Chapter 216
<strong>Chapter 216</strong>
Crimson threads tore out from the treasure and into Riven’s soul, but he didn’t scream - nor did he feel pain. The threads were soothing, caressing his damaged core and the obliterated Blood Subpir that’d been reduced to fragments.
He watched as they intertwined with each of them, collecting them up and pulling the shards together - only to frown in confusion when other, pitch ck threads flew forward from his fragmented shadow pir and intertwined. He felt his Path of ck and Red radiate and synergize between the two pirs after that, a shudder going through his body and mind, harmonizing and…
And stitching the two pirs together?
Riven’s eyes widened, and his hand instinctively tightened around Ath’s while his mind’s eye focused on his internal soul. Something like this had happened before when his blood and shadow subpirs had connected to one another - but only this time it was far more than just connecting.
They were locking themselves together with crystalized bridges, one after the other. They were extending. They were bing far, farrger than they’d been before - like a mixed tapestry painted between the two monoliths of ck and red.
The two colors swirled and meshed, the fragmentsing together to create something entirely new - aided by the power of the dao treasure he and Ath were holding in unison. His Blood Subpir then began to grow, and then grow even more. It expanded upwards off the base at the soul core it was attached to, surging forward until it slowed down and stopped at nearly twice the size of the previous one he’d had as shards continued to m into it; filling the cracks and crevices with more and more pieces of its old shattered remnants.
But then the swirling shards of his two meshing pirs all simultaneously twitched, and the fusion between ck and red stopped right as his orbiting Sin Core - an ominous ck and deep purple orb - came to rest directly over the erged Blood Subpir and its subserviently bonded Shadow Subpir.
“Riven…….”The voice echoed in his mind as a sea of whispers, causing him to tense and shudder when a cold dread overcame him. A demonic, deepugh of glee followed, and the voice continued to whisper into his ear.
“Ah… You can finally understand me… Can’t you?”
The sin core pulsed, he felt his body tear at the seams when the voice called to him, and Riven’s senses tingled when a maw opened up in the ck and deep purple sphere. Rows of teeth let out a low hiss, and it was from here that he realized the voice wasing.
He hesitantly nodded, not sure if he was saying the words aloud - or if he was just thinking them. “I can. Hello, Gluttony… I’m surprised you’re showing yourself in person to a little peon like me. To what do I owe the honor?”
The maw’sughter roared to life, and Riven felt blood begin trickling from his closed eyes, nose, ears and mouth. Riven vaguely heard shocked yelps and cursing, but he held up a hand to let the others know he was alright - though his body certainly took a toll just by talking to the entity. And it wasn’t just a piece of the entity either - oh no, this was the brain, the main aspect, the collective consciousness. This was far different.
“What are you doing in my soul?” Riven asked, growing more curious than anything else. He sensed no malice from the sin, and he doubted there’d be any anyways considering how it’d saved his life when Elysium’s tribtion had tried to kill him. “Just sightseeing, perhaps?”
“Testing the waters is all…” The sin replied with a hiss, the soul aperture around him shuddering with every word. “Repairing and preparing you for what is toe… and it wille sooner than you think. I came to say hello, so that you are not terrified of the bond when it solidifies in uing weeks.”
At this, Riven’s eyebrows raised. “Bond?”
Gluttony’s mouth widened, and slowly - it began to reveal a maze of tendrilsing out of the pit of its throat. They were dark, pulsing with deep purple and ck energies that connected and pulled at the rotating shards that hadn’t already been sunk into the pirs Riven had somewhat restored. The tendrils then shed away, and were gone before Riven even knew what to make of them.
“It has already begun…” Gluttony said in satisfaction. “Your soul, my soul, and the symbiotic rtionship that has helped you already not just once - but twice.”
Riven belched blood just from being in the presence of the great sin, and his vampiric regeneration kicked into high gear fighting off the cracks and crevices of sin energy leaking out of his skin now. He could hear the worries in the others’ voices, but they were a distant call - and he yet again held up a hand to stop them from interfering with the process. He needed to know what Gluttony wanted with him. “Symbiosis entails a mutually beneficial rtionship. I hope you’re not using this in lue of being a parasite.”
