Blood Shaper

Book 6: Chapter 38

Kay stopped in place as the necromancer began squabbling with herself. Unintelligible screeches mixed with garbled curses poured out of her mouth as different limbs and pieces of her limbs began attacking each other. Her left hand began scratching at her own eyes while her right arm tried to drag it off, but when the right arm suddenly began helping the left hand it turned and attacked the right hand and wrist. She twisted in place as she appeared to actively try and kill herself while also fighting to stay alive. It ranked fairly high on Kay's list of weirdest encounters and he wasn't sure what to do. It screamed "trap" at him, but he also wanted to kill the necromancer and end the threat anyways...

After watching one of her hip bones break through the skin and began stabbing at her stomach Kay decided to test the waters. He slashed out into the air with a sword strike and sent out a faux magical slash with blood. Three of the fingers on one of the necromancer's hands twisted around and fired purplish necromantic attacks to try and intercept the slash while other bits and pieces tried to obstruct the pieces that were defending. The "flying slash" burst into harmless droplets when the attacks hit it. One wrist suddenly snapped around and a beam of magic similar to the one the undead mech had fired lanced out, but the other arm punched the attacking hand and sent the attack off to the side.

Underneath the nonsensical noises coming from her mouth Kay could hear a faltering rant that she spurted out in bits and pieces, about how she would die taking something with her, how it would rue the day it had stolen her body, and how she was so much better than whatever it was she was addressing. As close as he'd gotten Kay could feel the corruption of whatever eldritch taint the necromancer had, and the feeling was lining up with the desperate call for death and the tirade the necromancer was shouting. There was eldritch corruption woven throughout the woman's body, but it wasn't complete. As she fought herself Kay could feel the foulness surge into a limb or a piece of the body that began to fight other parts or suddenly switched sides and when the tide turned or a part changed allegiances again the corruption felt like it had been pushed back. Throughout all of that, the feeling or taste of this brand of eldritch was noticeably different than that of vampyr.

Kay made his decision and started launching real attacks as he approached the necromancer. Patchwork shields appeared around the woman to block a hail of darts, but some failed or were redirected and the salvo hit true in many places. Kay sent tendrils of blood into her body, ripping and tearing as they went. Parts of her internals began to help the attack as the pieces of her that didn't have any eldritch taint in them started working with even higher ferocity. Piece by piece and bit by bit the necromancer's body was torn to shreds, the untainted pieces gladly sacrificing themselves to destroyed the eldritch touched ones.

Sidestepping a wildly fired orb of purple lightning that killed the grass where the bolts randomly struck, Kay stabbed through one of her legs. The blade expanded under his will and shattered the leg bone which severed the limb completely. Without missing a beat the splintered extremity rose up under it's own power and began bludgeoning the rest of the body. Taking that as a signal he sliced off the other three limbs which all joined their comrade in attacking the torso that slumped to the ground. The woman's skin began to twist and grow in unnatural ways as those sections began to fill with corruption but faster than they could mutate under the effects of otherworldly power they began to wither and die as necrosis grew throughout the body. A wave of death and decay consumed the torso from multiple spots that spread and joined each other until they were a single wave of the cessation of life. The blackening spread up to the neck as the necromancer began cackling and calling out about her victory.

"Finally! Finally I'll be free of-" Her milky eyes widened in shock and she cried out, "No! Don't let it get-"

One of her eyes exploded. A flickering string made of colors beyond the human spectrum that Kay could still see twisted in impossible ways as it threw itself at Kay's forehead. He surrounded it with blood and threw up barriers between himself and it, but it flew through them without stopping, as if it didn't really exist or it was on some other level of existence. Completely ignoring everything Kay did to try and capture or destroy it, it touched the skin of his forehead and vanished inside of him.

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The being was old and experienced. It wasn't one of the lesser of it's kind but neither could it call itself one of the greater. Nonetheless, it was well beyond it's first host and it's first world, and the fact that the host it had been stuck in for so long had stymied it so was aggravating beyond measure. The foolish lesser-dimensional being had dared resist it and had somehow remained even as the being had destroyed the inferior life. It had clung on and in doing so had changed itself to be just a fraction closer to the greatness of the being as the being reshaped the body to be closer to it's own perfection.

