ALFG Chapter 151

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL

“Manifest.”

Eridan’s eyes snapped open, jolting awake as if he’d been electrocuted. He sat up and began to frantically pat down his chest, trying to see if his heart had been ripped out of him but…there was nothing. In fact, his clothes were pristine, cleaner and fresher than anything he’d worn in the past few weeks, free of gore or blood, both his and not. The heaviness around his eyes had disappeared. His limbs felt lighter than they ever had been. When he took in a breath, his chest didn’t hurt.

“That is what she usually says, does she not?” the voice from earlier said. Eridan looked up at the sound of footsteps, and saw a scarred hand come into his line of sight, outstretched in an offer for help.

He took it, as he saw no reason not to. His wariness has left him with his fatigue.

“Thanks…” Eridan looked up to get a good look at the stranger, and frowned in confusion. It was…Angeles? No, he was taller. Older too. His hair was dark brown instead of snow white, or dyed black. His eyes appeared maroon in the lighting, though they could also just be mahogany, and there wasn’t a luminescent ring of atomic blue on the left iris.

But Eridan knew that face. He’d seen before. On the Heir of Doom and on Sapphrel Angeles, and yet he knew it was neither of them.

“I’m not,” the man said.

Eridan flinched back. “Are you in my head?”

“Not at all. If anything, you’re in mine.” The man chuckled. “It’s lucky the body decided to touch your blood, otherwise, it would have been very difficult to pull you in here. Blood magic can be so reliant on contact, sometimes.”

Blood magic. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

“You’re the Heir of Blood.” Eridan’s fins flicked down, and he bared his teeth, curling his hands into claws. “You’re the son of a bitch who’s responsible for – for all of this.”

The man smiled, though it was neither the mocking nor triumphant one Eridan expected it to be. Instead, it was just sad.

“I am,” he said. “But I haven’t really carried the title Heir of Blood in thousands of years.”

He turned away, and now that he did, Eridan finally had the mind to focus on their surroundings. There wasn’t much to. They were in a blank void, but instead of it being a pitch dark nothing, it was just endless, endless white. A blank slate. A completely unused canvas, stretching above, to the sides, and below. Neither of them casted any shadow.

“Does it bother you?” the man asked. “If you want, we can make it easier for your mind to comprehend this.”

Eridan blinked, and suddenly, the stretch of pure blankness was gone. Instead, he was sitting in a comfortable loveseat, in a small wooden cottage where there was soft rain pattering outside. The lights were off, and the room was dark, illuminated only by the gentle fire roaring away in the fireplace. Its orange light bathed the small living room in its glow, tinting the carpet, the ceiling, and the walls in orange-gold. The bookshelves and frames pressed against the wall cast shadows, the glow visible on the ceiling flickered every few seconds. Eridan’s skin was chilly, like he’d been out in the rain for too long, and the warmth of the fire was slowly giving heat back to his fingertips. He was in a comfortable sweater and pants, and a blanket was draped over his shoulders. In his hands, though he didn’t remember ever being given it, was a mug of something warm.

What the fuck.

“Where did you take me?” he asked. He turned to the other loveseat beside him, knowing full well that was where the man would be.

As he expected, the stranger was there, also equally decked out in comfortable autumn clothes and a hot drink. “Nowhere,” he said. “We’re in my head. Or the small pocket of it that I’ve been hiding in. Possession doesn’t really do away with the original owner entirely, it’s just two things co-existing and one being overpowered by the other.”

“Possession?”

“Yes.” The man turned to him and held out a calloused and scarred hand. Eridan looked at it dubiously. “William Angeles.”

Eridan nearly choked. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not, that’s my sibling’s schtick. They always lie, I never do.” William chuckled. “It’s nice to meet you properly, little Ampora. Anshu talks a lot about you.”

“Anshu?” he asked, bracing both hands on the arm rests of his seat, poised to spring on his feet and get up. The drink in his hands had suddenly disappeared. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing,” he said. “She’s fighting out there. We can’t be in here and out there at the same time, she’d lose control.”

“What?”

“She’s trying to save your body,” William said. “I’m trying to save your mind. Do you remember what happened?”

