Author note: >Innocent whistle< - What? Did you think I had forgotten her... that she was a part of the story that just served world building? No, no. I have those, and some things might get cut during the second pass, but she's important - well, sort off, and I am really happy we finally got to this part in the story. Been sitting on it for ages. Was supposed to be about 100 chapters, not 400 O_o
Right, what exactly is happening here? Irwin thought as he stared dumbly at the six… or was it seven, Oculithar that had completely bundled together in the middle of the small branch.
The tendrils were moving slowly at places, and if he didn’t know they reproduced with those spores, he would have thought they were doing that. He also didn’t think they were eating, as he’d seen that before, and this didn’t resemble that either. Far below them lay the ruins of what looked like a small town, stone walls and buildings crumbled.
He felt Greldo attempt to move him, and he allowed himself to be pulled into his friend’s shadow pocket.
“What in the blazes is happening there?” Greldo exclaimed as soon as they were standing in the quiet room of his mansion.
“I don’t know,” Irwin said, shaking his head.
They stared at each other when a shout came from a room further into the building.
“It’s me,” Greldo shouted back.
There was another shout, and a few moments later Dahlia appeared in the room, stepping out of the shadows.
Her otherself, Irwin thought as his eyes were drawn to the white band in her otherwise jet-black hair.
“Pescliz and Keirniz came in a few hours ago,” she said, drawing Irwin’s attention.
Greldo had told him about the two Slughir that had started following him, but he had yet to meet them. He was pretty sure that Daubutim would also be interested in seeing them, if only to get all the information they had about the Guidar, the worlds they knew, and the number of ships and fleet.
“According to them, that squid grew again, and it's been hanging around the giant crab a lot. They say it looks like they are talking…”
“Talking? I… dammit!”
Irwin grinned as he saw Greldo raise his arms in the air. His friend had made fun of his increasingly busy soulscape only hours ago.
“You seem surprised,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Didn’t you know that if you have any kind of land, things will show up to live there?”
“I… Fine. I deserved that,” Greldo said, barking a laugh while Dahlia looked between them, clearly confused.
“We need to take care of-” Greldo began, only for him to fall quiet and turn to the door. “Now what?”
The door was shoved open, and Irwin watched two bald women who perfectly fit the description of Slughir that Greldo had given him walk in. As soon as they saw Greldo, they dropped to their knees, lowering their head.
“Lord, the giant crab-” one of the two began, stuttering slightly.
“Oh, crap!” Greldo exclaimed, before vanishing from the spot.
Irwin stared at the spot he’d stood moments before, while the two Slughir remained kneeling on the ground. He glanced at Dahlia, then at the door.
“Don’t bother asking them to join us,” Dahlia said as she moved next to him. “Although they don’t fall unconscious when they see him anymore, being too close to him is still a bit too much.”
Irwin didn’t know what to say to that, and before he had to find an answer, Greldo reappeared.
“You have to see this!” his friend said, grabbing Irwin and Dahlia’s arms.
Irwin felt a stronger pull than normal, and he barely had to remove his resistance as he felt Greldo yank him through the shadows. It almost reminded him of a long time ago, when his friend had still been able to move him involuntarily.
Definitely stronger, he thought.
He didn’t have time to think about it more, as they reappeared in the previously calm branch, and he felt his eyes go wide. The clustered Oculithar had split apart, revealing an enormous portal with reddish lightning rippling around it. If not for the other thing happening, it would have drawn Irwin’s full attention. Instead, he stared at the enormous Crab that stood on the ground between the Oculithar. Four tentacles lay flailing on the ground infront of it, and before Irwin could even wonder how it had done so, it snapped at the Oculithar. Both of its claws turned into purplish black blurs that seemed to elongate.
Two screeches managed to drill even into the shadowrealm as two more tentacles thudded onto the rocky ground, and the Oculithar backed away even more.
We have to kill them before they try to flee, Irwin thought as he quickly examined the two corridors leading away. The Oculithar still showed no indication of fleeing, but how many tentacles could they lose until they did?
