Chapter 414: To Know Death |
Shalahora's form condensed, his figure looming.
"If that is what must be done...I still don't see why you see the need to do this."
"It's for our future."
"Harbinger...You cannot achieve the psionic ability I've gained. It's something given, not earned."
My eyes opened wide. A psionic storm raged in the domain of my consciousness. Mana sheened in my eyes before my body began to glow. I cooled myself as the grass around me caught fire. In the orange blaze, I smiled at the shadowed Sovereign.
"How about we find out?"
Pulling my wake against my skin, time slowed before I sent a horde of Daniels at Shalahora. I didn't even try using finesse since conventional tactics were meaningless against the overwhelming entity. To face him in that domain would be like sending children armed with crayons to fight a samurai.
In a swordfight, the samurai could kill innumerable children. We would turn it into a slog before shoving crayons in his eyes and down his throat. As I predicted, Shalahora killed me as he always had, like a reaper slicing through grains with a sharpened scythe. Twenty minds died in an instant, but many ran over the corpses.
Shalahora tilted his head, killing a group of thirty rushing towards him. Then another group of thirty. Then another. Instead of a small group of animas, Shalahora faced down a small army of psionics barreling his way. I lost control of my body once more as the sheer volume of Daniels dwindled.
And more still, I drained from the emaciated shell of my mind.
Shalahora slaughtered the endless mass, his shears sharper than knives. Still, his eyes narrowed over time. I pressed and pushed the Daniels from different angles, making them more difficult to kill at once. I collected them into multiple, blended minds, throwing the disparate mush his way. I mutilated my spirit and soul to disturb Shalahora with a single drop of my mental gore.
After several minutes of the silent struggle, I sent fifty minds at once. I splintered them all, splashing them over the psionic in a rain of my psionic blood. As the droplets fell, I sent another wave of fifty minds from below. They pulped before I regenerated, wielding the final wave of mental slaughter with my reconstituted mind.
In a gush, I unraveled splintered thoughts at him. Shalahora slaughtered the incoming muck, washing away the disparate thoughts and will. Death. Rebirth. Death again. I entered a transient state of will, one grounded by momentum and driven by purpose. During my psionic flood, I found a slight opening.
Darting through the crack, I charged Shalahora's mind. Lost in the sea, the Daniel I sent in died before Shalahora took a step back.
Shalahora's eyes widened.
"You've changed. Good."
I continued the onslaught. After several minutes, I settled into a deeper meditation. My mana production increased. It exploded as I stood still, and my body experienced time at a rapid pace. The army grew in size, seventy Daniel's swarming at once. Eighty. Ninety. They continued pilling up higher as the deathly aura of the hill deepened by the second.
Althea couldn't see the internal battle, but she felt the encroach of death. She crossed her arms as Shalahora began wielding psionic tactics. He couldn't stop all the minds in mass, and more of the entities passed through. They never threatened his mental tranquility, but each attack was a wound to his pride and immutable abilities.
After two hours of extreme pressure, one of the Daniels dove deeper into Shalahora's mind. It gathered elements of memories and not the shallow, surface-level recollections that Shalahora willingly shared. The Daniel saw a world with a shrinking sun. It saw people evolving into monsters as corruption seeped into a dying land. One figure rose above them all.
It was a messiah who stole the burden of his people so that they may survive. Shalahora growled.
"You mongrel."
As he waved a hand, a psionic wave passed over me. It killed my mind to its core. Every residual part was wiped clean, like a nuclear bomb sterilizing an island to glass and ashes. Killed and dangling, my corpse hung on the dimensions I anchored myself to. Even the subtle fall of my limbs tore chasms in the Earth, the ground rupturing from the swing of my feet.
Like a metal puppet without strings, my body rested on the weight of two worlds. Dust rose from the clash of my feet on the Earth. A silence crept over the field of battle. Shalahora murmured.
"Daniel? I, I didn't mean-"
Althea took a step closer.
"What happened to him? Is he ok?"
