Beacon from Beyond

The fear struck deep within him, something he couldn’t suppress. Hyperventilating, his heart began beating in his ears as he looked around wildly for any indication of someone else, anyone else to help him.

‘Mom?! Where am I? Why am I tied up? What happened?’ his thoughts came faster, the terror overwhelming him, blinding him before he could think out the situation logically.

‘I thought I saved that man!’ he cried in his head ‘I thought it would be the right thing to do! We killed the monster, I saw the notification, why?! How did it end up like this?’ But he didn’t have an answer.

‘I just want my mom back’ he started to repeat in his head like a mantra, over and over again. Minutes ticked by as he cried, tears streaming down his face and the bone-deep terror that afflicted him only became worse. He drew further into himself and eventually stopped crying so loudly, instead only whimpering in the darkness while repeating the same sentence in his head.

He heard a growl come from the darkness, and saw as the two pale orbs came closer “This is getting us nowhere” he heard a cold voice say.

Confusion cut through his fear for a moment ‘Why can I understand her?’ only to be plagued by a second realization ‘I’m not thinking in English, what language is this?’

With the second thought, he saw as Iora winced in the darkness “What did you just say? What word was that, and why couldn't I hear it?” She asked in an accusatory voice.

‘Say? I didn’t say anything, hear what?’ he thought haltingly. Something was wrong about this situation.

“While you’re in front of me, I can hear you think. You said a word in your head, something I couldn’t hear, but I know you weren’t blocking me from it either. I would have been able to tell and torn through you faster than you will ever want to know” she said the last part with a snarl.

His mind shivered at the realization she could see into his head, but tried thinking of his previous sentence to figure out what she was talking about ‘I’m not thinking in English-’ but was cut off.

“There! How are you doing that?” she asked after wincing again. “It hurts to even hear it!”

Dei realized she couldn’t hear the word ‘English,’ but he didn’t know what he was doing to cause that ‘I don’t know! What did I do wrong? Why am I being interrogated? And why can I understand you?’

She was close enough now that Dei could just barely make out her face in the darkness, and she was fuming “What are you?” she asked.

Again, he took a few seconds to collect his thoughts from the confusion of what she said ‘I’m a human?’

The anger in her eyes quickly transformed into open hatred at his response “YOU are no human!” she screamed at him “human children can’t destroy the cloak of a monster more than a hundred times their level! Human children can't use Soul magic! Human children don’t think as coherently as you do! No, you are something else. You have either taken the body of a child or you have killed a child and taken its place.

“Despite the fact that there’s no chance of you being a human, I still need to figure out what you are before I can kill you, and give the boy's family the closure they deserve.

“I was hoping to end this quickly at first, it seems that hiding your thoughts comes instinctually to whatever race you belong to… [Diamond Smiler]?” She asked, looking at him expectantly.

‘I have no idea what that is’ he thought, still shaking despite the fact that he knew what was going on better. He did some things children should undoubtedly not be able to do, and now they thought he was some sort of body snatcher.

He kept trying to think, to reason, to come up with a better argument, but fear still blinded him. It scattered any chance to say something that would help her understand him. He tried to say something in his mind, explain himself, but he just couldn’t think!

He distantly heard her “tsk” when he didn’t mentally admit to being whatever monster she had said, but he ignored it. He was finally starting to catch on to what was happening, what she was doing to him.

‘I shouldn’t be this afraid. I shouldn’t shake this much. I have better control over myself than this!’ he screamed out in his head." She cast something on me, she did something to make me more afraid.’

“Fine” he heard her say, but he wasn’t listening. All the fear she had forced into him was rapidly transforming into something else, a white hot rage.

“If you wont surrender your secrets, I will take them.”

He gritted his teeth and felt as power flowed through his veins, glaring at her as her palm came closer to his forehead ‘I didn’t let Wrath have my memories, I won't let you!’ he screamed.

But she was not holding back to spare him the pain. This was no test to pass.

As her palm touched his forehead, the small defense that he put up was torn apart, his anger snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane.

Heedless of the damage she caused him, Iora tore through Dei’s mind, through all of his memories.

His life flashed before his eyes, backwards. Starting from the fight with the monster in the forest, it went back through his family searching for herbs. It showed their trip back to the village, and his sleep the previous night.

Dei saw as weeks passed, rewinding time starting from the moment he passed out. He couldn’t think, but if he still could, Dei would realize that Iora couldn’t see any of his memories of the time spent in his soul.

As he relived the new life he had with his family, Dei’s Soul began to crack the further back she went. Eventually she reached memories that Dei himself did not know, his life before he became conscious again.

Dei saw how he lived through unending agonizing pain in the first six months of his life, and he was forced to relive it all again in this very moment.

The pain became worse and worse the closer they got to his actual birth, and his soul began fracturing faster.

Mana began flowing from the cracks, unregulated in a way his body couldn’t handle. It tore through him, both his regular mana and all the Wrath mana that his body had yet to store in [Pandora’s Box] before he was suddenly subject to a form of soul torture.

He screamed in agony at both what Iora was doing to him, and at his muscles bursting from the buildup of uncontrolled power in them. Blood ran down his entire body as the mana burst through, ripping him apart.

