It felt like waking up from a very long dream, or perhaps a very long nightmare. Something warm and wet covered my hand.
I stared at a red-haired girl, her face a mask of pain, covered in cuts, sporting a bleeding lip. We were both on our knees, surrounded by a dim light. Violet Indri was glaring at me.
“SNAP THE HELL OUT OF IT!”
There was a thud. My vision flashed white. She’d smashed her head into mine, making me reel. A thousand images slammed into my head. Yellowed paper. A bloody knife. A face staring up at me wide-eyed.
A thousand feelings collided at once.
Grief. Rage. Joy. Hope. Melancholy.
Then, there was the pain. My body screamed from a dozen places at once.
My eyes caught the Godblade in my left hand, its glow as radiant as the sun. Pure agony shot up from my right. I looked up from it, at Violet, at the bloody wound in her side. Disoriented or not, I could put those two pieces together.
“I- I didn’t mean-”
“Guess…you’re finally back from…whatever the fuck that was,” Violet grunted. Oddly, the girl somehow managed to both smile and sneer at the same time. “Didn’t think breaking anything would do much. Fuck knows you did that to yourself plenty already.”
I stared at her. At her wound. I’d done that. Something inside of me wrenched. My hand trembled even as it tried to cross the space between us.
No, that wasn’t what was important right now. I remembered…I remembered now. Who I was. Where I came from.
I hissed, doubled over. My head felt like it would split open.
“Pick yourself up, damn it!” Violet roared. “Or he’s going to fucking kill you! Do you fucking want that?!”
“H-he?”
At that very moment, the wall next to us exploded. There was a loud grinding. A black golem stepped into view. It stuck out a hand; light began to collect in the hole where one of its arms ended. It grew brighter.
“God damnit you’re an idiot!”
Violet crashed into me right as the beam of light fired. It seared the air, its scent burned my nostrils. The beam lasted a good three seconds before it stopped.
“Fuck. Are you going to snap out of it or what?!” Violet was on top of me,
“Why?” I mumbled. Stared up at her. “Why did you….”
Violet glared at me. Her hair covered most of her face, even as it brushed my skin. Did she even understand what I was asking?
Her face twisted. “Was fun.”
“What?”
“Been a while since I’ve had fun with…someone my age,” Violet shrugged. “I had fun. Would suck if you died just like that.”
I stared at her. "For that petty reason?"
"I guess so."
In the corner of my eye, I could see the golem charging another attack, the light growing brighter and brighter.
Something inside of me finally settled. I moved to push her away with my shoulder, but my right hand hurt too much.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing now?” Violet hissed in what could only be pain.
“Just stay right here.” I got up on shaky feet and swayed forward slightly.
“Just fucking run, what the hell are you-”
The golem fired.
I held the blade out on reflex. It shouldn’t have been possible to cut something like a beam of light. What was there to cut, anyway? The Godblade didn’t care. The burning light split where my steel met that beam of energy, carved a tunnel through it, even as I shielded Violet behind me.
My arms were shaking. I almost went down to my knees. The Godblade was draining mana, and no small amount of it. The blade didn’t just work on will, then.
This barrage lasted five seconds, and then it stopped. Black scars ran through the floor on either side of me. The ground itself had melted.
“How the fuck?”
“Just let me handle this. Shut up for once.” I whispered. My right hand was broken or fractured. My left leg ached when I put too much weight on it. There were other scars and bruises. Something told me this wasn’t someone else injuring me; it was the blade running wild just like it had at the Auction House.
I channelled mana, condensed it around my feet and my left hand. Enough to slowly shuffle forward. My reserves were low. Very low. From the ritual, maybe.
I tried to reach for my Gift.
It sounded like an earnest warning, rather than a rebuke. “I still don’t know what that means, you know.” I had expected something like this. Oh well.
The golem charged forward, seemingly done with long-range attacks. There was hardly any room to move at all.
I slowly staggered towards it. I saw a blurred fist larger than I was, aimed right for me. The blade sang in my head -an impression of someone else.
I jumped. Fresh agony flared up legs, but I forced it down.
I slashed down.
It felt like my bones themselves were creaking. My arm trembled from the force. There was resistance. The blade gleamed brighter. The resistance shattered. The blade cut through the stone, severing the hand.
I landed on the ground and immediately fell to my knees from the pain.
Something told me I wouldn’t be doing that again.
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The golem didn’t miss a second. The severed arm started to change, elongate, and sharpen. A sword?
The blade came for my head.
I half-dived and half-fell forward, below the swing that would have cut me in half. I hurriedly sat up, whimpering as I put entirely too much weight on my right hand.
Borrowed instinct screamed.
I spun, slashing right. My Godblade cut the golem’s new blade in half. Something in my left arm spasmed. The blade trembled, and I barely kept a hand on it. I twisted, aimed for the golem’s legs. It was thinner there, thin enough that I could sever it with one good strike.
