At the next layer, a swarm of fingernail-sized spirits darted around the space, following and consuming the waves created by the Primordial Child below. Because he was actually on-planet this time where the influence of Leviathans gave rise to life, an ecosystem bloomed.
Knowing what to expect, he moved through the next eight layers, glancing around and seeing the fuller effect of a Leviathan’s presence so far up. Melders ran everywhere, Spirits entered a feeding-frenzy, predators ripped apart smaller creatures- ultimately unable to keep up under the tide of bottom-feeders.
Dei felt several remora-like flying fish attach to and follow him through the layers harmlessly, while other types of Spirits attempted to nip at the edges of his flesh to consume the doubtlessly powerful concepts within him.
Entering the tenth layer, everything went silent, all the parasites following after him suddenly fleeing and leaving only the remora’s to search him for something. An empty clearing in the middle of a spirit forest held a familiar sitting Leviathan as she rested on a stump; said stump continued to grow and mold around her as her lifegiving aura seemed to resurrect it, the plant growing into a more comfortable shape and molding itself to her desires. Strangely, the only other permitted spirits in the area were the remora’s attached to her as well.
His eyebrows rose in surprise as he saw her. ‘This is the Leviathan that I sat with before…? Or is it just another version?’
“Have we met?” he asked, and she tilted her head, looking at him curiously.
She didn’t deign him with a response, and her body language gave an unreadable answer of “Maybe.”
He took that as her being a parallel version, one that was equally talkative as the last: not at all.
He sighed, sitting against a tree in a reflection of their previous meeting and looking around.
This environment was clearly much older than the last they’d met. The forest didn’t fully bend or break around her aura, merely being suffused with new power. This forest was balanced in a way that the last was not.
At the edge of his vision, far in the distance, he could see the swarms of Spirits that wanted to get closer, but resisted the urge so as to give them space- at least, that’s how he interpreted it.
He looked at the remora’s again. ‘Why are all of you allowed in here though?’
Eight were attempting to latch onto him, but kept repositioning as they found something unsatisfying about the placement. He sensed irritation slowly rising in their forms, and felt the urge to figure out what the issue was; he didn’t want them to leave, they were rather cute.
Looking at the Leviathan whose name he still hadn’t learned, her remoras didn’t move, and they dug deeper into her soul in certain places, cleaning harmless aspects of her away. She didn’t have parasites within her, but she did have soul-equivalent aspects of dead skin as she… rewired herself in an efficient way? She improved her biology using Knowledge, Connection, and Alter. Aspects of herself became redundant, and she permitted the remoras to consume them.
‘Ah,’ Dei realized, ‘I’m doing that myself. Knowledge finds the inefficiencies, and Entropic Touch cleans them… I don’t have any inefficiencies left,’ he thought sadly, but he really didn’t want them to leave, so he tried something else
While his body would always be in its most perfect state, he looked towards Harmonic Sanctuary to find beings with lower-quality body refinements.
He had hundreds of thousands of microscopically thin Connections from when he’d split it using the Class and Profession structures, so he took a few hundred and stuck them into Harmonic Sanctuary from different angles.
Within the world, beams of light rained down from the sky, thunder crackling and striking at his spell as the powerful concepts within Connection overpowered the weaker echoes of mana within the world. It would’ve been disastrous, if Connection was not as efficient as it was. Rather than radiate an aura, its power was insulated exclusively into the space it touched directly, storms kicking up within each of the searingly bright spells lethally, winds tearing the trees and grass apart.
Dei intentionally missed any living organisms and placed none of them near the elven settlements as he had an inkling of the changes these would induce in the Harmonic Sanctuary, but for now he took the shredded trees within each beam and presented them to the spirits attached to him.
They were destroyed material, and there were hundreds of sources to draw from as he attached the pathways to the surface of his skin for their convenience.
Though it was an unquantifiably large amount of discarded materials internally, he found that the remora’s could clean an entire beam out in thirty seconds flat.
Still, it satisfied them, and they settled into place on him.
The Leviathan looked at him with amusement, but he was unapologetic about how much effort he’d put in to keep the remoras happy.