He did. He nodded, frantic. “I dragged her out the house so we could run,” he said. “But she lost control while we were hiding, and you took control. She – ” He grabbed at his shirt, at the spot right over his heart. There was no heartbeat.

“I didn’t take control. That was the denizen. I told you; we cannot be in here and out there at the same time unless the body is fully ours,” William said.

“Am I dead?”

“Not yet.”

“Yet?”

“I don’t know if she can save you, she’s been fighting for quite a long time, she’s tired.” William lowered his gaze to the floor, and then to the fire. “I can…try to explain what’s happening as best as I can, but you have to calm down and let me talk first. Is that alright, Eridan?”

Eridan…needed to get back out there, wherever ‘out there’ was, but considering how confusing this conversation was, he figured there were some blanks in his knowledge that needed to be filled. He nodded, and stiffly, sat back down.

“I’m the Heir of Doom’s older brother,” William said. “When my session was on the verge of failing, because we didn’t know how to access our powers and what to do in the game, I made a deal with my denizen. Its survival for my existence and abilities, in order to give it the means to eliminate the threats from my universe. Are you following so far?”

“You made a deal and got possessed?”

“I made a deal and got possessed.” He nodded. “And it has stayed that way since. Blood deals are binding. It’s one of the most powerful things in the universe.”

“And you want me to believe that?” Eridan hissed. “Like that thing wouldn’t have just killed you if you weren’t working together?”

“To gain someone’s power, you need access to their soul, Eridan. Bodies are just containers. They’re nothing special. Why do you think godtiers have to discard theirs and ascend into new ones?” William asked. “A godtier body is made of magic, made of the soul, is the shape of the soul. It’s how it’s so in tune with its aspect and with the universe. You cannot possess something’s body and expect to have what composes it, all you have is the physical container. Therefore, if a denizen needed access to my powers…”

“It needs to keep you alive.”

“Correct,” William said. “I don’t have to be safe, or even intact, there just has to be enough of me stitched together with it to work. Why do you think it stole all of Anshu instead of just a piece of her body? If all it needed were a physical component, it could have simply stolen her heart instead of risking resurrecting her entirely.”

“So it is her,” Eridan said. “She was telling the truth. She’s…”

“She’s your Anshu, yes. Always has been. If she didn’t exist in there somewhere, there’s no way the denizen would have been able to access her Sylph powers,” he said. “She had a hard time adjusting to what was happening at first. It…took a while to teach her.”

Eridan nodded numbly, staring down at his hands. He’d heard it before, but for it to be confirmed again…he’d been cruel to her, when she was probably screaming in her own head the whole time. If he’d just noticed earlier, maybe he could have done something to stop it, maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so bad. Maybe all of this could have been avoided.

“Why are you here?” he asked weakly, after a moment. “Are you possessing her too?”

“We’re connected. More so than her and the denizen, since it used my magic to prototype the sprite kernel she was resurrected in,” he said. “I am still existing under the control of the denizen. It produced a false body to drop into the kernel, and then she merged with it, so it’s like a magical backdoor, or a window, really, and we’re connected through it.”

“You’ve been helping her?”

“Yes. Having a parasite in your soul and brain is…hm. Not an experience I’d recommend to everyone,” he said. “She hasn’t made any deals with it so she’s not as under its thrall as I am. Deals are binding spells, they give us Blood folk a little more kick than usual, so I’m bound by the laws of the universe to submit to it, even if I’m stronger than it in baseline ability. She’s not.”

Eridan nodded again, swallowing. His hands were beginning to shake.

A hand gently touched upon his shoulder, and a sudden sense of calm flooded him. “Breathe,” William instructed.

He did so. As he exhaled, all the tension left him, and he relaxed against his seat.

“Good,” William said, pulling his hand back, placing it back on the side of his mug, which was still steaming, though it’s been minutes. He hadn’t drank from it since the room formed. “Is it alright if I continue?”

“I…yeah.” Eridan waved a hand. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. Go…go ahead.”

“It’s easier to grab control when your feel strong emotions. This is a denizen of Blood, after all,” William said. “Anshu’s not a very angry person, so she’s only been able to take control when she’s worried about you.”

That didn’t make Eridan feel any better, not that it was supposed to. He sank further into his seat in guilt.