From the ether, my mind returned.
"Ugh...Yes? Maybe? What just happened?"
Shalahora's eyes widened.
"How have you returned? How...How is that possible?"
I shook my head, trying to get rid of a pounding headache.
"Egh, I've thought this since we started training. If my body can return from nothing, so should my mind."
I pulled the dust around us into a finite point, a stone falling into my hand.
"It's like you said, Shalahora. My mind and body are the same."
As I reached up my hand, Shalahora took a step back. The shadow fell onto the ground, overwhelmed by my return from death. Shalahora gasped.
"You...You're still there after a psionic death. I'm, I'm so sorry. I didn't-"
I waved my hand.
"Let it be. All's well that ends well. Besides, accidents happen. I will say, calling me a mongrel? Pretty rude, though."
Althea raised a hand.
"It was kind of mongrel-ey, though."
I spread my hands.
"In what world, exactly?"
Althea frowned.
"A mongrel is a crossbreed, but it can also mean a cross between different people. I think he said that because you were splashing your mind around like that."
She shivered.
"You were splitting your mind apart and throwing it at him. Ugh."
I rolled my hand.
"Ok, the psionic bloodbath tactic was a little weird, I'll give you that much. And anyway, why would you know about mongrels so much anyways?"
"Because after we met you're family, I wanted to know more about raising dogs."
"Huh. Cool."
Shalahora stared at me, his amazement lingering. Shalahora's words blended with the wind.
"You cannot die...In all ways."
I put my hands on my hips.
"That's the plan, though I doubt I'm genuinely invincible."
I walked over.
"Want some help up?"
I offered a hand. Shalahora grasped it, his titular mass having no weight. He met my eye.
"In all my years of living, across all the planets I've scoured, I have never seen an entity returned from oblivion...And to remain unchanged and whole...It shouldn't be possible."
I waved my hands.
"Is it really that crazy, or are you just scared because you can't kill me anymore, eh?"
Shalahora stared at his palms.
"That's right...I can't kill you. Even if obliterated to nothing, from nothing, you return. An endless creature."
He murmured, his words full of force.
"Infinite."
I shook my head.
"That's actually a skill I just got. Anyways, it's my dimension. That's my true source."
Shalahora waved his hands through my wake.
"And it is a realm I cannot touch."
I reached out my arm, condensing my wake over Shalahora. At a palpable density, Shalahora gazed around himself.
"This is your true form?"
"Close enough. Can you sense it?"
Althea walked up, holding her arm.
"I can't...But, why did you both have to try so hard in a spar?"
I sighed.
"We didn't. I was so excited I put Shalahora on the backfoot for a second, and he really cut me back down to size in an instant."
Althea grimaced.
"You were gone for a second. You looked...Dead."
Shalahora turned, his form dispersing.
"He was...I-I need time to think."
I gave him a thumbs up.
"Alright, take it easy."
As Shalahora faded, Althea frowned.
"You know, from what I could see, it looks like you're just learning how to get slaughtered."
I tilted my head.
"In a way, I am. It allows me to tread closer to death without reservations, and that allows me to access more of what I am. I'm wasting my potential otherwise."
She peered away.
"This cannot be healthy. I mean, like, at all."
I put a hand on her shoulder.
"Greatness never is."
"Is this really greatness, though? It looks like self-torture. More of it than before, which is saying something. You're, like, a professional at self-abuse at this point."
I frowned.
"All progress is a kind of death. We have to let go of who we were to achieve who we will be. My progress happens to be more literal than that phrasing implies."
Althea wrang her fingers.
"It just makes me nervous. Whenever I see you doing this kind of thing, I just want you to stop asap. I can't help it."
The lottery flashed over my eyes.
"It's a choice. I could hide this part of myself from you, and you'd be none the wiser. That's where the phrase, 'ignorance is bliss,' comes from. If I do that, you won't know who I really am. To me, that would be lonely."
Althea's eyes narrowed.
