Irwin spun around to see a dozen large Shadow Oculithar flying among a fleet of ships, chasing after them while appearing and disappearing as they moved through the shadow realm. Dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller ones were flitting about. The ships had flown apart from each other, like a flock of birds when a predator appeared in their midst. On the distant ground below the harbor, multiple ships had crashed, now swarming with smaller Oculithar. Some were carrying bodies, and Irwin felt only a tiny relief that none retained heat signatures or soulforce resonances.
If any had survived when the ship crashed, they were dead now.
Dammit, we really need to get rid of these things, Irwin thought as he looked up and around.
In the distance, a trio of Shadow Oculithar had caught a ship each, and they were wrapped around the brightly burning barriers.
He almost missed the soft groan from behind him, and he turned just to see the Ignizian teleporter collapse on the ground, eyes rolled up in her head.
Irwin jumped forward, putting a hand on her, only to find she was still alive but unconscious. He quickly pulled her into his soulscape, moving her beside Scintilla and the others for help before searching for Greldo. It took him long seconds to find his friend in the mess. Coal was what drew his attention, as he saw one of the Oculithar being swarmed by the hound’s shadow clones, ripping chunks out of tentacles. Greldo was nearby, dashing out of the shadow realm’s depths and slashing the tentacled monster. Dahlia and Gloom were both moving around with him, but those two sometimes disappeared entirely when a tentacle threatened to reach them.
Probably pulled into Greldo’s shadow realm, Irwin thought. He was about to shoot forward and bring out his giant body when Ambraz shouted to him.
‘Kid, look at that Oculithar’s soulforce… part of it is being drained!’
Irwin let his soulforce senses flow out and was nearly overwhelmed by the chaotic, nasty soulforce that emanated from the Shadow Oculithar. He clenched his jaws and ignored it, focusing on the one Greldo was fighting. His friend’s dark blade slashed the demonic entity’s tentacle in the same spot Greldo had hit before, clearly trying to chop it off. Irwin frowned as he sensed something, focusing more. He only noticed three slashes later what Ambraz had said.
With each strike of Greldo, a tiny amount of the Oculithar’s soulforce was drained.
‘Is he absorbing the soulforce of those things?’
‘Not sure if it's him or his blade,’ Ambraz said. ‘And it’s a specific part of the Oculithar. The shadow soulforce it has, probably. Whatever it is, Greldo isn’t growing stronger from what I see.’
Irwin scanned his friend for a moment before deciding he would have to find out later. Another Oculithar had just appeared, and not all of the ship barriers were holding.
‘Remind me later,’ he grunted as he clicked his tongue and shot up towards the nearest Oculithar.
He reappeared in his giantself while letting his aura ripple outward as he zoomed in on the first Shadow Oculithar. He clicked his tongue again, and the next moment, he appeared beside one of the Shadow Oculithar wrapped around a ship.
Irwin summoned his Volcano Gauntlets as he reached out and grabbed two of the tentacles. Pulling them taut, he almost felt the Oculithar’s attention focus on him. It released the ship and reached out.
Not happening, Irwin thought as he kicked himself away from the barrier of the ship, hoping it would hold. It did, and he managed to yank the Oculithar down with him. He caught a glimpse of the Ignitzians on the deck, who had clearly been feeding soulforce into the barrier, then he tumbled down, the Oculithar’s other tentacles trying to wrap around him. He triggered his explosive growth, going from over twenty feet to much, much bigger. The tentacles that had been encircling him suddenly only wrapped around his wrists. Irwin opened his hand, clenched it around the central part of the Oculithar, and squeezed.
A wet plop was followed by liquid dripping through his gauntletted fingers. As it did, he noticed a reaction from the Oculithar. The bigger ones released the ships they had and shot away and into the shadow realm. The smaller ones, however, seemed confused. Some shot down after the blood and gore of the dead Oculithar that had begun raining down on the side of a crashed ship. Others flew towards him like a flock of insects.
Irwin hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should chase the bigger ones or send Luath after them. Then the swarm reached him, moments before he would reach the ground.
I’ll find them later, let's kill these first, he decided as he pulled on his flame, and a wave of fire bloomed out from him.
--
Edricila Flowigniter stood on the deck of her family’s last remaining ship, not sure if she believed what she’d seen.
“I guess they found him in time,” she muttered to nobody in particular.
Most of her crew was either below deck, wounded, or at the back feeding soulforce into the barrier. The long tentacles that had been squishing the life out of their barrier had vanished just in time, and she glanced to the side where the monstrous thing vanished into the shadows.
