by Aaron Oster
What the…?
Looking down at himself, he could see that it wasn’t only his hands, but his entire body. At least he now knew what was giving off the horrible stench, but what the hell had happened? How had he gotten here, and more importantly, where was here? The last thing he remembered, was Simon’s ambush, then…
“Sarah!” Morgan shouted, springing to his feet and looking around wildly.
“Whoa! Easy there. The lovely Lady Sarah is quite alright, no thanks to you, I might add.”
Morgan turned warily, and saw both Gold and Samuel standing there. The former had a chipper smile on his face, and the latter was scowling.
“Can either of you explain what happened here?” Morgan asked, motioning to the destruction around him. “Why the hell do I look like I took a bath in someone’s innards, and where the hell is Sarah?”
His voice was deceptively calm, but he could feel his anger boiling just under the surface.
“Sarah in on her way here with Princess Katherine,” Gold said. “Though I suppose it would be Queen Katherine now, since you did kill her father.”
“I what?! How?” Morgan asked. “Shouldn’t I be dead?”
The last thing he remembered was Edmund’s foot descending on his head. By all rights there was no way he should be alive.
“Now, as for your first question,” Gold said, turning and speaking to Samuel. “Do you want to tell him, or should I?”
“You can’t tell him even if you wanted to,” Samuel said with a snort. “So I don’t think I’ll be answering that question.”
“Now, Morgan, why don’t we make a deal…”
Morgan ignored the man, turning to Gold.
“Tell me what?”
“Don’t ignore a god when he is addressing you, boy!” Samuel thundered.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Morgan said, turning to face the man and giving him his full attention. “I was under the impression that you already knew how I felt about you, so screw off before I decide to kill you.”
Morgan wasn’t sure where all this bravado was coming from. He had no idea how powerful Samuel was. Even with his Aura sense active, he couldn’t sense so much as a spark of power from the god. It made sense. How could a mortal comprehend the powers of a god?
Samuel spluttered in indignation while Gold roared with laughter.
“That’s right! You tell him, kid!”
“How…dare…!” Samuel began, but Morgan didn’t let him finish, using Goldfire barrage and summoning six violet fireballs.
“You can say or do whatever the hell you want, but until you tell me the truth, I’m not interested in hearing anything you have to say.”
Samuel’s fists clenched at his sides.
“I know I’ve threatened you before, but mark my words, Morgan. You will regret this.”
And with that pointless threat out of the way, he vanished, leaving the two of them standing alone.
“So, are you going to explain, or do I have to give you the same treatment as Samuel?” Morgan asked, turning his attention back to Gold and raising his hand to launch the fireballs at him.
“Whoa, don’t shoot!” Gold said, holding his hands up in surrender. “Though I can’t exactly tell you what you want to know, the information is buried inside your memories. And since you are going to get them back eventually, I can…help them along.”
“And these memories will answer my questions?” Morgan asked, watching the man carefully.
“They should answer most of them.”
“Fine,” he replied, relaxing and allowing the fireballs to fade. “But can you at least tell me why you are doing what you are? Samuel has his reasons, but you must have your own. So why are you helping me, and what you hoping to gain from it?”
“All excellent questions, and all of which I will answer once you regain consciousness.”
“Wait!” Morgan cried out, just before Gold tapped him on the forehead, and pain lanced through his head as he slumped to the ground.
***
The first memory he could recall was floating in a large glass sphere of some sort of liquid. A strange mask was strapped to the lower part of his face, allowing air to reach him. Shapes moved around outside his little bubble, but his eyes were not yet strong enough to see anything in great detail. He shifted around in the liquid, feeling it tickle at his skin, and wondered what the world was like outside his bubble. There was no liquid out there, after all, so how did anyone manage to move around?
Two figures walked up to his sphere then, both looking distinctly different, yet the same. They had the same coloration and general features. Where they differed, however, were in the lines of their bodies and in the shapes of their faces. Even the strange strands emerging from the tops of their heads were different.
“How’s he looking?” the one with short hair and a deeper sounding voice, asked.
“He’s been progressing nicely,” the other one answered. “However, it’s still far too early to say for certain how he’ll turn out.”
The other figure nodded, moving a strange cylindrical device across a flat piece of brown material, covered in a white sheet.
“We’ll keep tabs on him for now, and see how he’s developing in a few weeks.”
The two figures moved away then, leaving him to himself.
Over the next few weeks, the two figures visited many more times, each time making some new comment about his growth. He learned many things over their visits. For example, the two creatures were both the same race, however one was a male, and the other was a female.
He had yet to distinguish the differences between the two, other than the obvious, but it made it easier to know all the same. Yet another strange quirk of the two were the names that they used, and by careful observation he learned the names of these two. The man was named Samuel, and the woman, Loquin, though they did call each other different variations of these names from time to time.
