Music for today:
Immortal | Relaxing Ambient Grimdark Music For Lone Wanderers
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Chapter 460: Recollection
Early Morning - Early Spring : Year 24 : Center of the Death's Gape
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Hundreds of thousands of tons moving at dozens of tis the speed of sound... The impact that'd result from it colliding with sothing strong enough to stop it would be akin to teoric planet-fall—an expulsion of energy at a level where physics bends, and chemistry tears.
So then, how was it that when that mass was brought to a halt so instantaneous my flesh nearly tore from my bones, the gentle noise glass being laid on a table echoed...
*Tink...* It was was sharp, delicate, and.. insulting—echoing through my skeleton with the waves of pain from inertia tearing mortal flesh off divinity.
But despite the fuel for anger growing abundant, as my aura finally caught up to and wrapped around the core.. panic snuffed every falling ember...
Before wasn't a mana core the size of a barrel, table, or room...
It was one the size of ...
And before I could even react to it, it caught . *VWOOOOM*
In an instant, crudely ford stings of mana wrapped around like tangled anchor lines, completely suppressing my aura, while crushing, twisting, and contorting my body in an attempt to rip limb from limb.
It was primitive—aura control akin to a dragon fresh into adolescence—but in that mont, it felt as if a planet gripped . *CRACK-SNAP*
Feeling my muscles tearing while scales cracked, I accelerated my divinity, using the warping of ti to catch my breath and think.
But I didn't have many options...
This creature wasn't of a level I could face by normal ans. With a body spanning what I could only imagine was hundreds of kiloters, and a core exponentially more massive than anything I could conceive, it was bound to have a mass of divinity capable of making look like a hatchling fighting an ancient.
-The only way I can shatter this thing is vector flipping...- And I needed to do it fast.. before its divinity accelerated to match my own.
However, that wasn't possible while I was above it. Like pulling a bowstring held taught by unfathomable mass, I needed to directly oppose the warp in space's fabric to launch sothing with its snap back to form.
I needed to be between it and the planet's core.
I needed... -...to flip this bastard over...-
*WOOM* Weaving antimatter through the fur tracing my spine, a ferocious glow pierced the magma.
Before finally...
*Cr-RRRROOOOMMMM* Kilograms of antimatter ignited like gasoline in an engine, and thrusters strong enough to cavitate the ice above us wrangled the colossal serpent like a bull grabbed by the horns.
In a blink, it went from it holding , to holding it.
*RRRRUUUMMBBBLLLEEE* Forcing it deeper into the magma despite its struggle toward the surface I flipped its hulking body over, and exposed myself to the exponentially more suffocating ambient mana coming from below.
It made my mind spin, my senses freeze, and my skin crawl.
But even as it perated my scales, I had to focus.
Without being to grab sothing beyond my skin to vector flip, I was left with using a part of my own body.
Being so much closer to the planet's core than I typically was, no matter what part of my body I flipped, it was going to completely atomize.
But I didn't have a choice. -I can regrow a paw...-
Feeling my pupils tighten as if by adrenaline, my mind disconnected itself from the pain receptors in my arm, and I gripped the fabric filling my paw before twisting it with every drop of force I could muster.
But.. my paw didn't budge...
Despite pouring every drop of power I had into shearing it from my body.. the fabric hardly even bent. -W..what the hell..?!-
I.. couldn't flip it...
And by the ti I realized.. it was too late...
*WOOM* The mont I paused, the crudely-made strings of mana binding were scattered and replaced by thick chains beyond what I could mimic, and their incoherent twisting motions united with a focus. *VWOOOM* -WHAT THE..?!-
*Chink-CrAcK* As if the entire planet were suddenly pressing on , my legs imdiately began shaking and burning from fatigue.
Despite the ludicrously dense mana down there, my body couldn't keep up...
At least.. that was what I thought...
Hardly a mont later, the vast mass of ambient mana exuding from deeper in the planet churned.. and in that mont of ease, I pushed my aura out to try and break the chains...
But that was when I finally noticed...
The chains.. weren't the serpent's... They weren't even made of aura...
They were made of ambient mana...
And as if waiting for my realization, the mont I realized, everything I knew of my surroundings changed...
In a blink, the magma thinned, the world spun, and the endless mass of ambient mana began behaving like aura, further strengthening the chains before forcing its way into the serpent's reserve.. turning it soft.
Before I could even react, I began sinking, and no matter how badly I wanted to resist.. I had nothing to hold onto...
