As Meng Hu died, the Abyss turned on Jian.
It closed in on her from every side. Smothered her. Crushed her until her bones began to groan and twist under the pressure.
She tried to push back, pressing against it with the full might of her soul, desperately asserting her right to live. The shadows had always been her friend, had always protected her, had always listened to her when called.
But the Abyss did not belong to her.
She felt the hate in the Patriarch’s regard as the Abyss moved like an extension of his will. His Authority surrounded her, grinding away at her slowly, inexorably, until she was forced down.
She fell into a fold between shadows, drowning in fear.
She thrashed and flailed, screaming loud enough that her throat tore itself to shreds. She couldn’t die here. Not now. Not after everything she’d done. She reached toward something inside her, feeling it begin to erode a boundary she couldn’t see until-
The pressure disappeared with a pop of air.
Jian’s head spun, dizzy on oxygen and relief, as she found herself tumbling across the smooth stone floor of the Patriarch’s audience chamber. She rolled to a stop on her knees, her eyes blinded by the half-light that filtered down from the Palace above them.
She looked up at the silhouette of God standing over her, her body trembling.
“Kill her.”
Jian felt the Immortals on either side of her move and tried to react, to do something to stop them, anything, but her limbs were trapped. The shadows on top of her weighed her down like a mountain. She felt the bones in her right arm shatter as she tried and failed to lift it.
A black sword cleared its sheathe, tar flying from its blade in a terrifying arc.
A gray tentacle, barbs like teeth covering one side, darted from the beneath a ragged cloak.
“No.”
The arc of Ruin bent around her and kept going, cutting through both the tentacle and the stone wall behind it like paper, before disappearing out into the Abyss. The severed limb oozed and burned where it had been cut, the black tar seeping into the wound and infecting it. The corroded flesh quickly lost cohesion, sloughing off of the stump like water.
By the time it was pulled back beneath the cloak, the tentacle had forked and begun to grow two new ends, each a different color and texture from the original.
The Deicide’s hand landed on her shoulder and the weight holding her down disappeared.
Jian pushed herself back to her feet, forcing herself to get her bearings back.
Violet light shining in her soul whispered that she had almost died. That she would have died without help.
She grit her teeth and filled the cracks with cold fury and molten shadow as the Gods in the room discussed her fate.
“The abomination you’ve created must die.”
“Not today.”
Jian didn’t bother listening; she didn’t have the time. Her mind focused on the power surging inside of her that she’d stolen from Meng Hu, still raw and unrefined, still searching for a purpose. The sea of blood had overflowed its banks, waves crashing against the Pillar of her soul, soaking it in a new layer of resolve.
Thorns flourished on the vines wrapped around her soul. The tips of Meng Hu’s fingers poked up from the sea, the severed hand withering down to the bone as it was drained of every last drop of Immortal blood.
It hadn’t done anything to save her from the Patriarch’s might, but that didn’t mean it was useless. It just needed direction.
She wed the remaining shreds of The Hunt to her own desires and felt her body start to change. There were more things she wanted than power available, but she narrowed it down, discarding options and guiding it to a single purpose.
Let the Deicide deal with her peer, Jian needed to find Striga.
Her ears burned, the malleable flesh stretching to sharp tips.
Air brushed over her tongue, new taste buds breaking down the qi in the air.
Inside her soul, eyes bloomed like flowers in the shadow of her vines, red irises swiveling as they searched for prey.
She heard Striga’s heart beat far above her, a steady thump that rippled through the shadows between them, her ears resonating with each vibration.
She could smell her blood on the air, achingly similar to the taste of her mother’s soul, leaving a trail she could follow as easily as a paved road.
A road that lead up to the Palace above.
The Deicide’s hand tightened on Jian’s shoulder, reminding her that she was still there.
“Go, my apprentice. These three will not follow you.”
Her hand let go.
“After all, you have another lesson waiting for you.”
Jian ignored the warning and exploded upward, crashing through the roof overhead in a shower of glass.
As the Abyss flooded around her she felt it fall under her sway, once again absent of a greater will. It buoyed her, the new shadows in her soul synergizing with the old, pushing her even faster.
For every meter she crossed in the physical world, the shadows slipped her forward nine more.
Ten seconds later, she reached the Abyssal Palace, its crystal walls and soaring towers swallowing her view in a sparkling blur.
She did not slow down.
