Book 5: Chapter 8: Counterbalance

Book 5: Chapter 8: Counterbalance

Victor expanded, as he was wont to do, and ap’Gravin fell away from him, collapsing onto his rump, scrabbling toward the wall between the door to his cell and the next, closed one. Victor was thankful for his Iron Berserk upgrade, specifically his ability to keep his rage simmering in the background, because, truth be told, he was angry enough as it was. Something was wrong with his approach, his bullheaded charge for the answer to his burning question.

Ap’Gravin had been prepared, somehow resisting Victor, because if Victor were any judge of a person, he’d say the man was plenty frightened. He either didn’t know the answer, or he was hiding it. Victor chose to believe the latter. That left him with a choice. De-escalate, start over and try to work his way to the answer in a roundabout way, or, more to his liking, escalate things further. If simple fear wasn’t enough to crack the man, then perhaps a taste of Quinametzin-inspired madness would do the trick.

“Good,” he growled, voice deep, grating and cracking off the walls of the circular stone room. “Grovel there. Sit and watch what I do with my foes.” Victor glanced over his left shoulder to see Oylla watching him, small now, at least next to his hulking form. She had a strange, purple-red shimmer in her eyes, perhaps shielding herself from his aura now that she’d recovered from her earlier surprise. When their eyes met, he gave her a brief nod, trying to reassure her, then he reached into his storage ring and pulled out the night brute prince’s heart.

Grinning madly at ap’Gravin, looking into his wide, haunted eyes, he lifted the heart from its container and tore into it, ripping a huge, bloody chunk away, chomping it, and swallowing it noisily. Victor had thought about this, briefly, sure, but he had thought about it. He didn’t know what would happen when he ate this heart, but he figured it would be impressive, and the night brutes had been fear-attuned creatures; maybe the spectacle caused by eating the prince’s heart would help convince ap’Gravin to take his questions more seriously.

Tes might not approve, or, Victor thought, swallowing another bloody chunk, she probably would. She’d probably laugh and give him that eager look she always had when she watched him doing something stupid, brave, insane, or brilliant. He almost forgot what he was doing, thinking about Tes like that; he started to picture her eyes, her smile, and hear her voice in his ears. He began to wonder about his slowly growing feelings for Valla and if it was really something he should pursue—hadn’t he determined someday to be worthy of pursuing Tes?

“What in the name of the Old Father’s bones is this madman doing?” ap’Gravin cried, pushing away from Victor, who was hunched in front of him, dripping great gobs of night brute blood onto the stones as he chomped and chewed the dark, steaming heart, kept fresh and hot in Tes’s magical jar.

“He’s a Quinametzin Titan, and you’ve driven him to this madness. Pray the heart sates his hunger,” Valla said, and Victor could hear the amusement in her voice.

Victor took his third bite, chewed it, and tried to refocus on what he was doing. He squatted lower, holding the dripping, bloody organ before him, his great form hanging over ap’Gravin as he chewed. With each bite, he grunted and growled, letting the juices sluice off his chin to form a puddle that ran between his feet toward ap’Gravin’s robes. His grin widened and grew more savage as he saw the man try to melt back into the stone wall.

Something was happening in his gut. It was starting to roil, and Victor felt strange, tingling lances shooting out into his torso, but nothing painful, nothing that might cause him to look away from the haunted professor’s eyes. He was more than halfway through the enormous heart now, but his hunger had barely abated—something about eating hearts when he was in his titan form kept him ravenous.

“What’s happening to him?” Oylla asked from the side, perhaps echoing ap’Gravin’s unspoken question because he nodded frantically at her words. “He’s exuding shadows . . .”

“Guard yourself,” Valla said, and this time her voice wasn’t amused; Victor could hear her moving away up the steps. As he took another bite, perhaps the penultimate one, he was dimly aware that Oylla had stepped sideways into ap’Gravin’s cell and had pulled the door halfway closed. Ap’Gravin, for his part, began to wail, writhing this way and that but going nowhere. How could he? Victor’s giant form hung above him, madly grinning as the blood pooled on the stones and dark shadows began flowing from his flesh.

As Victor lifted the last morsel of the prince’s heart to his mouth, chomped it with his mighty teeth, and swallowed it down, he thought he was losing consciousness for a moment because his vision grew darker on the edges. When he glanced around, tearing his eyes from the whimpering, cowering ap’Gravin, he saw the room was filling with tangible, wispy, clinging shadows that poured from his flesh. The effect reminded him of a smoke bomb­; they were streaming thickly out of him, filling the area with their dark influence.

“Huh,” he grunted, lifting a hand to watch the dark ribbons wisp away from his skin, obscuring the man before him. Victor didn’t worry about that; the last he’d seen, just a moment ago, ap’Gravin had been muttering some repetitive phrase, his eyes squeezed shut and his entire body trembling in a paroxysm of terror-fueled spiritual fervor. The wisps of dark, clinging Energy began to pack the space, what was left of it, anyway, after considering Victor’s fifteen-foot bulk. He sat down, falling out of his squatting position, and kicked his legs out to either side of where he’d last seen ap’Gravin—no sense letting the worm wriggle away.

