Epic 223 story

The world was in darkness, stillness, and silence.

Silent and devoid of shape and meaning, Delta wandered through not a world of green trees and blue skies, but a void. An all consuming void that threatened to engulf this world.  

Black towering trees that had no definition as above her, an ocean of shadow was barely lit up by odd stars, closer to tears in space that churned with an infernal light. The brightest light, the only light Delta could see constantly, was her own skin, she blazed with orange fire. She burned like a pyre as her avatar began to lose the ability to keep her shape.

Her hair became streams, her hands trails of flame, her eyes were suns in the darkness, and all she could do was follow the light ahead, her mana, so thin in places it formed voids of darkness, could only do so much.  Delta wasn’t blind or deaf to the world, but she no longer had flesh and blood to navigate a physical world. 

She didn’t belong here in this state. Every inch of her wanted to rebel. As a Dungeon Core, she was leaving her home, her place of power... as a goddess, she was walking without authority, without rituals. She was an oil spill engulfing clean land and unaware life, flowing over them without knowing what was even there.

Occasionally a bird flew past or a small critter scampered in the grass and they shimmered with the faintness outlines of life, of mana. It was like being in space, the great void, and only having slight candlelight in some unfathomable distance to guide her.

Was this what other Dungeons who left their space experienced? Sheer darkness and panic, rushing towards any light they could? Delta didn’t know and she wasn’t keen to track one down if they had gone mad experiencing this.

All Delta could do was follow the pain of Alpha, her student. He was touched by her mana, soaked in it and even more, they were connected by old influences of Sister.

‘This is dangerous, the bindings that keep you bound to the world thin with every moment,’ the voice of Sister said, as if sensing Delta’s thought of her. Sister sounded as young as ever, but perhaps... more expressive. Delta looked down at her feet then over her shoulder before she noticed the only thing sustaining her was a lifeline that trailed back to her Dungeon, like a tube of oxygen only it supplied mana instead.

“I know, but Alpha needs me,” Delta insisted, not willing to turn back now she had come this far and Sister’s response felt far away, like a song underwater or a great bird call in the sky. Delta looked up slowly, seeing a strange ‘orb’ of powerful mana that hung over the village like a meteor suspended by some unseen force.

‘I don’t think I would have understood that before. The urge to risk yourself without knowing the dangers. Perhaps this is why things became so bad? Perhaps why we let things get so bad,” Sis said softly, ‘Everything me and Brother have done has been slow, methodical... ineffective,’ she admitted. Delta could have expected them to be mature by now, but honestly... Delta had no idea how fast god-like beings matured. How fast did gods advance from self-interest and instincts to rational long term adults?

In the end, it didn’t matter.

“What is happening to him? What will happen to him?” Delta asked as she put another foot in front of another. It was all she could do to focus and not become lost in shadow. Disconnected from her Dungeon and becoming something... else.

An all consuming flood of protective mana, a tyrant with a smile.

‘An Echo has taken him. It will become him, but only the parts it finds amusing or useful. Alpha exists, but the heart inside will die. He will move, sound, and even react like Alpha, but he will not love, care, or dream like Alpha. He will become... empty; just enough to let something echo inside’ Sister explained with frustration and it occurred to Delta, or perhaps she felt something through their conversation, that Sister was trying to also help Alpha, but couldn’t.

‘Alpha has not fully accepted us, fully embraced his power like you and the others have. If I employ too much power, I could harm Durence and kill Alpha. If I back off, I will be no better than I was before you arrived. I am stuck with having a hammer when I need a feather. I am a failure once more’ Sister said, sounding resigned to her destiny as it were.

“You care to try. You care about not being enough. You can’t help right now, but you aren’t a failure,” Delta promised. Delta noticed for the first time that breathing felt challenging, like she had the cleanest air in her Dungeon and now she was running on fumes. It made her throat burn and eyes water.

She was walking through fire and shadow, but she didn’t stop. 

