Everything was happening too fast.
Sunday yelled and tried to pull away, but neither his talents nor his spells seemed usable at the moment. Chaotic Step was the one thing he tried repeatedly while he resisted the strength of the miasma that swirled into the gaps of his cracked skin and pulled from the bone itself.
It was futile, as the talent had gone silent. Be it the closeness of chaos, or the touch of a Divine, it didn’t matter. He was helpless.
The swirling void filled with colorful lights became larger as his body was dragged toward it. The god Sunday had summoned and then pushed into the so-called cauldron was still resisting somehow. It floated amid the waves of chaos and void and raged against its fate. Despite it all, Sunday saw each part of it that touched the swirling cauldron’s energy being ground to fine dust, joining the rest of whatever was being concocted in there. The god tried to drag itself out, and the green mists became hands and bodies that tried to help, but it was futile.
And yet despite its own tragic situation, the being was hellbent on dragging Sunday along too, as if its own survival was not more important than forcing another to share the same fate. Sunday knew that there would be none of him left soon if he so much as touched the cauldron. There was no surviving this, no matter how special or chosen he was.
A whisper of something cold brushed by his cheek, and a blade glinted under the many lights pushing away at the miasma. Sunday felt the force that was dragging him slacken at once, and a hand grabbed his collar and threw him back.
“I swear, you can’t do anything right. I guess you’re just a child in some ways… I fucking hate children,” the woman hissed as she did what wights did best and simply moved without bothering to alert the laws of physics about it. She dodged the bursts of energy that were starting to shoot out of the cauldron with ease.
Was the force of the cauldron growing? It was reminiscent of a boiling pot.
Sunday stared at her, then at the ever-changing darkness in the cauldron. With a final silent scream, the god’s face twisted and sank into the void, and a wave of force washed through them making the Arcanum shake. Sunday didn’t care for it all that much. His attention was once again taken by another sight—that of his arm and how… lacking it was.
There was nothing below the elbow.
“W-what have you—”
“I saved your dumb ass. Don’t you have a healing—shit!”
Once again, he couldn’t believe his eyes. His hand, gone? He could regrow it, perhaps…?
As if in a last act of rebellion, the already dissipating miasma rushed into the open wound and sealed it before Sunday could realize what was happening. He felt disgust rise inside him like a tidal wave threatening to drown him. The stump of his arm burned with the same sensation. There was a phantom pain there now. Agony unlike any but the pain of the soul he had experienced before. Agony that made him scream out before he gritted his teeth and bit at his lips. His flesh was still cracked and broken by the overuse of the energy he had stolen, and this new sensation drove him to the edge.
Someone was speaking, but Sunday couldn’t hear a thing. He wanted to claw his skin away, to grind his bones to fine dust and sieve them, to burn his own flesh and get rid of whatever it was that was crawling inside it. Essence rushed madly as it moved in foreign patterns, going wherever he willed it like water trying to put out a fire.
All ended as a punch to the jaw made him fly away and hit the wall. Somehow nothing broke, and while the pain was a caress next to the agony of his cut limb, it seemed more dominant. More insistent. It grounded him.
The next second, the world exploded. A heavy pressure, as if the storm of all storms was about to be released descended upon the world, and somehow it dulled even the different shades of pain fighting for the spotlight. Sunday managed to get himself under control just as the woman stepped next to him, holding a head attached to a broken-apart torso.
Trust…
“What is happening?” she asked.
“How should I know? You all ruined a perfectly good recipe by throwing a lesser god’s incarnation inside it! What will happen now is a matter of pure chance! Perhaps… we all die? No one has cooked with so much Divine energy in the mix. And now we have a piece of a chosen inside too… Frankly, I’m surprised the world still exists!”
“I swear I’ll—”
“Please. We both know that while yes, the pain you inflict is unlike anything else, I’ll still be whole at the end of the day. It is simply my nature and calling. So, let’s all be civil now, alright? Alchemical wonders are afoot here, and I want to see them unfold!”
Sunday expected the woman to grow angrier at that, but she simply smiled—a look most unsuitable for someone with eyes that begged for the death of all existence.
“Don’t you pretend to know who I am, lich? Your undying nature is nothing short of a minor obstacle. And now I know where to find you.”
Trust’s face twisted at that, but then as if on cue the swirling black mass in the center of the hall exploded, doubling the range of the cauldron. The floor started cracking and Sunday could practically feel the essence and the quasi-spells covering every inch of the place shatter and churn, as they were dragged into whatever was being created.
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“So marvelous! Don’t you think so, Mr. Sunday?” Trust asked.
“You tried to kill me,” Sunday managed to say through grit teeth.
“Trivialities! I’d have thrown myself inside if I believed it would bring about a great result. Can you imagine what spell will come out? Whatever it is, I guarantee nothing alike has ever existed! Oh, how exciting!”
The cauldron’s range expanded again and Sunday found himself turning to run.
Then everything exploded.
***
“—and this cousin, get this, believed the voices! I say, if you start hearing voices you don’t trust the bastards, especially if you’re undead. Especially, if you’re a vampire. Who has heard of vampires hearing voices—apart from the usual ones, that is, but those are just instincts. So, we had to burn the lad, eventually. He was growing a second head by the end there. Say, old bat, isn’t that where the Arcanum of this city is? Don’t lie, I smelled it. Aren’t you a big deal there? Why is it smoking?”