Perhaps it was his Berserk state, perhaps it was his increasingly Quinametzin mindset, but Victor wasn’t particularly worried about what was happening, not yet. He’d anticipated the heart having a profound effect; he’d banked on it, in fact, expecting to not only improve himself but disturb the subject of his interrogation. Still, it was weird how quiet everything had become, how thick and heavy the darkness around him was. He reached out a hand to swipe at it, and that’s when he realized he couldn’t really feel his body anymore. Was he unconscious?

#

Oylla-dak stepped back from the stairwell, away from the hulking giant and the strange, clinging shadows erupting from his form. She’d felt his aura, felt the weight of his power, and she wasn’t sure she should try to intervene, at least not yet. She wasn’t entirely sure she could stand against him, and even if she could, there would surely be collateral damage if things came to blows. No, Valla ap’Yensha was from a reputable clan, and Jaxin-dak had instructed her to be lenient with the human’s request. She’d wait and see what happened here.

Something about how the giant had looked at her, nodding slightly, had instilled her with some confidence; he wasn’t disregarding her admonishment about harming ap’Gravin. Whatever he was doing with the gruesome display of eating that monstrous heart and erupting with clinging shadows had something to do with the interrogation; he was setting a stage, trying to break the professor down. Oylla got the impression that Victor had been surprised when ap’Gravin had resisted his initial questioning but also that he was far from discouraged.

She reached through the partially closed door, feeling the wispy shadows beginning to compound on each other, filling the space. They clung to her like greasy, slick silk, sliding against her flesh as she pulled back, sending shivers through her skin and reminding her of when she was a child, fearful of things in the dark.

What sort of Energy was this? Was this giant a Mind Caster? No, this was different. It felt primal, emotional, even. A spirit caster, then. Yes, it made sense—when he’d grown to the size of a giant, she’d felt the heat of rage in his aura, felt as though it would be wise to vacate the area, a deep urge in the pit of her being to get away from him. Could she stop him if he went mad? If she hit him unawares with her most potent abyssal Energy blast, perhaps.

“Perhaps,” she repeated softly, pulling her hand back as the stairwell filled with dark Energy. It continued to compound on itself, rapidly multiplying as the thick shadows piled up. She couldn’t see the giant or ap’Gravin any longer, and, not wanting herself to be engulfed, she pulled the door shut. “What do I do now?” she asked, looking around the cell that had previously held the disgraced professor.

#

Victor felt something happening at his Core. At first, he felt a surging, pulsing sensation that seemed similar to cultivating, similar to how it had felt when the Energy from other enemy hearts had replenished him. Something was different, though, and unable to see anything outside his eyes, he turned his vision inward. He could see the dark Energy in his pathways, flowing through them to his Core, but then he saw the problem he’d created for himself—the dark Energy was only feeding one aspect of his Core, his darkly throbbing and pulsing fear-attuned orb.

“Shit,” he muttered or thought he did, but he couldn’t hear himself. He tried to reach out with his will, tried to pull some of that Energy away from the fear-attuned orb and shove it into the smoldering red sphere of his rage. It moved with his will but slid off his rage-attuned orb, quickly flowing back to his fear affinity. “Shit,” he repeated and tried again, this time trying to steer some of the Energy into his inspiration orb. Just as before, it moved in response to his will but simply passed around the white-gold orb, flowing directly back into the now-surging globe of fear-attuned Energy.

Panic began to enter his mind, even stubborn as it was with the effects of Berserk and his bloodline. He’d hardly begun to process the dark Energy in the air around him, and his fear-attuned orb was rapidly swelling, becoming more prominent and denser than his other two affinities. Oynalla’s words came back to him, her many warnings about never letting his fear affinity outweigh the others. Suddenly Tes’s admonition about waiting until he was stronger before using the heart struck home; she’d meant his Core.

Titanic Herald - Legendary

Level:

50

Core:

Spirit Class - Advanced 5

Energy Affinity:

3.1, Fear 9.4, Rage 9.1, Glory 8.6, Inspiration 7.4

Energy:

11823/11823

Strength:

220

Vitality:

335 (369)

Dexterity:

100

Agility:

123

Intelligence:

92

Will:

473

“Not bad,” he said, chuckling.

“You’re a madman,” Ap’Gravin said, his voice cracking and quavering.

Victor rubbed at his chin and glanced to the left, where Oylla-dak had pulled the cell door open. He could hear Valla returning down the stairs, her boots scuffing gently against the stone. He turned back to ap’Gravin and said, “Not really. Anyway, tell me something, Professor. Are you ready to talk?”