'I don't know why I can't fall asleep tonight.'
A young child sighed as he stood on the balcony outside of his room. The crisp open air of the Ivory City surrounded his short form. Looking above, a sea of clouds covered the shy full moon.
'Father left to battle. Oh! I pray that he returns alive to be granted the Dragon Lord's favour. To have him be chosen would be the best thing to ever happen to me and mother.'
And his thoughts continued.
'Even if not him, I wish I could be special enough to be a chosen sacrifice.'
With the typical low self-esteem of a child his age, the boy doubted his place and potential within the Ivory City. But just as it came, it left. Feelings of self-deprecation flipped into anger and jealousy in but a moment. Fuelled by forces that the child could never understand.
'Why did that scum warrior dare to fight against our Lord's blessing? Running away just as the Lord arrived in his mighty form!'
What the child was referring to was the recent scandal of a sacrifice escaping his duties in front of the Ivory City's protector. Supposedly, after escaping, the warrior slandered Lord Sevras to anybody that would listen. But of course, the denizens of the city put a stop to it. Burning him at the stake was the least that they could do.
Just as the boy's gaze returned to the night sky, a flicker of light caught his eyes. Just as he turned to look closer, it disappeared. Only to appear in his peripheral vision once again. One turned into two, into four, and it continued to expand.
Finally catching one with his eyes, he realised. It was not a flicker of light but more so the absence of it. The absence of the ambient light that phased through the night clouds. And as they reached lower and lower, the haze of black fell more and more.
A sharp whistling sound grew louder and louder.
But the young child did not know any better. Thinking of it as perhaps a swarm of flies or a trick of the light, his thoughts returned to his father.
CRASH
BONG
The combined sound of something crashing and the echo of a bell filled the stone-paved streets, reaching the boys' ears. From his balcony, he could see it. The lone church that his mother and father were married in had collapsed, a bronze bell rolling in the debris. The building was demolished. As though an explosion went off on the roof, it collapsed on itself.
He now knew. This was not a swarm of flies or a figment of his sleep-deprived mind. It was danger.
With a burst of fear, the first thought that filled the young boy's mind was fear.
"MOTHER!-"
An arrow of darkness tore through the central roof of his home, collapsing the entire structure that held up his home. And within a microsecond, he could feel his heart sink as gravity took him.
In the moment that he landed, his left femur snapped brutally. Bursting out of his leg, the sharp bone tore through the femoral artery as it exited. But that was not the last of it, not close. The balcony that he used to spend countless nights resting on now sealed his fate. The trailing rubble acted as his sarcophagus as it crushed his broken form.
Now trapped in agony and darkness, he nearly broke his vocal cords as he shouted, pleaded and screamed. For his mother, whose state he could not imagine. For his father, the always strong man that knew how to solve every problem. For anybody, for anybody to save him.
Crushed and running out of breath, Alex died within five minutes. Fatally bleeding out from a severed femoral artery, experiencing hellish agony that a young child should never endure.
And along with Alex, six hundred civilians, with a majority being women, children and the elderly, met their death within an hour of the attack that started the war. More than two thousand were critically injured, with two-thirds of them likely dying within a week.
---
'May you find your peace.'
Aldric thought. Affording his victims what little grace he could.
Alone in the billowed cloak of Bael, Aldric was on his knees. His soul continually collapsed each time it reformed, with a new core trailing afterwards. Again and again, the agony was continuous.This was incomparable to the only other time he felt a new core expanding.
Continuously, dark sprites invaded his soul and blossomed as a stream of invisible dark light rose from the Ivory City and its surrounding airspace.
With the continuous pain, he could not think or breathe. He just existed in a void of pain. [Tranquil Core] worked in overdrive in combination with the passive effects of [Child of Nether] and [Dauntless Will], all to afford him the ability to have one small train of thought.
And of all the things he could have thought of, Aldric tried his best to assuage his feelings of guilt and doubt. It was not a linear train of thought but just words and phrases that ran through him.
To be truthful, he did not care at all for the soldiers that he murdered. This was war. Blood would be spilt. But he could not ignore the influx of dark sprites that came directly below them. He could not ignore the number of dormant humans that the nightmare spell addressed.
