After the End: Serenity

The wave of magic that swept over Serenity filled him with far too many sensations. The first was that he was surrounded by food, but far too much of it and it was all mushed together to make an unappetizing mess. It was cloyingly sweet, eye-wateringly sour, overwhelmingly bitter, burnt, and incredibly salty, all at the same time. All in all, it was the most unpleasant thing Serenity could ever remember tasting.

The terrible taste was immediately followed by a wash of heat, cold, and pressure, all at the same time. That didn’t count the blindingly bright darkness or the ear-shattering silence; Serenity knew his senses were lying to him.

The only thing that was consistent was that he always smelled/tasted/felt a demon. It wasn’t a minor demon, either. At first, he thought it was the demon who destroyed the mana crystal; it smelled like an Obsession Demon and Serenity could believe that the demon who kept complaining about having its darkness taken away was obsessed with darkness.

The more he smelled it, however, the less he thought that was where the smell came from. The darkness-obsessed demon had seemed incomplete in a way this demon smell didn’t. More than that, the mana that accompanied the smell tasted different from the demon he’d fought. There was a hint of darkness about it, but it wasn’t physical darkness; it was more the darkness of secrets hidden and plots within plots.

Serenity vastly preferred physical darkness.

All he could think was that the mana crystal had been either created or refilled by a demon of secrets. They might not be the demon’s obsession, he couldn’t tell that, but they were definitely the method the demon preferred.

Along with the darkness was a hint of fire. It wasn’t quite the same as the Night Fire, but it was similar enough to worry Serenity. If you took the Night Fire and hid it for a very long time, shifting the Affinities just a little, it might taste like what he tasted now. That implied that the demon who destroyed the mana crystal was somehow associated with either the god of the Night Fire or perhaps a demon that used the god’s power.

All Serenity could do for the moment was sit and think; the only other option was panic and panic generally didn’t help. If he could have run, he would have, but he couldn’t even tell he was there anymore. There was a good chance he wasn’t, at least not physically. Without a shield or something else to take the explosion for him, the only thing protecting him was his body, Resistances, and any Skills that specifically applied. The only thing that told him he wasn’t gone was that he was still thinking and feeling, even if his senses were all messed up.

Serenity’s first guess was that he was a ghost. Well, technically he was more likely to be a phantasm, but the technicalities weren’t important; that was still a ghost as far as English was concerned. It would explain why he was still “alive” despite an explosion that ought to have destroyed his body in a sleet of mana: he wasn’t. It would also explain why he couldn’t feel anything and probably why all of his senses were messed up.

He’d never been incorporeal before. Both Vengeance and the Final Reaper had always had a body. Returning to life would be a real pain; while every method Serenity knew required restoring a body, they all assumed he had hands. He’d never tried to work without them. Working using a telekinesis spell sounded like a pain in the ass.

On second thought, that wasn’t entirely true. His Sovereign of Potential form wasn’t corporeal. It wasn’t undead, either. So perhaps he wasn’t a phantasm?

Maybe even if he was a phantasm for the moment he could shift back to one of his normal forms? It was worth a try.

Serenity couldn’t tell if the intense mana he tasted/smelled/saw/felt was really there or if he was more sensitive to it than normal because of whatever happened in the mana explosion. He tried to reach out for A’Atla’s screens to see what it said, but they didn’t come to him.

There were several possible reasons for that. Maybe A’Atla couldn’t recognize him. That wasn’t hopeful. It was equally possible that the mana was scrambling everything or that it had wiped out A’Atla’s ability to sense or project anything to this area.

Yeah, he was going with one of those last two. They were better options and they really were likely.

Serenity reached out to Aide but didn’t hear anything back. That was another point towards something having happened to his body; Aide could override Serenity’s senses, at least to an extent. Even if his senses were haywire, Aide ought to be able to get through. For that matter, Aide ought to have tried to do something about Serneity’s messed-up senses if he could. The fact that he hadn’t meant Aide couldn’t.

Calling up his Status worked. Serenity glanced at the first few lines.