บท 19: Perfect Body

Things forgotten are not lost forever, though it often seems like it. Even with that primordial anger that he found foreign and even with the veil around his remaining memories.

It was as if time had stopped.

Goleil tried moving, but it was like he was bound by rope. Everything was still and silent. He could feel the hatred in his gut subsiding. The Krodians and Adal he'd just been fighting disappeared, and the Redvale City Guards took their place. He saw the dent his boot had left in Gwen's breastplate, the fear in her eyes.

'What just happened? One moment I was being taunted. The next, it was like I was back at Gruumsh's Gate fighting for my life!'

Then he heard it, a deep and guttural sound. He felt a chill down his spine and instinctively tried to jump back to getaway. But he couldn't move. It steadily rose in volume as if from the depths of the Netherworld, and he realized what the sound was.

Laughter.

It echoed all off the walls and reverberated in his mind, and he realized that it was. He wasn't hearing anything, with his ears at least.

The laughter stopped abruptly, and he heard a sigh.

"It seems that the fun stops here, unfortunately. I thought I could get you to kill at least half of them before you came to your senses, but here you are. Such a pity!" A voice reverberated in his mind, its echoes like knives stabbing into his mind.

"What is going on?! Did you do this to me?!"

The voice chuckled. "Of course, this was my doing. What did you expect would happen if you drank an Eldritch's blood, Godling?

"Godling? And you mean locraf? What are you talking about?! The people here have all drank locraf to strengthen themselves, and I've yet to see any of them have rage-induced meltdowns or even speak of side effects!"

"Of course not, you fool! They are mere mortals; they can't compare to even me, certainly not you! Even with this pathetic excuse for consciousness, I can tell that much! Their bodies are imperfect, and the more talented among them are only less imperfect. They meddle with magic far more dangerous than they realize, but it doesn't matter since they are too weak to utilize it to its fullest extent!"

"And your point is I can? How?!"

"Because you are unnatural! Your body was not born, it was created! Pieced together like some macabre jigsaw puzzle by a god who loved their work more than they did your life! They created a perfect vessel, a perfect body. I do not envy you, Godling. Your body is more a curse than a blessing."

"What? How is that even possible? I don't remember being created, or my creator!" Goleil's head began to ache as if the two consciousnesses were too much to handle.

"That is not my problem, and I can only tell you what I can see. I can at least do that much for you. You got the maximum benefits you could get from my blood, all the strength I had in life. I know a pitiful amount, but forgive me for not having a body that any god would kill for. Not only that, you resurrected me from death, and for that, I thank you."

Goleil could feel his head splitting. It was becoming too much. One of them had to go.

"I am sorry, Godling. You gave me the gift of a second chance, and I will not waste it! I have seen where the living go after death, and I do not wish to return!"

The knight felt a sharp pain in his chest, where he had found his soul while in those dark and endless plains.

Time continued, and Goleil dropped to his knees as his soul was being tortured by the eldritch within him.

The room was still silent, but that ceased abruptly as an aura of bloodthirst and desperation burst from Goleil as he roared in pain. When he had first looked upon his soul, he had used the mana he had stored up after weeks of constant accumulating in a process he did not understand.

The eldritch giggled with glee as it tore at Goleil's soul, finding him defenseless. The shattered mana circuits and core meant only one thing: guaranteed victory.

Gwen took one look at Goleil and ran out the door, screaming for Murdoc. The sun knight was surrounded by swirling dark red energy that seemed intent on trying to rip his cloak away from his body. One of his eyes was gold, the other a sinister and bloodshot red.

Goleil roared again as he doubled over and began tearing at his chest, trying to rip the eldritch from his body with his bare hands.

The City Guard scattered, some running towards Goleil to contain the threat and others out of the building to maintain security.

The dark red energy cut at their faces and necks like little knives as the guards neared him. Some guards tried to brave the blades of energy but only got so far before they were thrown away. All they could do was form a barrier to prevent the red energy from escaping.

The golden cloaked knight could feel his soul slowly being consumed, all the while having nothing he could do about it.

'Is this going to be the end?' He wondered as he desperately tried to figure out how to accumulate mana but to no avail. 'Will I really die for such a stupid reason?!'

Inside his body, the eldritch was waging a battle of his own.

"Never again... Never again... Never again..."

Permanent possession was no easy task, and he had to be careful not to alert whoever crafted this perfect body. A craftsman always leaves their mark, but the eldritch didn't know where it was, nor did he have the time to look. He had a hammer and chisel formed from dark red mana and was chipping away at the tendrils that connected Goleil's soul to his body. It was slow work, and he had only gotten three of twelve disconnected and reconnected to his own ethereal self.

Suddenly, he spotted a glowing symbol that was golden in color and carried a divine aura. He looked closely at it to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

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"Never seen that before... but seeing as it's carved into his soul I probably shouldn't touch it. Perhaps that's the maker's mark! In that case, it's time to increase my pace! I really can't stand being ungrounded to the material plane..." He whispered to himself. After roaming the Inbetween for what seemed like an eternity, it had become a habit of his.

"Never again... Never again... Never again..." It repeated over and over.

It returned to work, chipping away at the tendrils with happy abandon, keeping track of where the mark was so as not to disturb it. Once it had gotten through six of the tendrils with no problem, it increased its speed again, now confident in its skills. He could feel his control over the knight's body growing, the man's strength becoming his own.

"Almost there! I can almost taste life!"

He swung his hammer into the chisel, scraping away more of the tendril. Suddenly, he felt something was wrong. He looked back at the notch he had just carved and saw a small circle in its center. He looked closely, thinking he was seeing things as he had already discovered the maker's mark.

What he saw sent a shiver down his spine. It was a small circle, but inside it looked as though there was a nonsensical and scraggly mass of lines. He could not see how many lines there were, but he could tell that the power coming from this circle was orders of magnitude greater than the symbol he previously thought was the maker's mark.

In a realm millions of kilometers away but also right next door, a golden armored goddess looked straight at him.