Following the tendril of mana that wanted to drag Miesto's Soul away was a trivial task. A hand brushing past her wings and resting in the small of her back caused Aperio to delegate the tracing of whatever magic pulled on the Soul to the back of her mind.
"Yes?" she inquired, tilting her head slightly as she looked at Caethya.
Her disciple’s eyes were filled with concern as they flicked left to right, scanning her Goddess' face for anything out of the ordinary. "Are you sure everything is alright? You are… unnaturally calm. Cold."
The All-Mother cocked her head to the other side. She was calm, yes, but it did not feel wrong. Certainly better than being angry — practically unhinged — at what had happened, and breaking more in the process of seeking revenge.
"Would you rather I give in to my anger and kill everyone I will find on the other side?" she asked, a portal slowly starting to form beside her.
A thought placed Miesto's Soul into her Void, having it join the countless others in the River so it might be washed clean of the sins he had committed in this life. Hopefully the next one will be better.
Aperio's wings twitched slightly as Caethya moved around her and wrapped her other arm around her midsection as well. "Just because you don't show your anger doesn't mean it's not there," she said, looking up at her Goddess. "Remember? I know how you feel. At least a little."
"But I don't feel angry," Aperio said, a touch of her magic making sure the nameless God could no longer hear their conversation. "How can you know how I feel when I'm not even experiencing it myself?"
Caethya hesitated for a moment before she lowered her eyes, averting her gaze. "I don't know… I just know that something is wrong." She took a deep breath, moving her hands to Aperio's sides as she looked up again. "Can you do me a favour?"
The All-Mother blinked at the words but gave a nod nonetheless. Whatever favour Caethya would ask of her would likely be one she was willing to fulfill — there were only a couple of things she would not do for her…disciple...after all.
"Please, let me try to talk to the people on the other side first." Caethya said. "I refuse to believe that all of them knew what they were doing, especially now that I know what happened here." She hesitated for a moment, gripping the fabric of Aperio's dress a little tighter before she continued in a whisper. "I don't want you to have to kill them all."
Aperio wrapped her arms and wings around Caethya, pulling the Elf into her embrace. She brushed her hand over her disciple’s back, trying to comfort her. The All-Mother did not quite understand why Caethya was concerned about death now, but if her disciple wanted to offer them a chance, she was willing to let them have it.
"You can talk to them," she said, trying to let the mana that accompanied every word she spoke convey a bit of the calm she felt. "Just don't hope for too much. People are more wicked than you think.
"I am also not some delicate flower that needs protecting," Aperio continued after a moment, ending the embrace and holding Caethya at almost arm’s length. "I have no issue doing what needs to be done."
The Demigoddess gave her a sad smile. "No, you don't," she said. "But I don't want you to have to deal with the knowledge that you killed them all. There are other ways to deal with this issue."
"I doubt that," Aperio said, narrowing her eyes slightly. "Anyone who knowingly abuses Souls will suffer the consequences of their actions."
Caethya sighed. "Let me put it this way. Would you enjoy watching me slaughter a room full of people like it was nothing?"
Aperio tilted her head slightly at the question. If she was honest with herself, she likely wouldn't — even if life itself held surprisingly little meaning to her. That wasn't a recent development, either. As a slave, she had seen more than enough executions and murders to render the experience duller than the mundane. None of it had ever truly bothered her, and later on she merely found herself envying the dead. Now, she knew that death was not truly the end. Just a new beginning.
"No…" she said quietly. "However, I do not know why. If they deserve to die, they should. But the thought of you doing that just seems… wrong, somehow."
"And that's how I feel with you," Caethya said, standing on her toes to more properly poke a finger at Aperio's chest. "I know full well that you can do it — and that your judgement is scarily accurate — but I would like to believe that not everyone is a raging arsehole."
"You will be disappointed," Aperio said, letting the magic that had kept their conversation private dissolve, and faced the nameless God.
"I have found something that needs my attention," the All-Mother said, pointing a wing at the portal as her hands were still wrapped around Caethya. "I apologise for appearing on such short notice, but recently, things have been a bit disorderly and it needs to be addressed."
