Aurelian felt himself unravelling.
It was a feeling of evisceration magnitudes worse, even, than when he’d been hit by an endless wave of System alerts during the fight against the skeletons.
It was something beyond that.
Something outside of even the same category of mere pain.
His soul was on fire, and he was being torn apart by acid in the same moment as a torrential deluge of System energy raged through his veins, almost in counterbalance to the poison searing and corrupting his blood vessels. He was being destroyed on a fundamental level, and the fabric of his very existence was being scoured away; sloughed toward oblivion to make room for some grotesque caricature of himself.
The corrosive mana from the Vasiri’s blood was warping him.
The energy was a venom, excreted and infused within him without his consent.
It festered and spread, leaching out to the rest of him like a sickness he could neither halt nor abate. He screamed still, and even the blood flecking his lips from the tearing of his abused oesophagus was no more than an idle prick against the awareness of his tortured psyche.
Aurelian felt himself spasming and shuddering, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
It was a feeling comparable to acid in his blood, and like spines of hateful malice stabbing and slashing at every nerve. He was being torn apart by rusty nails, dragged along an asphalt littered with broken glass, and forced through a sliding tunnel lined with razor blades.
The corrosion was akin to dying, over and over, with the chemical burns of dissolving hatred searing away all that he knew, and all that he was. It was an inevitable course of utter destruction, and he knew, to the depths of his soul, that he would emerge wrong.
He would emerge as a nightmare imitation of what he had been.
He would be driven mad in a way that no magic, no healing, no act of compassion could ever rectify. He was being enslaved to something beyond himself, beyond mortal comprehension; and he could almost feel the unseen power’s insane glee.
Its triumph was dark and gluttonous, and putrescent with malice.
There had to be something he could do. There had to be a recourse.
The taint reached for his bond with Bahamut.
NO!
Dragon’s Resolve exploded within his mind in a searing corona of light, and the vile intrusion was stopped dead.
You will not take him from me! He mentally screamed. You will not have Bahamut!
Aurelian exerted his will like an imagined steel bulwark within his mind, and behind that immutable wall he sheltered the energy thread connecting his Core to Bahamut, protecting the steel cable of prismatic force that wound itself into his very Soulforce.
With the last dregs of his will, he locked it away behind Dragon’s Resolve.
There has to be… Something…
A memory, abruptly, burned through his mind unbidden.
> “Unique traits are incredibly, incredibly rare. I suppose you surmised that from the name, though. There are no set-in-stone approaches to how to handle such things, but my advice would be to wait until a moment presents itself where you might turn a bane into a boon.”
Aurelian’s mind reeled with recollection as he unravelled.
The gears turned, and he thought he felt Bael’tharax’s presence urging him on.
> “A bane into a boon? Like a curse or something?”
>
> “Yes, actually,” Tarixi had said with an approving nod. “That is exactly the right circumstance.”
Aurelian threw his will at the System, and with every ounce of his Willpower, he demanded what he was owed.
The System complied, and Aurelian almost thought he heard triumph in its song.
The venom in his veins abruptly surged.
In his delerium, a woman’s voice, one he swore he had never heard, spoke to him.
Be at peace, O Nephilim. Her voice was like starlight, and cool spring water. Let go.
Despite all protestation to the insanity, and for all that his natural suspicion screamed at him, Aurelian felt a sudden surge of vigour fill him when the voice spoke—and with a faith and surety that he would never be able to identify the origins of, he did as he was instructed… and he let go.
Aurelian sighed in acceptance, and the venom was unleashed to rampage like a tide.
It flooded his veins and body with rivers of muck and hatred, and flushed through his anatomy like coolant in an engine. Its path was viscous and unyielding, and just when it reached his Core space at last, something changed. The sense of wrongness warbled, and Aurelian almost thought he heard something distant scream in enraged denial—and sudden fear.
The corrupted and twisted power turned from a sickening, tar-like black to a vital scarlet which burned as bright as a star, and it smashed into his Core.
Aurelian howled and slammed his fists against the marble without conscious thought, and the Vasiri cackled; oblivious to what was happening within.
The lines of toxic virulence had transformed into something beyond his wildest imaginings, and Aurelian saw something in that moment that the new power surged into his Core: a tether.
A bond of green-black malice.
A filament of will and connection attempting to slither its way toward his prismatic Core and into its totality.
To succeed where it would otherwise fail.
To erode him.
To twist him.
To own him.
Calamity’s Blade manifested in his Core like a newborn sun.
The vine of Absolum’s Intent froze.
The Vasiri went still.
Aurelian snarled, and with a sound like an evangelical crescendo, the blade cut.
Radiance exploded throughout his mind, his soul, and his Core like a supernova; and Aurelian felt his back hit the floor.
