~~~Eve~~~
Eve was watching everything that happened, both in the room and outside. She watched the battle unfold outside with an army of spiders, but used her eyes to keep an eye on the people inside with her. Nate might trust these people, but she didn't know most of them.
"Relax, Eve," Serenity said, putting a hand on her arm and stopping her pacing, even as another shudder shook the building. "This is the safest place he can be."
Obviously, she trusted Serenity and the others protecting Zeke, but the wizards were another story. Not to mention they were the ones in charge of the giant magic circle they had Zeke sitting in! How the fuck was anyone supposed to know for sure what that thing did!? What if they'd changed it? She had taken pictures of the design during the testing, but what if they changed something she couldn't see?
The entire thing looked powerful... and dangerous. Even if she couldn't tell what all the magical mumbo jumbo did, she couldn't miss the massive amounts of mana flowing through everything...
"I wish we could be out there fighting," Zeke said.
"You are helping much more by..." James started.
"I know," Zeke interrupted with a sigh. "I know I can heal them better from in here, but... it still feels like I'm hiding. Especially when I'm the reason they're fighting..."
"Come on," Silas chimed in without looking away from the cloud of hovering crystals. "You know as well as everyone that you're the only reason we can fight. Everyone out there is fighting because they don't want to get enslaved by monsters, or worse, turned into one."
"I won't let that happen," Zeke stated with the conviction only a child who didn't know better should have. Except he did know better. He knew and still believed he could do it.
Eve didn't believe. She wanted to, but she couldn't. She could see the monsters outside. A literal army at the gates. An army that already had them completely surrounded, and it was still growing.
She couldn't see where they were coming from, despite risking pieces of her soul in dozens of spiders spread through the forest. They were still out there. She could feel them in the trees, but even with her soul empowering them, she still couldn't get a signal. Everything outside the shield had gone dark.
Inside, she still had eyes, as well as some weapons. She hadn't wasted her time moping like Stanley and had created a half-dozen more rail guns to contribute to the defense. Even if she was hiding in here with Zeke.
She didn't bother shooting at the never-ending zombies but saved her shots for the things that made it onto the walls. They weren't mindless, even if they were suicidal. They still burned inside the shield, but it wasn't instantaneous destruction. They had time to kill people before they died—not a lot, but every human down was one too many.
Eve didn't think Zeke knew people were dying out there. He'd be much more upset and probably demand to join the battle in person. Which would be stupid. Despite her distrust of the magic surrounding her baby brother, it was working amazingly well. Zeke was healing more people at once than he ever had before.
Or maybe he did know... he had sweat on his brow, and she could spot a tremor in his hands where he held them against the magic circle. The earlier bombardment had taken a lot out of him and the wizards, but he was pretending it hadn't... He was growing up too fast.
At least Nate had actually done something useful by charging over the walls and putting a stop to that magic. It was an insane plan to go out into that, but who better than Nate for the job? Other than... Stanley.
He should be here. He wanted to kill the undead, and it looked like they were all right fucking outside! So where the hell was he!?
Eve finally spotted Nate returning, and her fear only grew when she saw he wasn't coming back alone. A giant skeleton was in pursuit. They're here! She'd suspected as much, but it was another thing entirely to have it confirmed.
Nate fought it toe to toe, and for the first time, Eve understood why the man was in charge. She could barely follow his movements but saw enough to know that he definitely deserved his title of second-strongest in the dungeon. Unfortunately, he couldn't win—at least not fast enough.
She knew as much when she saw the next massive wave of magic go soaring into the sky from a different section of forest.
"Big hit coming," Eve said to the room, and then it was too late to do anything else. The magic rained down onto the shield in a storm of destructive power... and the shield parted around it.
Eve only had an instant to realize what had just happened. She took a step toward Zeke, then the building shook violently around her and nearly threw her to the ground. Unfortunately, that was only the first hit. The following explosions came one after the other, like a meteor shower crashing to earth, until they finally burst through into the room she stood in, and Eve's world dissolved into fire and destruction.
