Ren waited, watching the door like a hawk eyeing its meal. He was glad to be alone again. His eyes flickered to the fallen Duskflame warriors littering the room’s floor. Well, mostly alone—unless you counted the hibernating Xerxes. His lips twitched in silent mirth.
Straining the impressive audio receptors of his ears, he heard the retreating steps of the noblemen growing fainter with each passing second. Minutes later, after he was satisfied that they were gone for good, Ren nodded to himself and stood, surveying the mess he had made in the Alcove.
Between the noble’s clothes strewn about, and the stacked rows of glowing parchment, there was little room to maneuver in the treasure alcove. His eyes eventually rested on the [Eternal Bazaar] sitting on the altar. “I wonder…”
He reached over, ignoring the unpleasant tingling on his skin as his hands passed through the warping haze surrounding the artifact. It felt just as cool to the touch as it did earlier, but this time he had more time to observe it from different angles. Finding no changes, he tentatively sent a strand of his essence into the orb.
“Aghhh!!!” He grunted as blinding pain struck him. What the hell was that?
Rubbing his numbed hands, Ren frowned at the [Eternal Bazaar]. He’d been lucky that he hadn’t picked it up, but had only been interacting with it as it rested on the altar. He was sure that he would’ve dropped it, and who knew how this strange orb would’ve reacted to the impact. As it stood, he had also nicked his palm on one of the sharp edges of the runes that covered its surface.
Was it just his eyes playing tricks on him, or did the dull metal orb always have a tinge of red in its coloring? Maybe the indirect light from the magical torches in the vault room coupled with the soft glow from the stacked parchments were reflecting oddly on the artifact.
What to do now? The artifact obviously did not want his essence. But what else? A thoughtful look crossed Ren’s face as he examined the white scar on his palm while his nanites closed up the nick. The corner of his lips twitched in amusement as he scrutinized the orb, which had now lost the temporary red tinge and had instead returned to its original dull-metal appearance.
“Do you want blood?” he asked, head tilted. “My blood? I’m sorry but you might not like the flavor. It’s synthetic, you see.”
Shrugging, he gently placed his palm back on the [Eternal Bazaar], applying pressure as he rubbed it across the engraved metal surface. He sucked in a breath as he felt his palm get sliced open once again, but this time he left his hands where it lay.
A second went by, then five. Just as he was wondering if anything would happen, a loud thump resounded throughout his body. Dazed, he noticed ripples spreading across the Demigod’s blood, floating next to his Cultivator’s core. Within the pool of blood, the finger had all but dissolved into the sanguine pool which pulsed, as he watched wave after wave ripple its surface. Only the tip of the finger remained.
Ren cursed vehemently as the motion in the Demigod’s blood caused by his contact with the [Eternal Bazaar], allowed him to see the steady stream of vitality Xerxes had been drawing into itself.
The crazy voice had tricked him!
Before it had gone into hibernation, it’d instructed Ren to leave the finger alone and only absorb the passive amounts released until it reawakened. The psychotic Xerxes had conveniently failed to mention that it would continue to absorb the energy from the finger even in its hibernation. And Ren had been following its instruction, letting Xerxes grow stronger without his knowledge.
Well, Ren resolved to correct that mistake immediately. With prejudice. He opened himself up, sending mental feelers toward the Demigod’s blood. Nothing happened. It felt like trying to suck tar through a straw. Despite its liquid appearance, the Demigod’s blood resisted his attempts to take on more of its vitality.
All the while the red tide of the agitated blood, smashed against the black line of Xerxes’ soul that surrounded it. Undeterred by the resistance, Ren strained, trying to absorb a portion of the semi-divine blood. Minutes later, still feeling just as far away as when he started, he decided to try another approach.
He shifted his gaze to the steady stream that Xerxes was absorbing from the blood. Somehow, the crazy personality had left a funnel in the entrapment it’d created around the Demigod’s finger and blood. Without its input, some sanguine vitality flowed down the funnel towards Xerxes. And therein lay Ren’s new idea!
He had no hope of manipulating the flow of the vibrant blood. However, the one thing Ren had ample experience doing was pushing and segregating Xerxes’ control within his body. By supplanting himself in the key position where Xerxes was absorbing the Demigod’s blood and vitality, he figured he’d just be taking over what was rightfully his.
Grinning at the amount of curses he’d receive once the crazy voice awoke, Ren made a small breach into the solid black film of its soul, right in front of the funnel.
