NOVPUBThe hair on the back of Garina’s neck stood on end. The inky black being before her may have resembled Noah, but she was absolutely certain that this was not the being that she had been sparring with just a few short minutes ago.
He might have had the same form as the Noah that Garina knew, but Rank 7 senses went far beyond those of mere sight. Every being had a unique soul. It was like a cosmic fingerprint. Soul shaping could twist that print, warp and change the way others perceived it, but the print was still the same.
The only way in which that signature could be changed was through the absorption of runes. But even that was a long, arduous process. It usually took weeks for a new rune to begin fully acclimating to the soul it had been drawn into. Stronger runes could change the soul faster, but stronger souls were similarly resistant to change from the runes they drew into them. People were generally quite uniform. They were who they were. Without time and a great deal of effort, they did not change the deepest parts of their self.
So why does the thing before me not feel like Noah in the slightest?
If she were to believe this was Noah, then he would have had to absorb multiple powerful runes in the time it had taken her to delve into his soul. But, now that Garina thought about it, even that probably wouldn’t have been sufficient.
She’d seen the immensity of his soul. Unless he was absorbing runes with powers that were nothing short of impossible, there was just no way for a part of him to have such a different signature.
And it wasn’t just the difference in the pressure this part of Noah’s soul put out. It was his aura. His literal presence felt… wrong. Warped. Dangerous.
This isn’t Noah. What the hell is wrong with his soul? First the Line, and now this?
She’d lived long enough to know only a fool would claim to have seen everything. True understanding of the universe came with the realization that everyone within it was nothing more than a speck drifting through an infinite mass of space. Gaining comprehension of even one percent of the universe’s immensity was a feat to be elated with.
It was impossible for a Rank 7 to claim to have seen everything there is to see. Such a claim would have been ludicrous even for a god. Garina was many things, but a bumbling fool was not among them.
She was not afraid to admit that she did not know what it was she looked at. There could have been any number of explanations for it. Perhaps it was some manner of creature that had attached itself to Noah during his stint through the afterlife.
Perhaps it was a sickness or an infection corrupting his soul. Perhaps it was his baffling combination of Master Runes somehow coming together to create a wretched monster in the deepest recesses of his mind.
Perhaps it was something else entirely.
Garina didn’t know what it was. At the moment, there was only one thing that she did know.
The thing before her was not to be trusted.
“What are you?” Garina asked, watching the murky version of Noah through narrowed eyes.
“I am the ruler,” the creature replied. Its words dripped like molten tar, and Garina felt the pressure of Noah’s soul shifting around her. Something was changing within it — and she wasn’t much a fan of that at all. The fake-Noah’s inky gaze bore into skull like a heated blade. “This is my domain.”
The ruler? It’s claiming to be Noah? My ass. The pressure difference between your souls is too significant. You may as well have a whole different set of runes to him for how unique the two of you are. It’s far more likely this is some manner of leech trying to hide within the safety of Noah’s mind.
If that’s the case, I’ll purge it.
Garina’s fingers flexed as she drew on her runes. Wielding them within someone else’s soul, especially this deep into it, wasn’t going to be easy. This was not her domain. But she was a Rank 7.
No matter how big Noah’s soul was, there was still an incomparable difference in their power. The pressure bearing down on her was immense for a Rank 5, but to her, it was only an inconvenience.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
I just have to make sure I don’t damage anything important while I cleanse this thing. We’re deep enough in his psyche that even the Fragment of Renewal might have difficulty repairing things.
“Drop the bullshit,” Garina said. She had to go about this the right way. Cutting this creature free in her current situation was going to be like performing a delicate surgery with a battle-axe. “We both know you aren’t Noah. Tell me what you really are.”
“I already have,” the creature replied. It paused after every word, as if it were trying to remember how to string them together. Even its tone felt off. Each word was spoken as if it were its own sentence. Some almost seemed like questions, while others were practically yelled. It was the dialect of a madman, but the creature continued to speak. “There is no other existence within this universe that can claim to be the ruler of this place more than me. I am the apotheosis. How did you come here? How did you pass through the layers of the soul?”
