Chapter 6:

Soulception

“We need to go deeper.”

– Internet meme

– ***** –

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRH!!!!!!”

“VICKY!!”

Victoria’s fall and her consecutive howl of pain had occurred at a mere second of interval.

The Shielbearer barely had time to consciously register the former before her body leapt forward on its own. For all her anger and bitter intransigence, Athena was starting to genuinely like the weird dhampir girl. Also, as a tank, her sense of purpose naturally drove her to protect others, though the irony of the fact didn’t entirely escape her in this particular setting.

Unfortunately, her leap was cut short when she violently slammed against the wall of light. It felt as if she had just rushed head-first into electrified steel. She bounced back but luckily collapsed short of the edge of the platform.

- 500 HP

You have been [Stunned].

Time remaining: 30 sec.

Unable to move, but still conscious, Athena was forced to powerlessly listen to her companion’s throat-wrenching screams, as the seconds passed with unacceptable slowness.

Fucking drunken gay barrier.

Yeah, because not being heterosexual didn’t make one any better or worse at insulting things… or fan of rainbows.

– *** –

On the other side of the capricious veil, Victoria barely noticed the cartoonishly unsuccessful attempt of the Shieldbearer. The pain was growing more intense fast, as if a piece of white hot iron was making its way out of her thorax. Also, a bone-crushing pressure was exerted all over her body. Or not her body? It felt like every millimetre of her being was being squashed, but the sensation wasn’t physical. Not exactly.

She wasn’t, as she dazedly noted, losing any Health either. But it was only when she heard Seras’ mental cry join her own that she understood what in her specifically was being crushed.

It was her soul. Or souls maybe. She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of much right now, with all this pain searing though her mind.

Harmonization with the [Vampiric Tear].

Completion: 0.2%

The pressure continued to steadily increase, eclipsing even the scorching heat that radiated through her upper body. She felt about to suffocate, her ungoverned brain wondering for the umpteenth time how much a half-undead actually needed to breath, then leaping to questioning if a spiritual pressure could actually damage her lungs, before another stab of pain destroyed this train of thoughts.

Harmonization with the [Vampiric Tear].

Completion: 0.3%

Time flowed at an impossibly sluggish pace. It was a surprising how distress and suffering in fact simultaneously shut off the brain and allowed it to notice every single detail of the torture it was subjected to. The cruel irony of this selective surge of efficiency in the usual mayhem of her mind actually sent Victoria into a fit of delirious laughter.

“AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHARrrrgh!”

A mouthful of blood however, rapidly invaded her throat, shutting her up for a time before the shrieks of pain resumed.

– *** –

Harmonization with the [Vampiric Tear].

Completion: 70%

Halt until contract with a [Soulbound].

Then, after what had felt like hours but actually had been no more than a dozen minutes, something immaterial finally broke inside her, like a dam, or a shell. The pressure vanished, as if it had accomplished its purpose. Even the burning pain in her chest dulled as inexplicably as it had sprouted.

Victoria was left panting, muscles as if shredded and with the distinctive taste of her own blood in her mouth.

… it hurts … Thena? … tastes awful … Where is Thena? Thena tastes good...

Unable to think properly, the ravaged dhampir absently asked herself if inflicting so much pain to a player was actually legal, then let out a gory chuckle as she recalled the state of her virtual body.

Obviously, at least as far as “she” was concerned, the company had long since acted rather cavalierly with legal matters. She probably should have been a little worried and half-jokingly think up a few conspiracy theories, but she was far too drained to care for the moment.

As Victoria tried to come back to her senses, sapphire haze began to fill her crippled consciousness.

Or, less than it filling her mind, it was her mind that was sinking through the deep blue fog.

As the metaphorical curtains of the maddening torture slowly parted, and over the receding echo of her own guttural screams, the collapsed Progenitor heard a distant voice yelling her name, asynchronous sounds oddly coming from both the outside the mist and its deepest part.

…Thena…

*ting*

Existence of a [Soulbound] confirmed.

Resuming harmonization.

Victoria was a smart girl. And for all comatose she was, she could still add two and two, which lead to a very concise yet meaningful whisper:

“…shit.”