Distantly, and as she crawled through the chaos toward where she remembered Zeke sitting, Eve was aware of multiple camera feeds going dark as every spider in the path of destruction died. But not all of them. A few escaped unscathed, and when the dust cleared, one showed her the grizzly aftermath. Blood, bodies, and a smoking crater blown deep into the side of the building.
At the epicenter of that crater lay a dome of crystal glittering from within with a golden light.
Eve coughed and forced herself through the dome, crystals falling at her touch and pouring off her back in a tinkling wave. There was no more glowing magic circle inside, but others moved amid the raining crystals as well. Her heart soared when Zeke's head emerged with a bloodied and unconscious Silas in his arms.
She took a stumbling step toward him but never made it to Zeke.
Something tugged painfully at her back, and Eve stopped in her tracks. She met Zeke's wide-eyed gaze for a long, timeless moment amid the destruction. His hand came up, reaching for her... then her brother fell away as something dragged Eve through the newly created opening and out into the night.
"Eve!" His receding cry echoed after her, and she saw him surge to his feet before he was out of sight. Meanwhile, she was just glad it was her instead of him.
Things were even worse outside. They'd setup the circle and Zeke near the center of the building, and that magic bombardment had blasted all the way through to him. The only positive was that they must have sacrificed spread for penetration because the damage wasn't as widespread as it could have been.
That wasn't to say the damage wasn't extensive. It was far darker without the shield up, but she still saw too many unmoving bodies in the rubble as the magic dragged her away.
She didn't go quietly.
Eve shot out grappling wires from her gauntlets even as her single surviving shoulder cannon sent its beam sweeping the space behind her back. One grapple caught a corpse and dragged it after her, but the other snagged on the jagged edge of the outer wall.
She snapped to a halt, suspended between two opposing forces, and with excruciating pain coming from her back. Despite the pain, Eve twisted her head and spotted the line of magic running to her back. That was enough for her cannon to get a lock, and Eve dumped its battery in one massive blast that melted her gun into scrap but had the desired effect of freeing her.
For all the good it did.
Golden light intensified in the gap, and she saw Zeke scramble into view with a terrified expression on his face. Only he wasn't looking at her. He was looking at something behind her.
Eve tried to run, but she was too late to escape the massive skeletal hand that wrapped around her helmet and carried her away from her brother, even as the edge of Zeke’s aura licked at its bones with golden fire.
It wasn't all bad. They hadn't snagged Zeke, and she could see Silas coming up behind her brother with the rest of the team. They could protect him. Hopefully long enough for his aura to burn down the undead. Long enough for Nate to... the idiot was already caught.
Her heart sank further when Zeke ran after her, and she realized what was about to happen. It wasn't a mistake that they'd grabbed her, and it was never her they were really after.
She was bait.
"Zeke!" she screamed, knowing it was hopeless but trying anyway. "Run!"
He didn't give up the chase. He probably couldn't. He was too desperate to save everyone, even if it cost him his own life. He would never let her go, and that would be his downfall. She could see it all too clearly now, and she couldn't let that happen.
It didn't matter if she died. She was a terrible person who had done terrible things. But not Zeke. He was still good. He was worth saving, and it was now or never.
Eve dropped out of her armor and left the skeleton holding a ticking time bomb behind her as she ran for her brother's life.
Zeke beamed to see her free but kept running closer, his guards scrambling to keep up. Not that it did any good.
Silas was still summoning more crystals around them, but it didn't matter. They wouldn't have protected him against an attack from below. So, of course, that was where the skeleton attacked from. It didn't even have to fully emerge. A skeletal hand burst from the ground at his feet... and Eve detonated the batteries in the armor she'd left behind. All of them at once.
It was insane and a massive loss, but she didn't need to look back to know she'd blown the shit out of the monster left holding her armor. There was enough power in those batteries to level half the base, and the shockwave that slammed into her back told her as much. It propelled her forward like a bullet from a gun, and Eve reached for her brother...
She was too late.
The skeletal arm was as long as Zeke was tall, and it didn't try to grab him or carry him away. It didn't need to. It only reached up and drove a pitch black spike into Zeke's chest.