Next to her, manifesting as a dim yellow shape of a child, Sis began to walk with her, holding Delta’s hand.

“I can guide you. I can do that much,” Sis said and Delta squeezed her hand back with reassurance as they came closer to a swirling miasma of absolute silence trying to engulf familiar mana. Ruli, Quiss, Smalls, and others.

“Tell me, while we have time,” Delta spoke, her voice raspy, “what was the end goal? For us all?” she asked the goddess walking along with her.

“It seems so simple at the time,” Sis began with a shake of her lumenous hair, “make the ultimate hero, make the ultimate weapon, feed it the ultimate monster, and sharpen it in the ultimate dungeon. When we took the First, before you all, before we took his eyes and made him collapse into Echoes. We saw when he came to our side, he became a god. The process was so simple it was impossible to not to have gone wrong,” Sis explained and waves of something like a dozen screaming voices and howls of mana reached her.

“We saw how Little Brother became a god. The ultimate god capable of doing what we could not in minutes of changing, to make life even as he lost all power. We figured that was how people functioned. You take them from elsewhere, tell them to be something, and stand back. People would become their function,” she whispered and it astounded Delta that they had such thoughts at the time.

But they were alone. Two children that just happened to be gods that grew up in an empty universe. Who was there to teach them not to touch fire? To be kind? To see everything as more than toys for them to break the black silence.

“Then what?” Delta asked, not judging nor forgiving at that moment. It wasn’t the time for such things. A snap forgiveness was as hollow as an unfair judgment.

“Alpha would become king, the hero. He would purge all the seeds left in people and then strike down all the Echoes until only the closest ‘self’ of the Little Brother was left. We would then use all our divine energy to reshape it as a boy, as a child once more. We would send it back with you all, back to where you came from. We would become forces of nature, without thought and this world would be left to the people, free of our crime and Little Brother’s pain.  That was the plan. It was simple... it had to be simple. But I can see now it was never going to work, was it?” Sis asked, looking up at Delta with a sad smile.

“The best laid schemes of mice and men,” Delta said, patting the little goddess on the head gently, “and I guess now gods,” she added with a gentle tease before they came to a stop outside the village.

“I can go no further. I will burn souls, warp sensitive items, and scare the Echo into killing Alpha,” Sis said quietly.

Delta flexed a little, watching bands of fire and orange float off her like coronas of the sun.

“Leave the rest to me. I just need someone to open the paint program for me and the rest?” she said before grinning as her mana swirled around her like a whirlwind. Sis blinked then smiled in understanding.

Delta locked on to the conflict before her and her hands clenched into a fist.

“I can wing the rest,” she promised as the mana seemed to begin chanting a phrase over and over to Delta’s ears.

After a moment, she repeated it to herself aloud.

“Gonna rock you like a hurricane.”

---

Amenstar tried to get close to Alpha, to help the boy but the sheer malevolent mana swirling around him reeked of a putrid stickiness that threatened to lure Amenstar off to days of collecting bones for the sake of it. Days of planning a dozen projects but getting none of them done.

Days with little joy, but little meaning.

“Gam!” he yelled to the sword that looked like it was burying glowing veins into Alpha’s arm to combat the sickly black blood spreading across Alpha’s face.

“Little busy here. My damn skills to stop possession are only like rank 4! Possessed users were easier to convince to drop me off in some market place!” Gamma yelled back in slight panic. Possession? Amenstar hesitated then clasped his hands together as he tried to call on divine aid to help Alpha. His pride and attitude with his father and his role as a Saint meant little when it could help Alpha.

There was just one issue.

“Finder of paths uh... road me into the soul before... me and maybe let me help him?” he tried and got a bright glow to surround Alpha but it was a generic blessing as he and the sheep deity hadn’t quite had a heart-to-heart before.

