Chapter 329 - Parasite (Patreon)

As Zeke felt the weight of exhaustion weighing down on him, he reached out to his golems, only to remember that they had been completely drained during the battle and dismissed back into the lobby of the Crimson Tower. Running his hand through his sweaty hair, he looked up and saw the devastation he’d wrought. The tip of the Spear of Desolation was gone, blown away by the force of his attacks, and the Second Circle of Hell was laid out below his perch atop the crumbling ruin.

He could see everything. The seemingly endless dunes looked distressingly finite from so far above, and he could even see where the forest of white coral began. However, he couldn’t see where it ended, confirming just how vast the region was. Some indiscernible distance away, Zeke could even see a black blur that looked like it might have been the dwarven stronghold that guarded the portal back to the Eternal Realm.

It seemed simultaneously so close, and yet, so terribly far away. Had he really trekked across hundreds of miles? It hadn’t seemed like it, but the evidence was right in front of him. Or below, as it happened.

Closer, he could see his own tower perched next to the Spear, like a younger, smaller sibling. However, Zeke could feel the power rolling off of it, even from such a distance. Of all the rewards he’d earned, the Crimson Tower might turn out to be the most valuable.

After a moment, Zeke activated [Cambion’s Awakening] via his pure mana, letting it soothe his body, soul, and mind. It felt almost like taking a cold shower, except that it went far deeper than any frigid water could reach. With a sigh, Zeke pushed himself to his feet and glanced up at the roiling flames in the sky. They felt closer than ever before, and it wasn’t just because he was perched atop an enormous pillar.

“The wave is coming,” Eveline said. “Soon. I don’t know if you’ll have enough time to get back. Especially if we don’t start moving soon.”

“I expect an explanation as we walk,” Zeke said, turning back to the stairs. The carved doors were gone, and the arching entryway had been reduced to a few knee-high edifices. Like the rest of the top floor, they bore hundreds of tiny, spiderwebbing cracks. Fortunately, the stairs had survived, if only barely. Zeke dragged himself in that direction, saying, “Start now.”

Eveline gave a mental sigh, then said, “It didn’t work out like I wanted it to.”

“Obviously,” Zeke responded. If it had, Eveline would’ve had a body, and she would have gone her own way. If everything had worked out the way they’d intended, she would already be gone.

“Not so obviously, actually,” she stated. “My body was gone.”

“We kind of expected that, didn’t we?”

“Yes. And no,” was her response. “It’s more complicated than that. And things were…not what I expected. I was not there by choice.”

“Did you really think you were?”

If so, that was news to Zeke.

“I don’t know,” she said, her mental voice projecting resignation. “I guess I thought…maybe…”

“You didn’t think anyone could really force you to do anything you didn’t want to do,” Zeke guessed. When Eveline reacted with alarm, Zeke went on, “You don’t keep your emotions as contained as you think you do. You’re prideful. Confident. You probably thought you made a deal or something, right? You might’ve gotten something out of it, but it costs you your freedom. And when I came along, you thought you’d get both – the reward and your freedom, right?”

“Something like that,” she said. “But there was no deal. I know that much for certain. I was forced into that coffin. Someone splintered my soul to act as a…batteries for the cage that kept the dwarf imprisoned while the orchestrator of the entire mess used this…apparatus to funnel power down to the next circle.”

“Okay?” Zeke said, reaching the stairs and beginning his descent. He’d already looted Dáinn, getting nothing except the spikes he’d yanked out of the dwarf’s body, and there was nothing else left on the top floor. So, he had no reason to hang around. “I already know that much. Or most of it.”

“Indeed,” Eveline said. “What you don’t know is that my corporeal body is gone. The moment the last cage was broken, it dissipated into dust, untethering me from this reality. If I hadn’t…if I hadn’t latched onto you, I would have died. Or worse.”

“Latched onto me?” Zeke muttered, stopping in his tracks. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not,” she replied. “For either of us. But –”

In a low voice, Zeke growled, “This wasn’t part of our deal.”

“I’m aware, but –”

“Get out,” he ordered. “Now.”

“But –”

He roared, “Get out!”

As his voice bounced down the stairwell, Zeke’s last surge of power erupted inside of him. He took everything. The last bits of demonic mana in the air, whatever he could drag through the tenuous connection he felt within the earth, and the last dregs of pure mana in his body. His blood boiled. The Spear trembled. And his mind grew sharper than it ever had been before.

