Author Note: Potentially a little bad news - as none of you know, I have a very bad left eye and the last half year I got cataract in it. It is due to surgery on the eye when I was younger. Either way, it became really bad and I'll need to have another surgery. Right now I have a new glass(left) but the issue is that its a ton heavier than it was and very different from my right eye making looking with it... uncomfortable to say the least. I managed to write today's chapter, but I might need a bit more time to get used to it. So a heads up that there might only be a second chapter this weekend on Sunday if I don't improve faster than today.
Irwin shot upright, drawing in ragged breaths as the memories of what had just happened seemed to almost stream into him. The sounds of clattering steel, angry howls and screams surrounded him, while something hot and wet was dripping on him.
He shook his head, looking up to see Greldo a few steps away, slashing upward with his blade to decapitate what looked like a combination of a small Oculithar and a humanoid being. Its skin was like the dull gray of the Oculithar, while it only had a long slit of a mouth on its otherwise featureless face. Tentacles sat attached to the base of its skull as it tumbled down oddly, small eyes all across the tentacles dimly glowing purple. As it crashed onto the ground, the purple eyes stopped glowing.
"Finally! Some help would be nice!" Greldo shouted.
"He's right, Kid! Help us clear these things!"
Ambraz's shout made Irwin look to the other side, where he saw Ambraz in his giant size in the process of crushing one of the humanoid Oculithar.
Irwin pushed himself up, feeling weak. The world around him was dark, and it took his frazzled mind a moment to realize he was inside Greldo's shadow pocket.
Why am I thinking so slowly? he thought, shaking his head a second time.
A dull scream made him look to the side to find one of the humanoid Oculithar beings rushing towards him.
Right, clear this out first, he thought, trying to summon his hammer.
Nothing happened, but he felt a dull strain deep in his mind.
What?
Irwin stared at his hand, then focused on his soulscape. His vision warped, and for a moment he saw a dense mass of soulforce blazing in the middle of a darkness so vast it seemed to swallow all light. The worldcard song he'd worked on for so long was howling around him while streams and clouds of soulforce came from the darkness and surged into the ball of soulforce as it grew larger and more powerful.
Irwin was jolted away, and he stumbled two steps, trying to understand what had just happened.
"Kid! Look out!"
He looked to see one of the beings lunge for him and instinctively struck out. His hand connected with the smooth, faceless head just above the mouth, and it exploded in a spray of pale white ichor.
"I can't use my cards," Irwin shouted, looking up to find two more beings dodge back. "But I can help."
He moved forward, ignoring the slight dizziness as he flexed his legs and jumped forward. The world blurred around him as he reached the two odd beings so fast they couldn't even react. Neither could he, as he shouldered one, causing it to partially explode while the rest of it was flung back. The other one's tentacle eyes widened, and it jabbed both arms forward.
These things have only physical attacks? Irwin thought as he met the thing's arms, causing them to explode into more gore and a mist of white.
A second strike decapitated it, and he looked around to see the others rush away, vanishing into the shadows. Greldo's and Coal's shadow clones vanished after them, while Ambraz flew to him, landing on his shoulder. A few moments later, Irwin, Ambraz, and a heavily breathing Greldo were all that remained.
"What is going on?" Irwin asked, nudging one of the hundreds of dead bodies with his foot. "Where did these things come from?"
"Don't ask me. When the soulforce around you suddenly went insane, I grabbed you and dragged you away from the city," Greldo grunted. "We barely got away when the shadow realm began to act really weird, and the next thing I knew there was a portal opening inside it, and these things came through."
Irwin stared at his friend, trying to grasp what he just heard. "A portal… opened in the shadow realm…" he said slowly, looking around but not seeing it. "While we are on Eluathar."
"The portal is over there," Greldo said, pointing in a direction away from where the large swamp of his shadow pocket was. "Well, it was. Those things just went inside, and it closed."
"Things that look like humans with the heads of Oculithar," Irwin muttered.
Greldo shrugged. "Never seen them before either…"
Irwin crossed his arms, trying to sense his otherself and failing and also feeling… less. As if he were missing a part of him, part of his mind and being.
"Kid? You okay?"
Irwin blinked at Ambraz's worried voice, realizing he'd been staring off into the distance. There was something else that should bother him, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"I'm not sure," he said, focusing on his soulscape again just to see the same thing he had the first time, with the small difference that the growing mass of soulforce was bigger than before. "My soulscape is changing, and I can't use my soulc-" Irwin fell quiet, realizing he didn't have any soulcards anymore. "My worldcard isn't… ready yet, I think."