Jian crashed through the roof of the Palace’s tallest tower like a lightning bolt. The top three levels of the tower evaporated before she came to a stop, each layer of flooring crumbling beneath her feet as the walls exploded outward. Shards of crystal larger than she was rained down, pushed from above by a flood of shadows rushing to fill the vacuum she’d left behind.
She took a deep breath, parsing through the hundreds of new scents that assaulted her alongside the banging of a hundred heartbeats. The path to Striga warped and wavered, but she focused on the thread of Connection between them. A tiny piece of her soul, so small she could barely feel it, quivered as the path was pulled back into sharp relief.
Claws sprouted from her feet, shredding through her tightly woven slippers to slide easily into the misty, quartz-like, floor.
The shattered ceiling finally started to crash around her, slamming into the floor and filling the air with powdered crystal dust as a wave of shadows followed behind it.
Jian’s first step pushed her up into the air faster than gravity could pull her down. For a moment it felt like she was falling past a sheer cliff face rather than running, watching herself drift away from it. Before she could drift too far, she snapped her foot down, claws digging into the floor and dragging her back down to take a second step.
She blasted through the room with a crack like thunder, the air pressure carving a path through the dust. The debris hung frozen in the air as she passed it, the fragments in her path shattering into dust against her body like raindrops, as she threw herself into a shadowed recess of the room.
The world flickered as she passed through the shadow in an instant, reappearing three floors down. She spun on her feet, claws leaving circular gouges in the floor, and crashed through a door without slowing down. Shards of wood filled the air as she punched through it into a long crystal corridor lined with red torches.
A disciple with the dark blue sash of an Inner Disciple cringed in surprise as she ran past him, the air pressure knocking him away and slamming his back into one of the torches.
The torch behind him cast a shadow over her and she was gone.
She flickered through the Palace, diving deeper with each step and crossing rooms in a single breath.
She skid to a stop as the path disappeared, but she strained her ears, finding Striga’s heartbeat louder than ever before. Loud enough to almost drown out the dozen heartbeats between them. Loud enough to show her the way.
Her fist slammed into the floor, shattering it.
A dozen pairs of eyes looked up at her as she fell into the cavernous room below her, riding the largest shards of debris.
Their eyes glowed with violet light.
Each of them wore the purple sashes of a Core Disciple in the Liminal Realm, each of them stronger than she’d been a mere week ago, and each of them reacted quickly enough to avoid being crushed by the falling ceiling. They moved frantically, obvious practice and teamwork shaken by the desperate fear pushing them into action, and a dozen techniques and weapons were flashing towards Jian before she even reached the ground.
Jian didn’t know what they saw when they looked at her; maybe their greatest fear, maybe a rogue Immortal on a rampage, maybe a monster from the depths of the Abyss.
They danced like puppets on Shen Hui’s strings, each one innocent of anything more than being tricked by a man who could crush them in the palm of his hand. These people had been her brothers and sisters in the sect for a decade of her life, even if it had been in name only. None of them had been given an informed choice and none of them deserved to die here.
Jian didn’t care.
Maybe, the monster they saw through their violet haze was the truth.
She stepped past a spear of stone, the tip glowing yellow as it was superheated enough to warp the light passing through the air around it. It could have hurt her if it had landed, but it never came close. Instead, her clawed hands slipped through flesh like water, closing around a beating heart and yanking it free. She held it up to her lips and crushed it in her hand, wringing the lifesblood from it a fruit.
[insert memory]
She stepped over grasping roots that spread through the cloudy quartz floor, like shadows beneath the water. The roots broke through the surface with a spray of powdered crystal like seafoam and snapped tight like a noose around empty space.
Jian’s hand wrapped around the face of the tall disciple staring in terror where she’d just been standing, yanking him down so that his back arched and his knees buckled. Her fangs sank into his exposed neck like tofu.
Another disciple jumped out of her shadow, the edge of his bronze knife shimmering green with poisonous qi, but he was not Meng Hu. The shadows had whispered to her that he was coming and she had moved her sword in position before he appeared, never looking up from where she continued to feed. His own momentum buried her sword in his throat and black vines snaked out from the shadow of her sleeve and ran up the edge of her sword, wrapping around him and digging their thorns into him. His flesh began to wither as they drank his blood dry.
She dropped both corpses and stepped around the arc of a sword, its edge shimmering with shimmering sword qi as it cut through the air.
