Beastborne- Mark of the Founder

by James T Callum

  With bated breath, Hal waited. He kept impossibly still, understanding that his opportunity was coming up.

  However, the Beast was no fool. It understood Hal’s mind, or perhaps it merely understood the weakness it would leave open. While the Beast dared not lower its guard against Mira, Elora, Vorax, and Ashera, it knew a way to protect itself from Hal.

  A lid slid over the top of the pit Hal was stuck in. As soon as it shut off the light, Hal was alone.

  Alone with his thoughts. Alone in the depths of impossible darkness to which there was no end.

  He was cut off, completely and utterly from everything but the pain. Hal drifted in the dark, assured that he had failed before he ever had a chance.

  He felt diminished, detached.

  * * *

  The Beast’s red-soaked vision took in the scene before it. The Sin Keeper was weak, she didn’t have the resolve to do what needed to be done. As soon as it was sure Hal was dealt with, the Beast could reach its pinnacle of power.

  All it needed to do was reach out and attain its rightful godhood. Then it would shed its husk of a weak host and join its brethren among the dark spaces between the stars.

  Where all Horrors belong.

  The Ranger fired, just as the Beast knew she would. That one had a spine of starmetal. It would be a shame to kill her. The silver lightning streaked toward the Beast’s heart and it snatched the arrow out of the air.

  It was already beyond such petty attacks.

  Everything was going according to the Beast’s wishes. Just as it desired. Just as so many Beasts before it had taken over those who reached too greedily for power they could not control.

  Yes, everything was going according to plan. Right until the silver arrow exploded.

  70

  Chaos.

  That was the only word for it.

  Just as Hal reached too far within his Beast Magic and awoke something terribly dreadful, so too did the Beast err akin to its progenitor.

  In its complete belief of supremacy, it sought to destroy Hal, attain its Godhood, and fend off the attacks of his friends all at once.

  Hal understood what the Beast failed to recognize.

  Grasping for so much, the Beast was caught unawares when the silver-shaft exploded into a rain of biting metal, ringing sound, and blinding light.

  In that instant, its grip weakened. The Beast had overextended.

  So sure of its supremacy that even as it banished Hal to the darkest corners of his mind, it thought nothing of him or what reserves of will he might possess. It thought Hal a broken, pitiful wretch.

  The Beast erred. And for the first time in its short life, it knew fear.

  * * *

  Adrift in darkness, mute or deaf it didn’t matter, Hal screamed into the void. Where before only his body was cut off, now everything was gone. No HUD, no Founder powers, no sensation at all.

  He was completely untethered.

  It wasn’t fair. He wouldn’t accept it. He knew few things ever worked out as they were supposed to but this was unacceptable.

  All throughout his life he had been a doormat out of politeness, out of requirement and familial duties. “Don’t rock the boat, son.” They would say. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered,” his father was fond of saying. And by far the worst, “Keep your nose to the grindstone and work hard at the lot you are given.”

  No more. Hal raged against the soundless void that enfolded him so uncaringly.

  When a thin crack of light split the darkness ahead of him, he was ready. Eager even. He knew nothing of what was going on. The greater battle ahead seemed inconsequential to him now.

  Hal wanted nothing more than to make the Beast pay. Even if it cost him his own life. He was ready when the sliver of light came. Hal reached out to the ragged edges of that light, tearing it wide open. He was surprised how far his reach suddenly was.

  Out came Hal into the deepest recesses of the Beast, once separate, now bridged by a single lapse of concentration.

  Before he even hit the ground, Hal tapped into his Assimilation and wrenched his HP away into the wounded Wortling standing stock-still off to the side. He grabbed onto that thread of his Founder's powers and held tight to it.

  The Beast, through some means that Hal hardly cared to understand at that moment, had taken its HP from the brink of death to more than half.

  Unrelenting, Hal’s rage refused to relinquish control as he drained away his own HP. If he died, at least he would die by his hand, on his terms. Not turned into some monstrosity.

