Daris, the white StarMane, stared at Arkaziel, the black StarMane.

“Beast Sovereign, filled with Tiamat’s blood, the essence of gods, the Void, and the Ethereal. Bursting with Light and Darkness. You’ve come a long way, brother.” Not a voice Arkaziel expected to ever hear again, after Telos and her spooky head voices had erected the tenets of Twilight within his soul and Daris’ spirit had faded. Yet here he was, again, with a suspicious tone and eyes full of hurt.

The world around them existed in grayscale. Humans and demons battled lesser Archons, but none of them touched Arkaziel or Daris. The battle flowed around them. Were the humanoids the ghosts in this scenario, or were Arkaziel and Daris? Arkaziel assumed it appeared this way to all on the field of battle, that to them, he was a ghost, and to him, they were. In addition to the ghostly struggle around them, the bond between Arkaziel and Telos felt muted and shallow, which meant the lesser bond with Kallos also felt nonexistent. StarManes bonded with other races semi-frequently, but his bond to Telos struck many firsts in his ancestors' genetic memories. The connection to Kallos existed because of the connection between Telos and Kallos when Arkaziel bonded with Telos, which was nearly unprecedented in even his most ancient memories.

Normal bonds didn’t allow for insanity that his bond with Telos allowed. Arkaziel could reach out and touch the Void, Origin, and probably Pleroma too, if he had the courage. Light was his to command, after all, yet the unending light of Ein Sof scared the cat. The idea of touching it or drawing that power from Telos rang danger bells and flooded his mind with portents of doom. Light might be his, but Ohr Ein Sof wasn’t for him.

“Daris, you shouldn’t be here,” Arkaziel muttered, unsure how to respond.

“Counter-point: I should be here, and its you who should be dead.” The white cat flickered with illusory grace, a false divinity. It was as if no one had told whoever made the illusions that the Void Dragon of the Apocalypse couldn’t be fooled by illusions. Oizys, or the Archons, or the Administrators of this Tower were sloppy, ill-informed, and hardly more than appetizers, it seemed.

“In what layer of the Abyss would that even work? Alternate timeline where I get eaten instead of you? Or is this the start of a I’m the better one, you should have given me your body, yadda yadda? Besides, you’re the merest of fragments, the wisps of smoke that escaped when your body died. The majority of you, the real you, exists within me. Not separate, but united within me. Who’s so bad at their job as to pull this shit with me?” Arkaziel hissed angrily.

The form of Daris flowed, as if a curtain had been removed. StarManes did not turn into zombies, but there was some precedent for Lichdom. Not because of the fears that drove lesser races, like mortality, but curiosity and obsession. Those who were unfortunate enough to have the affinities of Undeath tended to have an inescapable destiny, regardless of race. Yet the putrid white and yellow of Daris’ body looked exceptionally zombie-like. To Arkaziel’s eyes there was some truth to the matter, and that kindled a fire in his stomach.

“If I consume you I can supplant you, usurp your life. I have to try.” The ruined flesh of the zombie Daris roared and threw itself at Arkaziel. Whoever created the zombie had obviously gone to great lengths, not just to capture the wisps of his soul that weren’t merged with Arkaziel’s, but to build a body powerful enough to be a threat to a Beast Sovereign was no simple feat. Once again, though, Arkaziel saw glaring deficiencies in his opponents knowledge.

~Take this,~ Telos spoke into Arkaziel’s mind and knowledge and torrents of the Void flowed into him through their fully unblocked bond.

+Thanks, Blue.+

Arkaziel wove the tides of the Void into a single exhaled breath attack. He imbued the Void with his authority of Life and Death, and pushed the alignment of the Void away from the celestial cold and towards the unlimited, untapped potential for all creation. If he had authority over Creation maybe it would have been easier, but Arkaziel had spent the vast majority of his existence trying to destroy or eat things, the only creation he’d ever done came with his dabbling with cooking. Yet when he reached for more experience, it wasn’t his connection to Telos that provided him aid, but Bobbi Slay.

Slay provided Arkaziel with a burst of experience with Creation, and the touch of her authority added to his own to alter his breath attack. Even more unexpectedly, through the connection to Kallos, Arkaziel felt her confident hand stroke the back of his head and impart him with a surge of the Nephilim’s authority over Law and Spirit. White light exploded the grayscale world with a vengeance, and when it departed, Daris no longer looked like a zombie, or any sort of undead.

A white living, breathing, dragon-cat stared at Arkaziel in shock and wonder.

“How the hell?” Daris looked at the grayscale world around them in confusion.

“You can’t be here, Daris, it’s dangerous. We blew all the power they invested in you to resurrect you, so you’re only a third tier.” Arkaziel lifted a paw, and with one claw scratched out a doorway of shadows into reality. “Dad will help you, probably.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Unlike most doors, when Arkaziel finished sketching out a StarMane sized door in the air, he gestured and it flew forward to engulf the reborn Daris. Arkaziel himself felt slightly lighter, but surprisingly okay despite the loss of essence that had belonged to Daris. Yet the cold, rational voice that spoke in the back of his mind, his own voice, suggested Daris had been a hatching when consumed, and the loss was proportional to that. Arkaziel told himself to shut the hell up, as the grayscale around him cracked and shattered.

