Chapter 4 - There is no way this is happening

As the nirvanic bliss of freedom passes I begin to realise that something feels … off.

 My senses are still spreading into my host hijacking his body's natural processes but already I can feel nothing but anomalies. For one my host appears to be a child of some kind, that is not odd in of itself a child would likely serve as an excellent conduit to use to break my seal, but this child feels … well they feel off. They feel like a wolf wearing sheep's clothing something trying desperately to be human whilst simultaneously being something else in their entirety. My mind recalls that strange surge of unidentifiable energy that almost cast me from my host before I could seize control of it. Another oddity among an increasing list.

What else is odd is my location. I take in my surroundings using this body's inferior visual receptors … and am unsure of what exactly I am looking at. My surroundings look an awful lot like the back-alley way of some run-down urban centre. High stone walls surround my newly stolen form in a shape distinctly reminiscent of an alleyway, the air is filled with the unmistakable stink of too many people living in too small a space. For a ritualistic summoning location, it feels very … rustic? Detritus lines the walls as pest creatures ruffle through rubbish heaps, the oddities of mortal life lie scattered around my new body. A half-eaten meal rotting in a corner, unidentifiable paraphernalia shifts beneath my bare feet as the wind gently whips dust into my visual receptors. Apparently whoever freed me is a slob.

More oddities come to mind as I examine my newfound host again. He is young perhaps ten solar cycles old. Again not strange in of itself but a little immature of a prime vessel to summon me into, distractedly I examine his physical form and in my distraction it takes me several seconds to notice a very obvious fact. He is dying.

"Oh", well that seems bad.

The magnitude of my thoughts suddenly hit me, "No! No! No! You can't die already!!!". In an act of desperation, I try and direct my power into my vessel attempting to undo the damages that have been wrought upon his body. "A perforated lung, internal haemorrhaging, multiple cracked ribs, long-term starvation, ruptured kidney, severe internal bruising", I mutter the list of fatal injuries as I deal with them one by one. Thankfully it seems that my power is compatible with my host otherwise I would've turned him into a barely sentient puddle of mush on the floor. This vessel cannot be allowed to die! Who knows when I'll be able to find another compatible body!

Looking at my hosts injuries it appears that the breaking of the seal is not responsible for my hosts injuries as I had first assumed. Someone, presumably the three individuals that stand at the head of what I am tentatively assuming to be an alley way have quite thoroughly and systematically beaten my host to within hairs breath of the reaper. I wonder how he's doing that old rascal Death; I confess I quite liked him.

However, I dislike quite strongly however my host being sent to meet him before I said so. Using the hijacked senses of my host I examine the insects in front of me. Judging by the blood staining their hands and boots they appear to be the ones who have reduced my host to this lowly state. They appear to be … adolescents? I have always struggled to differentiate mortals, but these ones feel … undeveloped somehow. This is why physical development should be marked by obvious markers, like horns! How are extra-dimensional entities like myself supposed to understand the differences between adolescents and mature members of a species if the only difference is they get slightly bigger! The annoyance at the peculiar design choices of the things that name themselves Gods help to alleviate the embarrassment I feel at my vessel almost being killed by what I am assuming are fifteen year olds. 

I confess I've never been summoned before since no one would dare have the gall to try something that absurd, but I'm certain they don't happen like this. From what my beloved comrades have told me usually mortals tend to dress these things up into great affairs. They seem to like doing that apparently, so I confess I had quite high expectations for my summoning. It is an understatement to say I am disappointed in the mortal chattel that follow me. I can't shake the nagging sensation that something feels very ... off, about this summoning.

I feel my hosts features twist in confusion as his expression mirror my thoughts. It's strange, I can't feel any summoning magic at all, could they have used something else to draw me out of the seal? I shake my head after considering it for a moment, the seal is still intact but damaged. I can feel the accursed thing trapping the bulk of my power in its confines, I have barely managed to slip through a crack in the damn thing. If my would-be liberators were trying to free me either they only partially succeeded, or they would have had to damage the seal and perform a summoning ritual to call a portion of myself into this vessel. I had assumed the later since it should be impossible to directly destroy the seal, but it's strange, I can't feel any summoning magic surrounding me.

My frown grows deeper on my puppets face as my confusion grows.

Actually I can barely sense any magic at all actually. My confusion only grows, just what by me hells is going on! It's like this host has almost no magic at all. Well that's not strictly accurate but it's close enough. The phenomena mortals call magic is a result of manipulation of an extra dimensional energy that they so crudely dubbed mana or as it literally translates to in archaic proto-languages, something or the unknown. This mana as they call it is the product of the soul, it's like the heat a star gives off simply by existing, so it's impossible for my host to not have any mana but it feels like that to my incredulous senses. It's like stumbling into a barren wasteland where you expected to find a rainforest, the sensation is utterly perplexing. I force my puppet to snort and shake its head. This is impossible, there's no way I would ever be summoned into the magical equivalent of a street urchin. The very concept is … ludicrous.

