Page 99 of To Free a Soul
The memory was so real that when Weldir’s hold on it slipped, it shocked him into alertness. His subconscious twisted and tore apart.
Weakness tried to pull him under, like a human breathing in water and drowning underneath a wave right as their fingers were skimming the surface they’d been reaching for. He perceived the hold on his thoughts, his alertness popping like bubbles.
Until a new face, a much more recent one in the longevity of his life, reflected in a bubble.
Someone beautiful, whose brown eyes had flecks of golden amber, and long, dark, curling lashes. It was just a flicker, but her neck arched back, revealing the long column of brown skin. A breast tipped with a dark nipple arched into view.
Weldir’s mind exploded.
His vision spun one way and then the other.
The pieces of him that usually made up his solid, physical self were spread throughout his consciousness. His mist had expanded, thinning as it drifted and spread out from him. With a clench against his mana, he sucked it all inwards until he righted himself.
When he looked down at his hand, its silhouette warbled and jiggled, then eventually settled.
Before he could register anything else, Weldir knew, with absolute certainty, he was weak. His power had been stolen and siphoned.
Something is wrong.
He immaterialised and transported himself to Tenebris.
Shock struck him as he looked up, down, and then all around at his crumbling realm.
Tenebris was like the inside of a ball, with a sphere of permanent bright-blue sky in the very middle. Meadows, forests, and human cities rolled along the outside, and looped in on themselves.
Fragments had fallen. They hovered inwards towards the sky from every direction, as holes filled with glossy shadows littered everywhere. The mountains in the distance, the trees, and even the blades of grass beneath him had a transparency to them. Everything was dulled and see-through, letting darkness shift their colours.
Weldir quickly shot himself backwards to find the humans. They were asleep, but none of them were in motion. They weren’t alive, playing out their fondest memories with thoseconnected to their fate threads. They were lifeless, their eyes hollow and cloudy.
Pressure pulled across his face and the tops of his ears, like their points had tipped back, as he scanned the slanted, breaking horizon. A hollowness filled his mind.
How did this happen?How long have I been asleep?
He waved his hand to reveal his own fate strings, all the different colours threaded with black, representing his own soul. Each colour reflected the base orb hue of each of his offspring, and one multicoloured string represented his mate.
He pulled on the only one that didn’t lead out of Tenebris and yanked himself forward.
All his questions were answered when he reached the other end.
Nathair lay on his back with his tail looped in multiple figure eights. With his fingers rigid, his hands unnaturally locked, his jaw open and pressing against his left shoulder, and his humanoid torso pulled so taut that it arched, he quaked upon the fading ground.
He seized quietly, almost lifelessly. His twitches were so minute that, maybe to a human’s eye, he may have been motionless. But Weldir could see them rippling beneath his black-and-rainbow glistening scales.
He has grown exponentially.Nathair had doubled in length, if not more, in his absence. Although very few of his skeletal bones had sunk beneath his flesh, more had protruded along his longer and girthier tail. His waist no longer narrowed in a starving, sickly way, but had thickened with meaty muscle, as had his bulging chest.
His fins had lengthened and currently twitched all down his sides to nearly the tip of his tail.
His usually orange orbs rotated with a kaleidoscope of colours, constantly shifting and never holding one for any length of time.
Lowering to one knee, Weldir waved his hand over his eldest son’s chest to look at his orange soul. Shards of white flaming glass had embedded themselves within his spirit.
They’ve burrowed deep,Weldir thought, turning his palm up and trying to call them out from within him. They weren’t new and shallow, like the last time Weldir had removed the remnants of the deceased souls Nathair had eaten.
While I was asleep, he must have gone into a rage and then rampaged through the nearby village.And the memories from the humans had incapacitated him until he was stuck in an ongoing seizure.No wonder my mana is so low.
He barely had enough to stay conscious.
A deity’s mana was created by the aura that surrounded their soul. The larger their aura, the thicker it was, the more they had to expend. If they ran out of it, they had the potential to gobeyondtheir capabilities and begin using their essence, their very self, for power.
