Chapter 108 - A New Lease On Life

The sight in front of him was ghastly to say the least, the monster was barely hanging on to life, the scorching chains had burned away large tracts of its flesh, exposing white bone that quickly began to burn as well. The parts of the monster that hadn't come into direct contact with the chains were burned and blistered, some of the skin looked like melted wax, running down onto the ground, and making small piles. Steaming entrails had fallen out of its abdomen, the skin and muscle holding them inside its body had cooked and cracked due to the heat, splitting apart.

The monster itself hung limply from the chains, the only reason it still drew breath was because Professor Kal allowed it to. He was currently pacing around the beast, using healing magic to keep it alive, making sure to knit its nerves back together so it would still feel the pain.

"Tell me, how did you come to this plane?" Professor Kal asked again, not expecting an answer. He had been torturing the monster for several days now, at least that's the amount of time that had passed within this soul plane. The monster had been quite stubborn, refusing to speak at all during all that time, even though it had suffered unspeakable torment.

"Mhhhrrggererg." An unintelligible gurgle came from the monster's throat, its chest bubbled from the escaping air, revealing just how much damage it had suffered.

"Oh, here, this should help." With a wave, a radiant light enveloped the creature, healing the monster almost completely. "See, look at that; good as new."

Although it had been healed, brought back from the brink of death, the beast still hung there lifelessly from the chains. Letting out a tired sigh, Professor Kal kicked the beast with his foot and asked the question again. With a snort, the monster came out of its near comatose state, coughing and gasping as it picked its head up to look at the Professor.

"Implant... I implant… my soul… inside a being from the plane." It explained in a thin, raspy voice.

"Then what? You take over their body?"

"Yes... it takes… some time to grow strong… strong enough to take over completely."

"So, how'd you wind up getting trapped?"

"Un…lucky."

"Ha." Professor Kal scoffed while shaking his head. "I suppose so, you implanted yourself in one of the most powerful mages of that time. She must have sensed something wrong, that's why she locked herself away. That leaves the question as to how the church gained possession of Amaranthae's body, though." He paused, giving it some thought. "Ah, I suppose it doesn't really matter in the end."

Professor Kal sat back down on the plush, leather chair that had magically reappeared in front of the restrained monster. "So, you implant yourself inside a living creature, just like a contemptible parasite, then bide your time until you become strong enough to take over the host's body? That's a rather roundabout way to invade another plane. What're the advantages of doing it that way?"

Taking in a deep, ragged breath, the monster answered. "The planes… suppress any foreign invaders. If I used a body that originated… from the plane, then I can use… my full power."

"So, you're saying planes have a will? They can determine what belongs and what doesn't?"

"Yes… and no. Planes are akin to living organisms…"

"And you're the disease." Professor Kal finished the monster's train of thought for it.

The creature's face twitched at the comparison; it must not have appreciated being compared to a virus, but Professor Kal couldn't have cared less how it felt. He took a moment to mull over what he had learned from the monster. He knew some things about planes, but he was far from an expert on the subject. Materializing his long, twisted pipe, he leaned back in the chair and began to puff rings of foul-smelling smoke into the monster's face.

"Now, I gather that you feed on souls." He started. "What happens to them?"

"They are ripped apart and broken down, fueling my power, my magic."

"So, you use souls to power your magic?" He asked. He wasn't unfamiliar with using souls for power, liches were widely known to use them to power their phylacteries, although, they didn't use them to power the spells themselves. He didn't know of any process to use souls in such a way, but he did see the merit in doing so, perhaps that was a field of study worth pursuing in the future?

Using souls to power its spells would explain why those creatures he and Ryan killed earlier were so resistant to mana, with another source of energy already filling their bodies the mana would have a hard time affecting them in any meaningful way. Now that he knew the why, the only thing to sus out would be the how. But like so many things as of late, he would have to come around to that issue later, there were other things he had to ask.

"Alright, so if they are broken down and… digested, why am I still here? Although I would like to believe I'm something special, I know that's not the case." Professor Kal admitted with a wave of his hand, taking pride in his own humbleness.

"I… do not know how your soul survived." It conceded. "Most of your soul had been devoured, but a sliver of it remained hidden from me, protected by some external influence. That is why I moved you into my soul plane, in the hopes of cutting off whatever force was keeping your soul from completely fading away. In the end... that was a mistake."

The monster let its head fall limp, rattling the rusted iron chains. It looked to Professor Kal that the beast was growing weaker with each passing moment, probably because he had taken control over its soul plane, robbing it of the energy it needed to sustain itself. Seeing how the energy from the other plane seemed to harm it, he wouldn't be able to supply it with any power in order to keep it alive much longer.

Standing up from the leather chair, Professor Kal strode over to the nearly dead monster. "One final question. How do I get out of here?"

"This is still… my plane. As long as my soul… exists, you cannot leave." It said in a hushed tone, not bothering to lift its head.

"Very well." With a wave of his skeletal hand, the monster combusted into red, blue, and black flames, its body quickly turning to ash as the flames ate away its soul.

…..

