With the demon’s influence expunged from Nuurr’s mind tided in the waves of truth. Memories of his father, in truth, being profoundly proud of him for his accomplishments, and him requiting that love with the shadow’s compelled mask of cold impassivity. It dawned on him then that he’d been the one rejecting his father. He was the one breaking his father’s heart.
His expression tensed and shriveled beneath his hurt. Tears of sorrow ran rivulets down his quivering cheeks. “Papa… I’m— I’m sorry…”
The light rescinded toward its source: the Songscribe child. Sorrinn ran the distance to check on Nuurr, wand in hand. “Are you okay?” The hand and arm that were corrupted were still painted black all the way to the bicep. A scar more than anything worrisome. Other than that, he didn’t sense any more Absence reeking from Nuurr.
Nuurr’s glasses lifted while he scrubbed the tears away against the back of his hands. “I want my papa… I was—”—he sniffled—“I was mean to him… I don’t want him to be sad…”
Sorrinn’s eyes narrowed in thought. If a shadow of the End was manipulating Nuurr, what were the odds another was working to corrupt his father too? The chances were too great to ignore.
The Silhouette’s inaction finally made sense. It wasn’t idling; it was sowing its own form of twisted seeds into the villagers. If it couldn’t reach him, it’d kill his spirit through the eradication of the place he called home. The greatest ingredient to producing powerful Origin was an equally strong will. If that was shattered and rendered desolate, he’d become as helpless as any other against the Silhouette’s power.
Maeve was there too. She was right beside her son until that bell started ringing in her ear again. It was louder than it’d ever been, slowing her steps and drawing her gaze into the distance.
“Time is up.” a woman’s ethereal voice said to her. It echoed in her head. “Come to me. The village’s continuity depends on it.”
She, entranced, veered off the path in the background. She made haste toward the source of the call.
When Sorrinn turned around, his mother was gone. Confusion painted a broad stroke across his expression. He didn’t have the time to go searching for her if Nuurr’s father’s spirit was being assaulted too. Who knew how many others in the village were experiencing the same. If any one of them were corrupted into monsters, it’d be chaos. People would die. His mother was fine, so she was low on the priority list.
He grabbed Nuurr’s hand. “You’re not alone. I’m here. We have to go now.”
“Where?” Nuurr sniffed.
“Your house. I think your dad is in danger.”
Nuurr bounced his head. He ran, leading the way as he dragged Sorrinn behind him.
Four spooked mandilleer came galloping from deeper in the village like speeding cars. Both of the boys were nearly flattened in the stampede. The mandilleers’ movements were too erratic to predict. One misplanned step and they would have both been finished. Sorrinn pushed Nuurr out of the way before diving toward the grass himself at the last moment. They didn’t have the time to orient, for the monster attack horn blared overhead not long after.
“No, no, no…” A cacophony of screams resounded from the village in the distance. The village people soon spilled out in vehement retreat in droves. In carts, on foot, carrying their own children and others’ children that’d gotten separated in the chaos; whatever method of escape was most available.
It was too late. Something was wrong. It’d never been that bad before in all of the times the horn had rumbled a forewarning note.
Shaking the fall off, Sorrinn picked himself up as his Origin roused to the limits of his will. A tangible shroud of shifting hues of blue-green rose from him like flame. All of his mind tunneled on the sensations of his body. He was far from being an athlete, but [Ethereal Surge] and [Focus] should’ve pushed his physical capabilities far enough to compensate when used in tandem. He passed Nuurr a fleeting glance, telling him to, “Go to my house. Tell my paba what happened. He’ll know what to do,” whilst frenzied feet sprinted past them.
Without wasting another second, he dashed ahead, running toward the commotion as swiftly as his little legs would carry him. For someone so small and averse to running, the culmination of his skills allowed him to reach a haste he shouldn’t have been able to. All he perceived was the path in front of him. All he felt was the tempo of his feet meeting the ground and the synchrony of his ebbing and flowing breaths. He buried the fact he was exerting himself, focusing singularly on reaching his goal so as to prolong [Ethereal Surge] for the greatest length without burning out his torch.
He didn’t pay any heed to the fleeing villagers passing him by. They were in the way of his objective. He dashed and weaved around them without delay. His one and only goal: to win. Winning meant saving lives. Winning meant defeating his enemies.