Eve couldn't think. She couldn't breathe, and not because the explosion had blown the air from her lungs. All she could see was Zeke and the towering skeleton that was emerging from the ground in front of him.
She blew past Zeke and snagged him as she went, dragging her brother violently away from the monster. They spun together across the ground until fetching up against the wall, and Eve immediately reached for the black thing stuck in Zeke's chest. He was still alive! She just had to get it out, and he'd be fine! He could heal himself!
The thing was darker than the deepest night, and merely looking at it made her want to vomit. That alone was enough to know it was bad, but she didn't hesitate to grab it.
It felt cold in her hand. Beyond cold. It burned her flesh and seared her mind, but she refused to let go and pulled.
She heard voices screaming, but none of that mattered because she could see that same icy darkness spreading across Zeke's chest beneath the crumbling metal of his breastplate. She'd made his armor... it should have stopped anything!
Eve pulled until something dragged her away from her brother, and she fought the grasping hands with everything she had. "Let me go! I can save him!"
"Cut it off!" a voice yelled, and Eve felt a flash of pain in her arm but didn't understand even when she saw a blackened and skeletal arm fall to the ground at her feet. It looked like a zombie arm. It looked like Zeke's chest... Eve glanced to the side and saw Serenity clasping a hand over the stump where her right arm should have been.
She blinked as the pain roared to life, but it felt far away and unimportant. What did it matter? How could anything matter when her brother was dying?
He lay against the wall with his eyes closed, his entire chest blackened and shriveled, and with that darkness visibly spreading to his extremities, including crawling up his neck... "Zeke!" she cried, struggling uselessly to get away from the hands restraining her and back to his side. "No! Let go of me!"
Zeke opened his eyes and smiled as he looked up at her. He was dying before her eyes, and he was smiling. "It's... okay... Eve," he said, his breathing labored. "I... can... beat... this."
His eyes were still full of golden light, but his aura had changed. It no longer shone pure gold. Now it had streaks of black running through it, and the darkness was growing before her eyes. Even his buff had changed, and it kept flickering back and forth between a buff and a debuff...
Buff/Debuff Gained: [Purifying/Corrupting Light/Darkness]
Until the hands dragged her further away and out of the aura. Eve kept struggling, but couldn't get any closer.
"Don't," Serenity said. "I can't heal you if you touch it!"
"I don't care!" Eve screamed, and Zeke's eyes fluttered shut. "Help him! Somebody help him!"
She looked around at the strangely silent battlefield, but no one moved to approach her brother. Even Nate just stared, the fuckface tied up in magic chains like a goddamned moron! What was the fucking point of this battle if no one could even protect Zeke!? What was the point of her if she couldn't protect her baby brother?
It was all her fault; she'd gone along with it. She should have told Nate and Stanley both to get fucked! She shouldn't have let herself get dragged outside... Of course he would follow her! Right into a trap!
"Please," Eve whispered. "Let me go..." The least she could do now was stay by his side...
Then she felt Stanley's gaze an instant before the air boomed overhead. He was here.
He was here, and he was too late.
~~~Stanley~~~
As he tore across the sky, Stanley pushed his soul into his eyes until they burned, but still couldn't see Zeke's golden soul. He spotted Adrian and Daryl's souls for an instant, along with a bunch of humans he didn't know, all of them sprinting through the woods. Then they were behind him, and he was racing toward Nate's base with a sick, gnawing pit in his chest.
He should be able to see them already... anyone! But there wasn't a single soul ahead! Where he should have seen a thousand souls was only a dark pit of nothing. Was he that late? Were they all dead already? They couldn't be... they were stronger than that... and he hadn't been gone for that long!
Stanley passed through... something—the buzz of magic trailing over his skin, and like a veil peeling away from his eyes, thousands of souls suddenly appeared in the formerly dark night ahead.
The vast majority of those souls were undead, a dark tide of zombies surrounding a bright cluster of humanity at the center of it all.
Stanley took it all in as he approached.
