Fire is all I know. Burning darkness suffuses me, setting every nerve ending I have alight.
I have Pain Resistance at a Silver tier. Level 15, no less. I have been able to put aside the sensation of pain even when half the bones in my body were broken.
And yet bright hot pain consumes me, devours every lucid thought in my mind. My body is alight with agony, my very soul burning under the wraithfire that slices into it.
Pain Resistance advanced to level 16!
Through the mind-shattering pain, I manage to wonder if this is what being Devoured feels like.
I can’t tell how long it lasts. My vision is shades of black and white and red. All I can taste and smell is sulfur and ash and slowly-cooking flesh. The silence of the room is broken by a woman’s piercing scream. It’s not until my throat is raw that I realize it’s mine.
Pain Resistance advanced to level 17!
Flesh chars to a crisp and sloughs off, Demonic Heritage replacing it just fast enough to keep my body from falling to pieces.
Pain Resistance advanced to level 18!
After a few short eternities, the pain starts to subside ever so slightly, and my vision returns enough that I can make out blurry shapes of light on dark. My skin continues to char to the point of boiling and falling off, but the screaming agony has reduced to merely excruciating pain, which I can push aside in my mind.
New skill unlocked: Demonic Resistance
You take 10% less damage from demonic attacks.
New skill unlocked: Fire Resistance
You take 10% less damage from fire attacks.
New skill unlocked: Wraithfire Resistance
Wraithfire deals less damage to your soul.
I can’t ignore it in its entirety, since it’s sort of important to know if my body is still falling apart on me, but my increased resistances beat back the undying waves of flame until I can function again. My mind regains its facilities enough to let me know that I’ve screamed myself hoarse.
Targets killed: [0/5]
Warning: XP reward reduced from 600 to 500.
They killed the dragon baby while I was suffering, it seems. Sure enough, when my eyelids are intact enough to blink and my sight begins to return, I see the two of them kneeling next to it. Adrian’s sword is wet with blackish-red blood, and I’m surprised to see that Sierra’s half-covered in it too. She’s elbow-deep in the corpse, and I can see magic flowing out of it into her.
Pragmatic. I can respect a woman like that.
Though everything still hurts, I’m able to start moving once more. I use Shape Blood to keep leaky exposed muscle from falling apart.
My charred bones creak as I rise, and my hiss of pain is genuine for once.
The two unburnt members of my part turn at the sound.
“Gods asunder, Evelyn,” Sierra gasps, horrified. Her face is streaked with tears that have long since dried, but at the sight of me, new ones well up. She doesn’t wipe them away.
Adrian vomits into the void. From how little he empties his stomach, I’d wager this isn’t the first time he’s done that.
“Er—“ I can’t make the right sound when my tongue isn’t whole, so I close my mouth for a moment before trying again, waiting for my regeneration factor to ever so slightly outpace the damage. I cough, wracking my body with fresh pain. “I guess the clothes are a loss.”
Sierra holds a hand up to her mouth, her shoulders shaking. “How can you say that?”
I try to clear my throat before realizing half of it is currently missing. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”
“You’re still on fire,” the Blue Mage says, drawing closer.
I look down. I am, in fact, still on fire.
Fire Resistance advanced to level 2!
Demonic Resistance advanced to level 2!
“Wraithfire burns for ninety-nine minutes,” Sierra says. “You—I can’t—“
Fire Resistance advanced to level 3!
Pain Resistance advanced to level 19!
It becomes easier to set the pain aside, so I do.
“You don’t need to put it out,” I assure her. Speaking is getting easier. I think more of the necessary parts are reconstituting themselves now. “I’ll… I’ll live.”
“Wraithfire,” she says, taking a shuddering breath, “wounds the soul. With my limited affinity, I cannot heal you.”
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 2!
Your soul is damaged less by wraithfire.
“I’m working on that part,” I say, licking my charred lips. “Do you mind if I consume a part of that dragon?”
Sierra puts herself together. Adrian does not. The Warrior still looks green around the gills, while the Blue Mage is able to reestablish a calm facade in moments.
“You also have some way to gain vitality from others?” Sierra asks.
“I do,” I say, shambling forward. “Unless you need it more?”
She taps the floor twice with one foot, and her legs glow a soft blue. The Blue Mage starts hovering, once again casually demonstrating her power, and she snaps her fingers. Blue light starts to glow around me—and then it crumbles to dust, the wraithfire burning it away.
