IGS #4, Chapter 63

Dameon

Victory. Could it be this easy? But of course it could, for he felt himself a god, was becoming one, would be unstoppable as soon as he crushed these ants and drank deep of all the Sun had to offer.

Delirious delight. How had it all gone so right? This was proof that good things did happen to the deserving. Against all odds he’d persevered, against all indignities, bowing his head, biding his time, tolerating fools, placating idiots.

But now. Here. With his very physical fabric meshed with that of the Sun, with an unending torrent of power flowing into him, he would finally step into the light and claim his moment.

Dominion! With Scorio falling before him, the scaled idiot, the brazen bastard, falling and weak and defeated at long, long last!

Dameon all but crowed in delight. “I love being a Charnel Duke! As soon as I’m done with this, I’m going to explore the Cube, make it mine, then focus on reaching Crimson Earl. I’d best hurry before Imperators or greater fiends arrive, or, Hell, the Silverines themselves—they’re going to be pissed!”

How good it was to fly once more, to soar upon the breeze, to feel it gently riffle through his hair, so dart and glide! Too many lives had gone by since he’d sampled this endless wonder. And now, centered in his own Dominion, Dameon dropped alongside Scorio, keeping his foe before him, but not bothering to quench his Heart, to rape his reservoir.

Oh, but the temptation was there.

But why make it so easy? Was it not merciful of him to give Scorio a false sense of hope?: Oh! There. Scorio was finally trying to arrest his fall, regaining his limited wits, so Dameon darted down, power building up in his fist once more, and it was practically orgasmic to smash his knuckles into Scorio’s temple and send him tumbling once more.

Though, he had to admit it: it was pretty impressive how Scorio was holding up. Dameon was a Charnel Duke now, and his cumulative punch should have shattered the bones in his skull. And those blasts he’d been unleashing from his dragon maw—had that been Diamond?

No. It couldn’t be.

Could it?

Still, the boy was outmatched. He’d never been very smart. Watching him labor with Naomi over those rocks had been outrageously amusing. What a good sport he’d been, working like a diligent little fool.

And for what?

Scorio failed to gather himself in time and smashed into a sand dune with punishing velocity. Sand erupted all around him as he plowed deep.

Dameon floated down closer to hover overhead.

“I really do admire you, you know.” It was true, for all the idiot’s reliance on brute force. “I honestly appreciate your endless drive. But it’s so strange. You remind me of my younger self. Well, from past lives, that is. How I used to just care so much for other people. Wild! Because they’re honestly not worth it. Not once you really get to know them.”

Not that Scorio would learn. That was the problem with brutes. They simply charged ahead until one day they ran into an immovable wall and broke their necks. A pity. So much potential there.

But rage was no substitute for wits and cunning.

Even now Scorio refused to give up. He dug himself out of the collapsing crater, still in his draconic form, and fumbled for the ambient mana.

How amusing. How delightful! “Go on,” Dameon called down. “You can do it! Try just a little harder!”

Scorio spat blood and sand and looked up at him, his black lizard eyes in his scary little dragon face burning with petulant anger.

Abruptly Scorio erected his Shroud and roared, “RELEASE DOMINION!’

The force of his command was so weak. It washed over Dameon like a splash of lukewarm water, and only made him grin all the wider.

“No, I don’t think I will, actually.” Dameon beamed. “This is so great. I really advise you to try it sometime. To utterly out maneuver an enemy, and have them completely at your mercy? It’s wonderfully refreshing. I’ve not had the chance since—oh, you already know, don’t you?”

Scorio summoned his ferula and pointed it up at him, a fleck of Diamond mana flying forth. But just like last time, it punched through Dameon’s Shroud to grind itself down to nothing in his forcefield, the mana that was pouring into him from the Sun endlessly replenishing the forcefield’s reserves.

Though damn if that ferula blast wasn’t moderately impressive.

“That’s just not going to work,” chided Dameon. “Haven’t you noticed? You’re basically trying to shoot through the Silverine Sun itself. Not possible at your rank, my friend.”

Scorio clenched his jaw and loosed again, and again. The flecks flew forth, but by the gods, it was so pathetic as to be pitiful. All of them burned out against the endless reserves of the Sun.

“I do love your ferula, though. Is that Diamond under Coal? How stealthy of you. And with… ooh! Noumenon! I’ll be taking that once you’re dead. How—sorry, silly question. You’re just prone to accomplishing impossibilities, aren’t you? Not this time. This time I’m going to kill you, then find Jova and see just how long her resilience can keep her alive before, well. You know.”