"Then I am glad you are stronger than you ever were," Greldo muttered, bending down to pick up the ripped-off arm before them. "These things are tough, and although I can cut them, doing what you just did?"
Irwin nodded, wondering what would happen when the ball of soulforce was done. How long would it even take?
"Irwin?"
Irwin grunted, then took a deep breath. "I think I need a bit of time to rest," he said. "Can you bring one of these things to Daubutim and explain what happened?"
"Sure," Greldo said, frowning slightly. "Do you want me to bring you back home?"
Irwin hesitated, then shook his head. "No. I'm having the hardest time staying focused, and I don't think I'll be able to explain what is happening. It will just make the kids worry. Can you tell Scintilla what is going on?"
"I will," Greldo said, staring at him. "Can you walk to the mansion yourself? Moving you around right now is rather difficult."
Irwin nodded as he turned and began heading towards the distant building, trying to ignore the dead things on the ground. He knew he had to figure out what they were, why they had come here at this exact time, and how they had even made a portal here, but as he walked, he felt his mind grow fuzzy again.
"Kid… I can't move into your soulscape," Ambraz muttered. "I'm also unable to talk through it like we usually do."
Irwin blinked, trying to keep his thoughts focused.
"Something isn't ready yet," he muttered.
Ambraz said something, but he didn't catch it as he continued walking. At some point, he reached the mansion, not even recalling how he'd walked there. Moving inside, he headed to the nearest couch and sat down, hearing it groan loudly as he did. Lying back, he closed his eyes and focused on his soulscape. Unlike the previous time, this time he hovered there in the shape of a soulspark, feeling slightly better.
He watched the streams of soulforce flow into the ball for a while before he began looking around. He didn't really notice anything special until he turned completely around.
What… that's my soulscape! he thought, as he stared at an area that looked like a cloud of soulforce gas that softly hummed in the same way his worldcard did. A chunk of ancestral copperion was floating beside it, while all around there was nothing but darkness and very distant specks of light far away.
I'm not in the primordial chaos anymore? Then… where am I? Irwin wondered as he tried to float around. He quickly found he could, though only very slowly. Or… not slow, but the distance he was covering was far bigger than he had imagined before.
Spinning around slowly, Irwin eventually began floating towards his soulscape, and the further he moved away from the condensation of soulforce, the more confused he became.
Is it a sun?
There was no answer, and Irwin eventually stopped moving, just hovering there as the enormous ball of soulforce continued growing both bigger and brighter.
How long he hung there, he didn't know, but at some point the ball began pulsing, the growth increasing as with each pulse more soulforce was pulled inside. As it was, Irwin felt something click, and suddenly he could sense and hear the soulforce as it moved around. At the same time, his mind seemed to clear up slightly, and he realized two things.
One, the soulforce being pulled in was chaotic, primordial ambient soulforce, and two, as much as the thing before him was pulling it, it was slowly radiating more.
How can it pulse with more soulforce than is going in? Irwin thought as he looked around, feeling sharper than he had for hours. Something moved in his periphery, and turning to it, he was stunned to see his soulscape moving towards him while the chunk of ancestral copperion drifted along with it. The pale golden clouds were spreading out slowly, and as they did, Irwin saw tiny bits of the world beyond, and he shivered. The landmasses were gone, as was the sea, and instead, a boiling mass of soulforce was spinning around an incredibly bright, very big, humanoid figure.
Is that my otherself?
Again, there was no answer, nor had he expected one, and instead, he reached out to the ancestral copperion, finding he could actually interact with things again. Pulling it towards him, he hoped the cards within had survived whatever had moved his soulscape from the spot it had been for as long as he knew to wherever they were now.
A bright pulse and a howling of his worldsong made him spin to the sun-like ball of soulforce. His soulscape began rotating around it, and as it did, it swelled outward. It doubled, then tripled, then turned ten times its original size, but as big as it was, it was tiny compared to the enormous ball.
Enormous streams of primordial soulforce began rushing in from all around, though Irwin couldn't find out where it was coming from. It almost looked like it was condensing far away, before turning into the streams flowing into the soulforce-like sun.
How big can it even-
A bright flash almost blinded him, and he knew it would have blinded anyone who didn't have his eyesight, and the soulforce ball was gone. In its place hung a brilliant golden yellow sun while the surroundings around them seemed to shudder and shimmer. Beside it, the previously cloudy soulscape had turned into a smaller pulsing orb, and with each pulse, Irwin felt a weird pull, then a push, then a pull, then a-
Oh, dammit!