His eyes focused on the Vasiri when he landed on his armoured spine, and he felt cold and bony hands around his throat. The creature started squeezing while desperate, gibbering sounds of hatred fell from its lips. He felt hot, racid breath wash against his face, and saw the creature weeping, laughing, and raging at all at once.
He couldn’t have fought back if he’d wanted to.
Whatever was happening to his body, to his mind, and to his soul was all he could focus on. It was too much, too fast, and with too great of a potency. There was no room for fighting back, or even attempting to move himself in a meaningful way. He could only lie upon the marble and gurgle as he was strangled to death, too inwardly focused on keeping his Core in-tact to defend himself.
He was too caught up in the changes wracking his body.
The Vasiri raised one of its hands from his throat, its expression a mix of confusion, fascination, rage, hatred, and fear. It was heaving for breath, and Aurelian could see… something… extending out from its Core.
A flicker. A twisting shape. Something recognisable.
A kind of thick, rotting cable of corrupt mana stretching up, up, and beyond his vision; into the skies beyond the glass ceiling.
The fingers on the Vasiri’s raised hand straightened, and its black fingernails lengthened into razor talons. It stared at him, and Aurelian almost thought he saw hope, or some semblance of bitter self-loathing in its rusty, mad gaze.
“Just—just a boy!” it spat.
Aurelian’s vision started to blacken at the edges.
AURELIAN!
The platinum tether connecting his Soulforce to Bahamut’s ignited.
The Vasiri had barely started to bring down its hand when a roar shook the room, echoing the same primal force of Bael’tharax’s power that Aurelian had himself unleashed earlier.
The creature spun around in shock and terror, and screamed when a mass of black scales and platinum crashed into it—and sent it careening off of Aurelian. A scything tail whipped through the air, shimmering with platinum spines, and its spearhead-like tip sliced through the Vasiri’s eyes in a spray of grotesque blood and essence.
The desiccated monster screamed in pain and rage, and before it could do anything more, Bahamut roared again.
Dragonfire exploded across the Vasiri’s body, and sent it staggering backward as Bahamut seared it alive.
The dragon’s jaws were parted, his golden eyes affixed upon the Vasiri, and a look of unbridled hatred etched within the radiant luminosity of his gaze.
Aurelian barely had time to savour the giddy relief that flowed through him before the last of the blazing crimson light was absorbed by his Core, and his body abruptly jerked upward.
Pain flensed all feeling from his body at once.
Pain he’d thought could never be felt.
Pain that moved into the realm of transcendent, soul-deep agony.
He couldn’t even scream.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think.
It was all he could do to ward off the level-ups.
A cascade of System alerts consumed his vision before he could stop them.
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
Hidden Conditions Met!
You have managed to achieve an ancient form of existence unseen by the Realms in aeons!
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Achievement: Deus ex Anima
For successfully achieving another feat of singular creation, you have received the following:
Title: Primogenitor
Trait: Sanguinated
Resource: Anima
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
You have met the requirements to unlock the resource Anima!
Anima is the power of animation, distilled and converted into manipulable essence. It is the truest incarnation of vital power, and has been lost to the Realms since the fall of the Elden. You have, by your actions, assumed the inheritance of their Crimson Mantle, and gained access to this most ancient and forgotten resource. Anima was once as closely tied to the power of Elden Cultivators as Health, Mana, and Stamina—and by your actions, may yet be so again!
Another reclamation has begun, Reclaimer!
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
You have met the requirements to unlock the skill Anima Syphon (E)!
The Vasiri are known for their ability to sustain themselves on the Life Essence of their foes. You have gained this ability, though yours is its form uncorrupted by the machinations of Absolum, and is instead the lost legacy of the Elden Blood Lords. You may choose to reap the remnant power of any creatures around you which are recently dead, or too weak to resist; increasing your Anima reserves in the process, should the creatures possess enough for you to harvest.
Your mortal cunning outwits the Gods, Reclaimer!
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
You have met the requirements to unlock the skill Anima Conversion (E)!
The Vasiri’s ability to harvest Life Essence allowed them to restore wounds, regenerate mana, and supplement their stamina with impunity. Though their method was flawed and drove them mad, yours is not. As the successor of the Blood Lords of Eld, you may harness the very essence of your foes against them, and use their claimed vitality power to your own. The power that animates your foes is but fuel for your undying fire, should you so desire it.
Now death itself may grant you life, Reclaimer!
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
You have met the requirements to unlock the skill Anima Infusion (E)!