As abruptly as it had stopped, the pain erupted again, but without the soul-crushing pressure.

The burning sensation began flowing out from her chest, like liquid metal through her veins, crawling on her skin, engraving her body and infiltrating her soul. Compact threads of red light began invading the sea of blue fog, growing deeper from the outside in, like stylized roots digging through the earth.

Victoria felt lost, incapable of coherent thinking, yet certitude suddenly dawned on her that she was surrounded. The haze she was in had no real limit, not in the physical sense of the word, but the blood-red roots still encompassed it all, leaving no possible escape. Victoria didn’t know where this conviction came from, but there was no denying it.

She was trapped. She panicked. She fled. Fled deeper in the dense vaporous magma that she now naturally recognised as her own soul. Again, she couldn’t say how. She just… knew.

Victoria quickly managed to put some distance – though she wasn’t sure how the concept of distance applied here, maybe depth was more accurate – between her and the roots. She was still trapped, but at least the threat felt less imminent. She was able to calm down a little and, not slowing down her flight, she considered her situation.

… I … what … I was … run … what?

Although she was no longer panicked, she was still unable to think clearly. And the deeper she went, the more confused her thoughts became. And the burning pain was still there, barely numbed.

In return, the amount of information flooding her mind inexplicably exploded.

So many things suddenly made sense. So many other suddenly made far less. She glimpsed at secrets none could even imagine and discovered that things held as universal truths were no more than fabled piles of glorified horseshit.

So that’s what this… what? I can’t remember.

She could understand so many things, but she couldn’t keep them in mind long enough to recall anything either. It left her in a daze of frustrating ever-aborted epiphany, like being drunk at God’s slide show of the Creation in fast-forwards

Like a sentient container instinctively searching for something it could actually contain, she tore her attention away from those near cosmic revelations – those would have to wait – and gathered her meagre focus around her current predicament.

She knew… where… the roots were. Though again concepts such as spatial disposition held no meaning here. She knew how they… moved? Same thing with mobility, speed, time... No sense at all. But she couldn’t find other words to describe what she perceived other than call it a “movement”. Not only were there patterns, but also a sense of purpose, a… destination?

Victoria’s hampered attention snapped towards a spot in the fog. A spot in her soul. There, she noticed, there was stream? Or a thread? It was difficult do describe, again. It seemed solid, as solid as spiritual energy could be. Solid in the meaning of hard to destroy, firmly anchored into existence. Yet it was also flowing at the same time, and flowing both ways, in and out of her soul, in two opposite directions but along one and unique path.

She decided to take a peek, if only to distract herself from the pain. It was curious how she could barely concentrate on anything, yet pain refused to let itself be forgotten. There probably was some deep metaphysical truth in that statement, but again, it escaped her.

And since the… spot… was the target of the roots, it was the furthest place from them right now. Something in her intellect tried to voice an objection against that reasoning, but she knew she was right.

Well, in all fairness, she always thought she was right, even when she knew she was wrong… which made no sense, but that was Victoria.

On her way to the thread-stream-spot, she suddenly noticed the curled up figure of a child.

The little girl was hazy, and pieces of her were… missing. Not torn off like gory mutilations, just… not there. Like a three-dimensional pencil drawing someone had assaulted with an eraser, even if the childish metaphor seemed ill-suited for the heart-wrenching desperation that exuded from the girl.

A good portion of her face had been scrubbed off, but her lifeless blue eyes were still mostly there, gazing absently through clumps of messy dull black hair and gushing out rivers of tears that evaporated as they fell from her chin.

She sat on nothing, hugging her knees without strength, and was surrounded by a mass of reddish smoky shadows that looked like a cloud of ink underwater. The red colour of the vaporous darkness wasn’t unlike that of the invading roots, but less sharp, more insidious. Less scarlet and more carmine. Less violent yet far more destructive. Less controlled. Less purposeful. But more alive.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

The red darkness swirled at a… distance… from the girl, apparently reluctant to approach her, yet was slowly creeping closer. The process was impossibly sluggish, almost still, but, perhaps because it was the inside of her own soul, Victoria knew the dark vaporous tendrils were inching towards the little human. As she knew they were responsible the girl’s lost pieces.