…

No

…

NO!

…

Oh!

My!

Me!

It's a street urchin. It, is, a, street urchin. I've been summoned into a street urchin. … WHAT BY THE CELESTIAL DEITIES IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!!

This has to be a dream, a nightmare! Some induced psychosis of my prison in an attempt to break my mind! Some new layer of hell crafted in order to finally drive me into the depths of insanity! There's no way some pubescent child accidentally cracked my seal! That's impossible! Please tell me that's impossible! Disbelief bubbles up inside me before turning to anguish.

THERE'S NO WAY THIS IS POSSIBLE!!

Petulant tears spill from my host, no longer caused by pain but disbelief. I slam my hosts damaged hands into the ground repeatedly emitting a wailing sound from my vocal cords. It takes me a second to realise I'm throwing a temper tantrum. That makes me scream even more. I thrash my hosts body jerking his limbs like a damaged marionette. Mentally I collapse in a pile and hold my head in my hands.

Unimaginable! Inconceivable! How this happening.

I should be free. I should be OUT! I escaped my prison to what, leap from the frying pan into what … irrelevance? I worked on that seal for eons and a child cracked it by accident! A child off of pure instinct accidentally, ACCIDENTALLY, cracked my seal in an attempt to overcome predation by its peers. That is the only explanation mu admittedly genius mind can come up with. A child accidentally cracked my seal. Accidentally!! Oh, I give up! Mentally I throw my hands in the air since my actual physical body is still restrained. I'm done. I'm through with fate and the damned spectre of hope it keeps dangling in front of me.

…

Oh?

In the midst of my tirade my vision had changed. It appears my host pushed itself to its feet at some point after … after our mature outpouring of emotion. To be honest I'm surprised it can even move my body, I do hope it doesn't try and challenge me again for control over the body, my mood is already bad enough and I'd hoped to return this body to the boy once I had found a more suitable replacement. So, I would really rather not murder this child's mind.

I think it's saying something. The words are unintelligible to me, that makes sense since the boy probably speaks a language I have never heard of before. I have no idea how much time passed whilst I was in a seal but it was definitely a very long time so it would make sense, I don't understand the language. But judging from the body language of our abusers it's nothing good.

One of them presumably the leader approaches my unsteady host. He raises a gauntleted hand already covered in our blood menacingly at us.

I feel my lips tremble.

My jaw clenches and unclenches as I struggle to control myself.

"HAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHHA".

For the first time in epochs, I laugh. The sound echoes in my prison and slips out in ragged gasps between my hosts lips. If my body wasn't chained up, I probably would've started rolling around on the floor laughing, what does this insect think it's doing! Doesn't it know who I am?! What is it going to do, smack me in the face with that puny little hand of its! Be serious insect you're not even dust to me I could wipe out your entire fam-

My tirade is cut off as it smacks its puny little hand into my face.

My host staggers bending backwards with the blow it's spine forming a C shape but remarkably it doesn't fall. I stare dumbly forward my mind going utterly blank. My host rights itself and touches one hand to its battered face and it comes away slick with blood. I stare uncomprehending through my hosts eyes as my blood drips from its hand.

My blood.

It drips slowly a brilliant crimson from my fingers, its vermillion tide ebbing slowing as it descends to the impure ground. My eyes follow it as falls unhurriedly before it crashes with a wet splash into the unworthy ground forever staining the stone beneath my feet.

…

The world trembles.

You

Inside my cracked prison my mouth opens. The action is impossibly delicate as my lips pull back revealing rings of circular lamprey teeth.

You

My host raises its head slowly. The action is as unstoppable as a glacier. It stares into the eyes of gauntleted fool in front of us.

Are

The fool stumbles backward, fear writ across its face. One its accomplices tries to flee.

"DEAD"

My host and I whisper the word in unison imprinting the very concept of death into the word. The sound slips out of our lips together. It feels strangely intimate. It feels disgusting.

For a second nothing happens.

Only for a second. Suddenly a vast number of things happen in unison.

As the word slips from our lips the air screams. A sonic boom tears outward from my hijacked body tearing the cobblestones around us into shreds, stone shards fly fast enough to kill as the walls of the alley splinter as they begin to collapse. The detritus that once consumed the alleyway is eviscerated in the span of a heartbeat, had anyone still been alive in the alleyway then they would minced into bloody ribbons. Fortunately for the souls in the alleyway they are already dead before the shrapnel reaches them.

