Victor of Tucson-Chapter 37Book 10: : On Hands and Knees

37 – On Hands and Knees

As Victor waged his war of madness, hacking Lifedrinker left and right, encouraging her to drink and feast on his shapeless, gigantic foe, he slowly came to grips with the realization that he was making no progress. Worse, it seemed he’d ensconced himself in the thick, clinging, burning, freezing stuff. As he swung and railed, jerking his arms, kicking his legs, breathing his magma and blue ice, he made a pocket for himself, but the black gelatinous stuff kept coming.

It was only when he found himself fully immersed, hundreds of tentacles clinging to his arms and legs, his torso, and his neck, that they began to show their true nature. The gelatinous surface seemed to sublimate into a hissing, burning black steam that wasn’t steam. It wasn’t anything. It dissolved his spirit flesh with a touch in a fiery, torturous cascade a million times worse than the single point of void he’d suffered with on the material plane. However, his own suffering was nothing compared to the tortured scream Lifedrinker wailed out as the void began to dissolve her spirit form.

The sound brought a shock of panic to Victor’s heart, and his pain was forgotten. His rage faded as fear surged into his pathways. How could he be so foolish as to risk Lifedrinker? What would he do without her? If she died there, if her spirit was consumed by his curse, he’d never forgive himself. As his panic mounted and Lifedrinker’s screams echoed through his mind, Victor summoned every ounce of control he could, trying to silence his racing thoughts, trying to tune out the horrific pain of his flesh being dissolved, regrown, and dissolved over and over.

He focused on his Core space, dragging the fear out of his pathways and commanding his inspiration to flood them. As his grip on that positive, white-gold Energy intensified, he shaped it into his Core Domain spell and unleashed it in the heart of the cursed miasma. Inspiration-attuned Energy exploded around him, reshaping the very soil and air of the spirit plane, and Victor was granted a reprieve as the void Energy struggled to gain purchase.

Lifedrinker’s wails subsided, but the agony that still racked her came through her haft into Victor’s hands, and he screamed his horror and guilt for having done that to her. His cries raged into the glittering, brilliant domain he’d created, and he spun, desperate to find an egress, a way to get Lifedrinker to safety. His Core was much more potent than when he’d learned to create his domain, but it still bled Energy at a frightening rate.

How long could he hold the void at bay? How long could he…feed it? Suddenly, it clicked, and Victor realized his folly. He’d bought himself and Lifedrinker a moment of respite, but at what cost? His Core was gushing Energy into the void and the damn curse was eating it up! Growling with frustration, mostly at himself, Victor pulled magma-attuned Energy from his half-depleted Breath Core and sent it into the pathways for his fiery wings. As they burst, crackling with glorious power, from his shoulders, he launched himself up, hoping to escape the curse before his Spirit Core was drained.

When he reached the edge of his inspiration-attuned domain, he smashed into the gelatinous substance of the curse’s solid form and blasted a tunnel with his magmatic breath. At the same time, he cracked his blazing wings and surged upward, streaking out of the curse, trailing black smoke that faded into glittering mist on the spirit plane. The curse reached for him, sending giant, ropy tentacles after him, grabbing his legs and feet. He ignored them, flying with every ounce of Energy he had, pulling them with him, stretching the stuff of the curse like great rubber bands behind him.

He was clear of the body of the curse and knew he was close to the limits of his movement, thanks to how the curse bound him to this part of the spirit plane. Lifedrinker was part of his heart—a partner through everything. He’d die before he let her be consumed by the void. If he held on, if he failed with her in his hands, she’d die.

Fighting back tears of frustration and guilt, he screamed, “I’m sorry, Lifedrinker!” and hurled her past the boundary. Without him, she was free to burst free of the curse’s domain, and she flipped through the air, sailing a hundred yards before smashing into the grassy, twilit plain. There she rested, her blade in the ground, her haft standing high, waiting for his grasp, close but impossibly distant.