The Vasiri are prolific Necromancers, due wholly to the tainted Life and Nature mana Absolum corrupts within their Cores during the process of conversion. Unlike the crude affectations of lesser infusion used by these puppeteering monstrosities, however, yours is the Infusion once mastered by the Blood Lords of Eld. You may expend Anima to grant the dead a new life, bound to your service and yet possessed of a mind, and will, all their own. Beware that this is not a form of true resurrection. These servants will function as they did in life, but with the undying bodies and relentless ferocity of the Arisen—bound to your power and bloodline with a loyalty that cannot be broken.
Every monarch needs a loyal Army, Reclaimer!
Congratulations, Aurelian Lucis Imperius!
You have met the requirements to unlock the skill Anima Diffusion (E)!
Creation and destruction have ever been two parts of the same coin, and the abilities of Necromancers are no exception. Already you may raise and forge Arisen to stand with you unwaveringly, but now also may you return them to the embrace of Death should you wish it. Merely will it and speak the word of command, and the Anima sustaining them will be diffused and lost.
You hold the power of life and death, Reclaimer!
Aurelian felt toxins erupt out of his pores the instant the alerts ceased cascading, and a wave of slush and muck as black as the void twisted and seethed upon the tiles from between the gaps of his plate.
He barely had moments to gag on the stench of it, stinking like burning hair, and sulphur, and rotted eggs; and then it started evaporating into putrescent fumes of shadowy filth.
Where remnants of the deluge of corrosive expulsion failed to find gaps in his platemail, it simply wafted out in the same black smog; leaving behind a stench, but no mark nor stain to speak of.
His awareness was shaky at best, and his sense of self was… jumbled.
So much had changed. So much in such a short amount of time.
He could still barely make sense of what the System had told him, and the effort of attempting to bring his mind back into focus felt almost herculean. He felt enervated by the harrowing pain that had torn apart his sense of reality, and the very thought of moving was… exhausting.
Bahamut roared again, and Aurelian forced his head to fall to the other side.
His eyes searched, and found the dragon engaged with the Vasiri.
“Bahamut…” he rasped in confusion, disbelief, relief, and hope. “Safe…?”
Joy ran parallel to bone-deep exhaustion.
It was hard to orient his mind, and harder to think clearly.
He could barely remember what had happened leading up to that moment, and he found moving akin to trying to lift a boulder with his bare hands. At least, by the reckoning of his strength on earth. His eyes sought the dragon again, and he noted the shimmer of Bahamut’s runes, the dark beauty of his scales, and the glimmer of his platinum claws, teeth, horns, and spines.
Aurelian shifted his attention back to the Vasiri, and knew he had to act.
He had to do something before the creature managed to truly strike back. Bahamut’s attack had surprised and terrified it, susceptible as it was to the newborn Dragon King’s fiery magic; but Aurelian knew the shock would not last. The Vasiri would recover, and the hatchling would be in danger the moment it did.
Aurelian gritted his teeth. He might have been physically incapable, but magically…
He reached into himself and activated Dragon’s Sight with an instinctive pressure upon the skill.
Immediately the world changed, and it was as if a new spectrum of vision had been awakened to his eyes, and allowed him to see the fundamental elements that comprised the reality of the Realms He spied motes of ten different colours, and he instinctively knew each one correlated to a different form of magic.
How he knew that was something he’d worry about later.
His eyes moved rapidly while he searched for what he wanted, and he felt his mana cycling and ramping rapidly within his useless body. In rare cases he spied motes that correlated to no specific magical school: prismatic balls of energy that he knew to be unaspected mana.
He noted those for later consideration, however. Aurelian had a task to complete.
He extended his awareness back toward the Vasiri and searched carefully, looking for what he’d seen earlier. He noticed motes of fire mana from Bahamut’s attack, of light mana, of death mana and twisted life mana, and corrupted nature mana. He saw motes of shadow mana and motes of pure mana, but he could not find the ‘cord’.
He narrowed his eyes and focused harder, fully aware of the time limit that was the Vasiri’s ruined eyes, and fully aware that Bahamut needed him to act soon.
He pushed past what he could see and into what he could sense.
He layered his instinctive comprehension of aether over his mind.
Aurelian pushed his mana cycle to its maximum output, and then beyond.
His Core screamed, and his eyes bled at the corners from exertion.
His body shook while he gritted his teeth and ramped up the blinding speed of his bolted together spherical Core to its maximum rotation within the bands of platinum force that had forged its framework. A single, ethereal chime of esoteric power rang out within his mind.
And then, at last, it was there.
A thick cable of rotting green and black mana, forged from pain, fear, and malice.
It ascended up from the solar plexus over Vasiri’s Core, through the ceiling and into the heavens far above. It was a tether of unimaginable proportions, a malleable pylon, a link to something far beyond the capacity for his mind to properly grasp, even while he factored its existence into his plans.
