Besal breathed hard, trying to steady his rapidly changing body.
How did Hal put up with all those notifications and prompts? He never had to deal with anything like that usually. Was this a sign that he was in fact different from his brothers and sisters who yearned for the stars?
He didn’t have much time to ponder the source as another notification rolled up into his vision. This one was even more confusing than the others.
New Quest: Wyrd Times.
You, so unlike your kin, seek to become something more than a mere abomination among the stars, a path many of your peers have taken happily. No, you possess something more than they once had. Whether the result of your host’s innate strength, the enduring taint of the Abyss, or something else entirely, you have resisted the allure of the stars beyond.
Should you choose to persist in this, you will forge a new path no other Khaeros has ever taken before. The stars will forever glare balefully down upon your new path into the unknown.
Objectives
Remain above 1 Strain.
Rejoin with your Host.
Rewards
???
Reaching his hand out, Besal could clearly see it was threaded with sapphire energy, not ruby like the Kinslayer’s had been. Like glowing veins, the sapphire energy was woven into his pitch-black limbs and his body of starlight and shadow.
Rolling waves of glittering starlight drifted off his shoulders, and for a moment he felt a strange sense of loss that nobody could witness his glory with so much darkness about.
But he didn’t dare drop the obscuring sea of pitch about him. So recently changed, he was still weak. A single strike would spell his doom. He now had to worry about pesky things like stats and resources.
With a Strain of 200 acting as both HP, SP, and MP, he wouldn’t last very long unless he found a way to increase his Strain. Taking quick stock, he realized that all of Hal’s unique abilities were lost to him.
Any Soul powers were gone, including Soul Drain. His Kol’thil was covered in darkness, and even if it wasn’t he would not have the first inkling how to reactivate it. Hal’s other spells and abilities were also missing.
He was left with Beastborne and Beast Magic alone. It would have to be enough.
Besal charged the wary Voidwracked Kinslayer, reaching a shadowy clawed hand toward him. As he moved, the darkness moved with him and before the Voidwracked Kinslayer could react, he was plunged into the caustic darkness.
Just thinking of reaching his hand around the man’s throat caused Besal’s arm to lengthen in a most disturbing way. As if his form was a mere suggestion, his arm stretched all the way to his opponent’s throat and latched on.
The Voidwracked Kinslayer was quicker than Besal would have guessed, and with a vicious sweep of that cruel black sword, lopped off Besal’s stretched arm.
Oddly, the damage was minor.
A mere 50 HP was lost as his arm reformed from the severed stump. Caught completely unawares, Besal slashed out at the man’s exposed neck, drawing five long gashes across his adam’s apple and over his collar bone.
Even more strangely was the effect of damaging his enemy.
Clawed fingers wet with fresh blood eagerly drank up the Voidwracked Kinslayer’s tainted blood and used its foul corruption to further empower Besal.
Shadowy fumes puffed out of the fresh wounds and Besal drank deeply of the more familiar Strain. Stunned and blinded, the Voidwracked Kinslayer lashed out again with that slim black blade of his.
Besal was already gone. His form twisting and bending until it easily dodged aside from the deadly strike. Despite the fact that he should be blind, the Voidwracked Kinslayer seemed more than capable of sensing wherever Besal was.
Just as he reconstituted himself behind the man, the Voidwracked Kinslayer was already turning, his free hand summoning forth that terrible swirling black water.
Something compelled Besal to stay put. He could have broken his body down to mist or a slim line to avoid the attack, but he felt a kinship with the spell forming around the Voidwracked Kinslayer’s hand.
Besal grinned widely as the attack dove for his heart, a certainly lethal move that he didn’t even bother to avoid.
Sinker Drill plunged deeply into Besal’s chest. Were it any other type of spell, that would have been the end of things.
But what was Beast Magic aside from Strain given form and function?
Too late, the Voidwracked Kinslayer realized his mistake.
