Aric Morholt couldn’t tell how long they had been walking.
It was difficult to mark the passage of time in this unholy place. The sky never changed. There was no evidence of a world which turned, nor were there a sun or moons to observe. Only fragments of things decorated the ruddy skies, gargantuan chunks of masonry and parts of titanic beasts, which something had bitten or torn apart.
Vos, their guide, spoke little. As did Aerin, for a different reason.
Their demise at Redmane’s hands had broken him.
The elder Morholt walked along beside Aric, his posture slouched. He was wringing his hands and muttering to himself. Aric watched him out of the corner of his eye, thinking about that face. The sneer it used to wear. ‘We’ll make a knight of you yet,’ he used to be fond of saying, after delivering a beating that left Aric black and blue all over, his cousins and brothers having a laugh as he struggled to stand.
It would have been so easy to extract some revenge now.
He could shove Aerin down a hill of gore and leave him to rot here for all eternity. He doubted this Vos person would care.
As the temptation drew closer to reality, the crack of thunder in the sky interrupted his line of thought.
All three of them stopped and looked up. There was a rumble, like that of an approaching thunderstorm. The ground shook beneath their feet, making Aric’s foot slip. He righted his posture at the last moment before falling over, but the ground hadn’t stopped shaking. Indeed, it was worse.
And the sky above blazed with power.
It was like a mix of fire and lighting. It resembled both, but wasn’t quite one or the other. Bolts of liquid energy shot out from a white-hot sphere which appeared and disappeared overhead, flickering in and out, each appearance coinciding with a thunderclap in the sky and a tremor beneath his feet.
Something like this happened earlier, but it was nowhere near this dramatic. Just a flash and a few rumbles. This felt like the end of the world.
Whatever this world was.
Aerin’s eyes grew wide, and he latched onto Aric, clutching his cloak and sleeve, doubled over in fear. When Aric looked down at his him, Aerin met his gaze and he saw naught but undisguised, childlike fear in his elder’s eyes.
Aric had nothing but contempt for this man for as long as he could remember, but this was the first time he felt pity blended with it.
Their guide, meanwhile, frowned up at the display in the red sky.
“He’s broken another seal,” he said. “Our time grows shorter.”
“What do you mean? What’s happening?” asked Aric.
Vos gave him a look that made it plain that he was wondering if it was worth the effort to bother explaining himself to a mere mortal. “We must hurry now. Come.”
Aric nodded and tugged Aerin’s arm to get him to pick up the pace, and he seemed to understand the meaning of the gesture. The two of them made haste to follow Vos, who was leading them down the long slope of a valley.
At the bottom of the valley, far in the distance, Aric thought he saw a building of black stone.
- - - -
Redmane sank into the Abyss.
He had found it calmed him. Eased his mind. All was stillness and silence down here.
At the moment, both were most welcome.
His encounter with the great devourer of old had gone his way. Barely. But it could just as easily have gone the other way. The world of Volos would never know how close it came to another apocalypse this morning.
Of course, the world of Volos was presently amid an apocalypse already. And he was its catalyst.
And the next two Seals might be even more perilous than the last.
Redmane closed his eyes and sat down, folded his legs. He took a long breath in and then out.
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The Abyss had a way of ‘softening’ things. He’d felt it the very first time he had found himself down here. He imagined that if a being spent too much time down here, it would come apart like tissue paper, whether it was mortal or divine. This effect made it easy to notice how much stronger his body was after the Gryphon, how sturdy and resilient it felt in the Abyss, how much more effectively it resisted its effects.
His first dip in the Abyss made him feel like brittle basalt. Later, he felt like granite. Today he was steel.
And speaking of steel, he had weapons to forge.
—
Skills Consumed:
Lion’s Lunge
Gryphon’s Dive
New Skill Learned:
Claws of the Exalted Hunter
Primordial Skill
Rank 1
Active - 25 Gnosis per attack
The Primordial Divinity channels power into its natural weapons, enhancing their destructive potential.
The Divinity leaps at his Prey to deliver a crushing blow which deals extra damage and knockback to a single creature. This attack halves the targeted creature’s armor if the Divinity marked it as Prey. If the Divinity performs the attack while descending upon its target — whether in flight or at the end of a leap or fall — the targeted creature's Evasion is halved as well.
The Divinity may follow the first blow with up to four more consecutive attacks, each with the same enhancement to damage, knockback, and potential armor negation as the first, at a cost of 25 Gnosis per attack. Consecutive attacks may be directed toward the original target or separate targets.
