STILL WEDNESDAY. By the way, if you notice 'www' in my chapters, its because I write in word and forget to change those to line breaks sometimes. Notify me if you see one. Anyway, throw me a review if you're feeling especially nice, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy, like wine does. 3 wine.
Mike snapped his left eyelid open as something bumped into him, Priscilla jerking away from the object with a start.
"Really? Kind of a personal thing we have going on here." Mike said to the limp body drifting lightly next to them. Despite the amused smile on his face, worry flashed in his eyes as he took a closer look at the pyromacer in yellow.
Priscilla detached from him with a slight push, maneuvering to the top of his body. Though a little scorched, Jeremiahs headpiece was surprisingly intact, coming off with little resistance. Priscilla's brows knit together as she looked his face and arms over, concern on her face.
"I don't understand." She finally voiced. "He doesn't even have any injuries, and all of his vital signs are perfect." Eventually she turned to Mike, who was inspecting the pyromacer from afar. "What could be wrong with him?" Her voice cracked towards the end, and she turned away as a few tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. Obviously, the two had some sort of personal connection.
"Let me take a look." Mike pushed forward, spinning Jeremiah around to face him with a twist of his wrist. Slowly, meticulously, Mike inspected him from his feet upward, each bit of skin scoured for markings of injury or magic.
Mikes flat lips began to curve downward as he approached the middle aged man's neck, with nothing to show for it except for the red eye orb in his left pocket, which had miraculously stayed there since he'd been taken out.
"This doesn't make sense." Mike stated when he was finished. Priscilla nervously twined a lock of hair around a finger as she watched him twist and turn Jeremiah's head, going as far as to pick through his cropped red hair. As with his beard and face, there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary.
"As far as I can tell, there is absolutely nothing wrong with him." Mike turned to Priscilla. "What did Velka do to him?"
Priscilla closed her eyes, thinking back. "Well… I remember him coming in much like you did, except he fell to her dark binds quicker." She winced suddenly, placing a hand to her head. "Then… I think she touched his forehead, or something like that, and he stopped fighting back."
Mike frowned and placed a hand on Jeremiah's forehead, thinking.
"Ah! What the fuck?!" Mike jolted back as a fiery orange spark stung his hand, burning a red welt onto his palm. He and Priscilla looked in shock at the unconscious pyromacer drifting limply, startled.
"Oh shit."
Priscilla turned to Mike, who held his hand, unfortunately his left one, up in the… air? Wherever they were. The red welt hadn't stayed so for long, already it had swollen to nearly twice its original size, and seemed to be heating up exponentially.
"Somebody's been playing with chaos." Mike said in a singsong voice as he dug around in his satchel. With his good hand he drew a dagger from within, its edge sharp. Before Priscilla could voice complaint, his hand fell fast and true, carving the growing mutation from his skin at once. The force of the swipe sent it spinning downward, the bubbling ceased.
"You- he-" Priscilla stuttered, her eyes flicking back and forth between Mike and Jeremiah. A pale hand stretched toward Jeremiah slowly, before she withdrew it in fear as another spark shot from him.
Mike, unperturbed by the tiny amount of chaos in the sparks reached inside of himself, feeling for the small soul he'd stolen from Quelaag. A burst of light signaled the transformation of his arms into flame.
"Long story short, I stole part of Quelaag's soul. Give me a moment to see what's up with the chaos." Mike kicked forward through the dark as he spoke, his arms outstretched. Just before he bumped into Jeremiah he stopped himself, wrapping his legs around the man's exposed torso to keep him in place as he worked.
With both palms safer from chaos, Mike carefully held them to the sides of Jeremiah's head, millimeters from his ears. A deep breath, then two. Mike felt around for his magic, and pushed into the other man's head.
Mike was almost happy for the cheerful glow that surrounded him when he opened his eyes in the astral plane. That was what he called it, anyway. Laurentius had shown him how to enter and maneuver there after giving him tattoos so long ago.
As it turned out, Jeremiah might well have crawled from the center of Izalith, as overtaken as his soul was. Looking at himself, Mike found a splotch of dark ringed in light, much like a giants soul, with a number of small bits amalgated onto it. On one side, Quelaag's soul, a tiny speck compared to the whole, fused directly onto the main mass. On the other side, a small flame was delicately anchored a distance from the main soul, this being his pyromancy flame.