It had traveled all across the physical space the inhabitants called "the world" searching for power similar to the remnant's, but something about it's host alerted each of them and forced it to fight them to keep it's host functioning. All the while the remnant tried to rid itself of the being in a reversal of how things should be! Every time the being made a plan or fought an enemy, the remnant tried to ruin everything, and it succeeded often. No matter how much the being tried to spread itself through the host to push out or crush every last trace of the remnant, some tiny fragment survived and rebuilt itself into the remnant.

But then it had felt the breaches open across this reality, the holes into other. Some led to realities similar to its own and some even led beyond, a most frightening though. He avoided any trace of beyond as best it could while it tracked down whatever had breached the defenses of this reality. This reality had a guardian that interfered with every moment of existence and anything that could surpass or avoid that guardian could surely assist the being in escaping it's purgatory of being trapped in a single, decaying host.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

It had followed the trail and it had found the partials and scoured that carried a hint of beyond. It had felt the closest thing to fear that it could comprehend as it had approached the most complete of the partials and it looked in ways that were beyond the beings of this existence and say something beyond, as it had feared. It saw Ì̶̢͎̾T̷̨̛̝͊. It learned Ì̶̢͎̾T̷̨̛̝͊ had a use for the being, and told the being that Ì̶̢͎̾T̷̨̛̝͊ would ensure that it was no longer trapped in the horrible host one way or another. It could study I̸͙͆T̷́͜'̷̦͂s̵͕̅ toys while I̸͙͆T̷́͜'̷̦͂s̵͕̅ plan went ahead in exchange for the being's assistance in those plans and if Ì̶̢͎̾T̷̨̛̝͊ succeeded then even that wouldn't matter. The being complied. The was no resisting beyond if anything beyond set it's sight on something less, like the being, so it complied. Plus, the being would benefit no matter what happened. It no longer cared about it's original goals in coming to this reality, it just wanted to leave.

But here, finally, the being was free as it had so long desired! The remnant had destroyed itself with the help of the being's new host, trying to destroy the being. Thus the remnant was unable to harm the being as it fled to the new host! Victory after so long, and achieving victory by spiting the remnant and destroying the victory the remnant thought it had won was so sweet. The being would have to figure out what to do about I̸͙͆T̷́͜'̷̦͂s̵͕̅ plans now that it had a host it could work with but-

The being froze. Why was it thinking about the past and it's own plans? Why was it thinking at all? The being was beyond thinking, it was as far beyond this reality as beyond was to it, so why was it processing existence in the way that-

It turned in ways that beings of this reality could not conceived and screamed with terror in a voice that would never be heard. It was becoming less! It was reducing, becoming something of this reality! How could this be? What was turning it from itself to some shrunken facsimile of it's true existence!?

It turned to run, to flee, because even ceasing to be as the reality outside of a host wore away at it until it dissolved would be a better cessation than becoming less than it had been! It moved in the ways that... But it didn't for it was no longer such a being! It could not experience or move in the manner of those outside of this reality for it had devolved into something of this reality! It was trapped in this horrible form, never again to-

A white blood cell that Kay's immune system sent to destroy whatever foreign body had made it into Kay's blood steam engulfed the being and began to dissolve it. Kay's anti-eldritch blood had already done most of the work and the being was reduced to protoplasmic cell goop in a matter of seconds.

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"What the fuck?" Kay blinked and looked down at his hands as the visions and strange, alien thoughts died out. In killing the thing with his existence he'd somehow seen it's last thoughts, or something? "That was weird."

"No, no!" A strangled scream snapped Kay out of his distraction. "After all this, it get's away!? I won't let it, I won't let it, I won't let-"

"Calm down." Kay snapped at the still moving decapitated head of the woman, which was somehow screaming without lungs. "That thing couldn't take me over if it had a year. It's already dead."

"... What?" The necromancer's head gaped at him. "How is that possible?"

