~~~Stanley~~~

There was a lot of pain when Stanley woke up to the sound of barking, and not all of it was from his soul.

He tried to roll onto his back, spitting dirt from his mouth, and could only turn his head... He froze when something hot splashed against his face, then stayed that way for a long eternity as he stared up at Caffeine in horror.

The pug stood over him, large enough to shield Stanley's entire body with his own, and that was exactly what he was doing.

Undead monsters swarmed from the surrounding darkness while Caffeine spun frantically in place and fought back. He bit, clawed, and barked in a nonstop cacophony of violence and blood. And there was blood... so much blood...

Stanley reached for his power, horror shifting through to rage and back again as he...

For the first time in forever... no power answered his call. Instead, magic ripped into him with savage talons of lightning and pain.

He spasmed and twitched in the dirt while his thoughts scattered into broken fragments. Distantly, he heard a growl... felt a rumbling... and then everything went silent... and still.

"Most impressive," a voice rasped, moments before Stanley's body finally stopped spasming and he drew in a ragged breath. "It is no surprise that you defeated Morgrath."

Stanley opened his eyes again and found himself laying on his back, staring up at Caffeine, who had shrunk slightly but still stood protectively over him. Stanley couldn't move...

Caffeine looked down at him briefly, then returned to staring into the darkness with a small growl.

It was hard to tear his eyes away from the injured pug, so hard not to scream and rage against... everything. The memory of his last attempt helped cool that rage. Slightly. The sight of Caffeine's wounds visibly healing and the lack of swarming monsters helped even more.

Stanley tried to follow Caffeine's gaze into the dark, straining his neck against the magic binding him in place. He saw nothing...

No, that wasn't right, it wasn't nothing. It was a field of glittering stars filling the darkness. Glittering red stars.

Caffeine growled louder.

"Stand down, you stubborn beast. You only prolong your suffering. The conclusion of this battle is inevitable."

Caffeine growled again.

Stanley felt blind without his mental touch spreading around. The darkness seemed to press in on all sides as stared up at Caffeine. Not again...

"You are strong, human. Strong enough that with proper training and guidance, you could rise to rule entire worlds in the future. Your soul is unlike anything I have ever witnessed... such... such mutilation and yet you still live, even thrive! Resisting my attack for so long is truly something to take pride in... something to preserve."

Caff... Stanley barely listened, hurting in a way he didn't have the words to describe, and not all of it was from the sight of his precious Caffeine in shredded tatters once again. Not nearly enough of it was from that.

It was his soul. A laceration of his soul, and it hurt beyond anything he ever could have imagined... an agony which felt horrifically... monstrously... familiar.

"Your Beast Lord nearly destroyed Morgrath, an impressive feat, even for a Beast Lord. Yet its strength is now spent. Your fight is done. Surrender to the inevitable and join us."

Stanley could feel Lee closer than he'd ever felt him, and knew his twin was suffering the same pain he was. Lee had finally awoken... only to be met with this. Now he was confused... and afraid. He was struggling... in pain... fighting for his life. Again.

Magic still held Stanley's body in place. Only his head could move and that let him see just enough to know how bad things had gotten. To know how badly he'd screwed up. Again.

"Your arrogance in attacking my forces is understandable. Especially when you seek to protect your purifier. But it is over. Accept the inevitable."

The skeleton emerged from the darkness like stepping through a door, white bones suddenly gleaming in the moonlight, and Stanley didn't know he'd missed seeing it until now. It was the same one that had chased him across the city... four arms and all, though sans black cloak.

This close, Stanley could see that it wasn't remotely human in origin, as if the four arms hadn't already given that away. It held many similarities. Bipedal, spine, ribs, all that. But the proportions were off, and the skull was especially alien. Oh, and it was at least ten feet tall...

