After the End: Serenity

True Dhampir

[Your primary living bloodline is your Base Form, Dragon. Which of your undead bloodlines is primary?]

Sage Draugr

Paramount Lich

Daywalker Vampire

Paramount Lich

[True Dhampirs may be Crossblooded. Do you accept your other Heritages?]

Serenity hadn’t expected that. If he said no, did that mean they’d go away?

As much as he’d like to get rid of the Vampire one, he had to admit it hadn’t actually been a problem - and there was no way he was willing to give up whatever humanity he had left by throwing away that “heritage”. He didn’t want to throw away his past, even the parts he didn’t like.

Yes, they’re a part of me.

[Noticed]

[Evolution initiated. The True Dhampir Path will become active when you complete Evoker]

[True Dhampir Path skills: Living Dead, DeathLife Breath, Deathgaze, Dhampir’s Transformation, Truth from Falsity]

[Connecting Vitality to both Life and Death Affinities]

[Death Affinity does not exist, using Death Incarnate]

[Life Concept initiated]

[Death Resistance increased to Immune]

[Life Resistance Increased]

[Mind Resistance increased]

[Sleep Resistance increased]

[Cold, Darkness, and Pain Resistance Inactive (undead) merged with Active amounts]

[Life Affinity overwhelmed by Death Incarnate]

[Life Affinity destroyed]

[True Dhampir Path corrupted]

[Vitality Damaged]

[Alternate Vitality support required]

[Examining Primary bloodlines: Highest remaining affinity is Essence]

[Examining Primordial Lich for complementary / opposing Affinity]

[Affinity found: Mana (Arcane)]

[Connecting Vitality to both Essence and Mana Affinities]

[Affinity model inaccurate, reclassifying Essence and Mana as Vital Forces]

[Essence Pool found]

[Arcane Aspect initiated]

[Providing Arcane energy to balance Aspect initiation]

[Vitality Restored]

[Dhampir’s Default Activated]

Serenity felt pain as his body was reforged in the lack of a place that was the Voice’s.

It reminded him of his study of the Void. It was closer to Liminal space than most of the other definitions.

[Liminal (Void) Affinity Increased]

Other Concepts flashed by him and he tried to grasp what he could, but the pain was all-encompassing.

It seemed like forever before the Voice put him to sleep.

Serenity woke up in his room in the Tutorial. He was in his dragonling form, but it felt different. He examined as much of himself as he could see, but nothing looked different.

Some of the messages he remembered from before he passed out sounded bad, so he pulled up his status. Everything looked fine, other than a couple of missing Affinities, but he’d expected that from the messages; the missing Arcane Affinity probably wasn’t a problem and if he now used something other than Life as his vital affinity, losing that didn’t seem too bad … wait. He had an Essence pool now, but more importantly, why were it and his Mana pool nearly twice as large as his Mana pool was before?

Was the error actually going to be useful?

Serenity directed his thoughts at the Voice. What happened. Why is my mana pool so large?

[An unexpected error. Your Death and Life affinities were disparate enough that when they attempted to combine, your Death Incarnate destroyed your Life Affinity]

[Most Dhampir are born, not made. This has never been seen before]

[An evolution with those consequences should not have been offered]

That sounded like an apology, but it still didn’t answer the question. Serenity didn’t need an apology; he needed to know what it meant for the future. It’d hurt, but that was over.

So what happened?

[The evolution was too far along to be halted or changed to an alternate Species, but the subchoice could be altered, especially as you picked True rather than one of the subchoices linked to living/undead]

[It was done quickly and with the fastest tools available to prevent additional degradation. Once a matching complementary/opposing pair was identified, you were spliced with Elemental material to aid the fusion]

[The only obvious effect is enlarged Mana and Essence pools, but it is likely that there will be negative effects if you drain either pool too far. It is possible that there will be negative effects if they are sufficiently unbalanced]

[While this has the effect of two additional Evolutions, they were incorporated into your Core’s Tier 2 Evolution and have not increased your Core Tier]

[Your Evolution-based Path True Dhampir was damaged by the changes. It will be repaired when you complete your current Path]

[Additional changes may manifest with time due to the emergency nature of the repairs]

So … an apology, an excuse, a power he needed to be careful about using too much, and a mysterious warning.