Harrowing shrieks from up ahead pierced through his concentration. Something horrid and alien pursued the fleeing villagers further up the path. It sprinted with bestial strides on talon-footed, digitigrade legs and four elongated arms, charcoal blackened skin coursing with deep-set lines of glowing, crimson corruption. A host of a dozen miasma-dripping tentacles writhed on its hunched back, and its face was nothing more than a hooded maw of many churning, razor-sharp teeth. The six-inch claws sprouting from its four, six-fingered hands ripped through the back of the fleeing villager it hunted.
The fact that abhorrent abomination was once one of the villagers shocked Sorrinn’s core. He froze in his tracks and fumbled his focus. There wasn’t a dreg of sapience, emotion, or empathy left—not an ember of Origin resonating from its hollowed depths. There was only an echo of something grand and harrowing lurking in the eerie silence.
The villager’s blood spattered and her lifeless body dropped before his broad, horrified eyes. She was the first person he’d ever seen die. Blood… There was so much blood. How could so much come from a single person? The Beast-blood woman’s child tripped when she collapsed to her injuries. The child looked over his shoulder in silent horror at his mother’s corpse with dreading, shock-rounded eyes. “Ma…ma…?” Blood and dirt staining his hands, he shook her shoulder like she was merely taking a nap and would awaken any moment.
The entity pounced for the boy next, maw pining for a taste of his head.
Everything ran dead quiet in Sorrinn’s ears as a high-pitched ringing plagued his sense of hearing. He imagined himself in that kid’s position: staring down at Maeve’s lifeless, mangled and bloody body; praying it was all a dream and his eyes would open to hers lovingly gazing down at him. He foresaw the kid being sliced to ribbons, head ripped from his neck by its clicking mandible—swallowed whole. To watch his sun extinguish only to suffer an agonizing end. Before those images, a sweltering concoction of anger, grief, and adrenaline crashed through his nervous system like a cataclysmic flood. His vision narrowed to pinprick dots honed on the entity as his Origin erupted out of him in an ardent blaze.
Once a villager or not, there was nothing there anymore. There was no reason to hesitate. All that mattered was that he won. His triumph was the village’s victory.
His wealth painted pinpoint radiance through his pathways. Particles of iridescent light converged around his wand's tip. He drew it inward, across his chest, with a sweep of his arm. The instant the concentrated beam of light surfaced like a mile-long blade of radiance, he swept his wand out in a broad, horizontal arc.
The beam ran through the entity. An incandescent line streaked across it where it leapt. Its malformed body parted into halves mid-pounce. All that reached the little boy was the cloud of ashes which it'd been reduced to.
Sorrinn ran for the kid to help him. Maybe there was no helping him truly, but he’d at least survive to grieve. That was good enough. However, a dense pressure rammed into his left side halfway to the kid. Everything went black. The next thing he knew, he was staring at the sky atop a bed of grass, a searing lance of heat gnawing at his side. Touching where it hurt, a bloodied hand surfaced into his throbbing vision. He leaned up in time to see the corruption that’d snuck up and slashed him ripping the little boy whom he’d saved’s head from his neck like a stubborn piece of jerky. He’d been swatted over twenty-feet out into the crop field abutting the road.
Tears welled in his shock-rounded eyes at the grisly sight. His hands squeezed at the grass to his frustration’s whim as a bass drum pounded in his skull. That ringing returned full-swing. All he had was one job.
“Luminary?” a whispering voice—the Silhouette’s—spoke into his ear. Its shrouded hands clenched around his throat, given the opportunity. “Don’t make me laugh. You’re nothing more than the herald of these peoples’ suffering.”
Stolen story; please report.
“Be quiet…” he hissed through clenched teeth.
“Open your eyes and cast away your blinders. Are my words not truth?” They were… “If you were never born, that mother and son would still be alive, would they not?” It was right… “It is you who sentenced them. Listen to the villagers’ screams, Apotheos. Feel their anguish in their final moments before facing the Finality you drove them toward. In the end, it is you who sentenced them to their fates.”
“…” Sorrinn forfeited his tension as he exhaled a long, steady breath, still as the silver lake. [Equanimity] quieted all of his emotions to make way for a crystalline clarity. His Origin Flame reignited and towered, warding off the Silhouette’s influence. Just as Izebeus said, the only noise acceptable from an absent existence was a deathly wail. He wouldn’t be led astray by such hollow words making a plaything of the truth. If The Void had its way, everyone and everything would become collateral before Its conquest against existence. Without soldiers willing to fight back, a war was nothing more than a one-sided slaughter. If he didn’t exist, far more than that mother and son would have been dead.