“Thank you for the effort,” I say, and I step forward. There’s an emptiness at my core where there should be vibrant life and energy, a bone-deep chill despite the fire that’s still burning away at me.
Soul damage, that’s what Sierra said. I hope it doesn’t prove to be more of an issue.
The corpse is waiting for me, its blood dripping into a stream that falls into the endless abyss below.
“Sierra,” I say, not wasting the energy to look back. “Do you know where the next one is?”
“It’s not far,” she replies. “The nest must’ve been close. There’s more of them in the rooms beyond.”
“Good,” I say, lowering myself down to the dragon. “Then this will work.”
This time, when I Devour, I’m not the only one consuming. The flame eats with me, hungrily annihilating parts of the dragon baby’s corpse.
We eat the baby.
Devour granted +112 XP!
It’s less than I would expect from a monster that has an attack this powerful, but then again, it’s a newborn and the flames are taking their part too.
Targets devoured: [1/6]
+200 XP awarded!
I still have more than four hundred XP until I advance to the next level, so I doubt that I’ll be able to use this as a method to heal myself.
Temporary skill unlocked: Wraithfire
This fire burns away at the soul itself. Wraithfire will remain burning for ninety-nine minutes after activation.
I grin with slowly-regenerating lips, and I try the skill out.
A single drop of wrathfire falls forth from my hand, and it steals my magic away to feed itself, leaving me even colder as I burn. It’s a greedy skill, this one, but it does leave a flaming trail behind it just like the rest. I put my remaining seven stat points into Magic (Regen) to ensure that I still have magic later down the line.
“I have a shadow of wraithfire available to me,” I say, rising once more. “We need to go.”
“C-can you even walk?” Adrian asks, a mixture of fear, disgust and something that might be respect in his voice.
“Haven’t fallen yet,” I tell him. “Let’s get moving.”
We continue on. Once again, I use Shape Blood to keep my body from falling apart. I’m not sure what counts as “outside my body” for the purposes of the skill, but it still works.
Shape Blood advanced to level 10!
You can now always use this skill. Your maximum capacity increases to 20 gallons.
“Evelyn,” Sierra says, barely-masked concern slipping into her voice, “Are you sure you can—“
“I’m fine,” I say, using magic to keep my burning flesh in a humanoid shape. “Hurry. I don’t have wraithfire for long.”
We leave the half-void room behind, a shaken Sierra taking the lead. I have to walk at a distance away from them, so fierce is the burn of the flame on my body.
Fire Resistance advanced to level 4!
Demonic Resistance advanced to level 3!
“This has to be the worst candle you’ve ever had,” I joke. Neither of them laugh, though Sierra does make a half-hearted attempt.
And then we continue on, making our way through a narrow corridor that’s nothing like the tunnels from before.
We emerge into a brightly-lit concrete room with steel beams attached to the ceiling. Unlike the last room, thankfully, there’s no trace of the void visible here.
There are two dragon-babies in here, each of them half again the size of their late sibling, but that’s not all.
A pair of dark crimson flutter on the ground from a sourceless wind. The shade of red is such that it almost hides the bloodstains on them, but nothing can hide the crushed corpses that lie under them.
“Cultists,” the Blue Mage gasps.
Even Adrian seems to recognize these. “Those are undercity markings. Shit.”
“That’s not good,” Sierra says. “This has to be reported immediately.”
I get the implication. If there’s dead cultists here, there are bound to be more of them elsewhere.
Still, there’s no immediate threat, so I lumber towards the two babies. They’re still young, so they’re not quite sure how to respond to a burning corpse that smells like their dead sibling’s breath.
This time, I strike first. Wraithfire flows forward from my fingertips, taking more and more away from my core until it feels like there’s nothing left, and the air in front of me burns.
I can’t deny that it’s satisfying. Despite its hefty cost, it’s too easy to use. Too easy to get lost in the flames, to give myself over to the corruption of this skill, even copied as it is.
The dragons breath their own wraithfire back at me, and I meet them with twin streams of my own.
Relentless gives me the boost I need to overpower their attacks, creating a new spark to fill the cold void Wraithfire leaves in me.
I advance a step.
Tainted flame assails me, but I have my own demonic fire to beat it back. Wraithfire meets wraithfire and hangs in the air, neither advancing nor backing up. The trails that our attacks leave behind remain burning as I continue forward.
