Iskander
Consciousness returned not as a struggle, but as a gentle surfacing into cool, violet light. I opened my eyes—those unfamiliar yet already dear violet eyes the same colour as Sylvia's, hopefully—to the familiar, spiraling ceiling of the Shell Room.
For a blissful, disoriented moment, the world was soft focus and profound peace. Then, memory crashed in: the roar kf the creature living in this zone, the crushing pressure, the tail-spike impact that had hurled me like discarded trash against the wall.
I braced instinctively for the symphony of agony that should have greeted me—the shattered ribs, the bruised organs, the deep, throbbing ache of trauma.
It never came.
Instead, a profound sense of… wholeness hummed through me. I sat up, movements fluid and effortless, no grinding protest from bone or muscle. My hand flew to my side, where the hooked spike had torn cloth and flesh.
My fingers traced smooth, unblemished skin beneath the ragged tear in the strange grey tunic. The fabric was stained with a dark red, drying blood—my blood, presumably—but the wound itself was gone. Vanished.
As if the nightmare collision had been a fever dream. Only the lingering phantom echo of the impact's violence, a ghost sensation in my nerves, and the torn, bloodied clothing bore witness to the brutal reality.
"Luckily," Sylvia's voice washed over me as soon as I woke up, warm with profound relief that resonated deep within my borrowed bones, "your body can use a bit of the aether saturating the air here to heal itself. It's a passive function, drawing on the ambient energy peculiar to the Relictombs."
"Luckily?" I scoffed, the sound rich and vibrant in the quiet chamber. I pushed myself fully upright, stretching, marveling at the complete absence of stiffness, the sheer ease of movement.
"Nah, Sylvia. This wasn't luck. This was planned." A grin, sharp and defiant, split my face. "Not by me, obviously. But by that Aggra—" I fumbled the name deliberately, a petty rebellion. "—that evil, mad, delusional scientist evil guy archetype. Villains like him? In all of Alfred's stories, the truly terrifying ones weren't just strong; they were brilliant. Diabolically clever. Alfred used to say,"
I adopted a passable imitation of his old butler's dry, cultured tones, "'Strip away their intellect, my boy, and most villains become about as interesting as a background extra chewing scenery.' Agrona," I spat the name properly now, tasting its bitterness, "he didn't just want a weapon. He wanted a resilient weapon. One that could endure the forging process, heal from the inevitable damage of learning to wield impossible power. This healing? It's not a boon. It's part of the design specs. A feature for his monstrous prototype—for his monster of Frankenstein."
Sylvia's laughter was a soft, surprised chime in my mind. "It's… quite something," she murmured, amusement warring with the ever-present undercurrent of sorrow, "hearing you compare a being like Agrona, a Vritra who reshaped a continent and murdered many of my brethren Asuras, to a mere trope in your butler's tales."
"Alfred was a greedy consumer of stories," I explained, warmth flooding me at the memory. "Books, ancient scrolls, flickering films on his antique viewer, folktales whispered by the hearth… he devoured it all. He was my window, Sylvia. My telescope trained on a world I could only glimpse from my prison bed. History, philosophy, heroics, horrors… he filtered it all through his sharp mind and kind heart, and shared it with me. He was the lens through which I saw most of the world."
A pang of fierce longing for the old man hit me, sharp and sudden, but I had to ignore it. He would be proud of me if he saw me right now.
Sylvia was silent for a moment. I felt a ripple of… something… curiosity? Profound empathy? A question poised on the edge of her echo. But she pulled it back, the unspoken query dissolving into the quiet hum of the chamber. I didn't pry. Some doors needed to open in their own time.
Invigorated, buzzing with the miraculous healing and the thrill of survival, I turned towards the spiral door. Time to face the darkness again. Time for round two. My muscles coiled, ready to propel me back into the fray.
"Child!" Sylvia's voice snapped out, sharp as a whip crack, freezing me mid-stride. The maternal authority in it was undeniable. I turned, meeting the stern disapproval radiating from her projected form. She'd crossed her spectral arms, lavender eyes narrowed.
"Charging back into that abyss, completely blind, without the ghost of a plan? That isn't courage. That's either infinite recklessness bordering on the suicidal, or plain stupidity." Her gaze flickered pointedly to the bloodstain on my tunic. "You just narrowly escaped being torn apart. Do you intend to offer yourself up again, freshly healed, for a repeat performance? You risk permanent harm, Iskander. Or worse."
I deflated slightly, the reckless fire banked by the cold water of her logic. "Fine, Dragon Mama…" I conceded, the nickname slipping out, a blend of affection and playful surrender. I sank back down onto the cool floor, folding my legs with the effortless grace this body afforded. The posture felt meditative, grounding.
