As Sovereign's blade turned back towards me, the inhuman creature scarcely troubled by my best efforts, I unlocked the gates of my soul, and let the Entropy flow.
Just as I had so long ago, within the mimic manor, I called upon the song without restraint, offering it free reign in return for an empowerment beyond what even Draconic Blood could offer.
The two of us joined in a lover’s embrace, and I howled as I met my enemy’s blade.
“Attack again and again!” it shrieked as my limp limb, articulated by Entropy alone, finally managed to contest its own might.
“Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again!”
It hammered against my blade in a whirlwind of savage blows bereft entirely of skill, so fast I could naught but weather them. The echoes of its inhuman strength numbed my arms, shook my heart, and tore my enhanced hands apart until I could take no more.
Flash Step.
“The Kingsguard regenerate with every death!” I shouted, now leagues away, my fear making way for something different entirely. The song ran roughshod through my veins, without a hint of temperance. My sea, already frenzied, was shaking in its vessel, crashing against the confines of my soul. “You’d only awaken the rest!”
“GOOD!” it roared, bounding towards me on all fours, its mammoth footfalls leaving towering plumes of dust in the arena. It was upon me in mere moments but, for some reason, I wasn’t so afraid this time.
“Let them!” it howled joyfully. “Let them all! Roast them alive with red Lightning!” It slammed into me at breakneck speed, sending me skidding back.
I snarled, planting my sword into the dirt to arrest my velocity. The Shardsong screamed inside my veins, my Blessings joining in its choir. It struck again, and I just barely managed to dodge this time.
A surge of arcane exhilaration flooded me. I was getting faster.
And I was getting angrier.
“You IMBECILE!” I screamed, even as I barely deflected another strike, my bones shaking and shivering but not quite shattering. “Incinerate them all at once?! Our reserves are finite, you–you FUCKING MORON! What if I missed even one?!”
“THEN DIE!” it screamed, noticing my newfound vigor and escalating its offensive with no apparent effort, lacerating my limbs with whipping strikes as I desperately sought to ward them off, its reach so much greater than mine that I found myself forced to cover everywhere at once.
“WE ARE WARRIORS!” it howled, as it flayed the flesh from my bones. “AND
THIS.
IS.
WAR!”
The song had given me strength, but Sovereign was no longer playing with me, now. It was trying to hurt.
Its brutish, haphazard swordplay seamlessly transitioned into that of the very master whose mangled skin it wore, expertly targeting weak spots, major arteries, and precious organs, its arms tearing through space at such a pace that the screaming air displaced by their passage drowned out conscious thought.
By contrast, I abandoned all offensive, all neat and skillful swordplay, broken down to the most crucial elements of my craft, fixated solely and desperately on a struggle to survive.
“WHY DO YOU DEFEND?” Sovereign roared, grasping my arm and ripping it clean off, causing me to wail with pain. Gore poured from the open wound even as it regrew, and I staggered back, lightheaded from the bloodloss.
“YOU ARE NOT MORTAL!” it shrieked at me, beating me mercilessly with my own dismembered limb, shattering ribs with each reverberating strike. “DO NOT FIGHT LIKE ONE!”
“DAMN YOU!” I shrieked back eloquently through broken teeth, numbing to the pain. I channeled the song like never before, adding to Draconic Blood’s already ludicrous strength as I forwent any and all efforts to protect myself. I burnt through Entropy by the droves and, at last, landed a solid blow.
Fang shattered into one thousand pieces against the creature’s head.
A shockwave greater than those that came before it echoed across the dirty arena, waves of sand whipped up by physical force as my blow pulverized Sovereign’s fleshy mask, causing the creature’s body to snap back.
I roared a savage laugh at its decapitated frame, the song running like liquid fire in my veins. My chest was a ruined mess of bruised flesh and broken bones, but I didn’t care. I snapped my fingers, expending an equally appalling quantity of Entropy to re-summon my Soulbound Weapon in an instant.