He hesitated only a moment, then pushed his soulforce gently against Greldo’s, which he knew his friend would sense. A pull came again, and a moment later, he stood back in the shadow mansion.
“We need to block those exits so they can’t flee,” he said. “Can you bring me to the one we used to get here, and help Lluath block the other one?”
As he said that, he suddenly wondered if his friend was strong enough for that. The Oculithar were gigantic, easily as big as the biggest of the shadow Oculithar he had fought, and although he knew he would be fine,
“Should be doable,” Greldo said. “If they manage to rush past me, we can just chase them. Are we going to discuss that big portal now… or?”
“I think it's a world portal,” Irwin said, while another part of him began warning Luath. “And let's deal with that after we manage to deal with the Oculithar. Also, you are sure that you are faster than they are?”
“Much,” Greldo said as he looked at Dahlia, whose mouth had fallen open.
“Don’t look at me,” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “I’m going to need two more soulcards before I even want to think about fighting with those things. I’ll stay here. Just… be careful?”
“I’m always careful,” Greldo said.
Irwin heard Dahlia snort right as he was pulled back into the shadows.
The situation outside hadn’t changed much, though one of the Oculithar had floated a lot further back, now lacking a third of its tentacles, while the Crab had begun using one of the smaller claws it had below its body to start stuffing one of the still flailing tentacles into its maw.
The world blurred by, and a moment later, he was ejected out a few hundred feet from the nearest Oculithar. Before even hitting the ground, Irwin changed his body into his giant one and triggered his growth.
The world around him seemed to sway and shrink until the Oculithar had become the size of a small cabin, while he felt a constant pressure and resonance from the giant portal. Easily ten times as high as the biggest one he’d ever seen before, he knew he could easily move through, even as big as he was now. He stared at it for a moment, wondering why it was there, and why the Oculithar had been wrapped around it.
‘Ready?’ he asked Luath, causing the Chaos Whale to hum with excitement.
Irwin stretched his aura outward, rippling across the Oculithar until he reached the other side, and a moment later, Luath appeared. The Chaos Whale had barely popped into existence when Greldo moved onto its back, while the Oculithar had frozen momentarily as Irwin’s aura passed over them.
A low, clicking rumble came from the Crab, and it blurred into motion, cutting off more tentacles, and Irwin completely expected the Oculithar to act. Attack, or flee in his or Greldo and Luath’s direction. Instead, they remained where they were, circling menacingly around the Crab and… doing absolutely nothing.
Irwin hesitated, then moved forward, his gauntlets appearing around his hands as he focused on the nearest of the Oculithar. There was barely any reaction to his movement, and only when he reached out and grabbed a tentacle did the Oculithar jerk into motion. As if it hadn’t even noticed him before, the thing spun around, tentacles spearing towards Irwin’s face.
Irwin summoned his flame like a shield infront of his face while he covered his gauntlet with it and yanked the Oculithar to the side.
It took him only a few minutes to rip the Oculithar apart, though he did notice the same thing he had when fighting the previous one a day prior. Unlike the shadowy Oculithar, the flesh of the regular ones was stronger and tougher, costing him greater effort to rip. Still, when he tossed the final chunks of it into his soulscape. He’d kept his attention on the others, and to his absolute surprise, they were still over there, making no indication of acting as they seemed, either focused on the crab or the giant portal.
“What is going on here?” he muttered, glancing at where Luath was hovering in the distance. He sensed the annoyance from the Chaos Whale and its desire to fight.
‘Just stay there for a while. We don’t know what is going to happen,’ Irwin said as he reached out towards the next Oculithar.
Half a dozen Oculithar later, it became clear that nothing would happen. Instead, he anticlimactically tossed the last of the ripped-apart Oculithar into his soulscape’s volcano, watching a few tentacles near the crab it was still chewing on.
He sensed something move through the shadow, and a moment later, Greldo appeared on his shoulder.
“So… what just happened?” his friend shouted, hands on his hips as he stared at the world portal.
“I have no idea,” Irwin rumbled as he focused on the Crab. “Think you can move those things into your shadowrealm sliver? That Crab will probably follow.”
