A thousand bolts of lightning blotted out the sun and bathed the world in its purple hue. For a moment, it looked like a great calamity had descended upon the world. Then it was gone just as abruptly as it had appeared.
Nephis stared at the view, it felt like an immense weight had been lifted off her mind. Then, the memories came back, every memory that thing had modified returned to their original form. Nephis remembered laying her eyes upon it the first time. That was when the hex had activated. She remembered walking towards the monster, with no intention to fight.
Lucien had broken through that hex somehow, when he told her to stay. He had gone to fight the Tyrant on his own.
And he had won.
But at what cost?
Right in front of her, the sand had been distorted into white glass, creating a crater at the edge of the nightmare desert. Lucien's bleeding body lay in the center of it, unmoving.
"My, oh, my, what a show." Eurys said,with a hint of amusement in his voice, "Never thought I'd see the day an Awakened Devil beats a Fallen Tyrant."
Paying him no attention, Nephis began running down the mountain of sand and towards the crater. She had seen the wounds he had accumulated throughout the fight, even if she didn't know how. Still, she knew that he would die if he didn't receive healing soon.
A white flame manifested in her hand as she crossed the distance between them. She had expected the center of the crater to be stained in his magenta blood, maybe pooling under his prone body.
But there was no blood to be found. The countless wounds on Lucien's body, which looked like someone had torn out chunks of his flesh, did not bleed. Or rather, the blood didn't escape his body. There was too little of it to escape.
Pushing those thoughts out of her head, she hovered her hands over his body and allowed the purifying flames to envelop him. Slowly, painfully slowly, his wounds regenerated. New flesh was woven into being, and blood began filling his arteries. The paleness of his skin began receding, and he began opening his eyes.
Lucien was in a world of pain. Every part of his body ached. A terrible feeling of weakness encumbered him. He couldn't even open his eyes anymore, much less move his body. Entire patches of his flesh had been devoured by his flaw, leaving gaping holes in his body. He was pretty sure that he couldn't move even if he had the strength to. There was simply too much of him missing.
So that was how his flaw acted if he didn't have enough blood to give. It would take his flesh, maybe even his bones one day…
"Oh well, hopefully Nephis will heal me." Lucien sighed, pushing those thoughts away from him. He stared up at the four purple suns and just lay there for a few minutes.
Eventually, Lucien decided to check his runes.
Name: Lucien
True Name: Hour of Calamity
Rank: Awakened
Class: Devil
Storm Cores: [4/7]
Storm Fragments: [57/4000]
Memories: [Stone Spear],[????? Blade],[????? Armorsuit], [Silk Yarn], [Iron Warbow], [Bone Arrows], [Starlight Pendant], [Damnatio Memoriae]
Remnants: [Mictlans Demise]
Echoes: - [Crimson Mantis]
Attributes: [T???l??s] [Ember of Divinity] [The T?m??s?] [Stormborn] [Retainer of Darkness] [Eyes of the Beholder] [Fountain of Knowledge]
"Hmm?" Lucien frowned, staring at the new set of runes under Memories. [Damnatio Memoriae]. He didn't recognize that one.
"Right, the spell did say I received a memory." He muttered and pushed himself up. Raising a hand, he willed the new memory to come to him. A sphere of light floated down from one of his cores, and released the memory.
A bright purple ring fell on his palm, adorned with two golden bands on either side of it. In the middle, where usually a gem would be encrusted, was a single golden reptilian eye. Lucien stared at it for a while, not knowing how to react.
Then without another word, he pulled up the runes describing the memory.
Memory : [Damnatio Memoriae]
Memory Rank : Ascended
Memory Tier : VI
Memory Type : Tool
Memory Description : [Eventually, Death will come for everyone. In Time even Death will fall. And in the end, everything will return to Oblivion.]
Enchantments : [Hex], [Thoughtless], [Curse of Oblivion]
Lucien stared at the runes for a few seconds, frowning as his gaze passed through the description. Why was Death, Time, and Oblivion emphasized like that?
It spoke of them like individual entities rather than phenomena that occurred naturally. He had a vague understanding of what it meant, that everything would die one day. But to return to oblivion? Did that not just describe death again? To die was to face your oblivion, you couldn't have one without the other.
Unless…
What if death wasn't the end? What if there was something after death, like a sort of afterlife. That would mean you could face your death without facing your oblivion yet, because you still had yet to fully disappear.
Shaking his head, Lucien turned his attention to the enchantments.
Enchantment : [Hex]
Enchantment Description : [Curses the target with a mind numbing hex.]
That was the hex the Terror had used on them to turn them complacent. It was a terrifying ability in hindsight. If it had decided to finish them off instead of toying with them, it would have won.
Lucien shuddered and moved on to the next enchantment.
Enchantment : [Thoughtless]
Enchantment Description : [Eliminates thoughts from the target.]
That was likely the ability it used to kill any thoughts of defiance. It paired really well with the [Hex]. Even if the victim was able to fight back against the mind numbing curse, this one could make it so that they couldn't even think of fighting back.
Enchantment : [Curse of Oblivion]
Enchantment Description : [Alter the memories of the target.]