As he’d fled his Core Domain, the spell had shattered, so Victor’s Core was no longer draining at a precipitous rate. Still, looking inward as he fought against the pull of the curse’s tentacles, he saw his Core was dim, and he knew if he looked at his status sheet, he’d be down to something like twenty percent of his maximum. As he stared, his mind numb at the utter failure of his assault, Victor’s Breath Core ran dry, and his wings sputtered and faded.

He fell to the grass with a ground-shaking thud. With his feet firmly planted, he could more easily resist the pull of the tentacles still gripping his legs. He stared down their ropy lengths to the bulk of the curse, and despair gripped him; it was twice the size as when he’d arrived on the spirit plane. He had no weapon to cut the tendrils around his legs. He had no breath, and worse, it wasn’t regenerating.

Frowning, he checked his Spirit Core again—still dim. Why couldn’t he regain his Energy? That had never been the case on the Spirit Plane before. He had to assume it was the way he was bound to that spot, in close proximity to the enormous, surging void. It drank the spirit plane’s ambient Energy like a sponge in blood—quiet but insatiable. Frustrated, furious, and worried about Lifedrinker, Victor tried to end his Spirit Walk.

He felt it start to happen; he felt his spirit bleeding through the veil, back to the material plane, but the cursed tendrils gripping his legs pulled him back. Victor reached down to grasp one of the tentacles. He grabbed it with both hands, crushing the squishy substance in his fists as he pulled, ripping it away from his leg. It stretched rather than broke, though. No matter how he pulled, more of the substance pumped through the tentacle to fill in the narrowed section. Soon, he had a knee-high coil near his feet, and then that began to erupt with smaller, grasping tendrils.

“Chingado!” Victor hissed, stumbling away from the nest of writhing, grasping, miniature tentacles. Once again, his fear began to escape the confines of his Core, seeping into his pathways. This time, Victor embraced it. If he couldn’t rip the tentacles off, perhaps he could rend them. He built the pattern for Abyssal Tyrant and let the fear-attuned Energy flow through him.

As Victor’s body surged with the power, convulsing—changing—he screamed, first in agony, then in frenzied hunger—a screech that echoed through the spirit plane, sending any spirits lingering near scurrying. His joints twisted, and his limbs expanded. Great talons exploded from his shadow-wreathed hands, and enormous black-feathered wings burst from his back, trailing smoky shadows in their wake. Sharp spines burst from his flesh, even as that very flesh turned dark, obscured by oily shadows and scales that clung to him like tattered robes.

He arched his back, lifting his black, depthless eyes to the twilight sky, screaming such a sound that the very grass quailed away from its echoing horror. Victor’s face, cloaked in those same inky shadows, elongated into a black, hooked beak, though his teeth remained in the back, sharpening to needles as they multiplied.

There he stood, a nightmare incarnate. He was a creature of night and shadow, terror and despair—fifteen feet tall, with a wingspan to match. His arms were too long, though hard to see in the shadows that obscured him. Though his talons lacked Lifedrinker’s enhancement, they were ten inches long, razor sharp, and curved. The spines that dotted his scaly, smokey flesh dripped inky shadows that sizzled as they fell to the grassy plain.

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Again, he screeched, casually swiping his talons through the tentacles that bound his legs. They fell apart in tatters. Victor, a tyrant of fear, cracked his wings, exploding into the air. Deep in his mind, some part of him rebelled at what he’d become, but the tyrant didn’t care. The hunger drowned everything. He scanned the gray landscape, searching for color, but seeing only darkness. There was nothing close by to feast upon. He shrieked again, confident his cry would bring some fear to the surface or flush some bright spirit out to flee.

His survey was cut short as he hit something—a thickness of the air that refused to let him pass. Frustration mounted as he shrieked again, fighting against the barrier. Failing to make any progress, he turned back toward the ground, scanning the grayscale landscape. Of course, he saw the heaving mountain of blackness, and part of his mind knew it was his enemy, that it wanted to destroy him.