“I can’t! I can’t!” Eveline screamed in his mind.

Zeke yelled again, but Eveline’s protests continued until, only a second later, the power guttered out. The battle with the fallen dwarven prince had drained almost every source of power Zeke had at hand, so there was only enough to fuel his outburst for a couple of seconds. And when the fuel ran out, so did Zeke’s fury. The moment the power ran dry, Zeke’s exhaustion reasserted itself, and he nearly tumbled down the stairs. Barely, he managed to catch himself on the wall and lower himself to a sitting position.

Meanwhile, Eveline continued to babble, her mental words rendered incoherent by the panic roaring through her. It even affected Zeke’s own mental state, though he had no idea how something like that could be possible.

He took a deep, calming breath. Then another. Power wasn’t the answer. If it was, Eveline would have been destroyed by that burst he’d let loose against the dwarf. No – he needed to think. To plan. To go at the problem intelligently. The only problem was that none of that was really his forte.

Over the next few moments, he forced himself into something approaching calm. When he’d regained control, he said, “Tell me why you can’t. Also, why did you go silent during the fight?”

“The second question is easy,” she said. “The confluence of power tried to drag me away. If we had come here before the rest of the pieces of my soul had been freed, I wouldn’t have been strong enough to resist at all. And if that had happened, I would have been sucked into the working, converted into pure energy, and sent off to the next Circle to be used just like all the rest. With my very existence at stake, I couldn’t spare the effort to speak.”

“But now you can.”

“Yes. Well, in a way,” she said. “I’m…I was changed by it. When you released the last piece of my soul, it shattered into two pieces. One was absorbed by you. The other…the other came into me.”

“And?”

“And souls are strange, Ezekiel,” Eveline explained. “You can’t ever really separate them. If you do it right, you can keep pieces isolated and apart, but that requires significant infrastructure and planning. We had none of that.”

After a brief pause, Eveline went on, “You were pulling so much power in, and that part of my soul was almost completely untethered. You absorbed it. And I had two choices. Either I went with it, carving out a place for myself within your mind and soul, or…I die. I chose the first.”

“Of course you did,” Zeke mumbled with a resigned sigh. It was a good thing, then, that he had a plan for how to deal with it. He’d mostly fleshed it out, but he’d been waiting for the appropriate moment to put plans into action. And after killing Dáinn, as well as all the demons that had come on the lower levels, Zeke had finally reached a level where he could create another skill.

“It won’t really work,” Eveline stated. “Your plan.”

“Yeah?” Zeke asked. “Excuse me if I don’t exactly believe you. You’re not really an objective observer here.”

“Granted. But…Ezekiel, we’re in this together, now,” she said. “I’m a part of you.”

“More like a parasite.”

“That’s unfair,” Eveline answered. “I’m not sucking the life out of you or anything.”

“Can you survive without me?” he asked.

“No…”

“And you do drain energy or something from me, don’t you?” he asked. That was the only way she could exist.

“I do, but –”

“Parasite.”

“I find that offensive,” Eveline huffed. How she managed to convey that in his mind, Zeke didn’t know, but her feelings were incredibly clear. “First, I’m also augmenting your mind. Not much, mind you, but enough that you should notice an improvement in your processing speed as well as your senses. Second, I’m barely draining anything from you. Most of what I get comes from ambient mana. So, we’re more like partners than anything else.”

“I’m sensing a caveat somewhere…”

“Well, I do believe I will drain some kill energy from you,” she said. “Not much, but your levels will probably come slightly slower now.”

Zeke resisted the urge to roll his eyes. First, some of his experience went to the Crimson Tower. Then, another stream went to Pudge. And finally, he suspected that his heavy foundation made him level even more slowly.

“There’s some truth to that,” she said. “Imagine your existence as a bowl. It grows slightly bigger every time you grow stronger. At level one, you only took a little bit of kill energy to fill that bowl. But now? With your power, it takes an ocean of energy to push you higher.”

“I’ve actually been leveling a lot faster since ascending,” Zeke stated.

“Because you’ve been fighting far above what should be expected of someone like you,” she said. “For instance, that dwarf you killed was on the brink of ascension to the Ethereal Realm. Or if he’d had his way, given his penchant for meddling in demonic powers, perhaps he would have chosen to descend to the Third Circle.”

That made some sense, so Zeke had no issues with accepting it as the truth.