He barely managed to jump away from his soulscape and back onto the couch as a yank tried to pull him to his soulscape. Drawing in deep, ragged breaths, he stared at the shadow-wood ceiling, sensing the couch below him.
"Are you all right?"
Irwin looked to the side where Greldo was sitting, now leaning forward and watching him worriedly. Irwin wanted to respond, but before he could, he felt his mind stretching thin while whatever his soulscape had changed into seemed to move somewhere. It lasted for a few moments, then it was gone, and a surge of soulforce filled him as his mind expanded and became clear.
"Damn! That was a lot of soulforce," Ambraz said softly, flying up to a small nook in the rafters. "You didn't just blow up your worldcard, right? What is going on?"
"I… am fine," Irwin said, sensing a connection just like he always had with his soulscape, but this time far more powerful. A swell of soulforce unlike any he'd ever experienced came from it, and for a moment he feared it would overflow him. Then it pulled back like the tide, though he knew he could pull it back.
"I think something is done," he said as he raised his hand and tried to summon his hammer.
A massive hammer of golden-red metal and a dark wooden handle that hummed in his hand. It was wrapped in a tight, gleaming gauntlet of a darker metal with red lines around the sides that sat up to just below his elbow.
"At least you still have your hammer," Ambraz grunted, and Irwin suddenly realized he couldn't sense their bond. He looked up, but before he could ask Ambraz about it, Greldo moved in front of him, staring at the hammer.
"That looks a bit different. Can you still do the things you could before?"
"Ambraz?" Irwin asked, ignoring Greldo.
"It's fine. We will figure it out later," his bonded friend said. "See what changed first?"
Irwin hesitated, then nodded. Focusing on his ability to manipulate both the hammer and his gauntlet, he grew the hammer to double its size, then did the same with his gauntlet, though the latter mostly turned more bulky, with thick plates on the back of his hands and arms.
Wait, they are one thing now? he thought as he tried unsummoning his gauntlet, only for it to shrink into a set of rings and a bracelet of darkened golden red metal. Curiously, he shrank his hammer as much as it could, and it eventually snapped against the bracelet around his wrist.
Wondering if he still had the ability to use two, Irwin raised his other hand, and a moment later, he had a similar bracelet and rings, a small hammer adorning the bracelet.
"So, what did all of this even do?" Greldo asked, sitting beside him and poking the bracelet. "Did they just change shape, and you can now keep them here?"
Irwin shook his head as he focused on the odd connection he now had. Unlike days before, when he had a soulscape, six soulcards, and a heartcard, which were all their own thing, he now felt only a single powerful entity that… somehow felt as if it wasn't just something foreign. It felt like it was part of him.
Did my bond with Ambraz vanish? Why? And what happened to my true clone? Did the bond move there?
He tried to reach out to his otherself, and a surge of memories rushed into his mind, and with them an odd sense of being… dispersed. At the same time, a powerful desire to move into his soulscape… worldscape? What was it even? - made him do just that.
"Wait, what are you-"
---
Growing and expanding had stopped. It could feel that, and the clarity in its mind was growing. The being that had once been a part of something else instinctively knew that it had a massive advantage that it likely shouldn't have. Stretching its powers over the small world that was both its home and itself, it began pulling in some of the still-growing mass of ambient soulforce to create what it had once called soulforce constructs.
Tiny beings appeared in the main ocean, and it continued until it had made a few thousand, knowing they would multiply by themselves, before moving its focus to one of the many, many swamps. Deep inside the muck, it sensed the ancient ones that had survived The Shaping. Different, more primordial, and with hints of what was before, they would die as they were now. Reaching into their bodies, it removed those parts that would cause them to be rejected, crushing the faulty resonances into their base parts.
When it finished, the ancient beings uncoiled as they awoke. They were the second conscious entities that lived on….
Crath…
The name meant a lot and nothing yet, at least nothing compared to what it could mean. It knew this, as it knew many things and yet… it also knew little. Most of the knowledge came from what the other part of him had learned across its life, but some also came from the ancient memories of long ago.
A soft push told it the other part was returning… that which it had once been, or part of at least. It wasn't that anymore, neither in mind nor body. Instead, as it spread its senses out, dispersed to continue seeding the world, it changed into something even less conscious than before. It would return when the other left, but neither could be here at the same time. It knew that.
As the mind dispersed, to return eventually, it felt the first conscious beings that it had created begin heading for where the other was appearing.
