A Tale of One Deviant (Book One)

Chapter 152: I, the Godslayer

It was just a crack with a hint of crackle in its bite. Small, insignificant, almost unnoticeable.

     A sliver, almost, and gradually upgrading itself to a beam. A small beam, like a flashlight attempting to pierce through the darkness.

     A small spotlight, then, stolen from an idol's concert, as the energy was growing. Energy did take time to build. It wasn't instant. And in that time it was building, Tasega was reaching out to me. It was opening its mouth to tell me a story.

     It was drawing from the depths of itself and coaxing me to take it. Take the light. Take the life. Take the wish. Channel it up.

     Show them what we're made of.

     The world was palpitating. It wasn't just the rattling of bones as they reached forward and grabbed my limbs. It wasn't just the trembling of the coal-dark ground as more sealed undead rose from likely thousands of pouriks down, reaching for the surface to crowd the endless surroundings with scores of themselves. It wasn't just the rumbling of their trade as all of their indistinguishable features meshed together, exchanging bones, building bodies to go forth and spread their miasma to everywhere that'd forgotten them. Forsaken them. Sealed them away for good and ever.

     It was the world. I was sure of it.

     Like my body was really only made of mana, and not just a flesh-bag which I battered in battle, ate with to appease eventual bouts of hunger, put to sleep to appease exhaustion, and I could feel every particle of myself and see the relation of it to every particle there was of Tasega. I could feel that there were others much greater than myself, other sources of mana, and they were watching. They were there. Their presences disrupted the flow of the world, as the air pushed by, as the water currents flowed, as new lives of growth tried to push up where their feet stamped down.

     It was like wearing the [Gaze of Berdine] with my whole body.

     And the amount of mana in my body was not able to escape that well-rounded sight. I could see it collecting, particle by particle, to make up for the other massive amount locked away in my soul that I couldn't use in that form. Being supplied by such a reputable source made me feel like I was small, for once, and not a giant to all of those weaker than me.

     The experience, while Tasega handed me its will and gave me what I needed to carry it out, was humbling. Enlightening. Subsuming.

     I was not alone, I was not done, and there was more to magic and the wishes of nature than what I had known and ever dreamed of before. That was it. That was the summary of the experience. It was realizing that there was life beneath life, stories not just recorded in books or memories, but the stories recorded in the mana itself that I wielded every day...

     And the world was alive. Surprisingly so. But mortal, as it let me know, in its own way, as I saw by looking back the way the energy came.

     And it could think. Was thinking. Opinionated, almost, contrary to thoughts of natural selection and the neutrality of mother nature that sprung up at my realization of the experience.

     And it could see. Was seeing. Watching, everywhere across its own surface, and below, and in the separate pocket dimensions of dungeons that resided in its space.

     And it had a wish.

     Save us.

     That spotlight became a star. Carrying such a thing in my body made me think I would implode, or burst, or both, as the skeletons had disappeared, and the space was white. I had been seeing something without seeing, feeling without feeling, hearing, but there was nothing but silence...