His smile froze on his face as hot tendrils tore into him. From his body, to his mind, his physical nuclear core to his Cultivators core. Every part of him was suffused. His body locked up, all the synapses and circuits overloaded and he convulsed in place. Ren panicked as blindness seized him.
His world was reduced to the mind-rending pain of the Demigod’s blood seeping through every inch of him. His mouth tasted of blood, his nostrils filled with the coppery stench of blood. His mind was overloaded with all the contrasting things he was feeling.
He felt the scalding tendrils reach into his memory databases and suffuse them with the madness the rest of his body was feeling. Another large thump resounded through him, frying some components of his audio receptors. His ears were left with the scraping high-pitched whine of tinnitus. Suddenly, his mind flooded with images.
He saw a great big serpent, hundred of meters long, biting a horned beast and injecting green venom into its veins. He watched as its venom bloated the withered corpse, leaving it unsuitable for any other scavenger to indulge.
THUMP! Ancient war-drums beat in time with the heartbeat that resounded through Ren.
He watched the carcass being overrun with maggots. They crawled in and out of its skin, maturing into flies that lay more eggs in turn, repeating the cycle.
THUMP! His convulsing body shook, foam leaking from his mouth as the visions continued.
He witnessed a great fire burning through the field in which the corpse rotted, laying waste to the verdant life and leaving nothing but ashes. The fire burned so hot that it destroyed the fertile top soil as well, leaving a desolate plane that would not produce anything for years to come.
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THUMP!
He watched as the world housing the burned field was destroyed when its local star died. He watched the star's core contract under the weight of its own gravity, leading to a metamorphosis that engulfed the world in the fiery brilliance of its dying star. The cataclysmic explosion released its stellar tantrum, sending shockwaves of elemental fusion and particles streaming into the cosmic abyss.
ENTROPY.
Throughout the visions, it felt like the Cosmos was trying to impact the essence of Entropy to Ren. It was the inexorable force that whispered secrets to decay, that pulled the vibrant tapestry of creation into an ever-advancing descent towards chaos. With each passing moment, it gnawed at the foundations of order, unraveling the carefully woven threads that bound reality together. In its wake, structures crumbled, energy dispersed, and intricacies dissolved into the void. It was the silent conductor of the universe's gradual unraveling, leaving behind a trail of disarray as it moved, a symphony of dissolution echoing through the very fabric of existence.
THUMP!
Ren watched as two Titans clashed, their — G&)@!!*#>?
His mind went blank, just as reality shattered like a mirror.
--------
Father is dead! It shouldn’t be possible, but yet it was. I knew it the moment it happened, barely seconds ago as an overwhelming pit of despair seized me, causing my ears to flap and my trunk to curl in agitation. The connection to the progenitor that had been with me since birth, was no more!
Briefly, I wondered why I felt so lost. He wasn't the most present figure. I had only met him once my whole life, and there had been thousands of us waiting on his command! Neither was he prone to displays of affection. Yet here I stood, my twin hearts heavy with grief and confusion.
“Briluk, is something the matter?”
Curses! Reflexively I shielded my thoughts from my beloved. Darluk could be so perceptive at the worst of times, even when she was hundreds of Li away. And there was no time worse than right now when our entire realm was moments from doom. I snaked my trunk forward, tasting the entropy in the air, and the results were worse than I expected—we all had less than a hundred stampeding charges, before the Divine Retribution that claimed father, came for us all.
My gut roiled at the unnaturalness of shielding my mind from Darluk, but I had a duty to uphold. Even as I turned back around, heading for the hallway beyond the giant Starsteel doors with its giant wheel-lock mechanism, I wanted nothing more than to tell her how much I loved her; how much I loved our son and our family. But I couldn’t. Not if I wanted to fulfil fathers divine command.
I had barely stepped over the threshold of the Starsteel doors when cries of pain flashed through the reception room behind me as the leading edge of a Retribution wave swept through, melting all present into so much sludge. I tensed as the wave hit me, but father’s blood was strong. Unlike the rest of the Joonga in the Svool Treasure House, I was a direct descendant of a True Deity.
“Briluk, why won’t you answer me?” I heard my wife’s panicked voice. My twin-hearts twinged in pain as she screamed moments later. “T-The servants…they’re gone. Puddles...everywhere.”
Blood seeped out of my mouth as I tore through the hallways, back to my VIP storage suite. I shouldn’t even have been here, but every few months, I liked to disguise myself as an ordinary Joonga. Walking through the streets as my vassals did always relaxed me better than any masseuse could. This year, I had picked this remote sector of the Realm to explore. I had opened a safety deposit box in this Treasure House decades ago, leaving one of the loose artifacts I had with me at the time.
