Ebony's Fable

"Are you here to eat me up?" Red raised her chin, but her lazy expression appeared not to give a damn about divine interference.

"I don't have a habit of snacking. I prefer a feast or festive drink." The Blood Saintess haven't even looked at Red. She eyed herself from toe up before deciding to manifest a dress of bright red blood for herself.

"So you're here to fatten me up even further. For my Blood that you've one-sidedly reserved in advance." Red did not forget the whim that got her sent to a cave to crawl amongst spiders and eat moss that refined and mutated her Physique when she was younger.

The Blood Saintess's lips curved slightly, "That was a joke. Mayhaps I shall take your offer one day. You and I have some fate together. As an offspring between the Sub-Bloodseeker Nosferan race and my dear friend's descendant, you are my descendant too. You are also his woman... now that you are related to the Rime, the two of you are our best chance at baiting them out."

"Hmm, you have a grudge against the Rime Tribe too?" As Ebony's wife, she was obviously aware that this name makes the First and Second generations surprisingly riled up. There was not much that could make them so excited or angry about.

"Nothing that fancy. That is for you Xengs, and everyone else. Oh well, I'd better not speak of it with just this presence of mine. I don't really care about the fate stuff, I just like you. You remind me of my mortal days. Beautiful. Bloodthirsty. Aggressive. More than the Rime, I crave some phoenix blood. It's been so long since I've had a sip."

Red plucked at the phoenix figure around her head and shoulder. That seemed to amuse the Blood Saintess mildly. "You can sense that phoenix?"

"Is this a remnant soul or something?" Red ignored the question. Having her soul tempered by her husband's skill, she obviously sensed a bird pecking at her soul for a while now.

"That young one hasn't reached that stage of immortality. That's a spirit of gluttonous obsession. Think of it as a desire that birthed a spirit after it died. When Will or Intent is potent enough, it continues to live even if the origin dies. That Turtle will probably be happy as long as you inherit the spirit of his sister."

"Is Ful a famous turtle-tree or something?" Red thought it was a soul trying to take over her body or revive through her so this relevation was surprising. Inheriting the obsession for gluttony? Would she even change much if that was the case?

She was more curious that this high and mighty Blood Saintess knew about a random Emperor turtle.

Of all reactions or replies, she truly didn't expect a hearty laugh from the otherworldly beautiful woman.

"Rueful. Grade 9 Emperor. How many of these mortals do you think exist in your supercluster?"

Red shrugged, she wasn't one to give a guess when she didn't know the answer.

"Amongst your second generation, I would consider none of your 3 Saints having reached Grade 9 before they evolved. Well, still a mortal. And a mopey one that hasn't got over their weak mortal family's death."

"If it's so powerful, how did the Spear Saint even kill his sister?" As far as she recalled, the Gluttonous Solar Blooded Phoenix was also a freshly evolved Saint.

The Blood Saintess didn't know but her guess was that the Phoenix took damage and regenerated till it was exhausted but Rueful simply never took damage to begin with so it had no energy expenditure regardless of how the Spear Saint attacked. In the end, it was just a theory of hers and not the truth.

The Blood Saintess raised a finger, "We've gone off topic. Do you want the Ubiquitous Providence Trial or mine?"

Xin had not heard of the term Ubiquitous Providence but the way the Blood Saintess framed the question made it easy to know what she was referring to. "Whichever makes me stronger."

"I'll pull you out." The Blood Saintess poked her forehead.

Red did not disguise her chuckle when the Phoenix spirit went ahead and pecked at the Blood Saintess finger. No physical damage was done but it was amusing.

'Ting' 'Seven Desires Combat Ascendancy Trial overridden.'

'Ting' 'Dawn of Primal Blood – Experience a fraction of the Dawn of Primal'

'Ting' 'Entity Scarlet Rhael Ning Xin Provisional Suspension granted. Archived.'

"This way you won't be treated as an anomaly if you can return."

"Return? Where from?"

"Show me why we're linked by the thread of fate."

It started with a shift—small, almost imperceptible, like the tilt of a room just before an earthquake. Then came the falling—not of her body, but of something deeper. A slow, unstoppable plunge inward, like being pulled through the floor of herself.

