I dreamed of that creature from that cave. The blurry greens and brown of the forest. Color made by cursed light instead of one’s power. I saw and felt the world in hues of black and white seeing color only when power was present. The red flames of anger of the imps, the purple of corruption, and the blue of the fire of the fragments. The dream shifted and I was in a magic circle in the middle of nothing. I was back to being a ball of shadow floating in the air looking into nothingness around me. Suddenly in the dark Vryas steps out of the nothingness, covered head to toe in that special robe of that cult he wore. He pulls down the robe and reveals a smashed-in face, Rammstein kept wailing on the man until his injuries caught up with him, and he bled out. To Vyras’s right, the man who gave me those dark crystals stepped out of the nothingness. Even now his clothes are dark purple the same color as my corruption and his skin is a darker shade than the other humans I’ve seen.
At the time I barely cared for the man but seeing him now I found it strange that these details are so noticeable. In Rammstein’s memories, Vryas was very tanned but in my sight, the dead man was white as any other human. The man's clothes are bathed in the color of corruption so maybe his body is also bathed in some other power. The man was moving his mouth but I ignored it as another thing walked up. Rat stepped right of the man with more holes and fewer scales than the last time I saw him. The muddy brown of his scales is somewhat obscured by blood as I wonder what power might invoke that color. Even now the color invokes feelings of disgust to bubble out of me. Vryas and Rat disappeared leaving only Rat behind in the nothingness.
“What is this little Rat? You don’t look so well.” I mock the kobold.
“Your mind or what I think it is and yeah this is what happened to me after you abandoned me in Redwood castle,” Rat said as he took a few more steps closer to the circle standing before it.
“I fulfilled my end of the contract that you sold your soul for. I had no need or want to save you. If this is my mind why are you here and why did those men appear here?” I ask Rat even though I feel something flash in me but it fades away too quickly for me to see what it is.
“You ran away after making me attack that kid and why should I know why those guys showed up? I was fine just floating in some corner of your mind but now I’m here.” Rat complained as he looked around in the nothingness.
“Why are you still here? You died and I ate you a long time ago.”
“Because you are still too weak to relieve my misery. You are close to after eating 2 thirds of Rammstein's soul but you are still too weak to eat me completely so the contract has me bound here until you are strong enough.”
“The contract? I don’t feel its power here. What do you mean? Two-thirds of his soul, I took everything he was.”
“Not completely true but I have no idea how that works. I just know you ate the first part of his soul when you dragged him down here and the second part once you absorbed that crystal but the third part escaped your grasp when he died. Oh, it looks like whatever is keeping you here is over. See you next time.”
As Rat finished talking everything was consumed by the nothingness and my thoughts stilled.
My mind flares as I see a flash of light under the black sand. I feel the shift of the sand as a worm appears with the scent of blood and imp essence. “Come to me,” I say through my tendrils as it echoes through the layer. The worm swims through the sand and enters my pool letting me get a better look at it. My tendrils reach out and pull out a metal weapon, a mace, imbued with imp essence. As the tendrils search its body I look through its memories seeing that that cult summoned it and they tried to attack the worm with the mace. They failed so the worm ate the cult leader there and one other but the rest of the members ran away. I see a plated creature also, a Lacerta, was used for an offering but it was even more abused than Rammstein from what I could tell from the worm’s memories. Sadly it seems that the worm lacked my ability to take over a body so it didn’t take any memories from its victims.
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As my tendrils explored its mind it seemed that the worms that had been fairly disconnected from me compared to the pools and the ceiling but it had some ability to gain my memories. In its memories, it had somehow pulled my knowledge of that land for itself slough barely. It took enough to know what was a human and that it had to return once it heard the sound of metal. I don’t feel a connection to the worms that would allow me to transfer memories like that and I can’t just simply pull its memories unless my tendrils explore its mind so whatever it is it's only one way. ‘At least it means that the worms can be used for more than defense if they can pull my memories when they need it.’ I thought to myself as I took a few scales of the Lacerta that the worm took. The worm seems to trying to eat them but it isn’t as easy as flesh so it's taking a while. I store a few of them into the pocket of blood with the fragments for now and leave the rest for the worm to eat.
