Chapter 27: The Trial Of The Beast

  For the first time, Erik didn’t arrive in this weird place in the middle of blackness, overlooking his magical sea sphere. He was inside it, or inside himself. His senses weren’t limited to his body’s manifestation here. He could still see everything inside the sphere, though other than the cliff without a beginning and the sea, there was nothing worth looking at.

  He wasn’t limited only to the inside, though. As he encompassed the sphere’s outer layer, he could still gaze into the darkness surrounding it. It was there that he found Leviathan Caress, far away in the abyss. With no up and down, it was right in front of him, no matter where it was.

  It was a black, solid shape, but it had eyes which moved back and forth, and a wide mouth with enormous, jagged teeth in several rows and columns. As he watched it, the dark creature shot forth at amazing speed, heading straight towards Erik’s sphere. Despite it getting closer, Erik felt no connection to the thing, which was odd. Absorbing Sovereign Faith had been all about bringing it closer to the sphere. That didn’t seem to be the case now.

  The creature, even more massive now that it was closer, threatened to crash into his sphere as it only gained more speed the closer it got. It was already clearly more than three times the size of the massive sea sphere, and it seemed to only grow.

  Was this thing about to destroy everything? What would happen if Erik couldn’t stop it? Would his magic die, or would he have to spend years picking up the pieces, hoping to rebuild it again? It didn’t matter. He had to stop that thing.

  His physical manifestation of himself vanished as he visualised raising his arms to catch the beastly missile, but nothing else happened. He didn’t have time to figure something out. He could hear the loud roar of the beast, despite it still being what seemed like hundreds of kilometres away. Two seconds. Think!

  Erik raised his arms to block once more, this time pulling the entire sea with him. The sea split apart into two separate ocean tentacles, leaving only the lonesome cliff behind. The water from the waterfall also split, ending in something resembling a tail of the double-tentacled form.

  Erik pushed the ocean arms against the beast, causing them to crash into it and splash a lot of magic seawater into the void. Still, the arms held. Erik felt the creature pushing him back increasingly hard, but something else was happening at the same time. Erik felt a bond between himself and Leviathan Caress form as the absorption began.

  Having caught the beast at a slight angle, they were now spinning through the void, rotating despite the lack of direction. The beast had lost all of its speed, but it still overpowered Erik slightly, pushing him closer toward the sphere. He could sense that, despite the absorption having started, the right way wasn’t to make it slowly descend on his sphere like this. He had to defeat it as well.

  Erik changed tactics, pulling one of his tentacles away from the beast. This increased the rate of descent, but he had to risk it. With as much power as he could muster, he slammed the free tentacle into the beast’s face. It roared, with glaring teeth, as Erik continued beating it. It was working, but it still wasn’t enough.

  The beast fought back with a wide swipe of its claw, and Erik’s tentacle holding the beast back was torn apart. He reformed it using some of the water from the other tentacle, and both ended up clearly diminished. The waterfall couldn’t keep up with the rate the sea level dropped.

  Seeing that the beast’s speed was gone, Erik started pounding it with both tentacles, enjoying more flexibility with the smaller arms. They were diminishing at a rapid pace, though.

  In a last attempt, Erik twisted the thin tentacles around the Leviathan and used every bit of strength he could muster to flip the beast around. It somehow worked, and Erik was now on top of the beast, receiving swipe after swipe targeting his tentacles as both he and the beast fell towards his emptied sphere.

  Erik strained to keep the beast from falling too hard into it, instead pulling it back away from the sphere as hard as he could. It slowed the fall down just enough. Erik felt the absorption going smoothly after he flipped the beast, meaning he was doing the right thing.

  Eventually, with only thin streams as arms, Erik placed the now much smaller Leviathan down, its movements still. In the last few seconds, it had given up fighting back, and Erik felt like he was putting a baby down in its crib, rather than fighting a monster.

  As he let his tentacles go, they landed in mere puddles on and around the beast. Fortunately, the waterfall worked in overdrive to refill Erik’s ocean, and the low sea connected to the puddles.

  The beast had turned to solid stone, and as the sea level rose, so did the new island, floating in the sea. It had a small lake in the middle, where a puddle on top of it had settled.

  Erik watched as his sphere filled back up to full over the next couple of hours. He was tired, yet he had succeeded. The clean air and calming environment helped him regain his strength.

  A four-legged mini-version of the beast that now floated on the sea as an island appeared behind Erik.

