Chapter 313: A Change in the Tides

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- Minor Gore Warning -

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Late Evening - Mid Winter : Atlas, Bahamut

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- Krystallo ~

*woosh* A gentle evening gust swept the garden with a chill that night. Usually, it's cold could never pierce my scales, but somehow, it felt as if frost was forming on my skin at that moment. -I wonder if brother is up there somewhere...-

At the time, I was staring up into the stars, questioning if Brother was hidden somewhere amongst them while reminiscing about the past. It was a pass time I had made routine whenever he wasn't home.

I missed the days he would teach me as a child dearly, attempting to explain the inner workings of the world through methods that seemed crazy or impossible to Mother and me at the time.

To be frank, there was nothing I wanted more than for those moments to come back, for him to teach me about what he loved and what he was passionate about.

But as time passed, even without understanding the weight of what he was truly doing, I forced myself to accept that those days may remain a memory.

Whenever he would leave, I would feel my heart ache, and to alleviate it, I would come outside at night and simply stare into space, desperately trying to think up questions to ask him when he returned.

But that day was different. Rather than looking into space for questions.. I simply.. watched...

And that was when it happened.

*WHAM-CRACKLE* Hearing the locked back door of the estate get broken through, I whipped around in a hurry and met eyes with Mother. She was in a complete panic with a pale face and look of horror in her eyes so deep it made my heart sink. "M..Mom?"

*FW-WOOOSH* Instantly darting out of the estate, she landed in the garden not far from me before bolting into the sky without even glancing in my direction.

-Where is she...- Watching her fly higher and higher into the sky, I saw her look straight toward the western horizon, but when I followed her gaze, all I saw was the moon hovering there, on the verge of setting, shining brightly as it always did. -What is she doing... Why is she...-

But that was when my mind went blank.

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N/A - N/A : The Mallory Area | Lunar Derelict District

- Vasilias ~

The instant it happened, my mind went silent.

Watching Ilios's body limply fall to the dusty surface of the moon, time seemed to stretch endlessly, but no matter how much time passed, I couldn't unfreeze myself. For every lingering moment his body fell, I was paralyzed, with my emotions only becoming more and more distant with each passing instant.

It was my mind panicking.

In an attempt to save my sanity, my mind destroyed everything, even its own senses. I was deafened, blinded, and numbed of any sense of emotion before a single conscious thought could flow.

But it was still too slow.

By the time the gate formed around me, the few remaining strings holding my sanity had melted like a bundle of wires in a blazing furnace.

"I wish good fortune upon your soul."

*Vwoo-* But the moment the gate was too close around me, the fabric of space screamed as if in pain. *split-SCRREEECH*

Splitting the gate in half, I darted to the ground many times faster than light before throwing a fist of liquid divinity into the jaw of my old form.

*CRRRRRAAACK* The scales, flesh, and bone at the base of the jaw were shattered and shredded instantaneously, but as if suddenly being reinforced, my fist hit a wall, sending a colossal impact into the moon. *WHAAAMMM*

But as the shockwave shattered over a hundred kilometers of the moon's surface, I heard that clear voice again. "Hoh? How could you damage your own body? What would your family think if I returned with a scar-"

Cutting his voice short, I pulled my amorphous fist back up, instantaneously repatterning the liquid divinity in it before driving it back down into the body. 

*CRRRRACKK-WHAAAMM* An enormous expanse of stone spanning nearly a thousand kilometers was instantly ejected into the void as the scales and bones of the body liquified on the spot.

But as my fist passed into its jaw, countless foreign strings of divinity spread into my hand, trying to ensnare and entangle my ethereal form before I was met by the dark, cold gaze of my own body.

"I was to send you home with the blessing of godhood.. and you wish to reject it?" Whether I wanted to admit it or not, at that moment, that body was no longer mine. "Then I shall reclaim what does not belong to you."

*VWOOM* An unfathomable suction instantly tugged on me from the ensnared strings of divinity in my hand. In an instant, each thread became cold, hungry, and draining, attempting to siphon my mind and body through my divinity like a straw.

But as it tried to pull on my mind, the core of my soul, it quickly found there was nothing to grab.

*CRRACKLE* Shearing off the strings in my hand, my arm took the form of a dragons leg, but the moment I was to slam it back into his body, the massive paw of a wolf, similar to Ilios's stretched from his body and tapped my abdomen. "Impudent!"

*THOOOOOM* The surface of the moon instantaneously became distant before thousands of kilometers of its surface shattered.

Everything from my mind to my body wanted to scream, but at that point, there was nothing left to process it.

"Is this how you treat your creator?!" His voice boomed as if there was no space separating us.

But rather than being an illusion, it was because he had simply closed the distance between us before my instincts could even process it.

By the time I could process the appearance of a colossal, ethereal white wolf, the palm of a paw, dozens of times larger than my whole body, slammed down with a strength countless realms beyond my own.

*BOOOOOOM* I instantaneously slammed back into the surface of the moon, but before the shockwaves could even rip across its surface, the wolf reappeared on top of me and held me there, spreading massive tendrils of divinity from its paws, entangling and winding through me, binding to my soul and its divinity before squeezing tighter and tighter.