Now that I’m in combat, Demonic Heritage no longer helps patch me up. I’m on a timer here—even with my increased resistances, I’m burning up. I need to finish this quickly.
When I use Bloodstep, it comes as a relief. For just under a second, my body is entirely composed of blood, divorcing me from the worldly pain that the soul-burning fire afflicts.
Bloodstep advanced to level 7!
And then I slam back into my still-burning humanoid demon-self, gritting my teeth through the burning, and I continue advancing.
Step by step, I tell myself. Inch by inch, I make my way forward. I dodge what I can and block what I cannot, and I continue on.
The knives I carry have long since melted under the scorching ashy flames, so I settle on a different plan of attack.
I use Phantom Shape and Shape Self both, granting myself ghostly limbs that sprout from my back with the former while sharpening my fingernails to deadly points with the latter.
The phantom limbs and true flesh begin to burn away as soon as I create them, but I’m close enough to the enemy that it doesn’t matter.
Fire Resistance advanced to level 5!
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 3!
Bloodstep carries me over another brutal demonic attack, and I alight on top of one of them. I’m not going to make the same mistake I did last time.
Before they can breath flame at me once more, I stab downwards with all eight of my available arms. Dark fire still engulfs me, and the sharp flesh that sinks into demonic scales is no exception. I part its natural armor with ease—it is still newborn—and it howls, the first sound it’s made. A guttural shriek tears itself out of my target’s throat, and its blood ignites.
Wraithfire burns the soul away, that’s what Sierra said. As a demonic being myself, I still suffer from the attack. It stands to reason that my enemy will too.
I activate Wraithfire once more, creating a droplet of it at the tip of one finger, and I punch it into the open wound.
When I tear myself off of the dragon-baby, it’s insensate from pain.
Despite myself, I grin. See how you like that one, little shit. It’ll have to experience the same pain I did, except there is no light at the end of the tunnel for it.
The grin drops away when I realize the damage I’ve done to myself. The wraithfire hasn’t stopped, and my resistances are still low-level. I don’t have long before it starts consuming important parts of my body again.
The second baby is more wary of me now that I’ve set its sibling’s internals on fire, but it’s far too late for caution.
While it’s recovering, charging itself up for another attack, I take a quick step forward. Relentless no longer burns within me now that the fight’s odds are nothing near hopeless, but I can kill them without it.
It’s pointless for me to do, but I still find some small part of me wants these dragons to know fear.
I saunter towards it, lifting my arms and examining the flame that still burns them, and the dragon takes a step back.
Before it can try to flee, I close the remaining twenty feet in the matter of a second, activating my lower-leveled Blood Surge to fuel my speed and power. It saps precious blood away with the flame, and I grit my teeth.
My resistances are helpful, but they won’t matter if I can’t level up. I need to finish this fight and consume them both.
The dragon moves with surprising speed, dodging my dash, and then—blue lightning smashes into one of its eyes before it can make another move, followed by a bright white spear of energy that lances straight through its skull.
Adrian finally catches up to me, and he cuts deep into the dragon’s neck with a single, smooth stroke, nearly entirely decapitating it.
Targets killed: [0/4]
Warning: XP reward reduced from 500 to 400.
I curse silently. Right. Adrian and Sierra don’t know about the objective, nor do they know that I need a level-up to survive.
The Warrior backs away as I approach the corpse. The other dragon is still alive, but the soul-shattering wraithfire is keeping it incapacitated. I don’t have time to finish it off right now.
Besides, I want it to suffer.
I step forward and Devour the baby.
Devour granted +101 XP!
Targets devoured: [2/6]
200 XP rewarded!
Temporary skill (Wraithfire) refreshed!
So gaining the same temporary skill from Devour just means that I refill the timer on it, then? That seems pretty reasonable.
“Let me kill the other one,” I say, practically hissing the word.
I take another step forward, and my leg fails me. Shape Blood can’t hold me together when muscle and bone alike crumble.
At the corner of vision, a cloak flutters. It’s not Sierra’s, and Adrian doesn’t wear one.
I can’t focus on that, but the other two can.
As Sierra shouts something to Adrian, I snarl and activate Bloodstep.
In the blood-form, the fire can only sear away magic. I will survive at least one second longer.
