A writhing, screeching mass crossed the debris. The very earth trembled beneath it. Purple grass wilted where it passed. Fallen buildings groaned under its weight. The liquid dark shadow that had been a former monstrosity had been reduced to nothing. Its form crawled across the debris in search of anything to feed on. Bright, succulent, revitalizing fate essence to suck on. To fuel its receding form.
It crawled like a river. Like a snake searching for prey. Desperate. Dying.
It sensed something beneath the ground.
Debris scattered, pushed aside by invisible tendrils. Revealing a head.
A decapitated head. Severed from a larger body.
A twisted body lying face down, as if someone had dug them up from a grave.
Orange hair scattered, tangled around a face. The face was rotting, bruised, resting ungracefully in the dirt. The skin was pale, drained of color. The eyes were open but empty. Staring at nothing.
The shadow lunged at it with desperate movements. Tendrils reached forward, wrapping around the corpse.
It went to the thing that seemed the most potent. The mage.
The Unfaithful swallowed the remainder of the ginger-headed mage. Swallowed the body whole. Swallowed everything. Briefly feeling the flow of the dwindling fate essence from the corpse. It tasted sweet. It tasted powerful. It tasted like salvation.
But something went wrong.
It could not fully absorb the body. This individual. This decayed corpse. Even at its death, this person had a vast reservoir of fate essence. Even if their thread was cut. Even if they were dead and rotting.
The shadow convulsed. Writhed. Tried to reject the body but could not. Tried to absorb it but failed.
***
[MARY'S POV]
Memories play themselves before me as I die. Am I not already dead? I recall the pleasant moments in the academy with my study group. Their faces are obscured. Blurred at the edges. I do not know why, but is this the phenomenon scholars refer to as the final recollection before cessation of consciousness?
If so, I must... I must...
Pain knocks at my head like a battering ram against fragile glass.
Focus. I must focus.
I attempt to open my eyes. Everything hurts. My body aches with a thoroughness that suggests systemic trauma. My head throbs with rhythmic intensity. How am I alive? The question presents itself with scholarly detachment.
I find my hand. Push off the floor. I try to rise to my feet. Everything feels wrong. The air is hot with swelling heat. My body will not obey my commands, as if I have been asleep on a rocky surface for an indeterminate period.
I look down at my body to assess my current state. I remember being injured. My left arm has this pulsing purple hue. I can see veins throbbing beneath the surface, as the skin appears translucent. Fascinating. My other arm appears normal by comparison.
I look down at the gaping hole in my robe toward my abdomen. The skin there is pristine. Fair. Unblemished. But below, my legs are entirely deformed. They resemble the exterior chitin plating of an Unfaithful specimen. The texture is rough, segmented, alien.
Most intriguing.
I stagger forward, clutching my left hand. It is not in pain, but it does not feel right to leave it unattended. I look to my side.
My side.
A sickening feeling takes hold of me as I observe my... friends? No. My mouth says the word, but the meaning escapes me.
Name?
I do not remember their names. I look up, jerking my head back, twisting as if something is fighting my very body for control. A secondary consciousness perhaps. How utterly remarkable.
I laugh. "Ahahaha... ahaha." A crooked laugh that sounds wrong even to my own ears.
After everything I have accomplished, after my extensive research into fate conjuring and theoretical applications of essence manipulation, I have been reduced to something like this. Is this some twisted joke in an afterlife? The irony is not lost on me.
I try to recall my memories with greater precision. I remember that I faced a C Rank Unfaithful. I remember... I remember...
"AHH!"
I scream as many fragments of memories crash into my head simultaneously. The memories of a noble. The memories of a princess. The memories of a teacher. None of them are mine, yet all of them are mine now.
Ah, I remember now. How could I forget?
Lucid. That dumb, quiet, selfless individual who saved me. Who studied with me. Who did not hesitate to intervene when that golem threatened my life. The one who protected me from those who made my existence at the academy considerably more difficult. A gentle soul. A kind soul. A mysterious soul whose very mastery my scholarly side yearns to decipher, to catalogue, to understand completely.
But beyond that, I remember so much more. The very dawn of the scattered realms. As if I am connected to a vast network of knowledge, a living database of experiences spanning centuries.
Oh, how it hurts. Oh, it is sickening. Oh, how terribly overwhelming.
But yet.
Beautiful.
I can feel, hear, remember every moment of every Unfaithful that has ever crossed their feet upon the soil of the scattered realms. Even now, I can feel my brethren getting slaughtered across the realm. Their deaths register like data points in my consciousness.
My, how it feels. It feels so ethereal. So complete.
He needs to feel this.
Who?
Yes, that is correct. Lucid.
I need to bring him into this vast tapestry of knowledge. This interconnected web of consciousness spanning all Unfaithful existence. I need to share my scholarly findings with him. We could collaborate. We could research together. We could unlock the fundamental mysteries of fate essence and its relationship to consciousness itself.
I clutch my stomach as if I am hungry. The sensation is primal. Base. Unscholarly. I sink to my knees.
I need to consume him.
I need to bring his consciousness into my body. To merge our knowledge bases. To create a perfect synthesis of human intellect and Unfaithful perception.
He will understand. Once he experiences it, he will comprehend the beauty of what I have become.
We could spend an eternity together. Sharing knowledge. Conducting experiments. Observing the flow of fate essence through living specimens.
