collecting them up and pulling the shards together - only to frown in confusion when other, pitch black threads flew forward from his fragmented shadow pillar and intertwined. He felt his Path of Black and Red radiate and synergize between the two pillars after that, a shudder going through his body and mind, harmonizing and…
And stitching the two pillars together?
Riven’s eyes widened, and his hand instinctively tightened around Athela’s while his mind’s eye focused on his internal soul. Something like this had happened before when his blood and shadow subpillars had connected to one another - but only this time it was far more than just connecting.
They were locking themselves together with crystalized bridges, one after the other. They were extending. They were becoming far, far larger than they’d been before - like a mixed tapestry painted between the two monoliths of black and red.
The two colors swirled and meshed, the fragments coming together to create something entirely new - aided by the power of the dao treasure he and Athela were holding in unison. His Blood Subpillar then began to grow, and then grow even more. It expanded upwards off the base at the soul core it was attached to, surging forward until it slowed down and stopped at nearly twice the size of the previous one he’d had as shards continued to slam into it; filling the cracks and crevices with more and more pieces of its old shattered remnants.
But then the swirling shards of his two meshing pillars all simultaneously twitched, and the fusion between black and red stopped right as his orbiting Sin Core - an ominous black and deep purple orb - came to rest directly over the enlarged Blood Subpillar and its subserviently bonded Shadow Subpillar.
“Riven…….”
The voice echoed in his mind as a sea of whispers, causing him to tense and shudder when a cold dread overcame him. A demonic, deep laugh of glee followed, and the voice continued to whisper into his ear.
“Ah… You can finally understand me… Can’t you?”
The sin core pulsed, he felt his body tear at the seams when the voice called to him, and Riven’s senses tingled when a maw opened up in the black and deep purple sphere. Rows of teeth let out a low hiss, and it was from here that he realized the voice was coming.
He hesitantly nodded, not sure if he was saying the words aloud - or if he was just thinking them. “I can. Hello, Gluttony… I’m surprised you’re showing yourself in person to a little peon like me. To what do I owe the honor?”
The maw’s laughter roared to life, and Riven felt blood begin trickling from his closed eyes, nose, ears and mouth. Riven vaguely heard shocked yelps and cursing, but he held up a hand to let the others know he was alright - though his body certainly took a toll just by talking to the entity. And it wasn’t just a piece of the entity either - oh no, this was the brain, the main aspect, the collective consciousness. This was far different.
“What are you doing in my soul?” Riven asked, growing more curious than anything else. He sensed no malice from the sin, and he doubted there’d be any anyways considering how it’d saved his life when Elysium’s tribulation had tried to kill him. “Just sightseeing, perhaps?”
“Testing the waters is all…” The sin replied with a hiss, the soul aperture around him shuddering with every word. “Repairing and preparing you for what is to come… and it will come sooner than you think. I came to say hello, so that you are not terrified of the bond when it solidifies in upcoming weeks.”
At this, Riven’s eyebrows raised. “Bond?”
Gluttony’s mouth widened, and slowly - it began to reveal a maze of tendrils coming out of the pit of its throat. They were dark, pulsing with deep purple and black energies that connected and pulled at the rotating shards that hadn’t already been sunk into the pillars Riven had somewhat restored. The tendrils then flashed away, and were gone before Riven even knew what to make of them.
“It has already begun…” Gluttony said in satisfaction. “Your soul, my soul, and the symbiotic relationship that has helped you already not just once - but twice.”
Riven belched blood just from being in the presence of the great sin, and his vampiric regeneration kicked into high gear fighting off the cracks and crevices of sin energy leaking out of his skin now. He could hear the worries in the others’ voices, but they were a distant call - and he yet again held up a hand to stop them from interfering with the process. He needed to know what Gluttony wanted with him. “Symbiosis entails a mutually beneficial relationship. I hope you’re not using this in lue of being a parasite.”