The God merely gave a nod, too busy making sure he never looked at the hugging women directly. Aperio squinted at him as she gently wrapped her wings around Caethya as well, not sure if he was being polite or if he had something against the display of their affection.
"It's fine," Caethya said, moving to Aperio's side once she had gently nudged the All-Mother's arms and wings aside. "He's just trying to be respectful, right?"
"Y-Yes," the God stammered. "My people usually do not show their… affection outside their own home."
"Your rule?" Aperio asked with, perhaps, a bit too much power in her voice.
The nameless God shook his head vigorously. "No, it's just what most of them prefer." He hesitated for a moment before he lowered himself into a chair that appeared behind him. "They mostly manage themselves," he said. "I only step in if their actions would plunge the world into chaos."
"Good," Aperio said, taking her eyes off of the God and stepping through the portal. "Keep it that way."
The other side of the portal was not what Aperio had expected. No gilded halls, no guards expecting her arrival, just a giant cave full of various crystals arranged in what she guessed were deliberate formations. Filled with mana…
It was easier to feel here than on Verenier, but it felt off somehow. Like it did not belong here. The answer as to why that was the case was obvious, and Aperio had no doubt that there was more than the one world that was suffering from having its mana siphoned off. The purpose of the collection of magical energies, however, remained unclear.
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"The mana here makes my skin itch," Caethya said, rubbing her arms as she tried to hide under Aperio's wing. "Feels so… wrong."
"Because it is," Aperio said. She let her aura expand again — just like she had on the nameless God's World — taking in everything her senses revealed to her.
It required little more than a thought to command the abundance of mana that filled this realm, the energy almost eager to serve her will over what it was doing before. There was, however, another presence, one that tried to pull the mana from Aperio's mental grasp. A fruitless endeavour, but one that piqued her interest regardless. Wouldn't usually even notice something like that.
She took a step forward, reality twisting itself further apart to bring them directly in front of the presence she had felt. Seeing it with her own eyes and not only her aura was something she felt was needed in this situation.
Gyesfal | [The Abomination] | Level: Excluded (Preliminary Classification: s͟͜ə̸̢́͜͡ʊ̸̀l͢͞͏ ̶̷̧k̷̵̢ə̢̨̡͘n̵҉ˈ̴̨͠g̨͞l͠ɒ̶̷̛̛ḿ̵ə͠r̛ɪ̧͢͡҉t̷͞͝)
Classification error: Failed to apply specified bounds.
Fallback: Unavailable. Action required.
"No shit," Aperio mumbled, mentally dismissing the System notifications.
The being in front of her was nothing she had ever seen or heard of before. The exception, perhaps, lay in tales of Demons. It was large. Too large. The cave she and Caethya found themselves in was easily dwarfing the one Fel’Erreyth had resided in, and the writhing mass of fleshy tentacles that was Gyesfal took up most of the space.
A thought wrapped her disciple in more of her mana than Aperio had ever used before in the protection of another. Just in case. She wanted to send Caethya away, but she knew that the Elf would not accept that — would perhaps try to find a way back.
The mass of flesh before them moved, then, its slimy appendages twitching as countless sets of eyes opened along their length; all focusing on Aperio.
"Who are you?" Gyesfal asked, its voice tugging ever-so-slightly at the threads of reality as it rippled through space.
Crude, Aperio thought with a frown. The being was stronger than any other God she had encountered before, but it seemed unable to properly wield its might.
"Aperio," she eventually replied, making sure her voice carried a bit more power than Gyesfal's own. She also took a step forward and, reconsidering the situation at hand, brought Caethya into her Void. Risking Caethya’s well being was out of the question, and a part of her mind devoted itself to making certain that her disciple would not leave the safe space. Every part of Aperio’s being knew that being yelled at later was far preferable to having to attempt to undo whatever damages Gyesfal might be able to do.
"The Failure," it said, its fleshy appendages flailing about. "How does the Failure wrest the mana away from me?"
Aperio tilted her head at the words, the anger that had been so long absent starting to make itself known at the back of her mind. "Who do you call a failure?" she asked, taking another step towards the mass of tentacles and eyes.