Dameon winked, feeling oh so dashing, a true rascal, and raised his ferula to blast Scorio where he stood.

The colorless flame hit Scorio’s Shroud, but this time Scorio fought to replenish it as quickly as it was consumed. A poor man’s attempt at duplicating Dameon’s own power. He poured his mana into it, feeding that one spot, replenishing it from his reservoir.

Oh, but this was fun. Reflex more than anything made him summon his Dread Blaze power again.

The tapestry of threads and ribbons appeared before him, complex and twisting, alive with fluctuating possibilities.

The main path before him, however, was but a slender stream of Silver.

Dameon frowned. That couldn’t be right. A quick glance confirmed that Jova was powerless as she circled his Dominion in the distance. There was nobody else in the area. Scorio was practically defeated.

Even as Dameon watched the Silver winked out and became a moderately sized path of Bronze.

It was getting worse?

Well, time to wrap this up, then.

Dameon loosed another blast of ferula fire.

Two spots now burned against the curvature of Scorio’s Shroud. The scaled brute leaned into the attack as one might into a great door, straining physically in a situation where only mana control mattered.

Absurd.

But he couldn’t win this. Dameon probed the conflict with his heightened senses. Scorio had to be feeling tremendous spiritual pressure. The ferula blasts of a Charnel Duke were unlike any other kind of attack. It wasn’t just light or force Scorio was facing; those incandescent flecks were mana made livid and weaponized unlike anything else.

Still, as usual, Scorio wasn’t accepting the obvious. It was commendable how he was struggling, but equally as absurd.

“This is for Simeon,” said Dameon, and loosed a third fleck of white fire. “And this is for Davelos. For Evelyn, for Ydrielle.”

Righteous melancholy arose within him, and Dameon felt his ebullience turn mean. His friends should be here to celebrate with him. To rise and fulfill Manticore’s dream. Instead, the muscle-bound lizard boy was there, still refusing to break.

“Know when you’re beaten,” shouted Dameon, abruptly impatient and furious. “I have Dominion! You want me to Gutter your Heart, to drain you dry? Die with dignity, you—”

Scorio screamed. Not with pain, but outrage, denial, and a small red sphere appeared in his taloned hand. Its power scalded the air, filled Dameon’s nostrils with the scent of smoke and flame, and its power actually pushed back the roiling Sun’s discharge.

Was that Ruby mana he sensed? A well of it, flavored and potent—

“No!” Dameon struggled to establish Primacy as Scorio swallowed the sphere. His Dominion was perfect, so why didn’t it snuff out the beast’s Heart? Grimacing, Dameon bent his will to the task, the simple, stupid task, one he’d done a thousand times before in his past lives, but which now felt so slippery and unreliable—

Scorio blazed with power, his eyes shifting to burning red, and his draconic form hunched as strength corded his limbs. An aura of pale crimson flames enveloped him, and he threw his draconic head back and roared, the sound terrible, primal, otherworldly.

“FALL!” commanded Scorio, and such was his moment of power, his preternatural potency, that Dameon’s eyes widened as he willingly ceased to fly, and fell the twenty yards to the dune.

Scorio leaped, beat his wings once, and fell upon Dameon. Who abandoned his attempts at Primacy to erect his forcefield with utter desperation.

Scorio’s talons scorched trails of burning light across the hemisphere, Dameon staring up wide-eyed as the brute roared and slavered and fought to get at him. For a moment he couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. It was too much, how had Primacy failed him, how had Scorio come to possess such a pill?

But the Silverine Sun’s power was total and unending. For each deep gauge that Scorio tore in the forcefield, Dameon frantically sealed it with twice as much mana. It was close—he couldn’t even get his Shroud up—but as long as Scorio was so fixated on his burning-white talons and the eerie, blood-red fire that coated him from the pill, he’d be wasting his time, he couldn’t get through the Sun’s reserves.

Primacy. Dameon needed Primacy now. Again he reached for that absolute power, and again his Dominion surged and sagged like a water-logged paper castle. What in the bleeding hells? All he had to do was extend his will, to desire complete mastery, and it should happen!

Doubt crept into Dameon’s mind. There could be only one reason it wasn’t working. His comprehension of his self, his ascension, it was incomplete. Was the Silverine Sun interfering with his own sense of who and what he was? No—that couldn’t be right, he was just channeling those immense reserves. Then maybe it was—could it be his leapfrogging past Pyre Lord?

