Did it even need a name?
It was simply like the weather – on any planet, in any solar system.
It never needed a name because it was simply a consequence – like stars falling into a black hole, like entropy, like gravity. It was what it was – doing what it needed to do. And that was it. That was sufficient.
It ate because that was its duty. Processed – because that was its function. It was ancient – not because it was wise, but because it was law.
No need for desires, wants, or thoughts. It wasn't such a thing that could ever be alive. Living was a door in a room. And it was the outside. It was the air. It was the current. What use was something as small as living?
But then, something curious happened.
Something, someone – some small living thing, on some small living world, tampered with the laws of magic in some small ways that they shouldn't have. They could, yes, nothing ever fully denied the access – the universe never had a moral compass that compelling.
But it wasn't something typically done. And the cost needed balancing. And the balancing was consequence.
Power like that could never be granted freely.
Thus, a small piece of it, burrowed into a living, breathing body. And for the first time, it became alive. It became something – living.
Consciousness didn't come from the start. There was no grand awakening, no thump in the heart where it became fundamentally changed. No place in time to bookmark a before and after. At first, it didn't even know it was thinking. It simply started. Small, muddy, blurry – and a slow, growing realization over the course of years that it sometimes liked the taste of tea.
When it was born, it didn't know much.
It just stayed there, in the dark, and watched through the girl's eyes. She had white hair, so it assumed we– had white hair. She had blue eyes, so it assumed we– had blue eyes. She wore a blue robe, and so it assumed we– wore blue robes, even if it still didn't fully comprehend the concept of clothes.
It lived like that for a while. Simply watching – because everything was new. It had simultaneously lived forever and not at all. It was patient – because it didn't understand the concept of time. Didn't understand the concept of counting – of waiting.
And then, and then– well, one day it became hungry.
It was hungry, because that was its duty calling. And its duty had been put on hold, because it had been young and just born, and not exactly sure what had just happened. But one day, sudden and true, the function, the processing – had returned in the form of a nerve-wracking, jaw-rattling hunger. A horrible, gnawing sensation that burrowed through its flesh inside and out.
And a blonde-haired, blue-eyed man was lying in front of them with the gentlest of eyes. And it could feel the girl's heart thumping – something warm and soft existing in her– their heart.
It had simply done what it always did.
That was the day it felt its first feeling. Its own feeling. Not part of the girl's daily life which it could sense in all directions.
An emotion that was wholly its own, nobody else's:
It was regret.
It didn't know what regret was. And it didn't know why it was feeling it either. Just a strange, forlorn sensation that the bubbly, effervescent feeling in their heart that the blonde man evoked might not occur again – now that he was dead and cold. It would have used the word hasty to describe its action – if it had known what hasty was then.
But it hadn't.
It had no framework for it – any emotion, to be frank – was new. Nothing it had ever been, or was, had prepared it for that sensation. It simply sat there, in the aftermath of its duty, and noticed the weight.
Feeling, it concluded, was terrible.
It decided the sensation was not worthwhile and dropped the train of thought immediately. Not worth pursuing something that felt so… uncomfortable.
The second emotion it had was annoyance. Irritation at the wailing body it watched through, for it was loud and noisy – even though it wasn't the thing that had been hurt. The small, white-haired– no, now black-haired, red-eyed creature was scratching itself and shrieking in screeching, tittering gulps.
The noise was terribly loud.
And it was still hungry, and the moaning thing was begging for elimination.
So it had complied.
And then the body was just its own – it swallowed the pitiable creature. Her thoughts, her memories, every drop of her soul consumed and devoured and settled like a pleasing weight in its gut. Silence filled the room and it was peaceful again.
Nice and quiet.
And then, it went back to sleep.
✦ ♡ ✦
Hibiscus was almost gone.
She knew it the way one knew things through pure, physical sensation. Her core hurt – with how empty it was. Her shoulder throbbed with an arcing pain – the muscles, fibers, and bones entirely destroyed. Her vision narrowed from the edges inward like something closing an aperture slowly and without urgency.