A bubble of water formed around her head, following her movements, but she left it alone. She didn’t need to breathe, so she couldn’t drown.
A disciple shot towards her, stepping on solid air to throw himself at her from above. A disc of sand encircled him like a shield, flowing fast enough it would scour mortal flesh from its bones, protecting him as he swung a fist covered in jagged glass.
Her sword flashed and three more Disciples of the Abyssal Palace died.
She caught their blood with fang and thorn, the flashes of memory coming so fast that they just blended together until they lost their identity. Before she could process them, they faded away like dreams evaporating in the morning light.
With each soul she consumed, Jian grew stronger. The sea of blood roiled and the pillar she’d grown around her heart grew, pushing the night sky up to expand her domain as new thorns grew from the vines that stretched across it, flashing with the hues of stolen qi like a field of stars.
Jian’s hand tightened on her sword as a truth she’d always known was reinforced. The difference between Realms was vast. A dozen disciples in the Emergent Realm could throw their lives at her and it barely slowed her down. It wasn’t even a fight.
It was a slaughter.
She dropped the twelfth withered corpse by the doors at the end of the room and flicked her hair, the last drops of water splattering on the floor to leave her untouched.
She strode through the doors, brimming with the stolen strength of a fresh Immortal Soul and a dozen lesser ones. It was enough power to leave her craving more, to push her to turn around and continue Hunting up and down the halls, gorging herself on the tiny flames she could feel in every direction-
But she had a priority to take care of first.
Striga sat in the same chair Jian had left her in, the large plush cushions almost swallowing her in their embrace. Her eyes were closed and she was slumped to the side, the feathers in her hair falling over her face as she slept.
Yan Feng stood next to her, wide eyes glowing violet as he stared at her. She hadn’t seen him since he’d killed Xue Yin two years ago, but he had barely changed. He still wore the sash of an Inner Disciple, his weak soul firmly in the Asthenic Realm. The only difference was that he’d replaced the arm she’d taken from him with a stone prosthetic.
He held that hand up to Striga’s throat, a bronze knife shaking in his grip.
“Stop-”
A pressurized line of blood cut through his spine before he could get more than a word out. Jian didn’t care what he had to say. She jerked her head to the side, dragging the jet of blood through his body away from Striga and slicing him in two.
The knife dropped in Striga’s lap as Yan Feng lost control of his body and collapsed in two pieces by the side of the chair, bleeding the last of his life onto the white crystal floor.
Jian ignored him and reached for Striga. She gently took the knife from the girl’s lap and tossed it over her shoulder to clang against the floor where it couldn’t hurt her. She cupped Striga’s cheek in one hand, relieved to feel her breath against her palm, calm and steady.
She saw Striga’s eyes start to flicker open and pulled her into a hug. She knew the child had rejected her touch in the past, but surely she’d earned a single hug.
Seeing the false vision of Wei again had made her confront just how much she still missed him. How much she missed having someone look up to and rely on her.
Jian would fulfill her responsibility to Alceste’s memory. She’d protect Striga until they could find someone to take care of her, but she’d always wanted a little sister. So she allowed herself to think, to hope, that maybe, just maybe, that person could be her.
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Jian moved her head down to look at Striga and felt something cold press into the skin under her jaw.
Her body locked up, the crushing pressure of the Abyss seizing her in its grip again. She couldn’t move as the golden knife in Striga’s hand slid up through her jaw. She felt Shen Hui’s qi resonate through the gold, hidden inside the perfect conductor, as it pierced the roof of her mouth and kept going.
Jian’s body shuddered and started to slump as the knife lodged deep into her brain, separating something crucial from the rest of her. Her vision blacked out, a fog rolling in and blanketing her thoughts.
What was going on? What had she just been doing?
She tried to lift her hand, but it only twitched by her side.
The shadows around her flailed as she grasped for something.
Shen Hui. Right, Shen Hui was here. Somewhere. He was killing her.
Where?
She couldn’t feel her body anymore. All she could feel was the fear thrumming in her head, pushing her to react, to save herself.
Without thought, without control, she reacted the same way she’d reacted when she’d woken up with her limbs bound to a golden operating table.
Spears of blood cut their way through her skin. A dozen. Two dozen. Enough to fill a forest. They cut through flesh and qi both, freeing her from the hold that had locked her in place. She fell backward, her head sliding off the knife even as it fell with her.
