Chapter 1745 – Swallowing Chaos [Liakan POV]
I am eroding.
A new nervous system is digging its mycelial roots through my arcane body. It hurts, yet it is soothing, like cold salt water on fresh cuts. ‘I could just dissolve into this pain,’ I catch myself thinking.
I struggle to the surface, suddenly realizing the volume of noise around me. Earth scatters as explosions of my making rip apart the soil. Ancient trees rot under the greedy, gnawing eyes and maws of the first foe. Mother chaos and her new lackeys devour the forest to fuel their own expenses.
My arm thrusts my spear at her enemy. The weapon is deflected by the broad of the First of Hatred’s Astrotium blade. Mother’s third born, I would call them. They were the children she had after me and the Mesopotamian gods. The one before and the one that now clashed with my Singed.
Unbidden, the contorting shape of him enters my field of view. His muscular arms swing his sword with an unfamiliar clumsiness. The attack hits the extended back-end of Metra’s halberd, who uses that force as leverage that brings the head of the weapon forwards. It narrowly misses the head of my ancient friend, slicing through the ear of the jackal-like head of raw flesh and mould-fuzz that is grafted onto his neck.
The sight snaps me out of Mother Chaos’ embrace. I stop mid-casting of an arc lance. Carelessly discharged arcane energy causes searing pain within my left arm. I embrace it, try to hold onto it, as I topple forwards and spew out gallons of saltwater. It gushes from my open wounds, seeping the ground in a liquid it has never known.
Ehtra knows mercy.
A gauntleted hand grips something attached to my head. I sob as Mother Chaos’ embrace is pulled at. It is a horrid sensation. Tendrils buried into my skull are made to slither from their tunnels. They’re buried as deep as my spinal column. The flesh is foreign to my body of metal and sand, yet melds so harmoniously.
“Why must you be so obstructive, Ehtra?” I hear myself say in two voices. “I can embrace you again, unruly child. You know how sweet it should be. You know how-“ The speaking orifice is crushed by the First of Hatred. Sinewy, stretched connections are exposed to the air. I can feel them as if they were my own. What must I look like at this time? Am I even still the dragon I knew I was? What twisted creation has my flesh become?
The First of Hatred’s sword screams. The whirling edge of mana shreds through the material keeping the parasite lodged in my skull. I scream when it is cut off, all the new nerves in my body revolting.
Casting the blob of flesh, mine and mother’s, to the floor, Ehtra crushes it under her boot. It is too large to be destroyed with a single stomp. I am blind in one eye, if I even still have a second eye. My chest laughs, the Lorylim squirming under my scales. I try to make sense of the situation around me. There’s fire, thunder, shadow, and earth, pulping the various Lorylim that attempt to support me. Metra remains locked in a fight with Singed. He seems to be rejecting the corruption better than me? I cannot quite say. My senses are dulled and I am only myself. I cannot see more.
New Lorylim matter bubbles up my spine and into my cranium.
Ehtra launches a burst of grey light. It scarcely harms me, despite my state, but the other parts of me are burned to ashes. I breathe heavily, drooling tainted ocean still. My twice cleft jaw trembles. I am repressing the urge to move. That makes two of us. The First of Hatred keeps adjusting her grip. She wishes to slay what is inside of me.
The nemesis appears.
The vile presence cuts through my dulled senses. Like nails on a chalkboard, her proximity reverberates in my soul. My serpentine neck twists so I can see her, the blonde, rancid thing. Colourless, tasteless, scentless, an existence that I hate.
‘You hate,’ the drums pound into me.
I hate.
‘You hate.’
The two sides of my being lock together in a moment of revulsion. Mould gushes up my throat, a vomit that flows back and fills the gap in my head in an instant. There is no helping myself: I must skewer the pariah.
Her neutral expression aggravates me further. My spear meets her longsword of what should not be and ceases to exist. The handle disperses as if it has never been in the first place. I could be next. A reasonable splinter of me is aware that the chances of that are slim. Mother Chaos hooks into the rest of me.