She was going to pass out.
That was fine.
She had done the thing. She had pushed everything she had until the floor came up and she had not looked away from the burning red eyes while she did it. Whatever happened next was, for Sera, or whatever Sera was at the moment, to figure out. She had given what she could – with the body she had. Her role was done.
Sera had more mana now.
Hibiscus could feel that too – distantly, through the narrowing tunnel of her remaining awareness. The channel Sera had burned through them was still faintly present at the edges of her perception, the thread she clung on to desperately still vibrating with the aftermath of everything she'd pushed through it. And on the other side of it – she saw something in Sera that was large, and vast, and so ancient, so terrifying – Hibiscus would have peed herself once more if she could.
But her bladder was empty.
She shuddered as she felt Sera's tongue flick her own, lapping up the remaining trickle of mana pouring through their contact. And then Sera shifted, and removed her fanged mouth from where it had been pressed hungrily up against her own. Sera's back arched and stiffened against the Priest's upper palm a little bit more.
She lifted her fractured forearm, white cracked bone peeking out from the torn flesh as if it were playing peek-a-boo. As if the destroyed arm was merely a light-hearted joke, a halloween prank. And Hibiscus watched it happen from very far away – her vision now barely a pinpoint. Her eyes struggled to stay open, eyelashes fluttering closed with increasing duration.
Sera raised her broken forearm, her elbow pressing defiantly against the Priest's enclosed palm above. She steadily pushed the desiccated hand upward, as if it were no struggle at all. Hibiscus weakly watched as Sera's palms and fingers seemed to stiffened into a point, as if her whole forearm was play-acting as a sharp sword. Red mana began rising thickly off the flesh, pouring first from the punctured flesh where the bone peeked out. And then, she watched as Sera swiftly plunged her hand and arm – broken bone and all – into the fleshy ceiling above them.
Sera's arm punctured through the desiccated flesh in an instant.
The red mana convulsed and shuddered. Hibiscus watched as the red torrent roiling off of Sera's skin flashed outward, quivered a bit, and then condensed inward in an instant. The magic was directional and fast and purposeful – lightning finding its rod, current finding its path – maroon starstuff swirled and poured through the fractured forearm and into the Priest's palm and burrowed up and into the ancient, desiccated flesh.
A thick, stifling heat blazed through the enclosed palms and Hib found it hard to breathe.
The foreign mana that had burrowed and arced through Hib's heart and which yanked something in her out into the open, was now thundering through the Priest's palms and traveling violently across its arms – aiming for a similar location in the monster's own architecture.
The Priest's heart.
She didn't know why she knew that, couldn't feasibly see where the mana was going, but she did.
Dark red mana flared, and whipped about, and blinded her little remaining vision into an obscured, blinding mist. All she could see was red, all she could feel was heat. She gasped desperately, the potent magic suffocating the tight atmosphere in the palms even more.
Then, Hibiscus heard Sera's laugh.
A low, throaty growl of satisfaction that rose sharply into a high-pitched careening cackle. She watched, in the hazy, chaotic hurricane of their enclosure, as the sharp magic that had pulsed through Sera's forearm and into the Priest's flesh, arrived back from its journey a few moments later. Bright, red mana swirling and condensing from the punctured palm, climbing down Sera's broken forearm with something white and shining, traveling through her shoulder, and burrowing deep into Sera's chest. It disappeared with a light pop. The mist cleared instantaneously and Hibiscus gulped a huge breath of air down – heaving – grateful for the return of air. Beautiful, delicious air that her lungs could be filled to the brim with. Even if it was a bit musty in the Priest's trapped fingers.
Then, she heard the Priest's laugh, second.
A throaty chime that reverberated the palms they were enclosed in. The palms shook, and their bodies shifted about, and Hibiscus felt the laughter rumbling deep in her chest and rattling her across her ears, bouncing violently in her brain. The Priest said something else again – something in the language she still couldn't understand – the same language it had been speaking to the raid this entire fight.