"I'm basically the antithesis of anything from outside of Torotia's reality. I'm basically poison to them."

"... Ha. Hahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Black tears dripping from one eye and one empty socket as the head twisted back and forth in hysterical laughter. "You mean there was a cure, or an inoculation against such things all this time? Oh, how foolish I was..." She trailed off into a whisper.

Kay dropped down into a crouch near her. "I... I don't know how long ago that thing got into you, but I've only been on Torotia a few years, and I've only been like this," he waved a hand up and down his body, "For a little less than that."

"An Outworlder bringing a new thing into out world, eh? Well then, I don't feel as bad. I was still a fool mind you, but I wasn't a fool that missed a precaution I could have taken." She sighed. The head shifted and her one eye snapped down to see the fraction of her neck she was supported by was disintegrating. "Oh thank the ancient bones, I'm actually dying. Being a madwoman trapped in what's left of my skull would have been an upgrade from dealing with that thing, but only a small one." She looked up at Kay and the skull pulled itself into a rictus smile, the bone underneath getting exposed as the skin on her head began to decay into dust. "Thank you young man, for freeing me from that nightmare."

"I'm happy I could help." He replied earnestly.

She closed her one eye and began humming to herself as she faded away. It wasn't a tune that Kay had ever head and her humming was terrible, but it was beautiful in what it represented in that moment. The bottom of her jaw faded away and she dropped down, clattering against the ground and breaking a few of her remaining teeth.

Her eye popped open and looked around wildly. "Wait! Shit I forgot to warn the boy!"

"I'm still here."

"Oh, good. Those vampyr fuckers, they're up to something with some oversized ritual circles! I couldn't listen all the time and most of them are as mad as I've been a few times, but they-"

"We know." Kay interrupted her. "We've been watching them while we amass enough power to deal with it all at once, that's how we knew you were coming."

"Oh. Well, bonus points for me that I got to fight alongside someone powerful and competent in my last moments." Kay heard a sigh that shouldn't have been possible. "Anything else I can help you with before I fade away? I don't have much of anything to give but I won't let it be said that Martha of the Pristine Bones was less than thankful to her savior!"

Kay pondered it for a moment before saying, "I don't know what comes next, but if there is something after and you run into my family, let them know I love them please."

The entire skull had blown away in a light wind that picked up, leaving only a single white coated eye that pointed at Kay. "Oh? A real request. Well, boy, Martha will do her very best!" Her voice faded away as she completed the sentence and the eye began to wilt like a flower without water.

A whisper of a voice floated into Kay's ear. "Oh, dammit, I spent however long that was going mad as some kind of part-lich trapped in my own body without rhyming my sentences, and I end on that? Damn..."

The solemn moment was immediately broken as Kay burst into laughter at the woman's parting words.

After a few minutes he pushed himself to his feet and nodded at the spot where she'd ceased to be. "I didn't get the chance to really meet you, Martha of the Pristine Bones, but I think I would have liked you." He turned around, already making plans for a grave marker that would either go in that spot if Avalon did push it's borders out or somewhere interesting in Avalon when he noticed the ring of collapsed undead around him. He'd been caught up in speaking to Martha and hadn't noticed them. Looking out across the battlefield he saw a sea of unmoving corpses, unable to continue without the necromancer who'd made them providing magic to keep them going. He started moving back toward the wall, mincing up bodies into tiny fragments with large constructs of blood that followed alongside him. There would be no chance they could identify any of these people, and they didn't deserve to be buried as part of the monstrosities the eldritch thing had made while controlling Martha's body. They would be forced to make a mass grave for them all.

Eleniah jogged up to him, her body covered in glittering flakes of gold. "They all stopped when you killed the necromancer," She reported. "We've had some casualties, but nothing terrible."

He turned and looked all around him at the victims of the depravity of eldritch things mucking in other worlds. He remembered the massive twisted blank spot the thing had feared and the plans it supposedly had. "We need to clean this up quickly and get moving. I need to find a fast messenger too, the Crusade and the Order need to get to Avalon yesterday."