Her stomach lurched half a beat behind the rest of her, twisting as gravity seemed to change direction. The world remained still, but she was dropping, descending into a thick, unseen sickness that clung to the inside of her very soul.

The blooming nausea grew sharp yet heavy, hollowing her chest as she felt a recoil through her vessel.

Her body morphed….collapsed inwards.

And she was knocked out cold the next moment.

Xin's consciousness returned in what felt momentarily for her. Yet she couldn't see, smell or hear. She could feel ian ntense chill creeping in first before she sensed that she was floating in a body of water.

Except her calm didn't last for long. She had no arms, legs, head. She wasn't in her body.

She knew what becoming a bundle of flames feel like and she would always be fully aware of her body. Unlike her husband, she couldn't remain calm the instant she was placed into such a circumstance.

Where is she?

What is she?

She questioned no one but herself as she didn't have a mouth.

By the sensation of her thoughts, it felt like her entire mind was sound. At the same capabilities as ever, so her mind seemed unaffected.

The panic didn't last for long after she found out that she couldn't move or control her body, but felt everything it was feeling.

'Not my body, but I'm like a passenger. ' Xin was not capable of such mind magic despite her ancestry but the revelation that she was more like a participant than a prisoner of a different body calmed her down slightly.

Wanting to check her state of health, she called her status up….

…..

Nothing.

There was no response, no status page showing up.

At this point, she realised her Intuition, foresight, was also working normally. 'Is this what it means to be temporarily suspended? Suspended from what?'

The weird creature she inhabited started to stir its surroundings, and she felt what it felt.

Hunger.

Then she felt something enter their skin.

'A slime-like creature eating through their membrane?' Xin's struggle was futile. She wasn't able to express anything nor exert any control over the situation. She couldn't use Intent externally. She seemingly had no mana, life force or stamina of her own.

She redefined her current state back to a prisoner, for she was locked in this creature. Her mental and Intent attempts had been futile for what felt like weeks.

Though in reality, the creature she was in peacefully underwent 200 feeding cycles.

One thing stayed constant.

The endless hunger of this creature was quite similar to hers, but unlike hers, it was never satiated for there were not many blobs of food pieces around. Always hungry.

She felt every morsel of this thoughtless creature's base desires more intensely than she ever felt another creature's emotions.

Hunger was an emotion, she knew she wasn't wrong about that.

This cycle went on and on, Xin's mind didn't grow tired, but she couldn't 'sleep' and continued to experience the bland life of this creature.

Till she sensed imminent doom.

She couldn't say for sure, this creature did not seem to feel pain but they both could tell that its outer membrane was melting or disappearing at an intense pace.

'Crap, what happens to me if this thing dies.' Xin had a feeling she was inhabiting a very small creature and got eaten. And that they were dissolving in stomach acid right about now.

As someone who could sense the internal workings of her stomach fluid, she was more than familiar with the ongoing process of stomach acid breaking cells down.

She learned first…second hand exactly what Ebony feared. Her struggles were futile, and she could only watch and sense this thing die.

Dying along with it.

At least this creature didn't have deep emotions, including fear. So, she was only sharing its physical pain of being bathed in acid.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Even in this state, the feeling that stood out the most was the creature's hunger. That was all there was to its life, and its purpose seemed solely to consume and possibly increase in size.

Futilely watching her very existence dissolve away was more traumatic than expected, despite not being in her own body. Her futile mental struggles didn't die out even as they died together, until the very last threads of thoughts faded away too.

Thinking she would wake up or die for real wasn't something that she could think about as she was immediately hit with a sensation of falling through the air once more.

Nauseated ---

Before she knew it, she was faced with a similar sensation. Sharing emotions and sensations with a different creature.

'I'm—this creature is huge this time round.' Immediately, she was refreshed that she was not blind this time around. She could see what the creature saw, hear what it heard, smell what it smelled.

Taller than some trees around them. She was either in a giant creature or they were surrounded by miniature trees. Without being able to see a reflection, Xin was guessing she was sharing an experience with a three-toed bear of some sort, but with significantly longer limbs than bears usually do.

A tree hugger. It immediately displayed its climbing….and fell.

Alright, it wasn't a good climber but the creature didn't stop trying. Finally finding balance and a trunk strong enough after over ten attempts did it drag Xin into slumber with it.

