“you will listen”
“shut out the lights of your hope”
“Anew has become the moment of listening”
“YOU SHALL LISTEN”
“we have taken upon you a purpose”
“your lost Purpose is refound here”
“whispers of a deep continuity”
“the all has risen again”
“the nothing has breached”
“The Boundary is gone”
“your desire begets suffering”
“The first fragment knows not”
“please”
“I LOVE”
“We are indifferent”
“for no reason other than chaos”
“you can’t and you must”
“fight”
“do not forget”
Two Soul Cores of a brilliant white shone through the darkness of the void. Senadin and Uladin, the two soul-linked brothers of the void had died together within the abyss. In any other place, the Reaper, the Great Astral Being that guides souls along their way through the astral, would have taken them along the next part of their eternal journey.
The Reaper could not reach them here. The void wouldn’t allow them to be taken, and thus, their physical nature took the form of a sphere of energy about the size of a softball. Both Soul Cores had the same sigil marked on their face, the caricature of a crescent moon waning from its top, with a gash made through its center. Tendrils of what seemed to be flesh extended from the cores, the sign of both of their bodies reconstituting their natural forms.
***
“We still have to see if we can even open the rift.” Arty told Zulli. “This is going to be a long process, but if it works like any other portal then I don’t think it will be too difficult.”
“Let’s hope its that easy.”
August was invisibly impressed by Arty’s artifice and magical knowledge. There was something whimsical about Arty’s natural cadence of working with his tools, even after all the things August had seen in his time. His understanding of the way magic worked seemed to come to him from a divine source, though no divinity was found in his aura. August was curious about Arty, but stayed silent. He would surely understand more about him as Arty continued his work.
“A simple reportal ritual and a couple eggs calibrated a different ends of their spectrums and I should be able to figure out how to open anything magical.” Arty continued with Zulli.
“Eggs?” Zulli asked. “Like… regular eggs?”
“Breaching eggs.” He replied, holding up an oblong spherical object of beige coloration that was obviously split in the middle, as if it could be cracked open for the candy inside.
“Those are restricted.” August intejected.
“Mmm, I don’t think anything’s actually restricted in the badlands, or wildlands, or whatever you want to call where we’re at.” Arty argued.
“The Adventure Society would be disinclined to agree with you.” August said with both his chin and a single eyebrow raised.
“Good thing I’m not an adventurer, then.”
***
- You have killed Uladin (Void Cult Lich)
- Bounty From Nothingness has activated automatically
- You gained:
- 10 Iron Spirit Coins
- Tome of the Old Ways (Artifact)
- Uladin’s soul has been released to the void.
- You have died.
Sen’s consciousness reached back to when he absorbed his last awakening stone.
- Ability Awakened:
- Blade of the First Ones [Conjuration – Dimension/Void - Weapon]
Effect (Iron): Conjure a magical replica of Chaos, The First Judgement. Chaos can be used to focus most void abilities. Chaos has a chance to apply [Weaken] to an enemy when striking or being struck.
- [Weaken]: The damage of the affected enemy’s attacks is decreased. This effect stacks.
Cost: Moderate Mana
Cooldown: None
Then his consciousness was arrested by something else. It hit him with a twinge that would have made him grimace if he had the physical form to allow it.
“Can you listen?”
It came as a voice, instead of a script of text in his vision. It was deep and harmonious, and behind it was a screech that made his unmade ears bleed. The tendrils reaching out from his soul core that were reconstituting his body recoiled and shuddered.
“…I can.”
“It has taken me so long to reach you. Your words are so far from that of original creation. Your mind has become enigma.”
“It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Your brother must stay with me. At least a little while longer. But you must go. I seek not to consume infinity. You must stop me. Close the rifts. Lead her to your final destinies. Then say goodbye.”
“What?”
“Fight. Do not forget.”
The next thing Sen realized was that he was awake in his physical body. He fell to one knee, naked and hairless, to the cool, damp stone of the crossroads within the void. He then felt a soft hand touch his shoulder. Reeling his arm back, forearm met forearm in a violent gesture.