“I am certainly not…” the sin retorted gleefully, shifting its many teeth along the sin core placatingly. “The alternative is impossible despite my wishes. I truly do wish to coexist… but you must let me in for the bond to fully connect. Otherwise talking to you as a mortal will forever cause a violent reaction such as the one you are experiencing now. As a harbinger of my blood, it is the greatest honor one can be given. The others… my worshipers… even the other holders of my shards… they don’t understand what it is I truly am. Or what it is I desire. Nor do you… but, that isn’t important now. What is important, is that I can help - as I have already begun to do. May I pose a question?”
Riven snorted a laugh, even despite numerous arteries bursting when he did. “Sure. go ahead.”
Gluttony paused. “Did you not find it odd that your Harbinger of Gluttony Class, and your Harbinger Soul Clone, manifested itself as my visage - rather than your own?”
Riven’s eyes narrowed at this. He’d been considering this exact thing for a while now. Even back in Daskus when he’d been able to somehow summon Gluttony’s maw in the sky as he destroyed the city in a wrath unlike anything he’d ever experienced before - and that was before he’d even acquired the soul clone on his status page. Then, very recently, he’d called Gluttony’s visage from the sky - and then the earth underneath him, to battle against Elysium’s will when it tried to strike him down for using Malignant Prophecy one too many times.
He pulled up an old notification to re-read it in his mind’s eye.
[Harbinger of Gluttony, Sin Class, Secondary Class, has finally finished its construction. Harbinger Soul Clone is now finished. +2 Sturdiness, +9 Free Points per level will now be distributed with each level up.]
* Harbinger of Gluttony (Sin Class Title) - The Harbinger of Gluttony is the most basic sin class specific to the original sin of Gluttony and creates a superimposed wraith-like Soul Clone, a symbiote created from sin inside your body, allowing it to strike out at close distances to any nearby enemy. +2 sturdiness, +9 Free Points per level.
The suspicion had been there… but… he didn’t know what to think.
“You’ve been planning the transition for a while now. Haven’t you?” Riven asked cautiously. “Summoning your visage isn’t normal for a harbinger. Is it? The description of my soul clone states it should be a superimposed image of myself. Instead, I got you. I had you even before I knew what a soul clone was.”
The sin laughed. “Envy may be the schemer of us sins, but that doesn’t mean I can’t concoct plans of my own. You are a unique vessel with an even more unique situation after your soul was shattered, and we sins that spawned the first of demonkind - just like the commandments that the angels hail from - cannot manifest into a true life without a symbiosis unless all shards have been collected from our shattered bodies.”
Riven grimaced.
“That brings up a lot of questions. Can you tell me what exactly the commandments are? Did you have an actual body of your own in the past other than the great maw I usually see? Why me? And just what is it that you desire, if it isn’t to simply consume everything as I’d assumed?”
The maw seemed to smile, and the ocean of whispers endured. “Those are questions that can all be answered in time… but you must accept my bond to find out. When the time comes, it will appear as a contract much like those of your demonic familiars… accept it, and I will be reborn.”
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“Reborn? How?”
This time, it was the sin that hesitated. “Let us just say that I wish to experience life once more… not this… everlasting prison, I find myself in. I wish to be free of the memories that chain me here. Meanwhile you desire power, power that I can help acquire. Accept the contract and find out. The time is coming rather quickly now… The terms will be in your favor. I’m excited to see what you’ll do.”
The visage of the maw on his sin core vanished, and a torrent of black, red, and deep purple energy exploded to life with searing agony accompanying it.
Riven didn’t physically blink, but it certainly felt that way when he found himself standing beside Athela on a vast ocean of red. The blood moon was half buried on the horizon, encompassing nearly 40% of the sky above with a single figure outlined in black against the red backdrop - floating there nearly fifty feet above the ocean his feet rested on.
Ripples of liquid radiated from his position when he turned to look at Athela, but the demoness was in a trance of her own - somewhere far beyond her current state while lights flashed in her eyes and her mouth twitched. “Athela?”
Abruptly the area around him shifted again, and he found himself floating beside the figure in black - red eyes gleaming underneath a dark hood as orbs of blood hovered around him to match the crimson landscape and the bright red moon behind them both. An aura bloomed from the figure before Riven as if the very skies around them were bending to the hooded man’s will, and he gently lifted a hand to show the artifact Riven and Athela had used.