Jian hit the floor, the red stained knife clattering next to her.
She gasped, her brain healing almost as quickly as the knife was removed.
The spears of blood retracted into her body, the holes in her skin closing behind them, and she scrambled to her feet. She grabbed the knife on the floor and jumped back to the center of the room, holding it up in front of her defensively. Her other hand reflexively went to her throat, trying to banish the awful feeling of cold metal lodged in her flesh by replacing it with the sensation of smooth skin, trying to convince herself she was fine.
She was thinking clearly enough to know she had lost time, maybe only a fraction of a second, but she’d definitely felt her spears bite into someone. Shen Hui should still be nearby, bleeding molten copper if anything, and she still had to find the real Striga too. She strained her senses, searching for him, but she couldn’t feel Shen Hui’s qi anywhere besides the knife. All she could feel was her own and-
Jian looked down at the knife she was holding and the way it almost fit in her hand.
Only the edge was gold, a new addition, plated over a bronze and jade shiv she’d held before.
Jian looked up at the small body still sitting in the chair.
She dropped the knife and stumbled forward.
She pressed shaking fingers to Striga’s throat, feeling for a pulse against blood slicked skin, but all she found was what her ears had already told her.
Nothing.
There was nothing, but the quiet dripping of blood from a dozen wounds.
This wasn’t- This wasn’t supposed to happen.
It had all been an illusion. A trick. It still was. It had to be.
She’d felt Shen Hui’s qi, felt her body lock up from his Pressure, he had been there, just like when Meng Hu had disguised himself as Striga earlier.
She looked within her soul, searching desperately for the telltale signs of violet light interfering, but there was nothing.
Nothing besides a young girl’s corpse in the chair she’d made for her.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
The rational explanation crept through Jian’s mind, but she refused to think of it. Refused to think of Striga taking the knife back from Shen Hui’s hand and nodding her head in acceptance. Agreeing.
She was supposed to have more time, more time to win her over. She knew Striga would never forget who killed her mother, but they could’ve overwritten those feelings with something new. They were accomplices in her father’s vengeance, traveler’s with the same destination, a family of circumstances.
She wasn’t supposed to die.
Emerald green qi flowed from Jian’s hands into the child’s wounds, but it just splashed off. Rejected.
Jian knew her qi wasn’t meant to heal others, hadn’t been since she’d balked at the price it would take to heal Wei on his deathbed, but she had still been able to brute force healing with enough qi a week ago. Something had changed with her Emergence.
Had she tainted her Life resonance with so much Blood that it couldn’t even be called ‘Life’ anymore?
The light from her hands shifted, threads of red staining the green until it became a rotten and muddy brown.
Jian wasn’t sure if she was breathing too fast or not breathing at all. The sound of her blood rushing through her veins filled her ears, drowning everything else out.
She pushed further, the light shifting again, the red overpowering the green until it flowed pure and crimson.
Finally, the qi took, latching on to Striga’s body. Blood flowed backwards. Wounds closed. The flesh left behind was whole and unblemished.
Still, Striga’s chest didn’t move.
Jian’s breath hitched as she hit the same wall she’d felt 10 years ago.
A hand landed on her shoulder and she flinched, head spinning as she reoriented herself.
The Deicide stood behind her with something in her hand. She threw it down beside the chair, where it landed with a booming crack.
Jian stared dumbly at the shattered ruin of Shen Hui’s body.
His legs were gone. His chest had caved in, revealing a crystalline mass like a cracked open geode. His arm had shattered when he landed, lying in three pieces by his side, the veins of gold-flecked bronze exposed to the air. His face was crumbling, the cavity of one eye was filled with sand, and a half dozen other wounds littered his body, exposing the layered strata of metamorphic rock he’d replaced his flesh with.
He was dying.
“This one chose to skirt my Laws for his own ends. His punishment will make a fitting first lesson for you.”
Jian felt numb.
“You could’ve done that at any time.” She said, barely hearing her own words. “You could’ve stopped him from interfering in the duel. You could’ve stopped him from taking Striga away. You could’ve killed him before it came to this.”
“And what would the lesson be if I had? You can blame my inaction all you like, but it was still your own actions that led you here. Your enmities and your cleverness.”
Fury filled Jian to the brim and she snatched the knife from where she’d dropped it on the floor.
She imagined herself surging to her feet. She imagined herself plunging the knife into the Deicide’s face and claiming the same title then and there. She imagined herself being anything, but the coward she was.