"Alright. Let's strategize... What can I do?" I met her gaze, the violet light reflecting in both our eyes. "We know the adversary. Let's call it 'The Thing' for simplicity. What can we tell about it? Observations from our brief, violent introduction are: one, it's massive. Towering. But two," I held up a finger, "it's not slow. Its speed was terrifying. Three, its body is an arsenal. Claws?"
I mimicked whirring blades with my hands. "Like industrial shredders. Fangs? Rows upon rows, crystalline, vicious. Tongue?" I shuddered slightly. "Not a tongue. A projectile spiked mace. And Four," I emphasized, "that tail. Armored, powerful, hooked. The impact felt like being hit by a siege engine."
I paused, recalling the most insidious weapon. "And Five… that pressure. That crushing, soul-deep weight that tried to pin me like an insect. It felt like gravity amplified a hundredfold, but…"
"I don't believe it was gravity, not the deviant element of mana at least." Sylvia interjected, her voice thoughtful. Deviant element? Oh, right she explained how magic worked, but I didn't care I was aiming at aether, not mana.
"You cannot feel mana, and I, as an echo of my former self, cannot sense it either. But the nature of that force… I believe it was aether. Raw, unshaped aether being projected, concentrated into a field of pure oppressive force."
"Aether?" The word sparked like flint in my mind. "That… makes sense. I was literally made to harness it…" I trailed off, placing a hand thoughtfully under my chin, feeling the smooth line of my jaw.
"And me, being part dragon due to your… unwanted contribution… I should be able to sense it too, right? But… it's vague. More like a… presumption? A heavy feeling in the air, a hum beneath the skin, even now. Why can't I see it? Grasp it properly?"
A profound sadness touched Sylvia's expression. "We dragons… the dragons of my Clan, the Indrath," she said the name with both nostalgia and pain.
"We possess a rare gift passed through our bloodline. It's called Realmheart." Her voice held a deep reverence. "In its basic state, our affinity grants us an instinctive sense of aether, a resonance, much like you describe—a hum, a pressure, a directional pull. But Realmheart… it's more. When awakened, it allows the wielder to truly see the currents of aether, to perceive its flow and density as clearly as you see light. And not just see… but to guide it. To nudge its currents, to attract or repel its ambient streams."
"Guide it?" I echoed, the concept igniting possibilities.
"Yes. Shape its flow, influence its concentration, though never truly command it like one commands mana through spells. It is a dance with the fundamental fabric, not a domination."
Sylvia sighed, the sound like leaves rustling in a lonely wind. "This is why I harbor such profound doubts about Agrona's entire concept for an 'aether core'. Aether, Iskander… it is wild, elemental, the bedrock of reality itself. Even the Ancient Mages," her voice dipped with that familiar, sorrowful reverence, "who built these impossible Relictombs, who wielded aetheric principles on a scale even us Asuras can barely comprehend… they could not mold aether like clay. They could not forge it into a core like mana. They harnessed its laws, channeled its flows, built with its properties… but they did not wield it as a mage wields fire or ice. The very concept of an internal organ designed to generate and control aetheric energy… it defies the known nature of the power."
"Wait…" The pieces slammed together in my mind with an almost physical force. My eyes widened. "The Thing! It can't use aether like mana—it didn't throw fireballs made out of it or ice spears, or anything. But it did project that crushing aetheric pressure! It guided it! Concentrated it onto me! Sylvia, it uses aether! Actively! And who knows how many centuries, millennia even, it's been lurking in this zone of the Relictombs, steeped in this energy, evolving with it?"
Excitement, fierce and bright, surged through me.
"Then… I can use The Thing! Not just as a foe, but as a… a source! An aether battery! The raw material, the concentrated essence I need to jumpstart my own core!"
Sylvia stared at me, her luminous eyes wide with surprise and dawning, horrified comprehension. "Iskander… I'm not entirely following your leap, child. You want to… harvest the creature?"
"No, no, not harvest! Utilize!" I gestured animatedly. "Think about it! My body passively heals using ambient aether, so I can guide it like you said. Always like you explained me a mana core—the organ Agrona didn't include in my body as he wanted me to develop an aether core—is something living beings naturally develop or are born with like you and your species. It's biological! So…"
I leaned forward, my voice dropping to an intense whisper. "What if I can… gaslight my own biology? Trick it? Force it to heal the missing part, only not with mana? But instead of using ambient aether for simple tissue repair… I channel a massive, concentrated dump of aether—ripped straight from The Thing when I defeat it—into forcing the formation of the aether core structure? Use that violent influx as the catalyst, the blueprint, the raw power to sculpt the organ where there is none?"
