Amalyse sometimes wondered if it was all really worth it. If freedom from her mother and clan was worth the trouble of going to a region of the Elderlands that was infested with an ever-rising number of monsters about to kill everyone. The things one saw on the frontier of desperate battle certainly made one question the life choices that led to such sights.

It was because of these doubts that she was having trouble writing her letter. While most regular pathways out of the Shatterlands were now blocked thanks to the Dreadflood, it hadn’t stopped her from writing the messages. They helped Amalyse clear her head.

A clear head was quite necessary not to end up dead in the chaotic conditions she tended to end up in.

“If I get out of this,” Amalyse quietly said to herself as she finished writing the letter. “I will do my best to at least pay you a visit. And then decide what I want to do next.”

It was a sad state of affairs that she was actually considering going back. Had she already had her fill of life outside her clan? Wasn’t there more to do?

But then, if all it entailed more and more fighting, constant battles against these Abyssals and Aetherians and other threats trying to take over the world… well, she couldn’t be blamed to want a break from it all.

Amalyse headed over to the location where they were all supposed to drop off their messages. The Clanmistress of the Stannerig clan—and apparently, now the head of the Ordorian clan too, after that terrible assassination attempt—had promised to send the letters. Apparently, she could employ a Spirit Beast to fly over the contested lands, though the journey would still be perilous.

That was none of the Amalyse’s concern, however. She had written her missive. She had gotten her thoughts out. It had helped clear her head. The rest was up to others, and she needn’t worry about what she couldn’t affect personally.

“Are you sure you have nothing else to add to it, Clanmaster?” a female voice asked.

Amalyse stopped short. Clanmaster? Oh, right. The big brute who had tried to kill Rieren not that long ago had arrived at the frontier to try to “help”. Well, the only way he could help Amalyse was by getting killed via a murderous pack of bloodthirsty Armistice Enforcers.

Though, considering how the politics of things tended to work, that might not be far from the truth. For all that he might have had some support in his loss of power, the fact that he had gone so far as to let his own daughter be murdered on his watch had troubled a lot of his own people.

Despite the vacancy left by the Clanmistress after she had decided to take up the Ordorian clan’s affairs, he hadn’t been able to take her place. Instead, he was here. Annoying Amalyse.

And supposedly helping against the monsters, but really, who cared about that?

“Yes,” former Clanmaster Yonvig said. “Well, maybe no. Hold on.”

He opened his letter, then furiously began reading through it. After a moment, he asked for a quill and some ink to add some seemingly important things before he sent the letter off. All it did was make Amalyse grind her teeth. Really, she had to spend time fighting on the same side as someone she wouldn’t mind killing herself? What was the world coming to?

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. The contrite tone took Amalyse a little by surprise.

“That is alright, Clanmaster,” the attendant said. “We—”

“I wasn’t talking to you. Just muttering as I write.”

He hesitated for a moment, but then began scratching out more words with a sigh. Amalyse stared at him. Had he… just apologized to whoever he was writing the letter to?

“I’m sorry,” Yonvig said. “I add these last lines for they might be the last I ever do. I should have placed my faith in you, dear daughter. I should never have lost myself to a point where I thought the clan would be better off even if it meant that you had to…”

He swallowed. “I don’t know what came over me. I don’t excuse it, but it’s as if a cloud has lifted now that I am out here away from it all.” He paused again. “I don’t ask for your forgiveness. I won’t sully this message with reminders of love. But please, dear daughter, believe me when I say that you are the most precious thing to not just me and my world, but to the clan as well.”

The attendant was silently bawling her eyes out as he muttered his message. Amalyse rolled her eyes. A part of her wondered what in the Abyss he had written in the first place that he still had to add all that?

But then, the rest of her had taken in his specific words. Not only was he contrite, he had mentioned something about a cloud, as though he hadn’t been himself when he had committed his crime. As though he was being controlled when he had allowed his own daughter to come to fatal harm.

Amalyse was rooted to her spot as she watched the large man walk away. What the former Clanmaster had mentioned sounded a little too crazy for her, but she filed the information away anyway. Something to look into, perhaps.