Yeah, now you flee, she thought with a snort before focusing back on the giant cardsmith that had just squished one of the Shadow Oculithar.
The cloud of smaller Oculithar that had been responsible for gruesomely killing far too many of her sisters swarmed towards the man, and she tugged her braid harder than usual. The smoke that flitted out gave her a faint idea of the surroundings, but she ignored it. The number of ten-foot Oculithar would be enough to eventually swarm most small fleets, and to him they might look like insects, but she knew a cloud of insects could kill her.
Come on, dodge, she thought. They might try to enter your airways, and-
A flare of light erupted from the cardsmith, and for a moment, she thought a sun had appeared in the Portal Gallery. Then the fire raged outwards, rippling over the thousands of small Oculithar, which just vanished as if evaporated. Not surprisingly, she knew, as she felt the power of the primordial flame that now pulsed before her.
It lasted for only a moment, but besides appearing to have evaporated the Oculithar, the cold that always lingered in this wretched place faded.
A soft groan came from behind her, and she looked back to see one of her youngest blademaidens with one knee on the ground and her head in her hands.
What… oh right, she was supposed to hit her second puberty soon.
“Get her below deck, and if she tries anything, tie her up!” she shouted.
Her blademaidens—crew, she reminded herself—jolted into movement and within a few moments the young woman was dragged below deck. The fire had vanished by then, but Edricila knew it would be days until the young blademaiden had flushed the desire from her system.
Almost a shame I couldn’t feel that, she thought as she stared at where the giant smith had been.
--
Greldo shot after the stupid thing he’d removed only a single tentacle from. It, and three others, were moving in a straight line away from Igniz, and they had been for hours now. At the speed they were going, he had almost no idea where they were. Luckily for him, both Coal and Gloom would be able to track back their dash through the ever-narrowing corridors of the fringes east of Igniz.
He knew little of this region, except that there were supposedly no Exit Portals this way. Just narrow corridors that kept shrinking until even a sloop couldn’t move through. They had probably been scouted by other shadewalkers in the distant past, but the map had said they all led to dead ends.
Which makes me wonder where these things are going, he thought.
More time passed, and he was starting to worry if they shouldn’t just return. A regular ship would have probably needed a month to get this far, if it could even move through the tight corridor. Part of him knew that even another shadewalker would have needed a week.
And Gloom has been slowing down slightly…
As if sensing his thoughts, worry and uncertainty bubbled up from his connection with Coal. It wasn’t for the first time.
‘Yes, I know, but we need to find out where they are coming from,’ Greldo said. ’It’s not just deep in the shadowrealm, they actually appear to be coming… from … ah…”
He fell quiet and slowed down while slipping slightly deeper into the shadowrealm. Gloom pushed up against him, following along in the slight wake he was creating. He’d been constantly trying to sense what was ahead, and besides the three Shadow Oculithar, he’d only felt a vast sea of nothingness. Now, on the fringes far away, he felt more Shadow Oculithar start to appear. A few dozen, then more, and as he continued forward, he sensed a tangled mass of Shadow Oculithar. They were massed together both within a slightly wider area of the Portal Gallery, almost like a small branch, and from the upper layers all the way down into the shadowrealm.
Greldo was a lot deeper, though, and in some way, he felt like he was looking up from below at them.
A gentle prod from Gloom made him pull the Elder Nyzir into his shadow pocket.
I guess he wants to talk about that, Greldo thought as he stopped moving forward and focused on a distant group of large Shadow Oculithar, which were circling…
By Gelwin’s Balls, that thing is big, Greldo thought, not even able to laugh at his own wordplay.
A single tentacle reaching out from so deep within the shadow realm that even he couldn’t see where it came from. He’d have to follow it to see if it was attached to anything still, but somehow… he doubted it. It wasn’t moving, and the two largest Shadow Oculithar were constantly feeding and keeping the smaller ones at bay. Chunks of the shadow realm-infused flesh constantly drifted up from where they were busy, and each time they did, they were snapped up by the next Shadow Oculithar’s up. A clear hierarchy had formed, purely based on size, and three he’d been following weren’t even halfway near the top. Or was that the bottom?
‘Keep a shadow clone here, but don’t move any closer,’ he told Coal.
A slight acknowledgment came back, and he sensed one of Coal's clones appear and hover where he was.
Well, I’m glad I brought my own big guy, he thought, stepping into his shadow realm.
He appeared in the middle of his manor, where Dahlia, Irwin, and Scintilla were listening to Gloom.