The saltwater in my maw turns into steam as I gather might within myself. Black and purple, my draconic breath launches, carrying with it the filth I embrace. Stalks grow from the gaps of my scales, as the attack drives Ehtra backwards. A gargantuan fist descends on her a moment later; one of the many other creatures intervenes.
I turn to the creature. Unified in purpose, I throw myself into combat with her. My fog, I leave behind. It would not obstruct her in the slightest. That power is better used reinforcing my protective measures. I know the disgusting thing has weaknesses.
A newly conjured spear serves as my weapon as I pursue. My vision is a tunnel created by various perspectives all over my body. I have eyes on my back, my arms, my knees, none of them symmetrical. My flowing wings beat, I descend.
The blank disappears. She cannot hide from me. In the network that I consist in, she stands out harshly. My senses expand as my mind slips. I am as if drunk, knowing that every gulp brings me closer to something that I cannot return from willingly, yet craving it all the same.
I need to kill her before she undoes me.
A barrage of strikes punches holes through the tree she hid behind. She leaps, attempting to avoid me. My reach and my speed are superior to her. I skewer her leg, she slices my weapon, then acts as if there had never been a wound in the first place. She’s too alien for the world to disagree. It revolts me.
I am about to catch her again, when the First of Hatred descends on me. A meteor of sharp feathers and vengeance, she slams into my back, tearing into my back with her sword. A howl of rage, the creature getting away and leaving me with the wayward daughter.
An explosion of arcane might throws her off me. We immediately engage again. Back and forth, our weapons clash. When her weapon bites into me, I sense the transferal of life to me. Mother Chaos hisses in frustration. She wishes to give Ehtra so much more of our life. Every time their minds touch, the Lorylim are made to recoil. The grey angel’s red halo wards her from such attempts.
‘Hunt her! Hunt her! Hunt her!’ I hear a male voice chatter in my head. ‘We had a deal, a deal, Tiamat! You useless creature! We must hurt him, we must take them! WE ARE LOSING THE EXPERIMENT! SHE IS RIPPING ME OUT! SHE IS RIPPING ME OUT!’
‘Cease, you little node,’ Tiamat growls back, her voice sweet and slicing in the cacophony of corrupted souls. ‘Izha, Izha, Izha, Izha, always impatient, always impatient – you are a visitor on my web. Do my bidding. My incarnation is more important than yours!’
The struggle between the two minds hurts me, the wriggling symbionts inside me moving from one sphere of influence to the other and back again. I assert my own mind. I attempt to get away from them both. I touch the bedrock.
A single mycelial eye stares at me.
It wishes me death two fold.
‘Fine,’ Mother Chaos growls.
My body twists around and I sprint away from Ehtra. I do not know where to, I only know I will find the monstrosity there. I feel my tail getting severed, but what do such injuries matter when all of the world is fodder for my mass?
I arrive too late.
Metra holds down my Singed with halberd and foot. The creature has her hands on his neck, pulling the second head off his torso. Jackal screams and screams. “NO! I AM MORE! I AM MORE! I AM THE PROTOTYPE! I AM THE VESSEL UNFINISHED! UNFINISHED BUT STRONG! MASTER IZHA, MASTER, I-!”
Anti-magic pulls Jackal out of his host entirely. The process is as much physical as it is supernatural. A sickening wet squelch accompanies the release of the final nerve-ending. Nia tosses the mass of Lorylim matter aside. Metra ends it with one cataclysmic swing of her weapon.
I cannot let the same happen to my… vessel?
I feel light, as if my body isn’t truly my own anymore. The cacophony beckons I sink deeper inside and let all the others have their fun in this realm. I hold on for now. I cannot let them take over until I have cut down the creature. The creature must die.
This time I am ready for Ehtra’s plunge.
I will my flowing wings to turn into arms. My form twists and the clawed limbs catch the grey angel. I slam her down into the dirt, manifest a manifold of spears, and needle her with them. Her armour is thick, but I punch through. The annoyance must be eliminated. I laugh at the little victory, not caring for what comes.
“You betrayed me!” Mother and I say. “Stupid sibling, daughter, Mother Chaos is eternal!”
“YOU – BETRAYED – ME!” Ehtra roars back.
