Epochē - PoV - Kingdom of Darius - Northern reaches


    The sense of her magic shattering caused Epochē to halt with the dagger just breaking the surface of Hades’ skin. Despite the trickle of golden ichor spreading across his stomach, the Olympian didn’t flinch away from her gaze.


    The golden script that blazed into Epochē’s awareness made her hiss just as she’d returned her attention to him. Farhad has slain Raivo but fled the battlefield to climb Immortal heights. The spoils go to Fenris and Tyr’s servant to split between them.


    “Oh, you idiot. I told you to stay well away from Fenris. You were asking to be destroyed by fighting her and tangling with a Celestial—what a waste. Well, no matter,” huffed Epochē and shoved the blade into Hades''s heart.


    As the Greek God of the Underworld died, she felt her Domain shifting in the fashion she’d long planned out through her dormant Mantle. “At last, I’ll be free of the Abyss as well. I wonder if the Titan named a Plane after you Hades because he liked you or to remind him of those he planned to trap?”


    Looking at the mummified body in front of her, she leaned in and kissed his lips. In the pendant around her neck, War’s call continues to pulse, seeking to spread its infection through the minds of gods and mortals alike.


    When her actions caused the fragile remains to collapse into dust, Epochē howled in laughter. The sound echoing through the town emptied of life by Hades’ troops before the spells from Epochē’s hags and an onslaught of her manes and gnarls shock troops slaughtered them?.


    An ancient Night Hag, shrouded in shadows wrought from centuries of harvested pain and misery, let the door to Epochē’s borrowed chamber open with a gentle push of her taloned fingers. Her long tresses of green hair, a curtain that continued until mid-torso, hid her craggy features well. Indeed, they were far more effective in concealing what they covered than the mildewed rags of tunic and skirt beneath the shadows.


    “The manes want to move on to slaughter the city as well, Lady Epochē. Should I continue to hold the Shaman in check?”


    “Let them move to attack but don’t support them. The defenders are strong enough to deal with them. Ensure there are enough hints of my name and nature among their possessions to spread the fear.”


    Epochē’s instruction had the Hag shift her weight unhappily as she moved off, only to stop and, with a moment’s hesitation, look back. Even as she turned, her shadow continued walking and stretched away from her, drawing thinner as it did.


    “Does that announcement require any adjustments to the plan?”


    “Yes, my little sister of fear, send me a few gnarls. With Raivo destroyed, I’ll have to take care of seeding some half breeds of my own. I want to ensure I have pawns in play to stir future conflicts as needed.”


    Amdirlain’s PoV—Maze


    True Sight washed away the dense shadows allowing Amdirlain to take in all the details that the dull lighting hid. The beautiful flowers and ripe fruit are a temptation to stay, relax, and meditate, but it was a temptation she ignored. Given the millennia the others had spent within the maze, finding a way out was not a priority—it was the priority.


    The grey-white stone of the corridor met the chamber’s ceiling towards its peak. Where the hall and chamber joined was a simple curved archway decorated with carvings of roses, marking the threshold of her room.


    With the shadows no longer obscuring sight, it was clear the corridor quickly turned away, and Amdirlain headed out to explore. The rough stone underfoot is far different from her assigned room’s lush grass and soft earth. Activating Ki State prevents the stone from rubbing her feet raw but, in a quick test of shifting direction, has the tattoos’ strange weight moving suspiciously.


    Still, while every passage she found was large enough for a Fire Giant to travel along, none went in a straight line for long. Their twists and turns left uneven spaces for the dead ends of other halls to nestle within, though none of the pathways she initially tried led to another chamber.


    Despite the fragrant blooms in her room, there weren’t any odours or sounds as she explored the maze. She followed the twisting curves through crossroads and T-junctions, turn after turn, mapping out her course by noting every choice and looking back frequently to memorise her return path’s appearance.


    Tremor Sense sometimes showed chambers near, but finding her way to them was another matter. Her path twisted away from one promising hollow after another, and the vibrations from her deliberately echoing footsteps more often faded into solid rock.


