Arkaenan did not tarry upon announcing his intent, and with the flowing grace of a striking serpent, the ancient Methuselah tore the rebar from Lucius’ flesh with a mere twist of his hand while closing distance. Each length of epochal steel, slathered in his lifeblood, rose to hover above him like a macabre frame and Lucius felt his body move outside of his will or volition.
“What—?”
“Patience.” the Sovereign decreed while stepping close enough once more for Lucius to easily touch him, and calmly lacerating the palm of his right hand with the black thumbnail of his left. The moment he opened the skin, a dull whump of power blew away everything outside of and within their ‘potentiality bubble’, and Lucius observed with wide eyes the passive force Arkaenan’s life essence had on the space around them.
“Focus, my child.”
Arkaenan’s voice pulled Lucius’ gaze back to the pallid god-emperor, and the sudden sense of rising panic that had accelerated to life within him faded once more upon seeing the mesmerizing certainty within the Methuselah’s crimson eyes.
“Well done, Lucius Argent.” Arkaenan praised him calmly. “Now, take my hand.”
Conscious thought warred with instinctive terror, and Lucius’ active desires won out handily over his buried, screaming instincts as a soldier—and as a human. His right palm moved and, without ever breaking contact with Arkaenan’s blazing stare, he pressed the surprisingly uncovered palm of his hand to the Sovereign’s own.
A small warmth invaded him at the contact, and Lucius sighed in pleasure.
“Now, repeat after me, my Heir: ‘I, Lucius Argent, do hereby swear upon Blood, Essence, and Core to adhere to the path of the Inheritor. I shall claim my place as Sovereign of the Crimson Star, accept my due Inheritance, adhere to the precepts of the Methuselan Empire, and return to the Galaxy its natural order of Predator, and Prey. These things shall I do of my own volition, of my own choice, and in full comprehension of the consequence of failure. Only upon my Fifth Awakening shall this Oath be fulfilled.”
Lucius repeated the words as they were spoken, almost down to the exactness of the inflection. His heart thundered like the beat of a war drum within his chest, and he felt chills and warmth in equal measure suffusing him from the point of contact on his palm, across the length and breadth of his body.
He noticed, vaguely, that Arkaenan was speaking his own oath in response—and only barely managed to discern the words amid the invasive sensations flowing across his body.
“I, Arkaenan of the Crimson Star, do hereby swear to watch over the Inheritor after death—and lend him my protections, until such time as Methuselan Law demands he stand or die on his own merit.”
Lucius’ brow furrowed at that.
“Y-you will protect me…?” he asked with a confused rasp.
“Of course. You would be far too easy a hunt for my few remaining kin were I to merely send you, like a lamb absent a sheepdog, to stand upon the Crimson Star. My protection will ensure nobody attempts to steal from you your Inheritance… until such time as the Law of our species demands you stand on your own.”
“How?” Lucius asked breathlessly.
“The Seed.” Arkaenan said simply. “Which we shall now implant.”
“W-wait, I—”
The Sovereign did not wait. With a sudden and supreme level of violence, the ancient Methuselah plunged his left hand into Lucius’ solar plexus, and between one moment and the next he felt his entire concept of reality dement in on itself. His mind, abruptly, flashed with memory—detailing back for him the exact moments, from youth, across which his Core developed.
Each new level of Awakening, which subsequently unlocked a new depth and level of mastery of Force, and the ascending tiers of power he climbed within the Aetherian Martial Hall. From Trainee, to Novice, to his first active stage of Enlightened, to Apprentice, to Journeyman, to Specialist, to Expert, and then finally to Master.
The levels of development experienced throughout his time growing in strength, training, and developing his Aether Core from youth to adulthood blazed through his mind like a holovid of experiences compressing and expanding in the same moment.
He re-lived every success, weathered every failure, and celebrated every milestone once more in a riotous explosion of sentiment and memory that flowed through him like the swell of a tide he could no more hold back than a fish could redirect the current of the ocean.
As these memories cascaded through Lucius, illuminating every triumph and tribulation that had shaped him, Arkaenan's hand moved with an unyielding precision inside Lucius's chest. The sensation was beyond pain, a convergence of physical violation and metaphysical upheaval.
In that moment, as Arkaenan's power inexorably invaded Lucius's being, a profound and intimate violation unfolded within the core of his existence. His Aether Core, a luminescent wellspring of his life's energy and essence, began to tremble under the weight of the Sovereign's unrelenting force. It was more than a physical structure within him; it was the metaphysical embodiment of his spirit, his achievements, and his very identity.
