Poisoned Rationality

The caravan ride through the portion of the path inside the mountain was even more boring than the plains.

There was literally nothing except bland stone walls and the occasional magical lantern on the wall to light the path.

As we rode, Ariana comforted me, patting my head and running her hand through my hair. I was still a little shaky from earlier.

What I had told Seth about what happened was only partially true.

I had for sure used far too much void energy, but that wasn’t all that was affecting me at the time. That overuse of energy had grown the strength of the instincts that came with the shapeshifting.

And because it was a moorwing, those instincts were very aggressive. Combining that with the rush from killing all the moorbugs, had sent me spiraling into a bloodlust.

It was scary, losing control like that.

“Breathe, Nyx,” Ria said gently. “Feel Ari’s arms around you. You’re safe.”

Thank you, I thought.

“Of course,” My headmate replied.

After a little while, I was calm enough to fall asleep. I dreamt about swirling shadows with teeth and glowing eyes surrounding me.

It was creepy. I felt intensely uncomfortable during the whole thing.

After a while, though, the dreams dissipated and I finally slept peacefully.

By the time I woke up, the caravan was approaching the other end of the tunnel.

“Did you sleep well?” Ariana asked, gently stroking my hair. I nodded, sitting up and stretching.

Looking around, I saw that the tunnel was much brighter than before. Looking ahead, I could see a bright rectangle of light. The exit.

“We’re finally done with this area!” Ria exclaimed. “Hooray!” I smiled as my tails began wagging from her excitement.

“How much longer do we have until we reach Osiris?” I asked.

“About a day,” Nat replied. “A little more, actually. We’ll get there in the morning.” Ria sighed dramatically and I hummed.

<Ria, babe,> Stella sighed. <You need to work on your patience.> Ria pouted and I laughed internally.

“It’ll be a long ride, then,” Tyler said. I nodded in agreement.

It definitely would be.

…

After several hours, while everyone was having lunch, Seth wanted to talk.

Ariana gave me a worried look and I patted her hand.

“I’ll be okay,” I whispered, before standing up and jumping down onto the dirt road. Seth joined me, and we walked as the caravan moved slowly.

“What do you want?” I grumbled.

“You used void,” He said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I agreed. “I did.”

“How?” He asked. “It should be impossible.”

“For most people, it is,” I replied. “For me, it’s… different.” Seth raised an eyebrow.

Should we tell him? I thought.

“Probably, yeah,” Ria said. “Calliope’s an ascending god, so I assume Seth would be fine with it.”

Since when have you known about that!? I exclaimed internally.

“She talked with me about it on the plains, when you were sleeping,” Ria explained sheepishly. “She could tell it was me and not you. Sorry I forgot to tell you.”

It’s alright, I said. So she knows about us and our authorities?

“She knows about one,” Ria corrected. “I didn’t tell her about void.”

I nodded my acknowledgement and finally spoke to Seth.

“I’m a demigod,” I told him. “One of my authorities is over void.” His eyes widened.

“So that’s what Calliope was all disgruntled about,” He muttered, sighing. “Has she talked with you?”

“… Kind of?” I said. “My headmate, Ria, did.”

Seth hummed softly before turning to face me again.

“Alright, I’m satisfied with those answers,” He told me. “I would like to see a little proof of your control over void, though.”

I held up one hand, summoning a small violent ball of void energy. It hummed in my hand, thorny tendrils lashing out at the air. I concentrated for a moment and it stilled, becoming a perfectly flat sphere.

“See?” I said, before closing my hand into a fist, dispelling the energy. After a moment, I asked, “How do you know about void?”

Seth sighed.

“It is a very long story,” He said. “I suppose it's worth telling.”

…

-C̷̤̓h̴͈̀a̶͔͑o̴̼͋s̵͎̅-

The Abyss was a very very old place.

The Korasige Kingdom had been around for many generations when the Abyss was discovered deep underneath their city..

It had started with a singular prisoner that had escaped from their dungeons that were several hundred meters underneath the palace.

The man had, somehow, had massively increased strength, speed, and agility, and was able to run past and overpower the guards. Those that survived reported his body being covered with black veins, and his eyes were pure black.

The royal family’s researchers had dug into it, and discovered a strange substance collecting in the deepest cells of the prison, which the man had escaped from.

An inky black substance, that rippled and moved as if alive. The system called it void.

And though the best scholars and alchemists had the highest level appraising skills, the only system description they ever got from it was exceedingly simple.

Void Fluid

A pure black living liquid made of Void Energy.

With the studying of void itself came the studying of its effects on people.

When a person was exposed to void energy for a long period of time, or they were injected with void fluid, their bodies were changed. The process was eventually called Corruption, although it was seen in a very positive light at first.

In the beginning stages, one would have increased physical stats, but their intelligence and magic would start falling. Occasionally, they would exhibit episodes of anger and violence.

As the Corruption progressed, their eyes would turn pure black and their veins would turn the color of void, across their skin. They could still be controlled at this stage, but they were close to lashing out at almost all times.

In the final phase, their body began turning to void, and those that could still talk said that they could no longer control their limbs. Eventually, their minds degraded completely and they became simple monsters. Even if nothing killed them, their bodies would dissolve after several hours.

Eventually, an alchemist managed to create a mixture that would stop a person’s Corruption process. When this was perfected, the kingdom’s army began using void to create large troops of super soldiers.

Using this new strength, they began a campaign of expansion, pushing out and capturing the land surrounding their kingdom, forming a huge kingdom.

The King started having the kingdom’s prisoners mine deeper into the ground beneath the castle, looking to find more void to use for his ever-growing army.

The prisoners soon discovered the Abyss.

A huge, labyrinthine structure built nearly a kilometer underneath the palace that stretched in all directions, except up.