"I don't want that, but each day, fighting like this even when there's no one here to fight...It's a lot for anybody."
"It's as I've said. I die now so that I may survive the fights that will come."
She peered away, her eyes going distant.
"Is that what life is to you? A series of fights?"
I leaned back.
"Of course not. Life is everything in between those fights. I'm making it so that I can keep having those times of peace without everyone and everything getting destroyed. That, and yeah, a few more personal reasons. We've been over that,"
Althea met my eye.
"Do...Do you ever think you're still at war?"
My lips narrowed.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Althea's face wrinkled.
"It's like, sometimes I look at you, and you're someplace else. I'm wondering if it's from some fight you had, and you're still reliving it. Maybe that's the war with Yawm or Elysium. It could be the fight with Valgus. I don't know, but it's like you never quit fighting. You never left it, and it never left you."
She put a hand on my chest.
"Hm...It's like you're trying to claw your way out of BloodHollow by yourself again. Or maybe even from something before that...I wish I could help you out of it."
Her remarks sizzled against my skin like a hot brand. My eyes hardened.
"The way I've chosen to live has saved us all."
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Her gaze softened.
"I know. I'm not saying you need to change. I love who you are. I'm just letting you know what I'm feeling, and uhm, you have me worried about you."
I frowned.
"You know, I worry about all of you too. You're like glass figurines to me."
She put a hand against my cheek.
"Are you going to lock us up in a steel box to keep us safe?"
I put my hand on hers.
"No, but I'm not letting someone walk into my china store with a bull and a bat. That's for sure."
She laughed before squeezing her hands into fists.
"Ok, ok. That's enough of me fretting. I'm becoming a nag at this point."
I raised a hand, a tiny space between my fingers.
"Just a little bit."
She grabbed my arm and swung from it.
"Ok, ok. Come on, let's go on our moon date."
I lifted us up, the hill of death lingering below us. I still didn't understand what was happening there, but it carried a vibe that Torix would probably mesh pretty well with. Leaving the solemn place, we flew over towards Springfield's center, the city thriving. Many citizens filled in the premade homes, and stores opened up along the streets.
Guildmates jumped across the rooftops, having patches of steel planted across them. Every person landed in those places only. Althea read my confused face.
"Those are so that people don't break the tops of the buildings. The metal holds up a lot better over time."
"They're that heavy?"
"It's the same problem you had whenever you started getting heavier than your average person. It's, hm, a strange but prevalent problem. The gravity rings help fix a lot of that, but not everyone can use them."
I watched a man stumble on one of the iron plates before leaving cracks in the roof. They scratched the back of their heads and apologized before leaping away. I smiled.
"So they make landing pads that don't need to be replaced all the time for people that struggle with gravitation?"
"Exactly."
"Huh. Awesome."
"It's not the only thing your legacy changes. Our guild doesn't use power armor anymore. The steel isn't strong enough, and the hydraulics are not efficient either. It's kind of crazy, but people are actually on the lookout for sensory artifacts."
I gawked at the people below.
"Sensory artifacts?"
"Yeah. People move so fast, and with such large bodies, their ability to perceive what's going on lags behind. Intelligence lets them speed up their minds, but their senses can't absorb enough information fast enough because they don't get much perception from your legacy."
I scratched the side of my head.
"So they look for artifacts to speed up their senses. It rounds out their weaknesses."
"It's actually our guild's biggest bottleneck, and Torix is trying to fix it. He's offering specialized tutoring programs just for handling your legacy. It's that big of a problem."
I sighed.
"Man, I never intended on that happening."
She nudged me.
"Hey, cheer up. It's a good problem to have. Our guildmates are worried they'll hurt other people, not be hurt themselves."
In the distance, people hauled off masses of different raw materials onto a hovering platform. Steel beams, bags of concrete, and wood planks covered it, and it sank to a foot above the air. Two heavier set guildmates strapped cables across their shoulders, hauling the goods down the road. They kept going until they disappeared on the horizon.