“She’s been trying to fight her way around the denizen. Manifesting things others want that would sabotage its efforts…making sure Cronus survived your attack…using your wishes to talk to her to inform you what was going on.” He waved a hand. “But like I said, she’s very tired. Her control slipped for a moment there and the denizen tried to rip your heart out. You’re going into shock as we speak, so she’s out there trying to wrestle control for the body to heal you.”

“And us? What are we doing here?”

“Anshu…didn’t want you to feel the pain. Considering – ” He chuckled. “She stabbed her hand past your rib cage and is quite literally holding your heart. That’s agonizing. She didn’t want you to feel that horror, but Anshu can’t fulfill her own wishes, Eridan. Only the wishes of others.” The man lowered the mug to his lap, tracing the rim of it with a thumb. “So, I’m trying to fulfill it for her. Blood magic can activate upon contact, and her blood’s touching yours. I can reach you, so I’m doing that. I’m pulling your consciousness here so you don’t have to feel what’s happening out there.”

The boy ran his hands over his face, letting out a deep shaky breath. God. Fuck. He was dying, again, only this time, it wasn’t as instantaneous because his spine wasn’t sawed in half. He was dying and Anshu was being used as a living puppet.

“Can you do anything?” He lowered his hands, cracking his eyes open to look at William.

“I’m afraid not, my physical body’s not there,” William said. “And I’m not a healer, Eridan.”

“So…what do we do?”

The man hummed. He lifted his hands from his mug, and the thing disappeared in the blink of an eye without so much as dissipating or shimmering away. It was simply there one second, and gone the next.

William set his hands on his lap. In the firelight, Eridan could see multiple scars, some thin and faded, some puckered and raised though they were no longer raised. They criss-crossed over the back of his hand, on the sides, and even snaked across his fingers.

“The denizen wanted to use her to fulfill its wishes of cleansing…destroying this world. She’s been trying to work around it by fulfilling my wishes of the apocalypse slowing down. So, it used you and your corrosive magic to push the end of the world faster,” he said. “When you use magic somewhere reality is already fragile, it tends to make the damage worse, you see.

“So the world is dying,” William continued. “It’s on its very last legs. Even if Anshu is killed now, the world will still die. The Anathema Point is dead, and they’ve assigned their ghost as Anathema Point once more. Their soul is slowly decaying and dying away, and the accelerated end of the world is going to hasten that process. Destroyer of Magic means Destroyer of Magic, Eridan. As long as it is magic, it will submit under your title.”

“So it’s over?”

“It’s over.” William said. “But I know my little sibling. They never let something play out unless there’s a back-up that can be exploited. They know of my existence, I think they were counting on me to do something. So I’m doing what I can – helping Anshu, helping you. I don’t know their plans, I’m playing blindly here, and…” He laughed. “Honestly, I think that’s what everyone they work with just does. Play blindly. Hope they know what they’re doing.”

“And do they?”

“Hell if I know. That kid lies like there’s no tomorrow.”

He laughed again, and to Eridan’s surprise, it sounded mirthful, despite the situation. Considering the man’s state, though, he had to be able to find amusement in the smallest of things, otherwise, everything must drive him insane.

“But, I think I’m starting to grasp what they’re doing. Think, Eridan. The Heir of Doom is really powerful, and even if Anshu’s powers can break a whole universe, she’s not that good at fighting one on one. Why do you think they’re keeping her?” he asked. “If she can fulfill a wish to destroy a world, she can fulfill a wish to save it, can’t she?”

“But there’s something stopping her.”

“Being possessed will do that to you.” William sighed.

“Can we un-possess her?”

“Not without killing her,” he said. “Resurrection through spritedom makes it so that the being truly becomes one. My magic, and thus the denizen, is such an integral part of her that taking one out would kill her. Maybe she’d survive for a few moments to fulfill the wish, but she’d die. Most things can’t survive with horribly-mangled souls.”

And that was exactly what Eridan was trying to avoid. But Anshu had already tried to take control of her body multiple times, right, so why…?

He ran a hand through his hair. “Even if she manifests for the world to be fixed, the denizen can just wish the end back.”