Greldo didn’t respond, but Irwin felt the soulforce around them ripple, and a moment later the tentacles vanished, almost immediately followed by the crab. At the same time, Luath came flying towards them, and Irwin sighed.
“I am going to bring out my regular body,” he said, not waiting and doing just that.
A moment later, he reappeared, falling down, and he clicked his tongue. Moving through the soundwaves, he landed on Luath’s back with Greldo appearing almost immediately.
“Okay, the crab is back in my soulscape, and it and the other things are eating from those tentacles,” Greldo said, walking forward, eyes on the giant red portal.
A rumbling hum came from below their feet.
“I… know this thing,” Luath said, causing Irwin to look down in surprise.
Luath began humming louder, then began singing a complex song that Irwin could barely follow.
Something about monsters and fleeing?
--
Luath stared at the portal, listening to the chaotic song that oozed from it while the faint memories he was sensing grew ever stronger. He tried to convey as much of what he saw into his song so Irwin would hear it, but as the memories became clearer and sharper, it became harder to keep the song understandable.
Then a memory hit him like a frontal blow from Sarha while they played, and he felt how his own consciousness was shoved sideways.
One moment, he was hovering before the enormous portal; the next, he was flying through a nebula, the fearful humming from thousands of Chaos Whales echoing out from all around him. Although he knew he himself was still young, dozens of younglings huddled close to his flanks, trying not to be crushed by the mass of moving bodies.
Luath could sense the immense soulforce pressure all around him, while the tiny calves cried softly. It was hard to see or sense anything but other Chaos Whales, but ahead, he sensed and saw the leader, a heavily scarred, immense Chaos Whale with green scales covering its flanks. Somehow, he knew it was an ancient one, having been born not in the chaotic realm they were in now, but somewhere else.
He didn’t know how he suddenly knew that, but just as he knew about the ancient one, he knew that they were fleeing from something… dangerous. Something that was currently chasing them and was closing in.
Luath had no idea how long the memory of fleeing continued, but suddenly he burst out of the soulforce nebula into the vast darkness of the primordial space. Far away, a vast roiling mass of soulforce-clouds covered the horizon, and between that and them sat a giant portal, not unlike the one he and Irwin were hovering before. Although far away, it was clearly enormous, and he knew it was their goal.
Looking at the portal, he sensed an odd resonance through the ambient soulforce, which he only now realized was different from any he had felt before. Sharper but also simpler, the resonance it conveyed came from the portal, and it felt… unstable.
‘Hurry, before it closes.’
The deep voice echoed out from the ancient one, and Luath sensed the thousands of Chaos Whales around him speed up. Some were younglings like him, but most were calves, which were now almost being herded forward. The few adults that remained were flying back or hovering where they were, facing away from the portal. All had the green scales he’d seen on their leader, together with scars, missing eyes, and tails that were ripped to shreds.
Inevitable… Podmother, I will miss you…
The thought came unbidden and filled with emotions that Luath knew weren’t his own. They came from the one he was living the memories of, and they were projected towards one of the adults, a single-tailed one with long tears across her left side.
A howling screech caused a ripple through the super-pod as it shot towards the giant portal, and Luath shivered. He wanted to look back, but couldn’t as he was merely an observer of something that had happened many eons ago.
All he knew was that the one whose memories he was living through believed that none of the green-scales would survive, their life the price for the others to survive.
Time blurred, and the next thing he knew, he was at the portal, watching younglings and calves dash inside, vanishing as they hit the portal. The resonance echoing from it had become even more unstable, and it almost looked as if it were shrinking.
Luath’s view changed as the long-dead Chaos Whale turned to where it had come from, a strong desire to help… to resist… to see its podmother one final time.
The desire vanished to be replaced by fear at the sight of what lay behind them.
Thousands of pale white, tentacled monsters were swarming around the green-scaled Chaos Whales, biting and tearing. The Chaos Whales gave as good as they got, moving in fluid bursts of movements, devouring entire tentacled monsters in a single bite, while pulses of green energy burst from them, bouncing against the other chaos whales, growing brighter and faster with each bounce, until exploding in a flash of light, incinerating dozens of the tentacled monsters.