It was the Tear of the Blood God.
Riven’s eyes narrowed but he found himself unable to talk anymore, just as the hooded man shattered the crystalized tear with a chuckle, and the oceans around him tore apart and soared into the heavens like a reverse avalanche. A sea of skeletal bodies were revealed under the depths of the ocean when the blood finally cleared after hundreds of billions of gallons of the crimson fluid covered the sky to blot out the stars.
Wait… Riven had been here before. He’d seen visions of this place before, hadn’t he?
“Blood, shadow, and death. These are the three pillars the vampires were created from.” The hooded figure said, turning his red gaze and forcing Riven’s own with it towards the piles upon piles of dead far below them. You have taken the first step by converging the paths of shadow and blood, but you lack the trio in its entirety. Descendant, you show promise… otherwise Gluttony would not involve itself so directly in you. But you need to broaden your horizons now and before you hit the E-grade, or you will fall short of what you could otherwise become. Death is a sister component to blood in more ways than one. Why do you neglect it?”
Riven’s eyes were allowed to drift upwards into the dark hood that outlined the mysterious man in front of him, but he felt his jaw remain locked. Riven assumed it was a rhetorical question when the man in the vision turned his gaze back upon the mountains of bones underneath them, and then he held out one hand - summoning a humanoid skeleton from the depths to hover in front of them like a rag doll.
The unknown man stared Riven down for a long, long time after that. Longer than Riven was comfortable with, until a single red finger rose out of the black cloak flowing around him - and touched Riven on the forehead. “Descendant, I bestow upon you insight.”
Red cracks flashed across Riven’s forehead where the man’s red finger was suddenly digging into his skull, and Riven screamed in agony as images flashed through his mind at the speed of light. A field of battle on a distant planet roared to the forefront, where men skewered one another with blade and spear. Their bodies leaked lifeblood onto the soil in oceans of red, and their corpses dropped to the ground in death by the thousands. He experienced one by one the sensation each of them suffered, the sensation of dying, of losing life that their blood had kept intact. He experienced the darkness, the shadow, that overcame their spirits as they transitioned into the afterlife.
Then he experienced a reversal of that cycle, never allowing the cycle into true death to be completed. Shadow turned to a pale imitation of light, and crimson fluid washed through rotted corpses as necromancers summoned the decaying souls of the dead back into their bodies. They weren’t the same as they’d once been, but pieces and fragments of these souls came together to form new beings - once again embracing undeath as a new form of life. The crimson liquid that’d saturated the ground rose up and embraced these new, unholy abominations, and three symbols began to flash in Riven’s mind over and over again on repeat.
The symbol of a scythe, a symbol of a red teardrop, and the symbol of a black sun.
They flashed over and over again, replaying without stopping faster and faster - overlaying on the images of the battle, the necromancers, the forward and reversed cycles that continued to slam themselves into his consciousness. He saw them rise up and roar to the sky above, saw their bodies begin to flicker with red mana, and then saw the blood moon flash before his eyes one final time.
He let out an internal scream, his soul core erupting and shattering on one end where a new subpillar tore into the soul aperture with a frenzy. Neon teal flecked with black illuminated the spot between and to the side of his Blood Subpillar and Shadow Subpillar, beginning to form bridging connections to these other two pillars when their shards began swirling to repair themselves yet again. The three were slowly beginning to become one.
Only for the symbol of the great maw to completely press itself against his dao vision and overtake his mind entirely. All other visions faded, with the teeth of Gluttony snapping down on them and obliterating them from his mind.
[Your Blood Subpillar has been repaired and has grown significantly. Your Shadow Subpillar has been partially repaired. Your soul core remains cracked and in ruins, and your sin core is beginning to fuse with your soul core in its damaged state. You are now oriented towards the Death Subpillar.]
[New Spell Learned: Legionaries of the Blood God (Death / Blood)(Tier 2): This is a temporary summoning spell that does not require minion slots. You may summon 8 Elite-Class Bloodstricken Undead from the Blood God’s realm, equal in combat level to your own, and may designate whether or not you wish to summon Blood Knights, Blood Sorcerers, Blood Assassins, or a combination of the three when you do so. Undead are non-sentient and last for 5 minutes before disappearing. 1 day cooldown time. Very high mana cost.]
