Kieran stood within this strange black space, in an area not quite the Darkness Below but existing right outside its edge, skating its periphery in so fashion he still couldn't fathom.
Much like he couldn't fathom how he had walked into this place.
'I feel like you're lying to , Fla… just what did you do?'
"My child, you are too cynical. I didn't take you to be a buzzkill fatalist, but you seem more like one with each passing day we spend together. Why don't you just enjoy the now with ?"
Kieran frowned, squinting into the dark with aimless venom.
The Fla had not manifested itself. If it did, Kieran couldn't tell in his current condition. The Darkness Below was similar to Altair's Lightless Shroud in that way, sohow absorbing all light, even the crimson light of the blood fire he could conjure now.
In this place, Kieran had nothing but ti — ti to explore and refine as if biding his ti and waiting for the perfect mont to strike like a predator. But that wasn't his current situation.
It was more forced upon him than it was willful action.
Every attempt to convince the Fla to let him out had failed. There was only him… and the Fla in this darkness, which seed poetic after giving it more thought.
Sort of like the situation was supposed to an sothing to Kieran. Alone in the dark… with the Fla?
Kieran fell black with his limbs splayed, hitting what he assud was the ground with a soundless thud. The only proof he had landed on solid was the strangely concrete feeling stabilizing his rear.
'Ready to let out, Fla?'
"So you can ruin everything? No can do. My machinations have only reached a simr. They must reach an unstoppable boil before you can be let loose."
Kieran inwardly groaned, feeling frustration and overwhelming boredom build in his mind. The Fla was unmatched in its infuriating ways.
'You have imprisoned here. Dare I ask what for? I am no stronger than any of those people in the battle.'
"You're right. Perhaps you are far from the strongest, but you could be. And that is why I can't set you free. You cling to death like a parasite and absorb it like a sponge. Surround you in too much… and my plans will be ruined before they start."
The Fla's words ca as no surprise.
Even Kieran found it offputting how easily he attracted resentnts like he was born to it… cursed by it. No, condemned to be that way. If he had the ability, he would alter that attraction, finding sothing not so incendiary as a replacent.
Sothing told Kieran those efforts would be fruitless, though.
In this situation, Kieran was a fly drawn to honey, drawn in by its sweet temptation. Only the honey in this regard was a maddening power tasked with chipping away at his reason.
'More like a fly drawn to shit. Because this sucks!'
As upset with the situation as Kieran felt, he didn't let it cloud his judgnt or stop his current actions. Though he was speaking with the Fla, most of his psyche was inside his Realm, reconstructing his soul to ramp up the accumulation of mystic essence.
Before all this had happened, he had been on the precipice of understanding the remaining Supre Letters in the mory of muted brilliance. The concepts borrowed upon and deeply resonated with many of the lessons embedded in this Trial.
Kieran's perceived version of the Trial's lessons, at least. Perhaps the road of least resistance was his objective, but Kieran despised that option with a heated repugnance.
Down that road was the Fla's fulfillnt, and he sought to defy that and deny the Godslayer. The symbol of his defiance was a testant to that decision.
It was asinine to go against sothing like the Fla, against an entity with stories related to the Gods, but it was his chosen path.
As his psyche worked, making deft usage of a Master's Mind and all its improved, superior cognitive functions, Kieran mulled over the Fla's choice of words.
He couldn't be let free because he would eat up all the resentnt being gathered in the area. That ant the Fla had a paramount need for resentnts in its next plan. In terms of how it could be utilized outside of making Fiends… that required a glimpse into Ravaged Plain's birth.
It was a grave loss for the Wailing Sierra, but that perhaps wasn't why its wails had beco so egregious. Kieran could not know if its cries were once ta, but they were daunting now.
Kieran's mind churned in two places, in the mystical and in the baneful. His thoughts drifted to the Citadel of Resentnt and the Ruined Bastion. If the Creatures of the Dark could spill from its bowels, both constructs belonged to the Place of Bane.
They had erged from the absence of the Screaming Night.
'Wait, no. That makes no sense. Its absence shouldn't an anything because the Screaming Night is not indigenous to Xenith. It had to be brought here. Maybe? I don't know…'
He felt he had all the pieces, but they were a disparate ss, like a jumbled puzzle frad with congruent thes capable of unification. Kieran did so ntal math, his expression growing more engaged as he moved his fingers beyond his senses in the stagnant air.
He mimicked Agatha's usage of mystic essence to write on the air without drawing upon any of that energy. It only had a nominal effect of keeping his thoughts in order.
Through what he knew, Kieran slowly wove a tiline together.
At the ti of the grand battle in his vision, the Ravaged Plains hadn't been a thing… but the Screaming Night existed. In the wake of its destruction, sothing was fractured, likely sothing that held the darkness at bay.
With nothing but the Screaming Night to feed on, the Darkness consud the Night, draining it of its chill and might. And once saturated…
'From within the Darkness Below rose the Ruined Bastion and Citadel of Resentnts.'
Kieran blanched at the thought of the Fla's ticulous planning. For how long had it been devising this plan? The Fla extracted a win even in its losses — which Kieran assud the first vision to be, likely a scene from the Failed Reckoning.
If Kieran's assumptions were correct, resentnts could be manipulated to summon things from the Place of Bane.
A question floated into Kieran's mind as he thought of the final battle.
'Does that an the Fla intends to sacrifice two Boundaries? Is the Place of Bane a Boundary?'
The Fla was ruthless enough to engage in a sche like that, but Kieran doubted this was all just for the sake of watching Boundaries be destroyed. Pitting them against one another and sparking a war had to be the catalyst for sothing greater.
A greater summoning.
With eyes of cold rage, Kieran barked at the Fla.
'Fla! What the hell are you trying to summon from the Place of Bane?!'
A maniacal laughter rang out in Kieran's mind, sonorous and deafening.
"I told you at the very beginning. Perhaps you just didn't listen well enough. A marriage is coming, and it can't happen without Death and Destruction! And a witness to ordain it all. If you haven't put two and two together… you shall be the witness!"
Kieran frowned, ready to refute the Fla, but he was stopped in his tracks.
Suddenly, a change erupted in Kieran's Realm.
The Anchor was pulsating violently, spasming as if suffering from thrashing death throes. The Call of the Anchor went haywire, the six chains clashing together in a stringent tune.
The frequency led to the dreadful cracking of the Anchor!
'Wait… wait. What? WHAT?!'
Despair hit Kieran in a tidal wave. The Anchor was his primary defense against the Fla. Without it… everything was left in shambles!
'Dear God…'
In his mind, Kieran heard sinister cackles increase in number.
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