Lucien ran past the Stone Saint, and rushed into the room below with his sword raised high. He didn't know what he had expected to find in there. Perhapsthe rot had managed to consume the entire chamber, or maybe it had been condensed in on itself to the size of a speck.
He certainly did not expect to find Sunny kneeling on all fours in front of where the brazier used to be, screaming bloody murder.
"Damn it! God damn it! Damn it all!"
Lucien paused, narrowing his eyes as his vision switched.
He had expected Sunny's shadow to be divine, considering his aspect, but to his surprise, it wasn't his shadow, but his blood that was divine. His blood, and his ever changing bones.
Lucien's vision was like a real time X-ray, he could clearly see what was happening inside. Sunnys bones were being broken and remade one by one, the golden sheen of divinity slowly filling them up.
'Is this how it looked like when I assimilated the Mind part of Nether's artificial lineage?' Lucien thought as he conjured a chair of stone and sat down. He could do nothing to help Sunny at this point, interrupting the process of receiving a lineage would only end in disaster.
Well, it wasn't like Lucien had any healing abilities to begin with.
However, he was curious about which Lineage Sunny had. It couldn't be Shadow Gods lineage, the divine lineages did not come in parts, and Shadows lineage clearly enhanced the shadow.
Was he like Lucien? Absorbing the fragmented lineage of a daemon?
Or was he claiming the lineage of each of the gods one by one. That would mean he had Beasts lineage to begin with and was receiving either Heart, or War gods lineage. Or perhaps the hidden seventh god.
A few minutes later, once the metamorphosis began calming down, Sunny stopped screaming and said in a hoarse creaky voice, "Hell, that was…rough."
Lucien was inclined to agree, but chose to remain silent until the entire process was done.
A few more minutes later, Sunny finally relaxed and struggled to sit up. He seemed to be staring at something.
'Checking his runes probably.' Lucien thought, and then with a smile he said, "You know, it's rude to ignore the people around you."
Sunny froze, and instantly disappeared from his spot, turning into a shadow. From the stairs, Stone Saint rushed down and pointed her weapon towards Lucien.
He kept smiling, "It's even more rude to threaten them with violence, or so I've heard."
A moment of silence passed before Sunny rose up from a shadow nearby. He stared suspiciously towards him.
"Lucien?" He said, as if he wasn't sure who it was.
Lucien's smile broke into a full on grin, "Who else could I be?"
Saying that he rose up from his chair, dismissing it in the process. Sunny immediately raised Cruel Sight.
"What did you tell me on the day you found me in the Dark City?"
This was something only the two of them knew, it could serve as a proof of identity.
Lucien paused, staring at the strangely reflective blade that was pointed towards him. Sunny wasn't sure if he was real, that was an understandable suspicion. After all, how could Lucien appear in front of him after being lost all those months ago in the Hollow Mountains.
"I told you my true name, Hour of Calamity, as a show of trust." Lucien said, dismissing his memories one by one until he was left with just his armour and daggers.
Sunny's hand trembled and fell to his side, opening his mouth he hesitantly said, "You…you're real? You're alive?!"
"I told you I wouldn't die, didn't I?" Lucien said, grinning.
Despite himself, Sunny let a smile crawl up his face. But then a sudden thought struck him, and the smile froze before it could finish, "How are you even here? We're nowhere close to the Forgotten Shores!"
Lucien opened his mouth to explain, but then paused, his eyes glancing over the room that once held a physical embodiment of the corruption. His words died in his throat as new ones took their place, "Can we talk somewhere else? This place creeps me out."
Sunny blinked, as if just realizing where they were. Nodding, he gestured to the stairs, "We can head down to the first floor, though it is a bit dark."
That wasn't a problem for Sunny who could see in the dark, but Lucien didn't share that ability. They'd need a lantern memory, or a fire, to light up the room.
"Or we could go up to the shrine, there's plenty of light there." Lucien suggested it would also have been easier to show him how he got to the tower.
Sunny paused for a moment and then shrugged, gesturing at him to lead the way.
Above, the two of them sat down near the middle of the room, Saint stood nearby as if watching over them. She stared at Lucien for a good few seconds, as if perceiving something. Then she nodded as if she was satisfied and turned away, continuing to stand guard.
'Strange.' Lucien frowned, did she sense the fragment of Nether's divine lineage inside him somehow?
Turning away from her, Lucien looked at Sunny. The shorter boy looked like he had been through hell, burns covered most of his upper body, making his skin look like a patchwork of red and white.
"What the hell happened to you?" He found himself asking.
Sunless shrugged, "I brushed past a 'star' when I was falling through the sky. Quite unpleasant, I wouldn't recommend it."
Lucien blinked, fell through the sky? Touched a star?
Just what the hell was Sunny talking about?