___

Elder Olg wasn’t certain he ought to be an Elder any longer, so to speak. He had ceased being a productive member of Lionshard Sect so long ago, it almost felt like a dream. Abyss, it was enough time since he had last been in the Mortal Realm that it felt no more real than his time at the Sect.

Abyss was correct, though. The wasteland of white, bonelike sand everywhere, with the little glimmering dots that each held a pocket dimension, was all he had known for…

For ages. He was sure of it. Time was difficult to tell in the Abyss, but Olg was certain that he had been here a little too long. He felt the urge to complain about his age, but if he was being honest, he had never felt this young in decades.

Strange how losing his body was what had returned the feeling of youth.

It wasn’t difficult to do anything in the Abyss, at least. He could lay claim to that within reason. Foxwolf’s Beast Core was not only keeping him alive, it was also granting him an innate supply of powerful Essence. While he couldn’t perform techniques or even use his Ashflame, he had access to some neat little utilities when Foxwolf’s Aspect was combined with Abyss Aspect.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

One such was teleportation. All Olg had to do was focus on a location that was within twenty-three paces of him, and he could find himself there in the blink of an eye after a spike of Essence from the Beast Core.

Why twenty-three paces? He had no clue. Techniques could be strengthened over time with regular use and practice. This, however, stayed constant in its efficacy. Quite strange.

Nevertheless, Olg was just happy enough that he could get himself to the tiny orbs floating all over the Abyss. Thanks to that, he had been able to get in and out of the Abyss at will.

The problem was that every single Abyss Rent orb he could reach always, always led to a monster.

Just as it did this time.

Olg took a deep breath, though he wasn’t sure where it was going since he didn’t have lungs anymore. “Another attempt, then.” This was at least his thirtieth. He had lost count after fifteen. “It isn’t as if I have anything better to do as a disembodied head.”

With that flimsy motivation, Olg teleported himself to the nearest glimmering orb. He had positioned himself just past it so that the floating Abyss Rent naturally came closer and touched him. As he was channeling corrupted Essence, it was a simple matter of establishing physical contact to be transported from the Abyss to wherever the little rent would take him.

Unfortunately, his effort at getting out of the accursed Abyss ended with the exact same result as it had done every time he had tried it. Olg didn’t come out in the Mortal Realm. Not exactly.

He exited the Abyss within an Abyssal.

The sensation of suddenly being in a new body would have been disorienting had he not done it dozens of times already. This one felt like a Shadeborn. Hulking mass, lumbering gait, and a strange growling near the midsection that sounded too external to simply be a hungry stomach’s moans. In other words, his midsection was alive.

In a scholarly sense, it had been a curious sensation to become one with a monster in such a way. Olg still retained possession of his full faculties. His thoughts were his own and he didn’t suffer strange, bestial urges of destruction and pillaging. Then again, he had never been able to control the bodies he ended up in. Olg was only riding them like a parasitic passenger.

The worse thing was that most of the monsters were in the enormous battle raging across the Shatterlands. Olg supposed it was his presence in the region that likely dictated which monsters he ended up within.

“This is getting very annoying,” Olg said. He didn’t hear the words so much as feel them travelling through his new body and into his ears. This monster couldn’t speak in his tongue. “Stop trying to kill yourself, you big dolt!”

Of course, as ever, the Abyssal didn’t listen. Every time Olg found himself inside a monster, he had inevitably been forced to exit the creature after some time. They always headed into battle, where they were eventually eviscerated by a Shatterlands’ defender. That nobody seemed to react differently to the monsters indicated that there was no sign of his presence.

A shame that his pick of Abyssals was so limited, but at least he wasn’t forced to hide.

This time, things were a little different. While the monster was no doubt heading towards certain slaughter, which necessitated that Olg would need to get out of it soon enough, there was a different sight attracting him for now.

A battle was already raging in the near distance, one that had caught his attention because of the attached implications.

At first, it looked as though two powerful cultivators had decided to battle against each other for some unfathomable reason. Olg was tempted to curse the folly of cultivators in general. Leave it to them to fight amongst each other while their homeland was being ravaged by monsters.