My skill lands me directly on top of the dying dragon. Wraithfire spreads from its body to mine, but what do I care for that? I’m already ablaze.
With the last breaths I can afford to take, I trigger Misty Blade, adding another layer of power to my sharpened, burning bones, and I slide it into the howling monster’s spine.
Targets killed: [1/4]
100 XP rewarded!
Fire crawls up my body, my regeneration starting to kick in too late to stop it from devouring me, but my upper body is still intact enough to use.
For what could be the final time, I eat the baby.
Devour granted +97 XP!
Targets devoured: [3/6]
200 XP rewarded!
Temporary skill (Wraithfire) refreshed!
You have advanced to level 9!
Severe soul damage detected.
You have gained 3 stat points.
Severe soul damage detected.
Your stats have increased by 1 each.
Severe soul damage detected.
You will not gain skills for this level.
Severe soul damage detected.
The divine text scrolls through my fading consciousness, each new line pounding in the frigid emptiness inside me, but I refuse to die here.
I’ve already died thousands of times. I haven’t come all this way to die to one stupid fucking mistake.
Elsewhere in the room, so distant from my mind that it could be a dozen worlds away, I can hear someone laughing.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 10!
Severe soul damage detected.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced from Silver to Gold!
Severe soul damage detected.
Fire Resistance advanced to level 10!
Severe soul damage detected.
Fire Resistance advanced from Bronze to Silver!
Severe soul damage detected.
Demonic Resistance advanced to level 10!
Severe soul damage detected.
Demonic Resistance advanced from Bronze to Silver!
Severe soul damage detected.
A presence far greater than my own brushes against my mind, and I refuse to let it in.
The cold embrace of death seeks a way in, and I shove it aside. I think of Sapphire, Sierra, even Adrian.
I think of what I must do.
Emptiness permeates me. All I need to do is give in, give up, and it’ll be over.
But stronger than the emptiness is a single truth.
No matter the cost, I will advance.
My name, so to speak, is Evelyn Carnelian, and this is not the end of my story.
Wraithfire consumed.
Trait earned: Soulless
You can survive without a soul.
The first thing I notice when I open my eyes again is that my body has returned to its healthy state.
The second is that our reality is falling apart.
Fire is all I know. Burning darkness suffuses me, setting every nerve ending I have alight.
I have Pain Resistance at a Silver tier. Level 15, no less. I have been able to put aside the sensation of pain even when half the bones in my body were broken.
And yet bright hot pain consumes me, devours every lucid thought in my mind. My body is alight with agony, my very soul burning under the wraithfire that slices into it.
Pain Resistance advanced to level 16!
Through the mind-shattering pain, I manage to wonder if this is what being Devoured feels like.
I can’t tell how long it lasts. My vision is shades of black and white and red. All I can taste and smell is sulfur and ash and slowly-cooking flesh. The silence of the room is broken by a woman’s piercing scream. It’s not until my throat is raw that I realize it’s mine.
Pain Resistance advanced to level 17!
Flesh chars to a crisp and sloughs off, Demonic Heritage replacing it just fast enough to keep my body from falling to pieces.
Pain Resistance advanced to level 18!
After a few short eternities, the pain starts to subside ever so slightly, and my vision returns enough that I can make out blurry shapes of light on dark. My skin continues to char to the point of boiling and falling off, but the screaming agony has reduced to merely excruciating pain, which I can push aside in my mind.
New skill unlocked: Demonic Resistance
You take 10% less damage from demonic attacks.
New skill unlocked: Fire Resistance
You take 10% less damage from fire attacks.
New skill unlocked: Wraithfire Resistance
Wraithfire deals less damage to your soul.
I can’t ignore it in its entirety, since it’s sort of important to know if my body is still falling apart on me, but my increased resistances beat back the undying waves of flame until I can function again. My mind regains its facilities enough to let me know that I’ve screamed myself hoarse.
Targets killed: [0/5]
Warning: XP reward reduced from 600 to 500.
They killed the dragon baby while I was suffering, it seems. Sure enough, when my eyelids are intact enough to blink and my sight begins to return, I see the two of them kneeling next to it. Adrian’s sword is wet with blackish-red blood, and I’m surprised to see that Sierra’s half-covered in it too. She’s elbow-deep in the corpse, and I can see magic flowing out of it into her.
Pragmatic. I can respect a woman like that.
