Chương 118: The Succession Opens

The conduits of Velkar-Morne did not lead to an exit. They led to a mouth. Zayn understood that after ten minutes. The slope descended too evenly. The stone walls gradually disappeared beneath layers of industrial flesh, black tubes, living cables, and metal plates covered in dry crusts. The ground was no longer truly ground, but a hardened membrane that sometimes vibrated under their steps.

Elyra walked behind him, the small elven lights they had recovered from the central hothouse enclosed in a sphere of light near her chest. They were weak. Not saved. Not dead. Something in between. Lumeï floated beside them, silent for once. The black scythe rested in Zayn's hand. The skull at the top of the shaft watched the walls with unhealthy curiosity.

"This place digests slowly," the weapon murmured. Zayn answered without slowing,"As long as it doesn't digest fast enough." Elyra tightened the sphere against herself.

"These conduits really lead into Voragna's lands?"

"Lorran said so."

"And you trust him?" Zayn gave a small laugh.

"No."

"Then why follow this route?" He stopped. Not for long. Just long enough to turn his half-mask toward her.

"Because if he lied, I'll go back up and take his other hand." The scythe clicked its teeth.

"I like simple plans." Elyra said nothing. She wanted to find that monstrous. Mostly, she found it coherent. That was probably the worst sign. The conduit began to tremble. At first gently. Then harder. The organic walls contracted in successive waves. The red lights embedded in them went out one by one, as if something far older had just passed above every demonic installation and demanded silence. Zayn looked up. The pressure returned. The Throne's pressure. Not a summons this time. A decree.

The system appeared before him, black on black. [Resonance confirmed.] [Candidate detected on the demonic continent.] [Black Throne: succession state activated.] Then a phrase heavier than the others wrote itself into the air. [The succession begins.] The entire conduit screamed. Not with voices. With answers. Red marks lit up in the flesh of the walls, each one pointing toward a region of the continent. To the north, the forge. To the west, the mirrors. To the southwest, the marsh. To the southeast, the maw.

To the east, the black flower. To the northeast, the white crown. Behind them, the gold of Ghelkar. And at the center, deeper than everything, the Black Throne. Elyra nearly fell to her knees.

"What does that mean?" The scythe answered before Zayn.

"It means the whole continent just learned there's a new piece on the board." Zayn stared at the marks. They were not merely glowing. They were looking at him. The next window appeared. [Succession law: any recognized candidate may be challenged, devoured, subdued, or forced to declare themselves.] [Prolonged refusal impossible.] Zayn smiled.

"Good." Elyra stared at him.

"Good?"

"I wanted those responsible." The red marks pulsed around him.

"Now they'll come introduce themselves." Lumeï murmured,"That isn't exactly good news." Zayn started walking again.

"Not for them either." Voragna's first envoy found them before the exit of the conduit. It did not arrive alone. The left wall exploded. A flood of black liquid poured into the tunnel, and with it came bodies. Not corpses. Experiments. Tall, thin shapes, skinless in places, with mouths stitched into their palms and eyes open in all the wrong places. They moved on four limbs, then two, then four again, as if each part of their bodies were voting for a different way to kill.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Elyra raised her light.

"How many?" Zayn looked ahead.

"Too few." The first creature leapt. The system flashed briefly. [Organic combat subject.] [Estimated soul-force: 39.] Zayn cut it in half. The second spat a rain of bone needles at him. Elyra raised a wall of light, and the needles lodged in it and immediately began to grow like teeth.

"They're sprouting!" Zayn moved in front of her, brought the scythe down on the wall, cut the needles before they could pierce the barrier, then grabbed the creature by the throat. It opened a mouth in its palm and bit his wrist. Gluttony beneath Zayn's tongue woke up. His smile changed.

"Bad idea." He bit back. Not much. Just a piece of flesh beneath its jaw. The taste was foul. Toxic. Dense. Full of failed mutations. But his body knew now what to do with impossible things. The creature froze. Organic information ran up Zayn's throat: unstable regeneration, rejection, overload, multiple grafts, weak core beneath the rib cage. He drove the scythe in exactly there. The subject collapsed. [Flesh Assimilation: partial biological information obtained.] [Downfall of Envy: residual absorption.] [Current soul-force: 157 → 159.] The notification vanished. Elyra looked at him in disgust.

