The Beginning After The End 08

by Turtle Me

  The rune!

  My eyes widened as I recalled what had happened to me. I pushed myself off my back, wincing at the pain of putting weight on my right hand, despite the fact that it appeared unscathed.

  The platform I was on wasn’t black anymore, but white, I noticed distantly.

  “Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty.”

  My battle instincts flared at the sound of the gruff voice, and I whirled around, ripping the white dagger from its sheath with my left hand, only to find myself face-to-face with a shadowy entity in the form of a wolf.

  It remained seated on its hind legs like a large dog, no threatening intent leaking from it. It looked like a very black wolf except for the glowing mane of violet fire that danced around its neck and shoulders, and a pair of horns protruding out of its head, each twisting like a gnarled branch as they came to a sharp point behind its ears.

  “Check me out. I’m majestic as fuck!” The wolf gave me a toothy grin, its shadowy tail wagging excitedly.

  My jaw dropped. “Regis? What happened to me after I passed out? What happened to you? Why do you look like that?” I stared at him, unable to make sense of any of it.

  “Easy, pleb,” Regis said haughtily, holding up his giant black paw. “This one shall explain.”

  I shot him a glare, eliciting an uncomfortable cough from the shadowy wolf.

  “After you killed that giant golem, that purple flame was trying to consume you. So I did what any loyal companion would do, and went into your body to save you.”

  “Loyal? Is that why you’re a dog?” I quipped.

  “I’m a wolf!” Regis emphasized, offended. “I don’t know why I’m a wolf, and not some badass dragon or something, but this is what I came out as.”

  I set the dagger down beside me and leaned back on my left hand, letting my right rest in my lap. “So how did it happen?”

  “Well, I felt this huge surge of aether fuse with me—”

  “Fuse with your body?” I asked blankly, but then it finally dawned on me.

  I expelled aether from my core, trying to siphon it through the rune on my lower back. Except there was no rune. I recalled the knowledge that had been ingrained into me upon forming the rune, but it felt like a blur, like trying to recall the events of a drunken night.

  “It’s gone,” I mumbled. “I—I can’t feel the rune anymore.”

  My eyes locked onto Regis in an icy glare. “You stole it.”

  “It’s not like I expected this to happen,” Regis retorted. “And besides, you were dying!”

  I seethed, unable to believe that I’d finally made a real breakthrough and now it was just gone. Through clenched teeth, I said, “I had it under control.”

  Regis let out a scoff. “Sure. Writhing in pain and blacking out was all part of the master plan, right?”

  “You don’t understand! I need that power, Regis.” I thrust my right hand out toward my companion, ignoring the burning pain. “Give it back!”

  Regis bared his fangs. “You don’t think I tried? After dragging your sorry ass off the black platform—you’re welcome, by the way—I tried going back inside your body and giving it back to you, but I didn’t even know how!”

  My brows furrowed as I gestured again toward Regis. “Come here.”

  With a sigh, my companion relented. The solid wolf turned to smoke and shadow as he touched me, then drifted into my body, just as he had been able to when he was no more than a little black ball of fire.

  As soon as his form entered my body, though, I felt the change. It started with a pressure building inside my ears, as if I was sinking deep underwater. Then a growing pain pressed against my temples as the knowledge of the rune in my mind and the actual rune now held within Regis connected. I recalled everything that I had learned as the warm touch of the rune spread from my lower back.

  Destruction.

  That was what the rune engraved on my back meant. Destruction, however, wasn’t something tangible, so the aether residing within me had shaped it into something I was familiar with, something destructive: fire.

  Through this formation of power, I had to question whether aether had some level of sentience. It had given me knowledge of what destruction meant, and how it was tied to vivum. Lady Myre had explained it as the influence over living components, but that was wrong. She’d understood only a part of it.

  Vivum was more akin to the influence over… existence. And just as life was a part of existence, so were death, creation, and destruction.

  I had barely touched the surface of Destruction, but even so, I had managed to gain more insight than Lady Myre—at least, based on what she had told me.

  The fact that I had invoked this rune meant that I had a certain degree of mastery over what the rune meant. It was a rare projection of mastery over a specific edict of aether.

  This made me question the differences between my newly-bestowed rune and the runes that once enveloped my body through Sylvia’s dragon will. How were they, in turn, different from the runes that both Lady Myre and Sylvia possessed?

  One difference was clear: the Indrath Clan, like all of the asuras, thought that the only way to obtain these runes was through the rare chance of inheriting them at birth.

  Were the specific edicts of aether they could learn limited by the runes that they were born with? Were they given the knowledge and abilities that came along with each rune right away, or was each rune dormant until they could make the breakthrough themselves?

  It seemed unlikely that they’d get the knowledge at birth, given how painful just obtaining one rune was. It seemed likely that even an asuran infant would die from the mental burden of dozens of runes instilling their brain with knowledge if it happened immediately upon their birth.

  Hundreds of questions ran through my head. I had no way to answer most of them, but the acquisition of the Destruction rune and the parallel I had drawn with the runes I had witnessed in the past made me sure of two things: one, I needed to make more breakthroughs in aether arts to obtain more runes; and two, Agrona most likely gained insight from these runes in order to create his own versions to bestow onto his people. That was what the marks, crests, emblems, and regalias were—simplified mana adaptations of aetheric runes.