Instead, she did nothing. She just stared at Striga and Shen Hui, side by side. Gods were a force of nature, and raging against this one would be no different than throwing herself into the sun. Nothing more than suicide.
She would not, could not, throw her life away in anger.
“You might save her still, if you act quickly.” The Deicide stated calmly, tilting her head as she looked at something Jian couldn’t see. “Your first lesson then, is a choice. Will you discard the girl and take revenge on the man who orchestrated two of the most painful moments of your life? Or will you let his soul slip away from you while you try to save her? If you kill him now, before his soul fades from his body, your power will double, putting you one small step closer to apotheosis. Saving her, though? That may cost you more than you are willing to give.”
The Deicide leaned down, putting her mouth close to Jian’s ear and speaking softly, gently.
“Will you make the same choice you did four years ago?”
Jian reached for Striga.
Her hand cupped the girl’s cheek.
She’d always convinced herself that she wasn’t responsible for the things she was forced to do, that she had no choice. She’d admitted the lie to Wei’s shade during her Emergence, but even then she had still held on to the fact that a choice with her survival on the line was barely a choice at all.
She didn’t think she was wrong to sacrifice others if it meant she could live another day. The reward of an infinite lifetime would always outweigh any individual sacrifice she had to make. She could accept any price on that path.
But there was no reason to accept Striga’s death.
Letting this child die would delay her growth, but that was all. It wouldn’t put her life at risk. The rational part of her mind knew the Deicide would not give her a choice at all if it could result in her newest weapon dulling beyond repair.
This wasn’t a price, it was an opportunity to fix a mistake.
Still, Jian hesitated.
Even if it was the right thing to do, that alone wasn’t enough to move her.
She looked at the young face, peaceful in death in a way she’d never seen Striga look in life. The child had gone from energetic to distressed and withdrawn in a single tragic evening. Jian had never had the opportunity to see her face in any light beyond joy or suffering. There was a whole range out there that she still wanted to see.
More than that though, was a simple truth. One that had hit her while looking up at the illusion of what Wei could have grown up to be.
She was lonely.
Red light erupted from Jian’s hands and the rage that had been simmering inside her slammed into the wall she’d been too afraid to cross.
In the end this was an act of greed. That bastard Shen Hui had already taken so much from her, she wouldn’t let him take Striga from him too. She craved a sister, a friend, anyone to help share eternity with. Whether they wanted to or not.
The wall shattered.
Her soul cracked.
A small piece of herself flaked off, just a fragment, a splinter so small it was dwarfed by the blazing furnace her soul had become.
That piece poured into Striga’s small body. Ravenous.
Vines grew from Jian’s hands, their thorns drawing blood where they bit into her flesh, dying them as red as the light they followed. They wrapped themselves around Striga like a shroud, ghostly and translucent. They sunk into her skin without leaving a mark, pulling away from Jian’s hands and constricting around the girl’s heart.
Jian felt, more than saw, as the vines burrowed through the walls of Striga’s empty heart. Her soul had already separated, had started to float away to join the river that snaked through the planet’s heart, but the vines turned. They followed the soul’s scent, pushing past a boundary Jian had never noticed before.
They found a small ball of white fire floating in the shade of a massive skeletal palm, blocking it from reaching the great white river that covered an empty black sky.
The vines reached out, wrapping gently around Striga’s lost soul, dragging it back toward her body.
Then they squeezed.
Jian watched, horrified but unable to stop it, as the vines drank the flickering soul dry. Flames raced down their length, igniting the vines and pooling in Striga’s heart.
New vines burrowed out through the sides of her heart, thin and red, to snake through every artery and vein, replacing old conduits with new ones.
Striga’s body shuddered, her eyes held wide and flashing white as her pupils flickered in and out.
The thorns covering her heart grew and bit down, devouring the muscle and leaving behind a knot of vines in its place. The knot twisted in on itself, forming a spiraling vortex that sucked qi from the air hungrily.
Jian felt it start to tug at her own soul, blood from her inner sea drifting up in streams like waterfalls.
A forest of black vines sprouted from Striga’s chest, spreading throughout the room. Jian backed away, cutting through the vines that reached her before they could touch her.
The vines avoided the Deicide, but found Shen Hui and Yan Feng’s bodies. They burrowed into their flesh and began guzzling what little qi remained in each. Jian watched as shreds of Shen Hui’s soul were ripped away from his body, the vines pulsing with red light as they dragged the pieces of his soul into Striga's chest.