"I am still part Asura so my body should know I would need a mana core, right?"
The audacity of the plan, its sheer, terrifying brilliance born of desperation and knowledge gained from Dragon Mama, left me breathless.
Silence. Profound, stretching silence filled the Shell Room. Sylvia simply looked at me. The motherly worry was still there, but it was now overlaid with sheer, stunned astonishment. Then, slowly, a genuine chuckle escaped her, rich and warm and utterly unexpected.
"That…" she breathed, shaking her head with a mixture of awe and disbelief, "...that is simultaneously the most reckless, horrifying, and ingenious thing I have ever heard. It shouldn't work. It defies every principle. But…" She met my gaze, a spark of something fierce igniting in her lavender depths. "...the underlying logic, perverse as it is, holds a terrifying kind of sense. Using the body's innate aetheric healing response, triggered by near-death trauma caused by damage… to essentially rebuild itself around that energy, forming a new organ… It's a theory built on a knife's edge over an abyss, Iskander. But it is… disturbingly plausible."
"However—" she began, the caution returning.
"I need to kill The Thing first," I finished for her, the grin returning, wider and more feral than before. The challenge was accepted. The impossible had a path, however thin and fraught with peril. "Yeah. That's the tricky part."
I pushed myself back to my feet, energy thrumming through me, no longer reckless, but focused. Purposeful. "Looks like I really do need to find that box of scraps." I winked at her spectral form.
Sylvia's expression was a masterpiece of conflicted emotions—profound worry warring with reluctant admiration, maternal fear clashing with a dawning, fierce pride in my audacity. She didn't try to stop me again. The plan, however insane, was laid. The objective was clear.
I turned back to the spiral door, the violet light casting long shadows. The torn tunic was a badge of survival. The healed body was a testament to Agrona's cruel design and my own resilience. The knowledge from Sylvia was my map. And the monstrous Thing lurking in the dark was no longer just a predator; it was the unwilling key to my future, the raw battery for my impossible ambition.
Adrenaline, sharp and clean, mixed with a calculated, ice-cold determination.
"Time for round two," I declared, the words echoing with promise and peril in the pearlescent chamber.
The spiral door sighed open at my approach, revealing the familiar, chilling darkness beyond. I stepped through, not blindly, but with a hunter's intent.
———
The abandoned corridors felt different this time. The sterile, pearlescent walls, the scattered tables and chairs of the Ancient Mages's lost workspace, the impossible height vanishing into shadow—they were no longer just a backdrop for terror, but a potential toolbox.
A battlefield to be manipulated. The pale violet light from the Shell Room, visible as a faint glow at my back, was my tether, my guaranteed retreat. My lifeline.
I moved with deliberate stealth, the effortless grace of my new body allowing me to glide silently across the smooth floor. My senses were hyper-alert, not just for the thunderous approach of The Thing, but for anything, anything, I could use. Alfred's voice echoed in my mind, snippets from a hundred adventure stories: heroes often use the environment. Improvise.
Turn the strengths of their enemies against them. My gaze swept the detritus. Overturned tables—too heavy to throw effectively again, and it hadn't worked. Chairs—flimsy. Then I saw them: scattered near a particularly messy cluster of debris were objects resembling sleek, metallic fountain pens, their tips gleaming with a strange, hard light.
Beside them laid rolls of something like supple leather, sheets of incredibly thin, flexible parchment that felt like solidified cloud, and small pots of a translucent, viscous substance that smelled faintly acrid—glue?
A disbelieving laugh almost escaped me. Did the savant Ancient Mages, architects of cosmic labyrinths, really have… office supplies? The sheer mundane absurdity of it clashed violently with the sublime terror of this place.
Back on Etharia, pens and parchment were relics of formality, tools for scribes recording King Grey's endless, bloody decrees. Here, in the belly of reality's anomaly, they were potential weapons, components in a desperate gambit.
I gathered them quickly and quietly: a handful of the strange pens, several lengths of the tough leather cord, a few sheets of the parchment, and a pot of the glue, tucking them securely into the waistband of my trousers or clutching them in my free hand.
They felt incongruously light, mundane, yet charged with potential in this context.
I was retracing my steps towards the Shell Room, the faint violet glow growing stronger, when I heard it. Not the insectile screech, not yet.
A low, rhythmic thud… thud… THUD.
