Chapter 490 – Death

A/N: I’ve decided not to leave you guys hanging on such a sour note, but keep in mind that this is tomorrow’s chapter, so if you don’t want to wait another 42 hours then you can choose to read this tomorrow. Up to you.

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“You don’t have to look so sad about the bird – I’ll be sending you to join your little beast soon enough!” Deimos said, his mocking voice slamming into Percy’s skull with savage glee.

Of course, Percy couldn’t care less about the Violet’s threats or insults at the moment. All he could manage was a blank stare at his friend’s mutilated carcass. He tried his utmost to disregard the Status’s morbid notification as he prayed for the crystalline body to start regenerating.

Something shifted, causing his heart to skip a beat.

Sadly, it soon became clear that it was just the wisps trying to return – further evidenced by his cords shaking violently, as they often did when a clone was on the way back. The first and oldest among them was located just below Percy’s sternum, the other a bit lower.

Sure enough, a blob of silver and grey soon left Micky’s body, shooting toward Percy. It slammed into his chest, the wisps trying to burrow into the spots they’d been severed from. Only, things didn’t go very smoothly this time.

Micky had been a familiar – not a clone. The part of Percy’s soul inside him had already merged with the stillborn crow’s and fallen gladiator’s souls a long time ago, making the resulting wisp slightly foreign to Percy. To complicate things further, the barrier of phantom mana that the clone normally used to keep himself separate from Micky had collapsed upon their death, causing the two wisps to mix on the way back.

The gloomy blob wanted to enter Percy’s body through two different wounds. As a result, it pulled and twisted his soul, threatening to rip him apart from within and plunging him into a world of untold agony.

Gritting his teeth, he ignored the pain, trying to savour the ocean of memories rushing into his head. There were countless times more memories than any of his previous clones had ever brought back. They flashed before Percy’s eyes too rapidly for him to process, though he scarcely registered that they spanned his friend’s whole life on Remior – from the day he hatched, all the way to his death.

In many of them, Percy saw himself through the crow’s eyes, experiencing Micky’s feelings and reliving much of their shared past from a new perspective. His eyes burned, welling with tears as the back of his mouth tasted bitter. A pit formed in his stomach, his head pounding from the influx of information, turning his thoughts groggy and impossible to sift through.

Even so, he tried his best to claw himself back to the present moment. Lifting his gaze with difficulty, he saw Deimos’s blurry silhouette preparing another blast to finish him off, though he was certainly taking his sweet time. Clearly, the sadistic bastard was enjoying himself.

‘Is he grinning?!’

It was hard to tell for sure, but that sounded right in line with what Percy had seen of the Violet’s personality. Cold fury burned through Percy’s veins as he tried to get back up and fight Deimos to the very end. He knew he’d probably lose, but he owed Micky to die on his feet, trying to avenge him. Unfortunately, Percy’s muscles refused to so much as twitch.

Something else did twitch, however.

Once again, the movement came from the crow’s shattered carcass – which should have gone completely inert by now. Percy couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow upon realizing that the blizzard of ambient mana spiralling around the cores had only intensified instead of dying down!

‘What the–?’

He didn’t even get to complete his thought when the icy body exploded soundlessly, sending frozen fragments everywhere. Most of them didn’t really matter, but the two intact orbs shooting toward Percy did. One shone in an amber light, the other pale – Green and Yellow in his Mana Sense. They landed onto the torn fabric trying to regenerate on his chest, sinking into the shifting strips of silk. The cold storm followed right behind them, collapsing upon Percy.

Deimos must’ve fired his spell, judging by the lingering traces of Violet mana fading around his hand, though Percy hadn’t even seen the projectile. Thankfully, he hadn’t felt the blow either, his head still attached to his shoulders – the only explanation was that something had blocked the attack, but he wasn’t sure what.

The wisps danced wildly around him, carving burning trails in their path. They blended with the frigid winds to form a twisting cyclone, strips of silk and chunks of ice joining them into a chaotic maelstrom of grey mana.

The pain in Percy’s soul intensified, his flesh now beginning to fight against him too. Soul-freezing ice rushed into his spare channels with renewed vigour, some of the substance even spilling out of the pathways to reach other body parts. It slowed down the flow of blood in his veins, sending an uncomfortable chill deep into his bones.

His muscles squirmed as the cold found its way into his other mana networks, causing even his soul to grow brittle. Tendrils spread out from the blob still roiling on his chest, expanding like roots to fill every corner of Percy’s body. It felt like his very being was restructuring itself, in a manner far more intrusive than even when he’d absorbed his third trait.

The pain intensified further, leaving Percy unable to think about anything else. If it hadn’t been for the blessing of permanence, the Insomnia trait, and the decades of experience he’d had experimenting with his soul, he would have passed out already. Even with all those accolades under his belt, he soon found himself unable to hold on, his consciousness receding into the confines of his mind.