On the boundary between the noble and commoner district a fierce battle was taking place. The soldiers that had been stationed within the city in order to protect it from any attacks carried out by the Kingdom of Amine, had finally rallied together to face the ever-growing presence of unknown monsters, and had made their way to this location. After encountering a few of the black-eyed monstrosities enroute, they had some idea as to what to expect, but were still woefully unprepared for what was to come.

A flood of hundreds of the monsters had taken the soldiers by surprise, quickly breaking through their meager defenses, and causing their lockstep formation to fall apart, forcing them into a chaotic, bloody brawl. Although the soldiers of Morgania outnumbered the monsters three to one, they were still only men, unaccustomed to the ferocity of the attacks and were initially overwhelmed.

Bodies littered the street, blood ran between the cobblestones and into the ditches, and the screams of dying men filled the air. The soldiers' commander barked orders from atop his warhorse, bringing some semblance of order to their fractured formation. As the frontline soldiers held back the monsters, the others regrouped behind them, forming a wall of lances that stuck out like needles in a pincushion.

Having formed a proper formation, the soldiers were able to actually handle the onslaught from the monsters, using their long spears to stab at them before they could get in too close. Although it took them numerous jabs to actually kill one of the monsters, they were slowly making progress as the wall of monsters broke against the stalwart soldiers.

Not far away, breathing heavily, the three students stopped to catch their breath within a narrow alleyway nestled between a pair of two-story buildings. They had been dodging black-eyed monsters and frantic civilians alike, they had even narrowly avoided being killed by a hideous monster that looked like a cross between a human and an insect, needless to say, they were exhausted.

Laura, Ben, and Richard still had no idea where Ryan or Professor Kal had gone, and had given up trying to find them. The city was much too dangerous at the moment to be running around with no clear destination and, as much as it pained them, they would just have to trust in the Professor to keep their friend safe.

"How much further until the inn?" Richard asked in a raspy tone as he wheezed.

Ben shrugged his shoulders before turning to look at Laura, their interim leader.

"Don't look at me." She said, "I was following you two!"

Ben's eyebrows arched up in surprise. "Following us?! We were following you!"

"It's not my fault!" Laura stated, defending herself. "We were all just running…"

Richard let out a defeated groan as the realization dawned on them, they were lost. Being lost any other day would only amount to a mild nuisance, but with the city falling into chaos, it was life threatening. The sounds of the battle between the soldiers and monsters echoed down the alleyway, overpowering their heated conversation as the battle seemed to shift closer to where they were.

Frightened of the possibility of getting involved in the battle, the three of them stopped pointing fingers at each other and ducked inside one of the buildings next to them. Whoever had lived inside the house must have left in a hurry, the front door was unlocked, and the fireplace was still smoldering, barely heating the house. Quickly closing the door behind them, they pushed a tacky looking sofa across the wooden floor and in front of the door, creating a makeshift barricade.

Peeking through the plain white curtains, they watched as the soldiers made a hurried retreat, fear plastered all over their pale faces. The monsters were still harassing them as they ran down the street, but it wasn't them that the soldiers seemed to fear. A loud crashing sound that caused the house to tremble came from outside, rattling the windows in their frames and nearly causing them to stumble over the top of each other.

"What was that?!" Richard cried as he scurried away from the front window.

Another resounding crash shook the house, this time much closer, causing the plastered walls to crack and fall apart onto the floor. The house itself was threatening to fall apart as the entire frame listed to the side, the roof resting on the house adjacent to it was the only thing keeping it from collapsing fully. A wet slap sounded out from directly in front of them, the noise reaching them easily through the now broken window.

Looking out, the three students saw a massive monster laying face down in the middle of the street. Its many arms flailed erratically, creating large gashes in the cobblestone street, and its hooved feet were kicking violently into the empty air. As it convulsed on the ground, they could see its humanoid face twist into expressions of terror and anguish. Multicolored flames belched out of its gaping mouth with each labored breath it took.

"I don't even know what's going on anymore." Ben quipped as the three of them watched the unbelievable spectacle unfolding before them.

With a sickening 'pop', the monster's cloudy, white eyes dropped out of its skull, iridescent flames immediately taking their place. The hungry flames soon consumed the monster's entire body, leaving no area untouched as they grew in intensity. Instead of blistering and blackening like one would expect when being burned by fire, the monster's skin began to dissolve, as if it was sitting in acid.

A horrid stench filled the air as the soft flesh melted down into a sloppy puddle, leaving nothing but its thick bones exposed to the elements. The three students gagged as they watched, although the flesh had been reduced to such a state, the red, blue, and black flames still burned intensely, with no signs of stopping.

Being picked clean of flesh, the large bones of the monster started to tremble. At first it was hardly noticeable, but only after a few moments they began to vibrate so forcefully that they could feel it through the ground. As the bones vibrated, they began to break at odd angles and with such force that the sound made them cover their ears. After breaking, they would fold in on each other and fuse, becoming much smaller but extremely dense.

After a few minutes of the gruesome process, the bones had reformed themselves into something much more familiar, a human skeleton. Standing upright, the skeleton began to move its limbs and roll its shoulders, testing out the abilities of its new body.. It even jumped up and down, making sloshing noises in the puddle of sticky flesh underneath its feet, little waves of gore spreading out in all directions.