Other people hauled shipments out of here in the meantime. One caravan shipped out an enormous bulkhead of food, while another carried electronics and wiring supplies. A powerline stretched across the roads, the elegant structures defying gravity. Pulses of mana mirrored pre-Schema powerlines, their intricacy apparent even from a distance.
I raised a brow.
"We're setting up a communication line, and Schema's allowing it?"
Althea shrugged.
"It can hardly keep dungeons together. How's it going to stop us?"
I nodded.
"Huh...Fair point."
We stepped into the city's center. People smothered the currency exchange center, selling off masses of eldritch parts, crafted gear, and old-age memorabilia. Like a parting sea, they let us head up to the warp drive with salutes of respect to both of us before we stepped onto the platform.
Althea suited up, putting on protective gear and changing her physiology. Once ready, she telepathized.
"You ready to head there?"
I scratched the side of my head.
"Through the warp drive?"
"How else?"
"Huh. Schema's people go to planets without an atmosphere?"
"If people are there, then they will come. It's also super easy to make cities because of some perk you have."
My curiosity spiked as I paid our surcharge. The clerk smiled at us before the ionizing mist covered our vision. As it faded, so did gravity. Stepping out onto the moon, I marveled at the encampment.
On a metallic platform, the currency exchange and warp drive rested. That's what we stepped onto. Two dreary and displeased clerks manned the area within vacuum-sealed, radiation-shielded shops. Around us, white rock walls stretched high, the crater being miles wide. A line of quintessence lit the edges of the crater walls, leaving everything bright and exposed.
Along those sheer faces, a series of metal capsules etched into the white rock like steel snakes crisscrossing the expanse. Guildmates eyed us from within their radiation shielding, many pointing at the two of us with wide eyes. Connecting these buildings, many of Torix's undead walked across the moon's surface, dispersing the shipments of goods as they needed them.
I telepathized out.
"Wow. This is way further along than I thought it would be."
Althea smiled.
"Torix had a base on the moon forever ago, apparently. He used a lot of what he learned there for this. For some reason, humans have a fascination with the moon, too. Something about NASA?"
"It was a big deal back in the day. That's before we knew about warp travel."
Althea put her hands on her hips.
"It sounded like a brute force project to me. It's like, you want to get somewhere, so you propel yourself on a rocket. Call me crazy, but that's the craziest solution ever."
I shrugged.
"Eh, it got us here."
"Pshh, good luck getting all the way to Mars or Venus that way. It would take years."
"If we're lucky."
One of Torix's undead cleaned a tunnel's surface. Althea pointed at it.
"Our finicky necromancer also thought the moon would be an easy place to terraform, considering how small it was. I think he called it a different kind of conquering or something. I kind of zone him out when he starts going on really long tangents."
"Ah, so a few minutes?"
"More like hours. I still love Torix, but you know how it is when he gets talking about magic or philosophy."
"He'll talk to you until you're as undead as he is."
Althea laughed.
"Actually, I joked about that being one of his most potent tactics for getting new necromancy materials. He talks things to death."
"How'd that land?"
"He gave me a three-hour lecture on how poor a tactic that really is."
I scoffed.
"Self-incrimination, I tell yah."
Gazing around, I marveled at where we were. I grabbed a chunk of the moon from the ground.
"But I do like that phrasing. A new kind of conquering, one where we overwhelm the elements and not each other...I like it."
Althea nudged me.
"Ready to go?"
I shook my head before stepping up to the settlement's center. I spent two hours constructing, etching, and powering up a city's monolith. Once established, I created a rim of my dimensional fabric around the crater, creating stairways leading up and down the expanse. Once made, I set the blue core into a premade slot, and it isolated us from the moon's void.
Neatly nestling along the cavern's edge, the barrier created a shield that matched the crater's size and proportions. My runes from L-7 came in handy, and air dispersed into the cavern along with air pressure, gravitation regulation, and radiation shielding. Althea pulled her helmet off once the barrier finished establishing a stable environment. She shook her head.