Victoria’s mind was fuzzy and she couldn’t think straight. She had a feeling she should recognise the girl, but the name kept escaping her grasp. The fact that the child had a formed body, albeit incomplete, in this immaterial place should have stricken Victoria as odd, yet she found it perfectly normal.

The distribution of what she knew and what she didn’t was really beginning to annoy her, but even this annoyance slipped from her mental grip.

What was I… right… the stream…

Victoria dreamily directed her attention – she wouldn’t say “look” because she wasn’t sure she herself had a body here – back to the thread-stream protruding from her soul. She was about to float… move… swim… away from the unknown child when a small whimper rippled through her soul.

Her attention brutally snapped back towards the little girl. A filament of blood-red obscurity had abruptly extended from the surrounding cloud and shot straight towards the kid’s arm, going though it like it didn’t exist and leaving another tiny hazy hole in her body. The girl, almost as devoid of life as a corpse, didn’t react in any other way than a feeble whine that would probably have been impossible to hear had it been actually uttered.

…whatever that means…

As Victoria’s disoriented consciousness attempted to piece the scene together, another filament appeared to move out of the deceptively immobile encirclement. Without thinking, she reached out and… grabbed? She couldn’t say as it wasn’t a physical feeling. But she definitively was holding something… somehow… and it burned. It burned, not like the pain that she was still distantly aware kept ravaging her body, but burned with hatred, rage, bloodlust and madness.

It was uncomfortable, disgusting even, but strangely, it didn’t hurt. It was a very familiar form of disgust and the burn seemed almost like a friendly warmth, even if Victoria could clearly sense the hostility oozing in bursts from the… thing?

Yet, she… smiled? Smiled like she greeted an old acquaintance she had a rocky relationship with. A smile that she meant to be warm and welcoming but, would it have been physically on her face in front of any half-decent psychiatrist, would have granted her a one-way ticket to the closest padded cell, preferably wearing a straightjacket and Hannibal’s muzzle.

Releasing the struggling tendril, she reached out for the girl and dragged her away from the ominous cloud and into her own… arms? She wasn’t exactly expert in disembodied hugs. The little child didn’t appear to notice, but Victoria could feel some tension leaving her… body? How did she have a body if this was inside Victoria’s soul? Was it some kind of projection? A spirit?

Again, she knew she knew but she couldn’t remember.

…how stupid…

She could see the blue fog around starting to swirl as irritation flashed through her mind, but, even more than usual, she was unable to focus and the swirling rapidly receded. Another movement at the periphery of her… vision… caught her crippled attention and she focused once more on the reddish black smoke that seemed to occupy a good portion of her soul.

She hadn’t exactly noticed until now, but the red darkness was present in almost half of the… space. It wasn’t evident where the blue fog ended and the darkness started. In fact, it seemed both coexisted. There were… places… where the darkness wasn’t, but the blue fog was everywhere.

As she… gazed… around in wonder, a portion of the darkness condensed in the form of a black young woman. The apparition possessed a deathly beauty that looked oddly familiar. Victoria’s attention perplexedly oscillated between the two females. Even with the state of the child and the smoke-like aspect of the woman, the resemblance was still undeniable.

The vaporous apparition… stared… straight at Victoria with an emotionless face, then, without shifting her gaze away, extended a finger towards the little girl, in a clearly possessive gesture.

…you want … the girl?

The dark lady nodded once.

Victoria’s attention briefly turned towards the little being in her immaterial embrace, then back to the smokes person. She wanted the girl? Of course. What right had Victoria to deny this claim? She knew the two belonged together.

She knew… yet… something wasn’t right.

…no.

Even though the words were only thoughts, and her tone hadn’t been any… louder… the conviction carried by this simple refusal rippled across Victoria’s soul as if she had screamed her lungs out.

The ripples hit the dark red woman, forcing her into the spiritual equivalent of a step back. Immediately, her deadpan yet bewitching visage twisted, disproportioned fangs sprouting out of her mouth in disorder and every shades of violent madness painting on her face.

With a soundless roar, the monster rushed forwards, clawed hands extended towards the faded child.

…out!

Victoria’s quiet mental shout banished the creature. The smoky darkness receded and only blue fog remained.