Adept Juvinde grunted and turned to look. It took her a few moments to realize what she was seeing. The vampire’s many stories had left even her lamenting all the wasted unappreciated silence throughout her lifetime. She was a war mage. One of the strongest in Blumwin, and one of its rulers.
She hated vampires, but the Baron was a necessary evil. This new one, Vesper he had called himself, was different. This was a madman given immortal life and the means and power to sow his madness everywhere. She had decided that the Arcanum had a moral duty to rid the world of him, and the first thing after the ghoul issue was dealt with, would be to inform the other institutes—the ones who had the means— that this particular one was dangerous. She hoped they would listen this time, although her passion to rid the world of all its bullshit was something very few shared.
Now though, all of the planning was gone.
The illustrious Arcanum, a building older than her, than the vampire Baron, than the city itself, perhaps only rivaling the torn walls, was covered in swirling dark fire. At the very least, parts of it were. It was difficult to see from so far, but the pillar rising into the sky, churning with wildness unlike any… Was it a mishap with the cauldron they were using to mass-produce fireballs? She had always been against the idea. Spells were not to be profaned with such methods, but then again it had given them an army.
The darkness of the pillar dominated everything, and compared to it even the night sky looked bright and blue. Plenty of colors were swirling inside it, with the predominant one being sickly green.
“Divine be thrice damned,” Adept Ironbond whispered next to her.
Adept Juvinde didn’t speak. Nor did she scream. She was a war mage; she knew that emotions were useless here.
***
There was nothing. Sunday was nothing. He couldn’t feel his body, eyes, or breath. He couldn’t feel his essence either. All he knew was a chaotic storm of things that was coming to swallow him, and that someone was preventing that. A thin layer of chaos, and a hand coated in death.
Then, the night sky. He was suddenly whole again, lying on his back, every bone in his body broken and even a few nerves were deader than they’d have been after Elora’s spell. Next to him the woman who had already saved him countless times cursed under her breath, muttering things Sunday himself hadn’t heard even back in the slums.
“Hey,” he called, voice like dry sandpaper rubbing against grainy wood.
Trying to stand up didn’t seem too smart at the moment. He was the plaza before the Arcanum. A massive pillar of energy very different from the essence he knew and loved was rising into the night sky, creating a vortex of clouds. It was all he could see.
“What?” the woman asked.
“What’s your name?”
“What?”
“Your name.”
“Nysandra. Why the fuck would you ask for my name now?”
Sunday tried to shrug. Something was very broken, but at least the pain was less. Or was it him who was less? The pain was very much present.
“You saved me many times. I ought to know your name.”
She grunted something.
“What’s that above us?” Sunday continued.
Someone else answered him. Trust.
“Very good question! No cauldron has done this before, I assure you! I’m quite taken with studying them. It’s—”
“I vow,” Nysandra hissed, somehow breaking the spell-like grip the strange energy had on Sunday by sheer strength of tone, “That I’ll find you again after this all ends. I’ll find what makes you work, and crush you like the bug you are.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Lady Nysandra, please— The Corpse K—”
“I pay no mind about the Corpse Kings. I serve none of them, unlike you. Fucking worm.”
Sunday decided to stay out of it. He willed a few moths into existence, and it took a lot. His essence was in disarray, but it came to him in his hour of need. Weaker than before. Tainted. As his body was slowly healed by the death essence, for some reason the agony that had taken a back seat returned and made him grit his teeth. He tried to summon a soul moth, but it only allowed for temporary relief this time.
This was bad.
With gritted teeth, Sunday stood up to stand next to Nysandra.
“What now?” he asked, trying to distract himself. The show was hardly over.
“Now we wait for the cauldron to do what the cauldron does.”
“And what is that?”
“It is said that all is born from the primordial chaos, and cauldrons allow the worst of the Alchemists to tap into the natural forces and create artifacts and spells. I can only imagine what will come out of here… Do you have room in your soul space?”
“I don’t think so. What do you mean the worst?”
“Alchemy is an art form. This here is throwing things into a hole of energy so far beyond anything a mortal or undead could hope to understand that’s not even fucking funny, and hoping something good will come out.”
“That’s an exaggeration. There’s an art to it! We—” The voice of Trust started, but the sound of steel stabbing into stone made him stop. Had she thrown one of her swords?
A wave of power exploded, spreading like a ring above the air in Blumwin, and the pillar melted away, leaving only a tiny dark shape floating in the air above the broken Arcanum.
***
Vesper watched with squinted eyes. He was sure Nysandra was involved somehow, and he only hoped she wouldn’t be pissed when she came back. She was bound to be though. It was her natural state. That’s why she had left him here, just in case he made her too angry. Who cared about a few thousand ghouls and magi battling it out? It was a regular day in the battlefields beyond the inner belts.
“Won’t you do something about this?” the old female mage frowned. She was a riot, that one. The only one who could somewhat resist his presence. Her and the one-armed high ghoul.
“Do what? I’m just an undead dreaming of his bed and the naked bodies inside it, lady. I won’t go throw my puny life away for the common good.”
“Why are you even here then?”
Vesper sighed, then tried to ignore the growing pillar of darkness and the sensations prickling at his skin.
“It all started when I was but a wee Baron, deciding to join a cult because I thought it would look sexy in my memoirs—”
The pillar disappeared, sending a shockwave throughout the sky, and all that was left was a dark shape hanging in the air. Vesper frowned. All the magi around him suddenly went crazy, and ignoring his presence, rushed toward the new presence.