"I raised you, bestowed upon you the souls of my own kin and his dearest friend, and yet you repay me like this?!" The wolf's tone, eerily familiar from the whispers within the Eye of Bahamut, resonated with a blend of sorrow and fury. "To let someone as ungrateful as you wield such a gift would be a slight to their memory!"

*CRAACKLE* A horrifically loud, distortion-like noise filled my mind as the binding tendrils started moving, churning the dense liquid divinity around the core of my soul with ease before finally wrapping around its crystalline structure.

The moment it shattered, I would disappear.

But the moment he moved to crush my soul, I regained consciousness. "Ungrateful?" My voice was deep and foreign to my own senses, but it didn't even cross my mind. "What do I have to be grateful for if I am to lose it all again."

*WOOOM* Before you could even see him move, he detached himself from his paw holding me, and darted away.

Although thousands of kilometers away, his voice resounded in my mind instantly. "What have you done..."

*crackle-CRUNCH* Crushing the thick tendrils in my body, I slowly began compressing the energy within the crystalline core within my abdomen and sucked in the white cloud that used to be his paw as if it were mana.

The next thing I knew, a refreshing feeling coursed through my body, and as my structureless body grew in size, a thread of consciousness formed.

"You think I should be grateful? You've killed Ilios after using him for your own devices, taken my body the moment you had a chance, and even wish to take my identity..." Slowly lowering my gaze onto his distant figure, my expression darkened before freezing solid. "I'd destroy my own soul before I let you get away with that..."

However, the moment I was going to lunge out at him, he appeared over me. "You still do not understand." His colossal form, now partially translucent against the void of space, loomed menacingly as he spoke with deep-seated anger. "The sacrifices made.. the struggles endured. All of it was for a greater purpose... I've witnessed the betrayal of those I had once given my trust and the suffering of those I hold dear."

As the columns of rock and debris surrounding us slowly stretched into the air, I stared into his deep, cold eyes, tempered over countless millennia, with a hint of fear lingering in the back of my mind.

"I am granting you mercy by taking your body, by taking the responsibility of protecting the world and those you cherish off your shoulders. Without my intervention, you would be forced to witness the very world crumble before your eyes and, eventually, face your own demise." His voice was completely devoid of warmth. "You have no idea what the future holds. The horrors the world will witness."

"As if that matters..." I snarked, "If a threat to the world happens to involve those I care about, then I will make damn sure they aren't a threat anymore... Even if I lack the strength needed for it." *fwip-WOOOM* Instantly darting out from under him as fast as I could, I wrapped countless chains around the tether connecting him to my body several thousand kilometers away and crushed it. *CRACKLE*

Accelerating far beyond the speed of light, my surroundings stretched and blurred. The colossal walls of rock and debris from our previous exchanges, still frozen in time, were continually extending into space, but I passed through them so fast I hardly noticed.

*FWOOM* Nearly instantly appearing next to my old body, I stretched out my arm, reaching through the scales, flesh, and bone before finally grazing my reserve. The moment I touched it, my liquid divinity and soul instantaneously conjoined with it, sending an unfathomable tsunami of senses, sensations, and memories flooding into my mind.

My idea was to stand up and destroy the Fenrir's soul while his tether was broken, as I did with Tyr, but the instant I regained control of my body, every single thought and sensation was eclipsed by pain that nothing, even my reincarnation, could compare to.

My eyes instantly shot open, forcing my gaze upon the faint outline of an ethereal white fenrir over looming over me.

"How arrogant..."

Hearing his voice somehow piercing through the pain in my mind, I felt a shiver of fear pass down my spine.

But rather than killing me or purging my soul from my body, he simply stood there in silence before mumbling to himself. "Maybe Nott was right... Maybe this time, we let t̷h̴e̴ ̶f̴̵̴r̴̴̷u̷̵̷i̶̷̴t̵̷̵ ̸̷̷b̶̵̷̶̶̶̷e̷̴̶̴̵̴̴a̸̶̸̶̷̷̷r̶̷̸̶̸̵̶ ̵̵̵̴̸̶̷a̶̷̸̷̷̵̶ ̴̴̸̴̴̸̵n̴̷̸̴̷̴̶e̴̷̴̷̴̷̵w̵̶̴̵̶̶̸ ̵̷̷̷̸̷̴t̷̶̶̶̴̷̶r̶̶̸̴̶̷̷e̸̵̴̶̷̸̴e̶̷̶̸̶̸̶..."

As his voice was slowly distorted, my vision finally faded to black, and my mind continued to descend into an endless hell.

Every second stretched into an eternity of agony, tormenting my soul, trying to shatter my consciousness.

Faint memories of my past life as a human on earth intermingled with a different life as a dragon I didn't recognize, sucking me into a maelstrom of emotions and memories as if to try and drown me before presenting me memories of the life I had lived as Vasilias.

At that moment, they felt familiar but still foreign.

However, tightly clinging onto the string connecting to my consciousness within my mind, I reached for it, forcing my paw into an impenetrable wall of liquid rushing so fast it sheared off my scales, flesh, and bone, leaving just a tangled, messy web of divinity in its place, before forcing my body through as well.

But no matter how far I reached, it always felt just a hair beyond my grasp.

At least that was until my whole body had been destroyed, and all that was left was a web of divinity wrapping around a mana core, that the farthest tip of divinity finally grazed a memory.

*crackle*

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