As the weeks passed, he began to notice something strange happening to him as well. Small appendages began forming from his mass, shaping themselves into the general shape of the two humans. They seemed pleased with this, as they started visiting more often. Never did they try and converse with him, though, and he soon began to grow bored.
One day, as he was floating in the liquid, he suddenly became aware of something forming at the center of his chest. His body now had a much more human shape, though he was much smaller than the others he’d seen so far. Focusing inward, he saw a small round sphere, much like the one he was living in, however this sphere did not contain a smaller version of him. Rather, a pretty violet light swirled around inside.
Fascinated by the pretty lights, he tried to reach in and touch it with his mind. To his delight, it responded, slowly funneling out of the small sphere and forming in the liquid before him. He reached up slowly, extending a single finger to touch it, when a loud, blaring sound made him lose control of it.
The light vanished in an instant, leaving him feeling sad once again. The people outside the sphere began running around, yelling and screaming incoherently. He wondered what had gotten them so worked up, when Samuel and Loquin came running up to his sphere, their faces dripping wet for some reason.
“What happened here?” Samuel demanded, grabbing one of the passing men.
“It started using reiki! You better do something before that monster kills us all!”
The man tore himself away from Samuel and ran away, screaming about monsters.
“Do you really think he was using reiki already?” Loquin asked, eyeing him fearfully. “That would be completely unprecedented! We haven’t even had the chance to inject the controller yet! What do we do?”
Samuel’s face hardened, and he let out a long sigh.
“Shut it down. We thought that mixing in some human DNA would make it more susceptible to control, but if he’s already using reiki, it’s too late.”
Loquin’s face paled.
“Are you sure? That’s months of work in t
he garbage. We’ll have to start over from scratch!”
“No, not from scratch. He’s given us plenty of data. I’m sure the next batch will be perfect. I think I may have a solution to stop them from accessing reiki so soon.”
“Very well. How would you like me to dispose of it?”
“We don’t have the energy required for disintegration, and anything less would leave it alive…”
Samuel rubbed at his chin, while he thought.
“Seal it in room fifteen. Then we’re closing this place down. We’ll bury it and move a city on top. That should stop anyone from digging it up.”
Loquin nodded, then the two of them quickly left.
He sat in his sphere, wondering what they were talking about, but was surprised when they returned just a few minutes later. Loquin was holding a long tube, and stuck it into one of the holes, filled in by a strange, springy material. He wasn’t alarmed when a strange black substance entered through the pipe.
They had inserted many pipes in the last few months, each pumping various colored liquids. Each one had tasted different though, and some had even accelerated his growth. So he understandably, stretched out a hand to absorb the liquid. As soon as his fingers touched it, he felt his mind grow fuzzy. What was happening to him? He’d never slept before, so the sensation was unfamiliar, and he began to panic.
Instinctively, he reached for the glowing purple sphere at his center and tried to use the light to help him. There was a loud crack, and a line spread over his glass sphere.
“Samuel! He’s breaking free!” Loquin called out in a slightly panicked voice.
“Don’t worry, the sedative should already be working to shut his systems down.”
Even as he spoke, the violet light faded.
He stared out as the two figures grew more and more hazy. Finally, sensation fled and blackness claimed him.
He was rudely awakened from his slumber by a loud crashing sound from above his head. He stirred, blinking his eyes open and staring up at the glaring golden light from the sky above.
What was going on?
He was in a small steel-lined room, surrounded on all sides by spheres just like his, except they were all empty. A flash of light from up above got his attention, and he peered upward once more. Brilliant lights colored the space he could see through the massive rent in the ceiling.
The steel looked as though it had been torn off by a massive pair of claws, leaving the small room exposed to the elements. He could feel the small sphere of purple light inside his chest reacting to the golden light above and he tried to move closer to the light, but found his way blocked by the glass of the sphere.
Pressing his small hand against the glass, he pushed with all his might, and found, surprisingly enough, that the glass gave way immediately, shattering and sending a spray of liquid gushing out over the floor in all directions.
He stumbled, feeling the air on his skin for the first time. He would have been afraid, but the pretty flashing light over his head called to him. Pulling the mask from his face, he moved forward, dropping to the ground and wobbling closer to the opening in the ceiling. He could see the golden light collecting up above, whirling around in a funnel shape and gathering right above him, lightning forking off of it every few seconds.
He moved closer, until he was standing directly below the pretty light, and stared up at it, stretching out his fingers and allowing violet light to play over them. The golden light in the sky responded in an instant, as though drawn right to him. There was a bright flash of light…then he was standing out in the middle of a sea of sand…
57
Morgan rose with a gasp, heart pounding hard as the revelation hit him all at once. His eyes flicked up to Gold, who was still standing there, looking as though he didn’t have a care in the world.
“All finished, are we?”
Morgan nodded, rising slowly to his feet, and looking down at himself in a whole new light.
“I take it that answered most of your questions involving your past?”