A wash of horror caused him to momentarily freeze as he gazed up at the frenzying Scorio, eyes widening as he examined the foundations of his power and found them wanting. The Silverine Sun had allowed him to move straight to Blood Baron and then on to Charnel Duke, his old knowledge sufficing, but the self-awareness no longer matched the Pyre Lord he’d been in past lives. He was too divergent. There was enough overlap to allow him to brute force the ascension, but now, when it came to Primacy—

Scorio became black fire. A humanoid shape of leaping ebon flames shot through with virulent crimson, his eyes leaving trails in the air as he reared back and then inhaled the entire conflagration into his maw, becoming flesh once more, to beat his wings and rise into the air, five, six yards above Dameon, and there exhale an inferno down upon the forcefields.

Dameon screamed.

The fire was impossibly hot. Scorio should never be able to channel such power. He was just a damn Blood Baron, Ruby mana should be scouring him from the inside, charring his spirit, searing his Heart!

Dameon summoned every ounce of discipline he’d learned across all his lives and focused solely on becoming a conduit for the Silverine Sun.

That wonderful, stolen, searing mana came flooding into him from the heavens, a witch’s brew of Silver and Bronze, Gold and Iron, and he poured it all into his forcefield. A forcefield which could withstand Diamond ferula blasts, but which now was as thin as an eggshell, the Ruby-tainted fire stripping it almost completely away.

For a livid eternity they remained thus, Scorio exhaling his own version of living hell down upon Dameon, who in turn flung up as much mana as his Charnel Duke self could channel, keeping his forcefield just barely in place.

At last, at long fucking last Scorio’s attack ended. The draconic brute flapped his wings a few times more, then let out a rasping cry of broken fury and fell to the sands.

Dameon lay there, panting, his Dominion so patchy it was barely holding together in a pitiful hundred yard radius. Were it not for the Sun’s stolen glory, it might have simply collapsed.

But he levered himself up to one elbow and eyed his foe. Scorio lay on his side, having shrunken back into his human form, and blood was leaking from his mouth, flowing like crimson tears from his eyes, smoke rising from his scorched and blistered skin.

“Heh.” Dameon forced a chuckle as he wrestled down his terror. “I guess that’s what happen when you play with fire, eh?”

Scorio place a palm on the sand and tried to lever himself up.

“Oh, no.” Dameon sat up. “Enough playing around. Time to end this. That was way too close for comfort.” That red pill had no doubt been the reason his own chances had dropped so precipitously.

With that threat overcome, his future no doubt was massively golden once more. Dameon rose uncertainly to his feet and raised his ferula. As he did so, he activated his Dread Blaze power quickly for a check.

The Bronze stream was but a thread, and even as he watched it the thread snapped and became red.

Dameon made a disgusted face. “What the hell?”

The red thread began to broaden. Faster than should have been possible, it widened into a slender stream, then a wrist-thick road, then even wider.

Horror, confusion, and fury arose within him. Scorio was done. He couldn’t even stand. Dameon had Dominion, the battle was won, the Cube was far, far away, the Silverines weren’t interfering, what—

A flash of light. A new light, blazing and pure, golden and overwhelming. Something slammed into Dameon with world shattering power, from the side, and all ceased to have meaning as he felt himself lifted off the ground as if by a hurricane wind, and hurled flying through the air to hit the dunes some fifty yards away and plow a furrow another twenty or so yards before fetching up against an outcropping of rock.

Only his forcefield had kept him from being totally annihilated, but it was gone now, as well as his Dominion. Stunned, barely able to think, Dameon tried to sit up. Everything hurt. His head was ringing, his vision blurred, his Heart almost Guttered.

A figure descended from the sky, her whole form aflame, a woman carved from the sun, her hair a burning mantle, twin cloaks spiraling around her form.

Dameon stared at her, unable to understand. “Who is she?” Nobody answered. “Where did she come from?”

She was saying something to Scorio, who was gazing up at her wide-eyed, his scorched features wide and vulnerable with amazement.

“Who the hell is she??!” screamed Dameon in fury, and slammed his fist into the sand. It hurt so badly he screamed, but the Silverine Sun was there, always there, so with blood-minded deliberation he spat blood to the side and began knitting his wounds together.

“Doesn’t matter who she is,” he hissed as he tried to rise. “I am a Charnel Duke. This is my hour. And nobody—nobody can stop me now!”

He very purposefully, however, did not summon his Dread Blaze power again.