Chapter 2: New senses.
Xerath had seen it all. He quivered and wanted to hurl. He wanted to stop with this stupid attempt at Ascending.
He wanted Tabia back.
But he knew he couldn't have her anymore.
Not when so much was at stake.
Xerath's new found anger only pushed him forward. The pain of the transformation was nothing. He only wanted this done now.
He could only feel the magic surge around him and transform him. Each moment turned into greater agony.
He felt his muscles and bones harden and crystallize. He felt his blood vaporize and his eyes melt. He felt his mind ripping from his body.
In those final moments, he doubted it all.
Have I failed?
Was the magic too strong for me?
Am I about to die?
For a moment, he felt nothingness. No sense from the universe came into him.
Then a massive influx of information rushed into his mind.
He could see again, but everything was different.
He could see as a human could see, but there were new entities humanity could only dream about. Swirling wisps and immaterial winds swirled around where he stood. Such beauty was unable to be explained by even the greatest of men, especially not Xerath. The beauty enthralled him so much that he wished to cry, but he could form none.
Xerath returned his focus back to the material plane, but was only left with the disgust of a ruined academy where his experiment had started. The academy was no more, and even then that was putting it lightly. The sandstone walls that had stood several meters away from him when he had started the ritual had been blown into dust and scattered by the winds. No signs remained of the walls, or the next, nor even the living quarters that had been several hundred meters away. The sandstone floor closest to the experiment had been reduced to molten glass and had been dispersed to such an extent that the floor had sunk an entire meter, forming a glass crater.
Xerath proceeded to look to the heavens and saw the storm that obscured even the Shuriman sun, the only thing lighting the landscape was the constant lightning that struck the landscape below, bathing everything in blue light. Globes of magic hung in the air, witness to the now barren and disintegrated landscape.
He looked down and glanced at his right arm. He still had control over it, but it was no longer flesh and blood. Instead it was crystalline, the skin turned to blackest obsidian. His ligaments were no longer there. The only thing connecting his arm to his torso was the cerulean lightning that flowed between the two. The plasma danced back and forth, feeding information to his mind like a synapse. He still could feel his body, but all stimuli felt weak. He could not experience the world in the same way. And he would never be able to ever again.
Xerath's mind could no longer handle it. He retreated into his mind, desperately trying to deny the very existence of his new body. He had never thought this would happen. He lost control of his new body, only for it to be given a new master.
The Chaos had control now. It could do anything it wished. It wished to spread across existence. It forced the crystal body into motion, floating above the ground on arcane tethers that dragged it across the landscape. It would spread chaos across this land.
Humans would halt it, but not after chaos had been spread across hundreds of kilometers. Its wish had been granted, but not to the extent it wished.
Its control began to loosen over the body as Xerath returned from his self-imprisonment, completely unaware of what he had done while the Chaos had reigned in his stead.