Though everything still hurts, I’m able to start moving once more. I use Shape Blood to keep leaky exposed muscle from falling apart.
My charred bones creak as I rise, and my hiss of pain is genuine for once.
The two unburnt members of my part turn at the sound.
“Gods asunder, Evelyn,” Sierra gasps, horrified. Her face is streaked with tears that have long since dried, but at the sight of me, new ones well up. She doesn’t wipe them away.
Adrian vomits into the void. From how little he empties his stomach, I’d wager this isn’t the first time he’s done that.
“Er—“ I can’t make the right sound when my tongue isn’t whole, so I close my mouth for a moment before trying again, waiting for my regeneration factor to ever so slightly outpace the damage. I cough, wracking my body with fresh pain. “I guess the clothes are a loss.”
Sierra holds a hand up to her mouth, her shoulders shaking. “How can you say that?”
I try to clear my throat before realizing half of it is currently missing. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”
“You’re still on fire,” the Blue Mage says, drawing closer.
I look down. I am, in fact, still on fire.
Fire Resistance advanced to level 2!
Demonic Resistance advanced to level 2!
“Wraithfire burns for ninety-nine minutes,” Sierra says. “You—I can’t—“
Fire Resistance advanced to level 3!
Pain Resistance advanced to level 19!
It becomes easier to set the pain aside, so I do.
“You don’t need to put it out,” I assure her. Speaking is getting easier. I think more of the necessary parts are reconstituting themselves now. “I’ll… I’ll live.”
“Wraithfire,” she says, taking a shuddering breath, “wounds the soul. With my limited affinity, I cannot heal you.”
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 2!
Your soul is damaged less by wraithfire.
“I’m working on that part,” I say, licking my charred lips. “Do you mind if I consume a part of that dragon?”
Sierra puts herself together. Adrian does not. The Warrior still looks green around the gills, while the Blue Mage is able to reestablish a calm facade in moments.
“You also have some way to gain vitality from others?” Sierra asks.
“I do,” I say, shambling forward. “Unless you need it more?”
She taps the floor twice with one foot, and her legs glow a soft blue. The Blue Mage starts hovering, once again casually demonstrating her power, and she snaps her fingers. Blue light starts to glow around me—and then it crumbles to dust, the wraithfire burning it away.
“Thank you for the effort,” I say, and I step forward. There’s an emptiness at my core where there should be vibrant life and energy, a bone-deep chill despite the fire that’s still burning away at me.
Soul damage, that’s what Sierra said. I hope it doesn’t prove to be more of an issue.
The corpse is waiting for me, its blood dripping into a stream that falls into the endless abyss below.
“Sierra,” I say, not wasting the energy to look back. “Do you know where the next one is?”
“It’s not far,” she replies. “The nest must’ve been close. There’s more of them in the rooms beyond.”
“Good,” I say, lowering myself down to the dragon. “Then this will work.”
This time, when I Devour, I’m not the only one consuming. The flame eats with me, hungrily annihilating parts of the dragon baby’s corpse.
We eat the baby.
Devour granted +112 XP!
It’s less than I would expect from a monster that has an attack this powerful, but then again, it’s a newborn and the flames are taking their part too.
Targets devoured: [1/6]
+200 XP awarded!
I still have more than four hundred XP until I advance to the next level, so I doubt that I’ll be able to use this as a method to heal myself.
Temporary skill unlocked: Wraithfire
This fire burns away at the soul itself. Wraithfire will remain burning for ninety-nine minutes after activation.
I grin with slowly-regenerating lips, and I try the skill out.
A single drop of wrathfire falls forth from my hand, and it steals my magic away to feed itself, leaving me even colder as I burn. It’s a greedy skill, this one, but it does leave a flaming trail behind it just like the rest. I put my remaining seven stat points into Magic (Regen) to ensure that I still have magic later down the line.
“I have a shadow of wraithfire available to me,” I say, rising once more. “We need to go.”
“C-can you even walk?” Adrian asks, a mixture of fear, disgust and something that might be respect in his voice.
“Haven’t fallen yet,” I tell him. “Let’s get moving.”
We continue on. Once again, I use Shape Blood to keep my body from falling apart. I’m not sure what counts as “outside my body” for the purposes of the skill, but it still works.
Shape Blood advanced to level 10!
You can now always use this skill. Your maximum capacity increases to 20 gallons.
