Chương 120: The First General to Fall

The mother-organ beat at the center of the Maws Gardens. Not like a heart. Like something imitating a heart because it had discovered that living beings obeyed rhythms better than orders. It hung above a black basin, suspended by dozens of red roots that burrowed into the walls, into the ground, into the flowers with mouths, into the remains of spirits, into the creatures still gestating beneath the pathways. Each beat tugged at the little lights Elyra protected against her chest.

Each beat stripped a little more shape away from them. Elyra fell to her knees.

"They're taking them back..." Zayn stepped forward. The black scythe slid into his hand.

"Then we cut." Voragna's voice descended from the flesh-sky.

"Cut, yes. That is so often how small things think hunger can be solved." The gardens opened. The rib-arches folded back. The flowers closed their mouths. The basins stopped moving. And Voragna finally appeared. Not a projection. Not a flower sent from far away. The true General of Gluttony. The system trembled before Zayn. [Demon General detected.] [Voragna — Gluttony.] [Estimated soul-force: 241.] She was not immense. That was worse.

Her body had chosen an almost perfect shape, tall, supple, sumptuous, as if flesh itself had learned how to lie gracefully. Her pale skin was threaded with red and gold veins. Her branching horns looked like sacred organs. Her eyes contained a monstrous tenderness. Around her, the domain breathed. Carrion Basin, Maws Gardens, Fleshworks. All of it was her. Not symbolically. Literally. Voragna laid a hand on the mother-organ.

"You want what I took." Zayn climbed the first organic step.

"Yes."

"You want Elvarin."

"Yes."

"You want the elven remains."

"Yes."

"You want the names of those who took part." Zayn smiled.

"You understand fast for a giant mouth." Voragna laughed softly.

"No, candidate. I understand because I have existed far longer than your current anger. I have seen claimants arrive with armies, bloodlines, curses, prophecies, ancient pacts. Some screamed louder than you. Some already had crowns. Some thought the Throne was waiting for them." She leaned toward him.

"I tasted every one of them." The pressure of her soul crashed over the garden. Elyra felt her legs give out. Lumeï nearly vanished. Even the scythe stopped laughing for a second. Voragna went on:"You are not yet the Demon King. You are very promising raw material." Zayn cracked his neck.

"And you're in my way." Voragna's smile split all the way to her ears. Behind her lips there was too much darkness.

"Then come." The entire garden attacked. Not one creature. Everything. The paths rose beneath Zayn's feet. Teeth burst from the ground. The flowers all opened at once, spewing red spores. The basins exploded, spraying filaments capable of entering through the eyes, ears, and wounds. Zayn leapt. His black wings spread with a wet crack. He passed over the first teeth, cut through the filaments, then dove toward Voragna. She did not move. Her right arm transformed.

The flesh opened, swelled, became an entire jaw, and caught the blade of the scythe between its teeth. The impact stopped Zayn dead. Voragna smiled.

"You think hunger does not know how to bite another hunger?" The jaw ground down. The scythe's blade screeched. The black skull howled. Not in fear. In rage. Zayn activated Time in Ruin. The jaw aged. Its flesh whitened, cracked, dried out. Voragna simply tore off her own arm before the decay could climb into her. The arm fell to the ground. Another regrew at once.

"Pretty," she said. Then she struck. Zayn did not see the blow. He only felt his body crash through three rib-arches before slamming into a basin. The black liquid entered his wounds. Tiny invisible mouths began biting his skin from the inside. The Gluttony under Zayn's tongue answered. Zayn bit the liquid. It was absurd. But his body was no longer truly limited by what should have been absurd. He swallowed a small amount. Information. Living poison. Memory of flesh. Central command. Link to the mother-organ.

Regeneration through nutritive surplus. He came back out of the basin spitting black. Voragna watched him with fascination.

"Yes... exactly. You learn by devouring what should have killed you." Zayn smiled. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"And you regrow as long as your garden feeds you." He turned his head toward the mother-organ. Voragna understood. Her smile vanished.

"Do not touch that." The scythe laughed.

"Ah. There. The first honest sentence." Zayn charged. Voragna was faster. She appeared in front of him, grabbed his face in one hand, and smashed him into the ground. The garden immediately closed over his body. Roots, teeth, flowers, membranes. Everything tried to swallow him. Elyra cried out:"Zayn!" She hurled her light toward him. Voragna turned her eyes toward her.

"Little princess, you carry my losses against your heart." The mother-organ beat. The elven lights screamed. Elyra fell, hands clenched around the sphere. Zayn heard it. Not Elyra's cry. The lights. Those remnants the world had already sold, used, stitched, scattered, and that Voragna was still trying to reclaim because they were useful. Something inside him scratched hard enough to become pain. Not yet open. Not yet named. But close. Very close. His fingers closed around a root trying to enter his side.

"Give them back," he murmured. The root decomposed under Time in Ruin.

"Give them back." The second root aged. Then the third. Zayn rose out of the ground like a corpse refusing its grave. He was covered in black flesh, spores, blood. But his eyes stayed fixed on the mother-organ. Voragna smiled again. Less broadly.

