Shadowbane

Two sets of footsteps approached me from behind. I tried to turn my head to look at them, but even that was proving difficult in my current state.

"... You alright there, Rei?" Alicia asked.

"I'm alive, but something is terribly wrong. My core feels weird right now, and so do all of my senses. Can you uh, tell me how I look?"

There was a slight pause before she replied, "Well, um, your right leg is gone from around your upper thigh, and your left leg from above your knee as well. Your left arm is gone too, but I really wasn't expecting you to answer because of your head. Except it's you, so I figured I had to make sure you were actually dead... Seriously, how are you not dead?"

"Stop beating around the bush. Is there a big hole in my chest or something? I can just barely see the top of my boobs though and they seem fine..."

Alicia sighed, "The top half of your head is gone. I can't believe you're alive and even talking without a brain. I knew you were different but jeez. All I can see right now is a bunch of black stitching itself together. Watching your head fix itself is not quite how I expected this fight to end, but at least you're alive I suppose."

Oh god, so that's why everything feels so wrong. I only knew it was possible in theory that I'd survive if my head was destroyed because my brain turns off completely all the time. Like when I sleep, or when my core handles everything so my brain can rest. That's a major reason I'm able to stay up for so long. Although even in those situations it never felt like this, so my brain must have still been active on some level. I just didn't know it.

"How long is this going to take?" Benny asked. He didn't sound disturbed in the least which made me chuckle because it reminded me of Godwin.

"It'll take a long time to repair, so you'll have to find Aresa yourselves and just leave me here. I'll hide in the ground and heal up while absorbing those."

It was difficult, but I managed to point at Belfos and Rai'ga's corpses.

"Wait." Benny said before circling around and bending down in front of my face, allowing me to look into his eyes. His nonchalant attitude he always had was now gone and replaced with a rather angry looking face. "I know all about your ability to absorb souls, and I'm not about to tell you not to do that, but absorbing Lord Belfos is out of the question."

"Benny, I've been told multiple times that he's tied to the wellspring, and I'm sure you remember who owns the wellspring right now?"

I heard Alicia say 'Ahh...' as Benny's face blanched. A few seconds later she continued, "Normally Eldritch souls would seek out a Humanoid soul to parasite off of after their death, but if Belfos is tied to the wellspring, that's where he'll return, and he'll immediately be absorbed by whatever Abyssal monster took it from Aresa."

Alicia then mumbled 'Which is something I really need to investigate but that's a matter for another day.'

Benny stood up and walked to somewhere behind me before saying "... Do what you will."

"Thank you, Benny. Now Alicia, carry me over there towards Belfos. And uh, please hurry. Rai'ga's soul shouldn't disappear for another five to ten minutes, but Belfos died much earlier."

A fluffy cloud appeared in front of me that was shaped like a bed or a stretched. The second it appeared Alicia picked me up and tossed me onto it, and it immediately zoomed off toward Belfos.

{Mom doesn't like this, but she understands that it's for the best. Better you absorb him than those freaks who took Telebron and the wellspring from us...}

How long has she known Belfos?

I reached out with my right hand and touched Belfos' foot. Thank god, it's still here. I then began to pull on his soul, forming it into a sphere. But since this was a powerful Eldritch soul, it was going to take time.

{Since she was born. She hasn't said it, but I can tell she's really sad that he'll be gone forever. He's died a few times but was always quickly resurrected by the wellspring, so she never thought a day would come where he'd completely disappear.}

Logically what I'm doing is easy to agree with, but emotionally it probably makes her sick. It needs to be done though. Especially if I'm going to end up at Caedrus.

Eventually a full sphere formed on top of my palm, but it looked nothing like the Eldritch souls I was used to seeing.

Luna, most Eldritch souls I've seen appeared as a dark purple mist, but Belfos' looks like a bunch of grass swirling around. Have you seen this before?

{No, but it's very pretty and fitting for Belfos!}

True, it does fit him.

I put the soul into my mouth but unlike what my core has always done, which is suck the soul down and devour it(although it was delayed a little with the chimera). However, this time it gently lowered it and put it in a pocket of my core I didn't even know existed.

{I-Is it done?}

Uhhh... My core is storing it in a separate space instead of absorbing it, but I'm not sure why?

... I'll figure it out later. I need to grab Rai'ga's soul before it disappears. It could be something simple after all. Like my core understanding I'll be absorbing two powerful souls, so it saved one for later---Oh?

Suddenly I felt something behind and above me, which meant it was on the ground level. And it didn't take me long to figure out what it was because of how familiar its mana was.

"Alicia, get over here!"

"I'm right behind you..."

