Elysium's Multiverse

Chapter 45

Riven and the two demons had found a small cellar, long abandoned, with a pair of dead bolts that still worked well enough after they closed the door behind them. It’d likely been someone else’s lair a long, long time ago due to the way various odds and ends were strewn about and a worn-out bed was in the far corner—though it was all in a heavy state of disrepair and had a thin layer of dust.

“Trash.” Athela threw one of the spare articles of clothing to the side, smacking Azmoth in the face while he grunted and sniffed at the pair of old underwear. “Also trash. This is trash, too.”

She continued to dig through the bag Jalel had claimed to be “treasure,” tossing it onto the growing pile atop Azmoth, and she let out a huff when she got to the end of it. “This is bullshit! All this crap was supposed to be more valuable than me?! How dare that insignificant little shit call you out like that!”

Athela was no doubt talking about when Jalel had been angry about Riven’s choice to save his minion over the other bag of “treasure.” Out of all the items Jalel had brought with him in that oversized sack of shit, not a single thing had been useful for Riven at all.

It was as if Jalel had intentionally been trying to deceive Riven concerning the bag’s contents when he’d been overly hesitant to show the warlock or demon anything inside. Why that was, Riven would likely never know.

Yet Riven had bigger things to worry about, like how he was going to get out of here. He needed to find the exit; he’d been here far too long, and both Allie and Jose were counting on him.

“I need a way out,” Riven stated flatly, staring down the phantom across the room while ignoring Azmoth’s mindless, deep giggling or the enraged chittering of his spider. “I need to get out of the dungeon. If I help you, will you provide this for me?”

Kajit let out a frustrated growl. Her usual semitranslucent appearance of an old, bandaged, half-mummified woman was gone. Now, in its place was her “true form”—a rather insidious-looking, deep-blue spirit in the outline of a slender woman with long hair trailing past her bare back, long legs, and pitch-black orbs for eyes. She was still semitranslucent, but the energy creating her body was much more potent and had an aura of danger about it. “I already state, boy, I cannot show way out. Way out is blocked for spirits like me, to keep from escaping hell. If I find way out, I already leave centuries ago. Hellscapes turn my eyes blind to exits; it is the curse of death. It is like antimagnet. When I look—system shows me other path.”

“Can’t you just possess a body and see it that way?”

“Why I not do this if I could?”

Riven let out an exhausted sigh and shook his head, arms folded over his chest while he sat cross-legged on the ancient cellar floor. “Well, I honestly don’t see a reason to help you, Kajit. I understand your plight, and I’d definitely love my dagger back, but I’m on a time limit here. I have no idea how my sister is doing or if she’s in trouble—hell, I don’t even know if she’s even alive. But I won’t find out until I leave this dungeon, and I have to keep looking for an exit. I’m sorry. You’ll have to find someone else to help free your sister’s spirit.”

Kajit obviously didn’t like that answer, and the room shuddered while black mana around her fluxed to respond to her rage. However, his piece of sin clamped down on her soul—the soul that resided within his own soulscape, the one she’d tried to inhabit him with—and her anger immediately simmered down to a more calm state of being. She’d essentially become his captive, one that he could use Gluttony to crush at any time due to her own stupidity and actions.

She took in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled as if she had a body to breathe with. Perhaps it was habit—he didn’t know.

Her black eyes snapped open again, focusing on his own while she imitated his posturing while crossing her arms in front of her own chest. “My sister’s soul is on time limit. It very hard to find entity inside dungeon who have prophecy; she likely die before I find another to visit tower.”

Riven raised an eyebrow and leaned back on his hands. “What kind of time limit are we talking here?”

“Three hundred years, take or give.”

“Seems like a long time to me.”

Kajit sputtered a coughing laugh, and she looked at him incredulously. “Not long time to find another prophet here in hellscape dungeon Negrada, foolish boy!”

“I wouldn’t know. Regardless, you have your priorities—and I have mine. I’m not risking my life to free a stranger from a prison they may or may not deserve.”

Kajit’s eyes narrowed. “I give my pledge I serve you if you save Kajit’s sister.”

“Serve me?” Riven shook his head slowly. “You’re already bound to my will anyways, and I’m sure as shit not letting go. You’ll probably kill me if I let you out of my soulscape. I can feel the power disparity after you entered to try and possess me. Why shouldn’t I just make you my slave?”

“I will not do as you ask. You may kill me with sin, but I not do as you ask unless you help Kajit.”

“No. Even if you don’t ‘obey’ me, you’re still not in a situation to make demands.”

Kajit opened her mouth to speak, frowned, and then closed it again with a hateful glare cast in his direction. Then she opened her mouth again, with a bit of a waver to her voice and worry on her features. “Please.”

“No.”