Iora reached his actual birth, then even before that. For nine months, Iora was able to watch as he grew, but she could tell there was more even than that. Unheeding of Dei’s worsening situation, she kept going, out of curiosity at this point. She had already verified that he was a human, had already verified that Fou had given birth to Dei, but she knew that there was something special about him.

She didn’t want to let his secrets lie. She reasoned out to herself that it might be dangerous to the community. ‘Shaman’s must protect the village, he has no right to hide something from me’ she thought coldly, despite the fact that a boy not even a year old screamed out in front of her.

Until, suddenly, she reached the part of his memories before Fou was pregnant with him. While Iora couldn’t see within Dei’s soul, she could see what it perceived. When Fou was pregnant, Dei saw darkness.

Iora rushed across the memory because she could sense that Dei remembered something that spanned before even that, but when she ran headfirst past the limit of Dei’s physical body, Iora launched her own mind out somewhere it should never have seen.

Iora, for a single moment, saw an unfiltered view of the void.

The spell shattered immediately. The ritual circle allowing Iora to see into Dei’s mind exploding into flames as Iora screamed and fell backwards, clawing at her face.

The darkness around the room faded immediately, and the silencing spell Dei hadn’t known was in place fell with it. He had worse things to worry about though, as his soul had already suffered lethal damage.

He was breaking.

The spiderwebbing cracks that permeated deep into him finally began to flake off into oblivion

‘Soul…please…’ he called weakly to the affinity, getting a notification in response

[Soul of the-

But he cut it off, accepting whatever help Soul could give without reading it. He didn’t have the time to read it.

Power flowed into him, a thin line of pure Soul mana rapidly weaving through his soul, stitching it back together. When the main portion was held in place, it shot outward and rapidly retrieved all the loose pieces that were previously fading into nothingness.

By the end of it, his soul looked like a hideously cracked series of experiences, barely stitched together by some pure form of energy.

The rope around him had stopped emitting its glow, but he couldn’t even think about moving or trying to break free. His body was broken, there was blood everywhere, and his mind was so scarred from the experience that he felt like an outside observer watching his own corpse.

***

POV: Fou

After Dei had unveiled the monster and it was rapidly killed, Fou desperately tried to wake him up, using all of her mana on healing him. Despite that, he stayed unconscious and too cold to be healthy.

The group quickly found Aree, the woman who was missing, and her group after that. She said that she had found a juvenile [Nightstalking Devourer] and got greedy for its valuable parts, so they chased it deeper in, but lost it.

Aree and her group paled at the realization that the mother was right around the corner and most likely had been hunting them while Fou’s group rushed to save them, but the situation was already over, and nobody had died.

Most of the group saw as Dei cast some form of soul attack, and Fou was worried that he would be interrogated when they got back to the village. She didn’t know how he did it, but to Fou, it was clear that Dei was a good kid. He wanted to save someone, how would they ever fault him for that? How could that be bad? She thought Iora would perhaps do a scan of him, maybe ask him some questions and see if he could answer. He had, after all, already spoken his first word. She would be able to draw a few more out of him, right?

When they ended up coming back through the gate though, it was so much worse. One of the people who was closest to Fou when Dei had done whatever he did ended up excitedly telling Iora that “Fou’s kid did some weird fuckery that I’ve never seen before, slapped the cloak right off that Nightstalker.”

It was meant to be a joyous occasion, but Iora immediately sent a pulse through everyone present, stunning them all.

Faster than Fou could stop her, Iora took Dei and quickly floated deeper into town. When the stun wore off, Fou and Gor shot off after her, leaving their other kids behind.

When they arrived at Iora’s house, there was some sort of barrier blocking the way. Gor slamming into it full speed but bounced off, Fou not far behind from doing the same.

They went to work, continuously attacking it with anything they had. Blade and bow skills rained down on the door, but it remained impenetrable.

“IORA!” Gor shouted as he threw himself against the opening. At one point he tried breaking the wall, but that was only harder. “I WILL KILL YOU! RELEASE MY SON!”

It would not have been as bad if Iora had asked for a personal interview, but both Fou and Gor hated how she had taken him rather than simply asking. She had kidnapped their child, and neither knew the reason, but that was not something you did, especially not to people who risked their lives on a daily basis to get the food and medicine for everyone. Both of them had seen the horrors of the outside world, both of them would do anything to protect their family, and both of them would absolutely be willing to kill Iora if she hurt their child.

They built up a crowd around them with all the screaming they were doing in front of Iora’s house, but neither cared. After nearly half an hour, the barrier finally fell and they stormed inside, rushing to Iora’s magic room where they heard a shrill scream.

Gor made it through the doorway first, seeing Iora on the ground clawing at her face while babbling incessantly. Fou made it in second, ignoring Iora and focusing on Dei.

She saw Dei bleeding from every orifice and multiple cuts across his skin, as well as a weird white spiderweb pattern that pulsed across his skin with an eerie glow.