Lucius felt each pulse of his Core as a sharp stab of existential pain, each throb a reminder of what was being inexorably stripped away. The Core's light, once a radiant beacon within him, flickered erratically, its glow dimming with each passing moment. It was as if countless memories, experiences, and emotions housed within that radiant orb were crying out, their voices drowned by the overwhelming tide of Arkaenan's dark essence.
Lucius felt as if his Aether Core were screaming for help.
It was the desperate plea of a lifelong ally, one whom had walked through every trial with him faithfully and without complaint. It was a final imploring for him to stop, to step back, to take death over the endarkening of his soul—and it was a final offer which would go unanswered.
The guilt and shame of that fact were like lances of agony assailing his heart.
The sensation of his Core disintegrating was akin to witnessing the death of countless stars within himself, and each miniature collapse represented a universe of potential and dreams imploding into oblivion.
The fragments of his Core, once vibrant and pulsating with life, now felt like shards of glass, cutting into the very fabric of his soul. With each fragment that broke away, a part of Lucius's history, his very being, was erased—lost to the voracious maw of the transformation.
As the erosion of his Core continued, Lucius was assailed by a torrent of emotions—memories of battles fought, loves lost, and victories won—all being washed away in an unstoppable deluge. He experienced a profound grief, and a mourning for the loss of himself, even as he was helpless to resist the metamorphosis.
The agony was not merely physical but an excruciating, soul-deep affliction. It was the terrifying sensation of being hollowed out, and emptied of everything that made him human.
The horror of this annihilation was compounded by the fantastical nature of the transformation. Lucius felt as if he were trapped within a nightmarish fable, where his body and soul were being reshaped by the whims of an ancient, otherworldly power.
Arkaenan's magic was a dark and eldritch force, rewriting the very laws of nature that had governed Lucius's existence.
Amidst this maelstrom of destruction, Lucius's mind teetered on the brink of madness. The sensation of his Core's obliteration was a relentless assault on his psyche, with each moment stretching into an eternity of torment. He was acutely aware of his humanity being flayed away, layer by layer, like the unwanted flesh of a mediocre slaughter.
All that remained in the aftermath was a void.
A voice which yearned to be filled with the dark, alien power of the Methuselah.
In the moments before the last remnants of his Aether Core dissipated into nothingness, Lucius felt a final, crushing sense of loss—a bereavement for the man he had once been. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks, and he let out a final, guttural cry of agony, regret, and soul-deep pain that resonated around the chamber like the crescendo to some abyssal unheard chorus.
Arkaenan’s only response was a mirthless hiss of laughter.
In the instant after his Core was finally eviscerated, the nascent, pulsating presence of the Sovereign’s Essence Seed took root. The horror of what he had lost was then replaced by a burgeoning sense of dark empowerment, one which he understood with absolute certainty heralded the dawn of a new, terrifying era in the life of Lucius Argent.
The Seed was a writhing mass of dark power, a primordial force that felt like a black hole within him. It was a hungering void that began to draw in the remnants of his human essence, and mercilessly initiated the reshaping of his physical self to better suit its voracious needs.
Arkaenan withdrew his blood-soaked hand from his chest, and Lucius watched the Sovereign delicately lick the gore, viscera, and vitae from his black nails and pallid fingers. While this happened, Arkaenan’s magic took hold of Lucius’ body, and he felt himself rise into the air as the first spasms of change rippled across his savaged flesh.
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Lucius floated in writhing agony, and the transformation orchestrated by Arkaenan’s will unfurled with a meticulous, and surgical precision. The Essence Seed, pulsating with an ancient and dark energy, began its invasive journey. Its every infusion was a weaving of its essence into the very fabric of Lucius's being, and carried upon its abyssal tendrils the abyssal potential of the Crimson Star’s chosen Inheritor.
Lucius felt his muscles twitch and spasm uncontrollably, and opened his mouth in a throat-rending scream as each millimeter was eviscerated and reknit into a denser, more powerful form. Each fiber was seemingly torn apart and reassembled, and each time the process repeated on a different section; he felt perceptibly stronger and more resilient than ever before.
His bones cracked and elongated, the sound akin to the groaning of ancient trees in a tempestuous storm. The marrow in his bones was sluiced and altered, and dark energy threaded across it to enhance its vitality and purity. His skeletal structure was simultaneously reshaped, growing in size and density toward a framework capable of supporting his newfound stature, and superlative strength.
Lucius’ scream turned into a sickening gurgle when his skin stretched across his expanding frame, tearing in places before healing rapidly, and adopting a smoother and more unblemished surface than it had ever possessed. Every inch of his hide became stronger and more resilient, and despite retaining its thickness; he knew instinctively that it had more than tripled in density and durability.