Jeremiah's soul was to his as a cancer is to a diamond. Admittedly, the sheer size of the soul was great, towering above his own, yet despite its great size enormous chunks were twisted and warped, like giant orange sponges as they burned and churned. Occasionally a fiber of chaos would connect with an untouched piece of human soul, and there a great bolt of orange light would appear, the source of the sparks.
Finally, Mike let himself return to his body. In the blink of an eye his view changed, and Priscilla was next to him, looking quite concerned.
"Well?" She asked nervously, hopefully.
Mike shook his head sorrowfully. "Well, the chaos hasn't taken him, but I still don't know why he isn't awake. There were no visual issues with his soul, so unless Velka braved the chaos, then we're just going to have to deal with him as he is. Perhaps Logan or Laurentius – a legendary sorcerer and slightly less legendary pyromancer – might be able to help. First though, we have to get back, and I think I know how."
"This, is a soapstone." Mike held aloft his white stone. "When you hold these, you can see the marks from them in other worlds. It may be a long shot, but if I was to, say, touch it-"
Mike stuttered to a stop as his bare left hand came into contact with the stone. As Priscilla looked on, his eyes grew glossy and unfocused, flicking back and forth every few seconds as he stared into the dark.
"Yeah." Mike said suddenly, his eyes snapping into focus. "You ought to see this." With one hand around it, Mike extended the soapstone to Priscilla. Her next breath caught in her throat as a flash of light burst in front of her, illuminating their surroundings.
"Wha… how?" Priscilla articulated slowly, each syllable drawn out.
"My working thesis is that the soapstone sort of… focuses the connection to other worlds 'near,' or similar to ours. That's why you don't see summoning signs or messages without one." Mike said this as he spun in place, observing their findings.
It was like being in the center of a fair, if he had to associate the light with anything. Around the pair, tens, maybe hundreds of discs of light seemed to hover in the darkness like stars, each one holding a seemingly still image on its surface, off recognizable. Most seemed to be views of the cathedral in which the painting had once been, save for three directly under them.
The first held an image of the cathedral, except it was different. Still intact. At the far end of the hall, the painting was still there, and in between a few dozen painting guardians stood almost still, save for their breathing. Priscilla felt her heartstrings tug as she saw the painting from the outside for the first time I n centuries, this one not even hers.
The second image was one Priscilla didn't understand. A small village ringed by grey cliffs seemed to be on fire, buildings crumbling as their supports burned. She moved on from this one quicker than the last.
"Hey!" Mike exclaimed when he saw the final image. It showed the cathedral, but from the side of the painting. There, calmly waiting for them to arrive, were none other than his companions, including Lily and the gargoyles. Oscar and Solaire sparred rapidly at one end of the room, both fairly evenly matched. Siegmeyer looked to be calmly pacing between two pillars, while his gargoyles trailed behind him carrying Mike's bound lizard.
Lily seemed to be curled up on the floor directly in front of the image, and near her was, surprisingly, Laurentius and Logan, their mouths moving rapidly. The two looked locked into conversation, heatedly passing words back and forth.
"Well, now we know where we're going. I say we should start that way, grab on." Mike extended a hand to Priscilla as he removed a piece of cloth from his satchel, which turned out to be a pair of discarded grey pants. A quick twist tied the makeshift rope around Jeremiah's ankles, and so they began to move.
Quick bursts of flame from his hands pulled he and Priscilla along, descending at a leisurely pace towards the world. Minutes turned into almost an hour as they continued to gain speed, eventually going so fast that new worlds began to appear around them. However, they kept their eyes locked onto their own, never deviating ion course to it.
"Priscilla, brace yourself!" Mike shouted as they neared. The world had grown from e size of a palm to nearly as large as a football field in front of them, glowing brightly. Like ants to sugar they moved, rocketing directly toward the wall of light.
To an outside observer, the three would've simply disappeared upon touching the world, not a sign of them left in the abyss.
"Are we… there?" Slowly asked Priscilla, who had been deposited next to him and Jeremiah. Mike looked around them slowly, taking in everything, before shaking his head.
They had been placed in the cathedral, that was for certain. What wasn't for certain was the state of their surroundings, or more likely, them. Occasionally while walking, the floor would just not work, and instead act as pudding for a few paces. For Jeremiah, it seemed gravity itself didn't exist, and he simply continued to hover around them.
"…perception!" Mike suddenly shouted from hear the painting. Where she was observing Oscar, Priscilla almost fell through the floor when she jumped, landing on a rubbery spot.