He vaguely recalled his earlier fight with it. He remembered how it had hurt his most loyal companion. It made him furious, but he was an abyssal tyrant, and hunger was paramount. That blackness, that emptiness held no sustenance for him. Every second he existed cost him something; every movement of his terrible form drained his stores of Energy, and he saw nothing to feast upon. Swooping left and right over the mountainous void, he tested the limits of his boundaries and found he was running out of space.

As his Core spent itself to maintain his existence and his lack of sustenance weakened the tyrant in his mind, Victor began to come more and more back to himself, and he knew what he had to do. As much as it rankled, as much as it was antithesis to his very nature, as much as it would shame him, he had to flee. It was a conclusion he’d already made once, but for some reason, wearing the primal skin of the abyssal tyrant made the torment to his pride all the more visceral.

With a frustrated, infuriated screech, Victor, still soaring on wings of shadow and midnight black feathers, ended his spirit walk, the taste of failure thick in his throat. That bitter taste was soon forgotten, replaced by the coppery suffocation of blood and the horrific pain of a body being consumed. “Gack!” he gasped, blinking his eyes, trying to make sense of what he saw. His vision was tinted crimson, and it pulsed, black tunnel walls threatening to encase him with each agonizing thud of a heart that was constantly being destroyed and regrown.

He turned to his side and coughed out a gout of blood, only to have it come up again, choking him. He peered down and saw, through the ruins of his shirt, that the void was enormous—large enough to consume his lungs and heart and eat into his spine. His titanic body and behemoth regeneration fought against it valiantly, but it was a losing battle. The fact that he lived at all was a testament to the durability of his bloodline.

His cultivation chamber was dim, the pedestal on which he lay smeared with blood, but he was alone. He tried to stand, but his legs only worked intermittently. He reached for Lifedrinker’s haft, hoping—praying—but she felt cold. Inert. Her spirit was trapped on the other side. Despair and defeat overwhelmed him then, and Victor’s mind found the darkest corner possible and crawled into it.

He lay there for a while, trying to make himself numb to the pain of the constant destruction of his body. The void was directly responsible for the worst of it, but his body was failing in other ways. His blood flow was intermittent, his breathing, too. His body was largely dependent on Energy, but it still needed oxygen. It still needed his organs to function. A constant stream of blood dribbled from his mouth, the result of repeatedly ruptured vessels and arteries.

While his body suffered, Victor’s mind drifted away from it. He thought about all the mistakes he’d made. He thought about the foolishness of going onto the spirit plane ready to do battle as though a dragon awaited, and not a curse. It was clear that the thing wouldn’t be killed by conventional means. Could it be killed? He’d taken the idea of “battling” with it far too literally. There must be another solution. Even with his gains, though, his will was clearly not up to the task.

The thought that followed that line of thinking was nothing short of pitiful; he was helpless to improve now. The fight was done. Why not succumb to the damn curse and put an end to the suffering? The thought wasn’t serious. Not at first. It wasn’t in Victor’s nature to give up. Perhaps he asked the question so that he could review why he fought. Down that road lay people—always people. He never fought just for glory, did he? Wasn’t he always trying to accomplish something for…someone? Sure, he stood to gain, but did anything matter if he was alone?

If he didn’t have people around him, people to share in his victories, what was the point? If he gave up now, those people would be gone. Would they be all right? Some of them would, but would he? His mind drifted into a fantasy, imagining another life, another existence, and running into Tes or Valla again. They’d be different, and so would he, but… On some level, wouldn’t they know? Wouldn’t they know he’d given up? If they wouldn’t, he damn well would. It would be a mark on his spirit.

