The Revelation of the Vine: Graft

Chapter 32: The Threshing Floor

  The dark portal closed behind me with a slurp that only I could hear. The knights rushed about on the second and third floors in front of me, screaming my name. I couldn't respond. My body was on autopilot; controlled by the terrible Corruption. My body walked forward and shouted, "I'm here!" It barely even sounded like me, and I hoped they would recognize something was wrong. Surely J, Sol, or Feng would notice; they'd known me for a lifetime. I saw them stop and turn, as they heard my voice calling to them. A look of relief crossed their faces as they shouted to each other that they saw me. The knights came running to meet me, and I felt myself weaken. I had to find a way to warn them; had to find a way to stop myself from destroying the world's last hope. The sky was already beginning to lighten to the east over the sea. The tear would be here soon. "Where in the Bloody Shadow have you been, V?" Jurgen's face was red as he and the other knights ran up to my body. His voice sounded more distant than it was, like it crashed through water to reach me. "Sorry, J," My body said, and I screamed at it not to use that name. I didn't want it talking to my best friend that way; tricking him into thinking that everything was ok. "Well, did you find anything?" His voice reached my body first, and then filtered through it so I could hear. "Nothing out of the ordinary, but it doesn't look like we have much time left to sit around and talk about it," My body responded, and pointed to the dark blue haze that rose above the horizon. I thought that surely J would have noticed my strange bluntness, but he just raised an eyebrow. "We need to get inside the peak." He said, and we turned toward a small archway in the inner wall of the Crown that led across a bridge where a large Paladnium door was. It was a grand double-door with a seam in the middle, and each door was carved with elaborate, swirling vines that looked like DNA strands rising from the floor. There was another panel on the wall to the left of the door, and my body motioned for J to go ahead and open it. I cried in defeat at the cleverness of my corrupted body, shattering the thought that Sophia would have detected the false me when it tried to open the door. The sound of pressurized locks releasing boomed, and the door opened outward with a grinding sweep after Sophia's voice confirmed the authorization; a brightly lit tunnel stretched into the mountain ahead of us. The group proceeded forward, with my corrupted body slinking in the background. The tunnel led along a path of Paladnium walls and grated floors. Two thick strips of soft light ran along the ceiling casting gentle illumination through the corridor. The sound of the doors closing behind us and the slam of the pressurized locks echoed down the tunnel. The path opened into a large, round chamber where there were two spiraling staircases that led up and down through the peak on the north and south sides of the room. Three other corridors could be seen opening around the room from the northeast, southeast, and southwest. The ceiling was about 20 feet high with a steep vault in the center; the stairs ascended through circles in the left and right sides of the vault and floor. In between the stairs was a wide, circular hole with four walls that rose to the ceiling at diagonal corners, so that the openings between them were like a cross. Inside of the walls was a thick pillar of blue-white energy that spiraled up from below. In front of each wall was a white, semi-circle desk, with two flat screens that faced a simple chair at the head of the desk. "Well," Jurgen's voice echoed through the chamber, "I guess we'll be as safe in here as anywhere. You think the Omni-Shield will hold up against the tear?" He looked at me with an expectant glare. I wanted so badly to be in control again, to talk to my friend with my own words, but my body went along with the determined actions of the Corruption. "I wouldn't worry about that," It said, the secret maliciousness and underlying hint that they should be worried about what it would soon do to them was apparent only to me. "Yea, you're right." He said, putting his helmet on one of the tables, "We should take a look around in here too. There might be something that can help us figure out what's going on." "Good idea," my body responded, "Let's split up." It turned without even waiting for an answer and walked off toward the north staircase to head down. I wanted to turn my head to them and scream for them to stop me, but my body continued with its order to divide and conquer. As soon as my body disappeared below, a new hole opened around me and I was swallowed back into the darkness, but it was different this time. Instead of entering back into the sludge chamber with the opening slits, the darkness simply passed over me like a long tunnel, and then I was standing in the corner of a hallway watching Feng look around in the distance. I watched my body step forward in flashes, drawing closer to him, like a silent shadow. A shard of the same black material that Kivan had stabbed me with appeared in my right hand as I phased forward. With a lightning thrust the shard slid into his back, as my hand slipped over his mouth. I squirmed inside of my mind-cage, crying and kicking and screaming. I wanted no part in this terrible scheme. But it was pointless. My body twisted the shard, and the warm blood of Feng's body washed over its hand. It felt like fire compared to the coldness of my body, but it didn t hurt at all. The vibrating air of his scream tickled the palm of my hand as I squeezed it back into his mouth. It sounded like nothing more than a small squeal. I pulled myself away from the vision before my eyes, and found myself in the darkness of my mind. "Captain Virgil," Feng's voice echoed around the cage that contained my true self, as a fading memory of the day I met him swam by, "Wow, I've waited my whole life to meet you. I've heard all about your heroic deeds in the Un-Terr." My fake heart exploded with blood lust, as my true self was overcome by a wave of unspeakable grief. I sat in my cage, holding my legs like a little boy, rocking in a hunched sit. There's got to be a way to stop this, I cried, in my mind within my mind. If there was a way, I couldn't see it yet, and my body had just finished laying Feng's corpse in a corner. I wondered if he would also become like me. I hoped that would not be the case, and that I was only meant to kill them, but it was an unfounded hope. I had used the same weapon that Kivan had used on me. My body stood up, and stepped through another portal, this time appearing behind Rahlix. I watched him searching a room, but heard footsteps close by and thanked the core, as my body stepped through another hole, leaving him alone for now. We appeared in a corner of darkness near the ceiling above Solanicus, as a thunderous boom signaled the arrival of the second tear. Solanicus jerked his head up at the roar of the event, but it was muffled inside the mountain. My body focused on his stretched neck, watching the veins pulse in the side of his skin. I felt my body leap forward from the corner taking the opportunity to strike during the sudden confusion. The shadow shard in its hand flashed outward and his neck peeled open like a wicked grin, and then I watched my body crouch forward and devour the blood that gushed forth from his wound. I realized then that my body was killing them, but not just killing them. It was also absorbing their lifeblood into its own corrupted mass, making the Corruption even more powerful. The darkness pressed harder, and I felt my soul's oppression under its weight.