[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 243 – Power Overwhelming

The hideous, profane Tower rose out to pierce the veil of Oblivion mana that surged and roiled around the heart of the Maelstrom. Following the edicts of his newfound family, Quinn had tried to use his Oblivion mana to destroy the Tower.

He had to break the Cycle. It was his duty.

A duty he had failed.

He knew what was wrong now, why he had been too weak to infect the Tower and spread sweet release to all within Il’dran.

An older man stepped out of Quinn’s shadow. Similarly robed, he placed a comforting hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “It is not your fault that you have failed,” said his new father, Renault.

He might not be his biological father, but he was kinder and more available than his dad back on Earth ever was. His failure was not met with beatings or torture. His family was not evil.

They were just different.

“We underestimated the anchors in play,” Renault told him. “You performed admirably. Even now, look at how the Oblivion rages around the heart of the Maelstrom we created! It is a thing of beauty more complete than any work of art.”

Quinn still felt as if he had failed. It was his first true test, and he had bungled it, no matter what his father said.

The Skyshard they were standing upon, anchored as it was to the Tower, rumbled and shook. Both men turned their gaze to the source of the sound up above.

Something was coming.

The colossal body of a blue-skinned ogre crashed through the wall of black death, its lifeforce flickering like a candle in a storm.

Immediately, Quinn knew what he had to do. Why he had failed.

The Oblivion mana needed a vessel, a pliable instrument for the will of the Silent Stars. Some called them a covenant of bloodthirsty cultists, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

For there was undeniable glory in destruction and devastation. It ushered in the blissful silence that they all coveted and aspired to.

The true state of the Multiverse was nothing short of oblivion. The dark need for it thrummed through his veins and twisted around his heart. Everything else was a profane mockery. They were all maggots on a corpse.

“I shall leave you to it,” Renault said, seeing the fires return to Quinn’s ruby-red eyes. A gift from the Silent Stars that allowed him to see far beyond the narrow spectrum he had been born with as a human.

His father faded away into his shadow, leaving the robed figure of the young man utterly alone as the battered body of the ogre crashed to the Skyshard a few hundred feet away.

Quinn hurried to its side, knowing full well that its lifeforce was nearly extinguished.

This will be difficult, he realized.

Never before had he extended himself to a monster. The Silent Stars all partook of his gift from the apocalypse, a lost fragment of Oblivion, but he had never treated with a monster.

It was at least humanoid in shape. There was that vague similarity.

In the end, one maggot was much like another. They were all defiling the perfect sanctity of nothingness. It hardly mattered that some were worse than others when all were guilty of the greatest sin of all.

Using Oblivion mana to erase his weight, Quinn stepped up into the air and hovered over the ogre’s bashed-in face. Had he known how badly damaged the ogre was, he might not have thought to save it. This would be a difficult task, even for Quinn.

Perhaps I should call the family…

He bolstered his resolve with his fervent yearning to serve and drew upon the will of Oblivion. The voice that issued from young Quinn’s mouth was far too deep and resonant to ever come from a creature so small.

“Doth thou seeketh power?”

The words burned trails of black fire in the air and created a torturous image of twisting light as everything was destroyed in their wake.

***

Vaskad was dying.

He understood it on some level, but couldn’t muster the will to care.

Everything had been going so well, too. He had finally found his prey, only for the creature to turn the tables on him so handily that it felt like a cruel joke.

Vaskad, the alpha ogre that had lived for centuries, done in by a puny human.

It was not fair, and it was not the natural order of things. He was supposed to be strong, and humans were supposed to be weak.

And then he heard the voice, garbled though it was, Vaskad opened one bloodied eye.

The words cut straight through to his brain, beckoning him to answer. Did he want more power?

Immediately the ogre thought of that human, that manling, Samuel Hunter. He had seen the Shardscript, he knew who did this to him.

With more power, Vaskad could get revenge. He could tear down that manling’s Skyshard and break him in two with his own bare hands. If only he had more power.

“I do!” Vaskad screamed, though the sound came out as a pathetic mewling gurgle.

***

Quinn smiled as the monster accepted. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t understand the creature’s speech, or its death rattle. The desire was all that mattered.

Once again, the deep resonant voice of a creature older and more powerful than even the ogre, issued forth from Quinn’s voice.

“Then shineth once more, o’ fallen star, and partake of the True Power!”

Quinn summoned every last ounce of willpower to draw out as much Oblivion as he could. This giant beast would be dead within seconds if he didn’t work quickly.

The nearer to death the better, but if he expended too much Oblivion mana, he would be incapable of doing anything but resting for several weeks.

This had to work.

His dark mana cut searing agony and freezing pleasure straight into his bones.

Quinn quickly realized he wasn’t strong enough to channel the flow of Oblivion that he would require.

The ogre was too far gone. Its face was caved in, his body stripped of skin by the Oblivion wall surrounding the Maelstrom…it required more than Quinn could give.

And so Quinn summoned the Silent Stars to his aid.

His new family materialized out of the shadows. Aida from a fold in the grass to his left, Callus from behind the ogre’s shoulder, Ellis from the shadow of a boulder, his father, Renault from his own shadow, and Claudia from Renault’s shadow.