  “I would rather die, do you hear me?” he screamed, hands and knees on the hard formless floor somewhere within his mind.

  Sensation came back to him and he needed a moment to reorient his senses to having a body, to feeling mostly whole.

  The brightness dimmed, and Hal looked up into the red-glowing eyes of the Beast. Its body was shade made material. Wings stretched behind its back. The shadow had an oily quality to it. Not quite oily, Hal corrected. It looks like a lava lamp. Constantly melting and rising away from the heat.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. Hal clutched tightly to his rage. Beyond the outrage and anger, he could feel the Beast attempting to wrest back control. So long as he held onto that anger, the Beast was powerless to stop him.

  The Beast could control every other part of his body, all of his magic. But with Hal in control of his Assimilation, the Beast was at his mercy for once.

  “You will die too,” the Beast said, its voice a deeper baritone than Hal’s. Though, perhaps unsurprisingly, not dissimilar.

  Hal rose to his feet and stood before the creature. Featureless light spread out in every direction, obliterating any shadow but the roiling substance the Beast was made from.

  “I don’t care,” Hal said with more conviction than he expected.

  The Beast roared right in his face, but Hal remained steadfast. This was his life.

  “Power beyond your reckoning is at hand. You could share in godhood. Surely that is better than your fleeting, miserable, anxiety-ridden life.” The Beast leaned in so close that Hal could feel the heat from its breath on his face. “I have seen inside your mind, Hal Williams. I am a part of you. I know the depths of your cowardice. You will relent.”

  With a grin, Hal tightened his fist and twisted. The pain he knew would come failed to arrive but it didn’t matter. With that movement, Hal dropped his HP to 10.

  Hal was beyond pain. He was free. From the pain, from the fear. His choice was already made. Death was preferable to enslavement. In his mind, he was already dead.

  There was nothing the Beast could offer him. No power, no godhood. It controlled the vast majority of Hal’s mind and body but it could not prevent its own destruction.

  It had no leverage.

  Even if it had, the Beast was unsure whether this human would even be capable of accepting any deal it might offer.

  The Beast had underestimated Hal.

  They shared the same mind in that light-filled chamber where no shadows were cast. The Beast thought it understood Hal. It could not have foreseen the turn of events that brought it here.

  It had been so close to godhood. To being something more.

  Now it was stuck here, debasing itself to a mortal of all things.

  The Beast could kill Hal, but to what end? The Beast, unlike Hal, wanted to live. It didn’t want to cease its existence and its survival instinct was not malfunctioning like Hal’s was.

  They both knew there was only one way this was going to end without the utter destruction of them both. Assimilation, unlike most other forms of damage, would kill them the moment it dropped Hal to 0 HP. He would not be knocked out as was normal.

  He would be dead.

  The Beast was not stupid. It was, after all, a part of Hal. An echo of his darkest parts, amplified and twisted by uncontrolled magic, but it was still him.

  They stared at each other, their thoughts circling around and around. Every attempt the Beast thought
to foil Hal was met with the same end. Death.

  Eventually, even the indomitable Beast gave up. Every plea, every fight, every threat fell upon deaf ears.

  There was no need for words. They were each a part of the other, their mind was one. But Hal spoke them anyway, “We both know there’s only one way this ends, Beast.”

  The Beast, knowing the futility of reasoning with Hal, did the only thing it could. It bent a knee and lowered its head, submitting.

  A life joined to one as ruthless and firm in his convictions as Hal would not be so bad, it reasoned. Even though it knew there was no other choice. It would not die, its instincts refused to allow that to happen no matter the cost.

  Hal understood the magnitude of the Beast’s gesture. Some small part of Hal’s mind screamed out that this was a trick. A last-ditch effort by the Beast to wrest control once more. The only option was death, just as Hal always knew it would be.

  The Beast’s red-glowing eyes flashed up to stare wide-eyed and filled with fear at Hal. But Hal knew the Beast’s mind as he knew his own.

