“And so the prodigal daughter returns. Welcome back, Auria.” The Creator sat in front of her, again in the same cushioned chair, again with the same cigarette and glass in hand. “How did it feel, the feeding?”
“It was okay.” Auria answered nonchalantly, trying not to give up how ecstatic she felt while draining the slaver. “Like a good meal.”
“Really?” The Creator’s eyebrows rose. “Either you are lying, or your body and mind mutated so far from mine that it had a much weaker effect on you than it should.”
He knows that I fed, but he doesn’t know everything. Auria smiled brightly. She did not trust him, she did not like him. “What do you want now?” She asked him calmly, yet without a hint of friendliness in her voice.
“I honestly want to help you. You are the only wielder that I can access through dreams - that means that only your sanity has been left… intact so far.”
The only wielder he can access… Only my sanity is intact. That means that my father is…
Auria shivered. “Are there other wielders?” She asked innocently. The Creator chuckled. “Ah, so you understand what a wielder is. That means that you already have some source of information regarding your… state. Tell me, who talked to you? Or did you perhaps find something left behind by one of us? Some message from the past?” He extinguished the cigarette in his drink and leaned closer to her. “Where did you find the projector you wield?”
Auria felt that she should be intimidated by the man. She felt like everything that happened to her in the past few days should intimidate her - new, highly advanced technology that fell into her lap, messages from the past, the Deadvoid itself…
Strangely, she did not feel any confusion. Instead, she felt like she was re-discovering things hidden from her behind a layer of fog, like everything happening to her now already happened in one form or the other some time in the past. The projector wasn’t exactly new to her, she felt an intuitive connection with it. The words she read from Sphinx’s journal were shocking, but… They were not strange to her. They were not new.
She thought of something. “An answer for an answer.” She demanded, and the creator laughed out loudly. Finally, he spread his arms welcomingly. “Go ahead, ask.”
“How many wielders are there in the world? Sane or not, it does not matter to me.”
The creator closed his eyes for a moment. “Thirty nine, at the moment.”
Auria was shocked. Where were they? How are they hiding, if they are really insane and she is the only one with a bit of sanity left? What are they doing?
“My turn. What is your source of information on our technology?”
“A book. My turn.” Auria answered quickly, and before The Creator could react, she asked. “Can I speak to anyone in Deadvoid, just as I am speaking to you now?”
“Yes. My turn. What kind of book do you get information from?”
“A journal. How can I speak to them?”
“Call them. Who’s journal?”
“Sphinx. How do I cal…”
“NO.” His voice resonated through her mind, shattering all the calmness that she tried to build up inside. Terror clenched her body and soul, shivers ran down her spine, her limbs trembled and she wished she could cower somewhere in the corner, hidden from him. “WHERE DID YOU FIND THE BOOK? WHERE DID YOU FIND THE PROJECTOR?”
“I… I…” She could not push words through her mouth, her throat clasped shut, her tongue dried up, stuck to her teeth, unable to move. “I…”
“WHERE.” The Creator took a heavy step that echoed through the Deadvoid. “DID.” Another word accompanied by a soul-shattering step. “YOU.” He was coming closer, murderous intent apparent from his color-flickering eyes. “FIND.”
A flash of lightning bolt, a roar of thunder. Darkness. A scream…
***
She found herself cowering in the corner of a damp cell. Fungi spread everywhere around her, covering most of the walls and rotting pieces of wood. She was but a child, shivering from fever, her body a roaring furnace. All around her, a heavy smell of decay and decomposition hung in the air, mixed with salty odor of piss and metallic reek of fresh blood. Malformed limbs were scattered on the uneven, liquid-stained cobblestone ground, cut-off tentacles still twitching, broken claws and pincers closing and opening again and again. A scene of slaughter, neglect and horror, with a laughing golden-armored dragon standing above her, covering her in his golden bodily fluids that stung in the fresh cuts on her skin.
“Leave her be!” She heard a familiar voice’s scream, as a large, heavily mutated woman lunged at the golden dragon. Long, sharp tentacles covered in black chitinous spikes pierced the golden dragon’s skin, again and again, mutilating his perfect visage, hiding the gold of his scales behind a veil of crimson. The dragon fell to his knees, gurgling sounds coming from his throat, his blood mixing with the liquid filth on the ground. Another dragon appeared behind the mutated woman, hitting her head from the back with the hilt of his sword, raising the blade to finish her off with one clean hit that would separate her deformed head from the rest of her unnatural body…
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“NO!” Auria screamed, lunging from the corner, stretching her two human hands and one long, metallic limb that shone with blue light towards the dragon. “ROT!” She screamed. ROT! she thought.
***
The Creator stopped, and coughed. A single cough, where oily black phlegm spat from his mouth. Auria stood in front of him defiantly, her projector stretched towards him, shining wildly. She felt the energy surging towards her, draining everything around her, absorbing all the darkness of the Deadvoid with the metallic arm. She felt the energy radiating from The Creator and it was hers to take, and she did not hesitate. The Creator fell to his knees, black oil pouring from his mouth and nose, his eyes blinking wildly. “What are you doing you bitch?” He hissed. Auria felt the internal, mind-killing and soul-tearing rot spreading through The Creator’s formless body, and she wished for it to spread no further.