Forcing himself to put those questions away, Lucien instead asked, "Do you remember when I got separated from the rest of the cohort?"
"Yes," He nodded, "You got kidnapped by a Corrupted Tyrant at the end of our expedition to find the first Bright Lord."
"It insists you call it a transcendent," Lucien corrected, "But yes, I did get kidnapped."
Sunless frowned, but let him continue.
"Shortly after that, it took me to a citadel inside the Hollow Mountains, one of Nethers Citadels." Lucien continued, telling him about the citadel. The room was filled with corpses of humans, stormforged, and rudimentary stone children. The room that contained a workbench with the tools of a daemon, and the three relics he left behind.
Lucien spoke of Nightveil, of the enchantment that demanded him to hunt nightmare creatures and amass knowledge until he could finally soulbind it. The entire reason he had been kidnapped in the first place.
Of course he didn't tell him about the lineage he received, he didn't quite know how he was going to explain that.
Eventually, he reached the topic of the statue of storm that was inside the citadel.
"The two statues are connected," Lucien said, glancing at the statue in the room, "Touching one of them will transfer me to the other. I assume it only responds to people with Storm's blood in them. I don't exactly know how it works, but Nether was a daemon, it's hardly surprising that he'd come up with something like that. Besides, that's not even the strangest part about my first visit to this…tower."
"The Ebony Tower." Sunny said absentmindedly. Then, he suddenly frowned and asked:
"Wait, what do you mean that wasn't the strangest part?"
Lucien smiled, "That would be the fact that I was frozen in time as soon as I got here. It took me a while to break out of it, otherwise I suspect I'd be stuck here until you came along and broke the enchantment."
Sunny remained silent for a few seconds, he had guessed something similar after being rudely awoken by the sudden degradation of the first floor. He looked up at Lucien and opened his mouth to ask:
"How did you break free of the enchantment?"
"I don't know," Lucien shrugged, "My core attribute has something to do with it I think. It flared to life when I was stuck in here and slowly freed me from the spell."
"Your core attribute?" Sunny echoed, he'd never heard of an attribute that allowed someone to break a daemons enchantment. No, Lucien hadn't broken the enchantment, it was still active when he came here after all. What he had done was something else entirely, he'd moved in an area of frozen time.
That was something only an aspect ability, or a memory could help you do, not your attribute. At least that's what Sunny thought. He didn't know much about attributes, but he knew they were passive, more subtle abilities. Like his [Fated] that made him more likely to encounter dangerous situations and survive them. It didn't guarantee his survival, he still needed to fight tooth and nail for it.
"Yes," Lucien said, "I don't exactly know why, the spell refuses to tell me anything about it, everything about it is distorted, even the name."
Sunny frowned, the spell refused to translate? The only time he had seen something like that happen was when the spell was talking about the -unknown-. The runes were hidden, but not distorted like Luciens.
"Not long after that, I was able to leave the Hollow Mountains and make for the Dark City." Lucien continued, unaware of Sunny's thought process. He turned his gaze to Sunny, "Imagine my surprise when I found the city abandoned and the bright tower toppled."
Sunny winced, right they hadn't waited for Lucien to come back before initiating their plan. He knew just how much the younger boy wanted to kill Gunlaug. For spell's sake, that was one of the first things they had talked about.
He opened his mouth to say something, an explanation, an apology maybe, but Lucien cut him off.
"Anyways, I figured if you guys managed to replace Gunlaug and emptied the city, there was only one place you could've gone to."
"The Crimson Spire." Sunny confirmed.
"Yes, but I was too late." Lucien sighed and turned away, as if staring at someplace distant. "When I arrived, you had already killed the 'sun'. All I found were bodies, hundreds over hundreds of humans and monster corpses. Some of them were my friends."
With a pained expression on his face, Lucien forced a smile. It didn't quite reach his eyes. "You know, for someone as fast as I am, I seem to be late when I'm needed most."
If he had been a day or two earlier, if he had slept less and focused more on hunting down the monsters. Maybe he could have saved them.
Inhaling sharply, he forced his face to relax, pushing down those troubling emotions. No use dwelling in the past, he'd just have to do better in the future.
Sunny wanted to say something, anything really that could reassure him. But he had never been good with this sort of stuff. He didn't know what to say. He didn't need to, Lucien recovered by himself and continued telling his story.
"I was moments away when the tower crumbled and the Sun disappeared. I was late there too, if I hadn't stopped to grieve for them, I would've gotten to the tower. You and Nephis could've left together, and she wouldn't have to do what she did.
Sunny's blood turned to ice, his eyes widening. Slowly he looked up to find Lucien staring at him.
"What exactly happened there, Sunny?" Lucien asked, "What happened when Nephis spoke your True name?"