Chapter 11:
Dax stepped into the consuming darkness of the chamber, a void so absolute it felt like a physical substance. He moved through it with an unnatural certainty, his footsteps silent on the cool, seamless floor. His hand found the familiar contours of his throne, and he settled into it like a king returning to his throne.
He whistled, a single, soft note that was swallowed by the blackness.
Instantly, light erupted from hidden panels in the walls and ceiling, banishing the shadows to the corners. The illumination revealed a command center of stark, imposing beauty.
Dax was enthroned upon a massive dais of polished obsidian that seemed to drink the light. He rested his chin on a clenched fist, his intense gaze fixed on a colossal observation window that dominated the far wall, showing a vast, empty plain.
Behind him, Micah stood rigid, his mind struggling to map the impossible scale of the room.
Dax's voice broke the silence, calm and measured. "Do you understand where you are?"
"The architecture… it defies reason, Master. I am in your world, but I do not know it."
"This is the Testing Ground, a dedicated sector of my laboratory," Dax explained, his eyes never leaving the window. " Here, your new form will be tempered and measured." He lifted a single finger. "Ceron."
In the space between heartbeats, the glass-bodied robot materialized. A slender limb touched Micah's shoulder, and the world dissolved into a nauseating blur of streaked light. Solid form returned an instant later, leaving Micah standing alone under the artificial sky of the immense field. Ceron was already gone, having flickered back to her post beside the throne.
It just warped space itself, Micah breathed, the words a ghost on his lips. From his throne, Dax noted the observation with a flicker of cold satisfaction.
A slender, black lens descended, positioning itself before Dax's mouth. When he spoke again, his voice was omnipresent, echoing with godlike authority across the kilometers-wide field. "Don't hold back."
The scale of his power… the control… Awe warred with a deep-seated terror in Micah's heart. I may perish from the revelation alone.
"Begin!"
Micah obeyed. He spread his arms wide, and the air itself seemed to still. His silver-blonde hair lifted as if underwater. Then, the ground beneath him erupted violently, fracturing and collapsing into a deep crater.
Almost immediately, the floor began to flow like liquid mercury, the material knitting itself back together until the surface was once again a flawless, unmarked plain—a miracle Micah, in his focused state, completely missed.
He began to ascend, hovering as the atmosphere compressed around him, drawn into the vortex of his being. A nimbus of golden, lightning-like energy crackled to life around his form. Then, it erupted. Torrential streams of pure, refined aura poured from his body, a wave of palpable force that flooded the chamber with the light of a contained dawn.
"A commendable display," Dax's voice cut through the energy, cold and sharp as a scalpel. "But I perceive a ceiling. Stop holding back."
Despite the ocean of power roaring within him, a shard of ice-cold fear lodged itself in Micah's core. The command could not be ignored.
In response, his eyes blazed with incandescent light. The left shone with the brilliant, divine gold of his past faith. The right pupil narrowed, the flesh around it shifting and reforming into a vertical, draconic slit, radiating ancient, predatory instinct. Simultaneously, the magnificent hybrid wings on his back unfurled to their full, terrifying span—one of radiant, feathered light, the other of gleaming, golden scales.
"Magnificent!" Dax's exclamation was a gunshot in the silence. He vanished from his throne and reappeared directly before Micah, his own pupils dilating to reveal the swirling crimson cosmos of his Origin Eyes. He gripped Micah's bicep, his touch clinical as he assessed the flow of power and life. A slow, demonic smile of pure, unadulterated discovery spread across his face.
In a movement faster than thought, he pivoted. There was no flash of light, no sound of tearing flesh. He simply turned and placed a severed forearm—Micah's forearm—neatly into Ceron's waiting pincers.
When did he—? Micah's gaze dropped to his own shoulder. The limb was simply gone. The space where it had been was clean, as if it had never existed. There had been no sensation, no warning, only the impossible, silent reality of its absence. A heartbeat later, agony arrived, a searing fire that was utterly eclipsed by the sheer, mind-breaking shock of the act.
I was once hailed as the swiftest man alive. 'Strongest' is a transient title, passed like a crown. But speed… speed was my essence. I didn't just possess it; I embodied its very principle. I was a manifestation of motion.
As if in a dream, he raised his hands to his face. Both were there. The new arm was already fully formed, the skin flawless and pulsing with vibrant, terrifying vitality.
Such regeneration… it's instantaneous. This is a second constitution, an artificial apotheosis! This blasphemes against the natural order. This… this belongs among the legends of the Ten God-Bodies. He has forged a God Body! The revelation teetered on the edge of madness.
The hypothesis was correct, Dax mused, his satisfaction a profound, quiet warmth. Ultimate power is a worthless tool without a vessel that can endlessly rebuild itself from catastrophe.
He turned his attention to the wings, his fingers running over the impossibly soft feathers and the cool, resilient scales. With methodical, unhurried precision, he plucked ten primary feathers from the angelic wing. He then produced a slender vial and drew it across the membrane of the wyvern wing, collecting a shimmering, golden ichor. He soaked the plumes in the divine blood before handing the priceless sample to Ceron.
His gaze then fell upon the cyan tattoo glowing on Micah's chest.
Anomalous. The mana conduits I fused into his being feel vacant. Dormant. Like a circuit with no current.
His eyes scanned the sterile, controlled air of the chamber, and the truth dawned with the force of a physical blow. The very fabric of this place was inert. It was a perfect vacuum, a reality outside the world.
A tremor ran through Dax's frame. Seeing his master's agitation, Micah took a concerned step forward. The movement seemed to break a dam within Dax, and a burst of wild, ecstatic laughter tore from his throat, a sound of pure, unhinged epiphany that reverberated off the distant walls.
Is he… breaking? Micah stared, aghast. "Master? Are you alright?"
The laughter ceased as abruptly as it began. Dax's face smoothed into an expression of placid neutrality, as if the hysterics had been nothing but a mirage. "There are fundamental truths that remain invisible to the common eye," he stated, his voice flat and utterly emotionless. "We simply have to know how to look."
Stunned into silence, Micah could only offer a slow, deep nod of uneasy acceptance.