Alpha’s skin hissed and Amenstar cursed as it didn’t do more than give Gamma a second or two or progress before he was pushed back. He spotted Quiss and Ruli approaching, Ruli looking thunderous as Quiss yelled something back, his hand glowing with powerful magic. A fire that burned the essence of something.

Amenstar thought it was both beautiful and utterly terrifying that Quiss could use such a thing.

“-end it now or let him suffer as a damn meat puppet! I’ve seen it happen and I won’t let it happen again!” Quiss screamed, his usual lack of care gone as his eyes looked wild with pain and fury. It took Amenstar a moment to understand that Quiss wanted to end Alpha to... save him.

It didn’t sit right so Amenstar was willing to do something his father made him promise never to do.

“Anyone, any god out there, please... help us. Alpha is a good person and he’s Gam’s friend. Please, I’ll serve,” he prayed, letting his sheer pure soul shine as it rose up from under the veil of necromancy and shadow. Instantly, with those horrible watching shadows in the sky, a dozen shining lights began to focus on the area before a mighty aura from Amenstar’s home erupted in a bubble that repelled the interested parties for a moment.

Still, a few pushed through. A god seeped with the smell of chains, blood, and the sea. Another of wine, suffocating perfume, and dim lights, while another snuck under them with a slithering hunger. All of them shot at him and there was a moment when Amenstar felt he might be torn apart.

A noise like a bell ringing shot out and the village went still as the gods were flung back, disperse as the air, the sky, every source of light, and even Amenstar’s turned a hue of burning orange, like a beautiful sunrise had just rose over an horizon despite it being only late afternoon.

“No way... Miss D?” Gam said as he also paused in shock at something approaching down the road. Amenstar hadn’t ever seen a corporal god. All of them were too wary to leave their domains for any reason, using avatars or projections to exert their will.

The light walking down the street was physically here, looking like she might erupt like a star at any moment. A woman with the hair of flowing streams, stars and islands awash in the strands as her hands danced along piano keys that weren’t visible but ran out in a constant song. She walked on feet that left a trail of mushrooms in her wake, infecting and covering everything in a way that seemed to enhance their base features rather than cover up.

She spoke but there were no words, only warmth and honesty, a wave of emotions that shook windows and turned everything a deeper shade of orange. Amenstar knew she had power and knew this was an Abomination from Delta that had come to help.

A Dungeon that devoured a god had to be put down, but what if the Dungeon became a god? What then? Delta, if that was her, could save Alpha but she was fading, unable to sustain her form as she had no claim here and wasn’t trying to take any. Amenstar bared his soul to her, offering it to the figure in an effort to trade it for his home, his friends, and to feel more of that kindness.

Delta... rejected him and Amenstar stumbled for a moment as the chains he so willingly offered to wear were broken into pieces and there was a strange chiming chiding. Amenstar felt she invited him to walk alongside her, but there was no obligation, no promise needing to be fulfilled.

Only to be himself.

It was like a part-time job and Amenstar guessed his father had nagged him to get one.

He reached out and they connected. It was utterly bizarre but he surrendered his body for a moment.

When he closed his eyes, what opened them next wasn’t Amenstar, but the Avatar of Delta.

---

Delta inhaled air into fleshy lungs with a body that lacked a lot of the pops and aches her old body had before she coughed, forgetting to breathe for a moment.

“One moment!” she said with the nasally voice of a teenager. She hadn’t thought that Amenstar could host her in her entirety, but the kid had a scarily strong soul. She looked down at pale skin and frowned, trying to angle it to the sun so it could get some vitamin D.

“Delta?” someone called and she looked up to Ruli and looked up... and up.

“Damn, you are tall to other people,” she admitted and the half-demon looked too shocked to speak which was a first. It felt like she was wearing a suit that just happened to be a person and Delta wasn’t exactly kosher with that but she would apologize for it later and maybe convince Kemy to be her next avatar.

Kemy had more height and Delta was already planning on asking her to stick around.

“How many saints can I have?” she mused and the answer came in the form of a screen that was barely there.

