In the oppressive darkness of the ancient catacombs beneath the demon-infested fortress, Ori's breath echoed against the cold, damp walls. His dark skin was slick with sweat as he suppressed his burning aura to blend into the shadows. Even his Vision of the Progenitor adapted to this subdued state, no longer emitting any glow as his eyes absorbed every flicker of light, his muscles tensing at every sound. It was then he felt her presence.
‘Lysara reports fallback to position two complete,’ she communicated.
‘Understood,’ Ori replied before a thought occurred to him. "Lysara, can you sense them? Are things moving into or through your flux?’
‘I... Yes, Ori,’ she confirmed.
"What do you see?" Ori asked hastily before a wave of nausea made him stumble, his vision clouding over with a dark, indistinct haze. Within this haze, shapes moved, and although it took him too long to reorient himself to realise he was at the centre, a new plan began to form as he crouched and focused.
Twenty yards away, behind walls and stone pillars, three Awakened demons and an Imp ambled along with two of the surviving hounds. Ori could now sense their presence as fuzzy disturbances in Lysara’s flux. Despite the distance and lack of direct sight, an Arcane Hand, aspected with the same void as the Soul Bound Blade it wielded, materialised behind the Imp's neck.
Ori felt the moment the blade sank into flesh, encountering brief resistance as it sliced through muscle and bone before the screams reached him. Unable to see his handiwork directly, Ori relied on the ghostly apparitions; his blade sometimes caught or was deflected by something hard and unyielding, before subsequent thrusts found flesh. The evidence of his bloody work was relayed by distant screams and the diminishing movements of the apparitions as they succumbed to blood loss.
With his mind divided, Ori maintained both his normal vision and this new Flux sense. He moved stealthily, intent on slaughtering as many demons in the dark passages as possible before attempting to breach the celestial prisons.
‘Freya?’ Ori called out again, her presence now elusive since the fulfilment of their original contract. He tried to dismiss the doubt, the lingering fear that she had completed her evolution and used his presence here as a distraction to escape, travelling incorporeally through rock and mountain to safety. He pushed aside the pain of abandonment this thought caused, deciding, 'So what if she escaped? Good for her,' and sincerely wishing Freya well. Meanwhile, with each kill, with every addition to the legends of his unique accolades, Ori felt his soul expand, the call of the Library of Fates growing harder to ignore. He hadn't quite reached the threshold, but with another Nascent or Greater infernal slain in the dark, Ori was closer to awakening than ever before. With Crucible’s words of warning fresh in his mind, Ori left the calls to awaken unanswered, thinking perhaps with enough Peritia, he too might evolve.
Pausing briefly to gather his bearings, Ori communicated with Lysara in a hoarse whisper that barely stirred the stale air. "Move back to position one, then report activity."
"Copy," came the reply.
The ground beneath him seemed to lose its vitality and potential as Lysara, ever obedient, sank deep into the earth, her presence a subtle disturbance at the edge of perception.
Ori pressed his back against the cool, rough stone, the ancient texture imprinting on his skin as he braced for the inevitable confrontation. The clumsy steps of an approaching figure caught his attention.
"Help!? Somebody, anybody, help me."
Ori jerked up, his mind racing as a bloodied and bedraggled human woman stumbled past a pillar. He was almost certain the figure before him was the succubus, and his overriding desire was to reduce her to ash. However, a small grain of doubt made him hesitate.
"Stop, don't move any closer," Ori commanded, his voice hoarse but stern as he raised Seraphine's Beacon, ready to fire. The Vision of the Progenitor flared, revealing the creature for what it truly was, its subtle magics now exposed. Instead of the young, distraught, average-looking, skinny woman with dark brown hair and soot-stained pale skin, there stood a deviously attractive demon. She still wore the same blood-stained human clothing and retained the same general body shape and colour, yet membranous wings and a slender, sinuous fleshy tail swished lazily behind her. She was the enemy, the one Freya had warned him about, and yet...