“- chunk of the ancient…. Ah, my Lord, did you sense it?!” Gloom said, looking at him with a gleam that was almost creepy.
Greldo hadn’t seen Gloom this enthusiastic since he’d learned that Greldo was a successor to become a shadowlord, something Greldo had mostly tried to ignore. This, however, was becoming more difficult now that Dahlia had learned to craft a shadow-typed cardseed and kept reminding him that she would soon be able to craft both of them more ruby-ranked shadow-typed cards.
For some reason, she seemed far more interested in the whole ‘shadowlord’ thing than he was.
“Sense what?” Greldo asked. “The giant, probably ripped-off tentacle that is floating up from somewhere so deep I don’t even want to go there?”
He wanted to scold him for calling him Lord, but didn’t bother. It wasn’t like the Nyzir would be able to with how hyped he seemed to be.
“No, my Lord! There is a chunk of the ancient shadow realm deep down there!”
Greldo frowned as he pushed his senses out of his shadow pocket and into the depths. His senses were far more sensitive than Gloom’s. Had he missed something?
“It’s the warmth,” Gloom said, his eyes distant. “Did you notice the vegetation? It is a stronger version of what that feels like.”
Greldo hadn’t even noticed the vegetation, but as he finally stopped focusing on the giant tentacle, he saw what Gloom meant. Long, thin leaves grew out of the depths of the shadowrealm, every part staying away from the tentacle. The warmth Gloom mentioned was also there, but he’d barely noticed because he knew it. It was the same sensation his own shadow pocket had ever since he’d gotten the plants and fishes.
As he thought about that, he inadvertently glanced at his own shadow pocket. The number of fish seemed to have tripled since last time he checked, and while he watched, he saw more trickle in from all around.
Remembering what Gloom just said, he focused on the depths below the tentacle, and this time, he immediately felt it. A powerful sense of warmth. It wasn’t heat exactly, but like a cross between a pleasant memory and sitting near a hearth fire.
Greldo felt a desire to dash down towards it, and he had to forcefully sit down.
How didn’t I notice this right away?
“My Lord, you need to get down there! If you can claim it… absorb it, you might improve your soulskill!”
“Wait, what?” Irwin asked, sounding as confused as Greldo suddenly felt.
“The amount of shadow soulforce within that chunk is more than I’ve seen in all but one place since the realm shattered,” Gloom said, staring at Greldo with what he felt was way too much manic delight.
“Only your current shadow pocket is anywhere close to it, My Lord, and-”
“Yes, yes,” Greldo snapped, losing his patience with the constant ‘my lord’ and bowing and scraping. “What did you mean when you said, improve my soulskill?”
Gloom blinked, opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head, seemingly trying to get a grip.
Greldo let him, hoping he would succeed.
A moment later, Gloom’s eyes lost some of the manic gleam, and he took a deep breath.
“Lo… I mean, Captain,” he said, his oily voice weary. “Before Yzir'a was destroyed, those who controlled the powerful areas grew stronger because of it. It was one of the main sources of war. The remnants below? They have to hold one of those, or they would have long since dispersed into the ever-growing shadowrealm depths. If you can go there and reach whatever shadowy soulforce source is keeping it intact, it will most likely be drawn into your shadow pocket because that is more stable. As soon as it does, you can use it to empower your abilities. As you use it, your skill will grow stronger over time. Well… that is how it worked for my ancestors, but you have a card… and…” Gloom frowned in confusion.
Greldo stared at the Nyzir, not sure what to say.
“A growth element,” Irwin said, sounding amazed.
“Oh, right,” Dahlia said, leaning back.
“Like your first card?” Scintilla asked.
Greldo looked between them before, raising his eyebrow. He knew about Growth cards, but not the details, and he’d never heard of something like this on a skilled.
“You know what he is talking about?”
“Not exactly,” Irwin said, his fingers tapping on the table softly. “ But you know that some cards have the growth type. Well, you know how it increased my first card from Diamond up to Ammolite. That’s not something most people know, and this sounds a bit similar, doesn’t it?”
Greldo hesitated before turning to Gloom.
“So, having whatever is holding that chunk of the ancient realm together might make my cards a higher rank?” Greldo asked. “I thought cards didn’t change after they became soulcards.”
Irwin shrugged. “That’s what they said, but I already increased the rank of one of them while it was part of a heartcard. That’s not supposed to happen either, right? Now, I don’t think it is easy, but with everything we have learned, including things about worldcards? I wouldn’t be surprised if we just found a way to improve your existing soulcard…”
A flash came from his shoulder as Ambraz appeared, snorting as soon as he did.