Magic glittered in two of its hands, the spell binding Stanley... if he could break that...

Another hand held a glowing black crystal. It glowed... black. A glow somehow darker than the deepest night... and it floated from the monster's skeletal fingers, drifting down toward Stanley.

Caffeine growled at the thing, then lunged, teeth blindingly white in contrast with the shard...

The skeleton's fourth hand twitched, and a web of pale green tendrils sprang up around Caffeine, ensnaring and immobilizing him as the crystal continued past unimpeded.

Stanley could hear the magic sizzling and sparking as Caffeine struggled against the restraints. The pug's snarling whimpers clawed at Stanley's mind... then the black crystal touched his chest.

Race Shard: [Eternal Bones]

The Civilized Dead.

A Skeletal variant of the Eternal Undead Race. A physically weaker species that specializes in mind and magic over brute force.

Accepting this Race Change will shift your Racial Alignment from Monster(Sapient) into Civilized(Sapient).

New Race: [Eternal Bones]

Racial Traits: [Immortal] [Genesis] [Mind Above]

Accept Race Change Y/N?

The shard felt cold against his skin. Ice cold. Stanley watched Caffeine chew on one of the green strands holding him in place, watched the magic jitter and dance between his teeth. He was eating it...

Stanley stared at Caffeine eating the magic and forced himself to hold back. He needed to be smart here. Needed more than blind rage.

He looked at the race change option, partly as a distraction for himself, but also because he was actually curious.

[Immortal]

Eternal Undead do not age or decay. The magic of this race suspends the form in a perpetual state of preservation—so long as the magic or form is not destroyed.

It might be what made them so hard to kill... but he'd destroyed their forms plenty of times. Was it the magic part? Was he not hurting the magic and so couldn't kill them? Or was it something else...

[Genesis]

Undead cannot reproduce biologically, instead creating race shards that allow for a similar propagation of the species.

So that definitely wasn't it... but would the shard make Stanley this thing's... offspring? Would he turn into a skeleton?

[Mind Above]

This species values the mind above the body, and it shows.

Doubles all positive mind attribute effects while halving all positive physical attribute effects.

That was... would that double his willpower? Or double his percentages? It was the first time he'd seen something worded like this... or was it related to being civilized rather than a monster?

"Accept," the thing looming over him said, though its mouth didn't move. "You will become immortal. Powerful. Better in every way. This is not something to fear, but a gift. You will become more."

Stanley thought about it. Really thought about it. He could stop fighting against these monsters... Nate could go to hell for sending him up here... and he could become as hard to kill as these things. Only... "What about... what happens to Caffeine? Or my brother?"

"Caffeine? The beast? It resists, but it will have no choice once you accept the change. As for your brother, all are welcome. All serve the March in the end."

Did... did it not see his Twin-Soul? Hadn't it mentioned his soul before...

Stanley still had the race change option glowing in his mind... but it was flickering...

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Accept Race Change Y/N?

Accept Race Change /N?

Accept Race Change N/N?

Accept Race Change N/No?

Acc... Race Change No/No?

Race Change No/No!

R... Change NO/No!

Cha... NO/NO!

NO

Caffeine's snarling grew with every flicker of the changing notification, and so did his size.

The magic green web crackled and vibrated around him as Caffeine grew larger. It dug into his flesh in a fresh deluge of raining blood... then shattered into evaporating sparks when Caffeine grew abruptly to rival the monster before him.

"Stop!" The skeleton's eyes flared brighter as the pug's mouth loomed before it...

Caffeine Barked.

The upper half of the skeleton disintegrated, but Stanley could see its body already rebuilding out of thin air as Caffeine shrank rapidly down to his normal size.

"Foolish..." the voice came before the creature had even fully reformed.