"Oh. Well anyway, Belfos has a link to Aresa's soul, even through that crystal of Xi's. She's on the ground level back, uh... Shit, hang on."

Luna, are you able to sense her through me?

{Yes! She's still alive, he didn't absorb her!}

Then I need you to do something. Leave me and show Alicia where she is. I obviously can't move right now and it's best if they don't carry me up there right now. There's still Crotia up there since Belfos' units all stopped moving, and I am in no condition to be eating random explosions right now.

{Ah... Okay...}

Hah, don't be so sad. I'll catch up to you guys soon enough. And thanks for helping me up until now little one.

{Of course... See you soon, Rei!}

I felt Luna exit my soul and fly above my body.

"Alicia, she's going to show you were Aresa is. Hopefully Xi is there too. And once you find them, please come back here and dig a hole for me to hide inside."

"Can't we just bring you with us? Putting me aside, Benny has crazy powerful defensive abilities. He was the one reflecting Rai'ga's spells."

Benny cut in, "Protecting against physical attacks is much harder for me. If those are regular explosions they're using and not magical, then I would advise against us taking her. I don't want Aresa blaming me for getting her friend killed."

"It's fine, Alicia. I'll catch up to you later. Don't forget that I have the Chimera's tracking ability that I stole back in Kellog, and I know where the portal to Mother is. So if you guys do journey to Gaia before I wake up, I'll know exactly where you went. Don't worry, finding you won't be difficult at all." I continued, "Oh, and take the two artifact weapons. The scythe I used and the sword Petey was wielding."

It actually might be difficult, but I need to avoid any risk of dying before I absorb Rai'ga's soul. And I'm still not sure why I woke up so damned weak back on Urza, so the less I die the better.

"Alright... If that's what you want, Rei. We'll be back in a few."

The cloud swung around Rai'ga's body, stopping behind one of his massive back feet. Smart girl, if anyone comes down here they shouldn't see me back here.

I reached out and touched Rai'ga's foot, and immediately I felt a surge of rage from it. Hahahaha! So you're powerful enough that you're still sentient even in soul form, huh? Well too bad for you asshole, no one's coming to save you.

I pulled at his soul as it went through one emotion after another; most of them being pure rage or anger. But once his soul formed into a sphere above my palm, all I could feel was resignation. Even the great Rai'ga knew that this was the end of the road for him.

I tossed it into my mouth and this time my core sucked it down and immediately began to absorb it. One other thing happened too though, I began to lose consciousness. It was necessary for the absorption process, but normally I'd be the one to make the decision. Maybe because my body is so broken and at death's door it figured there was no point to me even staying conscious... Oh well, Alicia should bury me underground when she returns. I hope she does anyway.

Soon after that everything went black.

I woke up surrounded by dirt. Perfect, so she did bury me.

I activated the halo and began to cast the basic move earth spell to break up the ground above me. Normally I'd let it brew, but I wanted to test out my new mana pool and poured a ton of mana into it, and the ground began to shake above me in no time at all.

Now that it was soft and I could actually move, I put power into my arms and pushed myself up, feeling a medium amount of weight on my back. She didn't bury me all that deep it seems.

Before long I was standing up holding the dirt above my head as it all crumbled around me, filling up the hole. I tried throwing it above me so I could quickly exit the hole but the dirt ran into something and broke apart even more. But it was all much softer by this point so I just further enhanced my whole body and jumped through it.

I didn't just power through soil and dirt though, I also rammed straight through a set of stairs before landing on an unbroken part of them. Looking around I noticed I was in the room we jumped down before our fight with Rai'ga. She buried me underneath the bottom of the stairs? Not a bad spot, I would've picked a place like that too if I was able to move before passing out. In fact, I think I did hibernate under a set of stairs after I absorbed that Moon-Eldritch back on Urza.

I removed the halo and turned invisible before ascending the stairs and exiting the keep through the long pipe. Outside it was lit-up by Mother, suggesting it was near the end of the day. Belfos' soul is still inside me and my core is infusing it with mana... I'm not sure what to make of this, and I have no one to bounce ideas off of until I find the others.

I decided to check out the fort real quick to see if anyone was here, but all I found was a horde of decayed Crotia corpses and empty carapaces everywhere. The Crotian's guns were also scattered all over the fort, so I picked one up and began to run toward Telebron. Magical guns huh? I can feel my mana flow into it with a little push. This works out in my favor now that my mana pool is ridiculously high.

... Well, they're definitely not in Telebron. I can't even approach the city. The abomination that was crawling out of the underground is now above ground and you can see it from several miles away.