It would have been a lot more satisfying if the screeching, pained cries of Oizys’ rage didn’t try to shatter his brain while the false reality around him ended. Yet the unbridled fury that exuded throughout the entire existence of Oizys left no doubt she was not keen on the way this trap for Arkaziel ended. Nothing pleased Arkaziel quiet as much as the cries of prey.

Ω

“Hi, Bobbi. Long time no see.”

Bobbi stood out like a pink flamingo in a line of storks against the backdrop of a grayscale world. Worse, her nascent bonds with Kallos felt muted and distant, depriving her of the one true source of near constant reassurance she had enjoyed since the formation of her bond. Kallos might as well have been a universal law for how constant she was, but the Soul Witch rarely stood out in the way Bobbi did. With pink fur, magenta scales, and patches of pink skin here and there, Bobbi stood out everywhere she went. The curling pink horns that lurked at the edge of her sight-line reminded her constantly of her choice of natural forms differed vastly from her kin.

Mara, the StarMane who lounged before her on a pile of gold, had a feline face, purely draconic body, and the coloration of a copper statue. Which was to say her fur and scales danced between the blue of oxidized copper and the reddish-brown of the metal. The version of Mara that lounged before her was in the fifth rank, barely. Mara had always been content to nap for decades on piles of treasure, and her progression upon the paths to power had suffered for that laziness.

“Hi, Mara. Did I wake you up from another nap?” The dark cavern could well have been one of Mara’s ridiculous dens, but the occasional glimpses Bobbi saw of humanoids and Archon’s fighting, as if in another dimension that overlapped this one, kept breaking her belief that this was in fact her sister. Especially since they’d just stepped through a teleportation portal to take on a Daemon and army of Archons. They had, hadn’t they? The details were increasingly harder to grasp upon.

“You did, and in such an unsightly form. Why are you always running around as a bipedal uggo?” Mara snapped at her with an unwarranted arrogance born only of the qualification of having hatched mere moments before Bobbi.

“I don’t have time to waste on you right now, Mara. I’ve got… something to do.” Bobbi sputtered the last out, awkwardly. It had been on the tip of her tongue, and then it vanished. What did she have to do?

“Yeah, real convincing there. Seriously, why do you always look like a humanoid? Why slum it when you’re a StarMane? Chronos birthed our race to be better than all the others, and we’re descended from Bahamut, not a mongrel clan like those descended from Tiamat. Could you imagine the shame of being caught socializing with one of those ghastly reprobates?” Mara’s eyes betrayed the malicious glee she gained from insulting Bobbi, but there was no way the real Mara would ever know the first thing about her traveling companions. That detail wormed through Bobbi’s mind, and brought back awareness of the fact she was supposed to be doing something.

She just couldn’t remember what.

“Maybe if you weren’t such a lay about you’d have become a Sovereign already, too. I’ve met Bahamut, and spoiler alert? He’s all about the humanoid forms too, in fact, he quite fancied my favorite form here.” A wicked smirk matched the gleam of superiority that filled Bobbi’s pink feline eyes.

“No one likes you, sis. We talk all the time through a callstone, but we never invited you to bind to it. You’re so weird, and quirky. Even Bahamut can be wrong, and like I’d trust anything you say, Miss I will rule the universe through cooking. How’s that coming along, anyway?” Mara had a perfect tone for a mean girl. She knew how to drop into a tone that said I’m pretending to be interested, but I’m so not, and you’re not worth talking to me, so piss off.

Bobbi’s anger skyrocketed. She didn’t have time to put up with this bullshit from her do-nothing sister. She had things to do! If she could remember them. In fact, hadn’t the treasure laying under Mara been gold and coins? When had it become crystals? They glowed and sparkled, like the crystals Kallos always seemed to be creating. Kallos! Arkaziel! The ghostly partial images of the humanoids fighting the Archon’s danced across her vision once more.

+Take a real look, Slay.+ Arkaziel’s voice came with the world spinning momentarily. Mara didn’t disappear, and in fact she knew for certain that it was the real Mara. Yet she didn’t lie on a pile of treasure. A collar of a twisted red quartz bound the copper StarMane’s neck, and it was connected to a leash held by a horrific centipede like creature that definitely hadn’t been there before Arkaziel’s Void Sight blessed her eyes.

-I detest creatures that would play with a spirit so. Destroy it for me.- From Kallos came the calm and resilient words that riled the fire in Bobbi’s heart, and the resolve to not lose sight of what she needed to do. For all that the Nephilim was known to be the Soul Witch, she was also a master of the spirit. Bobbi felt rejuvenated in a way she didn’t quite understand, until she realized that her entire body had been filled with unending Ethereal power.

~Girl, it’s time to kick some ass!~ Telos, the source of power, stirred Bobbi to action. Typically creatures of the Void were difficult to face alone, especially if you only had Ethereal or lower tiered power-sources. Even as an Ethereal cultivator with authorities over Fire, Wind, and Creation, Bobbi would’ve been hard pressed to defeat an abomination like this… except for the sudden twist and realignment of her Ethereal power.

“If you resonate this way, and touch just briefly the heights of Keter, your Ethereal power will be more than a match for the Void.”

~That’s Reverie. He’s a good guy, no need to think you’re hearing strange things. Well, things that aren’t real anyway.~

Life had gotten so weird since she met Kallos and Telos, and Bobbi wouldn’t have it any other way.