  Reaching out his hand, Hal rested his palm on the Beast’s shadowy head. No more words were spoken between them as the Beast submitted to Hal’s will, chaining its considerable power to Hal.

  At least until Hal overreached again and set it free.

  Hal was willing to accept that concession. He knew the Beast’s mind now and how he might deal with it in the future.

  Black veins crawled up Hal’s arm as the Beast diminished, absorbed by its new master. It would have plenty of time to ponder the meaning of strength. A newfound respect for Hal blossomed in the thing’s thoughts. In the end, the terrible loss was acceptable.

  Before it vanished completely, the Beast imparted one final thought to Hal.

  My name is Besal.

  * * *

  As Elora took another arrow from the quiver at her hip, Ashera tackled her. “No,” she cried again. “You’ll kill him!”

  Elora’s gray-blue eyes, hard as ice, looked back at her though tears stained her cheeks. “I know.”

  Mira, uncertain of what to do and wary of the Beast, stood on the sidelines using her a battered spear like a crutch. In the chaos, Vorax rushed up to Hal and waved its pseudopods in the air threateningly at the three companions, clearly defending Hal.

  Teeth, gleaming silvery things as wide as Ashera’s palm, sprouted all along the edges of the treasure chest’s lid, forming a formidable mouth.

  “Stop, just stop and look, will you!” Ashera released her grip on Elora and jabbed the air with her free hand.

  Elora saw the same thing Ashera did.

  The arrow’s explosion brought the Beast to its knees, its eyes shut in pain. Though Ashera believed it was the internal struggle, not the arrow, that caused it to fall silent.

  But that wasn’t what held the Sin Keeper’s attention. It was the waves of rippling mana emanating from the black shadow-clad body.

  What was once entirely ruby red began to fill with sapphire blue waves. Slowly, the red was displaced by the blue.

  Though Ashera counted herself an optimist, she couldn’t suppress the spike of surprise – or the surge of joy that followed – when the Beast opened its eyes once more, revealing sapphire blue glowing eyes.

  Every last trace of red vanished from his body.

  Hal rose unsteadily to his feet. Ashera was certain it was now Hal in control, not the Beast. Only Vorax seemed to have known all along that Hal would prevail.

  Still covered in the black oily shadow, Hal looked at his arm curiously as if it was somebody else’s. Ashera guessed it would feel like it was. Glowing light rippled out from the shadow covering his skin.

  Brilliant light engulfed his fingertips, burning away the shadow in thick flakes of ash that rose up on unseen currents and vanished. The light turned Hal’s hand into a beacon that slowly crept up his arm and engulfed his entire body.

  In one flash of brilliance, the shadow was burned from his body, leaving Hal just as he had been. Dark brown eyes replaced the Beast’s burning reds once more.

  Ashera ran to Hal. His HP was in the single digits.

  * * *

  Somehow, he won. The coruscating light that engulfed his body faded, leaving unblemished skin behind.

  Hal noticed Vorax then, waving his purple pseudopods in front of Hal. He sent soothing images to the mimic, calming the creature and turning it around to face him.

  Hal dropped to a knee from the sudden weakness that stole over every inch of his body. He draped an arm over the mimic. Its vicious façade fell away instantly.

  “I’m okay little buddy,” he whispered to Vorax. “I’m okay.”

  The mimic imparted its own mental barrage of shoving golden gauntlets, gem-encrusted sallets, and mythril-engraved shields onto Hal’s plate; the mimic’s idea of a feast fit for a king.

  Hal wasn’t sure whether the perceptive mimic wanted to reward him for winning his internal struggle, or it thought a feast would help bolster Hal’s 5 HP.

  Before Hal could collapse, Ashera was there at his side, and surprisingly so was Elora. They gently laid him on the ground. Though Vorax allowed Elora close, he still seemed distrustful of the women and wouldn’t leave Hal’s side.

  “Ease him back down,” Ashera commanded.