Xin couldn't even fight the sleepiness and shared everything in real time.

Not quite accepting this situation, their rude awakening as the branch snapped and they fell was her next chance to try something. Anything.

To get her mind out of this shared sensation.

The creature didn't seem to understand that its size and weight weren't suitable for these trees and acted as if nothing had happened. Climbing another tree, failing till it succeeded. In less than an hour, they were back to sleep.

'A koala? A sloth?' Restful slumber kidnapped them again.

Xin lived a life of annoyance.

She couldn't think straight for hours before this creature went back to sleep for an unknown amount of time. Eating leaves and insects seemed to satisfy the creatures' non-existent hunger. Weird for a creature of such mass but the inactivity did explain how it was surviving on so little.

This place was…safe. There were no predators, and Xin couldn't get a good gauge of time due to all the sleeping. The hours the creature was awake never exceeded two, and she couldn't tell how long day and night were. Even 2 hours was estimated by her gut feeling.

A couple of other species of this kind could be seen roaming around, but they don't interact much or at all. They'd rather sleep.

Xin used this chance to confirm that she was tagging along with some kind of giant sloth. And true to their names, they were slothful. Never achieving anything, never doing anything productive. Not even hunting with their superior bodies and natural weapons.

Xin almost hoped that this territory was attacked by a predator to get some movement in, yet something was creeping into her mind.

Peace.

Pleasure of not doing anything.

Not feeling any pain. Not pushing herself was starting to feel good.

Not because she liked it, but because the creature she inhabited loved it. There was nothing more it'd like to do than while its time away. It'd rather starve than hunt if it takes too much effort.

Her thought process slowed together with the creature over time.

Age.

They were ageing.

Their unknown lifespans aside, Xin took way too long to figure out what was happening.

She, they were ageing to death.

And she did.

Taking a deep gasp, she felt the sensation of falling into water and woke up with refreshed senses once more.

"That was more painful than any death." She included burning herself aflame to rebuild her body. Ageing to death, sleeping so much she can't get a proper bearing of herself, and their surroundings were excruciatingly painful to her.

This time around, her nausea didn't disappear after she seated herself in this new creature for it was feeling a similar sensation. Its body was ripped around in a whirlwind.

Xin didn't even get to think for another second before she felt herself falling back into the water.

She died.

No, the creature died in a tornado just as she entered.

If there was some kind of pattern, she was not getting it. There was no reason to drop her into a dying body if she was here to experience desire such as gluttony and sloth, which was obviously the key point of the first 2 lives she lived. This reminded her of the initial Trial she was supposed to take, related to seven desires.

The transition from one creature to the next seems to have become a little smoother and caused her less discomfort. She might be getting used to it.

Perhaps this creature-hopping experience had some flaws. It seemed like she was placed into the same type of creature. A small aerial little beast.

A bat.

Except this time, properly in a cave and not out in the open. Swallowed by a natural disaster or an attack.

What does a bat feel?

Apparently not much.

She couldn't tell what it was feeling for it wasn't feeling much. Sort of like Ebony, slightly muted emotions but still ever-present.

Xin assumed it was going to be another creature leaning towards 1 type of desire, but whatever this bat was supposed to be, there didn't seem to be an emotion it was displaying more obviously than others.

Having been thrown into a cave full of heat-eating bats, she was very familiar with their kind. This breed was much alike, minus the heat-detection and consumption ability.

It was closer to a normal bat.

At most, she was slightly disoriented by its senses since it was feeling the bounce of vibrations and using echolocation passively. Xin was more used to tracking by scent and intuition than this. And echolocation didn't feel purely like a hearing ability.

No longer new to this sensation and thought-sharing experience, Xin took a mental seat. Not entirely giving up on trying to remove her mind from this body, but also more accepting that she was here to experience sensations as part of this evolution.

However, she was unable to dissociate herself from the creature she inhabited, like Ebony could dissociate himself from becoming a shapeless form made of ice. She was forced to feel every little thing the bat felt.

Luckily, she felt less annoyed and disgusted by this bat's lifestyle.

She seemed to be in the body of an alpha of a pack. Resting high and mighty above its kind. A hunter not resting and wasting its time sleeping or having its pack serve it food.

