Chương 2: AF Chapter 1 – Falling There

Intermultiversal 'space', such as it is… Five done. The Curse was less than a third as strong as it had been. Hurt so fucking much. Oblivion hurts more... Aelryinth flailed and grabbed more magic, focus split and maintaining the Benny Hill session of mentally running away from the Curse trying to wipe him out of existence, copying and pasting the memories and identity it was trying to wipe away and putting them back into the wake of the energies.

He couldn't do anything about the reality-bending power sending him spinning through and outside time and space in a wild ride he was absolutely sure had taken him out of the sides of Creation that he knew of and into somewhere else, vaguely just seeing infinities streaming past, Rules and Laws flexing and splitting, then abruptly gone and something else in their place, only able to cling to his own magic inside. NOW!

Magic seared through, cleaving through something with no substance, and before the remnants of the Curse could move, half of it was gone, tumbling away through the void around him with some Karma released and not needed, locking the Curse to it as another part of his soul was cleft away with a pain he'd never forget...

I was the sixth cut-off portion of Aelryinth's soul, and I was still rather surprised when the voice broke over me, and I understood the magic of it. It was a very weird sensation, like being a frozen image on a movie screen, and suddenly, just the spark of contact allowed me to start thinking again. Hello, this is Aelryinth. As I Send this, it's been two days since I arrived at my destination.

I have just received a message from the first of the seven of you, informing me that you aren't random blank Karma, but actual soul-shards of me. No wonder it hurt so damn much. My apologies putting you through all this. You know I'll help if I can... and I'm going to be coming back your ways regardless. I'm sure you all have names you'll choose for yourselves, but for now I'm going to refer you to what I suggest your Rings be... Einz, Zvei, Drei, Vier, Funf, Zeks, and Zeben.

I don't know where you are or how to get to you, but you all know where I came from, and I'll do my best to find you if possible. In the meantime, here's some information that Einz has discovered that may or may not be of use to you, depending on where you end up...

Huh. Well, I was the sixth of the seven of us. Zeks, eh? Well, not a name I'd use in public, if and when... It also meant that I might just end up incarnating as someone, like Einz had. How had she managed that? How'd she end up a she? Well, whatever. I suppose I should wonder how she ended up a bipedal humanoid close to what we came from, given all the potential stuff out there. It left me wondering about my own condition.

I was tumbling free through something that might have been an astral space, cut through with countless ribbons and tethered web-like stuff connecting this ethereal wall to that one, sometimes throbbing with energy, sometimes cold and blackly dead, other times spinning energetically. I seemed to be bouncing along on some sort of planar current I had no control over, and couldn't direct myself.

I wasn't sure if I was being drawn or carried, but my attempts to go this way or that didn't get me anywhere, so I just sat back for the ride. Well, I sat back and started realigning my thoroughly mixed-up Karma, which was all swirled around with the Curse bouncing around trying to find Aelryinth, and only having something here which wasn't him anymore. This tripping astral space was definitely not a safe place.

I could sense a myriad range of energies, a lot of them very hostile to anything that would be normal organic life, and others just radiating ominous vibes. Given I had two days or less of temporal existence myself, nothing seemed to pay attention to me as more than passing spiritual detritus, perhaps a thrown-out thought or emotion from a greater power... The Curse was losing its hold on me, and that meant losing its power. I kept an eye on it as I tumbled along through nowhere.

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The tug sideways was quite apparent to me. I looked in the direction it was coming from, and would have pursed my lips had I any. Something foul and quite alien, and rather horribly familiar in all the wrong ways, seemed to be extruding itself through space, causing a local disruption held in place by some kind of wavering magic it was exploiting to punch through a dimensional Veil. The artificial and unnatural vortex so created was sucking me in. Wonderful.

Did I really want to know what was going on with-where this thing? Something in the Curse worrying at me seemed to pulse. Also, a sense of familiarity... and betrayal? I couldn't see where this thing was extending from, but had the distinct impression that I didn't want to. It wasn't The Thing (moment of blackness at the reflected memory, ugh...), but it was something similar. Something from Outside Creation...

I couldn't do anything about my progress, but I was about to see what happened to a disembodied fraction of a soul on the other side.

I had no idea of how much time it took to get there, just bobbing along in spatial currents rippling in and out, and probably some vestige of being mortal attuning me to a harder reality than the one I was in. Like a stone falling to the bottom of a lake, I was as much falling as being drawn to a spiritual rupture in the local Veil. Being that close to something that powerful in my state was exceedingly dangerous.