He crawled to his feet, then dashed for his dropped wand, snatching it up along the way. “I’m sorry.” He thrust his wand forward. A flickering spark of flame painted a line as it raced toward the corruption. A moment’s touch and the abomination was engulfed into an ardent bonfire of prismatic fire. It writhed, shrieked, and turned to ash beneath an ethereal blaze. He passed the entity by in route toward the inner village, offering it not a second heed.
Things were worse off there. There were two… four… nine… At least a dozen corruptions rampaging and on the hunt. They burst through the workshop lodges’ doors to pick off the village-folk sheltering within them and pursued the scrambling bodies still out in the open like mice. What village guards were there had already been ripped to puddles of viscera marring the road. He numbed himself to the aroma of blood wafting thick in the air, the sanguine spatter painting the structures, dripping from the lampposts, and the mangled corpses of the various-raced men, women, and children littering the paths like discarded garbage. He numbed himself to the horrid screams abutting the silence. All of himself raveled tighter and tighter around that singular goal stoking his Origin bright: “Win.” That word resounded in perpetuity in his core, pulsing world-shaking tremors through it with every re-utterance.
His rousing wealth joined hand-in-hand with The Mystic Force, dancing jubilant circles around himself. An inhale—full and steady—streamed into his nostrils. He balanced the grain of sand on the needle’s point. With his exhale, the two energies collided and blended into one, achieving perfect equilibrium. The Mystic Force embraced him from behind and cupped Its many hands over his own.
“It’s me, Annie…” a cornered Human man’s pleas quavered. The corrupted entity was slowly closing the distance, marinating him in his fear as it prowled. “It’s your father… You don’t have to do this… Come back to me… Look, I’m— I’m sorry for forcing you to marry the Heraden boy without consulting you first. I-I only wanted the best for your future. You have to understand…!” he pled and cried amidst the shakes of his head. “I never wanted this to happen to you! What’s happening to you…!? Please!”
When the man’s back struck the workshop’s exterior wall, the thing that once was his daughter roared, then pounced for the kill. He squealed, shriveled, and squeezed his eyes shut before the image of his end. However, time passed. Nothing happened. When his eyes peeked open at his fate, they were met by his daughter’s silhouette enveloped in a many-colored bonfire emanating reverberations of tangible peace. “I forgive you, father…” a hushed voice said from within the flame. He reached out to her, only for the Originless remnant to vanish with the flames in an instant. “Annie…?” his whispering voice quavered. He collapsed to his knees.
The entity beating on the workshop door bashed it open. The people inside cried and pleaded to the divine for salvation. The first step it took inside, it burst into a veil of prismatic flame.
Another entity pursuing after a scrambling Human family of five met a similar fate. It was engulfed in a flash the moment before it skewered the father shielding his wife and three children through the back.
A young village guard—the last present—haphazardly swept his sword back and forth at the corruption closing in on him. Six villagers sheltered behind his position. Every part of his body trembled in fear, but it was painted on his steadfast expression he’d die before forsaking them. It was toying with him, pretending to be fearful of his blade. Then it lunged and slashed the sword into five clattering pieces. He was left brandishing a nub. Resolutions warped into face-sullying dread. It swatted him to the ground with its overwhelming strength, many claws flared into the shape of his guillotine, verged on finishing him off. Then it attacked. A pale spark struck, washing it beneath a drape of opalescent fire before it could kill.
The source of it all: Sorrinn finessefully swept his wand hither and thither in a series of purposeful arcs and thrusts like a conductor before an orchestra as he sauntered through the village. Amidst all of the chaos, a pristine image of order inhabited his mind’s eye—a splendid map toward the preservation of all he held dear. He traced the lines of the image with his wand’s motion and gradually fettered the storm into a tightly-sealed jar. Iridescent sparks like glimmering comets of hope were cast forth with every intentful direction of his hand.
The sharp rise of Origin acted as a beacon to all of the corrupted. More corrupted villagers spilled from the woodwork. They mantled over the market houses’ and workshops’ rooftops and dashed in from other pathways, tripping over their feet in pursuit of their true target.
A succession of Origin Firebolts greeted the three leaping in from above. Their mutated figures struck the ground as they burned.