Her eyes were nearly shut now. Consciousness flickering in and out – Hibiscus strained to stay awake. Her vision traveled to Sera once more. Sera's eyes were closed, mouth slightly upturned, as if she was in bliss – like she was savoring something.
Hibiscus recalled the white thing – shimmering, iridescent, like the blinding light from the Priest's eyes – interspersed in the red mana that she had seen travel and disappear into Sera's chest. But before she could form a second thought, her consciousness finally snapped – giving way to fatigue.
Hibiscus's vision went black.
✦ ♡ ✦
The last robed figure fell at Kael's feet.
He didn't celebrate. None of them did. The formation stood in the sudden quiet of the temple cavern that had been loud for a very long time – the shrill music gone, the laughter gone, the sound of weapons against weapons gone – and breathed.
Desiccated bodies littered the white marble floor. Mechanical joints stilled. Staffs and flutes and fans and beaded necklaces settled and silent besides figures that had held them in prayer.
It was eerily quiet.
Rena was already scanning.
Nobody needed to be told. Every head in the cavern was already turned toward it – the Priest on its dais, eyes closed, enormous body still, the fist – the final set of arms – held above its head with an old, unknowable patience.
The formation watched it.
Waiting.
Rena had thrown everything at the fist while the congregation was still standing. Between commands, between adjustments – she had directed every available attack at the closed hands. Dark matter. Ice. Fire. Lightning. Punches. A scream or two.
A guide was taken – an important one.
But everything had deflected. The same light ping erupting from every attack – just like it had with the second pair of arms. The attacks ceased to be relevant the moment they made contact. As if it weren't allowed – the System deigning the action illegal and thus, unqualifiable.
She had watched the Priest's left hand pluck Hibiscus from the formation in an instant – the crunch of bone audible even in the chaos – and Rena had made the calculation immediately.
Hibiscus. A-rank. Second strongest guide in the formation after herself. Cleanse rate unmatched by anyone else on the roster. The kind of output that made the difference between a formation that could push through two more bosses and a formation that was going to struggle.
Losing Hibiscus was not something the raid could absorb cleanly.
The best play was clear – get Hibiscus out. Every second the fist remained closed was a second closer to her demise and the consequence of that would result in the formation's margins getting remarkably thinner. The math was simple. The execution was not. Because the fist was impenetrable and the attacks were deflecting; and the congregation was still moving and she had a raid of people to keep alive simultaneously.
So they had culled the congregation first. Push everything into defeating the mob. Come back to the fist later.
And now, the congregation was down and the fist was still closed. Two of their raid members were still inside it and there was nothing left to throw. The clenched hands were smaller than they had been when they had first closed; tighter and more compressed. The math on what that meant for the people inside it was not math that pointed toward a good outcome.
The cavern held its breath. Rena's thoughts were running like lightning, lips pursed, eyebrows furrowed, she was thinking quickly about what next they could try.
And then, the palms opened just slightly – and the raid formation saw red lightning burst out like a camera flash.
That was the only way to describe it – red, moving fast, arcing violently along the exterior of the Priest's pressed palms, tracing the architecture of the Priest's hands and then the forearms and then burrowing into the monster's chest with a strange directionality like it knew exactly where it was going. There and back in less than a few milliseconds. A sharp crack echoed across the temple as it occurred. The red thing snapped back – receding into the fist in an instant.
Then silence.
The formation didn't move. Rena didn't call out any commands.
The Priest started laughing.
Low. Resonant. A deep satisfied rumble – like it had been waiting a very long time and reached the end. Not triumph. Completion.
It said something, again, in the language they couldn't understand. Something that sounded joyful and sorrowful at the same time. Something, like reluctance and acceptance – and relief.
The Priest's clenched fist began to dissolve.
From the extremities inward – the fingers first, the fine ash catching the wrong-light as they dispersed into the air – into nothingness. Then, the palms began to dissolve next.
And from the raised, fading hands – two people fell.