His skin took on a pallor of the purest alabaster once his flesh settled its expansion, and served as a stark contrast to the blood that had once painted his body. It was as if he was being reforged from marble itself, not unlike a statue coming to life under the chisel of an unseen sculptor. Arkaenan was the conductor, or perhaps the Seed itself was; and Lucius’ body was a choir of torment and agony responding to its maestro.
Only the promise of vengeance allowed him to cling to his sanity.
Lucius's hair, once a nondescript sandy brown, darkened to a hue akin to the void between stars. Each strand thickened and lengthened, falling around his face and shoulders like a cascade of dark silk. Gravity seemed to hold no power over the folicles, and they floated around his body like he were standing up—or laying on his back. Its length, he loosely realized, fell down to the middle of his back.
Had he not grown taller, based on his skeletal changes, it would have reached the base of his spine.
His facial features, too, underwent a transformation.
Lucius choked and spasmed in agony, and nearly bit into his own tongue at the warping shift of elongating bones and sharpened canines. His jawline became more pronounced, cheekbones higher and sharper, and overall structure terrifyingly symmetrical. His lips, having been on the thinner side all his life, became notably fuller and yet distinctly austere—perhaps even cruel—in their curvature, and darkened to a bloody hue which contrasted starkly against his pale skin.
The most striking change, however, occurred in his eyes.
His irises, once an attractive but otherwise not-uncommon blue, ignited with a crimson glow and bled into a deep vermillion. Each one illuminated from within, and exuded a menacing light which set them to burning like coals in the darkness.
Lucius’ new gaze pierced the gloom of the chamber, and he felt vision piercing the darkness like a vanishing veil; one which rendered the shadows transparent. The lack of light was no longer an impediment to sight, but rather an extension of his newfound perception. He could see the minute details of the chamber, and the subtle play of light and shadow, as well as color and monochrome, with an acuity that was almost overwhelming.
His new eyes, he knew, were not just organs of sight; they were instruments of a predator, designed to perceive prey, and to pierce the veil of even the darkest of nights.
Lucius realized, belatedly, that he could even discern the life force of living beings—which manifested in the form of a passive, but faint thermal and aetheric vision. It was a skill that instinctively he knew was tied to his new nature as a Methuselah, and their penchant for hunting sapients with aether-rich blood.
Blood that burned with a heat all its own, and power besides.
The nascent Sovereign Core within him, now fully integrated, pulsed with an unbridled power. It was a reservoir of potential that Lucius could sense but not yet fully comprehend or harness. The core radiated an energy that was both exhilarating and terrifying, a promise of untold power at the cost of an insatiable hunger for the life force—and more specifically, the aether—of others.
When it was done, Lucius—body now hale and whole—felt himself descend to his feet, and gained an instinctive awareness of the mausoleum’s construction the moment his now-naked feet touched the cold steel of the floor. When he was freed from Arkaenan’s power, all of the pain and even the memory of pain seemed like a distant irritant—one he pushed back and dismissed like the irrelevance it was.
He was no longer merely a man; he was a Methuselah, a being of ancient lineage, darkness, and power. He lifted his hands to peer at them, marveling at the clear musculature visible beneath the moonlight-pale flesh of his arms. His fingers tightened and loosened, and he could feel the newfound physical might in each digit. He had the strength, he knew, to crush even the most sturdily built human’s throat as easily as a disposable cup.
When he took a step forward to test his locomotion, he felt his entire body respond subtly, and his muscles reacting to his will in order to make the movement as smooth as possible, and as energy-efficient as possible too. Each step he took felt powerful and intentioned, and even without seeing himself he instinctively understood that—when compared to his former self—he was grace personified, and exuded a lethal and predatory elegance unique to the Methuselan species he had been reforged into.
When he rolled his neck and shoulders appraisingly, he noticed that Arkaenan was no longer as immense as he had once been—and then abruptly realized that nothing had changed about the ancient Sovereign.
Instead, Lucius himself had grown, and exponentially at that.
His towering new height of six feet and ten inches dwarfed his former self, and left a feeling of raw and immense strength coursing through his veins. His appearance, he knew, was now a symphony of unnatural symmetry and predatory allure, a testament to the dark apotheosis he had undergone.
As he accepted his new form and settled into awareness of what had become his new reality, the last vestiges of doubt and fear clinginging to him from his discarded self dissolved. Lucius Argent, Aether Elite, and Captain of the United Republic of Humanity, was dead. He had died screaming and alone, sacrificing himself on the altar of power to banish a weakness which would have stood in the path of his due vengeance.
