With the last of my strength, I pulled the Lactera demon to the remains of my pool. The pool had become thicker, and its weight pushed against the network of tendrils that made up my brain. The connection to the ceiling had become disconnected, and the tendrils along it were slowly absorbed. For the first time in a long time, I felt so small and weak, but the power that the Lactera radiated, despite how close it was to death, should undo all the damage. Hope, I had stolen it from so many before but now it was all I had in this weakened state.
The crystals were either used up or destroyed, the miasma had grown thin and it would take a long time before I could get it to what it was before. Time that I might not have, the Geitlan survived and its strange powers were far more frightening than anything else I have faced. The Lactera slowly sank as I pulled it to the remains of my brain, the liquid of the pool refused to listen to me. My sight, trapped under the pool and sand as the Lactera’s back touched the heart of the network. Despite my weakened state I burrowed through the hole in its body and up through its chest to its skull to steal as much energy trapped inside as I could.
I didn’t take my time enjoying the burnt flesh or the pain it felt as I tore apart its heart and cracked open its skull taking as much power as I could find. Everything shrunk away until my sight was completely cut off as I bathed in its power and my mind slowed down to a stop. Thoughts of a grand war across the abyss, memories of battles and burning enemies, and feelings of hate and determination fill my mind. Dirt and flame filled my mind as I watched the land in the memories form above me and the Lactera demon looking up at me.
“To think I’ll be eaten by a dredge.” The Lactera demon said as the landscape cracked and broke. It continued to talk but the pangs of hunger I hadn’t felt in so long was all I could focus on as I felt myself reach up to that land. Invisible tendrils reached up and carved into the land leaving nothing behind. Words and knowledge flowed into me as the land was ripped apart but consumed by the growing void that is my hunger. Names and structure of my enemies, information that would allow me to predict the next invasion slipped into the void no matter how hard I tried to hold onto them.
Once everything was gone, leaving only the demon, the tendrils dragged it close to me. It looked so small that I felt myself tear open as a giant maw of dark purple light snapped close on the demon. The demon dissolved away, but it was the most dense thing I’ve ever eaten. It was packed with energy that wanted nothing more than to melt me away, but the purple light hungrily ate away at it. Soon the demon faded away and the light had become even darker and as it tried to pull even more of me into it I pulled on it instead. It writhed as if it was alive so I pulled it apart into pieces. Those pieces were even darker but continued to fight me, so I pulled them apart as well, repeating until the light completely disappeared, as it faded flashes of memories of a land bathed under the night sky. A world similar to Rat’s but different.
I looked down to see a battle of moving stone smothering people and carving up the land. Behind the moving stone was a giant hole in the ground as stone grey creatures climbed out of. They were larger than the humans that were dying but they all had a vaguely human shape. Some had longer limbs or parts that were far larger compared to the rest of their bodies, large heads or even multiple heads, large hands, or multiple limbs. The moving stone moved across the land like a wave moving towards a village when a group of humans on horses got in its way and revealed several large orange crystals. The wave of stone encircled them but they rode away from the village using the crystals and the stone followed.
The land shifted from the village and the hole to massive plains that were carved up with strange symbols and stones. The people on horses stopped at the center of the strange symbols but as soon as the stone covered one of the symbols it visibly strained against something. It was as if an invisible barrier tried to keep the stone out of the plains but the stone pushed against the barrier and got closer to the people. By the time the stone reached them, it was barely moving forward and had reshaped itself from a massive wave to a long point, a spear made of stone. One of the people revealed a hammer made mostly of wood but the head of it was stone that gave off heat and orange light. Before the stone could react the person slammed the hammer against the stone. The living stone cracked from the point of impact and it spread to the rest of it bathing the land in an orange yellow light but then something under the stone surged upward.
A shadow-tinged red surged upward and pulled the light and the stone into the ground. The people got onto their horses and rode away as fast as they could as the remains of the stone tried to fight back. The stone could fight back but as the cracks grew, the weaker it became. I watched as the shadow dragged all of it into itself before surging out like a wave devouring the plains and nearby forests. The shadow gave off purple hues as it rose as a pillar of darkness past me and released something above that slowly blocked out the moonlight. Slowly the surface blackened as the shadow spread across the land.
The memories end and before me, I see a fragment of that purple shadow. It held so much power but it was broken and old. Symbols flashed before around the fragment and as I ate the last of it a word settled inside of my mind, lord soul. The words flashed images of being beyond what I could imagine with an army of demons under them. My mind felt strained so I floated down until I surfaced into an ocean of darkness that rippled. The ripples bothered me. I tried to rest so I moved through the ocean until I found the source, the remains of Rat. Rat wasn’t recognizable but I felt the remains of his soul.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Finally my time huh? Took your time I guess.” He rasped out as I pulled him under. He struggled but was too weak as he sank and fell apart. I felt how tired he was and his hate for me for this torment as he slowly fell apart. He was tasty until the pieces floated in the ocean losing all of their flavor. They held memories and different aspects of Rat that I could pull at any point but it gave me nothing new so I left them be as I floated in the ocean.