Yan Feng’s body crumbled to dust after a single second. Shen Hui’s didn’t last much longer.
Sated by their meal, the vines slowly retreated, retracting back into the twisted knot where Striga’s heart had been. As the last one slipped away, it rippled, folding in on itself again and again, writhing.
With a final shudder it stopped and unfolded into petals. Slowly, a black flower bloomed in Striga’s chest, a new soul burning at its center.
One with the same hunger as the hole in Jian’s chest.
Jian trembled.
This was wrong.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She’d been trying to make the right choice, a better choice. Even motivated by greed, she’d been trying to take a step forward.
She’d failed.
She could still feel the piece of herself that had splintered off, the seed that had grown Striga’s new heart. She felt a phantom twitch in her hand when Striga’s fingers started to move. She felt heat as blood was pumped through the thin vines that had replaced her veins.
Striga opened her eyes, the window to the soul, and they were as red as Jian’s own.
It was like looking into a distorted mirror and being unable to look away, forced to see the monster she’d become. She could still see pieces of Striga in places, flecks of brown floating in the sea of red, but the majority of her soul had been stripped for parts, the pieces rebuilt in a shape closer to Jian’s own.
The knife fell from limp fingers as Jian stared at the forgery of life she’d created.
Had it been too much to ask?
Had it been too arrogant to think she could save someone?
She’d just wanted to stop being alone.
As her knees hit the floor, a second pillar broke from the churning sea in her soul. Blood poured off of it in sheets as it took its place opposite the first, its surface white as bleached bone until it flickered under the light of the red moon and turned clear as glass.
A small brown feather was enshrined inside.
Jian reached out her hand, anxious and shaking, but Striga jumped past it, wrapping her arms around Jian in a sudden hug. Jian froze, the phantom sensation of her own arms holding herself paralyzing her.
It was warm. It was wrong, but it was still warm. Jian didn’t know what to do. Surely, even a facsimile of life was better than none at all.
Surely.
An ink-slicked hand pat her shoulder.
“Fascinating.”
Jian didn’t know what expression she was making when she turned to look at the Deicide, but it was enough to make the woman break into a feral smile.
“You hate me, but there’s nothing wrong with that. You should hate me.”
Fingers brushed Jian’s chin, pushing her face up as firmly as the earth itself. The other hand reached down and touched her cheek, tracing the mark that she’d put there.
“I’m seventy one years old now, child, but I was young once; the youngest immortal to emerge since the day our ancestors were banished to this world. I still remember what it was like, to look up at the mistakes and sins of my elders, to see their mistreatment of those beneath them and have the arrogance to believe I could do better. I proved myself right, in the end. Now their bones bow to me even after their lives have burned away. Perhaps, you’ll be proven right too. Perhaps, one day, you’ll kill me.”
Jian flinched as her cheek burned. The mark on her face shrunk, changed, but it didn’t disappear.
“I’ll promise you this, to assuage your fears. So long as you live up to your responsibilities as my apprentice, I promise you the right to try. I promise you the opportunity to take your swing. I promise you that I will let you live until you choose to face me yourself.”
The pain in Jian’s cheek built. It was agonizing, like a brand as hot as the sun pressed against her face. She heard herself whimper and hated herself for it.
“But that is only if you play your role. Should you fail the tasks I assign you, should you balk at your duty and flee, then I will find you and I will kill you.”
The Deicide let go of her face and Jian collapsed to her knees, still hugging Striga. She shoved aside the fear and the shame and the hesitation that was threatening to overwhelm her. She would deal with it all later. For now, she could work with this. She had no intention of ever throwing her life away trying to kill the Slayer of Gods, but she would bow her head until the day she could escape. She could do that.
The Palace shook as a shout rent the air.
“Mara Chenma!”
Jian flinched, blood leaking from her ears as she looked down to check on Striga. The poor girl was cowering, holding her hands over her own ears, palms stained red.
Jian already missed the hug, but she didn’t have time to examine the sentiment before the seams of reality began to fray around them.