"Sometimes, I forget how much you can do."
I wrapped a hand around her hip. I raised my eyebrows several times.
"Hopefully, you haven't forgotten everything."
She shoved me away, giggling. In the distance, several adults left their isolated vesicles and walked into the earthen environment. Above us, the Earth floated in the distance, the view unlike any I'd ever seen. The stars were dim, the moon's reflection smothering their brilliance. The dark void made Earth all the brighter.
The white stone around us no longer blinded anyone brave enough to gaze at it. A few kids pulled off their helmets, laughing while jumping and running down the cavern walls. Althea blinked back tears. I couldn't blame her. It felt like a miracle.
She blinked.
"Hah. Kids on the moon. I never thought I'd see that."
I raised my brow.
"Me neither, but there's a lot I never expected to see until Schema's system arrived."
She nudged me.
"This wasn't Schema. It was you."
We watched the colonists acclimatize to their lifestyle upgrade along with Schema's clerks. No longer relegated to their capsules, the receptionists lowered their shielding before giving me a nod of acknowledgment. It left a smile on my face as Althea and I hopped over to the crater's edge. The hexagonal energy pads separated us from the brutality of the moon's surface, and we stared at it for a moment.
Althea tapped the shield, the energy rippling like a semitranslucent pool of honey.
"Is this stuff you learned from L-7?"
"Yeah, among other things."
She put her helmet back on and put a hand through the barrier.
"I'm guessing it was hostile there."
"Let's just say the moon is a picnic by comparison. It's why I've been on edge, after all."
We hopped over into the void. As I jumped from one space to another, the same problems cropped up. I couldn't get a good grip on my feet, limiting my power output. The ground held together better because of how much lighter I was, but it still cracked and crumbled underfoot.
The same mobility solutions worked here as on Earth, and my telekinesis gave me the friction I needed.
As I bounded off one foot, a rupture crossed the ground. It stretched into the distance, an omen of what I could do to this celestial body. I had to be careful. Earth was enormous, and my abilities couldn't destroy it. The moon was different, being much smaller and easier to break. A cataclysmic battle might displace this celestial plane, and destroying the moon was the last thing I wanted to do.
As I mentally prepared myself, I marveled at the radiance. The moon wasn't that bright on Earth, but here, it beamed out as if we stood on top of the sun. Althea already visited the place, and she left me eating her dust as she propelled herself around with grappling hooks.
Using two custom ropes, she slung ice picks of bone around her in massive circles. Once the picks were embedded, Althea jerked on each rope one at a time. This let her whip across the ground at nearly supersonic speeds. I kept pace with boring old gravity, my eyes set on her kinetic dance. She met my eye.
"We ground movers find our ways."
I smiled.
"Yeah, that's what I'm figuring out. It looks fun."
"Why not try it out?"
"Huh...Yeah, sure. Why not?"
I created two chains extending from each arm before wrapping them around my forearms. They ended with spiked mauls. I spun them over my head before slamming one into the ground in front of me. The metal gripped into the ground, and a quick jerk later, I flung myself into the air with a measure of grace.
I had to lighten myself to the weight of a feather to pull it off, but we had fun bounding across the moon like Spider-Man and Woman through New York's streets. We laughed with a gleeful abandon, each of us relishing the time together while on a mission for once. A few hours passed like that, each of us chatting away as if we never left each other for a moment.
Closing in on the other side of the moon, the situation changed. Something about the cavernous craters turned alien and eerie. Althea's eyes sharpened, and I matched her seriousness. After a few minutes of traversal, we landed together on a crater's edge. Below, a bus-sized stone sat on the moon's surface.
Like a stick insect, the rock moved while imitating the rock around it pristinely. Six legs skulked around as it raced towards us. Althea threw one of her spikes through the rocky exoskeleton of the creature before flinging herself around it. Her ropes circled the beast before Althea pulled the lines taught.
