Member
Lord Zee
Thayr
Enzayne
Vec
WrongEndoftheRainbow
ActRaiserTheReturned
Dezuel
Dark Cloud
UrizenThe Unsung Guardians
I
Lareus sat, one leg on top of the other, on one of the ornate chairs at his favourite dream-scape. It was a field of vibrant grass, swaying to and fro to the rhythm of a gentle breeze. The God of Dreams closed his eyes.
“This is… the best dream in… my realm.” He said, taking in a deep breath of the lavender-scented air. Curious, considering there were no lavender flowers in the entire dreamscape.
“It is calm, like a freshly reincarnated soul…” Voi agreed, his raspy voice coming from the darkness beneath his hood. The two blue orbs that floated in the darkness dimmed. Voi reached for his cup of green tea with his bandaged hands and poured the liquid into where his mouth would normally be, only for the tea to go all the way through and splattered against the chair he sat on, spreading throughout his black robes. It didn’t bother him.
“So… are you ready to… go?” Lareus opened his eyes and exhaled loudly.
“I think so…”
With those words, the two of them stood up and the dreamscape around them shifted and shivered away into a familiar sight - That of an endless desert on one side and an endless ocean of blood on the other.
It was only through the use of the Dreamlands that Lareus and Voi managed to teleport where they did undetected, but it was a one-time use trick for now. Lareus knew that the Dreamlands would be overrun as soon as he stepped out of them, causing chaos and pain throughout the dreams of all mortals. He knew so, but he also knew that some things had to be prioritised.
The other gods were too busy, too self-absorbed to react quickly to the threat, so he had gotten in contact with his only friend and set out on a quest of his own.
Still, he winced.
“The ya-gos… the dream bubbles… I can feel it all coming apart… at the seams…”
“I will help you fix it all, once we emerge from this accursed lake…” Voi stared at Lareus for a moment, then he stretched one of his arms towards the side and a scythe made of smoke and raw arcana materialised. Lareus saw this and touched his index and middle fingers on both hands to his temples, causing his circlet to glow and melt and wrap itself around his fingers. Four rings, all made of Larite.
“It is an ocean… but so be it… in we go, friend…”
And so they walked into the Blood Ocean.
II
The Outer Beast, both Greater and Lesser, had no souls. Instead, they had what Voi had gotten to call ‘seeds’. They weren’t fully aware of their actions, not even at the level of a normal beast from within the Universe, but they still felt pain, they still felt the desire to reproduce… It was strange. What was stranger still was the fact that their ‘soul seeds’ were all in various states of growth. Some of them had even managed to awaken into true souls. Those kills were the ones that hurt Voi the most. To kill an innocent, if violent, creature from another world and doom its soul to an eternity within his weapon was a grave sin. One that he had decided to shoulder for the sake of all that he knew and had created along with his fellow gods, his family.
One step, one slash. Both near and far in that direction, a thousand soul seeds ripped apart and were sucked into Voi’s scythe like a whirlpool.
Visibility was zero. The Blood Ocean was so dense that after just two metres or so of descent, everything was already pitch black.
Another step, another slash.
Behind Voi was Lareus. As usual, his eyes were closed and his fingers were pressed hard against his temples. Lareus was the only reason they were getting swarmed by thousands instead of millions. His weapon was no weapon at all, instead it was a set of rings that augmented his godly abilities. The ability to force his way into the minds of any outer beast with even the slightest bit of soul growth and impose dream after dream on them was terrifying. To think that Lareus had such an oppressive power, and that he never used it against anyone before…
But that still left the freshly spawned beasts. Wide awake as they were and wired to hunt anything with a trace of divinity in their blood, they were bound to go straight toward the pair.
But a thousand were no match for Voi’s Scythe. A single slash was enough to rip apart a thousand souls and leave the beasts’ bodies in a vegetative state.
Step after step after step. The saturated mud below their feet squelched unnaturally as they approached the deepest part of the Blood Ocean, where the seabed had collapsed. Deep below, an unnatural glow emanated from the sprawling black pools from which the hordes of beasts spawned.
Just as they prepared to jump down into the abyss, the flow of the blood changed.
In a split second, the Blood Ocean was parted in two. Lareus screamed in the silence of the depths and shot forward into the darkness, a trail of glowing divine ichor left behind him.
Voi couldn’t see their attacker. He, a God, couldn’t see their attacker. He desperately looked around, something that he instinctively knew would do no good. His grip on the Scythe tightened. His shoulders tensed.
The flow changed again. He was too slow. The thing came from above.
Three long barbed claws came straight down onto his head and split his two blue eyes down the middle and left a large gash in his smoky form. He lost his footing and flailed. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw the millions of previously asleep beasts awaken and rush to the trail of Lareus’ ichor, devouring it like a swarm of piranhas.
As Voi’s back touched down on the mud, the thing that had attacked them appeared from the darkness and sat on his chest. It smiled at Voi, row upon row of sharp fangs in its mouth. It had no eyes or ears, for it did not need them down there.
That’s when Voi felt it, this beast’s soul wasn’t a seedling, nor was it merely awakened. It was something… More. Just how many of his brothers and sisters’ creations had it devoured to grow that much?!
Voi stirred. Now that he had a lock on the beast’s soul, he had no need for fear. He simply reached up and touched the thing, and it went still.
“You shouldn’t have revealed yourself, you were too proud…” Voi said. He sensed a large swarm a few metres away. Hundreds of thousands, killing each other and crowding around one divine presence, all for a chance to eat just one more drop of ichor. “Lareus…!”