“Evelyn,” Sierra says, barely-masked concern slipping into her voice, “Are you sure you can—“
“I’m fine,” I say, using magic to keep my burning flesh in a humanoid shape. “Hurry. I don’t have wraithfire for long.”
We leave the half-void room behind, a shaken Sierra taking the lead. I have to walk at a distance away from them, so fierce is the burn of the flame on my body.
Fire Resistance advanced to level 4!
Demonic Resistance advanced to level 3!
“This has to be the worst candle you’ve ever had,” I joke. Neither of them laugh, though Sierra does make a half-hearted attempt.
And then we continue on, making our way through a narrow corridor that’s nothing like the tunnels from before.
We emerge into a brightly-lit concrete room with steel beams attached to the ceiling. Unlike the last room, thankfully, there’s no trace of the void visible here.
There are two dragon-babies in here, each of them half again the size of their late sibling, but that’s not all.
A pair of dark crimson flutter on the ground from a sourceless wind. The shade of red is such that it almost hides the bloodstains on them, but nothing can hide the crushed corpses that lie under them.
“Cultists,” the Blue Mage gasps.
Even Adrian seems to recognize these. “Those are undercity markings. Shit.”
“That’s not good,” Sierra says. “This has to be reported immediately.”
I get the implication. If there’s dead cultists here, there are bound to be more of them elsewhere.
Still, there’s no immediate threat, so I lumber towards the two babies. They’re still young, so they’re not quite sure how to respond to a burning corpse that smells like their dead sibling’s breath.
This time, I strike first. Wraithfire flows forward from my fingertips, taking more and more away from my core until it feels like there’s nothing left, and the air in front of me burns.
I can’t deny that it’s satisfying. Despite its hefty cost, it’s too easy to use. Too easy to get lost in the flames, to give myself over to the corruption of this skill, even copied as it is.
The dragons breath their own wraithfire back at me, and I meet them with twin streams of my own.
Relentless gives me the boost I need to overpower their attacks, creating a new spark to fill the cold void Wraithfire leaves in me.
I advance a step.
Tainted flame assails me, but I have my own demonic fire to beat it back. Wraithfire meets wraithfire and hangs in the air, neither advancing nor backing up. The trails that our attacks leave behind remain burning as I continue forward.
Now that I’m in combat, Demonic Heritage no longer helps patch me up. I’m on a timer here—even with my increased resistances, I’m burning up. I need to finish this quickly.
When I use Bloodstep, it comes as a relief. For just under a second, my body is entirely composed of blood, divorcing me from the worldly pain that the soul-burning fire afflicts.
Bloodstep advanced to level 7!
And then I slam back into my still-burning humanoid demon-self, gritting my teeth through the burning, and I continue advancing.
Step by step, I tell myself. Inch by inch, I make my way forward. I dodge what I can and block what I cannot, and I continue on.
The knives I carry have long since melted under the scorching ashy flames, so I settle on a different plan of attack.
I use Phantom Shape and Shape Self both, granting myself ghostly limbs that sprout from my back with the former while sharpening my fingernails to deadly points with the latter.
The phantom limbs and true flesh begin to burn away as soon as I create them, but I’m close enough to the enemy that it doesn’t matter.
Fire Resistance advanced to level 5!
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 3!
Bloodstep carries me over another brutal demonic attack, and I alight on top of one of them. I’m not going to make the same mistake I did last time.
Before they can breath flame at me once more, I stab downwards with all eight of my available arms. Dark fire still engulfs me, and the sharp flesh that sinks into demonic scales is no exception. I part its natural armor with ease—it is still newborn—and it howls, the first sound it’s made. A guttural shriek tears itself out of my target’s throat, and its blood ignites.
Wraithfire burns the soul away, that’s what Sierra said. As a demonic being myself, I still suffer from the attack. It stands to reason that my enemy will too.
I activate Wraithfire once more, creating a droplet of it at the tip of one finger, and I punch it into the open wound.
When I tear myself off of the dragon-baby, it’s insensate from pain.
Despite myself, I grin. See how you like that one, little shit. It’ll have to experience the same pain I did, except there is no light at the end of the tunnel for it.
The grin drops away when I realize the damage I’ve done to myself. The wraithfire hasn’t stopped, and my resistances are still low-level. I don’t have long before it starts consuming important parts of my body again.
The second baby is more wary of me now that I’ve set its sibling’s internals on fire, but it’s far too late for caution.