What stood in his place, born from the blood and agony of a betrayed life was the Inheritor; the future Sovereign of the Crimson Star. His path would be one of vengeance and conquest, conducted across a journey set upon the stage of the galaxy, where he would carve his name into the stars with blood, and fire, and the vengeance of every betrayed son of Earth writ large upon the mangled and drained corpses he would leave in his wake.
Some of them would be his enemies, transferred from his old life.
Most, he knew, would be those foolish enough to stand against his Inheritance.
“Welcome to your new life, Lucius Argent,” Arkaenan said in a voice that, where once it had terrified and awed Lucius, now elicited only a thrill of recognition and echo of paternal correlation. “Welcome to your destiny, my beloved Inheritor.”
Lucius’ gaze, alight with the power of the Sovereign Core—even then beginning to throb with the need for Essence with which to Cultivate—within him, regarded Arkaenan with cold and all-too-aware eyes.
Understanding had dawned with his rebirth, and something his mortal self had not been able to identify clicked within his new, and far superior mind.
“You compelled me.” Lucius said in a voice that was deeper, resonant, and carried within it an authority that his former self would have quailed to hear. “You held me in your gaze, and dispelled my doubts and instincts to flee, and manipulated me into compliance.”
“I did.” Arkaenan admitted calmly, and without shame under Lucius’ accusing glare.
Their eyes remained locked for a long moment, crimson to crimson, before Lucius spoke again.
“Thank you for not allowing my weakness to impede my destiny.”
Arkaenan’s smile, for the first time, was genuine.
“I chose well,” he said in a thunderous whisper. “The Aether did not lie. You are perfect as an heir.”
Lucius let loose a low ‘hmph’ at the ancient’s words, and turned to regard the bubble of potentiality around them. “We still have to escape this place, if I am to adhere to the call of the Crimson Star.” His gaze turned up toward the ceiling, and he focused on a spot without truly seeing it—and instead looked in the location he could feel the Crimson Star waiting for him. “I can feel it, already; like an itch upon my psyche, demanding I make my way to it. Instinct compels me, and for all that I abhor being a slave to it, I know I cannot disobey.”
“That is the Blood Oath.” Arkaenan elucidated in a slightly, but noticeably more diminished voice. “It is working as decreed, and ensuring your journey is made with all haste by giving you direction.”
“Which means you will soon expire, my Sire—” the word felt right to Lucius in a way he never would have been able to explain as he continued “—and I will be forced to find my own way out of these accursed depths.”
“No.” Arkaenan said softly. “I did not grant you destiny only for steel and stone to seal it below the surface of this miserable deathworld. There is power yet left in my fading shell, and I shall harness it to deliver you to my starship—the Sovereign’s vessel, hidden and left here in fear for what disturbing its matrices may have unleashed.”
Arkaenan’s hands rose while he spoke, and luminous threads of crimson aetheric lightning began to warp around his black-taloned fingers; filling the area with dread light as he worked a spellform and aetheric discipline Lucius’ decades of experience couldn’t have begun to identify. It was an ancient magic, he knew instinctively, and yet one still far advanced beyond the comprehension of the human nation he had once belonged to.
“The Sovereign Core metastasizing within you will allow you to pass unharmed through the defenses I placed upon it,” Arkaenan continued while the spell’s power built, “and your blood upon its inner altar will win the Intelligence’s fealty. Use it as your chariot among the stars, and bring the power of the Methuselah back like a veil of terror upon these unworthy trillions. Remind them what it means to exist in the shadow of the Crimson Star, and by the sufferance of its Sovereign.”
Lucius listened in silence, and felt any lingering traces of mortal fear and apprehension die while destiny settled upon him like a cloak. Arkaenan’s casting concluded, and sanguine light eviscerated space with the slash of a crimson blade; one that rotated where it formed and created a circular hole in reality. Peering into it, and ignoring the crackling scarlet lightning at its edges, Lucius noted what appeared to be the recesses of an immense ice cavern beyond.
“Go now, my Inheritor, and claim what is yours. My protection goes with you.”
“You will die here, once I leave?” Lucius asked with a final look for the wizened ancient.
“I shall.” Arkaenan said with calm acceptance.
“Good.” Lucius responded coldly. “Then the first target of my vengeance dies during the hour of my rebirth. A fitting send off as I stride toward destiny. I thank you for your gifts, Arkaenan the Ancient, and I bid thee not tarry when stepping into the arms of oblivion. Know that I am eternally grateful for what you have given me… and that your death shall be my first true pleasure in this glorious new life.”
And then, without another word, Lucius stepped through the portal.
Arkaenan’s approving laughter followed him through, until roaring collapse drowned out all sound, and the portal winked shut amidst the final destruction of the epochal mausoleum.
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