Aldric knew deep down what he did was inhumane, along with a number of other words, but the guilt that he felt was not the normal kind. The kind that was filled with an equal amount of regret for the decision that was made. But Aldric did not feel regret. No, he could not allow himself to feel regret.
This brutal act was not done with malice or emotions but cold reasoning. Aldric had recognised that this moment was an opportunity for him. A moment that would never repeat itself. The perfect situation that did not morally break his principles. After all, a nightmare was different from real life, right?
With the unique nature of his progression style, humans that he killed would give him over ten times the amount a nightmare creature of the same rank would. And this was scaled relative to his own rank, so for each master that he just killed, twenty sprites would be his reward.
So the killing of the thousands of soldiers tonight could only be the fastest way for him to progress and gain more cores. To strengthen his true darkness and unlock more of its esoteric properties.
Yet the inverse was true; as an awakened, for every dormant human he killed, he would only gain 1 singular sprite. A truly treacherous existence, to inhumanely benefit from the loss of innocent life. And despite knowing that thousands of the arrows from his Abyssal Nebula would miss the flying ships and descend onto the city below, Aldric had to make that decision.
A decision that he needed to live by.
Feeling regret would make a mockery of the people that he killed. The guilt he felt was the kind that he knew had to be recognised. To move past this moment selfishly with a lighter heart, he had to. And it would likely take a while. Long after the conclusion of this nightmare.
In part of the pain nearing its end and not wanting to think anymore, he summoned his runes and focused on what he knew had changed.
Name: Aldric.
True Name: F̴i̷r̴s̴t̵-̴C̴l̴a̶s̶s̴ ̶S̸i̴n̴g̵u̴l̶a̸r̶i̷t̶y̵
Rank: A̸w̵a̶k̴e̷n̸e̷d̸.
Dark Core: [7/7]
Class: Titan.
Dark Sprites:[79/7000]
Memories:[Unwavering Spark][Cragborne Armor][Malice Of The Deep][Cavedweller Garms][Water Basin][Charm Of Balance][Silk Robes][Silk Pouch][Warding Eye][Stone Coffer][Key of Beholding][All-Seeing Eye][Mantle Of The Underworld][Cursed Mirror][Dark Wing][Red Spider Lily][Sundered Sorrow][Dark Sea's Covenant]...[Cool Edge][Essence Pearl][Wrath Carver][Maledictive Crucible]...
Attributes: [Insight][Tranquil Core][Null][Tenebrous Rule][Child of Nether] [M̷̥͑͐a̶̺͘r̴͇̟͑͠k̷̞͐ ̸͍̊̋o̷̪̝̿f̴͉̈́̐ ̵̳̀ţ̸̖͒̃h̵̺͈͐e̸̺̩͛̆ ̶̠̙̂̎V̵̗̑̚õ̶̦̉į̵̨̊̚ď̴̢̖͗]
Aspect:[Made In Abyss]
Aspect Rank: Divine.
Innate Ability: [Chalice Of Requiem]
Aspect Abilities:[Dark Well, Dire Ordinance]
Aspect Legacy:[Path Of The Unbound]
Flaw:[Tarnished Soul]
???
Dream Anchor: [Sanctuary of Noctis]
Focusing on the rune count, a tired sigh left his mouth.
Dark Core: [7/7]
Class: Titan.
Dark Sprites:[79/7000]
"In the end, I guess... it was worth it."
***
Thanks for reading.
This story has OFFICIALLY been up for a year now(in two days). It's been a long year with lots of changes but this story was one of the highlights. I'm grateful for everyone that stuck by it from day one. I won't repeat why I wrote it but I'm proud of myself for sticking with this for so long( I think the comments helped :) But Aldric's story is nowhere near finished. With one milestone done, onto the next one.
UPDATE FOR POSTING SCHEDULE. My routine and free time has changed a lot in this past year and you can tell with my posting schedule. I've decided to write weekly from now on. Every Sunday at 21:00 UTC. Though, I might write more depending on if I'm free. But guaranteed chapter every week at that time.
Once again, I love you lot. See you next time.