Voi shot up onto his feet and swung his scythe wide in Lareus’ general direction. Shortly after, he felt the pulse of Lareus’ Artefact activating once more. It was weaker and the effect radius was smaller, but it was there. So Voi jumped forth and met up with Lareus, who floated in a small bubble of his own ichor, surrounded by the bodies of thousands of lesser beasts.
One of his arms, half his abdomen and an entire knee were gone, and the rest of his body was so badly damaged that Voi doubted he’d be able to move for the next thousand years. But, he was alive. Lareus looked at Voi.
“You look… Like you got a close look at a train’s wheels…” Lareus chuckled.
“What’s a train…?” Voi wrapped his arms around his friend and started to float down towards the pools at the bottom of the ocean, in the submerged caverns.
“I don’t know… I saw it in a goblin’s… dreams…” After some moments, when they were close enough to sense the peculiarities within the black pools, Lareus spoke again. “It’s not quite the… same as the way into the Dreamlands… but I should be able to… shut it down…”
Voi nodded.
III
The two gods stood at the edge of one of the pools. Voi had set Lareus down so that he could reach into the pool and get to work on shutting down the portal, and was now on extermination duty. Every few moments, the God of Souls swung his scythe and reaped the souls of whatever unfortunate Cantar individual remained within the caverns. He sensed no corruption within the unfortunate few left alive after the portal had appeared, but risks could not be taken, not now and after so much sacrifice.
Both gods bled still. Hordes of beasts swarmed them still. The only thing that kept them safe was Voi’s Scythe.
As soon as he was done shutting down the portal, they could both make a quick getawa-
CRASH.
Lareus’ thoughts derailed. The outcrop of ceiling above them collapsed and behind that collapse was a form that moved faster than either of the gods’ eyesight could follow. Was it the same as before?! Lareus’s head, the only part of his body that he could still control satisfactorily, shot around trying to get a good look at their attacker. It was only a split second later that he felt a chill wash over his body. No, it was a god!
A blackened form moved so fast that it was like it had teleported into their field of vision. It stood there in front of them long enough for them to get a glance. Its claws dripped with energies not unlike those of the portal they were trying to shut down, its maddened eyes lusted for blood and violence, its shape was familiar, but distorted at the same time. It could’ve been one of the Outer Beasts, if not for the divine essence that practically dripped from it.
It charged. Its digitigrade feet kicked up all the silt in the cave as it did, enveloping both itself and Voi in the thick cloud.
“VOI!” Lareus screamed. The muted whoosh of Voi’s scythe cutting through blood echoed off the walls. Once, twice. Then there was a crash and a rumble. Ichor flowed into the blood ocean once more.
The unknown god came out of the silt cloud and crashed into Lareus. “GAH!” He gasped as the thing’s claws pierced through his torso. Half a second later, Lareus found himself half-buried in the stone walls of the cave. His vision clouded, but a good look at his attackers’ face up close told him all he needed to know. That unnatural grin, the unfocused and bloodshot eyes, the very aura of Violence spreading out around its body… Misri. They’d never met, but he’d seen her in the nightmares of mortals.
“It’s Misri! Don’t worry about me, Voi!” Lareus screamed as loud as he could. Caverns in the distance collapsed.
It was quick. One moment it seemed like Misri had been about to tear his throat out, and the next Misri was gone and a slash of Voi’s scythe cut Lareus in two.
Standing where they’d been a few moments ago was Voi, his ragged cloak drenched with ichor and split eyes dimming.
As Lareus dislodged from the wall and started floating down towards the dark pool below him, he saw with his blurry vision how Misri flanked Voi and thrust her claws into his head. A bright flash enveloped the blood ocean when her claws shattered his already damaged crystal-ball like eyes, and then Voi’s gaseous body floated up to the cave ceiling.
“V-Voi…” Lareus stuttered and coughed. Ichor came up. Ichor flowed from his torso and his arm and his missing lower half. There was no saving himself. He knew that now.
And yet luck was on his side. Sensing the death of a God, the hordes of outer beasts above swarmed Voi’s body and, by extension, Misri. It was the opportunity that Lareus needed, and he took it.
Thankfully, even though it was no longer within his body, his Ichor was still a part of him. When it flowed into the dark pool that was the portal, the whole thing bubbled violently and started to evaporate, much like Lareus’ Ichor. Before all his Ichor was gone, Lareus gathered his strength and lifted his one good hand to his brow, The rings on his fingers lit up. He would put Misri to sleep for the rest of time!
But he was too late. Misri burst from out of the swarm and with a single slash of her claws, Lareus had no hand. What followed was a blur. Claws came down upon him again and again and again. They gouged his flesh and sliced his bones.
One last thought crossed Lareus’ mind before darkness took him. ‘We did it… Voi, we saved the world…’ And then he passed amid the fading sounds of beast on beast carnage.
Eventually there was no noise in the cavern other than brutal howls of victory. Misri’s dominance over god and beast had been asserted.
IV
The cavern system where the Sparkfall Hivemind had once lived was now silent. There was no portal to the outer realms. There was no life, no energy. There were only bodies, ichor, and blood.
The last pool that made up the portal was now evaporating. It was so small that no beast could hope to come through, but even though that was the case, a force forced it to stay open for just a few seconds more. A cloud of smoke spread far enough to find what it was looking for – The bodies of the two fallen Gods. The smoke engulfed the bodies and chopped them to pieces and then extracted what they wanted – An incorporeal thing, the thing that the Khodex had uplifted and turned into a God. A thing that used to be insignificant, but through eons of honing and refinement had become special. The smoke shivered as the two bright specks of light were swallowed deep into it, and then as quickly as it came, the smoke retreated back into the portal, and then the portal was gone.
Only the two mangled bodies of the dead gods remained behind.