They kicked off the floor at the same moment, Gor bringing his blade down on Iora’s neck while Fou went to grab Dei. Moments before the blade drew blood, Iora’s hand touched her Shamanic staff, and a strong pulse was released in Gors direction. Fou had just barely grabbed the rope tying Dei to the chair, and held on tightly as a wall of force knocked them both backwards.

Several things happened quickly. First, Fou began pumping healing into Dei using a Skill from her Love affinity. Second, Gor turned in the direction both him and Fou were being pushed, and launched himself at the wall they were about to slam into, shattering the entire thing so that Dei would not suffer the shock of hitting it. Smaller fragments still hit the back of Fou, but those were easy enough for her to absorb the force of. Thirdly, Gor wrapped Fou and Dei in a hug from behind, and formed an intangible barrier using a skill from his Sloth affinity.

They luckily went through the front door, rather than the second wall, and went flying outside. The barrier Gor had formed around them quickly absorbed most of the force of the blast Iora had used to launch them, and he used his legs to absorb the rest by leaning into it and sliding hundreds of feet back, carrying his wife while she carried their son.

Quickly, he let Fou down to stand on her own two feet while keeping his eyes trained on Iora’s doorway.

“Why…” he asked quietly to Fou, and perhaps to himself too. The entire situation made no fucking sense. He saw the state Dei was in before Fou got to him, Iora had been torturing the poor boy.

At the thought, he felt a long-unused skill from his Sloth affinity come to life, his [Slumbering Giant] Skill overcharging his mind and muscles.

“IORA!” he roared at the top of his lungs, the crowd on either side of the street pressing further against the wall “WHY HAVE YOU HURT MY SON?”

He motioned for Fou to run, to take Dei and hide him somewhere. They both knew what those Shamanic staffs did, and if Iora truly wanted Dei dead, there was nothing they could do to stop her, only delay her.

If Iora was going rogue for some reason, they needed to buy time for the Shamanic Council to come in and kill her.

Fou wasted no time and took off down the street, back towards the gate.

Iora did not come through the flap of her door. Instead, the entire front wall blew outward, shrapnel flying a few feet before stopping mid air. Floating in the center was Iora, staff in hand and eyes filled with hate. She completely ignored Gor and glared at the receding form of Fou, firing something at her that Gor couldn’t see, but felt.

Without hesitation, he launched himself into the air, midway into the blast. It did absolutely nothing to him, seemingly trying to pass through him without hurting him, but he used the mana in his body to grab hold of it and put it to sleep.

Most of it was stopped, but a small portion succeeded in passing through. ‘It’s a two parter spell. One part is to kill something, that portion was completely stopped by me because I was not the target, it was most likely specifically meant for Dei, and she set it to only hit him so that Fou would be unharmed. The second part was a tracking spell, set to track anything it hit. Most of it was stopped, but a little got through. Holy fuck, Dei I dont know what you did but she wants you gone.’ The entire thought took place within the span of half a blink as his [Slumbering Giant] Skill increased his stats immensely based on how long he had not activated it. It had been over a decade since its last use, and it was the longest it had ever been charged. He was still growing in strength too, hardly reaching the peak as the world continued to slow. That was good, because he didn’t know how long he was going to need to stall her.

“You ask why I want him dead?” she said as quickly as he could think, her power growing at the same speed as Gor’s or potentially even exceeding his. He continued rising into the air, closing in on one of the cave walls. He luckily had to launch himself at an angle, otherwise it would have taken much longer to reach the cave ceiling.

“Because” she continued “that thing is not a human! When you all got back, I could sense the residue of a complex mix of Soul magic mixed with two other affinities. I don't know what the other two were, but a triple-confluence Skill is not something to be taken lightly. When I asked what happened and he told me that Dei was the source of it? I knew that little freak was a mockery-type creature. Initially, because of the Soul affinity, I thought it was a [Diamond Smiler] but I’ve deduced that I was wrong. What I’m not wrong about is that he isn’t normal, and I won't let a mockery grow under the wing of a close friend! Fou deserves to know what he is, and if you had given me more time, I would have succeeded.” She finished her rant, which had given Gor both some vital information, and time to reach the wall that he now had his feet on.

She had assumed he wasn’t their kid, and had fully intended to get answers out of him without their permission. Based on Dei’s condition, she was too deep in now to back out. She had to double down, because if she was wrong, she would no doubt have her position revoked at best, or be executed at worst.

She wasn’t going to talk this out. She wasn’t going to explain what she saw, because she knew Gor would only continue to stall her and let Fou get away. She didn’t want to leave her life in someone else’s hands, so she had no intention of giving them the choice to screw her over.

‘She always was a control freak’ he thought, but he instead shouted “Get the fucking Council!” Into the crowd

Even if his Physicality was most likely breaking five or six hundred at this point and rising, with a Mentality to match, Gor knew that there were at least three people in the crowd who would have Skills to understand both of them, and understand his request.

Done wasting time, Gor saw how her attention on him wavered for just a single moment to glance at Fou, and in that moment, the ground under him exploded as he jumped into action.

‘I am going to do everything I can to kill this bitch, even if she thinks she knows best’ he decided internally. He wasn’t going to hold back on someone who would kill his son without giving him a say, even if she thought Dei wasn’t his son.

For Dei, Gor would try.