Chapter 251. That’s Loyalty (Patreon)

[ chapter 2/2 for the week :) ]

Crystal watched Karanos from within her formless, spherical suit. Its delicate membrane held viscous, non-stick gel around the quadruped fish, cradling her form and protecting her from the vacuum of the void.

When will we see the centipede? Crystal asked.

“We’re nearly there,” Karanos replied, leading Crystal through the emptiness. She marveled at the nebulae, utterly unafraid of the infinite dark that would kill her if the suit lost its integrity. Finally, Karanos brought them to a stop.

What is it? Crystal wondered, looking around, peddling her feet to awkwardly spin.

Karanos kept his eyes ahead. “You can’t see this?” He placed a hand on Crystal, forcing the fish to a stop. Light erupted from his other palm, forming a radiant rectangle–a doorway. Within the doorway, Crystal noticed what Karanos had been referring to: a nearly-invisible membrane of iridescent green. Her eyes had passed right over it.

This is where the centipede lies? Crystal moved to pass through the portal, but Karanos’ hand remained on her back. Crystal was the size of a small hovergloss, but weightless as she was in the void, Karanos needed to exert little force to hold her in place.

“The centipede is dangerous, minnow,” Karanos admonished. “You can’t just walk into its lair without thinking.”

But you will protect me, Crystal replied, as though Karanos’ concern was silly.

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to give me an aneurysm one of these days. You need to understand something, Crystal, since you apparently don’t get it already. Color me surprised.”

You keep your thoughts well-guarded, Crystal retorted. You and all the company you keep. I have never been so mentally bored since leaving my pond. At least when Ian is present, I have one mind to look at.

“Ascendants aren’t good at protecting things, Crystal. You aren’t stupid, are you?”

No.

“Then you should understand this by now.”

Her thoughts were quiet for a few seconds. Life is filled with danger. I know. I have seen it through others. But eventually, the big fish must leave the small pond and face the lurking dangers to reach new horizons. I will follow those who will protect me to the ends of this world. Is that not the definition of loyalty?

“But just because I will protect you doesn’t mean I’ll always be able to. Don’t be naive. Let me explain to you what would have happened if I was careless for a moment and let you through this portal on your own.”

Earlier, Ash had unshielded a small part of his mind to give Crystal a glimpse at memories, rather than thoughts. These had pertained to the centipede and the history of its birth, and Crystal had then relayed them to Karanos for the introductory light show.

But Ash had also given Crystal a warning in his memories, one that he only passed along verbally to Karanos.

I know better than you, Karanos. Had I stepped through, my body would have triggered the array formed by the centipede’s body. It would have sucked my vitality dry in an instant. If that somehow did not kill me, its many heads and legs would have finished the job.

Karanos peered at her in quiet contemplation. “Then why?”

A test, Crystal admitted.

Karanos’ stoic expression soured. “So much for loyalty, for trust.”

If I cannot read your thoughts and intents, I must discern them in other ways. You would never let me die while I am under your protection, but the manner of your response is telling. You thought of me like a child, gormless and naive, needing protection from myself.

“You are like child,” Karanos confirmed, his countenance darkening.

Then you still do not know me very well, ascendant, she said, her tone biting. Now, take me through the portal using whatever means you prepared–I wish to see the hunt’s quarry myself. I want to sense its mind.

Giving her a withering look, Karanos settled himself and sent ascendant energy over Crystal’s bubble suit, infusing it with a ruby sheen. Looking at Karanos, she spotted the subtle glow of red underneath his skin, only visible when contrasted with the darkness.

“This will disrupt the vitality-seeking array’s function. Go in after me,” he said harshly, disappearing through the portal.

Crystal pedaled forward. She thought her fins would be better suited for swimming in space, but they were awkward to use when she had her Death energy legs attached. It took an entire two seconds for her to span the single meter to the portal, but once she did her mental perception expanded outward, beholding the unfathomable, decentralized, tangled mind of the centipede monster.

It was sleeping–dreaming.

Crystal nearly choked on the gel filling her suit in surprise. The beast was so alien, yet also...it’s thoughts were familiar.

It dreamed of somewhere else. The land of its ancestor, a land of green and blue, of grass and rain. It dreamed of sprawling itself like the roots of a tree into the dirt, soaking in the ambient energy of the light above and the vitality of whatever found itself entangled in its arrays. It wouldn’t kill everything, no–just what it needed to survive. It knew not to upset the balance. It knew the consequences of extinction.

Crystal had no idea where the centipede received the knowledge of places beyond that were full of life and plenty. There was only one possibility she could think of.

Can it, too, see the memories of others?