---
Irwin gasped as he appeared in what he instantly knew was a lot like his old soulscape, and also something completely different. For a moment, he felt his mind connected to everything, then the sensation faded.
"What… was that?" he muttered, looking around.
He stood on a gentle slope below a sky that was a pale golden white, filled with dark yellow and orange puffy clouds. Although it looked a lot like his previous soulscape, something about the strong wind blowing around him and the scent it carried was different. Along with it, he felt an odd sense of belonging, and as he pulled on what had once been his ability to control his soulscape, he floated up into the sky, looking around.
It's nothing like it used to be, he thought, stretching his senses out.
It took several long minutes for his senses to stretch outward, and as he did, it felt like he was connecting to something that let his awareness grow far but thin.
"It's really a world," he said, feeling a sudden burst of excitement. As if agreeing with him, the oddly expanded awareness thrummed with joy, and for a moment he felt the entire world pulse, and with it, he had an incredible sense of power. Deep within the core, he sensed ancestral copperion and many other metals mixed and compressed tightly, while there was no sign of his soullake sea. Instead, the liquid soulforce seemed to have spread as a thin mist surrounding the world's outer atmosphere.
Irwin raised his hand, and an enormous conflagration of fire appeared above it. He tossed it up and let it split into dozens of narrow streams that swirled up in a complex pattern before he let them vanish.
If I ever have to fight someone here…
The thought made him feel a sense of surety he hadn't in a long time, as he also knew he could move people and things here, and unlike even the powerful soulscape he'd had before, there would be no issues. A quick spread of his diffuse awareness told him that the poles of the world were also far colder than the rest. Not cold enough for any sort of ice, which would likely be impossible unless he forced it, but cold enough that he knew normal people could live there without issue.
Curious, he looked around.
In the distance, he found a sprawling mountain range that he'd not seen before. It faintly resembled his old first soulcard's region, but as he began flying up again, he saw it was much bigger. So much so that at some point he realized he couldn't see either side. Far to the left of it, a glittering smoothness told him he'd found the sea, and he shot towards it, moving even faster than he had before, which proved a good thing as the distance was also much greater than he remembered.
Minutes later, he landed on a beautiful sandy beach with an unusual sort of trees on its edge. Golden red bark and thick pale golden and orange leaves, they hummed softly.
"Like a combination of the humming trees from my second soulcard's section and the volcano trees that I made," Irwin said softly, stopping below one and reaching up to touch a leaf.
A soft chime came from the tree, picked up by the others and echoing out before slowly quieting again. It did change the soft humming song slightly.
Glancing at the beach, then the beautiful sea of Pyroflux, Irwin sat down on the beach, knowing it was time to figure out something he was pushing away.
"Why is my bond gone?" he said softly, pushing his fingers in the sand and searching for the connection he'd had for almost as long as he'd been alive.
There was no sign of it, but as he tried, he did feel Ambraz and Greldo outside, with his body…
"Wait, if that's my body," he exclaimed, staring at his hand before inspecting himself.
This is a clone!
Wanting nothing more than to figure out what else had changed, where his giant bodies were, and if they even still existed, Irwin reached outside, hesitated, then pulled Ambraz into his soulscape.
Whatever he had expected, what he hadn't was a sudden gong sound as Ambraz appeared above the beach, while his bond exploded into being. A worry close to panic wafted in from Ambraz, changing to relief, then to worry again.
"What? No! That's too much… stop, I-"
Irwin jumped up, sensing a massive amount of soulforce surrounding Ambraz. He reached out to stop it, but before he could, a bright purple crown with six spikes appeared on Ambraz while he grew into his giant self and slammed into the beach, causing sand to spray everywhere. A crystal chime sounded like a horn, then it was gone.
"Ughhhhh, Kid! I," Ambraz yawned. "Well, whatever. I just ranked up, and-"
Ambraz yawned again, and his voice turned softer.
"I need to sleep. Leave me here, alright? We need to talk-"
Another yawn, and Ambraz's lips vanished while Irwin felt Ambraz fall asleep through their connection.
Staring at his friend, he put his hands on his hips, looked around, then dropped back on the beach in a loud, dull boom while letting out a weary groan.
Perhaps I should just sleep too, he thought, knowing he wasn't even slightly tired.
Before he could think about it longer, he sensed something approaching. Multiple someones. They were still far away, but turning his hand in the direction of where they were coming from, he instantly got a good idea of what they were.
The problem was that there was a lot that was very wrong with them.
My clones?