Helplessly watching my paws vanish beneath the crystal shell, my mind purged all thought in an instinctual panic for survival.. but with every passing mont, my grip on ti slipped, and slowly but surely.. my body was consud...
I was never given a chance to resist.. never given anything to hold onto or press against...
And the more I sank.. the more reality sared.
The more I.. lost control of my consciousness...
The more I.. lost my sense of self...
Until, in the very last mont of faded thought, a single neuron fired...
'Rember'
...
But then, as if it were all just a dream, I awoke...
"Uwaaaah..." Letting out a long, drawn out yawn as if just waking from a nap, I found myself laid in a vast pool of half-dried magma with my furred, fenririan snout laid across its surface.
It was warm, comfortable, and.. familiar. "Hm..." Letting out a puzzled mumble, a deep growl weathered by countless millennia rippled the magma. -How puzzling for to feel nostalgia from sothing like this...-
Slowly forcing myself up with a gentle, instinctive stretch, I looked out toward the horizon, where dense clouds of ash blended with freshly ford, molten mountains, only for my gaze to pierce them and land on a large, dozen kiloter tall fenrir.
Dagr.
"The hell are you doing now?" My voice, heavy with the wear of ti, echoed over thousands of kiloters in a blink.
"Oh, don't fucking start." Snapping at with a snarl, his eyes lit with a blaze of rage. "If you had this 'thing' incessantly probing you, you'd carve up the planet looking for the fucker controlling it too." *Beep* Hearing another quiet, chanical chirp, his eyes snapped to the side before swatting the air. *CR-RA-ROOOOOMM*
Before light could take a breath, kiloters of land cavitated and tsunamis of molten rock erupted to form mountains as if the continent split by his command.
"IT WON'T STOP! EVERY FUCKING WORLD WE GO TO, THIS THING FOLLOWS !"
It had been tens of thousands of years since we began our journey through the universe at that point.. searching far and wide for a planet to settle on after our ho world was destroyed.. but over the last few months, Dagr had been progressively losing his mind.
"I don't see anything even close to you, what are you on about?" Cracking a smile, I finally stood up with a stretch before blinking through the void and appearing right next to him. *Vwoop*
"YOU FUCKER, I KNOW YOU SEE THIS THING!" Snapping his eyes to what I saw as a bundle of light magic being cast through a thin tendril of divinity, he opened his mouth before letting out a beam of mana that carved a hole through a vast majority of the planet.
It was sothing ever-present in the handful of worlds we had visited since crossing galaxies—the observance of a god that sohow resided in the core of seemingly every star we passed. "I have no idea what you're talking about." It constantly probed Dagr, trying to tether his soul as it did the handful of lingering souls on the planets we visited, but for whatever reason it always left alone, so I played around with him, making him think he was just losing it.
*Beep* "FUCK!" *WOOOM* It bothered him like nothing else, but compared to eons of silence in the void, his anger was.. refreshing... "What's gotten into you?! Do you really just enjoy watching flail like an idiot?!"
"A little." *WOOM* Ducking under another annoyed swipe of his paw, the atmosphere behind rippled before the mountain range was split in half, and a gash was carved across the sky. "Haah..." Passing a heavy sigh, my smile faded slightly. "Look, it's not what you think. Even if I cut the tether, it repairs itself nearly instantly."
"So find where its coming from and kill whatever the hell it is!" ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel-fire
"If I could, I already would have."
"Tch..." Clicking his tongue, he turned away with a bitter look, his fur whipping in the turbulence of his own rage. *Crack-BOOOM* Another careless flare of divinity buckled the horizon, collapsing a chain of mountains into the molten sea. "Ever since crossing galaxies, you've changed."
"Right..." My voice was calm and nonchalant, but mory surged back in a blink—recollection of hundreds of thousands of years of tiless travel, crossing the void while evading the gazes of the horrors that drifted through it.. knowing my brother would never know of them as I dragged his still body behind . -H..huh..?-
It ca unnaturally.. like unearthing the fossil of a creature you just watched die... -What just.. Happened..?- mories I knew to be commonplace.. things I experienced every single day.. felt gutwrenching…
Noticing my eyes widening, Dagr's expression darkened.
But the mont I noticed and looked up, everything was different.. the molten planet was gone, and Dagr and I found ourselves floating in the endless expanse of space.. once again talking.
In the mont, I didn't know what was happening.. what the churning of my soul ant.. why with every ebb and flow, more mories found clarity...
But with every passing mont, ti’s erosion was soothed.. and slowly but surely…
I rembered.
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