I blanked all my thoughts in thoughtlessness and fell back on that timeless period of no-thought, giving it nothing to read or sense, and thus decide to nibble on, just a passing lump of stray frozen thought, possibly with some malevolent Curse magic pulsing upon me and discouraging any casual snacking. Then I was being crushed, folded, spindled, and morphed wildly through the chaos of a forced and unstable Veil intrusion, before being spit out the far side.

It took me a couple seconds to reorient and accommodate my sensory input as I was forced into a new and unfamiliar set of Laws and Rules, which didn't seem to know much about how to deal with Curse-carrying bundles of severed Karma.

Behind me was an extruded mass of a dozen tentacles, extending through the matter of the ground and space, up and looming over the young seemingly-human woman on the other side of a Summoning Diagram of unfamiliar type and design, probably designed to attract the attention of this thing behind me, but not really contain it... which was about to prove fatal to whatever demands she was screeching of the thing. The tentacles seemed to pause, and power thrummed against the magic of the Circle.

The young woman gasped, blood bursting out her nose as she staggered, her blue eyes going wide in shock, crimson streaming down the dark skin of her face. The Circle shattered like it was made of porcelain. That further destabilized the vortex here, so it wouldn't exist for long, the Veil instantly starting to push back this thing from outside its reality... but it did pop me free of being close to it.

The tentacles lunged, and the girl screamed in horror as they plunged into her, her flesh just a containment vessel. They grasped, and yanked with casual skill and power. I watched her soul get ripped right out of her, desperate spiritual eyes shocked to see me floating there helplessly as she struggled uselessly. The Laws were trying to stuff her back into her body, but the tentacles had her, surrounded her in their influence, their Laws, and nothing happened.

Except I was right there, and as the tentacles snatched their meal, the Laws snapped over to me, and pushed the other spirit there right into the existing spiritual void.

"Wagh!" I was trying to process the nervous system adjustment and sensory advancement, suddenly feeling very heavy and material and unfamiliar familiarity from programmed reflexes, because directly in front of me was a mass of greenish-blargh tentacles with little eyes on them that had suddenly realized it had taken out a snack, and now there was another one right in the same place! A two for one! How had this happened!? The pure novelty of it was all that stopped it from striking again.

That, and the feeling of death and Curse magic around me. Okay, this body had active magic in it. It had taken the entirety of her soul out of her, but the vestiges of her mind were still here, crowded out by my own, as even a fraction of a soul-bound mind had far more power than the lack of one entirely. And I had a hungry Curse that needed to be repurposed. The mana here felt very strange, but I didn't care.

I'd been running through a lot of Karmic allocation while I drifted through space, and now I could give this thing an outlet. I Concentrated, the one thing I was good at, focus above all else on senses magical and visual, my eyesight forced to clear, to look at the squirming mass of tentacles burrowing into that young soul, supping upon the emotions and drives of its life, while others rose and prepared to do the same to me.

She'd still had her wand in hand, something snatches of memory told me was very important here. No magic without an Implement, which was limited to Wands and Orbs... I stared at the thing, impressing the sickening feel of its alien Aura into my thoughts, a texture and power and hunger that thought itself beyond morality, beyond mortality, feeding wherever it could...

"Be Gone," I whispered at it, and the Curse inside me went absolute bonkers. It flowed out the line of mana I gave it, pushing forward as its target was abruptly changed, wanting to complete its mission as the parameters, even the vague ones, that had tied it to me were completely lost after I was stuffed into this girl. A new spell, a new target, new energy... and it was all fueled by the moment of death released by the soul staring at me in fear. She was going to die the most horrible death.

It was already happening, and I had no power to stop it. But as the Curse plunged into her, she realized that it wasn't for her... it was for the thing that was feeding on her, and what it was going to do. The eyes of her soul closed, and she gave up. The Curse surged completely through her, free and clear, and those tentacles dining on her ate it right up.

That was probably a very bad thing to do, as the remnants of a Death Titan Necromancer Lich's Death Curse don't need a whole lot to flare back up, and she had just willingly given herself over to power it. This... was HER vengeance, not mine! She tore apart and dissipated, the tentacles sucking up the remnants greedily, feeding on her final despair, release, and that final burst of hatred and revenge! The other tentacles were just starting to extend towards me when they convulsed and froze.