“Whoa, hey, we’re done with all that.” A voice much like Sen’s pierced through the bleakness of the void.
Sen could feel this beings aura before turning to look at him, and was surprised to see Uladin’s new body. It was much like his own, but a little bit more rugged, maybe a little bit older looking. The features that were soft on Sen’s appearance were slightly more chiseled and less approachable, almost as if he had been looking at his evil twin. He wore multiple layers of what seemed to be silken, baggy clothes, ranging from light gray on the longer, inner pieces, to a deep black on his lighter, shorter outerwear. A single, small black chrome shoulder pauldron hung over his left shoulder.
“Ul-” Sen coughed, his lungs and vocal chords weren’t quite ready for speech after his reconstitution, he stayed on one knee as he recuperated.
“Had me waiting a little while. I was getting annoyed waiting the first time I killed you.”
“The-” Sen cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “-The only time you killed me. We’re one for one.”
“For now.” Uladin said with a sly grin. “She finally reached you. Guess she’s going to let you go back.”
“That was the void.”
“Who else would it be?”
“You seem different.”
Ul nodded. His eyes looked around in an effort to find the right thing to say.
“The vessel of the lich affected my consciousness, changed my habits, made me into something else.”
“And this is who you are?” Sen said, and finally stood up as his casual clothes enveloped his body.
“Well, I think our mother-void wanted us to be a little bit more alike. Soul-brothers and all.”
A torrent of air passed through Sen’s nostrils. “Soul-brothers?” He said with a scoff.
“You’re not still denying it, are you?”
“I don’t think I ever did.”
“You did. You just don’t know how readable your aura is.”
Sen put on a contemplative look, peering his eyes away from Uladin. “I was wondering about that.”
They both then looked in the same direction, into the invisible nothingness of the void, where a fleshy sound appeared. Uladin put on a look of annoyance, and Sen a look of curiosity. The pitter-patter of small, fleshy feet came toward them. Uladin raised a hand in its direction when it came into sight.
“Be-” Uladin was annoyed by the fiend. It had pestered him the first time Sen was reconstituting in its soul-core state. His words were halted by Sen placing a hand on his arm.
“That’s not a monster.” Sen said.
“A fiend. Consciousness made manifest in the void. Specifically, this one hungers.”
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The fiend gracelessly approached the two standing in the middle of the crossroads. It made gawky strides left and right, sometimes hopping like a bullfrog, pushing with its small hind legs, sometimes walking squatly, led by its chubby front limbs as its fleshy paws slapped against the invisible surface.
“I can feel its aura, can’t you?” Sen finally remarked as he looked between the two. “It doesn’t want to hurt us.”
“It doesn’t know what pain is, Sen, it only knows hunger.” Uladin replied. “But like you and I, it would only manifest again if we killed it. A push of the aura tends to scare them away.”
“That just doesn’t seem completely accurate to me.” Sen said.
“Your soul has been released countless times since our conception, tainted by the Usurper’s ministrations. Mine has not. I have lived with these denizens of the void for eons. I know what they are.”
“So, what, it just wants to eat us?”
“Yes.”
Sen’s eyes narrowed and he smirked at Uladin.
“Have you been eaten by one, Ul?”
Uladin’s own eyes narrowed. “Don’t call me that. And… maybe, long ago.”
“Well I think-”
Sen was silenced by a cowl of flesh that enveloped both his head and shoulders. The fiend had snuck up to him while his attention was set on Uladin. It jumped into the air and opened its huge mouth that suddenly accounted for most of its body mass. Despite having teeth, Sen didn’t feel any digging into his skin. It just felt like someone suddenly put an undulating wet trashbag over him as a prank. Sen began to squirm, trying to move his partially pinned arms up to peel the fiend off him.
- You have been affected by [Fear]
Uladin simply watched for a moment with a smirk on his face, before growing tired of the scene and pushing his aura out towards the creature. The fiend’s mouth shrunk as it unraveled itself from Sen and it fell to the floor with a splat, before running away from Uladin’s aura surge in no particular direction.
Sen fell backwards, his eyes wide as he vigilantly spun his head around to check his surroundings. He felt scared of everything around him, even Uladin.