    Rounding a bend, Amdirlain stopped to regard an archway ahead. The stone was indistinguishable from the walls, the archway itself was completely unmarked stone. Beyond was an uneven path of river stones set into fallow earth. Only a few metres away, it looked like a rich brown loam, ripe for growth, churned with compost and dug up for a fresh planting, but there wasn’t any odour.


    True Sight showed her nothing at the threshold, but she approached it carefully. A brief thought that death would likely set her back into her room wasn’t a comfort, but Precognition warned of no dangers ahead. The chamber beyond the threshold curved away, and the stepping stones arced wide along the chamber’s course until they disappeared from view.


    The smells and sounds hit her when she moved to the first steppingstone. The room’s odour contained fallow soil and mulch in the moisture-laden air. With it came a loud splashing from around the path’s bend. Lifted by Ki Flight, she floated along the visible curve of the wall, keeping alert for any danger. Her precautions proved unnecessary when she spied the chamber’s far end.


    The chamber’s shape curved like a kidney bean reaching nearly twenty-five metres at its longest point. The room contained more turned soil and stepping stones, with no obstructions until a pool at the far end. A stream of water cascaded down a tiered rock face at the back before it plunged the last four metres to froth the pool’s water. The crystal-clear water away from the foam allowed her to see the pool’s bottom, its depth mostly like her own—it might reach past her knees in some places. Despite the volume of water streaming in, the pool’s level didn’t change.


    Though it was bare of the foliage that Mirage had described, the chamber still looked eerily like the description of her long time home. Amdirlain became sure of it when a shadow behind the waterfall deepened in True Sight. Skirting the fall’s edge, she crouched, slid behind the water, and wiggled inside.


    Meticulous drawings and portraits covered the walls of the hidey-hole; worn pebbles carefully shaved to leave remnants behind used to set each in place. Amdirlain looked over carefully drawn illustrations and found familiar faces.


    “What happened to Mirage’s trees?”


    Heading back out, she continued onwards and slowly found more chambers. Each stripped of foliage, but some showed features that matched the stories the others had told. The occurrence of hunger was a surprise and prompted a return to her chamber.


    Ki Movement sped her along the passages so quickly that sometimes she ran high along the walls or flipped from one to another to make a turn. The first time the weight in the tattoos threw off her balance within a flip, she’d put it down to coincidence; the second time, her suspicions grew.


    Now Amdirlain was certain the brands contained deliberate malice and wondered how Orhêthurin had lived with them for so long. Had she been deaf to the effect, or were their results so minor that they hadn’t been able to throw her off-balance in the same way?


    Rising, Amdirlain slipped her dress free and tied it around her waist, the cloth just long enough to fashion a loose sash. Inventory not working here was just one of the niggling annoyances among her locked powers.


    Ki State had lessened most of the recent damage, but a freeway speed collision with stone had left bones broken. It was only when the last bones finished healing that she ran again. Picking up the pace slowly, she selected from the growing paths she knew. The echoing pulse of her running let Tremor Sense map out more of the maze.


    In a test, she flipped from one wall to another at a slower speed, and though the tattoos itched, their uneven-balance stayed consistent. With deliberate care, she looped around, pushed her pace higher, and kept running while the itching grew more annoying. Three loops, then four, below her maximum speed, did nothing more than provide irritation.


    The instant she raced forward, going full speed, legs a blur of motion and Ki Movement added in, the vines coiled within her flesh. At first, they did nothing, but she had the growing sense of them waiting to strike. When she finally committed to a path that required her to manoeuvre dangerously, the tattoos shifted forcefully to throw her off balance.


    Instead of fighting it, Amdirlain turned into the shift and flipped the opposite way completely. Now heading away from the direction she’d planned, she landed on the ceiling, running along the other passage. The tattoos thrashed themselves about, and Amdirlain, riding within Precognition’s hold, had fractions of seconds to adjust.


    Icy nails of pain raced up along her spine, and iron scented the air when their tips of growth breached her skin. The pressure of her muscles and flesh contouring around the thorns had her gritting her teeth, and still she ran. She migrated from the ceiling to a curving wall before reaching the ground again. Through all her manoeuvring the thorns grew, their weight shifted, trying to hamper her into a dangerous misstep.


    It was the pain of thousands of bone splinters squeezed up through every breach they made; gravel rash laced with salt and two hundred proof alcohol poured into an open gut wound, with a molten lead encore. With the next course, things got nasty. The speed caused them to vibrate, humming through her bones like they were trying to yank each one from her flesh. The blood that had trickled across her skin became a stream.


    Thorns spearing upwards from her thighs tried to gut her as she ran, but Amdirlain snapped them, even when each regrew, without dropping speed. Their growth impeded her movements more and more, yet she pushed faster towards her space. The thorns scratching after stone didn’t leave a mark but repeatedly threatened her balance.


    I’d want to gut the cunts that sung this if they weren’t already long dead.


    I will not give in to them.


    If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Her path delivered her back to her home chamber, and she looped around the walls before spinning free to land on the pool’s edge. Within the water, her reflection showed a bizarre monster of thorns, blood, and serrated flesh. Holding herself still, Amdirlain cycled Ki, counting each cycle until the thorns finally withdrew, letting her flesh heal.


    [Ki Movement [M] (40->41)


    Protean [M] (52->53)


    Tremor Sense [J] (10->13)


    Mental Hardening [S] (16->17)


    Pain Tolerance [Ad] (33->35)]


    Nice to see that doing stupid stuff has the regeneration aspect of Protean progressing.


    When the last thorn retracted, her skin was glowing gold, and she untied the dress from around her waist and held it up. Thorns had left it a cut, pierced, blood-soaked mess, and Amdirlain rolled her eyes before she tossed it off one side.


    And this Amdirlain is why you can’t have nice things.


    “Back to hurting myself and celebrating the gains; Elliyna would be disappointed,” Amdirlain said aloud, simply to hear the words echo within the chamber.


    Without the thorns’ distraction, hunger pangs provided a reminder of why she’d returned in the first place. All the empty chambers lacked the food this one offered, and she hadn’t wanted to use a Psi technique with the offered juiciness of this fruit. The green apple’s selection was immediate for its familiarity, and the taste was what she expected. But the message that appeared when her teeth crunched into a green apple certainly wasn’t.


    [Resistance Poison [I] (6 -> 7)]


    Underneath its bitter-sweet taste was something else, and she spat out the juices before she could swallow them.


    Seriously what the fuck! My food’s poisoned?


    Analysis


    [Fruit of the Maze


    Details: An apple from Amdirlain’s room.


    In other words, they are not telling.


    Holding it away, she considered her bite marks and the fruit’s exposed flesh with True Sight, but there wasn’t a glimmer of magic. With Crafter’s Insight, the Psi technique revealed what lay within.


    The fruit would sustain her, but it would cause fading memories and the years to drift.


    While it might be a blessing for some trapped in here for endless years, Amdirlain wasn’t eager to indulge in fruit formed by an aspect of Oblivion.


    A flick cast the apple beneath its tree and the ground quickly absorbed it; as it submerged, she spun to seek her dress. Fortunately, it hadn’t disappeared, still laying atop the grass, but with the blood whisked from it. When she lifted it from the ground, she found the cloth was still pierced and cut but was slowly recovering. Leaving it to whatever process was reversing the damage, she knelt by the pool’s edge and cleaned herself off. Her Inventory’s non-functional state made washing necessary for the first time in far longer than she cared to consider.


    As she cleaned herself up, she applied a Psi technique to herself that she had only ever practised on training constructs. She’d learnt it for two reasons: one, in case she found someone starving, and secondly, as a base for its more dangerous variant, which she hadn’t yet learnt.


    With a combination of Psychometabolism and Metacreativity, Sustenance eased the growling in her stomach. The technique read the target’s nutritional needs and created a paste-like material straight into its stomach; it was a technique that the infirmary’s psi-skins maintained continually during a patient’s healing. The advanced technique read a living organism and then produced materials that would either make it sick or kill it, depending on her need.


    “Brands on my Soul showing and behaving as if living things, and my body needing food. Soul made flesh or part of the prisoner maintenance system?” grumbled Amdirlain as she let the technique work.


    By the time the hunger was gone, the dress had finished mending and collecting it, and Amdirlain moved to investigate her hiding place. Like Mirage’s waterfall retreat, it reached far into the wall, though hers had a completely smooth wall untouched by artwork. Tucking the dress inside, she glanced down at herself and shook her head; while the tattoo’s coverage was extensive, it hardly counted as clothes.


    Teleport placed her back at the furthest point she’d explored so far, and she didn’t hesitate to continue. Yet another bare room followed others with varying foliage. In all of them, her True Sight showed no one hidden, and the Aura Sight technique just showed the life force around the plants she found.


    Crafter’s Insights delivered the same verdict on the food source present in each, sustenance to ease the stomach and the burden of captivity. Hours stretched out and she sensed Protean’s regeneration wash fatigue away. Food wasn’t the only thing her body needed now.


    When she finally found the staircase after days spent fruitless exploring blind pathways and empty chambers, it wasn’t entirely what she’d expected. Instead of only the expected paired staircases, another corridor was across the room, stretching for a half-kilometre or more. Where it joined the room showed hints that True Sight was peering through something, and turning it off, the change was instant.


    The chamber plunged into near-complete darkness, and a blank stone wall blended seamlessly with the rest. The staircases at least held no surprises. One led up, and another set led down. Those leading down ended in an archway with the mosaic boundary that Ebusuku had described just beyond it. The short staircase upwards ended in a blank stone door that matched Sage’s description of the seal when a trial wasn’t in progress. Reactivating, True Sight shunted the illusion aside but looking between another plain grey-white hall and the stairs down, Amdirlain went for option two and started down the stairs.


    [Warning: Multiple life paths detected in approaching entity


    The trial decision pathway is unstable.]


    Sage said it put him back in his room, so if I fuck up, I can be back here quickly to try the corridor.


    The first square showed a scene she wasn’t expecting rather than her first life. It showed the first sight she’d seen when emerging as a Succubus—stretched out in that image were scenes from Culerzic, the ‘Blood Planes of the Dretch’ beneath ‘The Cliffs of Lust’.


    She ignited Ki State, making her flesh appear formed of golden flames, but when Ki Flight wafted her across the mosaic boundary, nothing happened. An invisible barrier stopped her at the far edge of the scene when she tried to continue down the corridor. Looking down had her reconsidering her choice. It was a scene she had spent hours taking apart in her mind, cataloguing all the vileness that the tortured souls beneath had committed.


    But with the exit Ebusuku had taken potentially laying ahead, Amdirlain settled down, ready to move at a moment''s notice. Yet she wasn’t allowed that moment; when skin touched the stone, she plunged into a cliffside moment far different from what happened. Amdirlain could only function as a helpless observer to another choice.


    This Julia got caught in a cycle of denial that what lay beneath her was possible. A moment of choice to disbelieve costing her a fragile grip against the urges Amdirlain recognised as B’s work. Each moment of denial tipped the balance further from Julia’s control and made it harder to regain self-control. When she desperately forced herself to move, she realised she’d been screaming too late, and a Succubus’ lash wrapped around her neck. The cat-of-nine tails'' metal tips guided the hide to smack against her skin, and when they touched against each other with the loop complete, the leather merged into one.


    “My little pretty. I find it curious I didn’t see you arrive,” the Succubus purred and blurred forward to press bodily against Julia’s and Teleport them both. The chamber they arrived in burned with Mana to Julia’s senses, and uneducated, there was no way of understanding it.


    Amdirlain, though, wasn’t hampered and picked apart the ward’s nature. Entry and exit via teleportation or other means were only possible by breaking the wards or possessing the key.


    Julia caught a flash of gold, gem-encrusted walls, and a wide bed covered in poppy red silken fabrics before being face planted into it. Still restrained, the other Succubus pressed against her in a way that had Julia''s body pulsing with body blows of unwanted lust.


    When the nightmare what-if scenario finally released her, Amdirlain lay on a blank stone square and shuddered at what might have been. Being helpless in the framework of that imaginary place didn’t lessen her. Holding herself motionless, she carefully took her time to work through the churning emotions that still sat inside her. Though these cut far closer to home, originating from the same life she’d lived, she’d lived far more since then.


    The Succubus had teleported the what-if scenario’s Julia from her bed directly to the Demon Lord’s opulent marble chamber without even a warning.


    While the older Succubus and B’s urges had provoked blatant reactions, the Demon Lord Moloch had more subtly manipulated Julia’s emotions. From the non-reaction to her abused state, the wine selection process, providing clothing, the revelation of his Hidden state, and the shared tale of his butchering a family that had ended with him cursed. His casually offered choice: to return her to the Succubus’ care, or she remains his companion had been a stake of ice through Julia’s growing desperation.


    Through it all, he’d seemed dangerously rational, and she made a note to keep as far away from him as possible; unless she possessed the power to crush him. Amdirlain could see herself as the Julia back then, having taken the dangerous safety of being his companion. Escape would have taken years, and who knows if she would have remained someone recognisable to herself.


    Shaking her head to escape the remnants of her old na?ve self, she stopped at the change in her surroundings. Besides the scene beneath her having transformed into blank stone, the corridor was gone. Ahead and to the sides was a crescent of roughly hewn stone lined with fractures. The largest might fit a hand inside, but the rest were barely hairline breaks.


    When Amdirlain leant forward to peek into the hand-wide crevice, she caught sight of a rustic home scene before the corridor trembled and shook. The closer she got, the stronger the vibrations, but even as she paused, the fracture opened like a credenza door, compressing the others.


    [Trial path critical anomaly.


    Warning: Cascading collapse from multiple lifetimes within path walker’s Soul.]


    The words flashed through her mind, and the stone walls slammed on her. Suddenly, back in her room, the grass underfoot replaced the sensation of crushed bones and pulped flesh. Despite a quick survey finding her body uninjured, the feeling of being squished remained, and exhaustion accompanied the bone-breaking agony from head to toe drawing continual gasps of pain.


    [Resistance: Mundane Materials [G] (4->6)


    Pain Tolerance [Ad] (35->37)]


    Moloch’s PoV – Culerzic


    With his wards showing that no scrying occurred, he shook off a feeling that something Primordial and dangerous had reached out to him. Stretched with his heels on the table before his couch, Moloch looked at the strange Succubus before him. Her sharp pointed features weren’t unusual among her kind, but the tiara formed of bone-white horns and ‘wings’ were very different. It had taken a dozen of his better wizards to secure her, and even with her Protean inert, she still possessed her strange features.


    The nest of ribbons and chains formed from black ligaments that sprung from her back hinted at some exciting evolutions ahead for her. Even more interesting right now were the classes Analysis showed her possessing: Queen of Planes, Assassin to a delightfully high level, and Hunter and Wizard. It was another anomaly for investigation since most would have taken a better base class after gaining a Tier 5 Prestige Class and all those affinities.


    “Now, my lovely, since you’ve had us chasing you so long, I think it''s time we got acquainted,“ said Moloch, motioning for the Succubus to sit across from him. “Your name is quite interesting. I don’t understand why you’d call yourself that, but the Anglo-Saxon lettering is interesting since it doesn’t exist here. This space intentionally left blank?” murmured Moloch. “How about I call you Slate? Or Intent?”


    “You might have me for now, but I’ll get free of you. I’ve got foes I need dead, and I won’t let you stop me,” growled the Succubus.


    “Stop you? Are you sure I’d stop you?” laughed Moloch and pushed aside the Succubus’ Will. “Who are you looking to kill?”


    “Raivo, Balnérith, and Usd’ghi,” she replied, grinding her teeth as if it might restrain the answer he’d demanded.


    “My, you have delightful tastes in enemies,” laughed Moloch. “One of those I don’t know, but the ladies, I’ll certainly at least applaud while you get blood on their boots. The question is: who do you want dead? You or them, Intent?”


    “Them,” growled the Succubus. “Call me-“


    “Bliss! That’s what I’ll name you, Bliss.”


    The Succubus growled at the pressure from his Willpower set the name in place. A moment later, Analysis showed Profile Mastery hadn’t replaced it completely; instead, it had simply added his name to the existing one.


    “Well, someone fucked you up,” murmured Moloch. “This could be fun.”