Speaking of, he attempted to Identify one, and it gave him permission rather easily.
“Remora, symbiotic Spirits that clean out undesirable soulstuff from other entities within the Spirit Realm.’
They didn’t even have a clever name or anything, the word translating directly over to the concept he knew them for and telling him they were just flat out remoras which, he supposed, made a bit of sense. Did that mean the fish on Earth were a variant of them? That was an interesting thought, that some had adapted to live in the physical world off physical impurities.
Not only that, but he found that his minor chaos-aura was still on, despite him having forgotten about it, but it let the remoras be. Either through an affinity's influence or the Leviathan’s, the fish were gently caressed and left untouched.
The Leviathan grunted and he looked at her. She pointed to her chest, and said “Cistasaria.”
From that alone, Dei got the sense she was more bestial than he’d first assumed. She wasn’t avoiding speech because she was wise or anything, but because she just wasn’t good at it.
It wasn’t a coincidence they’d met, as she must’ve resembled his own path.
Pointing at himself, he said “Dei.”
She nodded, and closed her eyes. He took that as her once again preparing to dive into his aura and influence him in some way as she had last time.
While he waited, he thought over their relationship, and wondered how the Leviathans chose her as their spokesperson to Dei. True, she resembled him a lot, but how would they know that?
The Champion had called Cistasaria his “Mentor,” and that felt like a… loaded word. True, she was teaching him Command, but “Mentor” felt longer term. If she was giving him a once-off lesson, “Teacher” would’ve been a better fit, but he hadn’t called her that, and this was not their first meeting.
He would be meeting her again, and supposedly not infrequently. Perhaps anything to do with Leviathans would come from Cistasaria, but how did they know she was like him?
The answer came unbidden from a memory of his first prophetic dream, the one where he’d experienced a vision and his Connection Skill talking to him.
“There are two ends to every Connection. Pray the other side does not pull you below the waves before you learn to swim,” its warning rang in his head again.
He’d forgotten its implications, that his Skill was not drawn randomly from a list, but taken directly from a specific Leviathan, one that could draw on their link at any time of its choosing.
Cistasaria was his patron. She was his Leviathan mirror, and the System had chosen her to be his mentor because she resembled him.
But it’d given him Connection far before he’d ever started on the path of Slaughter, meaning it had likely foreseen the struggles he would face.
‘Damn… it feels like every higher power could see the consequences of my actions since the very first day. Kindness warned me off, Wrath reveled in the storm to come, and the System gave me a Leviathan that would understand me.’
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Connection, the original string, and the one that held his soul together when it first entered him, emerged from his Potential node. While he had no way to see into it, he bet that if he could, he’d see a path directly to Cistasaria.
His thoughts quieted as he started to feel her grasp on his aura, the touch of a Leviathan massaging his soul in a way he couldn’t describe.
He felt the presence of something greater moving ahead of him, pushing through the dense terrain he struggled through. He rode the wake left behind, finding others doing the same for as long as they’d remembered.
In the path left by the being, by the Leviathan, creatures were spawned, lived, and perished, without ever knowing what it meant to exist in the open ocean. They were born into its touch, and it allowed them to do so- but the cost was known to all. To live easily, you could never surpass it, and you had to follow it for eternity. The Leviathan’s wake protected weaker denizens, but was a prison for the strong, limiting their paths in life.
Dei’s mind was drawn away. He didn’t need to live behind Cistasaria any longer. He’d outgrown her protection, and they both knew this.
Still, she would let him stay if he was afraid. If he couldn’t handle it, and the outside world scared him, she would allow him to reside in her shadow for as long as he wished but… this assistance would not come again, and if he did not take the leap now, he would have to do it alone later.
Command was more than just a spell, all the fragments were. It was more than just ordering souls to do what you wanted, and he was foolish to think such a thing.
But he did not cower. The Skill came with difficulty, and he couldn’t see himself ever using it on another soul, but it was him. He did not wish to hide behind Cistasaria, but to swim alongside her and ease the lives of others as she did.
He threw himself against the weight of her ripples as they tried to pull him back in, the natural state of all life to follow, but he didn’t give up, and Cistasaria watched on approvingly.
He clawed for every inch, the viscous air and searing light warning him away, but he did not surrender. With a final exertion, he squeezed through the last wall and…
He was free.
He didn’t pause or he’d be left behind, instead swimming forward to be alongside Cistasaria as she glanced sidelong at him.
Though he could not see, he felt the others around him, the great beings all forcing their way into the future, guiding those behind them towards new hope and bountiful lands. Cistasaria wasn’t quite the largest or strongest, but she was closer to the lead where the forerunners struggled the most.
Dei found that Leviathans followed behind each other at times, swimming like flocks of birds to ease the burden of their weaker children. He found that his struggle was greater than it might’ve been if he’d been connected with a lesser Leviathan, but he didn’t complain, happy with placement.
In the distance, at the edge of his perception across a forbidden gulf, he felt the touch of something massive enough to guide all life. It was difficult to exist in this place, but it would have been impossible without the true forerunner taking the lead.
The kind presence filled him with warmth, and nostalgia for something he didn’t remember struck him as he felt it. ‘Mom?’
Before he could assess the feeling though, he felt a nudge on his mind, and returned to his body.
Gasping as his eyes widened, opening again as a film was removed from them, he saw with his new sense.
Though he found himself back in his body, he would never again be unaware of the effort occurring beneath the surface.
He swam naturally beside Cistasaria, but to change his trajectory would require magnitudes of effort which he just didn’t have in him right now. His soul was pushed to the limit, and Cistasaria knew this, which is why she’d drawn him back into himself.
But… existence felt heavy now. It would not be as easy to recuperate from soul exhaustion, a portion of himself always dedicated to the effort of carrying the world; this would never disappear either, for as his strength grew, so too would the burden and the portion he was expected to carry.
Command would allow him to order souls around, yes, as it was instinctual to each one to listen to one of the forebearers, but it was a duty more than a spell.
He accepted it fully. This was precisely what he wanted to be: a leader of life, a trailblazer, an Ascender.
It wasn’t something to be used, but a state of existence.
His mind went back to that far-off presence again, and he knew immediately who she was: The Primordial.
She’d supposedly disappeared long ago, and he now confirmed exactly where she’d gone- higher. She’d Ascended, yet she had not forgotten about her children, still carrying them behind her, still protecting them.
‘To think… This is what it means to be a Leviathan after she rose higher and paved the way for us all. I cannot even imagine the effort she put in to carry the world upon her back at the beginning of time, when she was alone in her journey.
‘Life is meant to have counterparts, friends and comrades to lift the weight alongside you.
‘It is no mystery why she wished for death when the other Primordial’s were no more…’
He sat in companionable silence with the Leviathan, reveling in his newfound freedom, and dreading the duty now expected of him.
* * *
Several minutes later, Ashvorn connected with his senses, making Dei smile as it tried to copy the notifications of the System.
[Spell Gained: Command]
[Command has merged with Harmonic Sanctuary to form the Spell: Cradle of Life]
[Cradle of Life Description:
More than a spell or singular point in the soul, Cradle of Life alters the touch of the user in profound and unmeasurable ways. It makes living more difficult in some ways, but will force the user to grow in strength alongside the other protectors
Cradle of Life also appears to be a Mark of sorts, though mutated and unusual: its effect on one’s Rights changes as the spell does, forming an anomalous first-of-a-kind growing Mark, that will become more powerful over time]
Though Command was a burden, it was clearly very good at making the universe listen. Simply having it was a Mark, and the better he got at it, the stronger it became, the more likely he was to be heard.
He took a moment to look over his entire Interface.