Sovereign’s flesh rippled and throbbed, pulsing with eldritch might. I fell upon the creature before it could fully reform, mirroring its own relentless assault, slicing the tendons in its arms and legs.
“Yes,” Sovereign gurgled wetly, as I shoved my sword down its throat.
It backhanded me, cracking my cheek and sending me hurtling away, but I Flash Stepped before I even hit the ground, appearing behind it in a crimson fulmination.
“Yes!” it crowed euphorically, as I bisected it from behind.
Undeterred, its severed halves grew countless bloody tendrils that shot towards me. I cut through tens of them, but hundreds passed me by, making a pincushion of my tender flesh. Once inside, they splintered into thousands more, a web of razors that sought to slice me to pieces from within.
I grinned, and called upon my Fire.
My body burst into a rich, deep, ruby-red flame. Sovereign’s tendrils convulsed as they burnt inside me, all foreign influence expelled. The arcane inferno spread quickly, flying across liquid tentacles to reach the monster’s severed halves, which snapped back together.
Sovereign turned to face me, baying with delight.
“YES!” It howled as it burned. “THAT’S THE SPIRIT, HOST!”
Another inarticulate roar was my only response to its words, my waking mind long abandoned by now. I channeled Fire into my blade, Fang accepting the power with an eager howl, glowing with Entropic radiance, heat pouring off its silvered length. I joined the creature’s bestial cry, hurling myself towards my foe.
“KILL, OR BE KILLED!” Sovereign laughed, meeting my devastating blow with one of its own, stronger than ever before. The arena exploded with our clash, dust vaporizing, particles of dirt scouring my skin, sand slagged to glass. The detonation sent us both flying back.
Ripples of pressure muddied my mind, making my brain slam into the walls of the skull containing it.
Flash Step.
My Blessing fired near-reflexively, accelerating me towards the enemy anew, leaving not even a moment’s pause to recollect my thoughts. Fang’s flaming form came down, lodging deep into the wretched monster’s midsection and sticking within.
“FEED,” Sovereign cackled, ripping my blade free with impossible strength, “OR BE FED UPON!” Its own descended upon me. I growled, and flickered, and was gone again.
Flash Step.
My Mover Blessing shifted me but a few paces aside, letting the bony, bloody, spiked sword screech past my face. I struck again, but Sovereign blocked my blow.
Faster.
Flash Step.
I teleported before the creature could even begin to reply, stepping to its right, amputating its sword-arm. Sovereign’s grin broadened as I did so, blood bursting from its fingertips of its other, spearing towards me.
Faster!
Flash Step.
The sanguine missiles missed me; I was behind it again. I shoved Fang through its belly, belching blood as I did so, myriad micro-tears in muscles across my body catching up to me all at once. Sovereign’s head spun like a top in that sickening manner, whirling a half-circle to observe me with wild eyes.
“Faster!” It screamed.
I screamed back.
My words were unintelligible, an ancient wail from a far less civilized time, a relic from a bygone era where violence was the only language to exist.
At last, it was one we shared.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
A crimson shroud, a deadly halo of Lightning covered me as I danced with my eldritch foe. The ground beneath our feet was glass and charcoal, scorched by heat and Entropic discharge, pockmarked by the shattering strength of our mortal combat.
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Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
There was no thought. There was no mind. There was no me. There was nothing but the fight. The mad, hysterical, blood-crazed laughter of my primary Blessing was the only thing I heard amidst the howling wind and quaking clamour of our exchanged blows.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Each half-second took me to a new position, a new angle of attack. My surroundings were a shapeless blur, an ever-shifting, ever-morphing, ever-updating stain that spread across my vision.
The song in my veins was reaching a fever pitch, my Blessings joining in the choir. My Entropy had nearly run dry, but I didn’t care, nor did I sense the dreadful, rending soul-pain that usually accompanied such folly.
Something was happening to me.
The pressure that had begun building long ago felt about to burst.
“FASTER! FASTER!” Sovereign begged, and I was happy to oblige.
I closed my eyes and let my body soar, losing myself to the Lightning.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step.
Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. Flash Step. FlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFlashStepFla–
High above the surface of my sea, a great change was taking place.
The crimson tempest that was my Mover Blessing’s ethereal form had morphed into a raging hurricane.
It tore and ripped and rent the waves below into the stratosphere, pulling vast swathes of sea-green Entropy into breakneck orbit around it.
At its very center, the eye of lightning that had once flashed intermittently was now a solid sanguine-white, so blistering was the pace of its fervent fulmination, its disparate strikes combined to form a single plasmic beam that bore steadfastly into the side of the volcano below, cleaving it in twain. Draconic Blood wouldn’t survive its punishment much longer, nor would I.
But I didn’t care about that, right now.
I was transfixed by the crimson orb, drawn ever-closer towards it, unbothered by the stormy skies around me. The breathtaking ball of pure, pulsing energy was trying to speak to me, but I couldn’t understand its words.
Yes, little Host. Easy, now.
A distant voice, so faint it was barely audible, called out to me. I ignored it, mesmerized by what was taking place before my eyes.
Easy, easy. That’s it. Gaze into its depths and know.
The voice soothed me as I drew closer, so close to Flash Step that I could feel my body jerk and shudder with its every dispensed charge, so close that my hair from tip to toe was raised by free electrons saturating the area around me, so close that my very heartbeat synchronized with my Blessing’s activation.
Its spheroid form was a work of art, a lightning canvas, one million tendrils dancing in harmony to create a living liquid of rich reds and stark whites. I narrowed my eyes, and looked deeper.
Beneath, or within, or perhaps beyond the ceaselessly crawling strands of energy, there was…
Something.
It was an alien city.
It drifted softly in the clouds above a scorched, sunless world, its fountains of blood and halls of bone all covered by that same, scrawling, itching writ that worried my wits and muddied my mind. Its streets were populated by a beautiful, ethereal race of pure energy beings that gave daily supplication and succor to the crimson orb illuminating their lands, holding their metropolis together until the end of time.
It was an ancient machine.
Ancient and mighty, formed eons ago from raw elements by architects older still. An occult computer, so vast its breadth eclipsed continents, so monumentally powerful and complex that its myriad clicking gears, flickering circuits, and arcane conduits eclipsed the grains of sand on a beach, or salt in the sea.
It was both of these things, and more.
For unlike my own pathetic, concrete creations, its form was manifold. Multidimensional. So diametrically opposed to mundane cognition that it beggared comprehension. The moment I thought I might come to understand it, it changed again.
My fumbling mortal attempts to glean some hint of knowledge into its inner structure left me with nothing but a deep and gut-wrenching sadness, an anguish that I would never truly be capable of relating to a Shard.
That’s alright, little Host.
The voice consoled me.
You need not understand. Not yet.
Just breathe.
Breathe, and listen to its song.
I inhaled obligingly, and my tongue stung with the acrid taste of thick ozone.
I closed my eyes and focused on the hum of electricity, the swell that built before a coruscation, the breathtaking power and blistering speed.
I tugged gently on the Shardsong.
Flash Step tugged back.
You are ready.
I felt a chilling stab in the back of my skull, a knife of ice-cold pressure that pierced into my mind, bringing with it knowledge of an ancient ritual, a power that felt at once familiar and entirely unknown.
Speak,
The voice instructed me.
And it shall obey.
I held a hand out towards the pulsing crimson orb, lightning dancing across my fingertips, and spoke.
“You shall be my steed.”
The words fell from my mouth foully, unpleasantly, spilling out like slick oil, a language never intended for mortal tongues to whisper.
The orb responded immediately, pulsing eagerly, reaching probing tendrils of electricity in all directions. It latched onto nothing, though, for there was nothing there, and so began to whine anxiously at me.
As it had before, that profound sense of wrongness rippled across my body, drawing out an involuntary shudder.
But this time, I knew what it was asking for. I’d requested additional capabilities, suggested an expanded scope. In order to comply, Flash Step required commensurate direction, purpose, shape.