Those aren’t Oculithar, Luath thought, though he felt an almost primal fear and hatred towards the things.
‘Move, youngling!’
The chaos whale, of which Luath was reliving the memory, looked at the leader, who looked back with a single remaining eye on her left side.
‘Go! The portal will not remain much longer! Sing of us, and remember the enemy! Never forget!’
Luath felt another shiver run through him as an image accompanied the memory: a giant Oculithar-like being that pulsed with chaotic malevolence as it devoured everything in its path.
The portal ahead of him shrank, and he felt a pulse of deep sadness from the Chaos Whale he was with before it hit the portal.
The world changed into a streaking image of a corridor, while Chaos Whales far in the distance, and all around, were pulled forward at a speed beyond what they could reach when they flew. As they moved, they sang a deep, seemingly simple, resonating song. However, Luath heard and sensed a complexity hidden in the simplicity that made his mind boggle. It was on the level of what he had heard and sensed Irwin do on occasions when he tried something new that was at the outer limit of his ability. He also knew, instinctively as he had the other things, that without the song, the Chaos Whales would have died.
Powerful fluctuations echoed from the distant barriers, causing the thick, ambient soulforce within to shiver and roil, trying to tear everything apart.
Luath focused on the song, doing his best to remember it, knowing that Irwin would want to hear it.
He had no idea if it was the dream or if the portal was really moving them this fast, but the first of the Chaos Whales reached the end of the corridor in what felt like a few hours. By that time, he’d managed to memorize most of the song, though only because it almost seemed like he was remembering something instead of learning it.
As they hit the end, the corridor vanished, replaced by a calm, cold, and vast space. For a moment, the Chaos Whales' fear grew, and Luath’s with it, as the young yet long-dead being sensed the lack of soulforce.
Then its eight eyes locked onto a nebula that drifted like a gem in the distance. Luath knew that to the other, the colors were different and alien from what it was used to. In the Primal Chaos it had just come from, most things were green and purple. Here, the distant nebula was made of a deeper purple, a startling white, bright orange and yellow, and many fainter colors tracing through it.
Luath’s perspective shifted as the Chaos Whale followed the others, further away, before finally turning. When it did, Luath saw that the portal was shrinking rapidly. Only a quarter of the size before, a few Chaos Whales were still trickling out, but the shivering and rippling red lightning told Luath it wouldn’t be much longer.
As if to agree with him, the portal whisked out with a final flash of red light, causing a soft hum that had permeated everything up to that point to vanish.
‘Alone…’ another youngling cried.
The single singing voice was picked up within moments, and soon all of the younglings were singing as one. The song combined loneliness, sadness, and hope in a way that made Luath know that he would never forget it, not even if he tried. It was laced with memories of those who had been left behind, of those still fighting, those still dying, and the many who had cleared the path for them to be there. There was a knowledge that they were in a horrible situation, with none of the adults having survived, and only their knowledge now carried within them…
The song lasted for a long time, and as it finally stopped, the memory changed abruptly.
Luath was slowly flying forward, towards a distant web of tendril, glowing brightly in the darkness. He instinctively knew eons had passed from one moment to the next, and the Chaos Whale whose dreams he was seeing had gone from a youngling to the oldest living one in the group. A body covered with wounds, and a mind filled with memories, both happy and sad, it was at the head of a smaller pod of perhaps a hundred Chaos Whales.
The distant mass of tangled tendrils somehow seemed familiar, though he wasn’t sure why. Something about the resonance… even from this far away.
‘Old One, what is that?’
Luath blinked as the high singing voice came from behind, wishing he could see what was behind and around him.
‘A burgeoning Soulforce Web, young one,’ the ancient Chaos Whale hummed in a deep voice. ‘And hopefully, one that survives long enough to grow and provide us with sanctuary.’
The memory slipped away with a suddenness that left Luath stunned.