"You bit that thing." Zayn wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"It started."

"That isn't a justification." The scythe snickered.

"In our legal system, yes." The other subjects backed away. Not out of instinctive fear. By order. Something was arriving behind them. The tunnel filled with a sweet, heavy smell, almost floral. Then a woman emerged from the black liquid. Or rather, a form that had chosen a woman's shape in order to be less immediately incomprehensible. Her skin was smooth, pale, crossed with red and gold veins. Her hair looked like organic filaments. Her branching horns grew like precious organs.

Her mouth was beautiful at first glance. At second glance, it had too many teeth. Elyra stepped back. Zayn, meanwhile, lifted the scythe. The woman smiled.

"Don't cut just yet. This body is only a flower sent from the Maws Gardens." Zayn tilted his head.

"Voragna." He did not know her face. But he knew the mark. The open maw. The flesh that wanted to absorb everything. The system trembled. [Organic projection of a Demon General detected.] [Primary source out of range.] The projection laid a hand over her own chest.

"I prefer 'the one who understands growth.' But yes, that name will do in your mouth." The scythe murmured,"I want to hate her, but that was a good entrance." Zayn took a step.

"Elvarin." Voragna's smile widened.

"Ah, your little fleeing researcher. He passed through my conduits. A thin package. Trembling. Useful. Not delicious. But useful." Elyra tightened the sphere of elven lights.

"Where did you take him?" The projection slowly turned her red eyes toward her.

"An elven princess in my pipes. What a charming cycle." Lumeï nearly went out entirely. Zayn stepped closer.

"Answer." Voragna turned back to him.

"He's no longer in Velkar-Morne. Part of his work is going to the Fleshworks. Another part has already been copied to Carrion Basin. The remains, the methods, the names—everything is moving now." Zayn did not move. His silence was more violent than a scream. Voragna seemed to appreciate it.

"That is why the succession will be interesting. You came for one throat, and you're discovering that guilt has grown roots." She opened her arms. The organic subjects around her began to tremble.

"Kill this projection if you want. Devour my experiments. Ravage my hothouses. But understand this: every General who has touched this matter now has a reason to look at you. And ever since the Throne spoke, every gaze can become a challenge." Zayn finally smiled.

"So I have to fight all of you."

"You don't have to." The projection tilted her head.

"You can run straight to the Throne, beg to be recognized, and die under a crown too heavy for you." The scythe burst out laughing. Voragna continued,"Or you can pass through us. Let yourself be bitten. Bite back. Prove that you are not just a human accident with a beautiful wound." Zayn looked at the organic subjects. Then at the projection. Then at the conduits descending toward the southeast.

"You want to test me."

"No." Voragna smiled.

"I want to see what you become when you grow by feeding on something that already believes itself larger than you." The ground opened. A monster emerged. This one was different. More stable. More constructed. A huge, compact body covered in bony plates, with two massive arms and a spine of closed mouths running along its belly. At the center of its chest beat a red core, thick as a giant's heart. Elyra felt its soul before the system displayed it. [Minor organic champion.] [Estimated soul-force: 71.] Voragna caressed the monster's cheek like one pets a dog.

"Get through it. Then perhaps my Fleshworks will open a real door for you." Zayn lifted the scythe.

"And if I kill it quickly?" Voragna smiled.

"Then I'll send something less polite." The champion charged. The conduit became too small for it. It destroyed the walls as it came. Zayn beat his wings and threw himself upward, but the monster opened three mouths in its belly and spat filaments that caught around his left wing. He was dragged to the floor. The scythe cut the first bonds. Not fast enough. The champion crushed his chest with one fist. The membrane beneath Zayn burst. He felt two ribs crack. Elyra sent a blade of light into the monster's arm.

The flesh smoked, but almost immediately sealed over again.

"Its core!" she shouted. Zayn had already seen it. The red core. Too well protected by the bony plates. He pushed himself up beneath the fist, laid a hand on the champion's carapace, and activated Time in Ruin. The plate aged. It whitened. Cracked. But a new layer of flesh regrew beneath it at once. Voragna laughed.

"Erosion against growth. Very pretty." Zayn spat blood.