He saw stronger souls amid the horde of mindless undead—former humans turned traitors—and most of them weren't enjoying the choice they'd made. But not all. Some of them were excited... gleeful. Some of them still had hopes and dreams...
Two souls stood out among the undead, and Stanley knew exactly what they were before he ever laid eyes on them. The invaders had come calling, as Nate predicted, two of them, at least, and both D-grade, no less. Still, there had to be more of them still in hiding. It only made sense. They had to know he was going to kill them, but their souls felt like they'd already won.
He knew why they felt that way. Because he had come back too late.
Stanley stopped beside Eve and stared into the swirling orb of black and gold that now surrounded the best person he'd ever met. Zeke's soul had always been pure. A true light in the dark.
Sure, he wasn't perfect, but he was the closest thing to it in this miserable world. He was honest, caring, and selfless. He loved healing people. He loved it when people smiled. He was at his happiest when he spread happiness to others.
Now the undead wanted to take all of that away.
Stanley could see the thing they'd stuck in him, and he knew what it was. A race change shard. Only now it seemed like they'd found a way to force the change. Worse, it wasn't merely changing his race. It was corrupting his soul as well.
They weren't content with merely killing him. Instead, they wanted him to become anathema to everything he loved and cherished, and they were succeeding.
"Stanley!" Eve gasped, finally reacting to his arrival and staring up at him with tears running down her face. The overwhelming despair in her soul hurt, but she still mustered up some anger to go along with it. "Where were you!? You were supposed to protect him! You and Nate! Fuck you, Stanley! Fuck you, fuck Nate, and fuck your stupid fucking war!"
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Classic Eve, except that her anger was completely justified this time. He had screwed up. He never should have left them to face these monsters alone. They were his friends... his family. He'd let his fear for Caffeine make him an idiot...
All he could do now was fix his mistake.
"You're right," Stanley said, wrapping his arms around Caffeine and dropping his feet to touch the ground for the first time in what felt like forever. He knelt in front of her and placed the sleeping Caffeine gently onto Eve's lap. "Can you watch him for a bit while I deal with this?"
"You..." Eve stared into his eyes, a flicker of hope struggling against the despair in her soul, and wrapped her single remaining arm around the pug. She pulled Caffeine close and asked with a tremulous whisper, "Can you... save him?"
Stanley didn't reply but stood up and walked into Zeke's blackened aura.
Buff/Debuff Gained: [Purifying/Corrupting Light/Darkness]
Even the system couldn't seem to decide what was happening... and Stanley wasn't resisting the debuff portion of it like he resisted so much else. He could feel it sinking into him—like rotten worms digging through his flesh, eating him, changing him one piece at a time into something else.
The other half was fighting back, the golden half, but it was a losing fight.
It explained why no one else was inside the aura. Why no one was holding Zeke as he died...
His eyes were closed, but they opened when Stanley knelt and touched his limp hand. "Stanley..." Zeke breathed out, a smile lighting up his face even as black, rotten lines crawled inexorably up toward his golden eyes. "I'm glad... you're okay."
This close, Stanley could see what Zeke's soul had already shown him. There was no pulling the shard out; it was already a part of him, body and soul.
Zeke's smile slipped. "Stanley," he said, voice breathy. "Will you take care of... Eve for... me? I... don't think I can... beat this, after all."
Stanley was already angry. Angry at the undead, angry at the twisted reality that was his world, but most of all, he was angry at himself. Watching Zeke spend his final moments worrying about someone else only added fuel to the fire, and Stanley fed it all to the furnace of icy rage burning inside his chest. He fed all that cold fire into his soul and let it crystalize into an unstoppable purpose.
"I believe in you, Zeke," Stanley said softly, with none of the rage inside him leaking into his voice. "So hold on until I fix this, okay?" He was going to fix it, too. He knew what to do, and he knew it was possible. He'd seen it done before, after all. But... just in case, he would try it on someone else first. Something else.
Stanley walked out of the aura and looked around. No one was fighting, despite the army of undead on all sides. The humans only watched Zeke, and now, him. They were afraid and waiting for... something. Anything. A sign that they could still fight. A sign that they still had something to fight for.