That left the five dashing in from every direction. They were too quick on their limbs. Much of the distance had already been cut by then. Pivoting on his heel, the most he could do was pick off one or two before the rest scattered his viscera to the four corners of the world. He didn’t see a way out. Was it the end for him?
The Mystic Force embraced him tighter, almost as if reassuring him of his capability. Izebeus’s voice spoke from the world at his core. “Have you not trained for this precise moment, child?” It puppeted the threads of his hand and cast Firebolt through him. “To those who stride beneath The Illumination, a wall is never merely an end. A wall is a challenge to be surmounted. A wall that appears impenetrable is when life evolves most. It is the will of all things to face such obstacles head-on with imperishable determination and ascend to reaches once thought unfounded.” However, instead of only evoking one, a second sparked into being, then a third, a fourth, and a fifth, birthing an opalescent cluster of gleaming sparks. So that was what happened when there were no more decimals left to whittle off of a spell route. Weaving in the conditions into each was executed by his brain on an ingrained impulse. He immediately thrust his wand. All five Origin Firebolts were unleashed at once. Except they each rode a unique path, curving in flight to greet each of the five corruption mutants closing in on him precisely.
One by one, the entities ignited into bonfires of pale flame around him, strands of color flickering through the rising ribbons. The remnants of the people the beasts once were each reacted differently. One's cries of grief softly echoed from the flame. Another simply stared at the sky in their final moments. One smiled wistfully and offered Sorrinn a fleeting, “Thank you…” Their ends were all the same, however. One by one, the bonfires, having served their purpose guiding the tarnished souls back to the light, burned out.
The survivors weren’t certain whether to applaud or to cry as they surfaced from hiding. A palpable somberness cascaded over the atmosphere. There were those already breaking down into loud, mournful weeps in the aftermath of tragedy.
At the least, the man whose family Sorrinn had saved came to shake his hand—firm, how he’d shake the hand of another man who bore his respect. That felt appropriate, given the circumstances. “Thank you, son. Our door is always open to you. Whatever you might ever need.”
Sorrinn bounced his head.
Some screams played not far down the road. Another corruption mutant surfaced from the village’s outskirts. It wasn’t like the others. The Elven man was only partially transformed into a monster, splotches of black painting his tanned skin where he hobbled from one malformed foot to the other. Only a few scant embers of his Origin Flame endured, but they were persistent.
Sorrinn stepped forward to take care of it. Then he heard the words it choked out within its stupor.
“N…Nuurr… F-Forgive… me… Nuurr… Nuurr…! I… didn’t… m-mean… to… fail… you…” He collapsed to his knees, unable to resist the corruption any longer. The rest of his skin was dyed black. His features gnarled like putty squeezed in a fist. His bones violently spasmed, snapped, cracked, and popped beneath his flesh. His appendages elongated into knives. It looked like agony. It sounded like agony. Those onlooking were forced to cringe. A blood-curdling shriek rose from the hooded maw where his face used to be. The tentacles ripped their way through his backside. A second set of arms with claw-bearing hands tore from his sides.
Before the worst could come to pass, Sorrinn set him ablaze with an Origin Firebolt, heavy-hearted.
Nuurr’s father’s remnant only had one question to ask: “Is he still alive? Is Nuurr…”
“—Yes, sir.”
The Elf peacefully smiled, although polluted by tinges of sadness and regret. There were a thousand things he wanted to say, but he could already feel himself fading away into the light. Time was running short. Therefore, he settled for passing on what he felt was most pertinent: “Tell him… that I love him… And that there is nothing I adored more about him than his passion. I’m grateful to have been his father. I’m honored my centuries of life and wisdom were able to culminate into his existence… Watch over him. Please… Don’t allow his life to wither with me.”
Sorrin’s gaze hung low. He bit on his quivering bottom lip, hot tears welling up like thermal pools. They fell and dropped from his chin. “…Yes, sir… I will… I promise…”
Then the remnant passed on, the flame snuffing out forevermore.
His features further contorted to his hurt. Yet, his pain would be nothing compared to Nuurr’s when he came searching and discovered the whisper of an empty house.
That was the last of the Absence he could sense in the village. It was finally over. Good, because he was starting to feel his limit channeling [Ethereal Surge]. The second he relaxed his body, everything washed to a haze in his mind. He dropped onto the road where he stood, thrust over the precipice into unconsciousness.