It sounded pretty normal, really. Serenity had expected worse.

He shifted back into his chimera form and found that - other than still feeling different somehow - the only noticeable difference was that he seemed to be alive again, instead of mostly undead. The Heart was gone.

It was nice to be able to feel things again.

Waitaminute. The Quest was to take a Death-based Evolution. Does this mean I failed the Quest? Did I go through that for nothing?

[That Quest was complete as soon as you selected to Evolve. You will not be presented with Death-based Evolutions in the future. The active Quests you have are Tutorial Instruction, Restore the Lost, your Path Quest, Home is Where the Heart is? (Path Choice, Branching, Step 4), and Final Relics]

Serenity pulled his armor on and laid back to take a nap before the end of the Tutorial - he had to remember to set a timer to wake up before the transition, but that was easy enough.

[Tutorials Completed as Instructor: 43/180]

General - Major Changes: Core Progression and Tier, Path Level, Mana and Essence

Spoiler

Magic - Major Changes: Essence Technique: Essence Drawing; Arcane Affinity removed; Life Affinity destroyed; Void (Liminal) Affinity increased; Void (Nihility) Affinity separated from Void; Life Concept added; Void Concept split into Void (Liminal) and Void (Nihility); Arcane (Mana) Vital Aspect Initiated; Essence Aspect changed from Bloodline to Vital

Spoiler

Physical - Major Changes: Cold, Darkness, and Pain Resistances merged part of Inactive into Active and removed the remaining Inactive portion; Death Resistance added as Immune; Mind Resistance added; Sleep resistance increased by 50; Heritages - Essence Dragon changed from Bloodline to Primary; Dhampir, Essence/Mana added; Elemental (Essence) and Elemental (Mana) added; Lich, Paramount converted to Primary

Spoiler

Abilities - Major Changes: Raw Mana Control and Dhampir’s Default added to Monster Biology

Spoiler

Serenity knew the Tutorial didn’t take long, but he wasn’t certain how long he’d taken allowing the Heart to finish, so he was grateful when he arrived back on Tzintkra to the sight of a closed door.

When he opened the door, Rin and Marti weren't outside the door, but he saw Marti peek his direction from the next room down the hall. She must have noticed when his aura changed because his Death incarnate was locked down. “Sorry about that. I’m ready for you now.”

Rin didn’t say anything; he simply got up, followed Serenity into the room, and took the chair while Serenity sat on the bed. “You’ll need to heal your hands while I cleanse them.”

“I can do that.” Rin’s voice sounded as tired as he looked.

Serenity expanded his aura to cover Rin, then pulled on the death-tainted Mana and Essence that filled Rin’s hands. It came far easier than it had when he’d done the same for Raz; Serenity wasn’t sure what the cause of the difference was.

It tasted good.

He wasn’t sure how long it took, but when he finished, Rin only took a few more minutes to heal his hands. They no longer looked withered, but they were still somewhat elongated. “It worked.” Rin seemed happy, but it was more like relief than joy. “It wasn’t as hard to heal as I was afraid, either. We can make a start on Syri now.”

Rin stood up and turned to leave the room before Marti spoke. “Shouldn’t you get some sleep? Or at least get another healer to help you?”

Rin stopped and turned towards Marti. “You - no. You must not know. Ragnat came down with the shivers this morning. Bellin and Flora are in worse shape than I am, they’re sleeping right now. We- They’re not the only people who’ve caught it, either. I’ve already told the Guildmaster we have to close the Guildhall tonight. If this doesn’t work, I don’t know when we’ll be able to reopen. If it works - if it works, maybe a day or two. It depends on how well this works and how quickly. She said she’d talk to the Mayor about finding out if there’s anyone else or it’s just us. We have to try.”

Serenity recognized a man who was near panic when he saw one. “If you’re up for it, I am. I may not be able to get all of it at once, but I can at least slow it down, maybe stop it, then we can get the rest after we have some rest.”

