Chapter 247: Soul Subjugation!

Behind him, the urgent look in Ailin’s eyes abruptly changed.

For the first time since she had become the Mnemosyne, genuine surprise colored her features. It lasted only a moment before something else replaced it… something that had no business on the face of a being like her.

Excitement. Pure and unbridled excitement.

She watched the air around Finn shift in a way that was terrifying, yet also defining at the same time.

The tides of the battle changed.

It started slowly at first, almost imperceptibly even, then climbed with exponential pace. The ground Finn had been losing was now being gained back steadily. One step forward after another.

The Blessed felt him inside her psyche before she fully processed what was happening. Not as a foreign intrusion or the violation it should have been by every law governing souls and consciousness. Rather, she felt him as herself. As the Blessed. As Ailin, the girl underneath the Mnemosyne, the girl who had been touched by a Greater One.

His use of Error had allowed him to blend and weave himself into her consciousness without breaking what was perhaps the most sacred truth of reality…

The sovereignty of the self.

He was drawing on the strength of her consciousness. Borrowing it, not stealing, not forcing. He was simply using a door that should not have existed and walking through it as if it had always been there.

And not just her.

Even Althea felt it. From her kneeling form at the chamber wall, doubled over with the effort of simply enduring the Tyrant’s pressure, she felt Finn’s caress in her mind, foreign, yet still somehow just right, as though they had always been capable of this and had simply never tried.

She knew without being told that what was happening was impossible. Reality didn’t allow this. The sovereignty of the soul was not a convention or a guideline; it was a fundamental condition of existence.

And yet her soul did not reject him. There was no dissonance. No resistance. Nothing that felt like a violation.

What she felt instead was more. Like a door in herself she hadn’t known existed had opened, and on the other side of it was a whole new world she’d never had access to.

She could feel Ailin through the connection. She could perceive the chamber differently, more completely, as though her senses had been opened up to more than what they normally allowed. And in this state of expanded perception, she saw what Finn was actually doing.

He wasn’t just connected to her and Ailin… He was connected to the stone beneath their feet. To the ancient walls of the chamber. To the twisted trees in the forest outside, growing wrong in the grey fog. To the black water of the shore and whatever moved beneath its perfectly still surface. To things she had no name for — presences at the edge of sensation, vast and quiet and utterly indifferent, conscious in ways that bore no resemblance to human consciousness and yet were conscious nonetheless.

He had reached past them. Drawing from everything he could touch. He was careful not to draw too much from any particular source, making sure what he drew from every single consciousness he touched was negligible.

But because the sources were plentiful and increasing by the second, needless to say, the soul strength he amassed was staggering. And it only continued to climb.

With each step Althea watched him take forward, Finn continued to gain the upper hand. The green inferno raged. The Tyrant’s soul pushed back with everything it had, trying to reassert the gap between what it was and what Finn was.

But it was futile. The gap had closed already.

Finn stretched out his hand as if reaching for the statue, then with a deep voice that seemed to carry the weight of many consciousnesses, he spoke the first word of his Ossuarist ’Soul Purge Edict’ from the future timeline, improvising on the fly to change it to one of assimilation, rather than purging:

“Will.”

Immediately the first word of his edict dropped, the Tyrant’s soul trembled, the green flames flickered wildly as Finn’s outstretched hand ’grabbed’ onto it as if it were a real, tangible thing, holding it in place as its shifted and twisted erratically, like a chaotic soul mass trying to escape.

“Soul Anchor.”

Finn closed his eyes, grounding himself with those words to prevent his soul, along with his amassed soul might, from wantonly dispersing its barely-held-together strength as it began to radiate superior density. The words also brought a surge of stability that secured his body, ensuring that the Tyrant soul’s influence could not affect him, even as its struggle became more frantic.

“Focused Mind.”

The next words brought clarity to Finn’s mind, filling him with nothing but the thought of assimilating the soul right in front of him. Every other thought receded to the background until they were barely even there. His amassed soul essence had begun to spread in a focused manner, ready to attack the Tyrant soul which was struggling intensely against his hold.

“Sense Phasma.”

Finn’s eyes snapped open and his soul latched onto the Tyrant’s, causing it to fight with everything it had, trying to defend against the invasive force of his now, much more superior soul. But it was futile. Finn’s previous chants had laid the groundwork for his attack. His soul was rock solid, spearing forward without stopping.

“Order.”

The single word instantly stilled the erratically twisting Tyrant soul like a law. Finn’s soul had invaded so deeply into the Tyrant soul that it had no choice but to comply, allowing Finn to encroach more deeply and with ease.

“Bind.”

At this point, there was nothing left but the inevitable assimilation. Finn’s soul had forced it into submission in totality. The word only served to allow Finn to freely drop his hand that was still raised in a grasping motion, as the Tyrant Soul had now entirely separated from the statue, the green flames coalesced into a ball shape, floating still in the air like it was bound by invisible chains.

Once Finn felt his superior soul essence fully permeate the Tyrant soul mass, he took in a deep breath and prepared himself for the next two words.

Usually, when purging a soul mass, the next words would be: “Rend Asunder,” then “Absolute Purge.” But he didn’t want to purge the Tyrant’s soul. He wanted to assimilate it.

So he changed the words and his intent entirely. He was conscious of the fact that it was the intent behind the soul chant that mattered, and not the words themselves. The words simply served as a medium to ground the soul while doing it.

He instinctively tried to emulate two steps of intent. There were four words left to finish the whole chant. But he somehow felt no need to do so. Despite how powerful the soul of the Crimson Tyrant was, his enhanced soul had already permeated so deeply that he felt no need to create an extra step to further ground himself.

Finn didn’t waste any time. This was the moment that decided whether he failed or not, and he was not about to let his efforts go to waste.

With a voice reeking thick with dominance and superiority, he directly went for the finish, focusing on assimilating the Tyrant’s soul:

“Soul Subjugation!”

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