Displaced

Chapter 108 Part 1

'd made one before, many centuries ago, but that one had only been able to provide a picture of the largest that this tiny world contained. He required something more capable for his current subject of study. Something much more capable.

Within moments, the bioluminescent algae along the back of the polyp began to glow, the light providing a backdrop to the black ink slowly filling the translucent film that covered the front. The ink coalesced into an image, a crystalline pattern of maddening detail. As his powerful mind slowly parsed what he saw, Bazzalth realized with dismay that the pattern appeared to be a fractal one. Would he have to delve even deeper?

No, he decided. Not for now, at least. The pattern most likely continued as it did, only smaller, for many iterations. Perhaps, it even went on forever, endlessly repeating no matter how closely you looked. Not long ago, he would have thought such a thing impossible, but back then he would have believed a lot of what this crawler's weapon did was impossible. To think that a material existed that could take a bath in a person's blood for a period of five days and emerge entirely unscathed! Truly fascinating!

Only two other materials could boast a similar feat, though not entirely. A person's flesh, obviously, also could withstand the blood pumping through it. However, in truth, even it slowly broke down when faced with the unending corrosive nature of a person's ichor. The secret was that a person's flesh was constantly regenerating, utilizing the profound energy imparted by the liquid to continuously rebuild against the onslaught.

No, outside of this obsidian-hued crystal, only one substance could survive a person's blood entirely unharmed. That substance floated in a vat close by, seemingly trapped indefinitely in a state of half-death. Bazzalth took another long glance at his prized specimen, as had become routine since he had retrieved her days ago. He found some irony in the fact that her body, filled with and seemingly impervious to the most destructive substance known to personkind, could be laid low by something as weak as a crawler-made blade.

And yet, though her heart no longer beat and her mind no longer fired, Pari was not yet dead. Not by his definition of the term, at least. He'd found that the individual biochemical compartments that made up her body still seemed to function on an individual level, seemingly pulling energy from the processed blood bath in which she was suspended. But more importantly, her soul remained the vibrant blue it had always been, showing not even the slightest hint of the dead souls' grey. While such behavior went against everything Bazzalth knew of souls from millennia of observation, the reason for such a discrepancy was plainly obvious to his eyes.

The chains.

Hundreds of ethereal chains wrapped tightly around Pari's spirit, binding it in complex patterns, the purpose of which he could not yet discern. So tightly were they wrapped around her that they warped the soul's form into a nightmare mockery of its normal self.

But not all of them encircled her soul. Bazzalth could find them easily, now that he'd noticed their existence. Hidden within the mass of chains were chains of a different sort, larger and sturdier than the rest. Unlike the others, these chains did not wrap around the soul but rather seemed to have embedded one end directly into it. Of the dozens of these chains, five stood out. Along these five, and these five only, flowed the energy that kept Pari's soul alive.

One end of each and every chain, of both varieties, led away from Pari, their incorporeal forms reaching south through the wall of his cave lair and extending across this vast world to connect Pari even now to the Vile One, the most horrid of crawlers to ever exist. Not only did this foul being's machinations dare to tamper and defile Pari's very essence, but they also refused him his prized specimen! After all, how could he conduct proper study when such an unknown variable was constantly interfering? Bazzalth found the situation utterly intolerable, and he vowed once more that soon enough that cursed creature would not escape his wrath.