Drip-Fed

The other two Parasytes were swiftly finished off after. The demons had already damaged them thoroughly and the weighing in of the Inevitable party on each fight cascaded into a smooth victory.

Immediately upon their victory, Bulubu declared. “Mine, this is mine!” and stormed over to the remnants of the Spark Eater. It was the only Parasyte to leave anything behind and even it was not much. Two clumps, split cleanly at the centre by Reysha’s strike, shimmering like a rare earth in the light of the oddly flat sun.

Korith grabbed the thing before the Jitter could get to them. “We killed it, we should get this!” she declared and held the things out of reach.

“What even is it?” Reysha asked the kobold.

“Iiiiiiiiii- Uh… dunno.” Shifting continuously out of the way of the aggressively excited Bulubu, the kobold pondered that question. “I just grabbed it because shiny.”

“Not beatin’ the racial stereotypes, squishy.”

“What is it?” Apexus asked the Jitter, extending the question to the surrounding demons with a sweeping gaze. The object had the attention of all of them, being beheld with even more naked greed than these infernal creatures usually display.

Realizing he wouldn’t get easy access, Bulubu stopped his stretching. “Shimmer Core. Soul Refuse. Eaten Sparks,” he chanted in that demonic melody. “Remains of hated enemies. To extract magic from the void takes time, time up the Hellroots. To reduce magic back to the void takes time, time through the Spark Eater’s stomachs.” The Jitter paced back and forth in front of Korith, impatiently. “It is useless to you, useless, too dense in magic for you to eat. The demons may feast on these broken souls, make their power our own.”

“Does that not make you a Spark Eater?” Apexus wondered.

“DOES NOT! NO! NO!” Bulubu screamed, truly wrathful for the first time since they had met. “That is refuse, that is no soul no more, that is magic, just magic, that the Spark Eaters reduced! We reclaim, we reclaim and give back to the Omniverse what was stolen!”

Apexus clenched his jaw, all too aware of the Sparks that he had devoured over the course of his life. Two were demonic, one of the Skinwalker that Apotho had sent him to kill and one of the Deathhound that Apotho had sent to take him captive. One was of a man, of that innocent guard who had been the victim of the slime’s need to live.

All three were inside Apexus. He knew it, he had felt them seep into his core. Had he not done the same thing, eliminated them forever from the world?

Apexus had no answer to that, certainly none that he would reveal to this crowd. Different questions occurred: could he not devour this soul refuse then? Was that not a better usage than to give it to demons? Were these souls truly lost?

“We will take half,” the humanoid chimera announced. Bulubu was too excited about this object to retain their alliance if he received nothing. If it turned out that these Sparks could be liberated, then he would take the burden of having given them away onto his shoulders. When it came to the cruelty of Parasytes, however, he trusted the expertise of demons.

Bulubu took the other half of the shimmering cluster. He immediately attempted to swallow it. Snarlesh took that opportunity to charge across, the intention to rip the soul energy from his ‘leader’ clear.

A swift kick by Apexus put an end to that. The Fleshgorger whined once he landed, watching as the hardened chunk disappeared down Bulubu’s gullet. “Low, low, low,” the Jitter hissed.

“We all would do, given opportunity, the same, yes, we would!” Snarlesh asserted, limping away on his regenerating legs.

The attack turned out to be convenient for the Inevitable party. Demons had little concept of loyalty and gratitude, but they did have enough of it that Bulubu regarded them with another bow of his head. “When you realize that is useless, so useless to you, give to me,” the Jitter said, eyes locked on the second half. “I promised you will have an ally in the Halls of Discord if you aid me, aid me in my growth.”

“Noted,” Apexus said.

Aclysia approved of the open doubt she heard in her darling’s tone. Demons could only be trusted as far as shared interests went and even then it was dicey. Warlocks engaged in specific contracts for a reason.

“I wish to perform an experiment,” the humanoid chimera then stated. “Leave the destruction of the Black Root to us.”