“You little brats,” he snapped, causing Juul’rish to let out a soft giggle. “You are forgetting what is actually important. It’s the soulscape, remember? It’s what powers the soulcards, and its stability and soulforce generation and capacity are what determine if you can get a worldcard.”
Greldo saw Irwin’s eyebrows shoot up, while Dahlia hissed as if she instantly knew what the Ganvil meant. Sadly, he didn’t.
“Right,” he said. “So?”
“So? So?! So it means that it might not strengthen your soulcard, but instead do something to your soulscape. It’s what Dahlia has been trying, right? A way to create a shadowcard to combine your shadow pocket with your soulscape.”
Ohhhh, like that, Greldo thought as he let out a soft whistle.
“So it might not increase my soulcard, but increase my soulscape as if I have a better soulcard? But that… doesn’t sound great. It means my soulcard isn’t stronger, but my soullake might increase in size, making it…”
He stopped talking, staring at Irwin.
“Which doesn’t matter because you can just fill my soullake,” he muttered. “Dammit.”
“Exactly,” Irwin said, rubbing his hands and seeming like he wanted to rush down into the shadow realm right now, even though he couldn’t. “If there’s a way to do this with shadow typed soulforce, there might also be ways to do it with other types. Like fire… or lightning-”
“Yes, or anything else,” Ambraz said. “But it's unlikely to find it, because either there are others knowing this, just like with the way you made a card over a hundred percent, or how we figured out we can destroy a card and recreate something new from it, and they are hiding it just like that. Or, more likely, it is that, and it is super rare.”
Greldo saw Irwin nod slowly, and the excitement died a bit.
“Right, that’s all well and good, but what about that big tentacle and the monsters feeding on it? If we want to get to that area, I need to dive deeper into the shadowrealm than I ever have, and they will definitely notice.”
“How big are they?” Irwin asked slowly.
“The biggest ones are about as big as I’ve ever seen you get,” Greldo said. “And then there are a few dozen half that size, a few hundred that are as big as the ones we chased off, and… I don’t even want to try to count the smaller ones.”
“Well, we will just need to kill them,” Irwin said. “They multiply too fast, and although it seems the biggest ones are holding the smaller ones back, they will spread and find more places to grow. We knew this already, and now we have another reason.”
“Are you sure you can defeat them?” Scintilla asked, looking at him with a slight worry.
“Probably. How big is that branch exactly?” Irwin asked, looking at Greldo.
Greldo hesitated as he tried to get a sense of scale from the branch they were in. It was a lot bigger than the narrow corridors they had passed through, but big enough? He almost stepped out to check when he thought about exactly where they were.
Right, best if he does it, he thought, holding back a grin.
“Not sure, let me bring you out so you can check,” he said.
“Are you two crazy?” Dahlia exclaimed, leaning forward. “You said there are two as big as Irwin! How do you even know if he can kill them?”
Before they could answer, she spun to Dahlia. “And you, shouldn’t you tell him to be careful?”
“He has multiple bodies,” Dahlia said with a shrug. “Worst thing that happens is that Greldo drags him into his shadow pocket and flees?”
“If he can,” Dahlia said, shaking her head. “Those things are fast. We had to deal with them for a long time when we moved here and after. Remember?”
Greldo nodded. “I remember,” he said, turning to look at Irwin, recalling how his friend had fought in the past and what he’d told him about the battle outside of Scour’s Exit Portal.
Right, we might be getting a bit ahead of ourselves, he thought, only to see Irwin smirk.
“Well, the area is probably small, and we should hope for that. Those Shadow Oculithar don’t really like my flame, and if it's small, I can fill the entire branch with flame,” he said as his grin widened. “They can’t flee, while Luath will have little issue with my flame. Between him and me, we should be fine.”
Greldo began nodding as he pictured the entire branch filled with flame.
“That just leaves how I get them all up there,” he said, scratching his chin.
“You two… are crazy,” Dahlia muttered.
Irwin turned to her and smiled wearily. “If we don’t stop these now, while I think I’ll be fine, what will happen as they keep eating? At some point, they will be too big for us to deal with, and they will simply wipe out anything here.”
Greldo saw the realization set into Dahlia’s eyes.
“Let’s check what Irwin thinks of the branch first,” he said, dragging himself and Irwin out of his shadow pocket.