Fully assembled, the Silent Stars needed no explanations. They understood the monumental undertaking before them and immediately entered into the throes of spellcasting.

Once their bodies and souls were prepared, they received Quinn’s power, the Oblivion mana he had been gifted with when Earth was destroyed.

Alone, the ogre would have died, but working together, the six of them would be able to channel the requisite amount of Oblivion to seal up the ogre’s wounds and invigorate him with the holiest of holy elements.

“It is not enough!” Claudia cried to his left. “We need more, Quinn!”

“Your sister is right,” Renault told him. “Yet beware, my son! If you draw too much Oblivion from your own reserves, you risk harming yourself!”

Quinn racked his brain for some other source, but he came up empty. Until he glanced to the side. The black wall of destruction that he had once hoped would destroy the vile Tower was still there, its spherical shell spinning around them like a barrier.

All that work, for nothing. Already it had been sorely weakened by somebody wielding one of the Holy Triumvirate. Renault thought it was Void mana.

How Quinn would have loved to meet its wielder. Another brother or sister for the Silent Stars, perhaps?

Shaking his head, Quinn focused on the task at hand. He could not afford to be distracted.

Raising his hands, Quinn chanted in a deep voice, hearing his family members repeat and echo his call to the Oblivion shell that surrounded the Tower at the heart of the First Layer.

When Quinn had come upon the Tower, it had been little more than a gentle guiding stream of mana currents meant to draw in all Skyshards so that all may ascend to the Second Layer.

In his disgust, he had attempted to destroy the Tower with Oblivion mana. The Tower proved superior by far, pushing it away in a sphere, creating the shell of Oblivion that raged all around them. Now he had a better use for it.

Chanting in time with one another now, the Oblivion mana seeped away in great oily dregs, twisting and funneling into each of the Silent Stars and then into the ogre’s wounds.

The creature began to change. Thick, dark oily mana seeped from its flesh, transforming into shiny obsidian skin. Its bones cracked and snapped, reforging into osseous armor. Wounds were erased as if they never existed. Its face reformed, black bones jutting out of its cheeks, giving it a truly monstrous appearance.

The ogre became a glorious instrument of the apocalypse.

All around Quinn, the Silent Stars sagged with the effort of raising the ogre. One by one, they seeped back into the shadows where they were most comfortable.

Quinn watched the ogre rise. He felt no fear that the creature would attack him. He even welcomed the attempt. Testing its new powers, the ogre would be a fool if it did not at least try to kill its patron.

***

Vaskad opened his eyes, startled by the power thundering in his veins. He knew he was near death only moments before and was deeply confused. The sudden reversal was difficult for him to process.

Though he was smart by ogre standards, he still grappled with the concept of death as it pertained to him. Ogres did not, as a whole, believe in the afterlife.

They believed in this life, and of course, crushing the life out of every creature they could get their hands on.

One such creature in dark robes stood beside it. A tasty morsel, perhaps, for Vaskad?

Vaskad was surprised at how fast his arm shot out. His skin had changed, but that hardly bothered the ogre. He didn’t pay much attention at the best of times, and so long as the body was his and did as he wished, it mattered little what it looked like.

Power was all that mattered, and Vaskad could feel a raging torrent of power in every foot of its massive body.

Hooded figure firmly in its grasp, Vaskad stood up and peered at the creature. Despite being nearly crushed in his dark hand, the creature was able to flip its hood out of the way to face him properly.

Blood-red eyes gazed back at him under a mop of dirty blonde hair. Vaskad’s lips pulled back in a rictus grimace. The sight of a manling sent Vaskad into a rage and he immediately tried to squeeze the life out of the human until its organs popped out.

Curiously, Vaskad found that he could not squeeze any tighter than he did. His hand knew who its master was, and to Vaskad’s eternal shock, it was not him!

“Good, now that you’ve–” the manling began, but hearing the voice of men only enraged the ogre more.

Bringing another hand around, Vaskad tried to force the fingers of one hand to crush the creature, but he still could not.

He tried everything he could think of which amounted to: bashing, biting, and crushing. None of which worked.

“Are you done?” the manling asked exasperatedly.

Vaskad grunted, though it was more of a pout than anything.

The alpha ogre looked at the thinning shell of evil biting mana that had nearly killed it and felt a connection. A kinship.

“You sense the Oblivion mana,” the manling said. “Good. Use what is left, replenish yourself, and destroy your enemies. Let none pass through the Tower!”

The final words branded themselves on Vaskad’s mind. He would have gladly taken vengeance, but he cared little about the Tower.

Releasing his grip on the human, Vaskad pondered his orders. He would have eagerly left this Skyshard in search of his nemesis, but he did not sense Sam anymore.

Vaskad’s howl of rage bellowed out of the Maelstrom, washing across the sea of clouds, and all the Skyshards caught in its tidal currents.

If he could not find Sam, then he would bring Sam to him.

Using his nascent Oblivion mana, Vaskad created a swirling funnel of mana with the last dregs remaining around the Tower. Another Maelstrom was formed, weaker, and without the Oblivion wall that destroyed everything it touched, but no less deadly.

Because at its heart was an Oblivion Ogre ready to rip and tear every Skyshard to pieces.