  “Leviathan Caress, I take it?” Erik asked, turning to the creature.

  “Greetings, Master Titan,” the creature said, sitting down next to Erik. It gazed out towards the sea and upon the giant island that mirrored its shape.

  Its voice was androgynous, giving no sense of its sex. Erik sat down next to it, taking in the view along with it. Minutes went by without another word uttered between the two.

  “Why did we have to fight like that?” Erik eventually asked.

  “I do not know. It is part of the symbiotic relationship between spirit and non-spirit. It is as it always has been.”

  “You don’t have a say in how it plays out?”

  “None. It is an instinct too powerful to resist. I bear no ill intentions. Our bond was strong.”

  “What does that mean, though? I felt the power of the link between us, but what difference does a weaker link make?”

  “Hard to say. Spirits joined to a non-spirit never return to the land. Spirits you find have never known different,” Leviathan said with a calm voice, looking down the rushing waterfall. “Where does it go once it’s full?”

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  Erik chuckled. He’d been wondering the same thing since he realised it was filling his ocean. “I don’t know.”

  “It is… odd. But beautiful.”

  “It is. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel like it’s mine.”

  The creature looked at Erik’s contemplative face in wonder. Another few minutes went by in silence. Then Erik got up on his feet.

  “I’d better get back to it. This place won’t fill itself with wondrous and odd things, right?”

  “Are you sure? Rest is important. You don’t know what the next tribulation will be,” Leviathan said with a worried tone.

  “You may be right. I have to get stronger, though. My world won’t save itself. Not for lack of trying.”

  The creature looked around, seeing no danger in the man’s world. “There are other ways of gaining strength than rushing off into the void,” it eventually said, disregarding his comment about saving the world. Erik froze for a second.

  “Do you have a way in mind?”

  “Of course,” it said, getting back up on its feet. “Join me.” It vanished.

  It took Erik a quick second to ignore his manifested eyes’ limited vision, but he found the beast on the island in the middle of the sea. In a flash, he was standing in front of the beast once more.

  They were both facing each other now. Erik saw the pink and orange sheen of Sovereign some distance behind Leviathan, along with a bulkier, also humanoid shape.

  This one had two spikes sticking out of its back half a metre or so and had a much larger cloak billowing in the imaginary breeze than Sovereign did. It was red with black streaks, just like the first few times he’d seen it. That was his Core spirit.

  He didn’t know if there was a difference between the spirits he absorbed and his Core spirit. It had to come from somewhere, right? Or she, despite her larger stature, according to Sovereign.

  “Give me a moment, Levvie,” Erik said, vanishing from the sight of the four-legged spirit as he appeared in front of the two humanoid ones.

  “Sovereign,” Erik greeted, nodding at the spirit. Erik looked to the other one, now seeing that the larger stature resembled a full plate-armour body from top to toe. “Hello.”

  “Greetings…Erik,” Sovereign said with a slight bow. It seemed he had difficulty resisting the formalities Erik wanted no part of.

  The red spirit’s helmet nodded in response, but said nothing.

  “Can you speak? Do you have a name?” Erik asked.

  “Cross Vigor,” a feminine yet hollow voice echoed from within the armour.

  “Cross..? As in ‘Carry the Cross’?” Erik asked, remembering the few phrases uttered from the black-streaked red form earlier.

  “Behold, the Titan who carries the Cross is reborn,” Cross said in a well-practised manner.

  “Those are the words you tried telling me earlier? What do they mean?”

  Cross confirmed with a nod but said nothing more.

  “Right. Are you feeling okay? Sovereign said you were hurt or, uh… something? I’m sorry for hurting you,” Erik said, looking up at the taller spirit. He could only guess where her eyes were supposed to be, if she had any.

  “I am fine now.”

  “Great. I see you’re not very talkative, but we should have a talk sometime. Take care,” Erik said, poofing away towards Leviathan.

  “Are you ready?” it asked.

  “Ready for what, exactly?” Erik answered, as he hadn’t been told what they were doing here.

  “To fight, of course!” the creature said as it leapt towards Erik, its mouth turning into a massive maw with saw-like teeth whirring around inside the mouth. Erik gasped and teleported away.

  “What the hell?” he yelled at the beast from ten metres or so behind it.

  “No teleporting. This is training!”

  Its two front legs turned into giant pincers cruising straight towards Erik, only connected to Leviathan’s main body through thin, black tendrils.