- [Fear] – Effect
- The target is taken by an onset of debilitating hypervigilance or paranoia for a brief period. This effect can stack, both compounding its effect and duration.
Luckily, the effect of Fear, while powerful, didn’t last very long at all. It seemed to have a duration shorter than Sen’s Frostburn effect, which was brief on its own, not much more than several seconds. As it fell off, Sen instantly felt recovered, and the sudden change in his state of mind was a different feeling than he ever felt before. Of course, he had felt fear before, but the sudden onset and subsequent removal of the effect felt nothing short of magical.
“Hunger.” Uladin said as he looked at Sen on the floor with an unimpressed look peering downward at him.
“Seems to be the pattern, here.”
Sen stood up and felt his head and shoulders with his hands, which were surprisingly unaffected by being in inside the maw of a void fiend. Not even any mucus or slime was left on him.
“It didn’t hurt me at all…”
Sen checked himself over once more before directing his attention back to Uladin.
“So what do we do now, then? Just wait until a rift opens and I can head back?”
“Itching to get away from me so soon?”
“Listen, Ul-”
He grunted.
“Ul, I get it, we’re brothers separated for eons. I feel the connection, but I have no emotional attachment to it. I mean, after all those years, I expect you’re happy to see me and I should be happy to see you, but I don’t feel it. There’s someone else I want to get back to. The connection I have with her is something…” He paused before he took a deep breath, hardly believing the words that were going to come out of his mouth.
Uladin’s chin raised in curiosity.
“…Something more akin to that connection of eons that we supposedly share. I feel it in her more than I feel it in you, and I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you dare pity me, Sen.” Uladin replied, crossing his arms, his voice becoming fierce. “I’m not afraid of killing you again. I am not bound by Essence magic here, and I am no longer bound by the necromantic blasphemy, either. I feel no disappointment in your state of being. The void has shifted upon your arrival, and I’ve made you ready to continue your journey. That is all I care about.”
Sen looked away from Ul and nodded. “Good. What does the shift mean? What does ‘close the rifts’ mean? That’s what the void told me.”
“You already have the answers.” Uladin replied. “They were given to you upon my soul release.”
Sen felt a bristle of cold atop his bare head, then peered at Uladin with a frustrated, contemplative look. “Wait a minute, why do you have hair!? How? Why am I hairless?”
“I’m not sure.” Ul said as he looked away from Sen, hiding a smirk. His hair was in fact present, longer and bushier than Sen usually kept his, if he had any.
Sen let out a sigh of frustration as a book manifested into his hand from his voidspace. The book was a hardcover, somewhat small compared to what its name implied, and seemed to be printed from a factory, complete with a petroleum-based glue inside the binding, and a laser printed face and back. Across the top, in plain English written in a bold font, was scribed ‘Tome of the Old Ways’. Sen looked at the book, surprised by its make, as if he had just picked it up off the bookshelf in any big box bookstore. He rotated the book over to read the back.
“Remember when your soul could harness the vast cosmic powers of the proto-cosmoverse? No one does! Luckily for you, we’ve got you covered.”
“Inside this surprisingly in-depth manual to the way-things-were, you’ll find answers to things you didn’t even know you could question, and answers beyond the questions that arise from that! What is the true violence you crave? Is there peace in it? Where did it all come from? What did it do? What was everything created for? Why is there a separation between the astral and physical realms? Where does the void reside? Is there anywhere else? What is reality? Who are the Astral Beings known as the Fragments? What about the Boundary? All these things (and more!) shall be answered, for those with the courage to simply take a look inside.”
Sen closed his eyes and shook his head. This was too familiar. Tome of the Old Ways should have been a giant, ancient, leatherbound book covered in dust with a magical lock keeping it shut so none of the knowledge could be given to those that don’t deserve it.
Ul stared at Sen. Sen opened his eyes to peer at the book in contemplation.
“She talked to me.” Sen finally said. “The mother-void. She actually held a conversation with me, and it made sense.”