“I am certainly not…” the sin retorted gleefully, shifting its many teeth along the sin core catingly. “The alternative is impossible despite my wishes. I truly do wish to coexist… but you must let me in for the bond to fully connect. Otherwise talking to you as a mortal will forever cause a violent reaction such as the one you are experiencing now. As a harbinger of my blood, it is the greatest honor one can be given. The others… my worshipers… even the other holders of my shards… they don’t understand what it is I truly am. Or what it is I desire. Nor do you… but, that isn’t important now. What is important, is that I can help - as I have already begun to do. May I pose a question?”
Riven snorted augh, even despite numerous arteries bursting when he did. “Sure. go ahead.”
Gluttony paused. “Did you not find it odd that your Harbinger of Gluttony ss, and your Harbinger Soul Clone, manifested itself as my visage - rather than your own?”
Riven’s eyes narrowed at this. He’d been considering this exact thing for a while now. Even back in Daskus when he’d been able to somehow summon Gluttony’s maw in the sky as he destroyed the city in a wrath unlike anything he’d ever experienced before - and that was before he’d even acquired the soul clone on his status page. Then, very recently, he’d called Gluttony’s visage from the sky - and then the earth underneath him, to battle against Elysium’s will when it tried to strike him down for using Malignant Prophecy one too many times.
He pulled up an old notification to re-read it in his mind’s eye.
<strong>[Harbinger of Gluttony, Sin ss, Secondary ss, has finally finished its construction. Harbinger Soul Clone is now finished. +2 Sturdiness, +9 Free Points per level will now be distributed with each level up.]</strong><ul><li><strong>Harbinger of Gluttony (Sin ss Title) - The Harbinger of Gluttony is the most basic sin ss specific to the original sin of Gluttony and creates a superimposed wraith-like Soul Clone, a symbiote created from sin inside your body, allowing it to strike out at close distances to any nearby enemy. +2 sturdiness, +9 Free Points per level.</strong></li></ul>
The suspicion had been there… but… he didn’t know what to think.
“You’ve been nning the transition for a while now. Haven’t you?” Riven asked cautiously. “Summoning your visage isn’t normal for a harbinger. Is it? The description of my soul clone states it should be a superimposed image of myself. Instead, I got you. I had you even before I knew what a soul clone was.”
The sinughed. “Envy may be the schemer of us sins, but that doesn’t mean I can’t concoct ns of my own. You are a unique vessel with an even more unique situation after your soul was shattered, and we sins that spawned the first of demonkind - just like themandments that the angels hail from - cannot manifest into a true life without a symbiosis unless all shards have been collected from our shattered bodies.”
Riven grimaced.
“That brings up a lot of questions. Can you tell me what exactly themandments are? Did you have an actual body of your own in the past other than the great maw I usually see? Why me? And just what is it that you desire, if it isn’t to simply consume everything as I’d assumed?”
The maw seemed to smile, and the ocean of whispers endured. “Those are questions that can all be answered in time… but you must ept my bond to find out. When the timees, it will appear as a contract much like those of your demonic familiars… ept it, and I will be reborn.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any urrences.
“Reborn? How?”
This time, it was the sin that hesitated. “Let us just say that I wish to experience life once more… not this… evesting prison, I find myself in. I wish to be free of the memories that chain me here. Meanwhile you desire power, power that I can help acquire. ept the contract and find out. The time ising rather quickly now… The terms will be in your favor. I’m excited to see what you’ll do.”
The visage of the maw on his sin core vanished, and a torrent of ck, red, and deep purple energy exploded to life with searing agony apanying it.
Riven didn’t physically blink, but it certainly felt that way when he found himself standing beside Ath on a vast ocean of red. The blood moon was half buried on the horizon, epassing nearly 40% of the sky above with a single figure outlined in ck against the red backdrop - floating there nearly fifty feet above the ocean his feet rested on.
Ripples of liquid radiated from his position when he turned to look at Ath, but the demoness was in a trance of her own - somewhere far beyond her current state while lights shed in her eyes and her mouth twitched. “Ath?”
Abruptly the area around him shifted again, and he found himself floating beside the figure in ck - red eyes gleaming underneath a dark hood as orbs of blood hovered around him to match the crimsonndscape and the bright red moon behind them both. An aura bloomed from the figure before Riven as if the very skies around them were bending to the hooded man’s will, and he gently lifted a hand to show the artifact Riven and Ath had used.