I giggle to myself. The sound echoes wrong. Too many voices layered together. I am laughing maniacally, and I am aware of this fact, yet I cannot stop.
I make my way toward the large carcass. The corpse of my fallen... comrade? Friend? The terminology escapes me. It normally should make me feel something. Grief, perhaps. Sorrow. But it does not. I thirst for flesh. For the fate essence contained within. For the knowledge stored in neural pathways that I can extract and catalogue.
I feast. Diving my teeth into the back of the corpse. The taste is copper and salt and something sweeter. Fate essence flows into me, and with it, memories. Not mine. Someone else's. I catalogue them methodically even as I tear flesh from bone.
This one was called... the name dissolves before I can grasp it. No matter. The knowledge remains.
I stand, wiping blood from my mouth with my translucent purple arm. I observe the motion with scholarly detachment. How fascinating that this appendage responds to neural commands despite its altered composition.
I look around the burning archives. Debris everywhere. Bodies. Some still moving. Some not.
***
A figure emerged from the shadows. Black suit immaculate despite the destruction. Hair slicked back. Face pale and composed. He looked at her with an expression that shifted from curiosity to bewilderment in a single breath.
He muttered a single word. "Abomination."
Mary clutched her cheek with a blood-stained hand. She tilted her head, considering the designation. "Yes. That is correct. Abomination is the proper terminology to describe my current state." She laughed, the sound maniacal, echoing with multiple voices. "How scholarly of you to identify the correct classification."
The man in black stepped closer, unbothered by the carnage around them. His eyes studied her with the detached interest of a researcher examining a rare specimen.
"My name is Silas," he said, his voice formal and measured. "You are a beautiful specimen. A perfect synthesis of Unfaithful and human consciousness. The first successful hybrid I have encountered in decades of research."
He put his hand forward, palm up. An offering. A proposal.
"Join me. Join us. The Chapeau has been working toward this very goal for generations. You are the breakthrough we have been searching for."
Mary's head tilted the other direction. Bones cracked audibly. "But what do I have to gain from such an arrangement? I require concrete benefits to justify collaboration."
Silas grinned, a twisted smile that did not reach his eyes. "Lucid's flesh. His consciousness. His unique properties. We can deliver him to you. Alive. Intact. Ready for consumption and integration."
She grinned, a smile far too wide for her face. "Is that so?"
She took his hand. A firm grip. Scholarly handshake to seal their agreement.
Then she broke his wrist. Snapped it cleanly. Bones splintering beneath her translucent purple fingers.
Silas yelled in pain, dropping to one knee. Blood dribbled down from the shattered joint, staining his immaculate suit.
"My, how disappointing," Mary said, her voice maintaining that scholarly detachment even as she held his broken wrist. "Your pain tolerance is remarkably low for someone engaged in such ambitious research."
Silas looked up at her. Still smiling despite the agony. His other hand moved in a gesture, fingers tracing symbols in the air.
A dark ring enveloped them both. Dark liquid rose from the ground like water flowing upward, defying gravity. It wrapped around their legs, their torsos, climbing higher.
"Very well," Mary said, observing the phenomenon with academic interest. "You shall be my temporary research assistant. I have many hypotheses to test. Many experiments to conduct. You will serve adequately for preliminary trials."
"With pleasure," Silas said through gritted teeth, blood still flowing from his wrist.
The dark liquid consumed them both. Pulled them down into shadow. Into the soulscape. Into whatever domain Silas had prepared.
They disappeared, leaving only ripples in the air where they had stood.
The clearing fell silent again. Only the crackle of flames. The groan of settling debris. The whisper of wind through broken shelves.
Then, movement.
A figure with twisted limbs rose from beneath a pile of rubble. Debris scattered as they pushed themselves up with trembling arms. They held their side, fingers pressed against a wound that still bled freely.
Brown hair matted with blood and dirt. Hazel eyes unfocused, struggling to see through the smoke and pain.
The figure looked down at the ground beside them. At a massacred body. Torn apart. Barely recognizable as human.
The figure muttered a single word, voice breaking. "Brian."
A tear traced down their chin, cutting a clean line through the grime and blood.
It was Garfield. His playful demeanor was gone. The cocky confidence erased. What remained was a bloody, beaten, broken form that contrasted sharply with the vibrant person he had been mere hours ago.
But he was alive.
Somehow, impossibly, he was alive.
He limped forward, each step agony. His legs barely supported his weight. His vision swam. But he moved anyway, driven by something deeper than pain.
He looked back once. At Brian's body. At the place where Mary had disappeared. At the burning archives that had become a tomb for so many. He limped close to the corpse.
"I am sorry," he whispered. "I am so sorry."
He whispered broken sobs over Brian's last remains as he cried.
Then suddenly he looked up.
His body broke of to white golden motes.
***
Enlightened Title: The Divine Maiden
Name: Alice
Rank: Primordial
Fate Essence: ∞
Trait: [The Chain of Heart] [The Pierced Spine] [The Silenced Throat] █████▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒
Description: Lost in time and space... Error... Error... This message cannot be revealed further.
***
***
Performance: Unremarkable.
Vanquished foe: 15+.
Duration: Unknown.
Reward: 9 354 Fate Essence.
Ascension: Error. Cannot awaken nor ascend.
May your journey lead you toward enlightenment.
***