With the Voidwracked Kinslayer’s hand plunged up to the wrist inside of his chest, Besal pulled on the Strain that made up the spell and to the tether that bound it to the man behind the spell.
The damage had been negligible, but even still the Strain Besal was pulling out of the Voidwracked Kinslayer doubled, then tripled his reserves of Strain. All the while, weakening his enemy.
Every ounce of Sinker Drill’s Strain was pulled into Besal’s constantly shifting body. He thought to return the favor by summoning a blade of starlight and shadow, an extension of himself instead of the crude bone sword Hal had gifted him.
The Voidwracked Kinslayer brought his sword around to try and block it as he pulled with all his might on his captured hand. With little more than a thought, Besal dismissed the blade then resummoned it once his hand was passed that pesky blocking sword.
When the blade fell on the Voidwracked Kinslayer’s hand, it severed it at the wrist. His hand sunk deeper into Besal’s body to be broken down and reconstituted into the greater whole of Besal’s new form.
Stumbling away from Besal, the Voidwracked Kinslayer stubbornly reached out with the stump and began casting another spell aimed at Besal’s heart. Anvil Lightning reached him in the blink of an eye, its lightning arcing straight for Besal’s chest.
With a concussive blast that blew apart the very stone they were standing upon, the attack hit. Besal had expected to try and fend off the void element his foe had laced his attacks with before, but twice now he used normal Beast Magic.
Both times, Besal drank deeply of their Strain.
Empowering himself as the Voidwracked Kinslayer exhausted his powerful magic. Only then, when the dust and debris of the blasted stone began to settle, did Besal begin to understand its lack of void-laced powers.
Its black hole heart was cracked, with streams of familiar moonlight shining out.
Besal grinned savagely. The tables were turning.
175
Hal stared into the Kinslayer’s face. His face.
The man started to move. Hal quickly ripped the blade free and hopped to his feet, leveling the shining moonlight tip of the conjured sword at the man. He was ready to move at a moment’s notice, his white-knuckled grip on his blade of moonlight, unyielding.
“Do it,” the man rasped, a little bit of blood bubbled at the corner of his lips as he wheezed. “While I am still a man. While I still remember… me.”
Assuming it was a trick of some kind, Hal cast a wary look around expecting a surprise attack. When nothing came, he looked back at the Kinslayer. Black blood slowly seeped from the wound in his chest, the ragged edges of which were limned in moonlight.
“Why should I?” Hal said, surprised by the bitter anger in his voice. “You said yourself, Rinbast let me go! Why did you follow me? All I ever wanted was to be left alone, to make a home on a world I never intended on coming to. He did that! He stole my life from me!”
The Kinslayer chuckled but it was a worryingly watery sound. With great effort, the Kinslayer lifted himself up on his elbows and looked into Hal’s eyes. “I see you’ve taken quite a liking to this world, despite your anger. Save your fruitless posturing. Your life, like all of ours, was mundane and boring. Rinbast gave us meaning. He gave us what we yearned for back on Earth.”
As much as Hal wanted to refute his claims, the Kinslayer was right. While he objected in nearly every way Rinbast went about it, he couldn’t argue that his life on Aldim was orders of magnitude better than before.
He had somebody he deeply cared for, a family, friends… a purpose.
And that was to say nothing of the magic and adventure that was at his front door. For a moment he paused, staring at the dying man that was a reflection of himself on another Earth.
Had this version of himself let George talk him into skipping school that one day? Did his George live because this version of Hal had heard the silent pleas for help that George masked so well?
Pleas that Hal had missed back home. They had found George three days later washed upriver after his parents finally came home and found the note he left.
With a shake of his head, Hal pulled himself from the past, though his sword did dip ever-so-slightly. “It doesn’t matter, you tried to kill me. To kill my friends. Why would I ever give you what you want? My body is probably dead or worse, if I can even get back to it!”