Heavy, deliberate footsteps, shaking the floor subtly with each impact. Coming from the right-hand corridor, intersecting my path back to safety. Adrenaline spiked, cold and sharp, but it didn't trigger panic. It triggered action.
Without a wasted motion, I dropped low, diving beneath the sturdy frame of a nearby overturned table. The space was tight, forcing me to curl into a ball, pressing my back against the cool, humming material.
I pulled my limbs in, making myself small, insignificant. I clamped a hand over my mouth and nose, forcing my breathing into shallow, silent sips. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drum solo in the sudden, oppressive quiet.
The footsteps grew louder, closer.
THUD…
THUD…
Each impact vibrated through the floor and up my spine. Then came the sound I dreaded: the breathing. It wasn't a growl or a snort. It was a continuous, unsettling susurration, like a million insect wings vibrating in unison—the relentless drone of a locust swarm amplified to monstrous proportions ready to ravage Egypt.
It filled the corridor, a sound that promised only consumption and ruin. It crawled over my skin, raising goosebumps despite the cool air.
Fear, cold and primal, coiled in my gut. But beneath it, honed by a lifetime of enforced stillness and observation, was an icy focus. Don't move. Don't breathe. Become stone. From my cramped hiding place beneath the table's edge, I had a sliver of a view.
The Thing's legs came into sight first.
They were pillars of living obsidian, impossibly tall and thick, each step landing with the finality of a falling anvil. The seamless floor groaned faintly under the weight. Tar-black, absorbing the minimal light, they seemed less like limbs and more like constructs of solidified shadow given terrifying mass.
The sound they made wasn't a mere impact; it was the sound of immense density meeting unyielding material. Just like solid steel cubes dropped from a height. The sheer physical presence radiating from those limbs was suffocating even from my hiding spot.
A strange, detached thought surfaced: Sylvia was right. I had one advantage. My lack of a mana core, my inability to absorb or feel mana… it meant I had no mana signature to give me away. No magical energy radiating like a beacon.
To whatever senses The Thing possessed—sight in utter darkness? Vibration? Aetheric perception?—I might just be another piece of inert debris. A stone. A discarded table as long as I didn't move. I clung to that hope, that small, cold advantage in the face of overwhelming power.
Dragons are the only ones left who can touch aether, Sylvia had said. The Ancient Mages are gone. And this Thing… it wasn't a dragon. It was something else, something forged by this place, of this place. Its senses were an unknown.
My thoughts were shattered by a deafening SLAM. One massive, obsidian foot crashed down mere centimeters from the edge of my hiding spot. Dust puffed up. The table shuddered. I froze utterly, not even breathing. The insectile breathing paused.
A low, guttural sniffing sound filled the air, wet and probing. It was directly above me. Could it smell the blood still on my clothes? The alien scent of my new body? The glue?
Seconds stretched into agonizing eternities. The sniffing stopped. The relentless drone of its breath resumed. Then, with a sound like tearing canvas and shattering stone, The Thing moved. Not forward. Not towards the Shell Room.
Up.
A surge of displaced air washed over me as the massive form launched itself upwards with terrifying power, vanishing into the impenetrable blackness of the ceiling void. The thuds ceased. Only the fading echo of its wings-like breathing lingered, then dissipated into the profound silence.
I remained under the table, coiled tight, for several long minutes after the last sound faded. Paranoia screamed that it was a trick, that it was waiting just above. But the silence held.
The oppressive pressure of its proximity lifted. Slowly, carefully, I uncurled, my muscles protesting the prolonged tension. I peered out. Nothing but the empty corridor, the scattered artifacts, and the faint violet glow beckoning from the direction of the Shell Room.
"Useful," I murmured, the word barely a breath. The Thing could traverse the vertical space. It wasn't confined to the floor. Its domain was the entire three-dimensional void of these corridors. It thrived in darkness. The observation was crucial.
If I could find that generator, that source of the deep thrum… if I could bring light… it might disrupt it, disorient it. Tilt the scales. Anything, anything I could scavenge or manipulate could be the edge I needed.
Finally convinced the coast was clear, I slid out from under the table. My movements were quick, efficient. I scooped up a few more of the strange pens that had rolled nearby, adding them to my small hoard.
The torn tunic flapped slightly, a reminder of the stakes. But as I turned my back on the darkness and strode purposefully towards the welcoming violet light of the Shell Room, the objects clutched in my hands weren't just junk. They were possibilities. Components. The beginnings of a box of scraps.
And on my lips, despite the lingering chill of fear, despite the memory of crushing pressure and tearing claws, bloomed a huge, defiant, utterly alive smile.
The hunt was on.