The Romance of Lotania - An Under Gods Story (Rough Draft)

Chapter 25: The Operation

Chapter 25: The Operation

Ghawou stood over Teporia's charred body as she laid on her bed, stuck to every medical machine they believed would help her stay alive. She must be in agony, he thought. He wouldn't dare say it aloud out of respect. He figured it would be akin to calling her weak – or worse – acknowledging that she was on her last leg.

Teporia awoke with a violent gasp for air that made her throat expand and contract as she coughed.

"Teporia, you're up!" Ghawou rushed to meet her at eye level.

"Sort of... Ghawou, please. Vi need you to listen to me," Teporia wheezed dryly. "The system, i-it's broken. Vi spent my whole life preparing for the battle against Met Visogue, but it was my people that fell me. Vi always knew it, but vi did nothing. Please don't make the same mistake. You have to unite Vahemoria or... Met Visogue will destroy it."

"We will unite it," Ghawou assured her as he grasped her hand.

"You've got too much faith in me, Ghawou."

"And you have too much faith in me. Vi never would have gotten this far without you."

A soldier barged into the room.

"Please, forgive me but we have an intruder!"

"And you all ca-"

"Hey! Don't worry about it Ghawou. I'll handle it," Eyawa assured. "Lead the way."

The soldier nodded and signaled for Eyawa to follow as they rushed down the hall.

They turned the corner and halted in shock. The intruder was already in front of them. It was some feline creature with arrow-like stripes on its fur just like the ones the revolutionaries had called the previous night. But this one was different. It had on a crimson tophat and held a uniquely shaped knife. Eyawa attempted to observe it with her imageon, but the image was still blurry.

"Shit," Eyawa complained and took her fighting stance.

"Shit," Draven growled.

"You know this one?"

"Yeah, that's Eyawa. She's the reason I'm even in this mess."

"Eyawa? This is Eyawa?"

"She famous or something?"

"She's a threat."

"Agreed."

They charged at Eyawa with claws ready to maul, if needed. Eyawa's legs inflated and shot her body at the creature. They leaped over her, flipping in the air as they fell to the intersection of the halls. It was then that Orunya locked eyes with them. They tried to get closer, but Eyawa yanked them by the tail, spun around and slammed them through a wall.

"Eyawa, wait!" Orunya screamed and ran toward the conflict.

"Stay back! This thing's dangerous!"

"That thing is Draven!"

"Bitch, that's stupid! Draven is de-"

They lunged out and slashed Eyawa across the face with Draven's knife. Eyawa growled in pain as her yellow blood flowed onto the floor. The creature quickly sprinted behind Orunya.

"Dammit! If that is Draven, I'm going to kick his ass," Eyawa groaned.

Orunya looked down, but Draven was absent. She looked into the room where Teporia was held and their he was, nearly parilyzed by the sight before him.

Teporia was already dead.

Two hours later...

Draven laid still on an examination table as Ghawou observed his imageon.

"It would seem that your friend has somehow been linked to another, far more powerful, entity. Which wouldn't inherently be a cause for alarm, but because he's also had his DNA drastically mutated, it has disrupted both of their imageon."

"And that means?"

"It means the only way to fix this is to remove the corrupting energy that caused them to turn into this thing. Which would be difficult, but doable, with a precise enough imageon. But even then, the DNA that's already damaged won't fix itself. Maybe if someone developed an imageon path that reversed time, they could age them down to a time before this happened. They could be fixed, bu-"

A screeching noise let out as Draven's claws tore through the steel until the etching roughly read "Just remove the damn brand."

Ghawou took pause, then nodded. He ignited his hand with blue flames.

"You all might want to step out for this," Ghawou warned, and so they did.

"Hey, you're pretty good with this stuff, right, Eyawa? What's an Imageon exorcism?" Aapti asked.

"Well, in order to make an Imageon Path, you need to merge the imageon of other forces with your own soul. But once you've done that, you can't remove the elements you've melded by normal means," Eyawa explained.

Ghawou placed his fire-coated hand on Draven's corrupted body and burned past any level of heat Draven's nerves could comprehend. It was painless.

Draven opened his eyes and found himself in what he first thought was another world, but soon he began to recognize – from the geometric nature of everything surrounding him – that he was still on the examination table. He'd even go as far as to say he was more aware of the table than ever before. He could see the tiny imperfections of the metal, the nearly microscopic remains of other elements within it shone like stars in the night. The room's walls and the medical instruments in the cabinets were the same way. He looked at his paw and was overwhelmed by his findings. His human hand was there, burning hues of violet, teal, and pink, but that wasn't the only thing. There was another hand, much larger than his own – and much more feminine, as well – covering his own like some kind of glove or armor. That hand sported hues of goldish-yellow, white, and violet. But rather than a multicolored blaze that made the loose shape of a hand, it was compact like glowing cords unified with a sturdy working of heated gears.

And then there was the brand, a disgusting char that spread like a parasite hindering the glove-like imageon from movement and forcing it bend and twist in unnatural ways.

"Hey, can you still hear me?" a deep voice called.

Draven looked over and a massive suit of knight's armor, burning a lapis-blue and gold, towered over him.

"Man, I haven't had a trip this wild since my senior year," Draven admitted in an amazed and calm tone, figuring he'd seen it all at this point. "What's going on?"

"In order to operate, I'm going to need to use heat levels that the physical plain would be unable to handle. So vi brought us to Niyamako so vi don't melt down a part of Vahemoria again. Now, vi need you to listen very carefully. When vi brought us here, you couldn't feel it because vi put out the heat faster than your body and the physical plain could comprehend. But Niyamako won't be tricked so easily. This will be very excruciating."

"Not as excruciating as being a cat my whole life, trust me. Let's get this over with." Draven braced himself.

Ghawou shaped the imageon on his other arm into the shape of a blade and sliced deep. Draven shouted in pain. It was way worse than he had imagined. He could feel the blade severing every individual cell as if they were all individual people whose pain was compiled into Draven's abdomen.

Ten agonizing minutes passed. Then, finally, Ghawou opened the door. Kaga, Orunya, and Aapti rushed to the doorway to find Draven laying down, recovering from his experience, but doing so in his human form. They rushed toward him with a relief and happiness they didn't think they could find in Lotania. Eyawa walked in, trying not to make things awkward as she stared at Ghawou, asking how he reversed the damage with her eyes. He pointed to the other side of the examination table and Eyawa came to see.

What sat before her was a lotaness whose face was the exact likeness of Teporia.

"You must be Vladoria," Eyawa's eyes widened.

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