“We’re getting pretty far afield, though,” she said. “The point is that the little skill you’re cooking up – which is a good idea, by the way – won’t work on me. It might shield your thoughts from passive observation, but it won’t keep me out if I don’t want it to. We’re far too connected for that.”

Zeke once again rose to his feet, though he was more than a little unsteady. Hopefully, he would regain some energy as he drew closer to the ground. As he resumed his descent, Eveline went on, “I still think you should create the skill you have in mind. I can – and will – help protect you from hostile mentalists, but a skill would be far more effective.”

“Just give me a minute to think,” Zeke groaned. It was as much to distract himself from his own exhaustion as it was to figure out a solution to the problem. Eveline was a parasite, regardless of how she wanted to label herself. However, that didn’t necessarily mean their partnership couldn’t be beneficial. There were plenty of examples of parasites, bacteria, and creatures that had developed symbiotic relationships with their hosts. The first one that came to mind was the bacteria that lived in the human gut that helped to regulate digestion.

The difference was that Zeke didn’t believe for a second that Eveline was harmless. She was a powerful demon in her own right, and underestimating her was a good way to end up dead or as her puppet. But if what she said was true, and they truly were connected, then Zeke needed to wrap his hand around the fact that he was stuck with her – for now. Perhaps he could figure out how to detach her sometime in the future.

In fact, he decided then and there that doing so would become a priority.

“That will kill me, you know,” she said.

Zeke didn’t react as he continued to descend the steps. After his rebirth, killing had become a necessary part of his life. At first, it had been about mere survival. Then, it transformed into a way to satisfy his need to grow stronger. But now? Zeke was self-aware enough to recognize that he enjoyed it.

Not the taking of lives. Not precisely. But rather, the winning. Standing against a powerful foe and coming out on top was an incomparable rush that was only further augmented by the feeling that came with earning experience and leveling. Or kill energy, as Eveline called it. The whole Framework, orchestrated by some unknown and omnipotent god, seemed to have been designed to funnel people into that loop of positive reinforcement.

“Exactly the point of it all,” provided Eveline.

Zeke continued to ignore her as he pondered the scenario in front of him. He had no doubt that he could eventually extricate Eveline from his mind and soul. Maybe not in the Eternal Realm, but perhaps in the Ethereal. He could wait that long, he was certain. But if doing so would kill her? Could he do that? The idea of consciously killing someone who, admittedly, had helped him – and presumably would continued to do so – was very different from facing off against someone who was trying to end his life.

Even if she was a demon.

Perhaps because she was one. After all, she hadn’t asked to be reborn into Hell. Whatever she’d done in her first life had earned her place, but did she really deserve it? Did any of them? Eveline didn’t seem evil. Self-serving, sure. A bit murderous, definitely. And perhaps amoral. But not evil.

“I could be hiding my true nature,” she provided. It had been hours since she’d spoken, and she’d regained some of her typical humor. Probably because she knew that Zeke had already made his choice.

Or had one forced upon him by the circumstances.

“Maybe,” Zeke said aloud.

“So, you accept that we’re stuck together?” asked Eveline.

Zeke shrugged. “For now, I guess. I’m still creating the skill as soon as possible,” he said.

“May I suggest you get some rest, first? Perhaps visit those healing pools in that magnificent tower of yours,” she said.

“That’s the plan,” Zeke said, continuing his unsteady descent. After that, the conversation petered out. Eveline had experienced a monumental change in her circumstances, and she was doubtless struggling to adjust just as much as Zeke was. She’d come closer to dying than he had, and that kind of thing wasn’t easy to swallow. Especially for a demon who’d already lived for countless years.

Finally, Zeke reached the final spiral staircase as his exhaustion became nearly overwhelming. The moment he set foot on the ground, he activated [Cambion’s Awakening], tearing earth mana from the ground and funneling it into his body. The flow was still weak – he’d drained so much energy from the surrounding area that it had become something of a desert – but he greedily drank what he could find. And it was enough to see him all the way back to the tower.

When he entered, he was greeted by a couple of big kobolds who helped him to the teleporter. Once he reached the appropriate floor, he somehow managed to stumble into one of the waiting pools, and with a sigh, he felt the rejuvenating effect wash over him. At some point, he dozed off and dreamed of a crucified dwarf who kept cackling that he’d already taken the first step toward surrendering control of his body.