I was still about a mile away and tried walking toward the city again but the feeling of my entire body being irradiated nearly doubled.

Holy shit, I can't even approach the city without taking a constant amount of severe damage. That behemoth is on a completely different level from anything I encountered in the Abyss. While the Caster God and his ilk have been nothing more than slivers of their true forms, it's clear that the being who took Telebron is far from a mere sliver.

I turned around and ran back the way I came until I exited the abomination's aura of radiation. Once I finally escaped it, I circled back and ran around the city this time; giving it a wide berth.

The portal to Mother is west of Telebron. I saw it on a map Kai showed me, so I remember its general location. I can't imagine they went anywhere else. Arcadia would take them in but they'd have to work to eat and be housed. No free rides in that city. And I doubt the citizens of Telebron or Yulia would be able to farm for relics or power cores. So the only option left is trying to reach Gaia. Well, I bet there is people who fled to Viktor's lands as well, but I don't blame them if they did. The stories of how harrowing the trek across Mother is are most likely true, and none of them are pretty.

I ran like that for another week before finding a small abandoned city. It looked mostly intact, but clearly something had hit it at some point and scared everyone off.

I found a diner and went inside. It didn't take me long to find what I was looking for, since there was a map proudly tacked onto the wall with a few pieces of paper tacked onto the bottom of it as well. They explained that this was the way station for Zhegu's portal and anyone stupid enough to go into Mother's portal. Zhegu's was underneath this town, and it showed you how to get there. While Mother's was twenty miles to the north. 'Just go to the sea, you can't miss it unless you're blind'.

With that out of the way, I looked around the diner for food but only found some old chocolate bars under the counter. They didn't taste very good but I was starving so I didn't really care what they tasted like(although I obviously would've preferred they didn't taste old and melted).

After a quick look around town for food(and not finding any) I ran north toward the sea. I ran into a large forest the second I left the city and it was honestly kind of nice. Xelba and my cave back in the Xerathian realm were surrounded by trees. So I had always felt more at home in a forest.

Once I exited the trees near the sea, the words on the paper back in the diner echoed in my head. True, you really would need to be blind to miss this...

The portal was at the end of a long grassy natural bridge into the sea that ended on a medium sized island. And on that island, was only the portal, which was over six hundred meters tall and wide. There was no visual effects in between the stone archways, but everyone would know that this led somewhere ominous. I could feel a strange aura from it all the way back where I exited the tree line.

I removed my invisibility and flicked on the chimera's tracking ability. I immediately got the confirmation I was looking for. Everyone was here walking through the portal, so I knew I was on the right track, and that Xi was thankfully alive.

After turning invisible again, I walked through the portal. Unlike normal portal entries, where you would instantly appear somewhere else, this one instead turned you into something ethereal and made you watch as you traveled to Mother. I was moving at an insane speed, as I had exited Aetheria's atmosphere in seconds. It was shocking at first, but once I realized what was happening, I found the whole experience to be mesmerizing.

I could see all of the moons and planets on this side of Mother as I traveled through space. One of the moons was completely covered in dark clouds, and thanks to that it wasn't hard to figure out which moon it was. Urza is pretty close to Aetheria... I never knew which planet Aetheria was when I used to stargaze in Xelba.

The closer I moved toward Mother the more I tried to memorize the geography of the area it seemed to be sending me to, while also mapping out a route to Gaia; the yellow beam of light going through Mother far in the distance. We have a long fucking way to go if this is where the portal dropped everyone off.

Soon after that I flew through the atmosphere and got a quick glance at the world around me before landing between another stone archway and regaining my physical body.

... I really hope they didn't go right from here. After I exited the clouds I saw a black forest filled with miasma and hundreds of tentacle eyes looking up at me. I'd really prefer to avoid that place.

The area I came out on was a simple clearing surrounded by trees in all directions. The clearing was about the same size as the island back on Aetheria.

After a quick glance around to confirm nothing was here, I switched to the chimera ability while maxing its range. Alicia and the others could be seen heading straight from where I was, and after enhancing my eyes I could see a small road leading through the trees in that direction.

Once I was invisible again I began to run straight for the road. And when I arrived I found the road really was quite simple but well maintained, which meant that someone tended to this area, or it was just a 'feature' of Mother.

I ran and ran for what felt like days, swapping back to the chimera ability every now and then to make sure they didn't turn off into the forest somewhere for whatever fucking reason. But fortunately they didn't aside from the times they setup camp in a couple of small clearings.