The jabbering skeleton probably didn't help.
"We are eternal," it bellowed. "And all will join the march in the end!" It had been going on about futility and inevitability since he got here, obviously trying to convince people to switch sides. "Despite your defiance, you have fought well, and the march will welcome any who kneel..."
Silence
Stanley knew they had magic voices, but it turned out that they still used sound. He hadn't been sure... The other skeleton stood off to the side but was already silent and watching him with a strange feeling in its soul. It wasn't alone over there. It had Nate wrapped up in glowing chains and dangling at its side. Chains that held a touch of the skeleton's soul...
Nate didn't seem concerned about the chains and was also watching him with an equally strange feeling in his soul.
Stanley wasn't sure what to think about Nate's intuition right now. The man still had hope, even now, but if this outcome was what he'd planned for... then he was a monster.
Despite his reservations, Stanley still found some comfort from the man's confidence, if only that it meant his slightly insane plan could work.
"Eve," Stanley said, stopping beside her, but with his gaze locked on the silenced skeleton. "Was it that one?"
She glanced over and nodded with short, jerky movements. "Yes... can you really save him?"
"I will," Stanley stated. He had to. Failure wasn't an option. It was what had to happen. No matter what. It was all or nothing, and Stanley was all in. Mind, body, and soul.
The invaders had to know what was coming. He wasn't even trying to hide his soul from them and assumed they all had some kind of Soul Sight. There was a feeling coming from their eyes, especially the one he'd silenced, and it was casting a spell as it glared at him...
He moved before it finished whatever magic it was trying to use and latched his hand onto its giant face. He could just barely hook his fingers through its eye sockets and his thumb into its... nose hole? Assuming they had noses before becoming these dead things?
Obviously, his physical grip wasn't anything special, but it helped him focus and his mind more than made up for the lack of strength. Adding his soul on top of that more than made up for the grade difference, and he clamped down on the monster with unshakeable power.
It couldn't move when it tried to escape. It even tried to teleport away, but Stanley refused to let it leave, his hand on its skull making the effort trivial, and for the first time tonight, he saw fear in the glowing red eyes staring back at him from only inches away. It was right to be afraid.
Sadly, the other skeleton wasn't content to let things play out and tried to interfere, only to find out it had forgotten about the threat hanging right next to it. A rather serious mistake in hindsight.
Stanley had never seen Nate actually use his soul for anything directly, but he did now. Sort of? It swelled—not growing, but flexing?
The chains holding him shattered, and Nate went after the skeleton beside him with a level of speed and power Stanley had also never seen from the man before. He disrupted whatever magic it had tried to cast and started taking the monster apart with fists and feet.
Nate's attack kicked things off, and violence once again broke out all over. Stanley only hesitated long enough to ensure that Silas and the others were watching over Zeke. Eve, too. Since she'd lost her armor somewhere... and then he focused on his own fight, arguably the most important and the most difficult.
But no one else could do what needed to be done. It had to be him.
He had to turn back the clock.
It was a bit extreme, but he had no better ideas. Besides, that wizard had done it, so why couldn't he? If magic could do it, then psionics could do it better. He was more powerful than any of those chuckle fucks! And that was even before he knew how to use his soul properly. He could do it for sure now. He had to do it.
He'd considered rewinding Zeke, but this was beyond experimental, and he couldn't risk there being... unintended side effects. At the very least, he'd try it first with the undead. It didn't matter if something bad happened to them.
"You invaded my world," Stanley whispered, his voice inaudible amidst the violence and screaming surrounding him. But that wasn't the point. He didn't need to hear what he was saying, and he didn't need the skeleton to hear it either. Instead, it helped align his mind and soul. "So I take from you your future."
He knew the monster had no future. Showing up here tonight had ensured that much. It was easy. Obvious. Never a doubt.
"You trapped me in this place," he continued. "You separated me from my brother when he needed me most." Sure, that wasn't all this monster's fault, but it had played a role, and it helped feed his rage. "So I take from you your present."