But it turned out one of the cultivators wasn’t normal. The slighter and younger of the two men in the distance had a strange presence about him. It was only when the Shadeborn brought Olg closer to the battlefield that he realized what was wrong.

One of the cultivators was channeling corrupted Essence.

In fact, as Olg looked on with widening eyes, that cultivator didn’t seem to be in possession of himself. He was acting irrationally, almost bestially, like all the monsters around them.

Olg was taken by the battle for a long while. The Abyssal cultivator was floating several dozen paces high in the air, a summoned storm of lightning thundering around him. His bolts were pure black, though some were wreathed in gold. The power around him was so volatile, the air itself sparkled with electric arcs and the Essence was concentrated into the visible spectrum.

Corrupted Essence had left the same dark marks on his skin that decorated Olg’s face, though his were more intense. Even from this distance, Olg had no trouble seeing how his hair was flowed like dark smoke and his eyes were entirely black.

“That doesn’t look good, does it?” Olg said.

His Abyssal ride only replied by continuing to head towards danger.

The other cultivator was an old, large man who was using snakes. Snakes… especially those white-gold variety with ruby red eyes had to mean that he was from the Stannerig clan. The sheer power indicated someone at the Ascendant realm at least. Olg’s expression soured. The only one who could qualify that description was the Clanmaster.

In other words, this Abyssal-possessed cultivator had to be a tremendous threat.

Their battle was so ferocious, everyone else, both monsters and humans, was busier escaping the vicinity of their destruction than fighting their enemies. No one wanted to get caught in that area.

Unfortunately, it seemed the Clanmaster was failing to make any proper headway against his opponent. The Dreadflood wasn’t helping matters. He had summoned a thousand snakes, but they were being eaten away by the dark tide of liquid corrupted Essence on the ground.

The bigger serpents were trying to attack the Abyssal cultivator directly, but his lightning was fending them off. Several of the giant serpents were trying to spew streams of different Aspects at him too. Some threw green fire, another flung a starry shower of flickering green energy, and one had even gushed out a noxious cloud.

None of them worked on the Abyssal cultivator. He either evaded all the attacks or had his lighting or concentrated Abyss-Aspected Essence block it off.

The fight was growing so intense, the rest of the world seemed to pause to gawk, just like Olg. He could actually feel his breath coming to pause in anticipation. This was a landmark moment of the war. Whoever was victorious here would swing momentum to their sides’ favour to an overwhelming degree. And it was all up to those two men trying to eviscerate each other.

And then the old man was struck down.

In the furious flash of powers, with dark lightning flying against a storm of serpents, the Abyssal cultivator managed to squeeze a bolt shooting through the press. One that struck the old man dead in the centre of his chest.

That caused a great commotion. The wider battle surrounding the titanic clash between the powerful cultivators had paused, but it hadn’t strayed too far from the cultivators. The Shatterlands’ defenders, who had been bent on defeating the hordes of Abyssals trying to take over their homeland, had held their collective breath at the central fight.

Enough of them had been near it that, as soon as the old Clanmaster fell, they had been able to recover his body before the dark tide could get to him. Olg felt a wave of relief wash over him. That was good. After what that corruption had done to the other powerful cultivator, losing the snake-man to it would have been a terrible blow.

That also signalled the restart of the terrific fray. Things turned messy. Just as Olg had suspected, the Abyssal cultivator’s victory had greatly emboldened the monsters under him. Even before the dark tide of the Abyss-Aspected Essence could reach the defenders, the monsters were already tearing through them.

The defenders were forced into a hasty retreat. Olg felt the urge to grimace, though his monstrous body wasn’t really capable of it. The Shatterlands was losing.

Olg’s attention was pulled back to the main battle as his Shadeborn entered the fray. Blood was flying every which way, bodies dying everywhere. He would be forced to leave soon enough, lest he wished to die along with his Abyssal body.

But he couldn’t keep jumping from monster to monster like this forever. Olg needed a proper host. Someone he could use to actually do something here.

The monster’s furious fighting positioned it such that Olg was staring at the Abyssal cultivator for a moment. He had to shutter the incredible urge to bite his lip.

There. He had just found his real target.