She easily pushed through the barrier that surrounded the being, not even having to draw on her own well to do so as the mana that filled the realm was already more than willing to do her bidding. It even tried to enter her body and join the stream of pure mana that coursed through it, but the All-Mother did not allow it. Who knows what they did to it.
"You," it rasped. "You failed your creations. Left them to commit sin after sin. Left them to create me." It shifted, more tentacles and eyes somehow phasing into reality. "You abandoned your creations to suffer at the hands of the Pantheon you made."
"I did not abandon anyone!" Aperio spat, appearing before the biggest eye at the center of the abomination. Her wings unfurled behind her, the black feathers glinting with a subtle blue light as they kept her aloft with a slow beat.
"I was betrayed! Used!" A thought accompanied with a grasping motion of her hand caused the flailing tentacles to be compacted into a ball, pieces of the wall and reality itself joining them as Aperio found herself uncaring of the realm they were in.
"You create suffering," she spat, closing her hand further. A thick, viscous brown liquid started to seep from its tentacles as skin started to break in Aperio's grasp. "You take the Souls of others without thinking. Consume them."
"I am the shape of their revenge! Their desire!" Gyesfal spat back, struggling to break free of Aperio's hold. "I will unmake your world of suffering and create a true world, free of wicked things like you."
The All-Mother took a deep breath, letting her Void seep into the realm she currently occupied. The comforting nothing was accompanied by a mixture of anger and distress from Caethya, a feeling that Aperio answered by showing the Demigoddess what she saw and letting her know more clearly what she felt. She yearned to close her fist and squish the thrashing mass of tentacles in front of her, but she needed information. And to set the record straight.
"You are nothing more than an experiment that goes against everything I stand for," Aperio said, further tightening her grasp. "And you are just as wicked and broken as your creators.
"Do you know them?" she asked after a moment filled with nothing but the sound of Gyesfal's blood dripping on the remaining bits of stone floor. "Do you know who made you? What they did to make you?"
The abomination did not answer immediately, fruitlessly struggling against her grasp instead. Aperio let her Void flow over Gyesfal as she extended her senses into its body.
Aperio paused as she stumbled upon something she had not expected. There was some truth to its claim. In a way, it was the shape of some Souls’ revenge. Much like The Rage, Gyesfal had more than one Soul in its body, but for some reason they were not fighting one another.
They acted in unison — or as close as they could — with one Soul dominating the rest. She did not want to look closer at the subservient Souls, knowing that she would undoubtedly find runes engraved on them, forcefully ‘taming’ them so they would not fight over the body they inhabited. Is this why they sought out people with The Rage?
Aperio looked deeper anyway. Even if she knew she would not like what she found, she still needed to see it. Needed to fix it.
Just as she had expected, the Souls were covered in runes, so extensively that barely any part was left unmarred. Even the main one — which shone a bit brighter than the rest — had some on it. Most prominently, a formation she knew all too well.
The mark of enslavement was engraved into Gyesfal's Soul perfectly and, for a brief moment, Aperio considered letting the creature live. The feeling lasted until she noticed a small rune above the mark, one that would alter its meaning. It had always surprised her how one additional rune could turn a slave into a master, but it did. And Gyesfal had it.
It was no slave to someone else's desires. It knew perfectly well what it was doing to the other Souls. Knew it stole their freedom to strengthen itself.
A shower of flesh and brown blood covered the cave Gyesfal had called its home as she closed her hand. The torrent of gore left Aperio unscathed, any part that came too close simply bursting into a bright blue flame before disappearing from reality.
Gyesfal's Soul, and the myriad other ones it had used to strengthen itself, floated where the mass of tentacles had been before. Aperio stopped counting after a thousand, merely letting out a breath of inky black Void. She had not gotten any answers, had just killed the thing once she found out what it had done.
Not that it would have told me anything anyway, she told herself, looking at the still somewhat brighter Soul that had been the main consciousness for the entity once known as Gyesfal. This has Epemirial written all over it.
Without a sound, Aperio and the Souls disappeared from Gyesfal's blood-stained realm; a part of her mind staying behind to keep watch. She was sure someone would come to check up on their experiment. Someone from The Veil…