It was her mind dammit. And hell if she was letting her own madness control her. Or was it her own? It had seemed familiar yet foreign, like a composite of two materials, similar yet not identical.

Incapable of retaining the thought, Victoria let her attention drift back to the child shivering in her hold. Again, the shivering was barely existent. More like an intent to shiver that she could only perceive as this was her domain. Her soul. The same way, she knew the darkness had been kept at bay, but not destroyed. It would come back. And Victoria wanted it to. The darkness was part of her. Life without it just felt… boring.

But not right now.

She couldn’t do much for the child. She had no idea who she was, nor how to… heal… put back together… restore… her. But she couldn’t leave her like that. The darkness was hers… theirs? But, while Victoria could play and dance with it, the girl was barely more than food. She could tell. She knew, from this mysterious certitude and from the appearance the shadow had adopted, that it had been feeding on the girl… bit… by… bit.

Uncertain, yet confident, Victoria willed the blue fog to move. A stab of pain pierced through her mind, reminding her that her body was still being tortured out there.

…still?

How long had it been… distances… time… everything was a blur.

The fog obeyed her. Of course. This was her soul, and she was the Bloodsoul Mage. How ridiculous would it be, hadn’t she been able to control her own soul.

… how do I … know? … not … know … I … remember…

The fog clustered and formed a cocoon around the lifeless weeping girl. It wouldn’t stop the darkness, but at least it would delay it until a more definitive solution could be implemented. The whole thing felt a tad artisanal and rickety, and she felt something akin to… irritation… over her own incompetence.

… delay … definitive … how … oh … hereditary …

Now that the girl was secured…

… wait … why?

Why had she felt compelled to help the girl? True, Victoria wasn’t one to let children be tormented without reacting, but this had felt… different? Like an obligation. A gut… soul… feeling that something had to be done. She had known the dark lady and the little girl should have been together but… something didn’t felt right? There was no balance. The two parts weren’t coexisting but the girl was being eaten.

In the first place, the red darkness had been too strong. Like…

… two persons’ … worth?

Her mind was clouded. She couldn’t think straight. Pieces of knowledge came and went. A princess. A curse. Fusion of souls. Amateurish magic. Calamity. Pain. Destruction of balance. Ignorance. Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain.

The flood of pain wasn’t knowledge, she finally noticed, as her mind grew even hazier. Her body was in agony. And even here wasn’t deep enough to escape it. During her interaction with the fragmented being, the roots had drawn much… closer.

She sent a distracted piece of focus towards the haphazardly cocooned girl. She knew the roots wouldn’t harm her.

… this… will have to … d- AAAAAAAHHH!

Pain scorched her mind.

She fled. Again. Fled towards the thread-stream. She knew. Her own soul wasn’t safe enough. This pain wasn’t only of the body. But also of the soul. She would suffer if she stayed. But the link. The Bond. If she fled there. She’d be safe. Out of her. Out of the pain. Safe. With her.

She fled. Fled as fast as she could in a place where speed didn’t exist. Dashing for her only hope.

As soon as she reached the Bond however, a tide of foul… water… energy… smell… washed over her, mix of anger, fear, self-loathing, despair, lust, love, fear, pain, fear, fear, rage, fear…

Darkness.

Darkness hit Victoria, the roots caught up to her, her soul shook in agony and her consciousness dissolved inside the fog.

– ***** –

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I’ll try not to get a habit of cliffhangers… I’ll try… Hehe…

It took a little more time than I expected to write this one, but that’s because I first wrote two later chapters. And that taught me I shouldn’t write on my Itouch. It’s slow and frustrating, especially because I don’t know how to deactivate the auto-correction… which is set to “French”.

Plus if I start being able to write everywhere, I won’t do anything else anymore, post chapters much faster, and slowly die of inactivity and starvation.

I’m sure you’d be devastate by that, so I won’t do it. Thanks for your love and dedication to my health.

Aaaah…

Anyway, next chap is already mostly written, so it just need some completion and editing. It’ll be up soon… hopefully. See you there.

PS: That wasn’t my best title. I know, okay? But I’m tired and… I’m afraid to sleep.