As soon as my hand gripped theirs, around the blade, we merged. I didn’t need to understand or to have them explain what was happening. I knew deep within me now, not fully able to be comprehended, but it was there. It sat beyond active thought, telling me to just move. And I did.

  When it happened, it happened quickly; both versions of myself, Death and the Primeval, rushed into me like smoke. Two separate beings had flooded into my body and mind as an intangible smoke. It was overwhelming, but only for a minute. As they entered me, they brought massive amounts of information and power along with them. The power, though, wasn’t fully in my reach. I knew if I needed it, I could draw more than ever before, but in my normal state, it would be hidden, so I could walk through the living world without causing so much death and destruction.

  There were other things too… things I hadn’t expected. Memories, maybe… flashes… images of other people. It all rushed into my mind in a single moment. It was the collective memories of all the past monsters… the ones like me. Those who bore the mark of Annihilation and Death, from the very first to the very last, before me. Jon’s memories were there. I wasn't seeing them all, but if I looked within my mind for them, I could see them easily.

  I felt like something was being forged inside my mind. A treasure trove of information and experiences to help me as I continued on further down the path. They were all there, lining metaphorical aisles and shelves just waiting for me to reach out and experience what they had lived… felt and seen.

  But… I didn’t have time for that. As much as I instinctively knew what had just happened, I also knew where I was going.

  The moment I touched the blade and merged with the manifestations of Death and Myordrakien, I was moving through a sort of space. It was almost instantaneous, but not quite. However, in a mere breath, I was standing in a dark void.

  This wasn't the darkness that swallowed my spirit when I had no body. That was an absolute void. This was a darkness that was lit up every so often by a familiar, sickly red light. A weak pulse of a shriveled and dying heart. This… this was the heart chamber of Hunger. Her most vulnerable place within her gargantuan body. I was back in the living world… just inside of her domain.

  I solidified through shadows, manifesting my new Primeval body in the absolute depths of Hunger. It felt… strange, but fluid, like my new body was made for this shit. I stepped out into the living world, and Hunger’s consciousness noticed immediately.

  Her voice tore through my mind, “YOU! How are you here?” True confusions mixed with a sense of unease.

  Her mental voice wasn't just mental anymore. I could feel her words reverberate through the chamber itself. The dark walls that lined this desiccated chamber rattle dust and gravel loose as her rage radiated through the entirety of the pits. Clicks and clacks of small stones falling and bouncing across the stone floor echoed everywhere.

  I just stared deeply into the brightest part of her slowly squelching heart. I was watching her… the last vestiges of power she could call her own… reduced to this. I saw her prime form in my memories… Myordrakien’s memories. She used to be regal… destructive… and pure avaricious hunger. What she was now… reducing herself as she divided her power amongst her offspring to help her hide from us… It was pathetic.

  I started walking through the darkness towards the heart… saying nothing to her.

  “HOW ARE YOU BACK?” she screamed again, the earth shaking around us. “YOU ARE DEAD! DEAD!”

  I kept moving toward her, not running, just walking as steady as I could, showing no emotion or inclination to respond to her. We were well beyond that now.

  Red haze began to emanate from the surrounding walls and ceiling, even rising from the floor. She attempted to weaken me, just as she had before, to allow her elders to overcome my power. Even though it was a part of Death’s plan, something he had accounted for, it still pissed me off. Soon, in only a few steps, the chamber air was a sea of corrupting smog that I could feel trying to invade me.

  Instinctively, I reached to my side and slipped my hand through the veil and pulled the wicked blade from its otherworldly home. With a haunting ring of vibrating steel, Death’s blade was drawn out into the living world once more. There was a reaction as I brought it out, like the world didn’t want it. I could feel the heart chamber thrum with a plea… like the stones didn’t like the blade. I could feel a revulsion in the atmosphere.

  The moment the blade entered the heart chamber, Hunger’s sickly, still-beating heart began to quiver and churn rapidly, but it was no use. The blade drank in the red smog right before my eyes. I could feel the blade reaching out with an unseen power or force. It felt the life, the Primeval spark that fueled the red haze… and ate it up. The fog started to clear around me, the entire chamber clearing just as fast as it had appeared. That pissed her off.

  “WHAT IS THIS POWER?” Hunger screamed through the shockwaves of sound and grinding stone as the earthquake rattled around me. Her voice was full of emotion; something unbecoming of the heartless, monstrous bitch that she had been. Her voice fell to almost a hiss after the quaking stopped. She almost whispered… mental voice dripping with something strange to hear… coming from her at least. “This is it… the thing we ran from after we killed you. It's been a long time… but I know it’s the same.” She almost sounded reverent and resigned in her words now. It was something that I registered quickly without explanation. She knew it too. It was… inevitability. “Tell me… brother. What have you done to us? What bargain have you struck to claim us all?”