It was the Tear of the Blood God.
Riven’s eyes narrowed but he found himself unable to talk anymore, just as the hooded man shattered the crystalized tear with a chuckle, and the oceans around him tore apart and soared into the heavens like a reverse avnche. A sea of skeletal bodies were revealed under the depths of the ocean when the blood finally cleared after hundreds of billions of gallons of the crimson fluid covered the sky to blot out the stars.
Wait… Riven had been here before. He’d seen visions of this ce before, hadn’t he?
“Blood, shadow, and death. These are the three pirs the vampires were created from.” The hooded figure said, turning his red gaze and forcing Riven’s own with it towards the piles upon piles of dead far below them. You have taken the first step by converging the paths of shadow and blood, but youck the trio in its entirety. Descendant, you show promise… otherwise Gluttony would not involve itself so directly in you. But you need to broaden your horizons now and before you hit the E-grade, or you will fall short of what you could otherwise be. Death is a sisterponent to blood in more ways than one. Why do you neglect it?”
Riven’s eyes were allowed to drift upwards into the dark hood that outlined the mysterious man in front of him, but he felt his jaw remain locked. Riven assumed it was a rhetorical question when the man in the vision turned his gaze back upon the mountains of bones underneath them, and then he held out one hand - summoning a humanoid skeleton from the depths to hover in front of them like a rag doll.
The unknown man stared Riven down for a long, long time after that. Longer than Riven wasfortable with, until a single red finger rose out of the ck cloak flowing around him - and touched Riven on the forehead. “Descendant, I bestow upon you insight.”
Red cracks shed across Riven’s forehead where the man’s red finger was suddenly digging into his skull, and Riven screamed in agony as images shed through his mind at the speed of light. A field of battle on a distant roared to the forefront, where men skewered one another with de and spear. Their bodies leaked lifeblood onto the soil in oceans of red, and their corpses dropped to the ground in death by the thousands. He experienced one by one the sensation each of them suffered, the sensation of dying, of losing life that their blood had kept intact. He experienced the darkness, the shadow, that overcame their spirits as they transitioned into the afterlife.
Then he experienced a reversal of that cycle, never allowing the cycle into true death to bepleted. Shadow turned to a pale imitation of light, and crimson fluid washed through rotted corpses as necromancers summoned the decaying souls of the dead back into their bodies. They weren’t the same as they’d once been, but pieces and fragments of these souls came together to form new beings - once again embracing undeath as a new form of life. The crimson liquid that’d saturated the ground rose up and embraced these new, unholy abominations, and three symbols began to sh in Riven’s mind over and over again on repeat.
The symbol of a scythe, a symbol of a red teardrop, and the symbol of a ck sun.
They shed over and over again, reying without stopping faster and faster - oveying on the images of the battle, the necromancers, the forward and reversed cycles that continued to m themselves into his consciousness. He saw them rise up and roar to the sky above, saw their bodies begin to flicker with red mana, and then saw the blood moon sh before his eyes one final time.
He let out an internal scream, his soul core erupting and shattering on one end where a new subpir tore into the soul aperture with a frenzy. Neon teal flecked with ck illuminated the spot between and to the side of his Blood Subpir and Shadow Subpir, beginning to form bridging connections to these other two pirs when their shards began swirling to repair themselves yet again. The three were slowly beginning to be one.
Only for the symbol of the great maw topletely press itself against his dao vision and overtake his mind entirely. All other visions faded, with the teeth of Gluttony snapping down on them and obliterating them from his mind.