"You do not only want to kill. You want to reclaim." Zayn raised the scythe.

"No." He advanced.

"I want all of you to stop believing that whatever you touch becomes yours." Voragna spread her arms. The entire garden entered her. The flowers withered. The basins emptied. The roots contracted. The organic subjects hidden beneath the earth screamed and melted into a red mass, absorbed by the General's body. Her soul-force rose. The system shook. [Voragna — partial domain assimilation.] [Estimated soul-force: 241 → 263.] Elyra went deathly pale.

"She can still rise higher?" The scythe murmured:"Now this is a real evening." Voragna had changed. Her beautiful body had opened. A crown of jaws turned behind her head. Her arms multiplied, some thin as blades, others massive, others covered in mouths. Her belly opened in a spiral, revealing an immense organic core protected by layers of living flesh.

"Generals do not fall because a candidate has an anger episode," she said. Her voice now came from everywhere.

"We are the reasons this continent never needed a weak king." She charged. The fight stopped being readable. Zayn parried a blade of flesh, lost two fingers, nearly regained them under the unstable effect of Gluttony, got his side torn open, cut away one mouth, took a rain of acid, used Time in Ruin on an organic wave, flew over an empty basin, got caught by a red tongue and hurled against the mother-organ. His bones cracked. His vision went white. Voragna appeared above him.

"I could keep you." She placed a hand on his chest. Filaments entered his wounds.

"Not as a slave. Not as a prisoner. As cultivation. Imagine what you would become in my Fleshworks. Your Downfalls, your wings, your scythe, your hunger... all of it could grow better under my hands." Zayn opened one eye.

"You want to possess me too?" Voragna smiled.

"No. I want to improve you." He laughed. Blood came from his mouth.

"Same lie. Wetter." The scythe, fallen farther away, shuddered. The mark of Wrath on his forearm burned. Gluttony screamed under his tongue. Envy pulsed at his collarbone before the immense mass of spiritual force in front of him. Sloth along his spine whispered that everything eventually decays. Zayn grabbed Voragna's wrist.

"You regenerate because the garden feeds you." She tilted her head.

"Yes."

"Then I'm not going to cut you." Time in Ruin opened around him. Wider than before. Not enough to swallow the domain. Enough to reach the mother-organ behind his back. Voragna understood. She tried to pull her hand away. Too late. Zayn held on. The gray zone crept over the roots of the mother-organ. Not to kill it in one blow. To wear it down. Beat after beat. Each pulse of the organ began to age. Every surge of nutrients arrived weaker. Every regeneration of Voragna cost more than it returned. The General roared.

She ripped Zayn off the ground and hurled him away. But the link was already touched. The mother-organ beat again. Less strongly. Elyra saw the opening. She clenched her teeth, lifted the elven lights before her, then cast her light toward the mother-organ. Lumeï screamed:"It's too much!"

"Then help me!" The elven light did not destroy the organ. It pulled the trapped fragments in the opposite direction. Voragna turned toward her with a gaze of pure hunger.

"Do not touch my harvest." Zayn rose.

"It is not yours." Voragna pivoted toward him.

"Nothing is yours either, little candidate. You were rejected by humans, used by demons, mourned by dead who can no longer answer you. Even your vengeance was given to you by those who wanted to steer you." The sentence entered him. Precise. Filthy. True in certain places. Zayn stopped for a fraction of a second. Voragna smiled.

"There. You feel it? Even what you think you possess was supplied to you." Something inside him nearly split. Then he smiled.

"Maybe." The scythe returned to his hand.

"But when I take something..." He leapt. His wings launched him straight at the mother-organ. Voragna screamed and hurled herself after him. Too late. Zayn threw the scythe not at her, but at Elyra. The princess understood without understanding. The scythe passed in front of her, cut the roots pulling at the lights, then returned to Zayn like a black animal. Elyra released all her light. The elven fragments tore free. The mother-organ gave one empty beat. Voragna staggered. Zayn caught the scythe on its return.

"... I decide who gets to come take it back." He struck the mother-organ. The blade sank into the beating mass. Time in Ruin poured into the wound. Gluttony supplied the information. Sloth accelerated the decay. Wrath forced the blade to stay buried. Envy drank in the escaping fragments. The mother-organ rotted screaming. Voragna let out a cry that shook Carrion Basin to its farthest pools. Her soul-force dropped. [Voragna — domain support broken.] [Estimated soul-force: 263 → 229.] She was not defeated.

Even stripped of part of her domain, she remained a General. She came at Zayn like an avalanche of flesh. Her arm pierced his stomach. Zayn coughed blood. Elyra screamed his name. Voragna brought her face close to his.

"You are dying." Zayn laid a hand on the arm transfixing him.

"Not before you." He bit. Into Voragna's flesh. Not a random piece torn at random. The exact point where Gluttony had understood her regeneration redistributed force from the central core. Voragna froze. For the first time, there was fear in her eyes. Zayn swallowed. His body nearly broke. Too dense. Too old. Too monstrous. The system practically screamed. [Flesh Assimilation: contact with Demon General flesh.] [Major incompatibility.] [Critical information acquired: redistribution core.] Zayn raised the scythe with his other hand.