A tsunami of power races out from the brat's body, a void black ocean of power that blots out the sun and reaches ravening fingers out towards the fools that dared to touch me. A smile crosses my face as I feel each of soul in the alleyway be snuffed out in short succession, a fitting fate for those who defiled my holy avatar so. I do not actually see them die because I cannot see anything anymore, but I trust their ends were as painful as their crimes dictated.

With the power of hindsight perhaps channelling all of my available power through my host was a … less than stellar decision. It appears that humans as always prove themselves to be incredibly fragile my host in particular seems to be quite melodramatic.

As my power tears outward from my puppet his flesh ripples liquidly moving like water in a disturbed puddle. With my new connection I can feel his organs compress, expand and recompress in fractions of a second. I feel his bones shatter, remake themselves only to shatter again as my power simultaneously tears him apart and forces him back together.

I can feel blood vessels shattering across his body, likely fluid is leaking out of his every pore, in typical mortal fashion his bowels have voided. I sense his heart swell threatening to burst as a lung detonates like an overfilled balloon. Pain so transcendent that is causes even me to flinch tears through his nervous system in an endless tide of unrelenting torment. I feel his mind buckle under its pressure even as an aneurysm threatens to drown his brain in its own viscera.

I hear his soul crack under the pressure. It is not a pleasant sound.

I am not killing him.

That is too small a word to describe the damage I have inflicted on him. I watch as the genetic information that underpins his very body comes apart at the seams, DNA alleles bouncing off each other like stags competing to mate. Rampant necrosis darkens his skin in a rolling wave of black and purple spots that rapidly begin to outnumber healthy patches of skin.

"Shit". Curses flow from my lips as I want to tear my horns from my skull. "Shit!", I repeat as I desperately do what I can to stop the damage but is already far too late. My power is toxic to carbon-based life forms and even the tiniest exposure can be fatal, he has as much chance to survive as if he swallowed several kilograms of enriched plutonium. He is dead. He just hasn't realised it yet.

 "Shit!", I curse again but my voice is hollow. There is simply not enough of me left to be angry, I will have to content myself with the knowledge that escape from this hell is possible. "Who knows", I say to myself as I let out a morbid chuckle, "If I wait a few more eternities, maybe I won't screw everything up that time, the seal broke once, it can break again, …. I just have to wait, forever".

 I let out a sigh and feel my body sag in its chains again. Who knows how long it will before someone else finds and cracks my seal, I doubt I will still be sane by the time that happens. I begin to retract my sense from my dying host, barely two seconds have passed but his body has already been irrevocably damaged. He is dead, for good or for ill. In truth it is phenomenal he has lasted even this long but there is no way his body can hold on for any long- …

Huh.

Would you look at. 

"Listen and heed me strange one".

 I speak my thoughts directly into my hosts mind as I redouble my efforts to keep his body alive, doing my best to redirect the energy that is currently unmaking him. It is unlikely he can hear me and even if he can his brain is too damaged to be able to store information.

" I offer you my praise, in my peerless existence I have encountered many things little anomaly, perhaps more than any other creature alive, and in all that time I have only ever underestimated one being". I feel his soul start to slip from his body and shove the tenacious thing back inside our new body.

"I offer you my praise as the second entity I have ever underestimated, hear my words and know pride, I shall look forward to our future with great anticipation".

It is said in the old stories that souls reflect the true nature of a person and burn like a great blazing bonfire inside of a person, the greater the person the brighter and higher those flames burn. This as it turns out is less of a statement and more of a universal fact. Souls burn like engines inside of a creature, they provide a constant outpouring of the energy that powers the mortal vessel they inhabit. The sentient races of this world as I have already said crudely dub this energy magic or in its original archaic root word, mana. Though in their ignorance they fail to grasp how much more this extradimensional energy actually is than just a simple energy source. I mention this trivia not of out boredom but because a soul in the most literal sense must burn, if it does not burn it cannot provide energy to its mortal shell, even my soul blackened and twisted as it burns fiercely within my breast. If it did not, how do I put this delicately? My body would eviscerate itself, that feels like an apt description to describe instant and fatal immolation.

Perhaps there is a metaphor there about the nature of sentient life, but bluntly speaking I couldn't care less. I bring this trivia up as I force the boy to continue living because I am staring at the second contradiction to that rule I have ever seen in my immortal existence.

To my peerless immortal senses this boy's soul is quite, quite impossible.

I stare at the metaphysical representation of the soul I inhabit gazing at its true beautiful nature. I had never thought to find a soul like this again. Whoever prepared my host apparently has done a very thorough job. A terrible smile spreads across my face.

It appears this will be interesting after all.