[Gluttony has incorporated all the following ability properties from Jackal and Messenger as Sin abilities that you can cast regardless of wearing these items or not: Devour, Identifier’s Clause, Beastform.]
[Black Lightning (Shadow) has finished manifesting and can now be cast at will.]
[Your bond with Athela grows stronger. Mind Link has been established between yourself and this minion, allowing for telepathic communication.]
***
Riven slowly opened his eyes, realizing he was covered in his own blood that’d seeped from all the holes on his head. It stained the ground underneath him as he sat cross-legged, and he took in a deep breath. Fay was staring wide-eyed at him while Athela lay crumpled in a heap on Fay’s lap, where Azmoth was still holding Riven up in a sitting position to the side of his master.
Starlight twinkled up above, and the sounds of laughter filled the air while the rest of the camp went on about their lives as if nothing had ever happened.
“I can feel it. Your mana… part of it at least, is back.” Fay said with a hesitant smile. “Am I right? And don’t worry about Athela, she’s just tired from the insights she got. Said she made a lot of progress and learned two new abilities!”
“Ah, I was about to ask. Good to know, and yes - I was able to use the treasure to repair part of my soul after all. Just like I’d guessed, but in a rather roundabout and unexpected way.” Riven smiled back at her, a warm and comforting one. His body was still very weak, and his soul wasn’t completely repaired by any means, but it was certainly stronger. And just like Fay had said: he could now summon magic to him again.
A storm razor bloomed over his right palm when he held out his hand: the bloody, pronged, circular blade of magic shifting over his hand in the colors of black and red. It rapidly transitioned to a storm ball at a thought, the more explosive and less piercing variant of the magical attack, before it vanished entirely. Black lightning sparked along his fingers, dancing around it at a whim, before using his ‘devour’ ability on a nearby wildflower without much thought. A maw grew along Riven’s outstretched palm and a cord of dark tendrils ripped the flower up, pulling it into the jaws that snapped shut and receded immediately.
Glancing over at Jackal, who’d taken its canine form, Riven imitated the creature by abruptly shifting his own body into a flickering black jackal too - complete with red eyes to imitate the weapon’s secondary body as an absolute copy.
The two dogs just stared at each other while Azmoth grunted in excitement and Fay gasped, though other than for subterfuge purposes Riven couldn’t really see a reason to use the ability quite yet.
He shifted back into his vampire form without having lost any of the items he was wearing. “Neat, but not sure how it’ll be used in the future. Wana see my last new spell?”
Fay raised an eyebrow in amusement. “You have more?”
“Indeed!” Riven chuckled, then used the last spell he’d acquired from his dao vision of the mountains of skeletons underneath a bloody sea - and the three sigils. “I have some theories about the dao treasure we just used, and I don’t think it was necessarily for a dao insight itself. And it turns out that the Shadow and Death Subpillars are related to Blood in a lot more intricate ways than I’d expected. The experience was very complicated… Anyways let’s take a look, shall we?”
Shifting his focus to the river’s edge, he activated his temporary summoning spell.
Eight flashes of light illuminated the small beach, and eight hooded skulls etched with crimson runes on their foreheads stared with equally crimson orbs for eyes in their skull sockets. Four were heavily armored with red claymores and thick red plate mail. Two held thin, wicked daggers dripping blood mana in each hand and were strapped in red leathers, while the last two wore crimson robes and held staves with ruby orbs that flickered blood mana in the same way his own arms did when he summoned blood lance.
Each of their status reads was that of an elite, with gold lettering outlining their titles.
[Summoned Blood Knight, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]
[Summoned Blood Knight, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]
[Summoned Blood Knight, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]
[Summoned Blood Knight, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]
[Summoned Blood Sorcerer, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]
[Summoned Blood Sorcerer, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]
[Summoned Blood Assassin, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]
[Summoned Blood Assassin, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]