While it’s recovering, charging itself up for another attack, I take a quick step forward. Relentless no longer burns within me now that the fight’s odds are nothing near hopeless, but I can kill them without it.
It’s pointless for me to do, but I still find some small part of me wants these dragons to know fear.
I saunter towards it, lifting my arms and examining the flame that still burns them, and the dragon takes a step back.
Before it can try to flee, I close the remaining twenty feet in the matter of a second, activating my lower-leveled Blood Surge to fuel my speed and power. It saps precious blood away with the flame, and I grit my teeth.
My resistances are helpful, but they won’t matter if I can’t level up. I need to finish this fight and consume them both.
The dragon moves with surprising speed, dodging my dash, and then—blue lightning smashes into one of its eyes before it can make another move, followed by a bright white spear of energy that lances straight through its skull.
Adrian finally catches up to me, and he cuts deep into the dragon’s neck with a single, smooth stroke, nearly entirely decapitating it.
Targets killed: [0/4]
Warning: XP reward reduced from 500 to 400.
I curse silently. Right. Adrian and Sierra don’t know about the objective, nor do they know that I need a level-up to survive.
The Warrior backs away as I approach the corpse. The other dragon is still alive, but the soul-shattering wraithfire is keeping it incapacitated. I don’t have time to finish it off right now.
Besides, I want it to suffer.
I step forward and Devour the baby.
Devour granted +101 XP!
Targets devoured: [2/6]
200 XP rewarded!
Temporary skill (Wraithfire) refreshed!
So gaining the same temporary skill from Devour just means that I refill the timer on it, then? That seems pretty reasonable.
“Let me kill the other one,” I say, practically hissing the word.
I take another step forward, and my leg fails me. Shape Blood can’t hold me together when muscle and bone alike crumble.
At the corner of vision, a cloak flutters. It’s not Sierra’s, and Adrian doesn’t wear one.
I can’t focus on that, but the other two can.
As Sierra shouts something to Adrian, I snarl and activate Bloodstep.
In the blood-form, the fire can only sear away magic. I will survive at least one second longer.
My skill lands me directly on top of the dying dragon. Wraithfire spreads from its body to mine, but what do I care for that? I’m already ablaze.
With the last breaths I can afford to take, I trigger Misty Blade, adding another layer of power to my sharpened, burning bones, and I slide it into the howling monster’s spine.
Targets killed: [1/4]
100 XP rewarded!
Fire crawls up my body, my regeneration starting to kick in too late to stop it from devouring me, but my upper body is still intact enough to use.
For what could be the final time, I eat the baby.
Devour granted +97 XP!
Targets devoured: [3/6]
200 XP rewarded!
Temporary skill (Wraithfire) refreshed!
You have advanced to level 9!
Severe soul damage detected.
You have gained 3 stat points.
Severe soul damage detected.
Your stats have increased by 1 each.
Severe soul damage detected.
You will not gain skills for this level.
Severe soul damage detected.
The divine text scrolls through my fading consciousness, each new line pounding in the frigid emptiness inside me, but I refuse to die here.
I’ve already died thousands of times. I haven’t come all this way to die to one stupid fucking mistake.
Elsewhere in the room, so distant from my mind that it could be a dozen worlds away, I can hear someone laughing.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced to level 10!
Severe soul damage detected.
Wraithfire Resistance advanced from Silver to Gold!
Severe soul damage detected.
Fire Resistance advanced to level 10!
Severe soul damage detected.
Fire Resistance advanced from Bronze to Silver!
Severe soul damage detected.
Demonic Resistance advanced to level 10!
Severe soul damage detected.
Demonic Resistance advanced from Bronze to Silver!
Severe soul damage detected.
A presence far greater than my own brushes against my mind, and I refuse to let it in.
The cold embrace of death seeks a way in, and I shove it aside. I think of Sapphire, Sierra, even Adrian.
I think of what I must do.
Emptiness permeates me. All I need to do is give in, give up, and it’ll be over.
But stronger than the emptiness is a single truth.
No matter the cost, I will advance.
My name, so to speak, is Evelyn Carnelian, and this is not the end of my story.
Wraithfire consumed.
Trait earned: Soulless
You can survive without a soul.
The first thing I notice when I open my eyes again is that my body has returned to its healthy state.
The second is that our reality is falling apart.