How long was I asleep?! They're walking and I still haven't caught up to them. After absorbing Rai'ga I'm not only faster than I was before but I was able to sprint at far higher speeds while ignoring the mana load. And despite this, I'm still not caught up to everyone. I must've been out for weeks, or maybe even months... And I'm so hungry damnit. Thinking back on it now, I've always been fed by others. Even that cave I lived in as a child had a bunch of delicious fruit in it. Although it only grew in that cave, weirdly enough.

I finally hit a point where I realized I was pushing myself and decided to stop to rest. I had been running for weeks at this point without sleeping, and the last thing I wanted was to get caught out by a powerful Eldritch while my body was in a weakened condition.

Speaking of which; forget Eldritch, I haven't seen anything so far. Just wildlife and nothing else. This isn't quite the 'horrific experience' I was promised when I heard about Mother. Although if someone went right from the portal they undoubtedly would've experienced something beyond horrific. So there definitely are monsters here, it's just a matter of avoiding them I guess. Mother is massive after all. Aetheria looked like it was barely one-thousandth the size of Mother.

I punched out a hole in the ground and covered it with camouflaged mesh before turning myself off.

It took another two days before I finally exited the forest into a massive open plain that reminded me of Termia. The only difference being that there wasn't a bunch of Xerathian plants littering the landscape.

After a quick check I confirmed that everyone kept moving forward, and with that out of the way I activated my halo and destroyed the deer-like creature that was eying my curiously. Sorry little buddy, I'm fucking hungry!

I ran back to the trees and collected a bunch of twigs and wood before bringing it back and starting a fire with the basic fire spell I had. I wasn't sure of what was edible on the deer so I just took a bunch of non-organ meat and stuck them through a spear I made with my blood. After holding it over the fire for a while I slowly ate the meat, and it was definitely not delicious. Not even a little. Especially since I forgot to drain the blood. But whatever constitution I had was more than happy just having sustenance in it, so this was good enough for now.

After I was done eating I began to run toward the 'north' again. Please find them soon. I don't want to eat something like that again.

It was three days later I finally came upon something 'horrific'. There were dead orange tentacles everywhere. They had clearly been cut off, but the owner of the tentacles was nowhere to be found. That is, until I saw one shoot out of the forest a mile to the west of me and stab a large herbivore creature. The second it pierced the creature, it pulled it back to the forest at lightning speed.

... Not good. If they were hit by that thing then I can only imagine how many people were taken before they escaped its range It's obviously still alive so they didn't try killing it, which was the correct choice, but that means it was attacking them the entire time they attempted to flee.

I ran north again, passing by a few hundred dead tentacles before they finally stopped littering the ground. Now that I was past the danger zone, I ran for another five minutes before swapping to my chimera ability and confirming that everyone survived. My allies did anyway. The civilians probably died in droves.

Finally, five days later, I came upon the mountain I remember from my internal map I made before landing on Mother.

I'm not surprised that they went into here. The only other way is to go around it, and the path to the east is just as long as the route it took for me to get here. After they were attacked by that tentacled monster, I'm sure they wanted to take the shortest route possible. Which means going through this mountain.

I jogged into the cavern(that was about two hundred meters tall and wide), keeping my eyes on the surrounding while trying to maintain a decent pace. There was glowing moss here and there that allowed me to see my surroundings, but it was nowhere near enough luminosity for the average person.

One after another I ran into paths that broke off, and every time I was eternally grateful for the chimera's tracking ability. I would have never found them without it...

A few hours into the trek I came upon a large door with a bunch of carvings on it and multiple torches lit-up outside of it, which was the first source of lighting I had seen up until now. Aside from the moss that anyway. I can't read whatever the hell is written on this thing, so time to just walk into it and hope for the best.

I reached out and pulled on the lever next to the door. It didn't take long for the door to open after that as it slid into the base of the mountain. But what I saw was a shimmering blue wall that looked like water being hit by droplets of rain. I can't see past this fake water, but the others walked through here so I don't have much of a choice here.

After a quick break to prepare myself for whatever might be waiting for me on the other end, I walked through the 'water' and immediately found myself in another cavern. However, this time I wasn't alone. I could see my allies on the right side of the cavern, but there was also a ridiculous amount of other Humanoid creatures in the cavern as well.

There was a couple of people who clearly belonged to a water species talking to a Tengu Lord. And around the Tengu's side of the cavern there was thousands of people with black or white wings, but not like the ones Nei'lah's have. Nei'lah wings are thin and kind of evil looking, but these people had thick luscious wings. Actually, they look exactly like that Tengu Lord's wings...

And not only that, but I spotted some familiar faces among the Tengu's people. Godwin's kids were huddled around a horde of other people cheering on a fight between Godwin and another man. His whole family, including him, now had those very same Tengu wings sprouting out of their backs.