Caffeine wasn't done. He lunged with bared teeth as he shrank, but not at the undead. He lunged down... at Stanley... no... at the shard.

He snatched the ice cold shard from Stanley's chest with only a brush of whiskers... Stanley saw the black shard reappear for an instant as Caffeine's mouth opened wide, then a shockwave blasted out as he slammed his jaws shut over the glowing darkness.

"No!" the undead yelled, hands reaching down as the shard exploded into thousands of motes that seemed to hang in the air and swallow the light while they slowly evaporated one by one.

Then Caffeine fell onto Stanley's chest, breathing ragged, and blood hot as it spilled onto his bare skin.

"That's... impossible!" The towering skeleton stood frozen, posture bent and hands unmoving where they'd tried to stop Caffeine. Then it straightened. "Fascinating! Destroying a race shard... but inconvenient. I'd hoped to add you to our ranks along with the purifier... ... ... ..."

Stanley didn't hear a single word the towering skeleton was saying. All he could see was Caffeine limp on his chest. All he could feel was the hot blood on his skin and his brother dying in the distance. All he heard were his own screaming thoughts telling him how he had fucked up.

Magic bloomed brighter and brighter as the skeleton wove a new spell between three hands.

Screaming thoughts of how he'd sacrificed Caffeine again because he was too weak. How Lee would die because he was too weak. Screaming... screaming... SCREAMING!

kill

Stanley ignored the shocking lightning in his mind; it only fed the rage. He ignored the ripping, shredding magic in his flesh; it didn't matter. He ignored the shape towering above the skeleton and blotting out the stars; it was just another dead thing.

He ignored everything and called on his power to do what he needed it to do. What it had to do.

Something stirred deep inside him as Stanley forced out every drop of power. Something strained as he dug ever deeper, searching for every last scrap of power. Something... cracked open.

It was such a small crack... a tiny pinprick... but the blinding light that shone through the gap was something else entirely. A brightness that filled him... then spilled out... roared out... Raged Out.

It was... POWER

Stanley BURNED in that power as the world ground to a halt around him.

He literally burned, and white flames licked up from the boiling flesh of his arms as they cradled Caffeine's body. White fire blazed from his chest, his legs, his face, his eyes.

It lit the night brighter than any sun. Illuminated the darkness and the army that filled it. Shone blinding fire across the world. It showed him the monster towering above all of them... a disgusting amalgamation of flesh that even now threatened to crush him and Caffeine with a massive... limb.

Yet that same roiling fire of the cosmos only licked around the pug in his arms, almost friendly, caressing...

Stanley saw all of it in a frozen moment between seconds. Felt all of it. His mind burning alongside his flesh, boiling away as reality itself thinned out... stretching to a fragile breaking point. As if the fabric of the universe were so much wet tissue, waiting for him to tear it apart.

Notifications were screaming in his mind, but Stanley didn’t hear any of it. Instead, his attention touched the undead monstrosity looming above him... attacking him...

He reached a hand up to meet the descending blow... and crushed the monster into a ball that dropped gently into his palm.

"That's... not... possible..." The skeleton was afraid as it moved backward in slow motion. Stanley liked that. It should be scared. It should scream. It should die.

His gaze flicked to it... and he turned its bones to dust with the dense sphere in his hand that used to be a monster.

So weak. So fragile.

It tried to come back, only this time Stanley could see the threads that fed it. The power that fed its un-life. That kept it from dying as it should.

Stanley let it come back. He wanted it to see this. Wanted it to be afraid. Wanted it to suffer!

Then he started slaughtering its army. Killing the creatures in great swaths. Killing the ones bound with life-stealing threads that fed their undeath back to the skeleton.

It felt good to let go. Felt so good to let it all out... to burn the world with his rage. So he did.

He let it all out.

He raged, and the world dissolved into blinding white fire.