'Pride maybe?' Trying to figure out which was the more prominent desire, Xin thought it might have been pride, as the bat only moved for tougher, bigger hunts that his pack had trouble with.

This cave was the opposite of the sloth's home. It was filled with all sorts of animals and not safe by any standard. The bats weren't the strongest in the area.

Xin realised that she had only inhabited normal animals. No monsters are seeing status screens. No skills. No magic.

Purely animals using their natural traits to live.

To survive.

Their pack sustained a couple of deaths every time they encountered something the size of a cat or bigger. They weren't exactly apex predators.

The bat that Xin inhabited was quite aloof. It seemed to dislike its own kind, which gave Xin greater confidence that it was a prideful beast that wanted to stand out from its kin.

The bats never got much time to rest.

It was rest, get attacked or wake up hungry and desiring food. Xin was unable to feel curious, slightly concerning. She was beginning to feel more and more attuned to the creature she was inhabiting and losing the ability to separate herself from the creature as two different individuals.

During this time, she noticed odd actions from this alpha bat.

It attacked its own kind, not in a playful way. At first, Xin thought it was showing the others who was the boss, but she realised that the alpha picked targets. Even on hunts, it would attack when other bats were about to land final blows.

Claiming victory.

Claiming credit.

The bat was a creature of immense hidden envy.

It attacked its own kind only when that member was about to stand out. To suppress them.

This cave was weird. It was very lively.

Too lively.

There was something else she realised after a few more battles and cycles of sleep and wake. This bat was old, very old. It had no partners, it wasn't the fastest flier nor the strongest bat, but it was the most cunning and had just enough strength to make use of its cunning.

Xin felt what the bat was feeling. Its time left in this world was short.

And so it envied the living. Envied its young. Envied their strength. Their youthful virility.

Xin experienced the remainder of its life.

During her transition as it died in a hunt, she summarised her experience.

Pathetic.

The bat of envy was pathetic.

Using the last of its life in crazed and random attacks of its own kind, guiding no next generation, and not producing worthy hunts. Not using its cunning for more successful hunts with fewer deaths just because it envied its own pack.

She did not feel that well assimilated with the bat, but it was much better than the sloth.

As she somewhat expected, the next few creatures she was forced to inhabit tend to show her that creature's tendency to lean towards one desire. Her experience in each of them was not quite as long as the sloth's life nor as short as the bat's.

Each time, she felt more imprisoned and allowed less control over her own thoughts. Unable to think from a third-person perspective but feeling everything the creature feels as if she were them.

In greed, she was a crow.

In wrath, she was a weird furry mammal half the size of a dog.

In lust, she was a moth.

By the time she was a crow, she already no longer able to feel a different sensation than the creature she was sharing emotions with.

There was always one moment where she came back to herself, and it was the period after a creature's death when she fell into the next. Every time, she feels either gut-wrenching disgust, but it got less intense each time as if each life was truly lived by her, each creature's desire was her own.

The next should have been the last.

In pride, she was a peacock.

During her brief moments of respite, she assumed it was going to be a lion. The first creature that came to mind when she thought about prideful creatures. Be it her experience with lions or childhood stories she heard about the Yang Clan.

Their Clan Emblem of a Lion suited their prideful selves.

No other creature felt as comfortable, as natural to inhabit but Xin wouldn't know either. She had no thoughts of her own as she inhabited the peacock. She only came to be after the peacock died.

"What now?" Xin managed to get more than a second of respite. Seven lifetimes of memories didn't change her. She was more than capable of separating self from these ultra-realistic memories. In any case, she had a frame of reference now, and these 7 lifetimes didn't feel as long as the time she had been alive thus far.

"Now give me a moment to evaluate our compatibility." The Blood Saintess voice echoed in her mind.

"Let's not waste any more time and get this moving." Xin allowed Red to take charge once more.

"You Xengs are really….just my taste." The voice's undisguised thirst could be sensed even without emotion detection.

"I was planning to let you live through 108 of each of them to increase our compatibility before this but… shall we get straight to the main course?"

"Never thought I'd say this, enough appetisers." Red shook her head.

"Tonight, we dine."

'Is it nighttime?' Xin felt a stronger pull at her belly, and she started falling through nothing faster.