“Fuck that,” he grunted, spitting out another gout of blood as he pushed himself to his hands and knees. His palms were numb. His legs, too. It felt like he was gliding on waxy air as he crawl-fell down the steps to the cultivation chamber door. As he crunched his face against the unyielding metal, he reached up to slap his hand on the control panel. A moment later, the door bolts thunked open, and he pushed it wide with his shoulder.

Sunlight came through the high windows of his workshop, blasting into his bloodshot eyes. He felt relieved when he saw the workshop was empty. Bryn’s little makeshift bedroom was vacant. He could see her bed was made behind the screens—had she stopped sleeping there? He honestly didn’t know. He’d assumed it was temporary while he’d been unconscious, but then why was her bed still there? Why was there a dress uniform neatly folded atop the chest beside it?

Victor coughed up another gout of blood and shook his head. Why was he focusing on things that didn’t matter? Grimacing, he crawled out of the chamber and then, leaving a streak of blood in his wake, toward the center of the workshop. He unwound the chain for his vault from around his wrist, and, trembling with the effort, he turned the key and set the vault down. As it hissed and steamed, he crawled back, collapsing twice before he was far enough away to be clear of the vault’s rapid growth.

Gasping for breath, he lay there for a few minutes, waiting for the vault and then gathering his strength for the next push, for his next effort. As he lay there, panting, he heard boot heels on the floor and opened his eyes to see Bryn come around the side of the vault, peering at it, clearly puzzled. “Bryn,” he choked, spitting more blood.

“Your Gr—Victor!” She sprinted the last few steps toward him, falling to her knees at his side. novelbuddy.cσ๓

“Careful,” he grunted. “Don’t touch the void.”

“It’s, oh, ancient gods, Victor!” Tears sprang into her eyes as she gingerly put her hand on his shoulder, gently squeezing.

“Looks worse than—” He broke off, coughing out another gout of blood. He tried not to get any on Bryn, but it was a losing fight; he could barely control his body’s movements. “Sorry,” he croaked.

She was openly sobbing by then. “What should I do? Should I get help?”

“Nah, nothing anyone can do. Listen, I’m not done yet.” He paused to cough up some more blood. “See my vault there? Open the door for me.”

Blinking back tears, Bryn looked at the vault, then, sniffing, stood up to approach the door. “Just turn the key?”

“Yeah. When it’s open, take the key out and give it to me.” He watched as she opened the door and then pulled the key out. She peered at it with interest as she handed it back to him. “Thanks, Bryn.” Victor began the arduous process of crawling into the vault. There wasn’t a huge space inside, but he could fit with room to spare even at his normal, giant size. It didn’t really matter as he was crawling, anyway.

“Sh-should I come in with you?” Bryn asked from the doorway. Victor hated that she was watching him crawl. He wished he’d managed this part alone.

“No, Bryn. Listen, I—” He paused as an intense wave of pain washed over him, and the black tunnels encroaching on his vision nearly closed in.

“Victor?” Bryn started forward, but he held up a hand.

“No. Listen. I’m going to do something crazy, but it’s my last option. I think. Shit, Bryn, I don’t know. T-tell Kynna I’ll do my best. If—if I don’t come out of here, I’m sorry. I promise I won’t give up. I’ll try to the end. Tell Arona that.”

“Victor…” Bryn stood by the door, clearly vacillating between coming into the vault or running for help.

“Thanks, Bryn. I’m damn glad you were assigned to me when I got here. Go on, now. Push that pinché door shut for me.” Victor was on his hands and knees, blood drooling from his mouth, and he knew she probably thought he’d lost his mind. Gathering his strength, he looked up, locked eyes with her, and roared, “Do it!”

She jumped, eyes flying wide, then grabbed the heavy door and swung it shut with a clang that echoed with a note of finality. Victor used the vault wall to steady himself as he lifted his torso high enough to reach the lock. He stuck the key in the hole and twisted it until the locks engaged. “There,” he gasped, falling back onto his butt. He turned and, unsure whether he was about to save himself or seal his fate, crawled toward the satchel containing the ivid royal jelly.