My blade cut through.
The golem’s body groaned. It shifted, then began to fall. It fell backwards, thankfully. It would have crushed me if it hadn’t.
“Damn it.” The whole room shook. My body was screaming. Even with mana, it was warning me that this couldn’t go on forever.
The fallen golem’s body lurched.
Its head slowly turned to face me. It still wasn’t down. Its mouth opened. Light started to form in that dark gap. I rose on shaking legs, forced myself to walk forward slowly.
Another beam of energy came.
I held the Godblade in front of me. It cut through the attack, both sword and shield at the same time. I fell to my knees and gritted my teeth. It was all I could do to keep the blade raised as I slowly hobbled forward. My vision flashed black for a moment.
I was in a small, messy room. Bleeding out on the floor. A woman wept on top of me. I was dying. I blinked, and I was back in front of that beam of light again.
The blade almost fell before I managed to raise it in time. The Godblade shifted into a bloody knife, turned back into the brilliant white sword again and again.
The distance closed, the light faded.
I brought the blade down on the thing’s neck. I didn’t quite have the strength. It felt like the blade pulled itself in the direction I wanted. Spikes of pain shot up my arm.
There was resistance. More resistance.
The Godblade was cutting something my eyes couldn’t see. The head split apart. That resistance shattered.
The whole construct shook and began to melt before me, forming a large black puddle on the ground, even as half of it turned to inert stone.
I took a few deep breaths, swayed. I tried to catch myself by planting the blade in the ground. It cut right through the floor. I yelped as my own momentum finally stopped as the hilt met the floor.
“That’s…I’ll keep that in mind.” I murmured, dismissed the blade and watched it vanish into nothing. As soon as it did, my hands hit the ground. I didn’t quite collapse, but the world did spin for a second.
“How the hell did you do that?”
I looked up and saw Violet leaning against a wall. Next to her were large tunnels carved into the walls. The Golem must have done that. I crawled over to her slowly. Very slowly. “Cut off its head. Probably the weak point or something.” My vision had steadied now.
“It wasn’t.”
I paused in my crawling, stopped just in front of her. “What?”
“It wasn’t a weak point. I’d see it.” She muttered. “If it had one, I could have beaten that stupid thing with my Gift. You did…something else.”
I briefly considered that. I didn’t know what the Godblade had cut either. The connection of the person controlling it, maybe? I winced.
Some of the immediate pain faded. It was dangerous to use my Gift when I could only feel a thin trickle of mana. I needed to be able to think clearly.
My body still felt heavy, but that was something I could at least deal with.
“How…how hurt are you?”
“I’m just fine.”
“You have a hole in you,” I muttered, staring at her. Actually, now that I looked, the hole wasn’t actually…bleeding? Or rather, every time blood began to fall, it stilled, moved back in. It dripped back out, moved back in. Over and over again. How eerie. Impossible to tell how bad it really was.
“It’s a gash.” She muttered. Violet apparently saw my gaze. “My Gift.” That was all she offered as an explanation. “One way to use it anyway. I’m not fucking dying. Don’t look at me like that.”
“You do still have a hole in you,” I muttered. “And you’re…very pale. Don’t tell me you’re trying to look like me now.”
Violet raised an eyebrow and gave me the middle finger. She rose, swayed, and hit her back against the wall behind her. “I’m just fine. Took a couple of hits I shouldn’t have.” She looked at me. “From you.” She leaned forward on her warhammer.
“Err…sorry.” Guilt ran through me again.
Violet rolled her eyes. “I did try to save you, but you turned on me the second there was no one else to fight. Figured I just had to keep that fancy blade from cutting me. Didn’t think you could punch that hard, though. That’s a damn Godblade, right?”
There was no point lying. Not when Violet had seen for herself a blade that cut through rock and disappeared without a trace. “Yeah.”
“Didn’t think you could have one…with a Gift,” Violet muttered. “Always bloody wanted one.”
“Didn’t think so either.” I cast a glance around, saw all the…trinkets around us, fastened to the walls, or piled up on a desk in the corner. “What…where are we?”
“Beats me. Those are Artifacts, though.”
I looked back at her. Something must have shown on my face, because she asked, “What?”
“Nothing. Not…the time for it.” I rose again, swayed, fell back down.
Violet reached down and offered a hand. I took it, and she helped me up, though she started swaying from the effort, and I had to straighten her.
“We need to find my father,” Violet said. “I need to find him.”
We had the same idea.
Our pace was slow and measured as we walked down the hallway. Despite Violet's bold proclamations, she couldn’t walk very far on her own. She leaned on my right side. I kept my left hand on the wall to steady myself. She was dragging her feet along the floor. I was doing the same. I couldn’t help but think she looked paler than she had before. She’d even left her giant warhammer behind. That said a lot.