  Her words were sincere now as she felt her inevitable end crawling slowly closer. She wanted to know what was coming… to understand. The Primevals didn’t have an understanding, or even a word to describe what the human world referred to as Death. All they knew was their planned destruction to continue the process of creating a world. They knew of Annihilation… but not Death. The two concepts were similar, but they were not the same. This hinted to me something interesting as I stood there for a moment, basking in the moment as Myordrakien, Death, and I all felt the fear… the terror… the certainty pouring out of this Primeval entity; and we enjoyed it. Well… Myordrakien and I enjoyed it. Death was as cold and emotionless as always, even as I could now feel him through the blade. Hunger was terrified of the unknown… just like a human. She was scared to die.

  I felt the earth shake again, but this time it was only behind me. I turned to look, catching a glimpse of massive stones and boulder-sized rock chunks falling from the ceiling as the chamber wall split open behind me. Light poured into the darkened heart chamber from the new opening, and I saw what it was. From the other side of the chasm, the gargantuan elder… the spider, tore through the stone and frantically clamored through the heart chamber… coming straight for me.

  “KILL HIM, MY CHILD. HE WANTS TO END US ALL…KILL HIM QUICKLY BEFORE HE GETS TO MY HEART!” she screamed as the eight-legged freak busted through the slowly, groaning crack in the wall, forcing its way inside the chamber. It busted up the stone floor as it screamed toward me, creating pockmarks along its path through the chamber.

  The earth was shaking again, not just from the powerful words spoken by the ancient entity, but from the sheer size and power of the spider.

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  The black and yellow spider lurched more into view, its enormous frame scraping against the stone above. Each step cracked the earth, barbed legs flexing like serrated spears ready to tear through flesh. It loomed large… an armored titan of chitin and venom. Its fanged maw dripped a thick, hissing saliva that ate pits into the rock beneath.

  It was big enough to crush me with a twitch. But that didn’t matter. Not anymore.

  “Hello again… asshole!” I spit towards the thing.

  My fingers clenched around Death’s blade, feeling it pulse alive with the fatal energy that coursed through my veins. The power roared inside me, flowing and endless, coiling like a supernatural being waking from slumber. My vision narrowed. The spider’s many eyes gleamed, and I could feel them trembling. It knew something was wrong.

  It reared back, barbed limbs cutting through the air with a shriek of wind. It was fast… far faster than anything that size should be. But I was faster still.

  The world screamed as I moved. The air ripped apart in a thunderclap, the shockwave blasting dust and bone fragments outward. I crossed fifteen yards in a heartbeat, leaving a distortion trail behind me that was cloaked in shadow.

  The spider’s fangs opened wide to strike… but it was too late. Death’s blade met its face with a sound like splitting rock. The point sank in just below its cluster of eyes, and for a fraction of a second, everything froze. Then the power inside the blade erupted.

  A pulse of annihilating force blasted from the blade at the same time the spider’s head imploded, collapsing inward like wet paper sucked into a vacuum. Chitin plates shattered and split apart. Its shriek died before it began as its legs gave way all at once, the body crumpling like a mountain collapsing in slow motion.

  But I didn’t step back. I didn’t even flinch. The beast’s massive weight fell toward me, easily the size of a house, enough to crush me. I braced, driving my taloned feet into the ground, black claws curling from my forearms like hooked blades. The impact came, and then slipped past me on both sides.

  The spider split apart on me. Its body was torn in half, shredded by the curved, jagged talons that now extended from not just my hands, but my arms and shoulders had quickly erupted spikes and barbs that made every move lethal. I was a living guillotine… unstoppable, immovable. Wet meat and shattered limbs cascaded around me, thudding into the cavern floor in heaps.

  A wave of filth drenched me. The gore was hot, viscous, yellow-green, and reeking of rot and bile. It ran down my arms in ropes, filled the cracks between my claws, and steamed against the heat of my body. The stench hit me like a wall. It smelled like a bucket of dead fish and, oddly enough, cheese pizza. At least the memory of old Chuck E. Cheese birthday parties came to mind when the bug juice swarmed my nose.

  The monster twitched once, a reflex spasm of nerves, and I drove the blade deeper, twisting until the last quiver died out. Then silence.

  The cavern still shook faintly from the echo of my strike. I looked down at the twitching ruin beneath me, the once-feared elder predator reduced to pulp. Death’s blade shimmered faintly in the dim light, consuming the gore on its length until it was unblemished and in pristine condition.

  I exhaled slowly, steam curling from my lips. This wasn’t a fight. It was an execution.

  After his body stopped flopping into a dead and dismembered position, I saw it… the relic of Hunger. Almost instantly, it started rushing towards the heart. It zipped through the air like a lightning bolt as Hunger tried to reclaim what was rightfully hers. However, I couldn’t allow that.