“Yes,” William said. “It’ll just be a cyclical thing. It’s why the denizen made a false body to merge with her real one, so it would automatically heal itself and she can’t just kill herself and preemptively end the apocalypse. She can’t end her own life and stop the end, she can’t manifest someone’s wishes and stop the end, and if she does manage to die, it’ll just resurrect her all over again.”

To truly stop the end of the world, they needed Anshu free and without interference. They needed to stop her possession, give her a clear mind for once, and make sure she still survived. But…

Eridan turned to William. The man seemed to understand what he was thinking – could probably hear it like he’d been able to sense his thoughts earlier – and he looked back at Eridan with pity.

“We can’t have one or the other,” William said. “There must be a sacrifice.”

“There has to be something else.”

“The end’s already here. Whether you die or not doesn’t change it, you’ll just be a casualty. It can’t be your life,” the man said.

“What else is there? If she dies, the world still ends, right?” Eridan asked. “There has to be something to give up, but I know it’s not her. I know it.”

“You know what to do already, Destroyer,” William said. “You just have to acknowledge it.”

No, he didn’t. He didn’t, because Anshu had to live, otherwise, what was this all for? Eridan had already died once, it would just be a return to what he should have been a long time ago. What’s dead should stay dead, and he was the one who was walking the earth on borrowed life. He should be the one to lose here, should be the one to pay the price for the denizen’s greed.

But.

Anshu’s powers hinged on someone else wanting something and her fulfilling it. Someone else had to wish for the safety and restoration of the world, and then she had to manifest everything into being, and then it had to be her last wish. It had to be something the Heir of Blood – no, it was unfair to William to call it that – it had to be something the denizen couldn’t undo. She had to be unreachable at that point. They needed to cut out the magic that he’d bound to her.

It would kill her.

It would kill her. She would not survive.

But it was her or everything else. Eridan had already damned them all.

He looked down at his hands. Clenched them into fists. Still, they trembled.

“If you can’t heal me,” Eridan said. “What can you to do to keep my body moving?”

William didn’t answer right away.

“A heart keeps things moving inside your system,” he said. “Maybe we can buy you time if it just keeps moving. Maybe we can even make sure your heart stays attached to your body, though I doubt that’s possible.”

“Okay,” Eridan said. He swallowed. “Okay.”

Then he stood, shrugging off the blanket on his shoulders. He stepped in front of the fire and found that he was dressed back in his old clothes, not the ones he was wearing the real world, but his old garb – his cape, his scarf, his glasses, his dark shirt and pin-striped pants. Like he was back at the start again; always hopeless, always ruining things.

Except this time, it was to save a whole universe, wasn’t it? To give them even the slightest hope of surviving this.

“Help me,” Eridan said.

“I can’t from this far, Eridan.”

“Then make a deal with me,” he said. “The way you talked about it, the universe has to make it possible, right? You said her blood in my wounds is enough to help you pull me into this space. Well, use that, then, somehow. You’re – you’re the Heir of Doom’s brother. You been through the wringer as much as they have. So get my body moving.”

William stared at him.

“You understand the depth of this, Ampora?” he asked. “You’re asking me to take control of your body.”

“I do,” Eridan said. He knew what he had to do, and it wouldn’t matter even if he had to give up autonomy for a little while. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll – I’ll save the world, you help me survive long enough to do that.”

The man studied him for a moment. Then, he clicked his tongue, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, “Recklessness runs in this bloodline, huh,” before he shook his head and chuckled.

He lifted a hand, slashed a nail across it and – it must have been dream logic, or mind logic or whatever – but when he held it out towards Eridan, there was a massive gash in the middle of his palm, bleeding heavily.

“Save the world and I’ll make sure you survive long enough for it,” he said. “Do we have an accord, Eridan Ampora?”

Eridan slashed his own palm open with a claw. He took the Heir of Blood’s hand and gripped tightly, shaking it once. He could already feel the blood between their palms writhing, moving with a mind of its own.

“Yes,” Eridan said. “We do.”

#

“Eridan!” Karkat yelled, the first to move out of everyone through sheer panic. Through the press and crush of the magical presence around them, he forced a palm to face towards Jaeger and Eridan’s suddenly limp form, shooting out a tendril of blood – only for that to be pinned to the floor not a second later as the magical pressure increased. Karkat choked, slamming face-first into the ground. Around him, there were similar thumps and cries of pain.

