I wanted to eagerly check what a Legendary Spell might do when I heard a slight groan, and I paused... I was not alone.
My internal clock clicked into place, and I looked at the sky, and it was just the grey sky of the early morning. By this time, the Caelith should be crying out, and the earth should be shattering as demons rise, but there was nothing. Did I just end this catastrophe by killing everyone?
That would be both funny and terrifying at the same time, but now I know something extremely important: if I overwhelm Orath, Rex, and Commander Rel, then there is a chance to interrupt the Ascension Ritual. I did not think it was enough to stop this process that had been ongoing for who knows how long, but killing them may throw a wrench in their plans.
As I was thinking, I was looking at each body to find the source of the sound, and all I saw were dead shapes, and I sighed and pushed out Storm Sense, no, the threads, the sensory link that came with them.
The funny thing was that these senses came from the trousers I created, and it pulsed outward for hundreds of meters nearly instantaneously, and I felt the shape of a body crumpled against the eastern face of the pyramid, half-hidden in the shadow of a fallen outcropping of black stone.
With my eyesight, it would have been hard for me to see them, especially when I think they have been cut in half.
I walked toward it, and I could hear the glass crack under my feet, as the sound echoed across the empty crater. In a few seconds, I crossed the distance between me and the body, my body moving through space in a manner that even I found to be strange.
The body was Rex’s, of course, it was Rex, the good fall while the bad thrive.
Well, calling this body Rex was wrong; rather, I should say, what remained of Rex’s body.
He was curled on his side, his robes shredded, his skin grey, his chest barely moving. One arm was bent at an angle that should have been impossible. The other was pressed against his stomach, holding something in.
Below his waist, there was nothing; his legs had been turned to ash, and the burns had cauterised the wounds; else he would be dead, and from his appearance, it was not long until he was.
As I reached him, I saw that his eyes were open, and they were not Rex’s eyes, and what was strange was that they were not Orath’s eyes either. They were the eyes of someone who had been broken open and left to drain.
He was whispering, "...the third seal," he said, to no one. "They swore it would not sing, that the heavens would not hear. Why can I not leave this shell..."
I stopped and listened to his ramblings, but most of them did not make sense. I thought I could hear both the whispers from Rex and Orath from him, as if both of their minds were fused.
Then his dull eyes suddenly turned towards me, and I could hear the sounds of his dry eyeballs moving in his sockets, and the gaze that turned to me was filled with both madness and a kind of enlightenment... I can tell you this for free, at this point in my life, I had never seen a stranger gaze.
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and whatever was staring at me through Rex’s eyes was a very strange soul.
"Voss," he whispered. The word was wet, bubbling. His lungs were filling with something. "Voss, you came back. You came back from the... from the light. The golden eye, the Master favors you; they all favor you. You... you took it. Why? Only I am worthy of it, I should be a god, not you."
I knelt beside him. His breath was shallow, and each exhale carried a fine mist of blood.
"Orath," I said. "Is he still in there with you?"
Rex’s eyes rolled in their socket until it was showing only white, as if he wanted to look into his own skull and find out the truth. His mouth twitched in what I thought might have been a laugh.
"Hehehehe...Gone. The lightning... it burned him out. He screamed. Ah, I loved his screams, I can still hear them, he is still screaming." He coughed. Blood on his lips. "But it is fading, and soon it will be just me, and the hole he left behind. I don’t want him to leave me, Voss."
My eyes twitched, but I kept my mouth in check, "You’re dying."
"I know." He said it simply, as if it were a weather report. "But I know things. Before he left, I saw things. The harvest, seals.... The... the Sovereign of the Stars." His eyes focused on me, and there was something in them that had not been there before, a frightening certainty that was madness in the purest form that I had ever seen. "You’re one of them, aren’t you? One of the Arcanists from below. You took the harvest before it was ready, and you have ascended. You stole from the stars themselves."
I opened my mouth to correct him. To tell him that I could never be a part of their group and I was going to kill them all, but then I stopped.
Orath...Rex... whatever mad combination they had just become was offering me something. A way into this conspiracy that I could never get in any normal sense. How much information could I squeeze out of him if I played along with his fantasy?
The Hollow Avatar stirred. "Yes. Play along. The Harvest has not ended, and even without him, it is about to begin. You need to get inside."
I looked at Rex’s broken body. His eyes were filled with madness and jealousy.
"Yes," I said. "I ascended. The Harvest, I stole from them, and I am becoming a god. There is still much left, and they want to keep it all to themselves."
Rex’s breath hitched. "Then it’s not too late. I am worthy; I can consume like you, and we can ascend together. If we go now, I can share with you a part of my benefit. Hehehehe, don’t you see, I can gain Orath’s share, and that is enough for both of us."
I paused as if I was thinking, and then I said, "Show me."