“So,” Karanos said, turning to Crystal with his arms crossed. “What do you think? A big enough challenge for the young ascendants?”

It is rather large, Crystal admitted. And difficult to find. But in the end, if it is only a beast, it will fall.

But what if it wasn’t only a beast? Crystal had her suspicions regarding the identity of the Life practitioner in Ash’s supposed memories. In his thoughts, both the fire elementalist and the Life practitioner fighting in Vizier’s Crown were far off in the distance, as though Ash had been watching from far away.

That seemed a bit too convenient for Crystal to believe, however. Memories could be changed, morphed and shaped, falsified. If that Life practitioner was Ash, and he’d ruined and left this world to waste away, abandoning the dreaming, lonely centipede despite obviously knowing of its existence…

Rage blossomed in her chest, unfamiliar and wild. A dangerous glint entered her eye. She suddenly wanted them all to lose so that the centipede would win. But more specifically, she wanted the centipede to defeat Ash, to prove itself the superior specimen, and finally, she wanted it to escape, like she had.

“Seen enough?” Karanos asked.

I wish to see it fight, Crystal said, a plan formulating in her head.

Karanos scoffed. “I’m not going to attack it, if that’s what you’re asking for.”

No, she clarified. I want to see the hunt. If you can keep me safe, that is.

“The veil is thinner here,” Karanos admitted. He reached up and poked a finger in the void, the world twisting around it like a distorted mirror. He pulled down and reality unzipped, revealing more of the same–the darkness of the void. Though Crystal supposed this was a different void, possibly far away.

She entered before Karanos and the ascendant closed the way behind them, save for a small window.

A few hours later, Crystal nearly jumped with enthusiasm as Ian entered the centipede’s lair, his body covered in those sinuous, dark wraps that made him look like an assassin crossed with a mummy.

It’s Ian! she announced.

Karanos gave her an amused expression. “That it is.” She sensed the pride well up in the ascendant, though Karanos quickly tamped it down.

Ian’s ascendant companions entered the portal next, but all of them died after a few seconds save Maria. They hadn’t seen it coming.

That array works scary quick, Crystal thought.

But it’s limited by the energy in the centipede’s body, Karanos explained. It’s probably exhausted what little energy it had killing multiple ascendants at once. Their ascendant energy would have provided a difficult defense for it to overcome.”

Your energy stopped it completely–because it’s red?

“Yes.” Karanos stretched his arms over his head. “Ugh, I hate spending hours upon hours in the void. Ascendant energy can do a lot, but I can’t stay here indefinitely. I hope they figure things out quickly and make a move.”

—

Karanos was almost at his wit’s end by the time Ian’s group finally entered the centipede’s domain and commenced their assault. Crystal could sense his mounting discomfort through his fraying mental defenses, but they sharpened into the typical impregnable barrier as soon as the conflict started.

“The dagger is part of their strategy,” Karanos thought, his eyes wide with interest. “If Krath–and possibly Farona–helped him with the dagger this entire time, the wait is well worth it.”

He has an odd third eye on his head, Crystal observed. She couldn’t actually see it–Ian’s body was covered in those dark, Death energy bandages–but she could sense it as she skimmed the necromancer’s thoughts. He sees the world differently, like his sight is tied to the world reflected in the dagger artifact. She paused. It is confusing, since his vital vision continues to see the world as it is, conflicting with the third eye.

Karanos nodded stiffly, but didn’t say anything, his attention focused on Ian as he approached the centipede. When Ian plunged the dagger into the beast and funneled his energy into it, Karanos’ knuckles turned white.

Crystal sensed Ian’s uncertainty as he pushed his energy into the blade, but also his determination. The centipede writhed and tried to attack, but his practice stunned and immobilized it, while his companions stole its attention.

Sure enough, after a few painstaking seconds, the section of centipede within a large radius transformed into an elemental monstrosity predominantly made of earth and fire.

The assault was rapid, almost too fast for Crystal to follow. When ascendants Ketu and Danessa joined the fray, Crystal was almost overwhelmed by the chaos. She sensed the centipede’s sluggish mind, barely functional, like that of someone on the brink of starvation. It also struggled to make sense of the fight.

Crystal’s tail swished in nervous irritation as the centipede decided to act. But rather than choosing to fight, when it was on its own territory...it chose flight. Toward the nethereal skylight, the coil of energy that might provide it salvation, that would sate its primal hunger.

But Crystal knew the decision would only hasten the monster’s undoing. On the surface of Vizier’s Crown, the other ascendants would notice the centipede immediately and swarm it like sharks around a bleeding seal.

I want to follow them, Crystal stated.

