With the reaffirmation of my convictions, I could feel my core begin to rapidly crystallize, and the reach of my soul began to expand. When I conquered my tribulation the first time, it aided the growth of my channels, giving me the necessary boost I needed to rapidly complete the rest, and now that I had conquered myself, all of that power was aiding in the crystallization of my core.
The heavens released me, and my feet slowly touched the earth. It was almost as if gravity was finding it harder to hold me, and I knew that if I wanted, I could float, maybe a few inches off the ground.
This was because my soul was transforming, and this transformation was not just feeding my channels but my body as well. My channels hummed as the golden lightning weaved through them like a second set of threads. The grain at the center of my depth grew, the crystallizing Anima spreading, reaching toward completion.
For a while, I felt my soul becoming solid, and my channels moving towards a completion that I could see coming, but did not yet know the shape of.
Then it was over, and I exhaled, and my breath just kept going; it was almost as if my lungs had held a whole tornado.
The hall would have been silent, but I could hear the sound of the last Arcanist alive, he was whimpering, and I opened my eyes to see him crawling towards the portal of blood.
At a glance, I knew that this Arcnanist was not long from death,
The fox stirred on my shoulder, making a soft sound of disappointment as the golden lightning under my skin faded. Its silver fur was warm against my neck, and I felt its blue eyes turning towards me. The fact that it could eat tribulation lightning was... interesting, and I did not know what to do with that information.
"Done?" it asked, in Mel’s voice.
I looked around me and shook my head, "Not yet, but I think we are close."
I walked toward the Arcanist, who had been burnt until he was more coal than flesh. He had left more than half his body mass behind, and for any mage, they would be dead, but the leaking soul of the Arcanist still pushed him forward.
Tribulation lightning shattered the stability of the soul, and this had broken the Arcanist’s soul.
As I got closer to the Arcanist, it became harder to reach him, as his bleeding soul was like a fierce wall pushing back against me. Activating Soul Forge, a silver flame appeared around me, and I was able to cut through the soul pressure as if it were not there.
Even dying, he must have sensed me, and he stopped crawling towards the portal, and he turned his head, and the sight of it made me pause.
The skin and the flesh of his entire face had been burned off, and I could see his blackened skull and his squirming brains under parts of the skull that had been blown off.
"Stay away from me..."
The voice of the Arcanist emerged from his bleeding soul, and it was surprisingly clear; he had no tongue to speak, but his dying soul was so powerful that it could bend sound to express his intents.
I looked at this broken waste of a man that must have lived for centuries, and I could not find it in my heart to pity him, but I mourned for the potential that was wasted.
"Why?" I asked, "You are a pride of humanity; out of countless millions, you were able to rise to this step, where you could see the sun rise for a thousand years, and you seek to break the world who call you its protector."
The Arcanist’s blackened skull turned toward me. The wet gleam of his exposed brain caught the light of the lightning burning underneath my skin. His soul pulsed, weak and ragged, but still burning with the stubborn refusal to die.
"Protector?" The word came out as a rasp, a wet scraping sound that emerged from the ruin of his throat. "You think... we are protectors?"
I cocked my head to the side. From his tone, it was as if the question I asked him was foolish, and I shook my head in regret, "I think you could have been."
"The world does not need protectors. It needs... masters. The world is a garden, and gardens need gardeners. We were... going to be the gardeners."
I stopped myself from baring my teeth, "You were going to break it open and drink its blood."
And this damned man... actually laughed, "The blood of the weak is the fertilizer. The garden grows stronger when it is watered with it. A Celestial should know this truth."
I looked at him, and I saw for the first time the shape of the thing that had driven him. It was not greed for power, although that was there, I could smell it in his soul like a rotten egg, nor was it ambition.
I opened my hands and covered them with the silver flame of the forge, and I let his dissipating soul blow past the flame, and I caught it... Yes, it was fear. Fear of death, of insignificance, and the darkness that waits at the end of every life.
This man had watched many die, and he would rather more should die than to perish himself.
"You’re afraid," I said, my eyes tightened a bit as I tried to grab what I could from his soul. "You’ve been afraid for centuries. You climbed so high because you were terrified of falling. And now, at the end of everything, you’re still afraid."
"I am not..."
"Don’t lie to me." The hall shook from my rebuke as if my words were thunder, and the Arcanist shivered.
The word hung in the air between us. The Arcanist’s soul pulsed, once, twice, and then went still.
"I’ve seen fear," I said. "I’ve felt it. I’ve died with it in my throat more times than I can count. I know what it looks like. I know what it tastes like. And you, Arcanist, are drowning in it."
I knelt beside him. The silver flame of Soul-Forge flickered around my hand, but I did not reach for him; I did not need to.
"Tell me," I whispered to the dying man. "What was the name of the first person you killed?"