I turned my gaze to the sky, reached out with mighty hands of Entropy, and beckoned.
From its position floating high above the clouds, one of my saved Blessings responded. A second song reached me. It spoke of re-arranged flesh, of re-organized muscle fibers, of a physiology refined at the Host’s discretion.
Discretionary Mutation descended towards me, an arcane asteroid falling to earth.
Its gargantuan, mountainous size decreased as it did so, dwindling down and down until it was little more than a marble. It hovered above my open palm happily, like a child eager to play, and I smiled.
But I needed one more piece. So I reached out, and beckoned in a different direction.
The Blessing I called was loath to respond, having been so cruelly silenced not long ago. But I knew how to re-awaken it now, and fed it Entropy gently, softly, mothering it back to life. Bullet Time’s song slowly increased in intensity until it, too, joined me in the hurricane at the center of my soul.
I waved one arm, and twisted the other. The two Blessings, primed and ready, began to orbit leisurely around me. I was a divine conductor, and this, my very first orchestra.
I flicked a wrist, and Discretionary Mutation shot forth.
Flash Step latched onto its kindred, and devoured it whole. Immediately, a surge of orbiting Entropy rushed towards it. The Shard’s size bulged and contorted in the very beginnings of structure and form.
I fed it instructions all the while, shepherding its development with an expertise that I knew was not my own.
“You shall shape my limbs, swift and dextrous and able.”
I sang, and little legs poked out of the orb’s bottom. Arms bulged outwards, bursting from its either side.
“You shall guide my blows, sharp and precise and true.”
I sang, and a mouthless, noseless, eyeless face emerged, tearing its way viciously from the crimson chrysalis that had contained it. Its body, now humanoid, slimmed and tightened, arms and legs rippling with massive muscles, little lines of Entropy forming white runes that ran across its chest.
I flicked my wrist for a second time, and Bullet Time joined its sibling Shard, consumed by Flash Step to die and be reborn.
“You shall augment my mind, instant and ever prepared,”
I sang, and the mouthless face grew great twin antlers and pure white eyes. It flexed a massive bicep, examined a slender yet powerful palm, and looked out at me, curiously, perhaps truly seeing me for the very first time.
Just one last step was necessary. One final ingredient. One ultimate injection of power.
I held out a palm, and imagined what the sound of Lightning meant to me.
“Never again will we be too late.”
I sang, as I remembered.
Ewan. Raynie. A bonfire of burning bodies. A town, ransacked. A home, destroyed.
“Never again will we be too weak.”
My eyes stung, and I remembered.
The feeling of cloying fear as I emerged the Dungeon and noticed a plume of smoke against the midnight sky.
“None shall hinder our passage.”
That feeling of a desperate, fading hope. Racing towards the smoldering village. Knowing, deep in my soul, that I would never make it in time.
“For, over us, time will hold no sway.”
I let out one final sigh.
The Word in my hand had condensed successfully, becoming a single gem of golden will, more precious than anything in all the world.
I flicked my wrist for a third, and final, time, and as my nascent Blessing was impaled by Lightning, I sang.
“You are ABSOLUTE POWER AND BLISTERING SPEED.”
The humanoid’s churning, liquid body exploded into blood-red lightning, a shawl of electricity clothing it from top to bottom, tip to toe.
It shuddered, spasmed, shivered, and knelt at my feet.
//MY LIEGE//
Its voice was the rumble of approaching storms.
//NAME ME, AND THY WILL BE DONE//
I loomed large over my prostrate Blessing, pressed my splayed palm upon its chest, and spoke.
//RISE, ACCELERATION//
The hurricane surrounding us stabilized, the singularity whirling in my nascent Blessing’s chest collapsed, and we were both reborn in blood and thunder.
~~~
ADMINISTRATION 9→11
Flash Step 9, Bullet Time 5, Discretionary Mutation 0, Lightning N/A→Acceleration 10
Marble Gift unlocked: Shard Gestalt Attunement
~~~