The intensity of her hatred gives Tiamat pause. The mother is actually confused for a moment. I can sense a collapse into realization, a short-lived bipolar realization that washes over to me as well. What, exactly, has Mother Chaos become?
Ehtra was already slicing me open before I stopped.
The First of Hatred carves away at my dozens of limbs, sending them flying in every direction. The pain makes me snap back. I exchange blows with her. I sense that, with my regeneration, that should have me emerging on top. Instead, I find myself growing smaller and smaller, while she continues on, fuelled by what she is doing to me.
I jump back, putting distance between us. I back into a wall of stone. Mother and I realize at the same moment: we are alone.
‘We brought too little, I told you,’ Izha sings.
‘Why are there so many here, why, why?’
‘Doesn’t matter, does it? You were wrong, you are always wrong. We should just die, all, together, in a blaze of glory. Let us devour mother and father, then pay the price as we laugh!’
The back and forth in her head accompanied a series of strikes. Fire burned away at her excesses. Shadow and stone formed bindings around her limbs. Liakan struggled, only for her limbs to be grabbed. Liakan – I struggle.
What am I, even?
This vessel is pinned against the ground. This vessel screams, not out of anger for her captors but out of fear for the thing standing over her chest. This vessel struggles while the pariah sinks her hands into it.
The fingers are without temperature. It is colder than the coldest is, a spot where all senses of the vessel scream that something is there. She tries to push the pariah out. She is losing solidity. She will fade if pushed deep enough. The hands sink through scale, grain, and fungus all the same. They grab the weave of liquid mycelium artfully covering the spine.
The pariah pulls.
The vessel screams in pain.
I come to amongst the torment. I am between my body and… that place. The realm between the elemental Kingdoms, where the first foe is contained and Mother Chaos dwells. All minds of the Lorylim swim there together. I can see it before my mind’s eye. A network like a slime mould, enveloping the Earth and those Kingdoms adjacent to it like they’re nutrition pellets. A gorgeous, efficient, mad structure of decay and transformation.
I slip deeper into it as my body dies. “She is too far gone,” the creature says, still ripping at my new nervous system. Why would I surrender it so-
“Liakan… please…” I hear his voice and turn my head as much as I am afforded. My captors keep a wary eye on me.
My Singed stumbles forwards, his limbs little more than mana constructions. He collapses next to me. There is a gap, still, where Jackal had been melded into him. He’s just arcane. There is no flesh to him.
“Don’t leave me. Fight!”
I can’t lose him again.
All I have left renounces the cacophony. As I do, the other Lorylim in my body stream back. They leave me in control of all that they have built inside me. It is no triumph. It is their way to show that they need me. All of the organs simultaneously howl out in torment I left to other minds before. The harmony between my grains and their flesh is interrupted and the creature keeps on tearing into what I have become.
I can’t even scream anymore. I wish to embrace unconsciousness, but I cannot even do that. My only choices are this torment and surrendering my mind to them. I want to give in. I want to give in. I want to give in. Why do I love? I cannot do this. I cannot-
My mind suddenly clears up.
A chunk of Lorylim matter lands in the nearby soil. It gargles and attempts to grow. Ehtra drives her sword into it with grim satisfaction. Tired, I see her stab the chunk again and again, leaving it to Salamander to burn away what remains. Spores hang in the air still, but I was close enough to know that it was the last developed Lorylim.
I direct my eye towards the creature. Her presence is tolerable to me for now. I know that it’s not a sign of development on my part. Nia is as translucent as the reflection in a window. My eye drifts to Karia next. There is relief in her eyes. I am about to address her, when I notice the sky above us and the city that hangs upside down from it.
“Wha-“ I begin.
“Get out of here.” Our attention is pulled to the speaker, Ehtra. The grey angel is facing the temple we came from. “Huitzilopochtli was a front for the god of gluttony. The Grim Reaper is here to kill him. My Master will aid him in that task.”
“I… really wouldn’t recommend you, uhm, weigh in on this conflict,” Gnome says.
I chuckle weakly, less than a third of what I should be, surrounded by a force I’d struggle to challenge were I complete. “We will stay out of it,” I promise. “And Nia…” I cannot look at her as I speak, “…thank you.”
That is as much as I can do.