--
Irwin appeared on rocky ground and instantly felt the freezing cold of a section of the Portal Gallery, far from any Exit Portal, pressing against him.
“Right,” he muttered, glancing to the side where he sensed Greldo. “Bit too cold for your furry hide?”
There was no reaction, and he just looked around. Three narrow corridors led away from a very small branch, but a branch nonetheless. Just under two hundred feet high and about ten times as wide, its existence actually confused him. A single check told him there was no unopened Exit Portal here, and the frost on the ground that was also slowly trying to grow on his leathery armor showed there wasn’t any nearby either.
Is it because of the shadowrealm chunk?
It made some sense, and he took a deep breath before switching his body for his giant one. Instantly, the entire branch seemed to shrink, and as he triggered his explosive growth, it shrank even more. He limited himself to eighty feet tall, which made it feel like he was in a low-ceilinged room.
“We are probably going to be fighting two Oculithar the same size as you, and a few dozen half that size,” he said, sensing Luath instantly hum aggressively.
“Great! Now?”
“In a minute,” Irwin said, grinning at the barely concealed wrath he felt from his summon. “Get ready.”
A battle song filled with images of Chaos Whales fighting Oculithar rippled through their connection as he looked around.
“Alright, try and lure them up here,” he said. “I won’t do anything until they arrive, so the smarter ones don’t flee. If we manage to get them all here, and none flee, you can go to the ancient chunk with Gloom.”
He sensed Greldo swirl around him twice before rapidly turning faint as if he was still there but also not. Irwin knew the shadowrealm was like an extra distance that he couldn’t see, and as Greldo went further in it, it was like he didn’t become smaller, but… less here. Then his friend just vanished.
I wonder how deep he has to go for my senses to lose him, Irwin thought.
Time passed, seconds turning to minutes, and he was slowly starting to worry when something massive appeared in his senses. One moment, nothing was there, then a faint, enormous outline appeared. It grew clearer rapidly, easily his size.
“Here they come! As soon as they are here, I’ll fill the branch with fire,” he said to Luath. “Jump in as soon as that happens, because we have to kill them before they can flee again.”
The battle song deepened, and Irwin heard a faint second, and then a third, as Sarha and then Min joined in. Irwin knew that Sarha couldn’t be brought here safely, due to being bound to the real universe, while Min was far too weak for it. Still, it seemed they were trying to help Luath.
Now, let’s get rid of some pests, he thought, cracking his shoulders as he summoned his gauntlets and prepared to blanket the branch in flame.
--
“I am sure, Lord Sjeeklin. My informant within Jieldenis main base has faked her death to get this information out. Mozarath has regained his mind and forcefully escaped from the forces of Jieldenin.”
Sjeeklin stared at Hymjani, not sure why the younger Guidar made it sound like she was owed something. It took him barely any effort to hide the desire he felt to get his hands on Mozarath, and instead, he frowned.
“Very well. Seeing as you are sure, you will be taking control of one of The Seventy.”
Sjeeklin saw Hymjani’s eyes widen, and he almost snapped. Instead, he held back his annoyance until it faded.
“Did you train your mental resistance in the Tension Hall as I said?”
“I did, Lord Sjeeklin!”
Then I will need to go and test exactly how poorly a job they are doing there, he thought.
“Good. You will continue this after you return. You should have plenty of time to reach the Langost branch. If you are correct, and Mozarath moves through, you are to either capture him if the chance occurs, or lock the ship’s skills on him so we can keep track. In this case, you are to keep following him without his knowledge. Understood?”
This time, Hymjani seemed to be able to contain her worry, and she just nodded.
Sjeeklin turned to the large runic wall. Two older Guidar, well compared to Hymjani, stood before it, their hands flickering across it rapidly.
“Have one of the free Seventy ready for Hymjani. I expect them to leave within the hour.”
“Yes, Lord Sjeeklin!”
Sjeeklin barely checked. He knew some of the younger members of his species thought that The Seventy were something impressive, but in reality, they were seventy spyships that were not good enough for either him or the other eldest.
I’ll have to get a few more made in case some get destroyed, he decided as he ignored Hymjani walking away.
His thoughts focused on Mozarath, one of the most ancient of their kind. From what he knew, the man had been among those to first arrive here, though details were scarce. What he did know was that the last time he had been active, he had been The Arbiter, just like he was, and he’d been the one who had found a way to chain the Shaidin. He had vanished shortly after, but not before Sjeeklin had learned something.
I will figure out how you did it… before anyone even knows you did, he thought, hiding his turmoil.