***

Suspended within a vast, gloomy ocean, a single structure was spinning slowly. It was shaped like a pyramid, sporting a deep crimson colour. The object had certainly seen better days. Its formerly smooth surfaces were now riddled with cracks, its previous radiance having dimmed greatly.

The interior was in an even worse condition. The symbols on its ceilings and walls were distorted and faded, to the point that even their authors would have struggled to read them, the rich history they’d once depicted now lost to the annals of time.

Many souls lay slumbering within the pyramid, though they were smaller than grains of sand by now – tiny sparks of silver on the verge of going out. Even the much larger wisp embracing them all – the very owner of the structure and the one responsible for the others’ survival – wasn’t doing much better than her people. Like everyone else, she was asleep, her damaged soul having slowly leaked out of the cracks over the past few years, leaving barely a fraction of its original volume left.

But there was something else here, besides the slumbering souls.

A desert of colourless powder littered every floor in the structure, filling the rooms and corridors closer to its base entirely. The quantity of the exotic substance was so great that a single mortal would have needed decades – if not centuries – of restless consumption to exhaust it all. Some of it had been used up over the past few months – and it had even happened a little faster than normal. Still, most of the dust was inside the pyramid, showing no signs of running out anytime soon.

Or, at least, that had been the case until now.

Seemingly out of the blue, the scattered dust ignited, transparent flames spreading through the structure. For the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, the powder began evaporating at a frightening rate!

Colourless plumes spilled out of the holes in the pyramid’s walls with such force that they even drowned out the leakage of the goddess’s soul for a while, buying her a little more time!

But neither she, nor the person responsible for this development had the slightest clue that this was happening. In fact, seeing the powder consumed so quickly would have shocked every single god in the universe. For better or worse, however, there was nobody here to witness the change…

***

When Percy came to, the pain was still there, though it was slightly more bearable. He found himself resting face-down on a pile of snow, the cold wind sending a shiver down his spine.

More importantly, he finally had enough strength in his body to move around. Getting up, he noticed that his surroundings looked quite familiar. A vast, snowy plain expanded in every direction, mostly flat with the occasional mound, a moonless sky stretching over his head. Many places in the universe probably fit that description, but Percy had only felt this cold a few times in his life, and most had occurred while experiencing another’s memories of a certain planet.

‘The dark side of Huehue…’

Unlike his previous visits, flashes of colourful lightning lit the sky up, drawing faint images upon the dark clouds that Percy was only now noticing. Whenever the heavens rumbled, the same pictures burned themselves directly into his head. He wasn’t even done assimilating the crow’s life yet, when a new tale sprung into his tired mind.

This one was about a young boy who had spent his early days scavenging for food alongside his parents and sister, struggling to survive the harsh weather of his world. Later, it told of the boy’s separation from his family, and his relocation to a new home – one that was simultaneously warmer and far, far colder. Finally, the images depicted the young man’s struggles to keep himself alive as he fought countless battles, suffering for the entertainment of his treacherous kinsmen.

‘It’s too much!’

Percy was forced to bury his face in the snow, desperate to cool his head off. The first set of memories had already been almost impossible to endure – he sure hadn’t been ready to absorb another. There was simply no way he could possibly process all this information by himself!

Luckily, it didn’t seem like he was by himself.

A crunching sound caused him to jerk his head to the right. He saw a person approach, his silhouette familiar. He wore nothing but a pair of shorts, a series of tribal tattoos faintly visible on his bare chest and four arms. His features were mostly humanoid, except for a mouth and nose fused into a long beak, and short, dark hair that resembled the fluff one might see on a newborn chic.

It had been a long time since Percy saw this person’s appearance reflected by the murky pond in his cell – and through the man’s own eyes at that. Even so, there was no mistaking him.

With every step the newcomer took, Percy’s heart thrummed violently, causing the entire plain to shake. The memories grew easier to bear too – almost as if somebody was helping him carry the burden.

More sounds reached Percy’s ears, making him appreciate that he could finally hear something other than Deimos’s grating voice, or the irritating ringing of the Violet’s domain.

The shrill cries of Percy’s phantoms filled the air, mourning one’s untimely death. Winds howled furiously, promising vengeance on the one responsible, as a murder of crows cawed excitedly, seemingly celebrating their upcoming feast. Percy had no idea if this savage melody was coming from the real world, or merely his own mind. He wasn’t even sure that the two were mutually exclusive.

There was another, gentler tune. Anyone but Percy would have probably missed it – how could they not? Like a soft whistle, it spoke of a simpler time, reminding him of happier days – of a past he cherished greatly.

The four-armed man drew nearer, stopping by Percy’s side. He extended his lower-right arm, offering to help him up right as the music reached its crescendo. Its triumphant notes resonated with Percy’s thoughts, singing of victory against impossible odds and…

…the reunion of old friends.