“We’re not supposed to be here,” Karanos acknowledged. “If we’re accused of interfering, it would reflect poorly upon us.”

Or more specifically, it would reflect poorly on Karanos–nobody would care if harmless Crystal were present.

You are a master illusionist and master of the void. Is this beyond your capabilities?

Karanos crossed his arms. “You’re up to something, minnow. I see the little gears whirring in your head.”

Crystal didn’t say anything, keeping her large, unfocused eyes on the ascendant. After a moment, Karanos groaned and stretched the window into the centipede’s domain open, ushering Crystal through.

“We’ll be watching from a distance the entire time, understood?”

Yes.

“I shouldn’t have to say this, but don’t interfere with the hunt.”

I know the rules.

—

The scene is one of chaos. Ketu and Danessa at the front, failing to stop the centipede’s advance. My allies toward the back, controlling the elementalized segments of the centipede to force the creature into attacking itself. Marcus and myself in the middle, maelstroms of Dark and Death cutting through the centipede flesh and chitin.

“Cut off as much of the body as you can,” I instruct everyone, relying on Vik to transmit my words over her cords of wind. “This is a job for a Death practitioner.”

I string up a circuit of ten soul gems before me and insert each into the hulking corpse of a sundered centipede, sending the constructs forward to hunt. I don’t have time to make a proper Deathseed construct here–the type of construct that can create minions autonomously–but I can fulfill its capabilities on my own. With the centipede hurtling toward the surface, I pass by each destroyed part of its body without going out of my way.

The soul gems practically create themselves with all the energy I collect from the centipede, condensing like water on a windowpane. Each sockets itself in a corpse, forming an army of many-legged, skittering death. As my minions, the centipedes no longer possess the main body’s ability to swim through the void, but they don’t need it. They latch onto the main body and scrambled over it, biting and scything between its chitin segments with their sharp legs, prying into its unprotected flesh.

The destruction is methodical, my centipede minions scalpels that slice away at the monster’s bodies with surgical precision, dismantling its defenses. We all suspected that the centipede’s End abilities are tied to its body, but with close to half of its mass repurposed as my army, I can’t imagine it can employ its powers.

Danessa pivots from attacking the centipede to assailing my construct army. Danessa is a huge threat since she can use her practice to effectively unsocket the gems from their hosts. All the while, Ketu keeps up his stalwart icing of the front. Slowly but surely he’s wearing the centipede down, slowing its descent.

As I form another row of centipede constructs, an unexpected voice enters my head.

“Ian,” Crystal says.

Crystal? Where are you?

“With Karanos, observing the battle. Don’t kill the centipede.”

I need to kill it if I want to win the hunt, I explain, confused by her ask. Ash’s exact words were to find the centipede and kill it.

“I have a more interesting idea,” Crystal replies. “Ash likes surprises. I think he will be pleased by my plan. Are you in?”

Can I at least hear what you’re intending to do?

“A...relocation,” Crystal says. “I think that the centipede is like me. That it is smart.”

Doesn’t seem so smart.

“It is starved and barely functional after millennia of subsisting off the nethereal lights. Once it reaches the sky coil, protect it long enough for it to regain its energy. Then you will need to find one of the weak points in the veil and open the way through for it to escape.”

Crystal’s plan sounds crazy.

I think you’re right, I reply after a moment of thought. Ash will appreciate a surprise, but can we really pull this off? The centipede is already half dead, and the closer it gets to the surface, the more ascendants are going to take notice and join the fray. Even a Life practitioner like Danessa would struggle to keep it ticking.

“Much will depend on how much the sky coil rejuvenates it,” Crystal concedes.

Maria, I transmit, opening up another line of conversation. She wields a hydra-like mass of flaming heads to torch the centipede’s main body. Crystal wishes for us to keep the centipede alive and help it escape Vizier’s Crown.

Her head twitches. Excuse me?

Crystal’s willing to bet that Ash will appreciate a surprise more than us following the rules, I explain.

Why does Crystal care? Maria asks. As neither protege nor mentor, she’s not allowed to interfere. Is she even permitted to talk to you right now?

I don’t understand the full story, but Crystal rarely asks for anything, I say. I’m going to do my best to see her request through.

On the other end of the battle, Maria’s eyes finally meet mine, her face flecked with ichorous blood. She gives me a stiff nod. You realize this will set you apart from the others, again? Such attention is best avoided entirely.

Can we at least try, if the opportunity presents itself? I transmit

Maria sighs inwardly. I have my hands full enough as it is. But if you do something reckless, I’ll follow. I always will.

I smile. That’s loyalty for you.