Morgan nodded again, swallowing hard before asking the single most important question plaguing his mind.
“Am I one of the Pinnacle Kings?”
Gold’s grin widened, but he shook his head.
“A good guess, but no, you are not one of the Pinnacle Kings.”
Morgan was about to breathe a sigh of relief, when Gold continued his thought.
“I believe the accurate title would be: Beast King.”
“Beast King?” Morgan asked, not sure if he wanted to hear the answer.
“Why, yes. You were the original, after all. The one they used to create the five Pinnacle Kings, so it would only make sense.”
“How can I be a beast, though?” Morgan asked, gesturing down at himself. “I look completely human. I feel completely human. It shouldn’t be possible!”
“And yet it is!” Gold said excitedly. “You see, Samuel was developing the Pinnacle Kings long before he started building this world. However, it took him quite a few tries to even create a successful living creature. He thought you would be easier to control if they injected you with human genes. Instead, it had the opposite effect, making you far too powerful to control. So, they locked you up and threw away the key.”
The longer Gold spoke, the angrier Morgan found he was becoming. It wasn’t bad enough that Samuel had locked him away to rot for all eternity, but when he’d finally woken up, he’d decided to try and control him anyway? To Morgan, Samuel was the worst type of person, the one who treated others as objects to do with as he pleased. He’d been running across people like that all his life- or at least, the parts of his life that Samuel had allowed him to remember.
Then again, this could all be a trick on Gold’s part. The man had proven himself untrustworthy on so many counts that he really couldn’t be sure.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” he finally asked, giving Gold a challenging glare.
“Oh, that part is easy enough to prove. Just open your status.”
“What does my status have to do with anything?”
“It will have all the answers I can’t give you about yourself, and about how you managed to singlehandedly wreck an entire war camp and kill a super that should have been way out of your league.”
Morgan gave Gold another suspicious look, before shrugging to himself. If Gold was lying, the answer would be obvious as soon as he opened his status. So what was the harm? Concentrating inwardly, Morgan threaded a small flow of reiki up to his eyes, and his status screen flashed into view.
Name: Morgan
Intermediate Supermage: Rank - 37
Energy to next rank - 102,544/750,000
Ability Advancement: 2,821/5,000,000
Total Available AP: 80
Ability - Natural Disaster
RP - 2,730/2,730 (Regen - 27.6 per second)
Strength - 262
Agility - 343
Constitution - 266
Intelligence - 273
Wisdom - 276
Skills - Supersonic flight, Explosive impact III, Stormforger, Goldfire barrage, Nature’s wrath, Restructure, Beast King’s Rampage
Traits - Dense body, Recovery, Aura sense (inherited), Aura flare (inherited), Body, Mind & Spirit (Inherited)
Extra - Gravity storm (3rd category), Starbreaker (2nd category), Collapsing star
Morgan noted several things that immediately stood out to him. For one, his rank had gone up by 4! And if that wasn’t enough, his available attribute points were higher than they should have been. He wondered if his advancement to the Intermediate stage in his ability had something to do with that. But what really stood out to him was the new skill.
Beast King’s Rampage - Unleash your bestial side, and let your power run wild. In this state you will have no control over yourself, and may have trouble remembering your actions during the time the skill is active.
Effect: All Attributes & Skills are increased by a factor of 5
> Morgan stared at the skill for a few long moments, trying to decipher its meaning. From what he could gather, this seemed to be a different version of the Rage of the God’s skill he’d lost when he’d combined his divine energy and reiki. But this one had the additional effect of allowing him use of his skills. The downside was plain to see, as he would have absolutely no control over what he did while in this state. There was also the fact that there seemed to be no way to come out of it.
He had a feeling that had it not been for Gold or Samuel, he’d still be stuck in that berserk state, not that he really knew what he looked like when he went into it. Judging by the crater he was standing in, and that he’d managed to kill an evolved super at the maximum rank, the skill’s potential for destruction was extreme. He could hardly imagine what it would be like if he ever made it to his maximum rank of 100. If he ever reached that goal, would it be possible to…
Shaking his head, Morgan closed his status and turned his attention back to Gold, who was still standing there impassively.
“It appears that the memories were correct, but it still makes no sense. Why was I trapped in the body of a six-year-old child if I’m supposed to be some all-powerful Beast King? And why was my ability not unlocked until I was nearly sixteen? And even after the ability was unlocked, I still had to train myself up before I could create reiki for the first time.”
Morgan rubbed at his temples, feeling a headache coming on.
“None of this makes any sense at all,” he repeated.
“Don’t worry yourself overmuch,” Gold answered. “You did absorb the Skyflare, so all those memories that have been locked away will show themselves eventually. And when they do, you’ll have all the answers you’ve been looking for.”
Morgan hadn’t expected an answer from the man, but he still gave him a sour look.
“Can you at least give me one straight answer?”
“Probably not, but you can feel free to ask,” Gold replied with a grin.