  “Agrona,” I said aloud, a boiling fury building up inside me. My hands ignited in the cool violet flames of Destruction, and I scanned the platform for something, anything, to let loose my rage on.

  I needed to kill something. I wanted to kill something, just like Agrona had done to so many of my people. If it wasn’t for him, the war would’ve never happened and Adam wouldn’t have died. Buhnd wouldn’t have died. My father wouldn’t have died.

  Something was eating away at me from the inside. I could feel it, like a worm digging through me. It took away a little part of me and left behind something else: a craving for chaos and destruction, a demand for blood and murder.

  Destruction, I realized. The flames were hungry. They needed fuel to keep them alive. The rune wanted to be used—or maybe it was I who wanted to use the rune… it was hard to tell where Arthur stopped and Destruction started.

  The purple fire danced over my flesh, cooling my burning right hand. It really was beautiful. If I let it, Destruction would dance over everything, consume everything.

  Something in the back of my mind told me that was wrong, that I should douse the flames while I could. I tried, a little. My heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t bring myself to make the flames go away.

  And why should I? I asked myself. Destruction was mine now. It belonged to me. With it, I could burn the heart from my enemy’s chest, turn the air in his lungs to fire, boil the blood in his veins. I pictured the amethyst flames spreading across all of Alacrya, erasing the continent from existence. Then Dicathen would be peaceful again, and my father’s death avenged.

  In my mind, I saw it all happening. When Alacrya had been returned to the ocean and the saltwater rushed in, Destruction
drank it greedily, and the waves carried the purple flames everywhere, until the whole world was alight. I grinned.

  The flames had spread up my arms and dripped from my hands to eat at the platform beneath me.

  ‘Uh, Arthur?’ a small voice said from within me. Voices in my head… Sylvie’s, Regis’s, King Grey’s, Arthur Leywin’s… My mother’s voice. My father’s. Ellie’s voice was in my head, too, and she was wreathed in purple fire. She was pleading, asking me to stop, begging me to make it stop…

  With the last trace of sanity left in me, I grabbed the dagger from the burning platform and plunged it into my thigh.

  The fire flashed out. Little holes had been burned through the platform all around me. I fell back among the wreckage, focusing on the pain spreading from my leg, letting it clear my head. Regis popped out of my body and stood over me, his expression somewhat boorish in his canine form.

  “You okay, princess?” Regis asked.

  I got up slowly. I was still in a daze, and there were a thousand things on my mind, but I knew, regardless of intention, that if Regis hadn’t absorbed the aetheric rune from me…

  “Yeah, I’m okay now,” I said with a pang of guilt. “And I’m sorry for accusing you of stealing it. You were right. If you hadn’t, I would’ve died.”

  “It’s okay. I know you feel pretty cruddy since you’ve been so hell-bent on getting stronger. I’m literally in your head, remember?” Regis’s ears drooped. “And if it makes you feel better, even though the rune made my body is stronger, I can’t use those purple flames like you used to kill that golem.”

  I nodded, suspecting that to be the case. Lowering my gaze, I stared at my hands, wondering what had gone wrong. I had gained insights into vivum, but I only had half of the whole piece, with Regis carrying the other half.

  He didn’t have the insight to use the power of Destruction as well as I could, and I didn’t have the rune to use it by myself. And if I did continue using the rune, I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d go mad.

  It was frustrating. Unlike the growth in my mana core and my ability to manipulate the elements, my growth in wielding aether wasn’t linear or easily discernible. Obtaining this new, and powerful, ability was the first step in bridging the gap between me and the asuras, but I had only been given a taste before it was taken away from me.

  But at least now I knew. If I could form a rune for a branch of Destruction, then I could form one for other branches. I could only hope that the aether would mold and shape itself to best suit me in the future.

  Letting the wound on my leg close, I dusted myself off before shooting Regis a slight smile. “Come on. Let’s see just how useful this new form of yours is.”

  Regis’s ears perked up, his tail wagging excitedly as he shot me a toothy grin. “Try to keep up!”

  Regis and I continued on, ascending higher through the glowing platforms. The endless expanse of purple sky shone overhead, ever steady, making it impossible to track how many hours had passed.

  There were a few patterns we noticed as we ventured higher through the almost game-like zone.

  The color of platforms remained the same: white, red, orange, blue, then black. Regis and I referred to this sequence of platforms as a single “set.” This order never deviated, and each color corresponded to a specific challenge.

  As far as we could deduce, the white platform was the only safe platform. The red platforms were meant to be some sort of test for either our mental or physical fortitude. While the first red platform had siphoned our aether, the latter ones imbued all sorts of interesting curses onto us when we stood on them, from insatiable hunger that could drive humans to eat one another, to lust, depression, and so on.

  The orange platforms were rather straightforward as well. Each one conjured up enemies that Regis and I needed to kill in order to move on. The number and type of beasts varied and grew a bit stronger with each ascending set, but the rate at which Regis and I grew surpassed the rising difficulty of the stages.