"I... I see. So you're the one they've all been talking about. Melisandre's pet, loose and running amok in the lower reaches..." Her voice purred. Aware that her ruse was discovered, her tactics shifted as she exchanged information, or at least glimpses of it, for time. Ori paused to consider recalling Lysara for backup, while his Split Mind pondered how this demon could have arrived undetected. She took a step forward, her smooth words rolling off her tongue like promises woven into silk. "Yes, why fight me? I know I'm not much compared to her, so I won’t even try to compete. Just... let me tend to your needs while the busy little greater succubus plays with her other toys, leaving you all so lonesome."
Her hand touched him, and shockingly, part of Ori's mind even noted the skips in time between her words; her languid touch was a cool stirring on skin that had felt nothing but hot, sulfurous air and strife since his return. Ori shifted; he could move, his mind was clear, yet he continued to find excuses for why he couldn’t kill this creature. Did he want information? Perhaps he could turn her to his side? If not, perhaps a prisoner or guide wouldn’t be a bad idea. As his mind whirled with thoughts, her hand reached the band tied around his bicep, the piece of fabric that bound the Dreamwalkers’ Ward to his skin.
"Such a pesky enchantment, though I see it's on its last legs. Let me remove this from you and soothe the irritated skin beneath those tender muscles," she cooed, as her razer sharp claws ripped through the mundane fabric as easily as a scalpel.
"That’s... that’s mine..." Ori said weakly as she stripped the brooch from his forearm and held it briefly, her smirk turning cruel. She curled her clawed hands around the artefact and squeezed. Ori convulsed as the world turned white with pain.
She giggled in delight as Ori groaned, his mind now foggy, his body suddenly unresponsive. Ori felt her magic curl around his consciousness, a velvet caress that threatened to suffocate his senses. "Haha, you soul-bound that little trinket? Stupid pest," the succubus mocked as she kicked his torso with enough force to send his body spinning through the air. "Is that how you, a mortal, have managed to get so far? Binding your soul with elementals... Oh yes, I know of that one, I will deal with it shortly." Ori gasped for air as the words sank in.
Deep within his soul, a trait sensed the near destruction of an artefact bond and the peril of another, stirring the Bondweaver.
Ori stood under his own power as his domain flared. As the trait doubled his mental and spiritual characteristics, the effects of the Mesmer broke, and his Greater Channeling Wand of Light healed broken ribs and cleared his mind. Greater Stun channelled through his domain, suspended the Nascent succubus mid-stride, her eyes wide with confusion and horror. As her skin blistered and turned to glowing ash, Ori released his domain and crouched to retrieve his broken Ward.
"For fuck's sake!" he cursed at himself. After allowing just a few extra breaths for self-reproach, he ran.
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‘Lysara, what’s your status,’ Ori said as he reached position one, the site of the initial strike that had begun the massacre.
‘They've retreated or adapted and managed to shield their presence from me,’ she replied.
‘Alright, I’m heading towards the prison, cover me.’
‘Copy,’
The ground seemed to swell with charge as Lysara rose close to the surface. Bits of smouldering wreckage lay amongst the sodden bodies and mud as Ori cautiously made his way towards his goal. Aware he no longer had the protection of the Dreamwalker’s Ward, he clutched the solid presence of Seraphine’s Beacon, his muscles primed to react to any sight or sound picked up by his Quickened Perception.
A loud crack of Channel Lightning blew apart the door after Ori had inscribed a counter-enchantment to break down the ward and strengthening magic. Once more, he cautiously entered a narrow cavern. His instincts screamed that something was wrong, but with no real evidence to confirm this nor an alternative route to take, Ori continued deeper into the passage until a massive form filled the corridor. Emerging from the shadows like a mountain of smoke, a moving wall of malice and muscle caused vibrations from its unhurried steps to reverberate through the corridor.
"It seems like that wretched cunt did at least one thing right," a demonic presence spoke into the space between them, its voice gravelly and thick. "Though I suppose I shouldn’t be too hard on my minions as the fault, for all of this, lies on my hide."
Ori remained silent, recalling the blurry images of his first moments in the prison. Almost nine feet tall, the jacked, monstrous demon had wide sweeping horns that seemed to curl around its shoulder. Ori remembered the sweaty stink of its presence, the crushing impossible grip of its fist, how its bare skin and muscle seemed more a defence than steel plate. Its face, blackened with unwashed grease, appeared to perpetually sneer despite its seemingly agreeable tone.