‘A goddess can have as many saints as she can empower. Part-time saints on limited contracts potentially have no limits’ it read and this screen was new, a sort of soft pink. 

“You’re new,” she mused and the thing stoically didn’t react, but Delta knew it was only time. She had practise at sharing the blessing of awareness to these sorts of things.

“How- Why... did you go Abomination?” Ruli hissed, looking torn between impressed and having the urge to scream in panic.

“I found religion,” she corrected and Ruli blinked as Delta got a look at Durence for the first time and it was so quaint! Little houses, cobbled streets, and a homely vibe with a dozen or so knocked out infected soldiers for the Echo.

Right... focus time.

“Which god would be crazy enough to help you?” Ruli asked, shaking her head as Quiss stared at her.

“This goddess,” Delta said as she began walking to Alpha who was beginning to snarl like a sort of animal. 

“Oh, good. She became a goddess so she can wander outside. Normal stuff,” Quiss hissed as he put his fire out which made Delta feel better. His fire was dangerous...

“The taxman is going to kill us. Dungeon and Church tax is bad on their own, together? Ouch,” Delta heard Ruli mumble and she began to flex her hands, the natural powers of Amenstar rising.

“When they needed me the most, I vanished, but now I am back with the powers of an Avatar. Go! Elements!” Delta said as she let the magic flow and a mushroom poofed into existence by transmuting dead skin into spongy flesh which smacked Alpha in the face uselessly before hitting the ground.

“Ruli, how do I god?” Delta called back faintly.

“I’m not the person to ask,” Ruli said back before Alpha flew at her with a feral hiss and one of his eyes was black. His speed was insane and he used some sort of technique to pin her to the ground as he tried to stab Amenstar’s body with a sword which suddenly turned into a whip that bent uselessly against Delta’s Avatar.

“Miss D! Alphie is acting sus, we should call an emergency meeting!” the whip cried and Delta felt her world spin at the voice.

“It’s you,” she whispered and Amenstar’s eyes began to tear up.

“It’s a me, Ma-” the whip joked before Alpha tossed it to one side, deciding to use his fingers to claw Amenstar’s eyes out instead.

The rage and hatred conflicted with Alpha’s terrified normal eye and Delta felt a surge of hot rage. How dare this thing do this to Alpha. Delta only knew how to do one thing as a goddess so she was going to do that one thing very well.

She crossed her arms, left arm held across her body before her right one raised up, bent at the elbow, forming a cross.

“ULTRA BLESS!” she cried and her arms began to rapid fire blessings onto Alpha in shockwaves of dazzling orange.

“Bless your hair! Bless your little nose! Bless that weird dimple you have! Bless your cows!” Delta chanted as the Echo inside Alpha began to scream.

“HE IS MINE!” it screamed.

“Go to heck!” Delta cursed and to her surprise, her blessing turned dark.

‘Curse of the Dark Drakes is not available to goddes-- Error. Goddess has access to this curse. Processing...’ the pink screen returned. It began to play a damn spinning hourglass.

“PROCESS FASTER!” Delta screamed as Alpha began to blaze with black and orange lights, his skin cracking in places to show a burning inferno inside.

‘Solution found!’ it proclaimed.

What did that mean?

Alpha began to belch out black smoke and slime before the Echo was whisked away in a flash of orange.

“Where did it go?” she asked the screen.

‘To the place you consider a place of damnation and mistakes. The Secret Garden between floors of your Dungeon.’ it reported.

Oh.

Oh no.

---

The Echo spread out and burned. It needed a host. It needed a Seed.

It looked up as dozens of mutant creatures made of pure mana stared down at it.

“Obey and behold! I am Tomt Tec-” it roared and something stepped on the Echo, ending his existence without noticing he was even there.

His Echo ended in a whimper and then a sigh.

Above, a giant monstrous rat with a crown scraped his back paw off on a rock in annoyance.