Of course to the branch, it was an unparalleled treasure and it warranted VIP storage in their most secure vault. I had actually forgotten what I had stored here until I returned today, but having the VIP storage suite had been a blessing as it gave me a place to relax and knit in peace. Not having to deal with court intrigue and strategic decisions had been bliss. But here I was, bolting back through the trapped hallways before time ran out.
A sharp pain pierced through me and I keeled over, coughing so hard, I feared I would rupture my lungs. Bloody phlegm burst out of my mouth, splattering across the floor. My head felt light, my lungs raw and my twin hearts beat erratically. Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, I stumbled forward, resuming my arduous journey.
It was taking too long! Despite my Signet Ring of authority disabling the traps before they triggered, I moved only as fast as an injured mortal could. Instead, I burned my bloodline to fight against the constant divination and tracking attacks of the ENEMY. This left me vulnerable to the liquefying effects of the Retribution wave. Gritting my teeth in frustration, I soldiered on without the aid of my Dao’s or techniques.
When father had picked me as one of the Primes chosen to hold a flicker of his Divine Spark, I had been instructed on what to do in various scenarios. A solar cycle ago, he had left a cryptic message informing me of a potential disaster, and to be ready. So from the moment I felt him die, I was just following orders. Ignoring my wife’s telepathic pleas to me and the tears stinging my eyes, I had to secure the Divine spark. Unfortunately, the closest option to do so was the VIP storage suite I had vacated barely fifteen stampedes ago. I —
“No!!!”
My stomach dropped. I didn’t need Darluk to say a word, I had felt it too. My son…our son had just perished. His connection snapped away from me and I fell into a convulsing heap on the floor. My lungs were melting, but I pitted my will against the force trying to consume me. Someone had killed him. Father’s blood ran through his veins just as much as it did mine, and he was too young to have mastered bloodline suppression. So there was no way the Retribution had dissolved him like it did the others.
“Xooluk!!!!!” Darluk wailed. “No , no, no, no. This can’t be. Briluk, where are you? You just let our child die?!”
I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t. The ENEMY must have already infiltrated the palace and killed my son. He was probably watching her right this moment, waiting to get a lock on my location if I was foolish enough to open the mental connection and answer. From Darluks pain-wracked wails, I knew she was in the throes of grief. Nothing I could say now would change what had happened. What would happen to her as well.
Bitter tears streamed down my face non-stop as I struggled to inch forward, down the hallway. I could see the large door of the hexagonal vault room up ahead. I was so focussed, blurry eyes locked on the silver door, but I was so weak. By restricting my bloodline, the same phenomenon that had killed so many of my people was slowly working on dissolving me too.
I felt my brain liquifying as I moved, my thoughts slowing and my body becoming unresponsive. No. This could not be happening. One step. Then another. I…had to make…it past those…runes.
Wait, what? Runes?
Burning more wisps of bloodline, I pushed against the foreign presence that had infiltrated my defenses. It was a fierce little thing, trying to fight against the will of a demigod—although physically weakened. The entity was made of unintelligible runes, woven together in a dance of affirmatives and negatives that moved in response to my gaze. The intricacy of the complex tapestry the runes were woven into, spoke of grand master level control over what I could only assume was the Dao of Life and Runecraft.
This smelt like the workings of a Deity, much like the ENEMY was. But this presence was definitely not it, otherwise I would have been forced to self-immolate to prevent the Divine Spark from falling into its clutches.
The futile resistance of the runic presence popped under the force of my will but a sudden surge of ancient will leaked out from its mass, completely superseding my own for but a moment. Cold sweat bathed me, as I stood in shock, watching the runic presence scrutinize me with the same critical intensity that I directed towards it. Somewhere in there was a bloodline capable of suppressing even mine. Suppressing the bloodline of a son of Grothluk!
Was this Father’s doing? A hidden ace to help me accomplish my mission? Even in death, he remained ruthlessly persistent. Refusing to leave the survival of his Divine Spark in the hands of his inept progeny. Unfortunately, in my case he was right to do so.
“Who are you?” I asked through my hoarse throat.
I felt the alien presence try to communicate. Its thoughts were strange; all regimented and structured, but I could make out none of its words. Then time-space shattered, and my eyes widened in realization.
I knew then what had to be done. With a last burst of strength, I pushed forward.
“It’s up to you now, PD-840!”