Syri looked young, with black hair and an unlined face, but there was something odd about her that Serenity took a moment to recognize. She appeared human, but her scent had an odd tang that Serenity first thought meant she was a vampire who had once been human before he realized that she was instead a classic dhampir.

Odd to run into one right after I became one … but then, this is a planet of the dead, and dhampirs are traditionally on the side of the living. If there were a place where dhampirs would gather, this would be it.

Like Rin and Lak, her form had shifted, but she seemed less affected than Lak. “You said she was the first?”

“Yeah. She’s held up better than anyone else, but I don’t know how long that will last.” Rin walked to Syri’s side and stood next to her. Serenity got the feeling he didn’t want to talk, he wanted to try to fix Syri. “Ready?”

Serenity nodded, then reached for the Death energy the same way he had for Rin. Since it was deeply embedded in her, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get all of it without creating a network, but he’d try. Having an aura skill like Eat Death should be very helpful; her aura would push back against his, but it shouldn’t protect anything foreign to her.

He felt the corrupted, death-tainted Essence float around her. There was also corrupted mana, but it disappeared into his aura as quickly as he saw it; the problem was the Essence. He was surprised at how low the concentrations were; for all that it had fully invaded her aura, she seemed far more resistant than Rin. The concentration wasn’t high enough for her to have a core yet, though he suspected it was trying to form one. That was a relief.

Serenity started trying to pull the tainted Essence away from her body and aura. At first, it came easily, but it wasn’t long before he noticed a pull on it back towards Syri - a pull that wasn’t there when he healed Raz and Rin. As he pulled harder, it seemed to resist him more.

Serenity tried to feel what was doing it, and realized that there was a clue in the energy he could taste - as well as the almost liquid undertaste of the energy he’d pulled from Rin, there was a coppery tone, almost like blood. Her heritage must have protected her, but to do it, it had absorbed some of the energy Serenity was trying to remove and now it was coming when he pulled the other energy.

Serenity couldn’t leave any of the corrupted essence, but he also didn’t want to take any more of the energy that sustained the dhampir. He didn’t know what effect that would have, but it seemed unlikely to be good.

He needed to separate the two energies - no. He needed to purify the corrupted one; then he could leave it with the dhampir and it would reinforce her instead of damaging her.

He knew how to purify Essence, even if he didn’t know how he knew. All he had to do was tune his aura correctly, so that it would shake the flavor off the Essence; then he could do what he needed, even turn it into mana and flow it back into Syri if that would help. Done correctly, it would affect only the corrupted Essence and not any that Syri natively had - though the energy he felt from her was mana, not Essence anyway.

He held his aura the right way and most of the tainted Essence separated from Syri’s own death-touched nature and streamed into his aura, becoming unaspected Essence and mana. As Syri started to stir, Serenity saw wisps of the corruption cling to her and sink back into her.

That was not how it was supposed to behave.

It was not ALLOWED to behave like that. He would not permit it.

Serenity looked at the stubborn Essence hiding in Syri’s body. He reached for his Death Incarnate, but for the first time he consciously chose not to command it the way he would with an Aspect, but to simply be Death. “COME.”

Serenity did not see how the world seemed to dim even though the light level was the same, or how Marti took a step back in surprise and drew a dagger. All he knew was that the remainder of the laggard death-tainted essence came to him and was filtered.

He also suddenly knew that Rin’s healing was only partly effective on Syri. It would work, but not as quickly or as well as if she were fully Life-based; Healing Affinity should work to heal anyone, even the undead, but only if the caster was sufficiently skilled. Rin probably was, but he was also exhausted, and his healing energy must default to Life. There were parts of Syri that simply weren’t being helped.

Serenity knew that he could refresh them. It would be easy right now, as easy as a thought. Death energy simply did what he wanted; he didn’t require a skill or a spell.

It was done and Serenity released his Incarnate.

He immediately felt exhausted. It hadn’t seemed tiring when he did it, but it clearly had been.