His head felt like it was splitting open. His chest felt tight. He couldn’t breathe.

His vision was beginning to blacken, and he fought to keep an eye on where Jaeger was. From where she was kneeling behind the altar, she was wrist-deep in Eridan’s chest, violet beginning to stain her shirt as the boy bled. He’d passed out the second she’d plunged her hand into his ribcage, likely from the pain. Even as she rooted around the gaping wound, he wasn’t moving.

There was a wet squelch. They all watched in frozen horror as slowly, the girl’s pale hand came up completely drenched in blood, and in its grasps, Eridan’s heart, still pumping away, but very dangerously out of his body, hanging on through flesh and sinew.

Anshu clicked her tongue. “He made his choice, don’t look too horrified,” she said. “And he’s still alive.”

“What…do you want…with him?” Nightwalker gritted out. Karkat tried to turn his head, but the weight of the air around him kept him pinned, unable to move even a finger.

“Nothing,” Jaeger said. “He’s already done what I’ve wanted him to do. This is a kindness, a thank you, if you will, for helping me achieve my goals.”

Her smile tightened, like she was lying through her teeth. There was something up there, but she wasn’t telling them, and Karkat didn’t imagine she ever would.

“It’s his little send-off. This is how Anshu died, right? Or how he found out? Her body dropped in his arms, her heart missing, The Empress sends her regards… I’d know, I was the one she sent after the girl, the shortsighted little bitch.” She chuckled.

“You just killed your protector,” Hal said. His voice was coming out warped, slightly staticky, the creak and bend of his chassis audible, and Karkat could only imagine his state since he couldn’t turn to see.

“You think this needs protecting?” Jaeger asked. The pressure completely lifted – Karkat gasped in a breath and immediately doubled over from the pain in his ribs – and she motioned her free hand to herself. “Go ahead, then, attack. Try to see what you can do, Strider.”

That was bait. The Heir of Blood – because that’s definitely who this is – wouldn’t be as confident as he was if he didn’t know that Hal’s attacks wouldn’t work. Karkat stumbled onto his hands in knees, favoring propping himself up instead of passing out, because he needed to focus for whatever Jaeger was going to throw at them.

After a few seconds’ hesitation, Hal’s magic arced through the air, the familiar feeling of static charge filling the space.

“Electric Love.”

The glowing form of the Stand blitzed forward, leaving trails of electricity in its wake. But at the same moment, Jaeger lifted a hand, her teeth bared in a smile as she declared: “Manifest.”

Something hit Electric Love. They couldn’t see it, but something shoved its sword down and then hit its head, as it neck cracked to the side, before it was sent flying across the room – Karkat raised a hand, but his limb faltered; thankfully, Nightwalker had the same idea he did, and he teleported the Stand away from crashing into a wall, instead having him reappear somewhere closer to the middle of the room and giving him the chance to simply skid back on his feet.

Still, Hal hunched over in pain at the invisible strike, and there was a loud crack from his chassis, though in the dim light, nobody could properly assess the damage.

It only made the pink electricity curling around Hal’s physical body, the one sparking around his fist, more visible, as he glowered down at Jaeger. “Don’t use,” he started. “Their face.”

“Why not? That’s what your heart desires, isn’t it? Your wants and wishes? I can bring them back to life too, if you really wish hard.” Jaeger snickered.

“Strider?” Cronus asked, just as Karkat turned to get a proper look at his teammates. Dualscar was currently looking around the room, trying to spot whatever unseen thing Jaeger had summoned, and Nightwalker’s gaze flitted about from person to person, checking if they’re still around and in one piece.

“Who’re you seeing?” Cronus continued.

Hal didn’t answer, frowning deeper.

“What are you seeing, Hal?” Cronus repeated.

“Someone dead.”

“A ghost, then,” Nightwalker said, looking back towards Jaeger. “Everyone stick together, nobody get near it.”

“Hard to do when you can’t actually see it,” Karkat said, though he took a step back.

That only made Jaeger laugh again, and she raised her hand to once again summon something else, possibly a rift –

Eridan’s hand snatched her wrist. Everyone stopped.