My tendrils are too small to transfer the scales so I fuse a few of them creating thicker tendrils to help move the scales. I leave the worm to float inside my pool as the liquid that makes it up becomes thicker. That’s different compared to regular worms that simply grow in size until they are too slow to move and become a pool. My gaze leaves the strange worm and moves to the whole of what my tendrils cover. My gaze can reach wherever the ceiling covers as my tendrils have overgrown the ceiling leaving the tips of stalactites and now I can feel the through the sand but it has less range. My tendrils are under the sand that connects all the pools so now I can even the slightest movements of the worms that live between them. I mostly ignore them but I know that I couldn’t feel all of this before and the excess of dark energy that I spread out to feed the maisma is happening on its own now.
I was afraid that if I continued to spread then I would have even more issues with my mind unable to deal with all the stress but now I feel most of it gone. My gaze moves back down to the pool and toward the hole in the stone where all the tendrils meet. Before the tendrils all led back to the pool where I could pull and control them but now they all meet like a big knot. I try to pull it out of the hole but they refuse to listen and remain where it is. I know the brains of other things limited their actions but I never knew mine would be the same. I try to delve into it but my mind slows down and I can feel myself slip into that sleep-like state I was in before.
I don’t let myself slip into that state as I move out toward the ceiling. Some of my tendrils have been repurposed to move energy and blood throughout the ceiling without me even realizing it but the ceiling is growing faster than before. Not as fast as a new pool would let it but enough to notice. I looked down at the miasma seeing it grow thicker in the new area from the wave.
I sent some parts of me out toward the ball to see if it had changed while I was sleeping. I watch it from afar so as not to risk another flare. It has regained its size from before but the twisted pool under it is gone. The fire that circles hasn’t changed and probably won’t grow unless the imps come to feed it. The imps might come soon but I should deal with this damn thing sooner. It could be even stronger if it gets more imp essence or it might help strengthen an imp instead.
A wave of heat flows over the entire layer as I feel imp essence in the air. I pull my pieces back to me as I search for the source of the heat. Far away just inside my sight, I see a pillar of fire larger than the last one and a flood of imps, burning imps, fire imps, and a bunch of different demons. I see the clothed and plated demon among their ranks near the pillar with other demons. I guess they are Geitlan and Lacerta demons as I see a few like them among the ranks of the imps. I can hear yelling and fighting from here as the imps fight amongst each other and the demons do nothing to stop them so at least that will make dealing with the imps easier.
With the blue flames, the imps will be easy to deal with but the demons may be a different story. The flame targets imp essence but I have no idea if these demons look so different from the imps around them but they use their essence to at least weaken them. The imps start to charge me so I send some worms with fragments to deal with them. “Those of blue flame go eat the imps.” Only the weakest of the imps are charging and none have fire so it should be enough for the worms to deal with. They meet outside of the ceiling and I see the worms charge out of the sand under the imps eating several imps at once. “Young hunt the fleeing imps, do not get close to the pillar of flame. The rest return.” I echo out and the smaller worms chase after the imps while they return under my ceiling. I watch the demons but they do nothing but watch the imps get slaughtered and talk amongst themselves. I’m tempted to send a part out to hear what they are saying but the Geitlan demon noticed me last time I got close so I’ll wait.
The smaller worms hunt down the imps using the flames to catch several at the same time leaving only those that ran back to the pillar left of the wave. The small worms return to the black sand to rest. The larger worms can ignore an attack from the imps but the smaller ones will take time to fully heal from the attacks. For the entire wave, I lost 3 small worms for about a third of the force that they brought here. I know for a fact that these imps are just to probe my defenses but I feel better watching their numbers shrink so much. The demons are taking a while to talk as I watch those that ran back get beat until they can’t move anymore. The burning imps are bouncing around and I can see that they want nothing more than to charge me but the fire imps keep them back. Finally, a demon wrapped in flames jumped into the air and screeched and the burning imps charged me. Behind them about half of the fire imps slowly move as the flying demon flies toward me.
“Attack the imps again but stay deep under the sand while that demon is above you. Scatter the burning imps before the fire imps can reach you. Avoid the fire imps as much as you can.” I echo out as I droop down my tendrils from the ceiling and release even more dark energy to thicken the miasma to catch the demon that is quickly coming. I wonder how these demons taste compared to the imps, humans, and Geiltan that I have eaten.