Chapter 42: The Final Gambit

The seven tornadoes struck the final barrier together, and with the control of Elias, they did not crash into it like hammers; they pierced.

Thin, needle-sharp tendrils that burned white hot illuminated the entire barrier, and for a moment, Elias thought the barrier had transformed into a massive eye before the light emerging from it became too bright for him to look at.

As if the cloud of vitality over his body had developed a leak, it began to rapidly shrink, as a high, keening wail rose that was not the same as the mechanical scream of friction from the previous barrier, but something alive, something furious, something female.

The sound clawed into Elias’s skull like fingernails on the inside of his skull, and he staggered in his wisp form, the mental image flickering for a heartbeat.

The tornadoes paused from confusion as though the barrier had just spoken to them.

“Fuck that…” Elias growled, “I am the only voice you should hear.” With a cry of anger, he pushed his mental imagery deep into the tornadoes, and they shivered before continuing to press through the barrier.

The screams began anew, and Elias pushed through it, not letting his focus slip despite feeling as if his head was being repeatedly bashed in by a dozen hammers at the same time. The cloud of vitality had reduced to a third, and Elias was becoming afraid that he would consume everything here before he could break through the barrier, when, unexpectedly, the barrier parted, ripped like flesh under a blade.

Elias had sliced through a lot of flesh, and he knew the sound of the blade tearing through meat and how it felt. He would swear on his name that the sound of the final barrier breaking was the sound of flesh being ripped apart.

However, this was not what he was focused on… he had succeeded, one hundred pools…

Elias wanted to scream for joy, but he held himself back; he needed to make sure he completed opening up all the pools before he could celebrate. His wisp body was shaking as he watched the tornadoes tear through the webs of darkness over the Pools of Lumina.

Slowly, he brought himself back to baseline, keeping his emotions under check. As a hunter, he knew that some of the greatest danger lay in the moment his prey was about to totally fall into his hands.

With a dull roar, the webs of darkness tore beneath Elias’s supreme focus, and one by one, all the Pools of Lumina were filled up. Elias did not dare to breathe; he waited for the pools to begin deepening and widening up, and when he saw two purple rising from it to slowly join the others, creating a total of twenty orbs, that was when he was about to roar from his victory.

Then, everything changed.

The last two purple orb rose to the same level as the first eighteen, and a resonance seemed to form between them. It began slowly at first, like a hum that could be heard at the back of the ear, and then the sound increased.

Arcs of light leapt out from the purple orbs that travelled across them, and the humming sound continued to increase as the purple orbs grew brighter. Elias could still not observe his body, or he would have seen nine spots of glowing light on his chest that shone as bright as the sun.

The scent of sandalwood on his body was becoming so intense that the now purple swarm above him could no longer devour all of it. They were even becoming lethargic as scores of them began to fall from the air, and Elias was surrounded by a curtain of purple rain as the Swarm could no longer hold back the scent of sandalwood.

This scent traveled through this cavern, quicker than light, and it rippled all throughout this Fragement of Divinity, causing everything to pause for a moment, and then screams from a million throats, no… billions erupted, as the Fragement came to life.

Inside Elias, the wisp could only retreat in shock and confusion as the humming and the brightness of the purple orbs reached a limit, and suddenly that limit shattered, and a bright golden light erupted from the center of this space, directly over the twenty purple orbs.

He closed his “eyes,” but the golden light was so bright that it burned even through the wisp’s closed eyes. Elias felt the surge hit his real body like a physical blow; his knees buckled, his spine arched, and blood sprayed from his mouth and nose in a fine mist.

His Vitality Absorption technique was broken, but it did not seem to matter. Something inside him pulled on that vitality, and his body rose into the air, and he entered into the cloud of vitality above, and if he could scream, he would have lost his voice as vitality poured into him faster than he could channel it.

His skin split along old scars that had not properly healed. His heart stuttered once, twice, then steadied into a thunder that shook the cavern walls. His Status screen appeared over his vision without prompting, and it seemed to be screaming at him…

Vitality: ??? / ???

(Overflow Critical — Containment Failing. Veil Fracture[Body Mutation] Imminent)

Elias could barely process this change. Was Veil Fracture not the fear for higher-order Siphons like Mist Phantoms, who had so much Lumina in their bodies that, without proper control, they could mutate into abominations?

The Status screen screamed warnings in red, the first time Elias had seen it do something like this, when it was normally a white text in a blue background.

WARNING: Lumina saturation exceeds safe threshold.

Multiple pools integrating simultaneously.

Core instability detected.

Entity resonance detected — external influence incoming.

Suddenly, the woman’s voice returned, and it was a roar that filled the entire Fragment.

“YOU WILL NOT HAVE IT!”

The wisp was barely alive, and it was about to be shattered by the golden light when the light twisted itself into a ribbon that moved like a snake, and the wisp instantly knew that this light was aware, and at the same moment, that there was something wrong with it.

The pools Elias had just opened up began to be filled with blood, and this was not the red vitality of Damnation Lumina; this was real blood that contained no vitality but an endless hunger.

Crimson threads snaked upward from the liquid surfaces, wrapping around the seven tornadoes like chains. One by one, the spirals were dragged downward, back into the pools they had filled, and Elias felt a shock of cold rushing through his body that made him want to destroy his entire body, because he had never felt so violated in his life. Something was possessing the core of who he was, and that feeling was terrifying.

Then, Elias felt it, a cold hand closing around his heart. Not metaphorically. Literally.

Something, someone, had reached through the Lumina itself and seized him.

The wisp form flickered violently. Elias’s real body convulsed in the air, like a living animal cruelly hung on a hook for slaughter, blood bubbling from his lips. His Will clamped down like iron on this invasive threat, but it was slipping. The woman’s scream rose to a deafening crescendo,

“THIS FRAGMENT IS MINE! YOU ARE MINE! EAT YOUR WINGS, CHILD! EAT AND FLY TO ME!”

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