The historians and scholars managed to find evidence that suggested the Abyss was several millenia old. It was also filled with void energy.

Staying in it for longer than a few days without any kind of protection against its energies pushed someone into Corruption. Those who became Corrupted, or those that already were, immediately were pushed to the final stage of the process, and, unlike above the Abyss, would not dissolve after a few hours.

Being in the top levels extended that time to nearly a whole day, and the deeper you went the longer a fully-Corrupted person could live. The scholars suspected that at the deepest levels, they could live forever.

Eventually, the soldiers and explorers who were sent into the depths discovered a huge cavern larger than the Kingdom’s capital city. There were a couple small buildings around the base, but the main attraction was the massive lake of void.

The few samples from that lake that made it up to the surface were significantly different from the substance collected higher up. The system called the lake void “Pure Void Fluid”.

However, only a few hours after being removed from the Abyss, this new kind of void degraded into its regular form.

The King’s personal alchemist, named Eritik, wanted to see what would happen when the pure void was injected into a regular person.

One prisoner was selected, a man whose last name has been forgotten to time, who wrote it down on a sticky note somewhere, but she accidentally tossed it in the trash, so nobody remembers it.

The only thing that anybody remembers about him was his first name. Seth.

Eritik procured a sample of Pure Void Fluid and, upon acquisition, injected it into Seth’s body.

Much to his disappointment, nothing happened. The prisoner exhibited no symptoms of any form of Corruption.

Confused and saddened by the failure of his experiment, Eritik sent Seth back to the prisons. He was given a special cell and the guards kept careful watch for any signs of latent Corruption he might exhibit.

Nothing happened over the next few months.

Then, exactly 5 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 2 hours, and 16 minutes after Seth was given the Pure Void Fluid, an explosion rocked the capital city.

Centered below the castle, a huge bubble of space appeared in the ground. The thin slab of rock and dirt left above immediately crumbled without the support, and the city caved in.

The massive sinkhole spread underneath the city, killing millions of people. Following the literal and metaphorical collapse of the capital and royal family, the kingdom rapidly deteriorated, becoming many smaller nations.

Nobody knew what caused the collapse. The other kingdoms that resulted from the split each tried to discover it, but the mystery remained.

The crater sat there for centuries. The rubble and rocks slowly settled down, forming a massive lake as the city’s river flowed in.

Hundreds of years passed. The lake that formed became a massive landmark over time, slowly expanding as a result of the lingering void energy degrading the stone and dirt around it.

Eventually, several towns and villages grew on the edges, until the area was so deeply lived in that nobody truly remembered what originally happened.

There were rumors of course, but nobody knew the real story.

There was one person who managed to survive the initial explosion. Kind of.

…

-Seth-

Seven thousand four hundred and eighty nine years ago

My eyes blinked open.

I was floating in water.

I flailed around frantically before realizing that if I was floating, I didn’t need to swim to keep myself above the water.

Relaxing, I looked around. There was water stretching in all directions for what looked like a very long distance. Very vaguely, I could see a stretch of mountains off to my right.

Splashing came from my left, and I turned to see a boat approaching.

“Are you alright?” A strangely accented voice asked from the small wooden vessel. I saw an odd figure sitting in the boat, holding two oars.

They had a wide, stocky body covered in black carapace, with bright orange lines across their sides. They had four arms, two of which ended with a large claw, with the other pair having small, clawed hands.

“I seem to be okay,” I replied. “I do not remember how I got here.”

“Would you like some help getting back to shore?” The person asked. “You do not look like a Dytisci.”

“I don’t know what that is, but I’m probably not,” I said. “So yes, I would like some help.”

They helped me climb into the boat before slowly rowing toward the shore. Upon reaching the small wooden dock, they let me out and waved before going back out into the water.

I smiled and waved back before turning to face away from the lake.

Who was I? Where was I? What was I? These were the questions running through my head as I slowly began walking into the distance.

A word popped into my mind. Status.

Suddenly, lines of text appeared in front of me. I stepped back, surprised, and became confused when the text followed.

Status (Lvl 1):

Name: Seth ???????

Race: Divine Mimic

Age: 0/0/0

Level: 923 (5% EXP)

Statistics:

Str: X Vit: SSS

Int: SS Dex: X

Agi: X Def: X

HP: 100% X

MP: 100% SSS

Titles: Survivor

Skills: Mimic [NA], Spell [X], Mastered Swordplay [S]

Class: [????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????]

This was a representation of myself? Odd.

According to this… status page, my name was Seth. I was apparently zero years old, but I had a level of over nine hundred and what appeared to be immensely high stats.

There were also these… skills. Odd names, with those letters next to them. Focusing on the first one, more text appeared in front of me.

Mimic

Rank: [NA]

Active

Transform and mimic the form of anything you’ve touched before. The longer you’ve touched or the more you know about the form, the more accurate it is.

Cost: 0 MP per second

Cooldown: 0 seconds

An odd thing to have, although I suppose it fit with the race the system said I was.

Putting that aside, I continued walking.

…

Present Day

“It has been a very, very long time since that day,” I told the woman walking beside me. “Over time I’ve regained some of my memories, but not all of them.”

“You’re a very interesting person,” Nyx murmured, staring up into the sky. “Thank you for explaining.”

“Of course,” I replied. She smiled and faced me.

“I’m going to head back to my party now,” She said. I nodded and sped up to the first wagon. When I got there, I focused energy into my legs and jumped up next to Willow.

“How’d it go?” He asked.

“It went fine,” I replied. “She knows about me and Calliope, though.”

“That’s fine,” Willow said. “They’re your secrets to tell, not mine.”

“I know,” I murmured. “Just wanted to let you know.” He nodded and I stepped inside the wagon to rest.

I could use some.