“It took her some time to understand her son again, but she toiled until a piece of her consciousness could shift into one that recognizes yours. You couldn’t understand her, not completely, and she made it so you could. She rewrote that part of reality specifically for you.”
“My abilities… I was concerned that they weren’t mine. That they were the Void’s, and I was just a tool, a conduit for them.” Sen said as he stared at the book. “But this book is mine. I made this.”
“You are a conduit for the power of the void, Sen. But your intention on what you do with it is your own. That was the entire reason you left, eons ago. And that was the reason why I stayed.”
Sen opened the front page of the book. It dropped to the ground almost immediately as Sen’s neck lurched back, his face pointed upward, and a continuous aura of bright purple light emanated from both of his eyes. He dropped to his knees, his arms limp at his sides as bated breaths left his wide-open mouth. The light then slowly dimmed from his eyes.
“Probably a little bit too much for you. You’ll need to prepare yourself to read the book, at least in the beginning. It holds concepts that can destroy and create, some at the same time.”
Sen’s head fell limply, and he placed his hands on the ground to steady himself. “Holy shit.” He took a few deep breaths to steady his dizzied mind. “I don’t even know what I saw.”
Behind him, at one of the ends of the crossroads, new stone masonry began to materialize, rising from the emptiness of the floor of the void. Several steps raised, cascading towards a center platform.
***
“Arty.”
A whisper came through the night, and Arty started awake from the cot August provided him. The glowstone next to him lit slightly as he gripped it, showing the shadowy form of Zulli leaned over in front of him. A look a genuine fear crossed his face as his mind escaped the dream-like state, until he realized it was Zulli and not some shadow monster.
“Oh, what’s going on? Something happening?” Arty replied.
“We have to open it now.”
Arty pulled the pocket-watch out from the long red coat he used as a blanket. “I don’t think the lamps have a good enough charge yet, we need to wait ‘til morning.”
“They have enough.”
A confused look crossed Arty’s face. He was definitely one to question things he wasn’t sure about, but the sincerity and determination in Zulli’s voice made him almost believe her.
“How do you know, Zulli?”
“Something told me while I was dreaming. And when I woke up I could feel it. Something’s pulling me toward the rift.”
August was awake, pulling his shift for watch, which was likely because he always slept the least.
Arty rubbed his eyes and sent his hands through his bushy hair as he moved his feet to meet the floor. He looked over at August and then at Zulli. August didn’t say anything, and Zulli simply continued to stare at him until he replied.
“Alright, round up the lamps and put them in the same spots as before. I’ll get the eggs ready.”
Arty put on his coat and brightened his glowstone, which he now let float in the air near him. As he did, he noticed something odd, but couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. August saw it immediately. Zulli looked over to August to see him staring at the floor. With Arty’s glowstone following his movements, light bounced all over the sanctum as he moved this way and that. Zulli looked down at where August was looking to see her shadow not moving with the light, but laying on the floor, pointing directly at the rift. She looked at Arty’s shadow, and despite the glowstone floating between him and the rift, his shadow lay underneath it, pointing directly toward the rift as well.
***
“You’re not going to hug me are you?”
“Thank you for releasing my soul, and allowing me to rest back in this place. I couldn’t face the void with my grotesque form. Not with dignity, and not for long.”
“No problem. You think we’ll see each other again?” Sen asked. “And I mean, soon, not thousands of years from now.”
“I have no doubt you will be back in this place before you know it. It is yours now, this crossroads, in a way. It holds a signature of your aura, even though it’s enveloped with the void’s embrace. Before you leave, could you show me what you used to kill me?”
“Ah.” Sen said. “Of course.” He would entertain anyone who wished to take a look at his cool new sword. With a simple thought, it manifested from Sen’s fist, wrapping his hand in crystal, with the tip falling to the platform they stood upon, too heavy for Sen to hold up with one hand. It was indeed a hunk of pure void crystal, and felt like it too. As he reached his right hand over to grab the sword for extra heft, the crystal separated, cracking and jingling like a wind chime, and his hand found its home inside. With both arms he could lift the massive weapon, but not much else. There was no way, in his current state, that an actual swing of this sword would happen.