Slowly, Anshu looked down at him. His heart was still in her other hand, and it was still beating, though a few arteries had snapped, but Eridan was moving. His hand on her wrist tightened, and he pushed himself up to sit, teeth bared in pain. His eyes were –

They were red. A deep, rich red, and they did not belong to him.

“That’s enough,” he said.

“You,” Jaeger spit out. “How did you – ”

“You’re not the only one who can make deals,” Eridan said, and though his voice was his own, the way it molded around the words was wrong, his accent was all wrong. Where Eridan was loathe to harm Jaeger, his grip on her wrist began to crack and snap bone. “Now drop it.”

“Angeles.”

Hal flinched.

“Not quite,” Eridan said. “Still all me.”

The girl wrenched his heart out of his body, jerking away. Eridan, like he didn’t have a hole in his chest, stood up, and threw her against a wall.

#

“You good?”

“Yeah,” Eridan muttered, getting to his feet, or trying to. He felt William take control of his legs, forcing them to straighten even through the pain. “I’m fine.”

“You’ve lost a lot of blood.” William hummed, and Eridan wondered exactly when he’d gotten used to people whispering to him in his thoughts. First it was Nereus, now it was the older Angeles. He tended to collect voices on his shoulders. “I don’t think we’ll last a violent fight.”

“I’ll make this quick then.” Eridan turned, spotting five people, but he didn’t have time to catalogue and think about who they were, if they knew him. They needed to get out of here so he could move as he needed to and subdue the denizen. “Leave.”

“How the fuck are you walking around?” Karkat – Karkat?! – asked.

“Doesn’t matter.” He forced himself to turn away. “Leave. Now.”

Jaeger was now getting to her feet, brushing off the dust that clung to her. Eridan could see it now, what William meant about her indestructible physical body. Her bones should have shattered from how hard he’d thrown her, but they were all resetting back into place, cracking and squelching as they did.

That made this easier. If he hit her with magic, he risked killing her outright. But he could attack her physically and it wouldn’t affect her.

“Your friends aren’t leaving.”

“Everyone get out!” Eridan yelled, though he didn’t take his eyes off Jaeger. “Now!”

“Don’t be fucking stupid, Eridan,” Hal called back. “You’re not in any shape to – ”

Jaeger flicked a hand to the side, prompting Eridan to turn to his friends in a panic. An invisible thing seemed to grab Hal by the neck, lifting him off the ground; Karkat reached for him with a yell, and silver and green sparks coiled around his fingers. Hal disappeared in a flash, and reappeared right next to the boy.

“Stay close!” their human companion yelled, holding his hands out and telekinetically throwing Cronus and Dualscar over to Karkat’s side, before teleporting over. Instinctively, all five of them turned with their backs to each other, standing in a tight circle with eyes alert for any signs of the ghost Jaeger had summoned.

“Eridan!” Karkat yelled. Called for him.

They didn’t have much time. If Eridan got rid of the denizen, then that ghost had to be called off, right? And that besides, he was sure Karkat wasn’t going to approve of his plan anyway, so he needed to keep his distance from them.

Karkat began to step forward like he was going to risk it and run towards him. “Eridan – ”

One of the church pews suddenly lifted off the ground and was violently hurled towards them.

“Duck!” Nightwalker yelled – the remaining four did as he told, while he stood and sliced a hand through the air. The pew cleaved in half just as it reached them, breaking apart with a green glow.

Jaeger clicked her tongue, her body still reconstructing itself from the mess her crash had caused. She murmured something under her breath, and suddenly the others were freezing, eyes watching empty space with horrified recognition.

More ghosts of their pasts.

Eridan needed to make this quick. He took a step back and curled his fingers into claws, watching as Jaeger’s body mended itself. She looked unharmed, save for the spiderwebbing burn on her neck, the wound of which was still open, though the blood had crusted.

“Your magic is destructive to her body, since it’s made of it,” William whispered.

That confirmed it, then. Eridan knew what he needed to do.

“Anshu,” Eridan whispered. “I need you to come up to the surface. I need you to talk to me.”

Jaeger’s eye twitched, and she scoffed.

“I have a plan,” he said.

“Eat shit, Ampora,” Jaeger said.

And then, as fast as she could, she turned to the broken door to the back of the church and ran.