“Luath? Luath? Are you alright? What is happening?”
Luath blinked with all his eyes, sensing Irwin’s worry.
“I’m fine… it was just an ancestral memory,’ Luath sang, feeling odd. It was as if he was being pushed and held… was the dream not over?
“Good! Then please stop flying into that portal!”
Luath shuddered as the reality of where he was returned, and he realized he was being held by Irwin in his largest form, trying to hold him back as Irwin used both of his powerful tails and all of his soulforce to propel himself towards the giant red World Portal.
Luath stopped immediately, moving his head to the side.
He felt Irwin’s powerful hands very slowly retreat, though some worry remained.
“I am fine,” Luath said, moving away from the World Portal.
“Good…” Irwin said again, still remaining where he stood, between him and the portal. “What happened?”
“I think I just saw the ancestral memory of when my people came to this Portal Web,” Luath said, as he looked around, realizing why the tendrils had seemed so familiar. The soft, barely perceivable resonance he’d heard had been the same as the ambient soulforce within the Portal Gallery.
“I think… I need to try and tell you what I saw,” he said
--
More food!
The squid-like being shot forward, looking at two enormous tentacles that had suddenly appeared on the far side of the swamp. Another few appeared, and a moment later, the big shell returned in the crater it had left behind. It snatched one of the tentacles, pulled it close, and lowered itself into the hole, causing murky water to flow back to the previous heights it had been before it had left.
As it reached the first tentacle, it slowed down. The sense it got from it was different from the others… better, but different.
‘Eat. You will be fine.’
Feeling a wave of joy, the squid slammed into the side of the tentacle where it had been ripped from the base. As the condensed soulforce within the blood flowed into it, the being felt its structure and resonance rapidly change, just like what had happened with the small fish when they ate the previous tentacles.
There was a moment of pain as it felt its body grow with a burst, then the pain faded.
‘Stop when your mind feels fuzzy.’
The purplish squid had no idea what big-shell meant with that, but it was sure it would warn again when that happened.
--
Irwin stood on the deck of the Nocturna, staring at the enormous World Portal. He had read about them and even knew the rough locations of some, but he’d never actually seen one before.
“It’s very stable, meaning it likely just formed,” Ambraz said, sounding worried. “Still, if there was a town… well, there’s nothing else here, and from what we could find, there shouldn’t be a town here.”
Irwin glanced at the ruined town, sensing Greldo still moving far below it, having found tunnels leading into the bedrock that covered the bottom of this part of the Portal Gallery.
“Perhaps they were doing some sort of investigation or research?”
“If this were a bigger branch, definitely,” Ambraz said. “But in our little Langost Branch? Although it’s stable… That's only for a World Portal. Do you sense the resonance it’s emitting? It's a miracle anything makes it through that without problems.”
“That matches with what Luath told us,” Irwin said, as he sensed Luath talking to Sarha and Mikili. The young Chaos Whale was swirling around Luath in excitement at the story, trying to join him in the complex songs. At the same time, another part of him was filling in Daubutim and the others.
“Well, we don’t have a few thousand Chaos Whales to help us stabilize that thing,” Ambraz grunted.
Irwin hummed in agreement, and they continued examining the enormous portal.
Greldo appeared beside him, shaking his head.
“I am going to need your help down there.”
Irwin blinked in surprise.
“With what?”
“With a bunch of very confusing Yilda Worshippers…” Greldo said, rubbing his chin. “Also, you are going to be really surprised, because there’s someone down there you know.”
Irwin stared at his friend, who shrugged and tried pulling him into the shadowrealm. Irwin let him, and a few minutes later, they were rushing down squarish tunnels below the small town until they reached a large chamber with a blue forcefield blocking the only entrance deeper down. Behind it, Irwin saw multiple people, all wearing robes engraved with an eye that he knew, called the Eye of Yilda.
As surprising as that was, his eyes were drawn to one, widening as he recognized an Ignitzian he’d not seen for a very long time, and one whom he had almost forgotten about. One who had almost gotten him and Scintilla killed on Scour long ago.
Numilli?