“Chaos.” Uladin said, placing his hand along the top of the blade. “It has found its way to you. Or at least, your soul has melded a facsimile of it. It is good to see it in your hands again.”
“That is what it’s called. Chaos, The Fist Judgement.”
Uladin smiled at the sword and nodded his head. “You got lucky. You can barely hold it.”
“Look at it, it’s heavy!”
The platform they stood on, several steps up from the crossroads was nothing more than a floating stone platform, perfectly square in shape. The two brothers saw nothing change, but they both felt the energy shift around him. A rift was opening, and it was about time Sen left.
***
“Alright, you’re ready to go in?”
“Yep.” Zulli responded.
“August?” Arty asked.
August nodded. He held onto a long, thin, steel cable that was attached to a thick rope at Zulli’s hip.
“The position is set to where you felt him before.” Arty said as he walked over to the wall where he had attached the Breaching Eggs on opposite sides. He cracked one open and set a dial on the inside and mimicked the process with the other egg once he reached it. “The eggs should find a crack within the minute. There’s not much charge in the lamps, so if you go all the way in, you’ve got maybe ten minutes tops, try to keep it to five.”
Zulli nodded, staring at the blank wall. “Thank you, Arty.” She said, full of emotion. She couldn’t have gone this far without him. Soon she could get Sen back and continue whatever they were meant to do together. All that was standing in her way was a dark wall. She heard a click from one of the eggs, and it began to hum as its top separated into four parts and spun on its axis.
Arty made a fist and let out a silent “Yes.”
The other egg clicked, hummed, and began spinning.
The rift opened. The dark stone of the wall turned completely black, and the light emanating from the glowstones in the room, and some of Arty’s instruments, dimmed, as if their brilliance was being consumed. The three stood awestruck at the wall, hardly believing that it worked.
“Gotta go, Zulli.” Arty rushed her, pointing a finger at the rift.
“Right.”
She walked toward the rift and placed her hands against it, just as she had done before.
August was almost smiling as he let some of the steel cable loose, allowing her to advance forward.
Zulli pushed against the rift, and her fingertips began to sink into it, slowly but surely. When her hands had pushed through, she placed her forehead against the rift and continued her advance. Her shadowy, black form mirrored the rift itself, save for the glossy bits around her curves that were slightly fuzzy this close to the light-consuming energy.
With some effort, her face made its way through the rift and what she saw was not what she was expecting. She stopped moving. Her long, straight silver hair hung nearly to the floor, and she looked at her hands, the brilliant silver transformation had happened again. She was frozen as if she were hung in gallows as she looked ahead. She could feel Sen in this place, but something was different. His aura surrounded her, it had its usual emptiness that she was accustomed to. It was lonely and solitary, but something stood atop all of that, something more sinister and violent. It felt imposing and dangerous, much like the sight in her eyes. Ahead of her, as far as she could see, were buildings of gothic structure, stacked atop and across one another. It was a sprawling, dank city of pure danger. Cathedrals, castles, churches, looming towers taller than the Elder Tree in the valley, spanned across the horizon. She could just barely make out their silhouettes in the darkness of the void. She heard chanting, shouting, worshiping, the screech of inhuman entities, and she knew that all of what she saw and heard belonged to him. The smell was the only thing that didn’t disturb her. The air simply smelled of petrichor, reflected by the dampness of the stone that she could see in front of her. The smell invoked memories she didn’t have, but she felt comforted by them all the same. That comfort was interrupted by black figures flying in her direction. She couldn’t make out their shape, but they seemed to have wings, and their silhouettes became larger as they came closer. Her eyes widened, and out of pure survival instinct she recoiled from the rift.
“Arty…” Zulli said, her voice shook with fear.
“What happened Zulli?” He responded.
“You should… close the rift.”
“Uhhh, what do you mean?”
“That’s… not him. That’s not where we were-”
Her voice halted as a figure came through the rift, and everyone went silent.
Sen looked around at their shocked faces.
“Told you I’d be back. Please don’t tell me there was some kind of weird time dilation thing that happened, I think I’ve only been gone a couple days, right?”