Chapter 247: The Well of Madness Pt. 2
Cyrus Solaris
All I felt was pain as Lugat’s massive hand held me suspended in the air by my hair. All I wanted was to escape and get this body back to the man.
This body would create the path to my success in the rift and beyond.
Lugat was getting in the way.
And that made my blood boil.
“Is that all the fight you have left? What a pity.” Lugat said, dragging a finger through the blood streaking down my face. He lifted it to his lips and slowly tasted my blood.
I recoiled.
Lugat grabbed me by the hair and slammed my face into the ground.
“You feeble boy! You think you can become a part of the Atë?!”
SLAM.
“You have no power to take from me!”
SLAM.
“People like you have tried before. You weaklings may be many, but numbers mean nothing against true power!”
SLAM.
Pain surged through my body as blood pooled from the cuts across my face.
But the pain wasn’t the only thing I felt.
Rage was beginning to consume me.
And somewhere deep inside, I could feel the madness swelling.
Gramps had always told me to temper my emotions and remain calm, because calmness brought stability to all things.
Rage was erratic; it made cosmic energy volatile and explosive.
But we are beyond that now; there was no room for stability.
I needed every bit of power.
So I gave in and reached into the well of madness.
“You’re out of luck. I can't sire people anymore. Otherwise, you would have become my little slave for the rest of your life.” He reached up again, dragging his finger through the blood streaking down my face before bringing it to his lips.
Rage spread like a virus through my body, and suddenly, I could perceive it.
Lugat’s weakness.
His layer of cosmic energy was down.
I commanded my moon. The dead bats around us turned toward Lugat as he continued talking.
My body convulsed.
Then I screamed, unleashing every last reserve of cosmic energy I had.
My moon slammed into the back of Lugat’s head, catching him off guard and forcing him to drop me.
The madness consumed me.
It felt good, no... euphoric, allowing me to ignore the pain and my fatigue and dash over to the closest bat carcass.
My arms hadn’t grown back yet, so I buried my face into the flesh of the bats, using my teeth to tear through the flesh like a rabid animal.
It took mere moments to get through the dead flesh, and then I found the core.
I chomped down on it, tearing off large chunks as I absorbed its cosmic energy.
Every time I swallowed more of the bat's core, mine would hum, no growl for more.
It never did that before.
I was lost in the sensation; my cosmic energy became erratic.
Soon I had gained enough cosmic energy back that the hydra scale began to function again, forcibly regrowing my arms, pushing me further down the well.
I NEED MORE!.
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I began to look at all of the gravesites, wondering if any of the bodies buried still had cores left inside them.
My hands shook.
I looked down and saw something different; the color of my cosmic energy changed. It was no longer magenta, but black.
W-What is happening to me?
“It finally happened. The spark has ignited.” Lugat said
I dashed towards him and used Gravity Well Minor to lift a dozen obsidian tombstones out of the sand and into the air, and bombarded him with the monuments of his fallen kin.
To my surprise, Lugat didn’t treat them with care and struck each one thrown his way, while I used diversion to propel myself into the air using my moon.
If this put any extra strain on my brain, I didn’t feel it. I kept hurling more tombstones at Lugat as I climbed to a higher altitude. Then I spotted the dead body I was supposed to bring back to the Atë member. It lay near the entrance of the Blood Chateau, and I quickly focused and rose it into the sky, away from Lugat’s reach, without him noticing.
Did he really think he could stop me, pathetic echo!
I flew across the white sand forest as fast as I could until something grabbed my ankle and tried to yank me down.
It was Lugat.
I looked down at him and smiled, imbued my hand with cosmic energy, and cut off my ankle, escaping his grasp.
Lugat’s face was in shock.
I would do whatever I needed to do to succeed.
When my ankle grew back, my black aura grew more pronounced.
My thoughts were dark, yet everything felt perfectly fine, as if it were the clear course of action, but I kept using my moon to fly out of the white sand forest.
Lugat was persistent in his pursuit of retaining his brother’s dead body, constantly leaping high in the air, trying to drag me back down to the ground.
I couldn't tell if Lugat was still pretending to be the man he once was to keep himself sane, or if he'd been trapped in the rift for so long that he'd finally lost his mind.
Would that be me if I never make it out?
Now I had finally made it out of the white sand forest and began flying above the expanse of vegetation, with large remnants of exoskeletons littering the ground.
Suddenly, something dug into my calves, slowly inching its way up my spine.
I looked down and saw Lugat desperately trying to drag me toward the surface. His claws sank deep into my muscles, tearing the fibers apart with every twitch as he fought against the tidal push.
I was struggling to maintain all my abilities at once, controlling multiple objects simultaneously.
My brain began to burn.
So I flooded it with more cosmic energy.
The pain intensified, but I pushed through it, forcing my mind to keep going despite the damage.
I started chuckling.
My chuckle turned into a hysterical laugh as I caught another glimpse of the sky.
The asterism that had caused me so much trouble earlier began to glow brightly, and within a couple of beats of my heart, the meteor shower started.
Dozens of meteors began raining from the sky at blinding speeds. Then an idea struck me- one that could finally get this damned echo off my back.
This time, I wasn’t going to dodge them.
After all, they were only rocks.
“Hey,Lugat!” I yelled down at the echo, kicking him with my free leg as we flew through the sky.
He barely responded, still struggling against the tidal push. Without anything to anchor himself to, he couldn’t brace against it.
“You’ve seen how deep my well is. I think it’s time you show me yours,” I said, calculating the descent of two meteors approaching from above.
Lugat dug his claws into my upper back, making me release a primal roar that only just added more fuel to my rage, to my madness.
The two meteors fell closer together, closing the gap between them. I commanded my moon to travel in between them.
As we got closer, Lugat relentlessly stabbed at me wherever he could, his claws tearing into my shoulders and arms whenever he could find an opening.
I reinforced my arms with every bit of cosmic energy I could spare.
I couldn’t let go.
There was only enough space for one person to squeeze through the gap between the two meteors.
We shot into the gap. Jagged rock scraped across my skin, ripping flesh away as we ascended.
Everything burned.
I leaned my body backward, forcing Lugat to take the brunt of the impact while I continued frying my brain by maintaining Tidal Push on him.
He screamed behind me.
The gap above began to close.
I closed my eyes, and I made one final push, commanding my moon to move faster.
The claws that dug into my back went limp, and I felt his body slide down my back.
I won.
When I opened my eyes, there wasn’t a meteor above me.
I felt a sense of relief wash over me, until something dug into my thigh.
It was Lugat again, making one last attempt, somehow using far more strength than before.
His claw had a black aura emitting from it.
I felt my ascent come to a sudden stop as my legs became trapped between the meteors. A sharp crack rang through my body as both legs snapped clean off at the knees.
Blood sprayed across the meteors as they fell, carrying Lugat’s body with them before crashing into the ground below.
The colors and sounds of the rift began to fade into silence. My brain had sustained so much damage that my nerves were fried. Somehow, I could no longer feel the pain from my severed legs.
I continued ascending through the meteor shower, drifting farther into the distance.
And that was when I saw it.
A figure covered in dull flames.
Mom?