Garina gathered her power. She could feel Noah’s soul continuing to shift around her. It was doing something. He was doing something — and that gave her pause. An invader wouldn’t have been able to actually control Noah’s soul.
That meant Noah himself was doing it. But that made no sense. Noah would have no reason to help a parasite latched onto him. He shouldn’t have even been able to look this deep into his own soul.
Garina knew Noah fairly well at this point. She was confident he hadn’t reached the level of understanding that would let him peer this deep into his own soul. He should have been completely unaware of everything happening here.
And if he was, that meant the one controlling the soul around Garina was none other than the eerie creature standing before her.
But a soul couldn’t be split. That wasn’t how it worked. A soul was a soul. It could change and grow and evolve, but it could not be two entirely separate things. If it actually did get split, then it would just shatter and cease to exist.
How could something like this exist? The being here is so different than Noah that I don’t see how it could possibly be part of his actual soul. For that to happen…
Garina’s eyes widened slightly as a thought struck her.
Wait.
Answers to questions that that had rose when she’d been within the deepest part of Noah’s mind finally clicked into place. Garina’s skin prickled as realization finally set in.
“You’re not lying,” Garina breathed.
This was how Noah had managed to keep his sanity all the way through countless years of torture along the Line. It wasn’t that he’d somehow just ignored or forgotten all those years that his mind had been forced to endure.
He’d locked them away.
The human mind was capable of suppressing a great many things. Time healed many wounds. Traumatic events could be sealed away in a vault and the key thrown away. But there were limits to that.
Limits that would become very apparent when one tried to seal away the vast majority of the time they had existed. When there were so many memories, so many emotions drawn out over more years than anyone would ever dare count… locking them away could only do so much.
Both Garina and the creature before her had been correct.
This was Noah. But it wasn’t the Noah that she knew. It wasn’t the Noah that anyone in this world knew.
This was the part of Noah that remembered every single second of the Line.
Noah had locked away such an enormous part of himself that it had formed into its own being. It was him, but it wasn’t him. But if that was the case, then they were still the same being. And if they were the same, then fragments of their memories would still be shared.
That would be how Noah could still recall pieces of his time in the Line. He still bore every second of that passed time, but much of it had been condensed and sealed. There would have been no other way for him to process even a single thought.
But if that was true… then the version of Noah before her shouldn’t have been able to muster a word. It should have been a gibbering mass, twitching and screaming on the ground in wait for someone to end its misery.
Have his emotions somehow gathered to the point where they wrapped back around to control once more? Is that even possible? Can you overload your mind to the point where it’s so thoroughly broken that it reforms?
“Garina. Apostle of the Seven. I need your power,” the creature claiming to be Noah said. “It is the key. Give it to me. Give it to me, or I will take it.”
Its words weren’t as slow as they had been before. They came with more purpose. More intent behind them beyond the lilting confusion of insanity. The creature was adapting. It was getting more aware, and at an alarming rate.
The world shifted around Garina. Pressure swirled around her, seeking an entrance through her defenses — but there was something wrong about it. Pressure usually came in a single wave of power, but this was more like countless little individual pinpricks. Millions of fragments of thought, all trying to poke at her defenses at once.
“Your name,” Garina said. Her senses yelled warnings to her. She didn’t know what this creature was capable of — and she couldn’t fight back without doing severe damage to Noah’s soul. There was something seriously wrong, something so badly warped within Noah’s soul that even she was in danger. The best move to do was leave. But she couldn’t leave. Not without one last answer. Garina’s eyes narrowed. “What is your name?”
For a brief instant, the pinpricks of will battering against Garina’s soul jerked back. The being’s inky black head tilted to the side as the voids it called eyes burned into her mind.
Then it smiled.
“Spider,” the being replied. “I am Spider.”