  Hal shut his eyes and somebody slapped his face. “Keep those eyes open,” Elora said, her own were bloodshot and watery. Was she crying? “I need you to stay awake, Hal.”

  He nodded, more in understanding than agreement.

  Struggling against the strength that leeched out of his body with every passing second, Hal reached out to the Wortling to draw on its HP with Assimilation only to realize he couldn’t.

  The Wortling was gone. It was no longer under his control.

  71

  “Where’s the Wortling?” Hal managed to ask as Ashera fed him a potion.

  The Sin Keeper looked around but hardly seemed concerned.

  “Just drink the potion,” Elora pleaded. Hal turned his weary gaze her way and she looked away, unable to meet his gaze.

  It should have been completely immobile. Unless it was controlled by something else. Hal expected that the Dominate sigil would give him some warning. Maybe it would have if he hadn’t been entirely devoted to the task of killing himself.

  A feat, ironically, he intended to do through the use of the Dominate sigil. The only explanation was that, during their merging, the connection was severed somehow. He was still dumbfounded that he was alive.

  His friends saved him. And then somehow managed to ignore the very clear and present danger of his transformation, affording him the time to wrest control back from Besal. From the Beast.

  He was still there. In the back of his mind, pacing. No longer an instinctive urging, Besal was apart from Hal. His own entity.

  The feeling scared Hal more than a little.

  “Is everything okay now?” Mira asked. She used her spear like a walking stick to make her way over, favoring her left leg. Her right had large gashes in the supple armor that were stained bright red.

  Hal nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “For everything….” He wanted to say more. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  Before he could get another word out, Ashera laid a hand on his shoulder. “Nobody blames you, Hal. If not for you, Mira and Elora might not have made it. There were well over a dozen of those creatures out there. I saw you fight them off. Or… I guess I saw the Beast fight them off.” She shrugged as if the difference was minimal and it strangely made Hal feel better. “Because of you, I was able to heal them. Combined with the Health Potions you helped me brew, I was able to bring them to a stable condition.”

  “Yeah,” Mira said, leaning heavily on her spear shaft. “Thanks for that, Hal. I didn’t know you dabbled in the crafting arts but I’m certainly glad you did.”

  Ashera looked over to Elora on the other side of Hal and nodded. Together they lifted the battered and bruised man to his feet and
supported him as they walked back to the tunnel.

  Vorax hovered - rather, he hopped and scooted his boxy frame around - about like a mother hen the entire way.

  It felt odd not to command the Wortlings to flank them. In so short a time they had become like a second limb to him.

  At least I have the two limbs that can be replanted, he thought. It was a consoling thought. Especially if he could ally himself with the creatures and not force his will upon them.

  But that was for the future.

  Back inside the tall worked stone hallway, Hal breathed a little easier. Until he noticed the crack. The tunnel he drilled created large splintering cracks in the stone of the halls. It ran in every direction in a radial spiral moving outward from the hole.

  One, in particular, was nearly a handspan wide. It wrapped around the top of the hall and out of sight back the way they originally came.

  Noth drifted above him like a guardian angel. “How many more times do you plan on cheating Death out of his due, Hal?”

  Hal chuckled and barely had enough energy to shrug his shoulders. Ashera and Elora set him down so his back rested against the wall. The Sin Keeper eyed the Reaper and then bent back toward Hal.

  She infused him with what was left of her own magic. It was enough to stabilize him, and with the sickly sweet [Health Potion] - notably tasting like blue cotton candy, from the [Witherroot] - he was in no danger of dying.

  No more danger than usual, at least.

  Mira took out another [Health Potion] and with a nod of approval from Ashera, downed it in one. “We’re going to need to rest, ya? Let’s see if I can’t find a more defensible position.” With that, the Dragoon limped off down the hall and out of sight.

  In the end, Mira found a decent-sized room that they could camp in. It even had some cushioned seats they could throw on the floor.

  Hal properly introduced Elora and Mira to Vorax. They were both clearly hesitant to approach the mimic, considering their last encounter with him was less-than-ideal.