We slowly shuffled forward. The mana reinforcing my legs was the only reason I was still standing. It was probably the same for her.
These hallways were dark. Depressing. Some underground construction, the air dry and lifeless.
It was impossible to get lost, seeing as it was just one very long hallway. Violet had told me these other rooms just had more Artifacts too. Not something I liked to think about.
There were a lot of other things I didn’t want to think about right now. I knew who I was now. I remembered. I wished I didn’t. Each time I closed my eyes, I was back in that damned room. My room. I tried very hard to keep my eyes open for as long as I could. That fucking bitch she had-
I took a deep breath and distracted myself. I was good at that in my last life, too.
A thought had been burning inside me for a while now. I finally asked it. “Why?”
“You can’t ever get to the fucking point, can you?” Violet muttered, not breaking stride.
“You’re going against your House. Your father.” I muttered. “Doesn’t that…I mean, even you have to think about that a little first.”
There was silence for a time as we walked. We had to turn a corner before an answer came. “He’s doing some fucked up shit. There were cages and…collars. Small ones.”
Something inside of me hardened. That, combined with all the Artifacts, really confirmed everything I needed to know.
“At first, I was just trying to find you. I did owe you, but then I saw those cages and….” She shook her head. “Who cares if he’s my father? I’m my mother’s daughter.”
“She…wouldn’t approve?”
Violet laughed, a harsh sound that cut the silence. “She’d kill him with her bare hands. The only people afraid of my mother were scum. They called her the ‘Mad Red Judge’. Why…why do you think that is?” Her voice was lower at the end, as if she were talking more to herself, and I was simply overhearing her.
“I don’t know.”
“A smart-ass like you would know about…the rules for slaves, right?” Violet muttered.
I did. “Slaves can be taken in war. Can be made from criminals. Can be sold by their starving families.”
“Not just that,” Violet muttered. “There’s a standard. You can’t just do whatever the fuck you want to them.”
I did know that part, somewhat. Though I’d thought it was just lip service, and not something anyone actually cared about.
We stopped in front of a huge roadblock, a golem that had fallen exactly on its side. Too tall to hobble over. I started dragging Violet around. I was surprised she didn’t try pulling me around the other way.
“It wasn’t always like that,” Violet muttered. “My mother attacked and destroyed auctions all over the country. She found slavemasters and caved them in with her warhammer. Elves used to…have that happen to them a lot. Not so common now. The last King had to…had to make new rules. My mother had to agree to them. It was…what you scheming bastards call a compromise. Don’t think she should have done that, though, even if it killed her.” Violet grunted. “Guess it did anyway, though.”
That did explain a lot of things. It also made Duke Indri much more deluded and corrupt than even I’d imagined he was.
“She…she sounds like a hell of a woman.” A mother you could be proud of, unlike mine. “Why would she go that far?” It was hard to believe any Noble had that much of a moral compass, though perhaps that was just me being biased for no reason.
“She was a slave.”
I froze. Violet almost stumbled forward before she caught herself. “What?” She was staring at me.
It was hard not to stop at that. Hard not to have sympathy for Violet and hate her father even more. It was also hard not to be honest with her.
“I…I think I’m going to kill him. Your father.” I finally confessed, stopped, and looked at her. No matter what she’d said about her father, that was surely something that would give even Violet pause. “It won’t be quick either. He- the children. He's turning them into Artifacts. He wants to turn me into....” How could I possibly even begin to explain everything?
Violet's entire body shook so faintly I would have never noticed if she wasn't leaning on me.
“No.” Our eyes met. Violet had a sneer on her face, but I saw something heavier flash in her eyes.
“I will.”
WARNING: KITTY-REX BREACHING DIMENSIONS!
Monster Evolution Progression Fantasy Space-Warp Powers Chaotic Adventure
Meet Idalia: part lion, part dinosaur, and all fluffy chaos. She'd rather cannonball into lava than follow rules, and her sneeze alone could tear apart reality.
DANGER STRIKES: When Phantom Carnotaurs attack her clan-mates and her father vanishes on a doomed mission, Idalia refuses to sit still. Tail fluffed, ego massive, she dives headfirst into rifts, molten rivers, and monster mayhem.
POWER UNLEASHED: Her portal roars can obliterate enemies, shield her from threats, and tear open dimensions. With these, she’ll rescue her father and rise as one of the most formidable monsters alive.
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What to Expect
- Monster evolution & power growth
- Volcanic mayhem & space-time chaos
- Clan bonds, friendships & rivalries
- Progression-driven adventure
- High-energy coming-of-age arc
Featuring:
- Portal roars & space rifts
- Phantom Carnotaurs
- Lava-swimming kitten-rex antics
- Multi-realm traversal
Fiery Adventure Monster POV High-Chaos Action & Heart
New chapters every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday!