Kallen spent too many hours avoiding his newly changed runes. There was no good reason to do so, he just felt guilty. Guilty to enjoy something when there was so much suffering around him as well as inside him.
Sitting on his throne, with a heavy breath, Kallen descended into his soul sea and checked his runes.
Name: Kallenir.
True Name: Blessed of the Sea.
Leviathan Core: Dormant.
Class: Monster.
Scales: [36/2000].
Memories: [Wyrm's Tongue], [Bucket of Water], [Apple of Eden], [Twitchband], [Tide's Embrace], [Arachne's Spool], [Mender's Gauze], [Widow's Mantle], [Olympus's Boon], [Breath of Life]...
Echoes: [Gilded Warden]
Attributes: [Revenge], [Voice of the Sea], [Amplifier], [Mark of Divinity], [Inheritance, [Illusionist], [Fireproof]], [Thread of Connection].
Aspect: [Sea King].
Aspect Rank: Divine.
Innate Ability: [Tideform].
Tideforms: [Knight], [Bolt].
Aspect Abilities: [Ocean's Wrath].
Aspect Legacy: [Titan Slayer].
Leviathans: [Veilray], [Wyrm of the Depths].
Flaw: [Fish out of Water].
Kallen floated silently in the vast depths of his soul, reading his runes a few times. It was painful to see the Elder Gargoyle's name missing. But still, he'd gained quite a few things in the battle with that Titan.
Specifically, a new core, a tideform, an attribute, and there was also a new Legacy Relic to claim when he focused on his Aspect Legacy.
Kallen started with his new attribute.
Fireproof, he thought to himself, unable to muster any excitement. It was a tad disappointing. He was hoping for something like firebreath, but being fireproof was likely a a whole lot more useful. In the dream realm, abilities that made one more adaptable and harder to kill tended to be more useful than those that made one good at killing.
Fireproof would be especially useful when he was forced to fight a certain someone. Disinterested in the attribute, he moved on and observed his new core. It was identical looking to his first, but with it, he felt substantially more powerful.
After a few moments, he moved on from that and read the name of his new tideform, ignoring Puddle who zipped around him in excitement.
Kallen felt spoiled getting a second tideform, considering that he was hardly even able to use his first one to begin with. But he wouldn't turn down a free power up.
Without a second thought, he summoned this: Bolt form.
Electricity shot through him.
A volatile film of crackling water enveloped his body, surging to life in a pulse that lit the sea around him with a bright, electric-blue flare. Kallen gasped, instinctively curling inward as arcs of power danced across his limbs. He began to emit a low, resonant hum.
Next came the boots. They didn't appear so much as ignite into being, shaped from thrashing water, bound by bands of white-hot energy, crackling with threads of lightning racing along its surface. The water in them churned like a captured storm, endlessly folding in on itself in tight spirals of pressure, energy, and flow.
Experimentally, he moved a foot. The world around snapped, a sharp crack of displaced water following even the smallest motion. A rush of speed shot up his spine, burning hot. He flinched, back arching slightly, reflexes too sharp, too fast. He blinked and found himself ten yards ahead, having sped through the water like a bolt of lightning.
"Bolt form," Kallen breathed.
Everything felt sharper. Faster. The sluggish weight of thought was gone, as though a dam had broken in his mind. Every motion, intention, and reaction reached his limbs before he could even finish a thought. Each nerve within him sang with electric tension, a symphony of energy and momentum.
Kallen glanced down, watching faint trails of charged energy curling off his armored boots. The water film flickered with electricity, vanishing as quickly as they formed. Alive, reactive, and wild.
He hadn't known what to expect when he'd summoned this tideform. Something with speed, yes. Something flashy. But not this.
He could see himself using this, loving it, darting through enemies, crashing into them like a bolt of living lightning, too fast to be touched.
Kallen closed his eyes and let the energy hum through him, breathing out storm as he released the tideform. The water film peeled away, the boots dissolved with a sharp pop of discharged energy.
He floated there a while longer, panting in the silent again sea of his soul. The ghost of crackling power still whispered to him. Puddle zipped in front again, buzzing in agitated circles, but Kallen barely noticed.
Looking back, he found the small dragon and gauged its reaction. It didn't seem to care about the bolt form. Perhaps nothing could impress it.
Bolt form consumed more energy than Knight form, Kallen realized, brushing down his hair. Considering my second core… Bolt form is just as transient as one might expect.
He probably wouldn't be able to summon it outside of his soul sea until he'd become an Awakened. Even then, he wondered how costly using the ability might be.
Moving on, Kallen considered what would hopeful be a more immediately useful ability. Quickly finding the section on Legacy Relics, he located his new boon.
First Relic: Claimed.
Second Relic: Claim?
"Yes."
[You have claimed an Aspect Legacy Relic.]
[You have received a Memory.]
He didn't waste any time finding it.
Memory: Null Meridian
Memory Rank: Divine.
Memory Enchantments: [???], [???], [???].
Memory Description: "To open it is not to read, but to descend. "
Kallen frowned at the description, then summoned the Memory without much thought.
Something landed in his hands with soundless weight. It was a book. Or at least, the shape of one. It was black as the void, too dark to reflect anything, as though light refused to acknowledge its existence. On its ink dark cover, read the runes of words he couldn't read.
The water around stilled, perfectly calm.
Kallen stared.
Something inside him reached for it. It wasn't his conscious, nor his subconscious. Perhaps his soul, but whatever it was, compelled him to open the tome.
He fought that feeling for a moment, brushing its surface with a reverent hand, but it was no use. Without making a sound, he opened its pages.
The sea of Kallen's soul trembled. Something shifted behind the world, just slightly. His ears popped. The light around flickered out of being.
The space in front of him folded. Next came absence, like the universe had taken a breath inward. Kallen was standing on nothing. Around him was nothing. Nothing was to his left, as well as his right. He couldn't tell up from down, an inch from a yard, nor thought from spoken word.
Where was he?
It was like nothing he had ever seen. Experienced. Thought.
He was as much nothing as everything else was. As though the laws of everything simply didn't exist… except for that book. With a frightened thought, Kallen suddenly closed it.
He hit cobblestone as though falling into his own body from a great hight. Air punched into his lungs. The world rushed back all at once. Sound, weight, breath, gravity, every part of existence slamming back into him like he'd been absent from it entirely.
For a beat of his heart he could only grip the book and gasp.
A city lay around Kallen in stillness. A stray bit of fog curled around his ankles. He knew this place, the crooked streets, the distant hum of life, the uneven architecture. He was in the dark city.
His stomach churned. He wiped a shaking hand across his forehead, smearing sweat cold as water. That place… that absence. A moment ago he had been nowhere and nothing. There had been no "moment."
And now he was here. Kallen lifted the book. Its pages did not glow or smoke or tremble, yet. It was simply a book. Except he knew better now. Some part of him, the part that had stretched thin across that void flinched at the sight of it.
"Not much time…" he whispered to himself.
The sky confirmed it. Kallen had not spent long in that void. It was like he'd stepped between one breath and the next only to emerge miles away.
His hands lowered. His gaze drifted toward the bright castle crowning the distance.
What the hell is this book? Kallen thought.
A/n: Bit of a shorter chapter, but it took me a while to nail down the void scene. Also, let me know if I forgot any memories that Kallen has gotten. I'll try to go in and add them, but it's been so long that I've definitely forgotten some.