"They call me Korrent the Tormentor, the warden of the lower reaches. You have played in my kingdom long enough, little pest. Now it is time for you to be put back in your cage. Come willingly, or die."
Ori's grip on his wand tightened as he silently communicated with his elemental, sharing with it the nature of his plan and recently gleaned insights on their mutual affinity.
'Attack,' he instructed just before Korrent moved.
Lysara shot out of the ground behind Korrent and blasted him with an eye-watering beam using their affinities authority to conjure a massive pulse of anti-protons. It was less a controlled channelling and more like a focused release ten times as intense as the one Ori had managed against the troll. For a brief, brilliant, searing moment, the Sovereign ranking demon seemed to glow before losing a chunk of his torso, an unattached limb falling to the ground as the meaty shoulder that had once connected it to his chest turned into glowing ash. Ori’s eyes watered before a clap of thunder blew out his eardrums and caused the floor to rattle, the cave itself groaning under the violent shockwave.
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Unfortunately, Ori was wholly unprepared for what happened next. A wave of Balefire roared from the injured demon, turning the side of the corridor Lysara had occupied into a furnace, and Ori’s connection to his familiar snapped. Stunned by her instant demise and the backlash of losing a bond, Ori didn’t so much see but felt the impact of the demon’s fist like a hammer against an anvil, his body hurled against the wall with brutal force. Lesser Restoration cleared his pain, but the force and suddenness of the assault had all but shattered his mind. Arcane Hands reacted before his consciousness could process, deflecting another blow that would have turned his head to paste. An enchanted sword appeared behind the demon and stabbed, its void enchanted point sinking just a few inches into muscle before the demon reached around with its grip, its intentions clear. Ori dismissed it from reality, unwilling to see another enchantment destroyed today. Instead, he Channel Lightning, the blast blocked by the metallic, heavily enchanted greaves worn by the demon. It lunged at him, too fast for conscious thought to follow, Ori’s Arcane Hands working together, four against one, though only able to deflect and push against its meaty hammer of a fist, as to Ori’s horror, the demon seemed to rapidly regenerate the missing chunk of torso in real-time.
The demon's eyes glowed red, and an amber light seemed to rise from its mouth. Before Ori could react, Balefire scorched him, burning away his jeans and baking his skin. Unable to cast spells on his own due to the unbelievable pain, Ori pleaded with his Greater Channeling Wand of Light, which acquiesced, using his mana to instantly rejuvenate him just in time for him to deflect a blow that sent him spinning to the opposite wall of the corridor.
Ori ran.
Suddenly, he was lifted off his feet by a kick that broke his pelvis. Casting Lesser Restoration just in time under his own awareness allowed him to get back on his feet, but the situation reminded Ori that he was up against something stronger and much faster than he was. With that realisation, Ori ignited his domain; his Aura, Vision, and Reach of the Progenitor snapped into place as his Bondweaver and Duelist legends waited with bated breath.
His astral affinity swallowed the region within his domain.
Korrent simply looked around, unperturbed by the ceilings opening up into an auroral sky as Ori’s form became the avatar of the Astral Adept, his supreme presence weighing down upon all around them. Instead of forging his intent into a weapon or using his lightning or light affinities to attack, Ori simply willed Korrent out of existence as if he were banishing a bad dream.
The demon grunted as if punched, but for too long a moment, it simply stood there unmoving, until the wound on its chest ceased to regenerate, and then, inexplicably, began to regenerate in reverse. It screamed as it was slowly unmade, its outer extremities—its toes and feet, its skin—flaking away under the edict of his dream, only the demon's presence and will, that of a Sovereign ranking being thousands of times his strength, kept it in existence.
And then Ori's domain collapsed. The backlash sent Ori crashing to the ground. From his godlike perch above all existence, he collapsed, the frail mortal playing with powers far beyond his abilities. Recovering first, Ori stood to his feet and blasted the still-recovering demon with Channel Lightning straight in the face. Even now, a bloody, skinless mountain of flesh, it knew to block his strike. Ori then stabbed viciously with his soul-bound sword, the enchanted blade doing less damage than the monster regenerated.
"For fuck's sake, why won't you die!?" Ori yelled as he continued to stab and thrust at the being, who even now, righted itself as if beginning to stand.
It laughed as if this were all a joke. "I do admit, you are full of surprises. Yes... I should keep a keener eye on Melisandre in future. She certainly has an eye for talent; a mortal with a domain, what a preposterous sight."
Ori turned and ran while the demon collected itself.
He had made it from the bowl up into the catacombs, his mind spinning with desperate ideas and contingencies. Meanwhile, Lesser Regeneration healed what were life-changing burns across the majority of his body, leaving fresh, pink, tender skin, free of blemishes and scars.
He had reached the entrance on the other side of the cave, closer to the armoury where he intended to make a last stand when he was punted dozens of yards towards the cliff. Lesser Regeneration wasn't enough to remove his disorientation and surprise.
Korrent strode towards him with menacing, unhurried steps. Though the demon's chest heaved, Ori could not tell if it was from exertion or exasperation. Ori clenched his fists as he withdrew the broken dagger from his void storage ring, while in the other hand, Seraphine’s Beacon shone with a soft, cold glow.
He had lost his ward, the first high enchantment he had successfully crafted; he had lost his most recent familiar, and the pain of Lysara’s sudden demise should have broken him, both in mind and spirit. Yet again, he faced another insurmountable foe as a mortal. He had wounded it, hurt it, yet it seemed not to take him seriously, as if his actions were the last, futile tantrums of a child.
And so, Ori would use that hubris. He would fashion it into a weapon, a blade forged from the fires of loss and lessons learned from his trials, tempered by the promises he had yet to keep, and sharpened by the first truth that only now, he was beginning to accept.
Long had he wondered how another from his world would have done in his place. Would they have survived, seen better paths, taken more fruitful opportunities? Would those Olympians who had given their entire life in pursuit of a single goal, or those selected by nations as their elite warriors, have done better than him?
Ori now knew the answer: it didn’t matter. He was no longer the same lost soul out of step with the world around him; he had fashioned himself into more and would continue to do so. He would survive; he would progress towards a freedom of his own design.
He groaned as he cast Echo Forging, using it to reshape his soul.
"Little pest, I can see the cracks in your mind your spells cannot heal," Korrent the Tormentor said, its form suddenly all Ori could see, its vice-like grip crushing his jaw just as it had done weeks ago when it had ripped out and replaced his tooth. Its newly regenerated fist curled into a ball and hammered into Ori’s chest, turning his insides to mush. Were it not for his pleas to his Light Magic wand, still strapped across his ankle, Ori might have lost focus as Lesser Echo Print completed and he quickened a separate re-enchantment.
He could feel his body sway over the edge of the cliff; he could feel the heat from the lava lake hundreds of feet below on his skin despite the distance, the stink of the demon’s breath as it grunted with disdain and irritation while Arcane Hands sought to punch, slap, rip, and gouge ineffectually at the monster's skin and orifices.
That was all misdirection as the invisible blade bound to the broken dagger was taken by one of his four Arcane Hands. He aided his attempts to misdirect and confuse, by summoning Flenser and casting Channel Lightning at point-blank range.
"Even now, at the end, you persist, no doubt believing yourself to be the strongest, most gifted of your kind. But you are still an insect. A pest I no longer—"
Ori had learned many lessons from the battle against Eltitus and Sera’s sacrifice. He had spent countless moments reliving the ways they could have done it differently, done it better, how he’d have changed things with the knowledge he now knew; a level of expertise and knowledge on souls likely as significant, if of a different focus, to Lady Seraphine’s own.
For example, he’d often wondered that if a soul could damage another, if soulcrafting could be done on the unwilling, there had to be a cost. Lady Seraphine of House Serillian knew this when she’d detonated her soul inside Eltitus’s skull; Eltitus had known this when he’d enveloped Lord Bartholomew’s Grace with his pseudo domain.
Peritia.
While the cost was total in Seraphine's case, it didn't have to be. Instead of a bludgeon, why not use a scalpel? Instead of detonating his soul, why not fashion it into a blade?