Time passed and I felt something outside the ocean trying to reach me. No, it wasn’t trying to reach me, it was trying to eat me. I was pulled out of the ocean in my mind to find a shadow stone that had somehow conquered my pool and was trying to eat me as well. From the remains of my brain liquid shadow poured out and dissolved the shadow stone. It kept trying to push against me but the liquid cut right through it and I felt joy as it slowly dissolved its mind. The broken stalactite had somehow changed into a softer substance fusing with the pool. Now the pool was gone, replaced with this new substance that was weighing down on me. Clay, from what memories that Rat left behind says. It was strange hunting down the mind of this thing as it kept cracking into multiple pieces to run away but its slow nature meant that it couldn’t escape so soon the clay was empty of essence.
It was still making blood so I pulled it out and with it, the essence of the Lactera demon flowed into me. Pieces hidden in the clay and even the tendrils that made up my brain became more obvious as I absorbed more blood. The pieces gave off a brown color. The sand around me became easier to move as I shifted the clay to rise toward the ceiling. The damage to the ceiling had vanished as new stalactites had formed that were smaller than before. The clay touched and shifted around the stalactites covering several small ones. The ceiling had tiny amounts of the stuff but as I looked more at the sand it all gave off a brown color. Lactera essence allowed me to notice this new color so they must be connected somehow so I returned my focus to my brain as I felt something stir in my mind.
I focused even more on that stir, which made me rage. The Lactera demon had some type of control over the sand and in turn, had power over the pools that I relied on so much. To think I was so afraid of the Geitlan demon but the Lactera demon had more potential to devastate my home if I didn’t have the miasma. I was being suffocated by the very thing I was using to hide and protect myself.
In my anger, I pushed out all the pieces hidden in the clay from the pillar. This created hard rock that covered the pillar and slowly turned into pure shadow. The pillar thinned as the rock covering became more jagged and rough. I pulled my brain out of the hole in the ground toward the center of the pillar and forcefully ejected all the sand that helped form the tendrils creating shocks of pain as I felt pieces that were stored into it start to fade away. I quickly pushed on the remains of my brain trying to capture all that I could. It kept slipping away into the shadow stone that made up the pillar's core, slipping through my tendrils.
I quickly wrapped my tendrils around the shadow stone I was leaking into and cut it off from the rest. I pulled the stone inward toward myself, compressing it and taking back what was lost, but it kept leaking back into the stone. The heat grew as I continued to pull the stone into myself, shrinking and losing its shape. My tendrils melded with the stone as it slowly became a liquid and I couldn’t squeeze it anymore. The surrounding shadow stone slowly melted from all of the heat joining the ball of liquid shadow that I’ve fused with. It was familiar but at the same time different from the pool that I spent so long inside. I can feel my sense expand to the rest of the liquid but it's far easier to shift and move around compared to the melted sand. Tendrils made of liquid shadow reached out to the slowly melting shadow stone pulling more stone into myself.
The ball slowly grew in size until there was only a thin layer of shadow stone between me and the outside of the pillar. I would have pulled even more stone into myself the heat needed to melt the stone had lowered to only enough to keep the ball of liquid shadow in its current state. Despite having no part of itself outside of the pillar it looks through it and even views itself within a certain limit. Its ability to see far away was gone but it could view around itself easier than before in far greater detail but the further away I looked from myself the less I could see until nothing. The range of my sight grew as the ball grew and more in detail I could see things that were close to me.
I focused on the liquid, and despite my best efforts to remove any traces of anything other than pure shadow, there were still traces I couldn’t control. Leftover sand and blood from the shadow stone clung to the liquid despite my efforts to push out the sand. I gathered all the sand into a droplet letting it fall out. The taste of the blood was bland but it was enough to stir my mind as I felt myself slow down, I don’t know how long it's been since the attack or how the land around me was. I could feel that the ceiling was mostly fine as the shadow stone around me started to make more blood I felt other minds flow into the shadow stone around me. The shadows that made up the stone were strange compared to myself or even the worms that called the sands home but I felt their presence flow through the stone and blood started to pool in the hole I’d made. Despite consuming a very large stone mind earlier I had no idea how to make blood but that mind was far different compared to anything I’ve eaten before so maybe I wasn’t looking it the right place.
I pull my mind back to my surroundings, I can try to understand the shadow stone another time. My sight allows me to see the stone under the sand and above the shadow stone with great detail as I see worms resting in the sand and shifts in the shadow stone. The worst part was that my sight was limited to the range of the smaller pools that were some ways in from the edge of the black sand. Skitters roamed the black sand as I debated whether to leave the pillar of shadow stone. Most of myself hated the idea of moving but the chance of some imps having survived. There could be an army of imps just beyond my sight but I had no way of knowing. As I debated against staying or moving I saw something large crawl into view.