There it was, the final and most insidious ability. To alter, and perhaps even remove memories at will. As long as this ability was active, they stood no chance of victory. That was why they couldn't see it at first. It was actively removing itself from their memories. Combined with [Hex] and [Thoughtless], this made the Terror one of the most terrifying beings he had fought. If not for his strangely tenacious mind, he would have never been able to counter it. He would have willingly walked to his death.
And now, all of that power was his. His face twitched and slowly turned into a grin. He was going to make good use of them.
Picking up the ring memory, Lucien spared a moment to appreciate its craftsmanship. It wasn't made of any metal, at least any that he was familiar with. And the reptilian eye in the middle…it moved, its gaze flutterring around aimlessly.
Taking a deep breath in, Lucien raised his other hand, and slipped it on his middle finger, and willed it to activate.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then, all of a sudden, the purple metal rippled and began expanding. The entire ring flowed outwards, covering his entire arm before solidifying.
A purple metal gauntlet now covered his arm upto his elbow. It was jagged, with multiple thorn-like protrusions on the gauntlet. His fingers extended to razor sharp claws, and the reptilian eye now covered the center of his palm. A golden liquid flowed down the gauntlet like jagged rivers, attached to the eye on his palm.
Lucien stared at the memory. "Is this how the Terror looked?"
"A shame I can't harvest its body. The explosion left nothing behind."
Sighing, Lucien dismissed the memory, he'd need to find someone to use it on later, maybe Eurys.
It was then that a sudden warm feeling overcame his whole body. In the skies above, white light glowed from behind the black clouds. Lucien could feel his body healing at an extraordinary rate. Wounds knit themselves back together in seconds, and blood began flowing in his arteries once again.
A deep sense of relief overcame him for a moment, and he allowed himself to revel under the cleansing light of Nephis' flames.
Then, slowly, he opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was Nephis' grimacing face as she poured her flames on him. It looked like she was in pain.
'Strange.'
"My, oh, my, colour me impressed boy. That was a spectacular show." Eurys said all of a sudden, making a shop of clapping with his hands.
Sighing, Lucien forced his body to move, pushing himself off the glass. Beside him Nephis deactivated her aspect and let out a deep sigh.
At the horizon, the Sun had nearly disappeared. In the distance, the cacophony of battle had already begun.
"We don't have much time," Lucien said as he stood up, "We should go."
As he spoke, something caught his eye. Just to the side, right where the first explosion had been, was a single severed hand. It looked exactly like Damnatio Memoriae, down to the rivers of gold.
"Huh, so there is something left afterall." He muttered to himself, walking up to it and picked it up. It was an exact copy of the memory, down to the single eye on the palm. Or rather, the memory was an exact copy of the arm. Wasting no more time, he stored the hand in his bag and began walking towards the mountains.
Nephis stared at him strangely, but chose to say nothing.
Soon after, the three of them crossed the border of the nightmare desert and stepped on the cold rock of the hollow mountains. Moments later, the desert behind them exploded in violence.
"We need to find a way into the mountain." Lucien said, staring up at the peaks. In the darkness of the night, it was difficult to see where the mist was, but he knew it would come down soon.
Nephis nodded, she knew exactly how dangerous the mist at the peak of the mountains was. The first time they entered the mountains, Cassie had warned them about it.
Closing his eyes, Lucien felt the wind around him, and spread out. He felt when the wind clashed against the immovable stone of the mountain, and kept going. Eventually, they were bound to find an opening.
With each passing second Lucien grew more and more nervous. There were no openings in the mountain, no cracks that led inside, no secret doors, nothing.
There was nothing to their left.
Cursing under his breath, Lucien shifted his focus to the right side, the side that led back towards the Forgotten Shores.
For miles all he found was smooth stone, there were no structures on this part of the hollow mountains. Until the wind suddenly struck the edge of an opening.
"There!" He exclaimed, pointing towards the opening, "There's a pathway there."
Saying that, he took off towards it, his two companions close behind him. A few minutes later, he saw it, a cave leading into the mountain. Its opening wasn't crafted, there was no gate there, only natural stone.
Above them, the mist had begun descending.
With no time to waste, the three of them ran into the cave just as the mist descended upon the world.
The opening of the cave was now completely sealed off by the mist, drowning the inside in darkness. Yet, none of them tried to light it up, there was no telling how the mist would react to that.
Lucien spread out his storm sense outward and found no signs of life around them. That seemed to be the staple at the outer edges of the mountains. Then, the wind around them suddenly moved as Lucien tried to gauge the inside of the cave, steering clear of the opening.
The cave was very plain, with no artificial structures around them. The walls were nothing but cold stone, and the path that led deeper in…had been blocked.
Lucien frowned and walked up to it. A pile of rocks blocked the way inside, as if the cave had collapsed in on itself.
It was too dark to make out what had happened, and he was tired. Even after being healed, the exhaustion remained.
"Rest," Nephis said, "We will move in the morning, once the mist passes.
Lucien agreed, for once he actually wanted to sleep. So, he lay down on the stone floor as far away from the wall of mist as he could and closed his eyes.