The Kinslayer coughed, blood flying from his lips as he shook his head. “I hated you. Your freedom most of all. You were right under our noses and we didn’t see you. It was a slap in the face.
“Nobody thought you had gained so much power in the Gift. You shouldn’t have been capable of something so… vexing. If we didn’t already have enough reason to detest you, we had plenty after that failure. Weeks on Aldim and you already evaded our pursuit.
“But what truly galled me was the way Rinbast just… let you go. We were sent to track you down as soon as we learned you had left Murkmire. Only a few days out of Murkmire we were ordered to return. To let you go free. I couldn’t abide by that, and so I hunted you. Alone.”
“Even into the Shiverglades?” Hal asked. “Why?”
“I was too far gone by that point, it had become an obsession,” the Kinslayer said with a wet chuckle. “You were my ‘White Whale’ and if I could just bring you in, or kill you, then my own subservience would be more tolerable somehow. I could… feel justified in my existence. And I couldn’t even do that.
“Now I understand why Rinbast called us back. Something is different about you. I should have seen it. You’re like him, you know? People just… flock to you, do what you say without hardly ever thinking for themselves.”
Hal tightened his slackening grip on his blade of moonlight. “That’s not even remotely true!” At least, not the latter part. He had known, since talking to Thirty-seven, that he was more alike to Rinbast than perhaps any other. But the rest was untrue.
If only it had been that easy! Just point and tell people what to do, then they follow it. Even with his high CHR and Oathforger’s Regal Bearing trait, people didn’t just do whatever he wanted because he asked.
His problems would be so much smaller if they did. Is that how it looked from the outside? Did it seem to others that he hardly cared about his friends and family gained through blood, sweat, and tears?
“I don’t have enough words - and you don’t have enough time to hear them besides - to tell you just how wrong you are. I struggled for every friendship, every alliance, and still the Shiverglades - and you - all but destroyed everything we built. So I ask again, why should I offer you mercy when you surely would not have offered it to me?”
As the pool of blood beneath the Kinslayer widened, all the strength seemed to leave him. He collapsed onto his back and stared up at the cracked ceiling. His next words struck deeply at Hal’s heart. “Because I am you.”
It was a simple truth. Simple enough to get through the various layers of armor Hal had put up around his heart.
This was a reflection of himself.
No matter what else he was, the Kinslayer was him. What kind of man, what kind of person, could kill themselves so heartlessly?
He was already dying, wouldn’t he want mercy granted to him in his final moments? Thoughts raced around inside Hal’s head, all to no avail.
Healing, or somehow saving the Kinslayer would be the height of naivety. As much as he didn’t want to kill him, the damage was already done. Undoing that would just mean he had another enemy to fight again someday.
One that knew exactly where he was and the defenses he had in place. But if he killed him, what if he was bound to a Manatree somewhere else? Then he would return to Rinbast’s side, all with knowledge of his new home and with a more accurate assessment of Hal’s strength.
The only reason he had managed to survive until that point was precisely because he was continually underestimated. It was one of the few advantages he had left.
But he could not risk that Thirty-six was bound somewhere else.
Each decision seemed equally risky. Kill the man and send him to Rinbast, or heal him and… what, try to jail him? Hal shook his head at the ridiculous notion. What cell could hold him?
He didn’t know what to do and in the moment of quiet between doubting thoughts, he heard a faint musical note... then another, and another. Like he had left a music box somewhere in his pocket, muffled by thick fabric.
Focusing on the sound, he could feel more than hear the Manaseed bound to his soul. It could confirm Hal’s fears.
He reached down to grasp the man’s forearm, the same marked forearm as his own. As he did, he felt for the connection between Thirty-six and the warm argent glow of a Manatree.
Nothing. Hal was almost disappointed, but he was hardly surprised that Rinbast would keep something like that for himself.