His power tightened around and throughout the skeleton, inside and out, stopping it from so much as having another thought. He held so tightly that even its soul stopped, frozen in an endless instant where it would never know anything ever again. He held it tighter still, so tightly that not even time could touch it.
It was heavy... but Stanley held on. He had to hold on. This was his moment. He had the power, and what good was all of his power if he didn't use it when it mattered most? Zeke deserved this. He was a good kid. The best of them! Stanley wouldn't let these monsters turn him against everyone he loved!
"You came here," Stanley growled, his mind, body, and soul screaming at the power flowing through him. Power that he drove against the monster in his hand. "You came after my family!" It was getting harder. He couldn't see anything anymore. He couldn't hear anything, but he couldn't give up. "So I take from you... your past."
Notifications were going off in his head, and Stanley was distantly aware that at least one was a warning against doing what he was doing. He ignored it.
You
The system continued to scream at him, but Stanley continued to ignore it. His entire soul was engaged in making this happen, far more than he'd used to kill the cannibal, and he knew he was damaging himself. But none of that mattered anymore.
Never
His body wasn't keeping up with his mind and soul, so Stanley let it fall behind. He didn't need it. His soul was enough to see his mind through to the end... except it was fraying at the seams. He knew Lee's patch was failing... but it was too late to back out now. He'd committed himself too fully, and there was no going back. Even if it killed him.
Existed
The patch holding his soul together broke, and Stanley knew the wound in his soul was about to tear wide open. He would die. But he couldn't stop and he didn’t want to. He had to finish what he’d started.
Except his soul didn't tear...
Instead, two figures stood in the gap, holding it closed and holding back the end. Stanley knew them both. One, a small pug, and the other, an indistinct man that he would recognize sight unseen. They shared a soul, after all. All three of them.
Caffeine held their soul together in his jaws, and then Lee was there, taking Stanley's free hand in his even as his other hand reached out and closed around the broken part of themselves. He was inside their soul, and he simultaneously stood at Stanley's side, supporting him. He wrapped their wounded soul in a new, more brilliant and indomitable web of power, even as he urged Stanley onward.
Even as he demanded that Stanley finish what he'd started.
Stanley didn't need the encouragement. He'd never stopped. He couldn't. He pushed through the pain and the screaming notifications. He threw everything he was, had been, and would ever become into his will... and drove it against the towering wall of reality that pushed back against him. He demanded reality conform to his will. He made it conform. He rejected any possibility that it wouldn't obey... and his brother stood behind him, holding Stanley up with his own unwavering belief.
Reality blinked first. It bent before the power of his will, and he forced it the rest of the way.
Stanley opened his eyes with a grin on his lips. He’d won, and the weight of the world fell from his shoulders as reality conformed to his will. He'd done it! Even better, he could see again, and he felt fantastic! Light as a feather!
Except... what he was seeing made no sense.
He turned his head easily, but nothing else moved. The entire world stood still. Spells hung in midair, zombies stood frozen mid-stride, and even Nate wasn't moving where he stood with a fist coming out the back of the other skeleton's skull.
Stanley's previous elation died hard when he realized that Zeke still looked the same. He was still dying... or turning. Albeit, not at the moment; he was as frozen as everything else.
The reason for that might have been that Stanley's skeleton was still here as well... only now there was a jagged crack running down through its body. Not only through its body either... the crack was spreading upward and downward through the... air? It was also getting wider, and whatever was on the other side of that crack looked... bad.
Stanley had seen a lot of terrible things, most of them in recent memory, and with some standout highlights. Monsters out of his nightmares. Souls rotted through with corruption. A cannibal feasting on the flesh and souls of his own kind. To name a few.
Yet he'd never seen anything as frightening as what was inside that crack. It wasn't evil or corrupted. It wasn't light or dark. It wasn't anything. It was... nothing. It was less than nothing. It was oblivion. Not the oblivion he'd seen when he almost died, but true oblivion. He hadn't even understood the difference until now.