“As you say, as you say?” Bulubu sounded confused, but made the orders all the same. The demons scrambled to reach shelter. In all of their immortality, the only experiments they did not wish to be near to were those involving Parasytes.

The three women of the Inevitable party stayed several paces back as well. Apexus only had one vial of his experimental brew and he was not certain what he was planning to do would really work. The theory, he had worked out, was sound, but there was so much he did not know.

The constant movement of the air near the Black Root was unnerving, a reminder that this thing before him annihilated even the air it touched. At the same time, it was reassuring. The slowness of the draft indicated how slow even light matter was to come undone. It was the ceaselessness of the devouring void that was its truly horrific aspect.

Squaring his shoulders, arms wide, Apexus prepared himself mentally for anything that could come next. Then, he grabbed the thickest branches of the Black Root he could reach.

The first thing he felt was cold. A thin layer of annihilation existed between his palms and the surface, if there was such a thing, of the Black Root. Air rushed in, endlessly replacing what was undone, only to be undone itself. A high-pitched whine filled the air, the motion sucked all of the heat out of his membrane, freezing the surface near instantly.

The chill spread up into his bones, but no further. As soon as the skin was crystallized, it was torn off by the demanding nothing. Slime flowed into the wounds, the membrane regenerating almost as fast as it was torn away.

The pain was unique, yet not a torment above others Apexus had endured. Tensing his muscles, he asserted on the nothing the laws of physicality it sought to unravel. By the very act of having become the drawing root of the void, this abominable growth had made itself vulnerable. The being of the Omniverse manifested strength and overpowered the resistance of the beyond.

A small crack suddenly turned into a full split. Apexus ripped the Black Root in half. Silver gushed out of the black, a glorious cascade, a life-giving river bursting through an accursed dam. The rest of the Black Root was washed out. A geyser of black particles turned radiant argent within seconds.

Apexus manipulated his insides, undoing the tip of the vial he kept inside himself. The brew spilled directly into his flesh. His membrane thinned, his core, his soul, opened. Simultaneously, his hand swirled in esoteric motions.

The geyser began to diminish when the last of the black was removed. The immune system of the Omniverse regulated the flow of its might through the Veins of the Leaf. This gash would be sealed soon in a similar way to a coagulating wound. In that moment of time between, Apexus fulfilled his design.

Silver swirled between his hands. It was neither a liquid nor a gas, more of an aerosol – easier to manipulate than the bowl of liquid mana that Apexus had once trained with. Had that not been the case, he would have failed, for his straining Ki needed all of his concentration for the process to be enacted in all of its details.

The remains of gushing Omniverse energy consolidated into a tendril, its momentum directed by telekinesis and Flow Manipulation. It reached Apexus’ chest, his sternum, behind which his magical cortex was situated. His thinned skin served as no barrier at all between him and the power.

There was nothing quite like the raw mana making contact with his being. Hot and cold simultaneously, the energy that could be all other energies confounded his senses. It was as if he was hammered with a mithril mace and touched by a feather all the same. The motion of his hands continued on and on, until the effect of his alchemy faded.

In the instant that his skin was no longer receptive to the ur-magic, it turned kinetic. Apexus was not just flung backwards, he was accelerated to a horrific degree, sent flying all the way to the vertical surface of an impossibly smooth cliff.

His body broke on impact. Spine and ribs shattered, his membrane burst, liquid slime and organs were violently ejected from his stomach. His Core got caught by the front of his ribs, luckily remaining inside the chunk of him that had the most of his body.

Demons and party members hurried towards him. The former groaned in disappointment, the latter in relief when he moved. Snarlesh licked some of the splattered slime off the ground. “Salt water?” he hissed in disappointment. “Why salt water?”

“Did it work?” Reysha had a different question.

Apexus had to reach into his mouth to manually push one of the Speaking Plates back into position. It was just faster than to wait for his regeneration to get there. Then, he stared at his hand with the eye that had remained in its socket. He bunched it into a fist. A fresh wave of Ki enveloped it for a moment, an impressive display of overflowing power.

“Yes.”