He had felt an echo of that very influence attempt to pierce his own Core when he’d changed the Vasiri’s power, and for him now to truly witness it first-hand… he knew then that, had he not excised the filaments remaining with his own body, and if he had let that malicious splinter enter his Core; he might very well have been subsumed, much as the Vasiri had been subsumed.
“But not today,” he wheezed whilst lifting his left hand shakily.
Soulforce ignited in a roar within his exhausted body, and Aurelian felt his Core spinning unceasingly. He could feel changes occurring even then, feel the scarlet power of Eld, the essence of his Sanguinated trait, and the force of his own internal Anima surging across the Core’s surface, and coating it in a thin layer of film.
The bands of platinum served as the framework, and the vital energy worked to diffuse the aetheric friction between the bands and the interior nucleus, while the shimmering scarlet power formed the spectre of what would eventually become, he suspected, his Attunement stage Calamity Core.
That, however, was not what concerned him at that moment.
Aurelian’s attention was fixated on the massive, braided cable of rotting divine power.
Its thickness was comparable to the largest of bridge-cables on Earth, and it radiated a sense of abject wrongness and abominable domination that set his teeth on edge. Aurelian glared at the sight of it, and instinctively once more he wove together mana and Soulforce. He twined, and twisted, and threaded, and knotted it carefully and with precision; his eyes tracking the Vasiri as it tried and failed multiple times to get to Bahamut.
Above the pair of them, a Soulforce-wrapped mana construct began to take form.
The dragon, meanwhile, used a combination of flight and fire to keep the Vasiri at bay, and even its undead forces failed to render aid.
That was smart of the Necromancer, Aurelian recognised grudgingly.
Likely, the Vasiri worried what the dragon’s fire would do when exposed to an entire legion of essence-corrupted skeletons.
Conflagration is a neat word. He thought to himself deliriously, and spat out blood.
Aurelian’s smile was strained when it came, and he felt sweat pouring across his features with every second he continued to gather mana and Soulforce. It was an exercise in focus, magical capability, and sheer force of Intent that was buoyed by his Dragon’s Resolve. He could feel it like a heavens-shaking roar within his mind and Core, curling protectively around his sense of self, and lashing away any intrusive negative emotions.
The nascent, bladed construct above the Vasiri’s shifting body began to grow in stability, but he knew he needed more. He all but emptied his reserves, and those that had been given to him, while staring at the corded bond between the Vasiri and its god.
He poured everything he had into the formation of the shimmering shape of light, and heat, and power.
His Soulforce roared like a stoked furnace, his Core spun with a dizzying velocity that hummed with a bass note of music he knew, intrinsically, to be his own.
The last of his mana sank into the weapon, and then Aurelian found more.
The motes of power within the air shifted, drifted, and slammed into the construct.
More and more energy moved throughout the space, drawn like water to a whirlpool, or like matter to a black hole; all while the spell grew ever-more incandescent with power.
The strain on Aurelian’s mind set him to clenching his teeth.
His nose leaked blood from a mild hemorrhagic reaction.
His body shook with the first beginnings of shock, which he knew would lead to eventual organ failure. His vision doubled and distorted with pressure, and he felt blood vessels rupture—which he ignored thanks to Pain Tolerance and Dragon’s Resolve.
His eardrums shook from the frequency of the construct, though only he could hear it.
His eyes ran with consistent tears of blood, and Aurelian pushed his body until surely, surely he would break. Yet still, beyond all hope for restoration of his physical self, he pushed—pushed until every iota of himself was thrown into the forming Skill.
A blonde woman, attired in elegant white robes, grinned in victorious approval.
Return to the Realms what we could not protect, noble Reclaimer.
A raven-haired man, his body bedecked in runic plate, smiled at him warmly.
You are our final gift to the lost children of Elysea, honoured Nephilim.
Their hands linked together, and they bowed their heads in fealty.
Calamity’s Children to Calamity’s Heir, we acknowledge your Coronation.
Magical energy filled him in a radiant tidal wave of power.
LET JUSTICE BE DONE, THOUGH THE HEAVENS MAY FALL!
Then at last, with a triumphant musical note of pure power, it was complete.
Aurelian grinned in blood-soaked triumph.
Scarlet threads of aether-lightning crackled and coruscated around the shape of the Skill, which itself manifested as an immense sword made of light and fire—one which burned with Intent.
“Eat shit, Absolum,” he croaked to the god he hoped was watching.
Aurelian’s left hand made a weak cutting motion with the last of his physical strength.
Calamity’s Blade, blazing like a sun, severed the Divine Tether like a guillotine.
The Vasiri screamed when the cord was sheared away, the arboretum exploded with light, and everything went black.