  I lifted the blade and pointed at the jagged fang of Hunger’s power, and I sent a surge of my power out, through the air, similar to how I could send my pulse sense out. However, this was not to gain sensory data or locate a specific person. No… this was to destroy. I didn’t know how I knew to do that, but it came like breathing.

  The crystalline object had been a brilliant, pulsing red shard one second, and then it was a black, hollowed-out shell that flickered out in a fast spudder. In only a single motion, I killed the power of the relic, and a weighty presence felt like it had left the room. I knew that I didn’t have to worry if Hunger reclaimed it. It wouldn’t matter, as I could still kill her, but it might allow her to cause more damage by moving her body, killing parts of the city as she shifted her titanic corpse.

  “NO… NO,” Hunger raged again along with more tremors. “I’LL…”

  Hunger had something cocked and loaded, ready to make a plea or threat. However, something in me had shifted. I had seen enough in my first stage of being the monster, and in this first trip out in my new form. It was time I learned from past mistakes. It was time to make moves and be decisive. So, with this thought in mind, I cut the bullshit.

  I moved like a shadow, appearing beside the massive, yet shriveled heart. I raised Death’s blade, and with a single, gentle push, I slid the blade in between two folds of dried-out flesh on the side of Hunger’s heart. The moment the blade touched the titanic heart, the red light that beat within the corpse faded. It wasn't instant like the spider-elder had been, but it took about ten seconds to fully wink out of existence. In that time, Hunger spat venom at me that she shouldn’t have. She was only helping me.

  “They’ll kill you,” her menacing voice promised me with a sick mental grin that I could almost see. “I’m not gone… You may have killed my prime form… this version of myself… but I will return. As long as my children remain… the relics remain… I will not truly die. And my brother… has already seen you.” The hungry heart was almost completely faded before her last words rang out. “The Abyss claims all…”

  Then… there was nothing.

  The heart was dead. No life beat within it. No life beat inside this heart chamber anymore; not Hunger, not her elder… not even me. I hadn’t been alive, technically, in a long time. Not since I made the deal for Eleanor.

  I turned from the heart, wasting no time. I walked towards the opening where the elder had clawed its way through to attack me. As I passed through, I slid the blade along the jagged and rough surface of the walls, scoring a line into the petrified flesh and bones of the deceased Primeval. The pits still had lingering veins of power throughout, and it had to die as well. I knew that this was some kind of similarity between other Primevals that my predecessors had fought in the past, and a vague voice spoke to my subconscious to lead me to do this part.

  I plunged my blade into a faintly glowing vein of red energy and ran it all the way to the hilt. The dark walls looked unmoved for a moment, and I almost doubted… but then it started. A grey brittleness began to seep out from where the blade was impaled into the stone wall. It moved away from the blade in all directions, taking over more of the walls, the floors, and even the ceilings of the pits. It stretched out, swarming in all directions as the pits themselves were being killed. Not even an Elder with a relic would be able to manipulate the pits like they had been able to do before. No more shifting through the walls of Hunger’s flesh and bones. From here on out, the pits would literally be just a hole in the ground, forever frozen in time in the current state it was in.

  I tore the blade out of the wall, separating a dying chunk of stone with it that fell to the ground and turned to dust. I turned and began walking up a steep incline as I sent out the most powerful surge of sensory expansion that I had ever mustered before. The pulse scoured the pits, sensing the wave of death that was killing the place more and more every second, but also searching for others. The remaining Elders. Unfortunately, after a few moments, and a few more pulses just to be sure… they were gone. Two others were out there… somewhere in the city. The bony, skeleton asshole, and the puddle of goo that ripped my head off before. They were next…

  I looked straight up, knowing where they were. They were up… in the city, roaming St. Louis and maybe even beyond. There were others, too, some that were far off from what Alex had said. I also knew that everyone connected to Hunger would now be aware of what had just happened. Another Primeval… was dead. Alex would know…

  My thoughts ran to her. Was she okay? Where was she? Did killing Hunger affect her?

  “Calm,” Death’s voice came as a whisper. “She remains… but we must stay on the path. There is more for you above… in the city.”

  His assurance that Alex was okay was everything I needed to refocus. I nodded to myself in the darkness of the dead pits. There would be time for that… for all of it: Alex, Autumn, everyone.

  I could sense others within the pits, but they were small fish. Nothing that needed my direct attention, yet. Most were fleeing, running up to the surface to escape the rolling waves of dread and death that were billowing up from the deepest parts of the pits, swallowing the home they had known for so long. The city was about to be full of all kinds of things that go bump in the night… but I didn’t fear.

  Death wouldn’t allow something that would tip the scales, and mass deaths would definitely tip the scales. That had to mean that most of them were just going to run… but part of me hoped not. The monstrous side wanted them to stay in the city because… it was about to become my hunting grounds. And I… we… were hungry for death.

  Myordrakien spoke once before we disappeared from the pits.

  “KILL!”