"Its our perception of things!" Mike explained as he bounded over, his feet encountering no softness in the ground. "That's why Jeremiah isn't being held down, and sometimes the floor forgets to floor."
Priscilla made the connection. "So if we were to perceive ourselves as being there…"
"What?" Mike frowned. "Maybe? I don't particularly think so, I would assume rips in space take a bit more than believing, but I suppose its worth a try."
Both of them stood there for a few seconds, intensely focusing on being real.
"Nope." Mike shrugged when his left foot began to sink into the floor. "It was a good idea though." Priscilla nodded, and followed Mike's example as he dropped into a cross legged position. In one hand he held the soapstone, focusing the world, in the other, his pyromancy flame. It was then that an idea came to him.
"Hey wait!" Mike yelled suddenly, startling Priscilla and himself as his voice echoed around them oddly, the pitch changing as it passed through half substantial walls. After realizing the ensuing sounds were his voice, Mike began to stuff his arm into his bottomless box, assembling a handful of items in front of him as they were removed one by one.
From left to right, in a semicircle sat five items. To Priscilla's surprise, the first was the still smoldering gauntlet remnants, which seemed to bend the floor under it in unusual ways. Following were a small pool of humanity sprites, writhing and twirling through the abyss. After that came the soapstone, a chunk of wood that Priscilla didn't recognize, and Mikes own staff. Altogether, the odd assortment of items seemed to be themed around dark and magic, both of which made her shudder slightly as she thought back to a few hours, or days, or however long ago it'd been she had encountered Velka.
"I don't understand." Priscilla said as she examined the items. Mike was forced to suppress a small smile as he noticed the deep furrow in her scaled brow, along with the slight twitch of her tail as she passed over the gauntlet.
"Well, let's start with the gauntlet, and the humanity." Mike picked each item up, to Priscilla's surprise, and assumed a scholarly air. "Earlier, I found myself troubled when I tried bending the dark flame to my will, much like I do with pyromancy. This confused me because humans inherently have dark souls, with a little light to make us look like the gods."
With his right hand, Mike held aloft a humanity. "It's taken me a bit, but I have a running hypothesis that when we use a humanity, it reinforces the darkness in us, forcing our bodies into an 'unharmed' state, healing us. This kind of confused me a little, but after taking a peek at Jeremiah I think what the darkness does when it enters our souls is poke a tiny hole in the light part, which is kind of like a shell, not letting the dark show."
Priscilla nodded slowly as he talked, her golden eyes flicking between the humanities and Mike. "So… you couldn't control the dark, because you didn't have any way to channel it. Like how you require a pyromancy flame to manipulate fire, excepting flame sorcery."
Mike nodded, before raising the gauntlet remains. "Exactly! This, however, gives me a non-humanity source of dark, a form of it I'm not used to. If I had to guess, subjecting myself to it while simultaneously absorbing a bunch of humanities to strengthen my dark soul might allow me to squeeze a little more dark from my soul, and allow me to manipulate it properly."
"That… is quite complicated." Priscilla conceded after a time. "But why do this? I understand… mother uses the dark, do you plan on using her own magic against her?"
Mike snorted. "Nah. I was actually working toward a second theory. See, generally when darkness is encountered, time and/or space seems to kind of not do what it should. For example, the painting using a dark based pigment of questionable origin to sustain an entire world and its gateway. I also think Gwyndolin uses it, but that's off topic. With dark, I might be able to create a small hole into reality-" He waved to the space around them, where the others continued to wander and wait aimlessly. "This reality."
A look of understanding dawned on Priscilla's face. "I see! That would explain mothers ability to move between places-"
"Teleport."
"-yes, that!" Priscilla perked up significantly as the connections formed in her head. "Certainly, it would take a great deal of magic, but I could provide you with this-"
"Awesome." Mike nodded. Magic sickness sucked.
Priscilla paused, a hand in the air. "But what about directing it?" she questioned.
"Exactly like other magics." Mike explained. "This one is easy. Directing dark magic is just like light, hexes and pyromancies alike. Of course, it'll be a few millennia before anyone invents dark miracles, which are basically just hexes, and dark fire and magic are basically light, but presumably with different runes. Directing it should be relatively simple."
"Well then, we've got what we need, right?" Priscilla asked. When mike nodded, she jumped to her feet, only to realize they were working off the floor.
"So let's get started!"