Kassian felt his blood turn cold.
One thing was political warfare, territorial maneuvering, even conquest. But this sounded like sothing completely different. Sothing existential.
"Survival?" he asked with a tense voice.
Selthia opened her eyes and looked at him directly, and for a mont Kassian saw sothing in that gaze that was no longer childish, sothing that reminded him this girl had been in communion with incomprehensible forces for years.
"If they’re allowed to use the power," she said with seriousness that made the air in the chamber feel heavier, "we’re going to lose. All the people of Yino are in danger of dying, and the attack will most likely co before the crystal can deliver them the eternal paradise."
The words fell over the chamber like stones in still water, creating ripples of understanding that spread through each person present.
Each listener processed the implications differently. But for all of them, it was the mont when the true stakes beca clear.
"What do we need to do?" the King asked, with the awareness that so decisions admitted no hesitation.
His voice carried the authority of absolute rule, but underneath was a father’s desperation to protect his daughter’s future, whatever the cost.
Selthia closed her eyes again, pressing her palm more firmly against the crystal.
The veins throughout the chamber pulsed more brightly. The insectoid creatures seed to lean forward, as if they too were listening.
The entire chamber had beco a single organism, all its parts focused on this mont of communication between human and alien intelligence.
"Everyone needs to be given a beast right now, without exception," she declared. "And it needs Kassian now, even though he’s sowhat immature... to connect them all."
Kassian’s stomach beca a knot.
The casual way she spoke of his ’unreadiness’ stung, but the larger implication was far more terrifying.
"Connect?" he managed to ask. But the word ca out as barely a whisper. His throat felt dry, constricted, as if his body was already beginning to rebel against what was coming.
The King’s eyes fell on him and Kassian realized he was no longer being seen as a person but as a component in so vast machine, a tool whose utility was being assessed.
"Have you already given him the new potion?" Selthia asked, though it was obvious the question didn’t co from her.
The dual nature of her voice was becoming more pronounced.
"We gave it to him just a mont ago," Coleoran responded. "Right before coming down."
As if those words had been a signal, Kassian felt sothing activate inside him.
It started as a tingling in his extremities, but quickly intensified into a burning sensation that spread through his entire nervous system as his body was forcibly transford into sothing new.
He scread.
It wasn’t a scream of pain only, but also of pure shock at the intensity of what he was experiencing.
The sound echoed off the chamber walls, mixing with the pulsing of the veins to create a symphony of transformation. His voice cracked and changed even as he cried out, becoming sothing deeper, more resonant.
"Bring him here, I need to be in contact to finish the process," Selthia ordered.
"No!" Kassian tried to resist, but his muscles weren’t responding correctly. "Wait! Maybe we haven’t thought this through completely!"
His words slurred as his tongue felt thick and foreign in his mouth. The transformation was affecting his speech, his coordination, his very ability to think clearly.
But it was too late. Lords Bloodwyn and Ravenspire took him by the arms, and though he struggled, he had no real chance of resisting.
Their grips were gentle but implacable. These were n who had made peace with necessary cruelties long ago, who understood that so gifts ca wrapped in suffering.
The potion was now gradually canceling his control over his own body while transforming him into sothing else.
’What have I gotten myself into?’ he thought desperately. ’Damn the stupid child I was. Damn the foolish teenager. How could I get involved with this monstrosity?’
The regret was useless. Every choice that had led him here... his father’s ’death of motive’, his own desperate hunger for power and purpose, they all seed like the moves of a naive boy who had no idea what forces he was courting.
But then his hand touched the crystal.
The experience was like being struck by lightning made of pure information.
Images, thoughts, knowledge in quantities that shouldn’t fit in a human mind poured into his consciousness like water from a broken dam.
The flood was overwhelming, disorienting. Concepts that had no human language crashed against his expanding awareness. The true history of civilizations that had risen and fallen before present humanity.
He saw the origin of the tower, the division of the world, the true purpose of the two cities. He saw possible futures, paths that bifurcated and converged, choices that led to salvation or extinction.