“It’s your creation.” She said, waving the projector in front of his mad eyes. “You tell me.”
“It is no work of mine! I have never created such inelegant, plague-spewing filth! You wield no work of mine!” Her voice changed between growling and hissing forth and back, but there was something else… A note of fear.
“Yet It can infect you with a rot of my own design.” Auria muttered. “It can kill you.”
“I am already dead!” He cried towards her, half terrified, half tormented by his essence being consumed by the mind rot.
“Nothing to be afraid of then.” Auria smiled cruelly. Where does this come from? What am I doing?
She shuddered and willed for the rot inside The Creator to disappear. After a brief moment, the oil stopped seething from the man’s face.
“What are you? How are you doing this? This realm, this world… It is not possible to alter the minds and souls of the dead!” He cried desperately.
“Apparently not.” Auria said. “Who was Sphinx? Speak, or I will destroy you.”
“A bitch, a mind-killing whore, the murderer of worlds, The Death, The Dustbringer, the entropy itself!” Each word he said, he said with disgust, contempt and spite. “She is the prodigy, she is The Wielder, the first, and supposedly the last. She is my greatest work, and my greatest failure.”
“Is? She’s alive then?” Auria took her eyes off of The Creator, and in that instant, he took the opportunity to disappear. She was left alone, in the darkness which did not seem so alien, terrifying and claustrophobic suddenly. She felt only calmness, and silence. Sphinx is alive…
***
Crowds of refugees walked the opposite way Iarvahr was traveling - the diseased, the lost, the poor and the dying filled the main roads connecting Glaeria and The Lands of the Citadel. He paid them almost no attention, save for a few instances when they begged for something from him, touching his armor-clad boots or the edge of his cloak. Each of them died in a single sweep of his axe. He had no time for mercy nor for charity. The only thing that mattered was Leonie.
He even met a small patrol of Glaerian soldiers, and although they paid him no attention, he did not leave them alone. Death to Glaeria. Death to all you fucking golden-clad monstrosities.
Empty husks of three soldiers laid next to the frequent road that evening, only their bones gleaming in the setting sun, their paper-thin, dried skin shattering into dust particles in the soft breeze.
No stops. No distractions. Death to Glaeria.
He continued quickly. He did not need to eat, he did not need to drink. All he needed was a fresh horse. A dead stableboy here, a drained soldier there… It did not matter.
Somewhere, deep inside Iarvahr’s mind, a small piece of his former self screamed - the last remnants of his sanity, trying to hold onto what was gradually being lost.
***
Auria woke up well rested. The calmness of the Deadvoid felt rather refreshing after the disappearance of The Creator, and, after a very long time, she actually enjoyed the rest of her sleep.
“Good morning.” Harian said to her, smiling. “It seems you’ve slept well.”
Auria nodded and yawned. “How long was I asleep?”
“A day and a half. We are well on the way, almost at the Glaerian border.”
Auria raised her eyebrows. “That long, huh…” Shelooked around the empty carriage. “Where is Naira and Suranihr?”
“Out. We’ve stopped.” Harian sighed.
“Why?”
Harian nodded towards the door. “See for yourself.”
Auria opened the door and looked outside. High up on the carriage, she was able to see through above the crowds of people, thousands of bodies strong. “What’s happening?” She asked, panicked.
“I don’t know, Auria. They are refugees. And all of them have only one destination in mind - The Citadel.”
Auria looked at the crowd. A barrier was formed between their convoy and the refugees made of hundreds of Citadel’s border guards. Everywhere she looked, she saw desperate faces - men, women, children, all of them filthy, poor and…
She felt it. She felt the contagion rampaging through the crowd, a wild sickness, something not natural, something… Designed. She felt the unnaturalness of the violent, volatile plague that spread unchecked through the crowd, waiting to explode, waiting to maim, cripple and paralyze its hosts… after a time. The crowd was a ticking bomb, waiting to be set off by… something.
“No..” She whispered, but then her voice increased in loudness. “No, they can’t be allowed into The Citadel, they are contagious, they are diseased! They will infect the whole town!”
“Calm down, Auria.” Naira and Suranihr walked to her from the nearby carriage. “What’s wrong?”
“They are diseased, they carry something vile, something designed to…”
A single stone hit one of the border guards, opening the skin on his head. A reply to the stone was the gunshot from the border guard, and a woman fell on her knees, screaming from pain. The crowd reacted, a huge tidal wave of unwashed, filthy, diseased bodies hurled itself towards the barrier made of Citadel soldiers. Bullets, bombs and blades, although highly effective, were not enough to stop the onslaught of refugees, and guards died, suffocated under the weight of thousands of bodies.
“Move out!” Suranihr cried over the roaring refugees. “Move!” He shouted at the convoy horse masters. “Ram through the crowd, go!” Naira shoved Auria inside the coach and herself jumped in. Harian, on the other hand, ran out and shut the door behind them. Both women were thrown against the cushioned seatings inside, as the coach suddenly jumped forward.