Like a razored piano wire, the ropes cleaved the beast apart without resistance. Its blue guts spilled out, and it slammed into the wall with a rush of dust. She jumped up before throwing her spiked rope through another alien rock. After impaling the beast, she pulled the rope taught once more as she ran across its length.
She was like a trapeze artist, but she dealt in death, not wowing a crowd. I siphoned the floating dust into a stone for visibility while walking over and putting my hand on the blood.
"So these are the lunar beasts?"
She ruptured another of them apart.
"Yeah. Their disguises are first-rate."
I nodded.
"I couldn't even tell it was there at all. Have we made sure-"
"Oh yeah. There's none of these things anywhere near the lunar bases."
"How do you guys know?"
"Because these things need dimensional energy to live. This one's dying. That's why its blood is blue. It's supposed to be black."
"Well then. It looks like these are moon vermin. Like moon mice. Heh, I wonder if they like cheese?"
Althea put a hand on her hip.
"Probably. I haven't seen anything organic that they won't eat. The colony calls them lunar trojans."
I vaporized the monster with Event Horizon.
"Ah, like Trojan horses but on the moon. Cool, cool."
We headed further out, finding more lunar trojans spread across the ground. Their density and viciousness increased as we got further over the dark side of the moon. Well, the dark side was an expression. It faced away from Earth, but when our side was enveloped in darkness, the unseen half of the moon basked in the sun's light.
We happened to choose a time when the lunar colony and the dimensional rupture were all illuminated. This light exposed how tormented the moon's surface had become. Even a cursory, passing glance demonstrated an unhinged fabric of reality. Gravitation fluctuated at random intensities, at times strong enough to crush bones.
At other times, gravity lessened enough that Althea could hurl herself off the moon entirely. Other spots of the moon brimmed with warm radiation exceeding L-7's permanent glow at the ossuary. Other spots floated as blots of darkness where no electromagnetic waves could pass.
Regions held different temporal flows, some faster or slower, some even twisted. One spot moved time back and forth like a spacetime pendulum. I pulled Althea out of it with my wake, but pieces like that explained why Althea lost an arm. Other areas couldn't even hold gravity; the space warped to the point where it couldn't maintain fundamental laws of reality.
The creatures mirrored this corruption. Their disguises lost their elegance, the jagged, almost geometric creatures like unfinished Van Gogh paintings. They reminded me of the minions Yawm protected his world tree with. Those poor creatures squirmed at us with open wounds, unable to survive this tortured environment yet unable to leave it.
One of them walked out of the void from above, its form entirely black. As it hacked at me, I ducked backward. Its sharpened blade arm cleaved into my dimensional wake, ripping at the dense fabric. My eyes widened before I gelatinized its insides with gravitation. As it fell, I blinked back, a growing unease settling into my chest.
Althea murmured.
"You ok?"
"Yeah, but these things can hit me where it actually hurts. That's a first."
We passed the expanse with careful aggression. I led the charge, and Althea passed close behind. We found more lunar trojans, no longer appearing as stone. They feasted on the radiation and latent energy here. One even tried to indulge in the uncorrupted space around it, like some kind of dimension eater.
Eerie.
In a way, these monsters contained the outbreak since they held energy in themselves, but there was only so much they could do. Helpful or not, I took a scorched earth policy with these guys, killing all of them. As we slaughtered them in mass, Althea fired harpoons for the main damage spike, and Event Horizon destroyed the bodies.
It left us colder. It was as if the mission had finally started, and we entered a dreamland of horrors to accentuate that fact. Near the oozing rupture, reality became a suggestion, and the causal laws constructing our reality disintegrated. Althea stopped along this line, her body half in our reality and halfway in another.
She waved her hands at me, and I got the message. I checked the surroundings for a patch of stability, finding one on a cliffside. Althea walked back onto our plane before she put herself against the cliff's edge.
"So you can probably see why I turned around after a while."
I sighed.
"If anything, I'm wondering why you came this close before."
She shrugged.
"Nothing's been able to touch me when I planeswalk. But this, this isn't like that. It's a deep kind of pollution or something. I can't find a version of reality that isn't being torn apart by this stuff."