Death may or may not be the end for living souls, but he knew without a doubt that falling through that crack would be the end. Permanent. Final. Body, mind, and soul. Not death, but the end. His soul wouldn't dissipate like all the others. He would be outside of reality, and nothing could be outside. He would simply cease to exist... and the crack was spreading, growing longer and wider by the... second?
He tried to take a step back, but every step took him nowhere and left him in the same spot. Even trying to fly yielded the same results, and the crack was getting closer. Or felt like it... was it dragging him in!?
Stanley stared for a long moment but couldn't actually tell if it was growing or if it only looked bigger because it was swallowing the world around him. The whole thing was just... wrong. There was no reference frame on where the edges were. It didn't have edges. It couldn't grow or shrink.
Despite the confusion, he kept fighting to escape. But no matter how fast he thought he should have flown away, he made no progress. He didn't dare try to push the crack away; the mere thought of sending his mind anywhere near that thing left him with a deep, abiding terror.
He tried to push the nearest people away, namely Eve and Zeke's team, but couldn't touch them. It was as if they didn't exist. He tried to scream as the nothingness loomed closer, but no sound escaped, and only afterward did he realize he wasn't breathing anything. He was going through the motions, but there was no air entering or leaving his lungs.
It was all bad, and Stanley's anger was fast turning to fear as he contemplated that he might have just killed everyone he cared about—or was he the only one here? That would suck, but maybe the skeleton would go with him? Maybe he'd even succeeded in saving Zeke out in the real world? Maybe this was just a side effect of what he'd done? Had he accidentally gotten himself caught up in whatever he’d done to the monster? Maybe split them off into a dead timeline?
He didn't want to die, but if he'd saved Zeke... well, that wasn't a complete waste. He'd have done something worthwhile, at least, and how bad could it really be to get deleted out of reality?
Movement caught his eye, and Stanley's heart pounded painfully in his chest. Oh, no.
Caffeine stepped halfway out of Eve's lap before taking a long stretch back, then up, along with a huge, whining and grumbling yawn. After which, he shook himself vigorously and trotted toward Stanley with a wagging tail and a chorus of little happy noises.
Stanley fought harder to escape. No! You can't take him too!
It took him a moment to realize that he could hear Caffeine, and the pug was actually moving across the ground! Did that mean he could run away? Could he escape!? Stanley tried to make him do just that, but he couldn't move Caffeine anymore than he could move himself. Caff, run!
Caffeine didn't run away. Instead, he stopped in front of Stanley and proceeded to growl angrily at the crack in reality.
Because of course he did...
You can't do this! I won't let you...
Someone laughed, the sound coming from everywhere and nowhere. It was a strangely familiar yet disturbing laugh... and then an equally familiar voice said, "You owe... me one."
In the same instant that the voice finished talking, the crack slammed shut. Violently and explosively. Stanley didn't even have time to shield Caffeine. He tried, but before he could even finish forming the thought, something slammed into him with all the power of a nuclear explosion.
His domain told him he'd gone through a dozen trees before he managed to arrest his momentum, and then he was racing back toward the small sensation in the distance. Caffeine!
He moved fast, furious at what he might find, and only partially about Caffeine. He knew the pug was strong, and he could feel his soul, so he knew Caffeine was still alive. Despite that, Stanley came in hot... and stopped cold when he saw what awaited him.
His emotions were a... rough mix.
He was thrilled to see Caffeine's tail wagging. He was awake! Truly awake! But plenty of rage still tempered his joy, because one side of the massive pug was a hairless and bleeding mess where he'd used his body to shield the others from the explosion.
Someone or something would pay for that! Something would die for that!
Aside from his rage over Caffeine, Stanley was also slightly disappointed to see that he hadn't saved Zeke, though he had accomplished something...
The boy's soul was almost pure gold again, but there was still a nugget of rotten darkness clinging to his chest, sending wisps of that same corruption drifting through his aura.
"Impossible!" a skeleton screeched, and it wasn't the one Stanley had fought. That one was... dead? Either way, it was something else, at least.