“Mercy, really?” the Kinslayer said, mistaking Hal’s intent. He barked a laugh that quickly turned into a bloody coughing fit. When it finally subsided, he spoke softer than before, weaker. “Gods above, you really are green as the spring grass, aren’t you? How did you survive so long? If you were able to heal me - which I very much doubt - I would only continue my attack on you.
“Send me back home, brother, while I can still return. Don’t make me relive this hell any longer. Finish it, and know that I won’t truly die. We are not from this world. When we die, we do not die for good. We are sent back to our home world. To the life we left behind… unless we are fully corrupted.
“End my wretched existence before the void consumes me, and I will yield up what power is still mine to command on the promise that you will free my brothers. They are trapped just as I was. Give us the freedom we so deeply covet. Free us, and weaken the chokehold Rinbast has on this world.”
Had the Kinslayer been lying the entire time and been strong enough to strike at Hal just then, there would be no way he could have defended himself.
The tip of his moonlight blade slid toward the glassy ground. Hal felt cold and numb all over. If he had died, he would have just gone back home?
“What about Rinbast,” Hal said, trying to steady his shaky voice. “He is tied to a Manatree, isn’t he? What happens if he is killed without its protection?”
The Kinslayer weakly shrugged. He hardly seemed strong enough for that motion, let alone to answer him.
Darkness began to creep back up the Kinslayer’s form, starting at his hands and feet. It moved, inexorably inward, and obviously caused a great deal of pain to the man.
“My offer,” he said through pained gasps and gritted teeth, “still stands.”
Hal nodded. And despite the fact that the man had been trying to destroy him and everything he built less than a few minutes ago, he felt a sense of sorrow and loss.
“I’ll set them free,” Hal said, raising his moonlight blade over the Kinslayer’s - no, over Thirty-six’s - heart. A look of intense focus came over Thirty-six as the man fought the corruption of the Shadesblight with the last of his strength. “You have my word.”
Without breaking his gaze, Hal thrust the blade home into the man’s chest. There was a moment of pain and then a sense of serenity came over him. He moved his lips, but no words came. Even still, Hal understood the two words he meant to say well enough.
“Thank you,” were the last words, spoken or not, that Thirty-six ever uttered.
The black prison all around them shattered like exploding glass, letting in a flood of light from all directions.
176
>
It was almost too easy.
Every strike weakened the Voidwracked Kinslayer further and strengthened Besal. With 1,107 Strain, he could afford to drop 100 points to boost his stats and leap forward through the sea of pitch to bowl over his opponent in the blink of the Great One’s eye.
The only reason he didn’t outright kill him was his fear that doing so would somehow harm Hal. Besal could still feel that Hal was alive. Though, much to his frustration, he had no idea how to extricate the man from the creature.
Strange as it might be, he felt a kinship with Hal. They understood each other in a way that nobody else ever would. Even his siblings, fellow creatures of darkness that yearned for the freedom of the stars would never know his heart as well as Hal did.
He didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. Besal wasn’t sure about a lot of things, but he did understand that Hal was doing something inside that black hole heart of the creature.
As they battled, Besal easily gaining the upper hand, the cracks spread and grew across the surface of the black hole until it was more light than darkness.
Before his eyes, the black hole shattered. In a flash, all the colors of the world inverted. The sea of pitch became white mist, the brightening sun cresting the eastern mountains turned black.
Just as fast as it happened, everything turned normal again except the black hole had turned into a shining sphere of pure white.
Besal felt Hal coming out of it before he saw the streak of moonlight rushing out of the white hole. In that instant, without thinking about how he could turn the situation to his advantage, Besal reached out for Hal.
They collided, Hal’s soul with Besal’s and what remained of Hal’s body. Besal was hardly ready for it and he went down hard. His teeth rattled as he crashed to the broken stone ridge.
Hal’s soul merged with his own and it turned out to be a fortunate turn of events to be cast down because every spell absorbed by the Voidwracked Kinslayer was spat back out in the direction where Besal had just been standing.
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