~~~Lee~~~

Hands dragged him through the building while Lee struggled to make his mind make sense. He had to fight... he had to stop the monsters... had to protect...

Mana Mind showed him so much, but he couldn't understand enough of it. He could see the wounds in his flesh. See them healing too slowly. He knew the person pouring something down his throat... but couldn't remember them. He knew the people dragging him up the stairs... but who were they?

They took him up the stairs, through doors, and behind them, below them, the monsters pursued. Lee saw them, but he couldn't cry a warning. His mouth kept making the wrong sounds.

Lee could feel Stanley, could feel the fear, the regret, and the anger.

The unknown hands carried him into a place he knew... because there was power in here. A tiny point of infinite power. He could use it. Use it to do... something. To protect.

Small people were in the place with him. They had to be protected.

Lee pulled on the liquid fire, letting it fill him, fuel him. He wanted to do... something. Protect. He tried to pour the fire out... and found protection already there. That was... good. But he could make it better... needed to make it better. It wasn't enough.

Monsters were getting closer. They fought outside the door... his friends were losing... but he couldn't remember them. But they were his friends. He had to protect them.

The door opened. The monster stepped through...

Stanley raged.

Pain bloomed from somewhere deep... and from that same place… came…

POWER

Lee realized that his liquid fire wasn't actually all that hot. It couldn't even be called fire. Not compared to the inferno that erupted inside him, around him, from him.

It BURNED his flesh. BURNED his mind. BURNED through his brain and didn't care about the missing connections. This fire didn't care about anything. It BURNED him to ashes and put him back together simultaneously.

Debuff Removed: [Mental Fracture]

Stanley! Lee's mind crashed back into total clarity with painful reverberations. He saw everything as he burned. Understood everything as his mind bloomed further than it could or should.

He saw Stanley as if they stood side by side. Saw the monsters surrounding him while the world sat frozen in time around them both. He saw what they'd done to his brother... to Caffeine...

Kill them all!

Time ticked slowly forward as Stanley did just that.

Lee watched his brother destroy the monsters a world away as the power continued to swell inside them.

Closer to home he saw the elf staring at him from the doorway. It wasn't a human face, but it didn't matter. The horror in its alien eyes was undeniable.

Behind it he saw Alejandro and Maria, both bloodied, hurt, their own expressions a mix of terror and desperate determination. Both of them prepared to die if it would stop the elf from reaching their children.

The children. They were crying... faces wet and eyes terrified as they stared at the beacon Lee had become. Bradley stood beside them, trying to protect them while equally terrified. They didn't know what was happening. They didn't know that he could protect them now. He could protect everyone.

Lee saw through the building to the outside, saw the army assaulting the walls that hadn't been there before he went to sleep... Bradley had made them. He could clearly see the other man's mana in the stone.

So many had died to protect this place... but so many lived and fought on even now. Unfortunately, too many monsters were inside his home. Everywhere he looked, his friends fought for their lives, outnumbered, doomed.

Three days. Lee remembered now. He'd been asleep for three days. He'd wasted three days while the others fought to protect everyone. While people built walls and weapons. He had hidden away in the dark because it hurt. Because he was afraid.

Now it was his turn. His chance to make things right as he burned.

He could see a solution as his mind boiled. A way to accomplish what he wanted. What he needed. The power filling him had to go somewhere, had to be steered away before it destroyed him utterly and completely. And he knew exactly what to do with it.

Lee touched the floor... and let the power flow from him. Then he forced it to obey. Forced it to do as he commanded. Forced it to become... Protection. Safety. Strength. Power.

Home.

Together, he and Stanley wielded the fires of creation. One to destroy, the other to create. Destruction for life's sake, and creation for destruction's sake. Together they burned. Together, they raced toward oblivion.

But it wasn't over yet. There was a path through.

Lee felt his creation take hold. Felt it bind into stone and steel. Felt the fire settle into a waiting presence. Felt it awaken to its new purpose.

It was done. He'd succeeded.

At least as much as he could. To do more would end him and Stanley both. But this was enough.

Everything was far away now, as Lee called to his brother. Tried to quell the fear and rage he felt. They were safe. It was enough.

Stanley didn't hear him. He raged with despair and horror in equal measure. He wasn't letting go.

Lee screamed at him to stop. Begged him to stop. The monsters were dead.

But Stanley wanted more destruction. He wanted more than he could take. Wanted to kill them all, even if it cost everything... He wanted to escape the pain...

Stanley... It's not over yet. I'm waiting for you to come home... Please don't leave me alone. Please...

Lee couldn't see his brother anymore. He couldn't see anything. It was all white fire that consumed the world.

Then he saw something moving through the flames... a small dark shape that grew as it approached... he knew what it was.

Caff...

The light went out.

Lee floundered in its absence... he felt so cold... and Stanley felt so far away…