The walls and roof cracked and were ripped away, disappearing into the endless darkness of the Abyss. The whole Palace was collapsing, graceful spires poking out of the void seemingly at random, entire halls torn to pieces. As the pieces of the Palace sunk deeper into the mire of the Abyss, the lights that danced within their crystal exterior dimmed, winking out one by one. The fragments of crystal and glass that fell into the darkness melted and flowed like water just out of sight, rising again in distorted versions of the original architecture and spreading out to form a massive sphere with Jian at the center.
The Patriarch of the Abyssal Palace descended, the edges of his silhouette crackling with power that burned Jian’s eyes when she looked at him.
“Mara Chenma!” He repeated, “You’ve gone too far. If the abomination you’ve created can spread like a cancer, then it is an existential threat. It dies now.”
“No.”
“Then you will both die! You were a fool to come here, to walk into my Domain without a thought. Not even you can escape the pull of the Abyss.”
A hand of shadow larger than the palace reached out of the Abyss to crush them in its grasp.
The Deicide looked up at a God in the center of his Domain and laughed.
“Who said anything about escaping?”
The hand trying to wrap around them ground to a halt as the world around them ceased to move. Color fled, bleeding the scenery to a monochrome gray as time was caught in the space between instants. The Deicide lifted her hand, the sole movement in a frozen world.
The air split in two, parting smoothly under a surgeon’s blade.
“You were always a sad one,” The Deicide said a word, a name, but it slipped from Jian’s mind before she’d been able to grasp it. “While your brother’s personality was lacking, his understanding of the Abyss always outstripped your own. While he saw the endless Potential hidden beyond that black veil, you only felt the Pressure of being the second son, always crushed under the weight of his shadow. I consider it an injustice that you never had a chance to prove yourself before I killed him.”
The Deicide smiled cruelly.
“Allow me to rectify that.”
A skeletal hand burst from the floor they were standing on, shards of crystal spinning off into oblivion. Jian shuddered as jade bones dragged themselves out of cold packed earth, two different visions of reality overlapped on each other. The skeleton pulled itself free and stood on its own power, Authority rippling in the space between bones, streaks of jet black and twinkling threads of opal running up and down their length.
It held its arms up to the hole in the air to meet a deluge of black and jade ink. It splashed over the bones, filling their every crack and sticking to them like glue. It built up, layer after layer, like silt at the bottom of a river. The flow of ink surged, enveloping the bones completely, hiding them from sight for a moment.
When the last drop fell to the stained floor, a man stood in the skeleton’s place, his hands slicking back long wet hair as if he’d just stepped out of a bath.
The Deicide laughed, the sound enough to chill Jian to her bones.
“It is the right of the young to try to Conquer their elders, so come, young Patriarch of the Abyss! Face your predecessor! Take your swing!”
“Mara!”
For the first time, Jian heard real emotion through the veil the Patriarch wrapped around himself, the snarl in his voice visceral as he screamed. However, his curse cut out before he could finish as the man on the ground disappeared.
The previous Patriarch slammed into the current Patriarch hard enough that the shockwave alone knocked Jian off of her feet, sending her skidding across the ground with the sound of a hundred overlapping thundercracks. Half the spires still sticking out of the mire of the Abyss crumbled from the pressure as the far side of the sphere they were trapped in was blown out by the impact of the two men being thrown into it.
Jian looked out of the sphere where reality had cracked, spaces of pure black clashing with shards of an infinite white. The longer she looked, the more she was convinced it wasn’t white at all, but a mix of every color the world could handle overlapped on top of each other, different shades peaking through as they harmonized into something greater.
A hand wrapped around the back of her clothes and pulled her to her feet.
She pulled Striga closer as she stood, never having let her go.
The Deicide turned to look at her, a crooked smile still on her face. She was enjoying this.
“We need to leave.” Jian pleaded. “We can’t stay here.”
The Deicide ignored her.
“I believe in simplicity, and so I will only give you three lessons as my apprentice. You have already cleared the first, so for your second, I’ll be giving you a longer term project.”
Jian did not like the sound of that.
“In the city of Gnosis, the God Apollo is attempting something profane. In trying to emulate Hera, he has created something that he believes will help him ascend as the Fourth Titan. What he has created, however, is a weakness. One that can be exploited.”
The Deicide smiled at the disbelief on Jian’s face.
“Your second lesson is to kill him. You have six months.”
She snapped her fingers and the hole hovering in the air above them swooped down like a living thing. It enveloped Jian and Striga in an instant, leaving nothing behind as it reached the floor and zipped itself shut.
“Go, my apprentice, and learn how to slay a God.”