And one showed Yino transford into a paradise where death was optional and pleasure infinite.
He had undoubtedly judged wrongly, by appearances...
The corruption he had feared was revealed as liberation. The monstrous transformation was actually ascension. Everything he had thought he understood about good and evil, about human nature and purpose, was turned inside out.
And gradually, as the information settled into his slowly transford mind, he began to feel... better.
More than better. He felt complete.
This wasn’t defilent... It was hocoming.
’It’s not bad,’ he realized with growing conviction. ’This... this could be the best thing that’s ever happened to .’
He no longer felt danger from the crystal. On the contrary, he felt as if he had finally co ho after a long journey in foreign territory... As if the crystal were that father who would guide his family, proud and reliable.
The crystal’s energy invaded him completely, and his threads, now visible to everyone as lines of purple light, expanded from his position toward all the nearby "corrupted."
But "corrupted" no longer felt like the right word to him. They were the "liberated". Of course the moralistic idiots would call such promised libertinage corruption, wallowing in the pleasures and powers that normal existence denied.
But in Kassian’s opinion, that wasn’t corruption...
On the contrary, it was purity. The purest form of humans: succumbing to their desires without the artificial restrictions of a hypocritical society.
The crystal offered freedom from those chains, the chance to beco what humans were truly ant to be.
The threads connected with everyone present, but the strongest connection was with Selthia.
Through her, Kassian could feel the crystal’s vastness, its millennial patience and imdiate urgency.
Then the threads returned to the crystal and expanded throughout that side of the tower, creating a communication network that spanned kiloters.
The sensation was intoxicating. The isolation that had defined human existence was gone, replaced by perfect unity of purpose.
"The crystal promises," Selthia translated, tears running down her cheeks but with a smile on her face, "that it will do everything possible to save as many as it can."
She addressed her father directly:
"But it needs you and the strongest to resist to give it as much ti as possible. It’s a desperate effort that unfortunately will delay us in the true objective."
Selthia wiped away her tears, her smile trembling slightly.
"I’ll take longer to see Mommy, won’t I?"
The question pierced through all the planning and cosmic purpose, revealing the child beneath the oracle. For all the wisdom and power flowing through her, she was still a little girl who missed her mother.
The crystal responded through Kassian this ti, his voice sounding strangely like his own but charged with echoes of sothing much older:
"A few extra years are nothing when counted as a fraction of eternity, little star."
Coleoran approached his daughter, placing a protective hand on her shoulder.
"Even if the idiot king cos," he promised with a fierce voice, "I won’t let him ruin your future."
His tone carried absolute conviction. Whatever the cost, whatever sacrifices were required, he would protect his daughter’s path to transcendence.
He headed toward the exit, followed by Bloodwyn. Ravenspire hesitated for a mont, looking at his king and then back at Selthia and Kassian, who remained as diums of the crystal.
With the new potion circulating through his system, Ravenspire already felt different too, more connected but also more distant from his previous concerns.
The doubts he had carried seed gradually more... irrelevant.
He looked once more at Selthia and Kassian before feeling himself entering the communal trance.
The only one who remained outside the trance was Hagen.
From his position in a corner of the chamber, he observed the entire system of pulsing veins and purple energy of the tower with a clinical eye.
His explorer’s instincts remained active even here, cataloging details and escape routes from pure professional habit.
The two out of three rings in the still unopened door were protected by crystallized veins that ford specific patterns. The defensive asures were sophisticated, layered.
It was an impressive system, he had to admit. Complex, powerful, and obviously effective.
The engineering was beyond human capability, but it served recognizably human needs, protection, communication, enhancent. Perhaps the corruption wasn’t as alien as it appeared.
He sighed deeply, watching his compatriots transform into sothing that was no longer completely human, sothing that could be better or worse than what they had been before.
These people looked happier than he had ever seen them, more complete.
’It’s not my place to decide,’ he thought finally. ’And at the end of the day... you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, right?’
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