Ori reached for his tattered and burnt belt and grabbed the force wands as his Arcane Hands plunged two blades into Korrent the Tormentor. One blade, with a void enchantment, stabbed just an inch into his back. It arrived just a fraction before a second blade, a far more sinister, invisible blade made from the sharpened edges of Ori's soul, carved into the demon's heart.
It was a blade that left no visible wound, but as it sank into the demon's chest, all of Ori’s experiences using his soul came into play—from his original soulcrafting, to his carving away of the unwanted influences of Eltitus's ego, to the refinement of his own skills and traits, which were chiselled away by the howling void. These experiences culminated in the reshaping of his pseudo-soul domain, a domain he had first witnessed used by Eltitus against the Grace Knight. Now, he reshaped his own by using the skill Echo Forging, his Vision of the Progenitor, and his intent even as the demon's grip crunched his face.
Flenser, his soul-bound weapon, now sank deeper until its tip pierced through the opposite side of the demon's chest.
He had started with over ten times the Peritia he felt he’d needed to awaken, and now it drained away from Ori at a prodigious rate while he carved out all of the demon's talents. Its inherent toughness, its supernatural speed and associated movement skills, its natural regeneration, and its ability to breathe balefire. These and more were sliced from its soul and removed from its page of fate. Ori deconstructed the demon's hard-won abilities and natural advantages one by one even as he choked on the blood from a crushed jaw. The presence of Korrent's spasming fist prevented him from healing, despite his growing need to do so with every untaken breath.
He could see the demon glare back at him in rage. There was also newfound consternation and a hint of fear deep within those eyes—eyes that had seen an insect break a giant, eyes that now had new horrors to fear. Ori dismissed the soul-blade as his available Peritia neared zero. The edges of his vision dimmed even as Arcane Hands sent the broken dagger swirling around the once Sovereign-ranked demon, slicing skin and tendons to ribbons. Another arcane hand withdrew Flenser before plunging it back into the demon's shoulder, disabling the demon's offhand just before it could rip Ori in half. The demon grunted again, its subdued wince the only reaction to its mortal wounds. Without the soul blade carving away at its talents, the demon regained a semblance of control and prepared to toss Ori off the cliff.
Feeling the shift, Ori grasped for his force wands. He felt the familiar cold metal, a sliver of hope in his desperate grasp. With a pulse of intent, he triggered a simple re-enchantment that transferred the wand's output into its reciprocal on the ground. The ground beneath them trembled, then shattered, a network of cracks racing across the floor to the edge of the catacomb ledge.
The entire ledge transformed into an avalanche of tumbling rocks as both Ori and the demon lost their footing and were caught in a fatal fall. Despite this, Korrent’s grip remained iron-strong, prompting Ori to fire another point-blank blast at the arm holding him after resummoning Seraphine's Beacon. His prismatic lightning struck, reducing the elbow to dust, and suddenly his jaw was free. Lesser Restoration was already healing him as Ori attempted to use Arcane Hands to stabilise his fall. At that critical moment, however, he realised he couldn’t just use the same hands to lift himself or float since they were anchored to his physical location, which was swiftly sliding towards its doom. Just moments before reaching the sheer edge and plummeting towards the lava lake below, the grip of Arcane Hands that weren’t his own, intervened.
The rush of the plummeting scree below him was a roar in Ori's ears, time stretching into eternity as he gently descended the cliff.
“Took you long enough,” Ori laughed, mirroring Freya's tone from before they raided the armoury.
“Hmph, I think you need to eat less, Ori,” spoke a familiar voice in an unfamiliar way.
"Freya, by the looks of things, it's you who's put on some weight," Ori said as he caught sight of her stunning figure. She stood just over a foot and a half tall, with the proportions of a woman four times her size. Her delicate, doll-like frame and pale skin reflected the light from her crystalline, prismatic butterfly-like wings. A faint glow, which seemed to intensify around her dark eyes and navy blue, pixie-cut hair, surrounded her. She stood on a ledge below him, hands on hips expectantly, as her Arcane Hands guided him towards her.
“Very unwise words to say to the kind and amazing Pixie currently levitating you gently to the ground shouldn't you think?”
Ori simply shook his head in acknowledgement and laughed. Even the growing heat from the molten lava below and his bone weariness were not enough to dampen his grin of victory, relief, and joy.