I winced.
"Damn. I'm the guy that's going to slurp it up then?"
Althea frowned.
"That's not what I wanted, but the others thought you were the easiest solution we had. You've touched this stuff before and in a lot higher densities. I remember it, actually. It's still a scary thing to think about, but hey, if it didn't cripple you then, why now? Right?"
I reached over.
"Thanks for trying to take care of me."
She leaned her face against my hand.
"Sometimes, it feels like I'm the only one who is."
I put my forehead against her faceplate.
"Eh, one is better than none."
She rolled her eyes before taking a seat on the cliffside. She murmured.
"I'll see you when you get back."
I opened my pocket dimension.
"I could just store you in here if you'd like. Seems safer."
A bubble of gravitation passed by us, and it disintegrated a portion of the wall. Althea's eyes widened.
"Heh, maybe that's for the best."
She curled into a ball, fitting into the pocket dimension with ease. Before her head sank in, she narrowed her eyes.
"Don't do anything weird to me while I'm in here."
I put a hand on my chest, a mischievous smile coming over my face.
"Oh, how it hurts me to hear you say that."
She and I laughed before she fell into stasis. She rested while we set out into the distance. Not needing to protect her, I propelled myself with speed and force out of the crater. Chunks of stone spiraled away from my ascent, and I bolted into the hidden hellscape. A buffet of physical sensations crossed over me as the laws of reality caved into vague implications rather than firm rules.
It reminded me of the twisted patches of reality left by the cipher, though the density and scope of these changes exceeded anything I'd ever seen done by the language. As I passed over miles of the twisted landscape, a dark fog settled over everything. As I wafted into it, the fabric of reality bled. It was the only way I could describe it.
Every part of existence faded into something undefined. No rules remained here, every moment different than the last. The lack of continuity left me drifting through everything as if it were a memory or a dream instead of something tangible. But it was undeniable in the end.
The fog seeped into my armor, the metal hungry for a new source of energy. As it sank in, an icy cold sensation pierced through me like frozen needles digging into my skin. The denser the fog, the colder I felt. That density of fog also destroyed the tangibility of all around me.
At times, the distance between two spaces was normal. A second later, I had to spend a minute crossing a few feet. Another moment would pass like an hour, while another hour would pass as a moment. Up became down. Down became in and out. The disorientation grew until I tried to get rid of it.
With my wake, I condensed a space around me, fighting off whatever this corruption was. It bent away, a kind of dimensional lens forming around me. Able to pierce through the veil, I made headway until I reached a vast dark cloud at the moon's far reaches. Here, the changes sank in the deepest.
I made my wake into a point, driving it through the tainted space like a lance through armor. Steady but slow going, I spent an hour getting closer. All the while, my armor drifted away from me. It shot tendrils in the dark to siphon the energy. It loved this stuff, becoming almost drunk on the darkness like a god's first taste of ambrosia. Event Horizon could sap the energy, helping correct the space as well.
It allowed me to speed along before I found the gushing wound in spacetime. In this central chasm, a rip belched out with plumes of interdimensional energy. It sent a chill down my spine, reminding me of when Baldag-Ruhl cleaved dimensions apart.
This was the same kind of split, but it wasn't a clean, sterile kind of cut; this jagged mark would leave a nasty scar. It sat in the center of the darkness like a jagged splintering of reality, stretching out in every direction. As I got near it, my armor trembled over my skin. It drank deep from these waters, ingesting the most delicious of flavors.
It disgusted me, but I allowed it to do this. This energy hadn't hurt me in the slightest, though the effects were as difficult to place as they had been the first time I'd felt them in BloodHollow so many years ago. Taking a moment, I grabbed the edges of the alternate reality, getting ready to heave it away from the moon's surface.
As I did, a voice radiated from the other side.
"One that withstands the blood?"
My armor smiled, and I frowned. The strange voice oozed its words.
"No...A being that indulges in it."