  The blue platforms were by far the most time-consuming. Each one was a puzzle of some sort: some had deadly traps, while others were meant to keep you in limbo for days to die of thirst and starvation. With my body needing very little sustenance apart from aether, this didn’t really apply to us, but it was a large waste of time, regardless.

  While the blue platforms took the most time, the black platforms were the most deadly and challenging. There was only one beast to fight, but each was on a level far higher than the ones seen on the orange platforms.

  I had come out of each battle with wounds that would’ve crippled or killed a normal person, only to have them heal without a trace. My clothes were littered with tears and holes, but the black leather bracers and gorget, along with my teal cloak, managed to stay intact. I had also expected the white dagger I had obtained from the millipede lair to have broken down, but it held strong without a single chip or crack to blemish its pristine white blade.

  While I wasn’t able to unravel another aspect of aether to obtain a rune, the rate at which my aether passages grew increased as we navigated the zone. I could only assume that it had to do with the knowledge that had been instilled in my mind when I had received the Destruction rune.

  Unfortunately, minute control over aether still felt impossible, like I was trying to mold air into a sculpture. It was imperative to have precise control over aether in order to enhance my speed. I had grown somewhat confident in my resilience and power, but without the aid of both mana and elemental magic, my speed had deteriorated despite my stronger body and my ability to use aether.

  The biggest change, however, was Regis. My black mutt—which he hated to be called—was no longer the cannon fodder he used to be. While he wasn’t yet able to use the violet flames of Destruction, his speed, strength, and razor-sharp teeth and claws made him a formidable companion nonetheless. The only downside to this change was that he was now much more corporeal than he used to be—which meant he was susceptible to injury.

  He didn’t bleed, but since his entire body was made of aether, getting too hurt meant that he needed to be given more aether—my aether—and a lot of it.

  “After we get out of here, remind me to whip you into shape,” I huffed, resting on the giant head of a three-headed serpent I had just finished off. It was our seventh time on the black platform. “My little sister can fight better than you.”

  ‘Bite me,’ Regis snapped, his discontent ringing in my head. ‘I’m still getting used to this form. It’s my first time having actual limbs you know.’

  “Well, at this point you’re more of a liability to my aether pool than you are an asset in battle,” I said with a smirk.

  Regis opted for silence, all out of excuses and witty comebacks.

  He knew it as well. It was too dangerous to use Gauntlet Form, now enhanced by the violet flames of destruction, because of its escalating effects on my psyche, and the beasts that appeared on these platforms were too strong for him to fight back against with just teeth and claws.

  Beneath me, the three-headed serpent began to dissolve back into the ground, the same as usual. I expected to see the customary set of stairs leading to the next platform, but instead of a platform waiting at the top of the translucent stairs, I saw a portal.

  Looking at the shimmering gate of iridescent light felt like stumbling upon an unexpected oasis in an endless desert.

  ‘Is that… ’

  “I think it is!” I rushed up the stairs, wanting nothing more than to escape the hellish purple void.

  I thought anything we would have to face on the other side would be better than looping through the colored platforms again and again.

  Through the portal, I could see a battle unfolding beneath an ominous crimson sky. Hordes of grotesque beasts warred against only a dozen or so humans… including three Alacryans whom I recognized.

  271

  First Ascent

  As I stepped into the ne
xt zone, there were so many thoughts racing through my mind, so many questions I wanted to ask as I took in the sight. What was going on? Why were there so many mages gathered there? Were we even still in the dungeon?

  My eyes were drawn to what I first thought was a red sun. Looking carefully though, the “sun” seemed to be sitting on top of a towering column, quite a distance away.

  A monstrous screech pulled my gaze back to the scene just ahead.

  With the vast field of uneven dirt being trampled by hundreds of monsters and the blood-red sky matching the pools of blood and pockets fire strewn across the battlefield, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was what hell would be like.

  During my journey through the dungeon, I had faced skeletal chimeras, giant aetheric millipedes, deadly shrews, and shadowy beasts of all shapes and sizes. However, none of them could quite compare to the sheer grotesqueness of these monsters.

  Each one of the bipedal creatures had sickly white skin that was pulled tight over their skeletons and an oversized head resting between sharp shoulders, like a ghoulish infant. Their clawed hands and large mouths were dyed in red, and sharp fang-like spikes protruded out of their gangly bodies.

  From the hundreds of monster corpses littering the field and the Alacryans coated in a layer of sweat, grime, and blood, it was easy to infer that they had been in battle for quite a while.

  ‘Why can’t we ever be fighting against a half-naked succubus or a seductive demoness of some kind? Why are they always so damned gross,’ Regis lamented.

  “Hey! Are you waiting for permission or something? Help us out!” a large female warrior clad in plate armor barked before unleashing a surge of blue fire from her golden halberd straight at a group of demonic babies.

  Chittering screams filled the air as the fire washed over the monsters, but they were immediately replaced by another wave.

  ‘What do we do?’ Regis asked.

  Stay hidden inside me for now, I replied. It seemed like the Alacryans and I had a common enemy for the moment, but revealing anything more about myself than I had to would be foolish at this point.