Her features contorted back into rage, and with a shriek she ripped out of this existence and into another—vanishing from the room with an echo that nearly split Riven’s eardrums. He could still feel her soul tethered to his own, though, the jaws of Gluttony holding her tightly in place, and he let on a slight frown. He understood where she was coming from, but he had his own goals. Sadly enough, now was just not the time to have a bleeding heart on display. One day, when he got stronger, he’d let Kajit go. Until that day came, though, he was keeping a firm grip on her to make sure she didn’t cause him any trouble. God forbid she actually attacked him, because she’d likely be able to kill him the way he was now if her mana fluctuations during mood swings were any clue. Even now he could see her mana waves rippling back and forth across her own soul structure, and though she’d condensed hers to a smaller area, her potency was far greater than Riven’s was.

Riven glanced over at where Athela was making a small nest out of the pile of clothes, odds and ends. “Do you think I made a bad choice?”

The spider demon stopped what she was doing, then cocked her head quizzically. “About Kajit? My advice on the matter is to do whatever you want to do. Don’t let other people influence your decisions, rather, make your decisions based entirely on your own desires. You’ll be a lot happier that way, not being burdened by thoughts of what others want or need or think of you. Just because Kajit has a bad situation going on doesn’t mean you need to be the one that fixes it, and she was the one who tried blackmailing you first!”

Athela gave a quick head nod before going back to her pile, and Riven scratched his chin while pondering her words. He really did want that dagger back…and he felt slightly bad for Kajit. But in the end, those things weren’t worth it when it compared to potentially leaving Jose or Allie high and dry in the outside world. Hell, he might even die in that so-called Tower of Fates, and he could never forgive himself if he abandoned those two to fend for themselves in this new world.

He had a duty to make it back fast, so that’s what he’d focus on. Other things be damned, and the rest of the world could burn for all he cared. Family and friends first.

Allie stood amid the burning wreckage of a city block that had once belonged to the old world of Earth. Her red eyes narrowed on the man in a church-attire suit underneath her, sputtering pointless bullshit about how she was damned for all eternity while he bled out on the ground and tried to cast another holy spell to heal himself.

She didn’t let him finish the incantation.

*SHUNK*

Her cursed, soul-woven wand snapped forward and unleashed a burst of black energy that ripped into the man’s heart. He let out a screech and a low wheeze of an exhale, his body seizing up amid the shock of her mana strike. She could feel and almost even hear the soul trapped inside her weapon scream out while it began to soak in the life force of her newest victim.

“Keep your ramblings on faith, for I do not need them.” Allie leaned over the man and sneered, “Save it for the sheep that follow your boss.”

Her body hummed with energy, absorbing death mana from the dead and dying around her while she slowly walked through the wreckage of battle. When she felt two of her minions fall at the hands of the new-world “holy crusaders,” she merely lifted her right hand. Teal and black mana flared along her forearm and fingertips before trailing off to give life to nearby bodies around her.

The corpses twitched, flesh began to melt, and slowly the two skeletons stood up with similarly teal-colored orbs lighting up the insides of their skulls in place of eyes.

With a thought, she sent them back into the battle taking place ahead of her, feeling an influx of XP with each death she brought to the ones foolish enough to challenge them.

*POP—POP—POP*

Three bullets ricocheted off her soul-woven gauntlets and pauldrons, cursed items created from bone just like the skull mask she wore and the bits stitched into her leather cuirass. One of the bullets did, however, manage to strike her in the thigh, where the armor had a gap. It was merely a flesh wound that would no doubt heal within minutes, but it still pissed her off.

She snarled and whipped around, locating the young man holding a pistol before he managed to get off another shot. She blurred left with inhuman speed and closed the distance, avoiding another blast from the gun and launching herself to slam her fist into her attacker’s skull. The young man’s head exploded, a normal human body no match for what she’d become in only weeks.

Another shot was fired from a rifle through an adjacent window amid screams and shrieks of the undead and the living alike—and she took aim with one hand to fire off a death ball. A globe of teal and black flames exploded out of her outstretched hands and ripped through the frail, damaged wall to violently eradicate the defender while three of her skeletons rushed over his body to continue their assault on the others.

She calmly walked ahead, entering through the burning hole she’d created, and looked down where a terrified man and a woman were being eaten alive while holding hands and frantically sobbing. Probably a couple, but honestly she didn’t care. Not after what they’d done to Jose.

They all had this coming, and she was far from done with her work. They would pay for their sins in the blood of their family and friends, a sacrifice worthy of the ones who’d taken her own in the name of purging the nonbelievers in this new world where God had made his presence known.

Fucking fanatics.

She would bring them war, as they’d asked. She would bring them a crusade. She would see just who purged whom, and she would not stop until she stood upon a mountain of their corpses. She would find the one who called himself Prophet. She would hang his corpse from their church so all his holy-aligned nutjobs would see his body and despair, even if it was the last thing she ever did.