  Erik dodged left, then right, scraping by and escaping both. He dashed towards the shapeshifting creature from in between the tendrils, but the tendrils snapped, forming small snake-like mouths that chased him.

  They criss-crossed around, and instead of getting tied together by the tendrils, the black strings phased between one another. One of the mouths snapped to the side as its thread grew taut, crashing into Erik’s side with whip-like force. Erik lost his footing, and the second mouth went in for the kill.

  It bit him on the shoulder. The teeth grasped him tight as they penetrated deep. It lifted him up into the air and tossed him backwards, Erik ending up further away from the Leviathan than he started.

  “Fuck!” Erik winced as he gripped his wounded shoulder in pain. The pain he could handle, but he hated losing.

  “I said not to teleport, not to avoid your powers. Maybe you should start with Sovereign. I didn’t expect you to still be so weak,” Leviathan said. He wasn’t acting at all like he had earlier. Erik chuckled in response.

  “I know what you’re doing, and I hate that it works,” he laughed, getting ready for another round. This time, Erik had a better sense of the rules, and most importantly, he was ready.

  Leviathan Caress shot out his forelegs, turning them into pincers once more. Erik dodged to the right, getting outside Leviathan’s reach this time. He then dashed as fast as he could toward Leviathan but had to duck and roll as the creature flung one of its pincers to the side as it retracted them, its left one flying straight above Erik’s head.

  The Titan manifested a pebble in his hand and threw it at the creature. The creature knocked it away with one of the tendrils, not even with the main shape of its altered legs. Erik soon held a stick in his hand and shot forth the grey goo.

  As Leviathan tried knocking the substance aside once more, some of it stuck to the shadowy tendril. The substance hardened after Erik dodged a few swipes, the tendril falling limp from the point it was stuck and outwards.

  Erik threw a frisbee with his right hand, immediately followed by a handful of screws with his left. Its one remaining pincer tried to knock the frisbee away, but it acted too late. The large limb crashed into nothing and was knocked away.

  Unaffected by the wall, the screws headed straight for Leviathan. The creature cut off its glued appendage with nothing but a thought and whipped the shorter tendril towards the screws. Erik had to activate them before they reached his target. A bright blue plasma cage floated in front of Leviathan a moment later, but it didn’t reach him.

  The creature growled as Erik noticed the pincers flanking him, having been stretched around the invisible wall. The man threw himself out of the way of the giant appendage, and Leviathan missed his target by an inch. Then, the appendage and the loose, unshaped tendril both fell limp at once as the air filled with a boom as a hidden pebble hit its target.

  Erik took the chance to sprint through his shield, jumping on top of his stunned adversary and raising his fist to the creature’s face.

  Erik waited for the beast to return to its senses. No need to beat the spirit up when training, he figured. Leviathan woke up a few seconds later. He shook his head, then saw Erik’s fist and face above him.

  “Good. At least you have potential. You use Cross well,” the beast said, giving a toothy grin. “But it’s not enough!” It shook its entire body to throw Erik off of it.

  It struggled for naught. When it realised it was constrained somehow, it turned its head to look down at its own body, struggling even to do that. Most of its body was covered in hardened concrete.

  “Enough?” Erik asked with a similar grin.

  “Indeed.” Erik thought the concrete away from the spirit, who got up on its now normal feet. “Next time I won’t go so easy on you,” it said.

  “Oh, sore loser, are you?” Erik asked.

  “I liked the fact that you threw that stone along with the small metal things. Had I been so inclined, though, I could have easily dodged,” it said, and Erik believed it. He thought back, and the creature hadn’t even moved an inch during the second match. It was possible it couldn’t when attacking with its forelegs, but Erik didn’t think that was the case.

  He looked over the creature with suspicious eyes. Leviathan then turned into an enormous beast, much more resembling the Leviathan Erik had fought during the absorption, both in size and form. It was easily fifty stories tall in its current form, and the ground shook just from its breathing. A moment later, the creature returned to normal, as Erik wanted to call it.

  “Good, uh… boy? Do you have a sex?” Erik considered, blatantly ignoring the last few seconds, for his own peace of mind if nothing else.

  “I can be considered… male.” He seemed to taste the word.

  “Good boy, then,” Erik repeated, scratching the creature’s chin. A low rumble sounded from the creature, but its eyes were smiling. He was a good boy.