It still stood, but in two jagged halves, and Stanley was pretty sure it was dead from that alone. Not to mention its lack of a soul. The halves stood a few feet apart amidst a massive circular field of... glass? Broken glass? Something smooth and glittery, and whatever it was, it also covered and encased the two pieces of dead skeleton.
Stanley only noted that in passing as he shot toward the still-living... unliving skeleton. It was time to end this war, and Stanley was more than ready to finish what he'd started so long ago.
He closed on it almost before it finished screaming, which was somewhat surprising. He'd really expected to be out of commission after that ordeal, but he felt fantastic. Hell, he felt better than ever. More powerful than ever!
The last skeleton was smarter than its fellow and teleported away the instant Stanley touched it. Which was exactly what he wanted it to do! He laughed aloud when he felt its soul, including the handprint of his own soul he'd left on it, appear far to the south. "Game over, motherfucker!"
He took off after it, hoping it went back to where the rest of them were. That would let him finally wrap this whole shitshow up and be done with it. He could kill them all in one fell swoop!
Caffeine appeared in his path before he made it anywhere, and Stanley stopped at the whine coming from the pug. "I'm happy to see you too, Caff, but I have to go kill some monsters first, okay?"
He tried to go around, but Caffeine got in his way again. It made him... angry. "What are you doing!?"
Buff Gained: [Purifying Aura]
"Stanley!" Zeke's voice came from behind him, and then Nate bounded past to stand beside the enlarged pug, echoing Zeke's exclamation.
"I have them, Nate!" Stanley said, grinning. "I know where it went, and now I can kill them all!"
"But your body!" Nate exclaimed. "Are you... okay?"
"What?" Stanley spread his arms wide. "I feel... fantastic?" He trailed off when he saw his arms. The flesh was... blackened, maybe burnt? It was hard to see it clearly past the blazing trails of purple light that ran down his arms in massive bands. "Huh." He shrugged. "I feel fine. I'll worry about it after I kill all those..."
"Check your status," Nate said. "Please! Something is very wrong!"
"I guess?" He didn't like the delay, but this would only take a moment, and he was curious about why he felt so good.
Status
Name: Stanley Cascade
Race: [Wrathstorm](E-grade Human) Pending...
Racial evolution in progress: [Eidolon of Wrath](E-grade Eidolon) 95% Complete.
Titles: [Titan Slayer] [F-grade Source]
Traits: [Adaptable](57%) [Source Nexus] [Wrathstorm Unleashed] [Source Burned] [Ruthless Soul]
Class: Soul Psionic (Epic) - Level 150 (Expert)
Class Skills: Mind Over Matter (Legendary) - Level 150 (Expert) | Premonition (Epic) - Level 90 (Advanced) | Still Mind of the Psionic Beast (Epic) - Level 49 (Intermediate) | Harmonic Soul Meditation (Rare) - Level 89 (Advanced) | Mental Fortress (Epic) - Level 59 (Advanced)
Attributes:
Strength: 50(+20%)60
Vitality: 50(+112%)106
Dexterity: 50(+20%)60
Wisdom: 950(+2373%)27172
Intelligence: 950(+2373%)27172
Willpower: 950(+9918%)108431
Twin-Soul: 127(+747%)1075
Non-Class Skills 2/6: Soul Awareness (Epic) - Level 49 (Intermediate) | Psionic Barrier (Rare) - Level 49 (Intermediate) | Psionic Soul Shield (Rare) - Level 24 (Basic)
Buff: [Soul-Link]
Debuff: [Soul Wound(Unbroken Soul Binding)]
Stanley shrugged. His attributes were weird, but otherwise, he didn't see anything to worry about. He was plenty powerful enough to finish this. "Looks fine. No debuffs. I'm just evolving my race. Now all of you get out of my way before..."
Buff Gained: [Still Mind of the Psionic Beast]
Warning! Skill: Still Mind of the Psionic Beast (Epic) is incompatible with Race: Eidolon of Wrath
Racial Evolution Interrupted.
That notification hurt. Like really, really, really hurt. Stanley shouldn't have been able to feel any emotions, but he definitely appreciated it when everything went away and he fell into the oblivion of unconsciousness.