"Then we speed up both sides." He bit his own palm, let his blood run over the scythe, and Gluttony reacted to the information taken earlier. Unstable flesh. Core. Reconstruction. Overload if feed lines were severed. The scythe slipped beneath a weakened plate. Not toward the core. Toward the nutrient conduits. Zayn cut. The champion screamed. Its regeneration spiraled out of control. Too much. The flesh regrew in all the wrong ways around the wound. Every mouth along the belly opened at once.

Elyra understood and drove her light into each one, forcing them to contract. Zayn activated Time in Ruin on the already overloaded area. This time, growth turned into rot. The red core appeared. The scythe laughed.

"Hello, meal." Zayn struck. The blade jutting from the black skull entered the heart. The champion reared up. Then exploded in a rain of black flesh. Elyra raised a wall of light before the fragments could hit them. Some pieces, upon touching the floor, still tried to crawl. Zayn tore the half-broken core from the carcass. Gluttony wanted to eat it. Envy wanted to absorb it. Sloth wanted to let it rot. Wrath wanted to crush it. Zayn chose. He drove his fingers into it. Envy took what it could.

[Minor organic champion defeated.] [Soul-force absorbed: +6.] [Current soul-force: 159 → 165.] A breath passed through his body. Not healing. A denser weight. Voragna watched the scene with an almost tender smile.

"Yes. That's it. You don't eat only to survive now. You choose what deserves to be taken." Zayn crushed the hollow core in his hand.

"You talk too much for a flower." He threw the scythe. The blade passed through Voragna's projection from hip to shoulder. The body split. But instead of dying, she laughed. Her face remained suspended for a second inside the opened flesh.

"Carrion Basin, then Maws Gardens, then the Fleshworks. Come to me if you want your researcher, candidate." The projection liquefied. Before disappearing, she added,"And hurry. Now that the succession is open, the others won't wait for you to finish my meal." The conduit fell silent again. Not for long. Far above them, another vibration passed through the ground. Not organic. Metallic. Like a hammer striking a forge. Then a huge laugh rolled through the depths of the continent. Elyra looked up.

"What was that?" Zayn wiped the blood from his mouth.

"The next one." The scythe opened its smoking eye sockets.

"Vhur heard." In the north of the continent, in the Forges of Vhur, an anvil split in two. The immense demon holding the hammer looked at the crack, then burst out laughing. Around him, thousands of warriors stopped working. The red sky above the burnt mountains still vibrated with the Throne's resonance. The General of Wrath turned his gaze toward the southeast. Toward Velkar-Morne. Toward Voragna's conduits. Toward the human who had just killed an organic champion while the Throne named him candidate.

"At last," he growled. His voice shook ash from the forge ceilings.

"A new dog enters the arena." A lieutenant knelt.

"My lord, shall we send a legion?" The General smiled. His four arms closed around his weapons.

"No." He looked toward the center of the world. Toward the Black Throne.

"Send an invitation." The lieutenant raised his head.

"An invitation?" The General laughed again.

"A war-head. A real one. Let him survive the Belly first. Then let him come to Vhur." His smile turned red.

"If the Throne has felt him, I want to know whether his blood knows how to scream." In the conduits, Zayn felt the mark of Wrath on his forearm grow hot. Not from his own hatred. From an answer. Something, somewhere to the north, had challenged him without even touching him. The scythe vibrated in his hand.

"That one is going to be fun." Elyra looked at the organic path descending toward Carrion Basin.

"We can't fight the whole continent in a straight line." Zayn walked forward.

"No." For a second, she almost looked reassured. Then he added,"We start with the southeast." He looked at the living walls around them.

"Voragna has Elvarin or the pieces that lead to him. After that, Vhur wants to see me. Then the others will follow." Elyra stared at him.

"You say that as if it's already decided." Zayn smiled.

"It is." Lumeï murmured,"By who?" The scythe answered,"By the Throne. By them. By him. By all the idiots who still think they get to choose the moment a catastrophe becomes official." Zayn descended into the organic depths. Around him, the conduits pulsed like a throat. Far off, the Fleshworks were waiting. And for the first time since arriving in this world, Zayn no longer needed to search for a reason to keep moving. The demonic kingdom had just given him seven. And a Throne.