<strong>[Your Blood Subpir has been repaired and has grown significantly. Your Shadow Subpir has been partially repaired. Your soul core remains cracked and in ruins, and your sin core is beginning to fuse with your soul core in its damaged state. You are now oriented towards the Death Subpir.]</strong>
<strong>[New Spell Learned: </strong><strong>Legionaries of the Blood God (Death / Blood)(Tier 2)</strong><strong>: This is a temporary summoning spell that does not require minion slots. You may summon 8 Elite-ss Bloodstricken Undead from the Blood God’s realm, equal inbat level to your own, and may designate whether or not you wish to summon Blood Knights, Blood Sorcerers, Blood Assassins, or abination of the three when you do so. Undead are non-sentient andst for 5 minutes before disappearing. 1 day cooldown time. Very high mana cost.]</strong>
<strong>[Gluttony has incorporated all the following ability properties from Jackal and Messenger as Sin abilities that you can cast regardless of wearing these items or not: Devour, Identifier’s use, Beastform.]</strong>
<strong>[ck Lightning (Shadow) has finished manifesting and can now be cast at will.]</strong>
<strong>[Your bond with Ath grows stronger. Mind Link has been established between yourself and this minion, allowing for telepathicmunication.]</strong>
***
Riven slowly opened his eyes, realizing he was covered in his own blood that’d seeped from all the holes on his head. It stained the ground underneath him as he sat cross-legged, and he took in a deep breath. Fay was staring wide-eyed at him while Athy crumpled in a heap on Fay’sp, where Azmoth was still holding Riven up in a sitting position to the side of his master.
Starlight twinkled up above, and the sounds ofughter filled the air while the rest of the camp went on about their lives as if nothing had ever happened.
“I can feel it. Your mana… part of it at least, is back.” Fay said with a hesitant smile. “Am I right? And don’t worry about Ath, she’s just tired from the insights she got. Said she made a lot of progress and learned two new abilities!”
“Ah, I was about to ask. Good to know, and yes - I was able to use the treasure to repair part of my soul after all. Just like I’d guessed, but in a rather roundabout and unexpected way.” Riven smiled back at her, a warm andforting one. His body was still very weak, and his soul wasn’tpletely repaired by any means, but it was certainly stronger. And just like Fay had said: he could now summon magic to him again.
A storm razor bloomed over his right palm when he held out his hand: the bloody, pronged, circr de of magic shifting over his hand in the colors of ck and red. It rapidly transitioned to a storm ball at a thought, the more explosive and less piercing variant of the magical attack, before it vanished entirely. ck lightning sparked along his fingers, dancing around it at a whim, before using his ‘devour’ ability on a nearby wildflower without much thought. A maw grew along Riven’s outstretched palm and a cord of dark tendrils ripped the flower up, pulling it into the jaws that snapped shut and receded immediately.
ncing over at Jackal, who’d taken its canine form, Riven imitated the creature by abruptly shifting his own body into a flickering ck jackal too -plete with red eyes to imitate the weapon’s secondary body as an absolute copy.
The two dogs just stared at each other while Azmoth grunted in excitement and Fay gasped, though other than for subterfuge purposes Riven couldn’t really see a reason to use the ability quite yet.
He shifted back into his vampire form without having lost any of the items he was wearing. “Neat, but not sure how it’ll be used in the future. Wana see myst new spell?”
Fay raised an eyebrow in amusement. “You have more?”
“Indeed!” Riven chuckled, then used thest spell he’d acquired from his dao vision of the mountains of skeletons underneath a bloody sea - and the three sigils. “I have some theories about the dao treasure we just used, and I don’t think it was necessarily for a dao insight itself. And it turns out that the Shadow and Death Subpirs are rted to Blood in a lot more intricate ways than I’d expected. The experience was veryplicated… Anyways let’s take a look, shall we?”
Shifting his focus to the river’s edge, he activated his temporary summoning spell.
Eight shes of light illuminated the small beach, and eight hooded skulls etched with crimson runes on their foreheads stared with equally crimson orbs for eyes in their skull sockets. Four were heavily armored with red ymores and thick red te mail. Two held thin, wicked daggers dripping blood mana in each hand and were strapped in red leathers, while thest two wore crimson robes and held staves with ruby orbs that flickered blood mana in the same way his own arms did when he summoned bloodnce.
Each of their status reads was that of an elite, with gold lettering outlining their titles.
<strong>[Summoned Blood Knight, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]</strong>
<strong>[Summoned Blood Knight, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]</strong>
<strong>[Summoned Blood Knight, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]</strong>
<strong>[Summoned Blood Knight, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]</strong>
<strong>[Summoned Blood Sorcerer, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]</strong>
<strong>[Summoned Blood Sorcerer, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]</strong>
<strong>[Summoned Blood Assassin, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]</strong>
<strong>[Summoned Blood Assassin, Bloodstricken Undead, Level 133. ELITE.]</strong>