—
Redmane observed the two Skills merging with each other.
The Gryphon’s pattern branched like veins, a natural-looking thing, whereas Lion’s Lunge was all straight lines and angles, clearly man made. But here in the Abyss the two could come together naturally, creating something new.
He held out his hand and formed a new set of claws to befit the new Skill. These were a blend of his own and that of the Manticore, the Sphinx and the Gryphon. Somewhere between the claws of a bear or lion and the talons of a bird of prey. They were dark, curved like daggers, and came to impossibly sharp points.
Redmane examined his handiwork.
And then he turned his hand palm up, and conjured a ball of Golden Flame.
He began adding things to it. First, the Flame Breath of the Rock Warg, Umber. Then the Venom of the Manticore. And then, the power of his own Beast Within.
Out of curiosity, he brought the amalgam of Skills close to the axis of it all, to Devourer, and while the two could not blend the proximity of his central Skill seemed to influence the admixture.
—
Skills Consumed:
Flame Breath
Venom Breath
Golden Flame
The Beast Liberated
New Skill Learned:
Flame of Redmane
Primordial Skill
Rank 1
Active - 100 Gnosis
The Divinity is a keeper of the Flame of Redmane.
The Flame of Redmane burns flammable substances in the same manner as mundane fire. The Divinity may breathe it, hurl it, project it from their eyes, or whichever other way he chooses to wield it.
When wielded as a weapon, it has the following weapon profile:
Damage +50
Evasion Negation 30 (Spread 15)
Might Damage over time (Venom 10)
Grace Damage over time (Venom 10)
Corpus Damage over Time (Burning 10)
Spirit Touch (Godslayer 1)
Vorpal (Godslayer 1)
Soul Sundering
A mere glance can also conjure the Flame of Redmane directly into a creature’s body.
If the targeted creature is an ally, bonded beast or minion, it gains the Divinity’s Qualities, Armor and Evasion, as well as access to the Divinity’s Skills, at the Divinity’s discretion. If the target creature has a Quality higher than that of the Divinity, it receives a +10 to that Quality instead.
If the targeted creature is an enemy, the power of the Divinity burns and tears its body apart from within. The targeted creature erupts into a fountain of blood and gore as claw and bite wounds from an invisible source spontaneously tear its flesh asunder and flames and smoke pour from the open wounds.
The Flame of Redmane provides warmth and light in the same manner as mundane fire, and a creature afflicted with a Condition will find itself cleansed of one stack of said Conditon for every 30 seconds spent in the presence of it. This effect does not distinguish between beneficial and detrimental Conditions, the flame will consume either.
Furthermore, The Flame of Redmane has a warding effect against incorporeal entities such as spirits and ghosts. The flame consumes them as easily as physical kindling.
Any substances consumed by the Flame of Redmane as kindling will nourish the Divinity as if they had been physically eaten.
—
Redmane examined his handiwork.
The flame burned in the palm of his hand. Its core was a blend of violet and deep crimson, and the flames themselves were a blend of the two. Flecks of gold rose from it like embers before dissipating into the nothingness of the Abyss. He could perceive the various strains of Gnosis fueling it, the Skills dissolved and reconstituted into a new whole.
It would burn and weaken and heal and nourish.
He was most intensely interested in that last permutation.
Redmane read the final sentence of the Skill description slowly. A few times over.
His flame was a part of him. It would consume on his behalf.
Immediately, he visualized the camp of the Numantian legion ablaze in the Flame of Redmane. He found it was easy to imagine the scene; soldiers rushing around to put out the fires engulfing their screaming comrades, the command tents and siege weaponry ablaze, the sky tinted red by flame and ash and embers. Redmane wondered what it would feel like to devour the bodies of hundreds or perhaps thousands of soldiers in this way. He wondered if their arms and armor would burn, and if there were of fine quality.
Wouldn’t it be something, for his claws to suddenly gain the concentrated power of thousands of swords.
He knew how to get there. There was an Abyssal Well not far from the city of Taracon.
He could find out right now…
But it would be unwise to show himself before he was fully prepared. Before he broke the last two Seals and could stand before them at full power. Then he could beset them with all manner of gruesome surprises.
The thought put a smile on his face.
To Skyrend Peaks then. To the Seal of the Kirin.
Redmane would test his new weapons on whatever stood in his way.
PATREON