"There." He drove the blade beneath the cage of jaws turning behind Voragna's head. Not into the visible heart. Into the hidden core. The blade met enormous resistance. Voragna screamed. All her arms closed around him. She crushed him. Bone. Flesh. Wings. Breath. Zayn saw black. He activated Time in Ruin on the blade. Not on her whole body. Only around the core. Voragna's regeneration tried to push back. But the mother-organ was dead. The garden no longer answered.

Elyra, on her knees, held the freed lights against her. The harvest was no longer hers. Voragna understood. Too late.

"No..." The scythe spoke softly.

"Yes." Zayn twisted the blade. The redistribution core split. Voragna's soul-force exploded into the air. Not like light. Like a banquet catching fire. The General of Gluttony opened from the inside. All her mouths screamed at once. Her arms decomposed. Her beautiful skin cracked, revealing beneath it centuries of accumulated flesh, devoured monsters, stolen functions, swallowed lives. Zayn fell with her. But the scythe stayed planted. Voragna collapsed to her knees. Her red eyes fixed on Zayn. No smile now.

Only an ancient lucidity.

"You... are not... a toy." Zayn, half-crushed beneath her, answered,"You learn slowly." She almost laughed. Then her body disintegrated. The ground trembled. Maws Gardens began to die around them. The flowers closed forever. The basins emptied. The rib-arches crumbled to dust. The organic conduits, deprived of their mistress, convulsed in spasms of death. The system appeared. The letters were unstable. [Demon General defeated.] [Voragna — Gluttony: dead.] [Downfall of Envy: exceptional absorption.] Zayn's collarbone burned as if someone were driving a black sun into it. He screamed. Not long. But truly. Voragna's force entered him in fragments, too heavy, too vast, impossible to absorb completely. The system imposed a limit. [Partial absorption enforced.] [Yield limited by superior density and domain incompatibility.] [Soul-force absorbed: +31.] [Current soul-force: 177 → 208.] Zayn fell to his knees. His breathing was broken. His wings hung in tatters.

The scythe almost vanished completely, leaving only the smoking black skull in his hand. Elyra ran toward him.

"Zayn!" He raised a hand. Not to reassure her. To stop her from touching him.

"Not... now." His voice was hoarse. His body had not truly won. It had survived something that should have eaten it. That was different. Around them, the elven lights trembled freely. Not saved forever. But freed from Voragna. Elyra looked at them. Then looked at the corpse turning into organic ash.

"You killed a General..." Zayn wiped the blood from his mouth.

"One." Lumeï murmured,"He doesn't say that like it's a victory." Zayn rose slowly. His legs trembled. He was smiling anyway.

"There are more." The shock traveled across the demonic continent. In Ghelkar, Cassiel Varn stopped turning his ring. For one second, every open contract in his palace lost a line. He looked southeast. His smile was gone.

"Voragna is dead." In Nhaless, Seryth saw every mirror crack at once. Behind each fracture, for an instant, she saw a half-mask, a black scythe, and gardens dying. She laid a hand on the glass.

"That was not supposed to happen so quickly." In the Forges of Vhur, the General of Wrath burst out laughing so hard that three warriors fell to their knees.

"Yes!" He raised his weapons to the red sky.

"Now that is a candidate who knows how to answer!" In the marshes of Morvessa, a pale figure opened her eyes for the first time in days. The mist around her grew heavier.

"Already one dead..." In the night gardens of Lyséa, a woman with fine horns set down an untouched cup on a marble table. Her gaze drifted southeast. For a long time. Too long. Then she murmured,"That taste..." And something old, very old, passed through her eyes. To the northeast, in Vaelthor's white citadels, a cup of black gold shattered in a gloved hand. The voice of the General of Pride descended on his vassals like a blade.

"A human killed Voragna?" No one dared answer. Vaelthor looked toward the center of the continent. Toward the Black Throne. His hatred turned cold.

"Then the succession is defiled." At the center, in the Forbidden Realm, the Black Throne beat. Once. Then again. Above Maws Gardens, a black sentence appeared in the air, visible to every domain. [Succession confirmed.] [A Demon General has fallen.] [Zayn Veylor has survived the first right of devouring.] The demonic continent stopped laughing. It had understood. Zayn was not a distraction. Not a tool. Not a toy thrown between the hands of the powerful. He had entered the succession by killing one of them.

And in the middle of the dead gardens, covered in a General's blood, Zayn lifted his eyes north. The mark of Wrath was already heating. Vhur was calling him. The half-reformed scythe opened its smoking eye sockets.

"The enraged blacksmith now?" Zayn smiled.

"Yes." Elyra stared at him, horrified.

"You barely survived." He walked anyway, crossing the ashes of Voragna.

"Exactly." The Throne's voice still seemed to vibrate in the air. Succession confirmed. Zayn walked toward the red roads. Toward the north. Toward war.

"Now they'll stop welcoming me." His smile grew worse.

"They'll try to stop me."