[Authority Signature: Dei
Race: Reaper
Foreign Construct, Incomplete: Slaughterer of the Sundered Realm (26% Complete) (Level 226)
Foreign Construct, Complete, Partially Sealed: Herald of Power (46% Complete) (Level 146)
Innate Potential: 484/700
Marks: Void Walker, Soulspeak, Beyond Understanding, No Rulers Above All, Bearing the Burden, Slayer of Giants IV, Cruelty of the Slaughter (II), Dammit, Slaughterer, Untethered, Risky Business, Golden Voice and Silver Tongue, Supreme Inquisitor of (Eternal Refuge), Pioneer, Awake, Dreameater, Lunar Terror, Eclipse of Blood, Observer of Chaos, ???, Forge of War, (The Champion’s Blessing of Travel), (Void’s Reward), (Changed by the Realm of Reality), (Leviathan-based recognition), Devourer, (Star Seared), Extraterrestrial, Dragonslayer, Macbeth, The Champion’s Devil, (Meet Grim), Reaper, Rebirth, (Sealed Okrin), Cradle of Life
Reality Constructs:Soul of the Leviathan, A Korgonda’s Mutual Respect, Deal of the Almost-Dunce, Vow of Secrecy to The Champion,
HP: 100%
MP: 100%
SP: 4%
Active Affinities:
Kindness: Low-Grand: 81%
Personal: Mid-Historic: 47%
Wrath: Low-Grand: 81%
Soul: Low-Grand: 23%
Fortitude: High-Treasured: 86%
Void: Low-Epic: 45%
Love: Low-Uncommon: 26%
Death: High-Uncommon: 9%
Potential Affinities:
Snap - Presumed barrier: Disinterest.
Natural Affinities: Sapience-derivatives, (Cycle of Life and Death)-derivatives
Rules of Wrath:
- I will allow no harm to come to those under my care.
- Children must be protected.
- (Estimation): Greed-based Rule about protecting your own objects.
- I will stand for no betrayal.
- (Estimation): Never let an enemy roam free.
Affinity Spells:
Kindness: Call for Help (100), Good Samaritan (259), Meaningful (175)
Wrath: Growing Rage (407)
Soul: Empower Self (39), Cradle of Life (1)
Fortitude: Solidity (300)
Business: Value Sense
Void: Roving Gate (112),
Mind: Overmind (316)
Reality Spells:
Health: Divine Balance (409)
Mana: Meditation (293)
Confluence Spells:
Identify of the Stout Protector (208), Cycle of Sealing (500) (Unknown containment), Eldritch Self (217), Hollow Cry (3), Fractured Reality (162)
System Spells: How About a Demonstration?, Fine-Tooth Comb (76), Vigilance (185), In Tune (125), Commune with the Universe (71), Starved Bastion (157), Hellish Divergence (12), Entropic Touch (33), Land Between (84)
Misc Spells: Living Barrier]
He’d leveled up significantly in Herald of Power, which made sense considering he’d served as The Champion’s hand to seal Okrin, and he now carried the weight of the Leviathans in every move.
More importantly though, Oppositional Reforging took on a new name again, his Personal affinity becoming more defined: Forge of War.
It was coherent. He bet that if he surpassed level five hundred right now, he could ascend to Godhood if he wanted and become a God of the Forge of War. Not that he would, though, as he still had much he wanted to do in the world.
It was also interesting to see that his SP had almost completely bottomed out, the exhaustion from learning Command taking its toll on his Interface.
All of his Spells had virtually stagnated now that he wasn’t in the Quarentine, but Land Between caught his eye as it’d jumped seventy levels, which made him quirk his eyebrows as there could only be one reason.
‘The patch to Okrin’s coffin counted as a MASSIVE Land Between. Even if I didn’t cast it directly, it still had a hand in its creation.’
That set his mind ablaze thinking of the implications for what it could be used for.
A few minutes later though, Cistasaria appeared to grow tired of him, and he got the sense that she wanted him to leave already. He laughed, as she really was like him, and stood up.
“Cya.”
She didn’t respond, so he shrugged and swam back up through the layers. The Spirits did not try and harry him this time, seeming much more docile. Though he hadn’t ordered them away, his desire to not be bothered must’ve been felt through Command, and they listened.
He found himself back among his friends, though he still in dire need of a break until his SP recovered.
Then, it was time… time to say a last goodbye to Earth, and head back into the quarantine for either the rest of his life, or until he Ascended.