Souls

Within the miasma, hidden away by the rotting trees and mounds of mud, a man stood atop a thick branch. The branch was unreasonably large, larger than the man himself.

Its bark was black and its leaves red, but the man standing upon it contained no sign of surprise or wonder — instead his gaze pierced the horizon beyond him, somewhere in the distance a battle should have started.

***

Willow gutted a beast. Her arm soaked in blood, lodged between the ribs of the creature. With her other hand, she grabbed the horn adorning the beast's forehead and pulled.

The horn snapped off and a shaky shriek assaulted her ear drums. Gripping the horn even harder, she rotated it around her palm and then slammed it into the beast's cornea.

Blood splattered across Willow's chest. She felt the beast's heartbeat slow down in her hand, since her arm was lodged so deep in the creature she was almost touching it.

Before the beast dissolved, however, she ripped its horn back out and threw it across the plains. As the essence particles flaked off the horn it penetrated another's hide and sunk deep within its flesh.

The two corrupted being's dissolved simultaneously and joined Willow's soul core, granting her a much needed boost in essence.

With it, she held her arm out and summoned her hammer. As the golden weapon manifested, its glare attracted the horde of monster's surrounding her.

Corrupted Raptors, Leliurium Mammuthus', beast's the size of tree's and with the strength of rivers rampaged across the forest and towards the camp's wall.

Dashing out of the way, Willow slammed her heel into the mud and used it to pivot her weight around. Performing a 180 spin, Willow extended her hammer outwards and allowed it to crash into the beast's around her.

Bones and muscles shredded to bits. Blood and snot flew through the air all while multiple living being's took their final breaths.

Back at the camp, Emile and Blood were slowly stabilizing. Emile's radiant skin had faded and his bulging veins and protruding muscles returned to normal.

That didn't mean he was fine, however, as his soul core's break was not something that could be fixed in such a manner. Adding on top of the fact that Blood was absorbing any and all essence left within Emile, needless to say, Emile was struggling.

His eyelids weighed heavily on him, his back burned and ached, and his neck felt strained and tight. But there was nothing he could do, he had tried to move a few times already and Blood's powerful grip was always there — waiting to correct Emile's slight deviation.

So with nothing better to do other than wait, Emile focused on his soul core. Using his brain power, he poked his soul and watched as a ripple traveled across its surface.

His soul core resembled an ocean, not a wild and chaotic one; stuffed to the brim with tyrannical pirates and century old treasures of war, but rather, it resembled a calm pond. His soul was smooth, the surface of it gently swayed from the ripple prior as minuscule waves propelled around.

Beyond the soul sea, reflected on its surface, was the wall encasing it — the core so to speak. Like a sky or glass dome, the core surrounded his soul and protected it from foreign dangers such as soul attacks or fate readers.

This is where Emile's break occurred, at the core of his soul, at his glass dome. At present, a white river of water flew into the sky, defying gravity and physics and falling up from the sea below.

The white waterfall poured through the crack in the sky, escaping to the far reaching world and giving potential threats a clear path to directly attack Emile's soul.

But more than that, this white liquid was Emile's soul in its purest form. Each droplet contains millions of pages of information from the smell of freshly cut grass on June twenty-ninth to what Emma said on their twelve birthday.

Losing this liquid was akin to losing himself and so as Emile kneeled, unmoving above Blood, and as his soul was sucked out of him and devoured by Blood — a new and strange phenomenon was occurring.

Emile's soul core broke and because of that a crack appeared in the shield that guards his soul. Meanwhile, Blood's lingering advancement to Perfected hung on the requirement to 'abandon one's humanity.'

Not only did this sound particularly striking, particularly evil, and particularly grand, but the sad truth of the matter is that Blood could never figure out what the hell it meant.

How does one abandon their humanity?

At first Blood assumed it meant taking another person's life, but Blood's been killing people for a long time; long before he was able to advance to Perfected and he still hadn't met the requirement.

So what else could it mean?

Devouring another person? As in consuming their flesh?

Were Blood's abilities related to such savagery?

The other option he considered was that it was simply a number he needed to reach. For example, only after killing a thousand people does one abandon their humanity.

His logic follows on the basis that most people have killed people or at least will kill a person just by virtue of war existing; therefore, perhaps he needed to kill an exceptionally high number of people and only then will he have abandoned humanity.

On the contrary, unbeknownst to all but one, abandoning one's soul simply meant taking the soul of another as the soul is what makes a human, well, human.

Long ago Emile had asked Blood why his soul didn't notify him of his human murders, this is the reason why.

Collecting a human soul is not something to be taken lightly, in fact, the authority one needs to possess to even be aware of human souls in the first place is extraordinary.

Of course, most people are aware of their souls, but the ability to detect other people's souls is the tricky part and due to Emile's core breaking and Blood's body entering critical condition — the stage was set for Blood to have a taste of Emile's soul and with it, his long-awaited advancement.

In the center of his soul, above the blood red sea and below the furiously howling winds, erected a spire of pure, white light. Instantly, memories began to flash across Blood's vision: Starbox, college exams, a weird ex from highschool, things Blood never could have imagined flooded his brain.

All the while, the winds began to calm and the once dark and thick blood sea developed a tiny shimmer of radiant light.