Chapter 82: Alone

Krala felt power rush into her horns and out, into the shining man.

This was not fully her own power, it came from somewhere else, somewhere very, very strong, but it was still her that channeled it, and she output as much as she could without holding back.

When she opened her eyes, she could see the shining man again, except…except he was dimmer.

His light was gone, and his golden wings were turning black.

The man stumbled backwards and fell to the ground as his left leg began to disintegrate into nothingness, a flickering edge of shadow traveling up from his leg and devouring his body as it moved, threatening to erase his body utterly out of existence.

"I…I am fading away? Disappearing?" The warden watched as his leg crumbled away, and then the darkness began to gnaw at this waist. "N-no! No, no, no, no, no! My jailers…my jailers…they will save me, they will heal me!

While the sun is still shining, yes, yes, they will yet save me!"

With that, the warden flapped his darkening wings of energy, sending his crumbling body away into the transit point leading out of the throne room.

This left Krala alone. She did not know what the warden said, but she knew he had felt fear, and that he had run. It made her smile.

For so very long, she had been so very afraid of him and all the hurt, thinking he was something so strong and shining and beyond her, but in the end, he was just as scared as she was of the dark place.

He was not special. He never had been. None of his words meant anything.

She collapsed onto the stone floor.

It was cold even though it should have been hot from the shining man's light.

Maybe…maybe because of the magic. She did not know exactly what it was. Just that it had made her strong for just a second, and that it had given her a choice to fight, and that she had taken it.

Oh…

Now the cold and numbness was coming back. She lay on her back and watched the ceiling of light crystals again. The ceiling was breaking apart, the sunny light of the crystals fading and flickering as darkness began to creep in.

Everything was breaking. Dust and debris and breaking shards of crystals began to fall everywhere as huge cracks started to web around the stone floor, shattering the throne at the center.

She turned her sight away from the decay. Things were getting dark and blurry again.

She felt cold.

Cold and...alone.

She did not want to go to the dark place. Because there, she would be so alone. Always alone.

She wanted warmth. She turned her face to the other side, towards that one, and here, she felt warmth.

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That one's heart still beat in front of her on the ground where the shining man had dropped it.

With a last bit of energy, she crawled up to the heart and hugged it, slumping her tired, heavy head on its warm, gentle beating. The heart beat slower, and her breathing grew slow with it, and she smiled.

Mother…was this her? It felt like her warmth.

But now, she was the one holding mother. Because now, she had proven she was strong, strong enough to be the one holding and taking care of others.

"I forgive you," said Krala, her paling lips mouthing the words. Her tongue made no sound, but it would not have made a difference to her deaf ears.

She could feel light and warmth radiate around her, and maybe, she thought this was what happened before she went to the dark place. She did not want to be alone there, so she hugged mother tight.

Then, there was cold. She could feel mother disappearing from her grasp, and the cold filled in the void where warmth once was.

No. She did not want to be alone. Not here. Not in the dark place.

Then a voice that rang in her head, and even though it was murky, she still knew it came from that one.

Had he…had he joined her into the dark place?

Suddenly, she felt warmer again, and she opened her eyes.

==

The Collector stared down at the female daemon specimen. She lay atop a bed of thick snow. Howling winds packed with clusters of ice raged all around, compromising visuals and dropping the temperatures dangerously below the freezing point of water.

This was where the Collector had warped to.

A harsh environment unsuited for its current form that utilized various insect bases that simply could not survive here.

It had to metamorphose soon and choose a more appropriate form.

Still, this female daemon specimen-

The Collector knelt down by her.

'Return my heart to me,' said the Collector, but the daemon could only listlessly look up to it.

The severity of her injuries was too much.

A lost hand, arm, and foot. Several broken ribs. A lacerated lung. Severe blood loss.

Not to mention the harshness of this environment. The blood that pooled out from the female's wounds froze over in seconds.

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She was soon to expire. Already, she had trouble even perceiving the Collector's thoughts.

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The Collector knelt down to her side and took its heart from her hands.

This was its main heart.

Without it, the Collector lost access to any of its magic, rendering it drastically weaker than normal, not to mention the severity of the physical wound itself.

It had stemmed life-threatening blood loss by internal manipulation of its muscles and compensation with its two other hearts, but this was not enough.

The Collector calculated it possessed two minutes of activity before it rapidly expired.

Yet, the Collector attempted an operation. It placed the heart in the cavity it had been torn from, and in doing so, it could feel faint hints of magical energy still tethered from the organ to the rest of its body.

Using these small remnants, the Collector circulated using Sapia minor blood flow to the heart, eventually building that minute flow back up to something strong enough to gain minute access to its magical capabilities again.

It rooted the heart in the cavity with makeshift Sapia structures, though it determined that any usage of mana for other procedures was liable to sever this delicate operation.

Still, the Collector put a hand towards the female specimen and attempted a minor circulation of bodily processes through the female daemon's body using its Sapia. A faint aura of purple energy transferred between the Collector and the specimen, their link easing this process.

Blood flow resumed within the specimen.

This would not save her, but it might grant her some minute amount of time to potentially explain the usage of the magic she had utilized to defeat the humanoid.

The Collector had only observed remotely. It had not been consciously there to sense the nature of the power. It only understood that it operated similarly to the aged sorcerer from the tower's magic, his 'Chaos' as it were.

Though far more powerful. The two could not even begin to be compared in terms of the sheer density of magical energy that went into them.

Even now, the Collector could sense tiny remnants of that power from around the daemon specimen's head. Shadowy black circuits lined themselves across her face, running up her pale skin to fully grown, sharp horns.

An oppressively powerful presence emanated from these circuits in an even more overwhelming pressure than what the phosphorescent humanoid could muster. The power had been vastly too much for the daemon's body to handle.

Her head was beginning to disintegrate, the edges of her hair and horns flaking away into ash. Cracks began to line her cheeks, reaching into her eyes and making her blind.

Regardless, the Collector knew that by consuming the daemon specimen, it could gain a better understanding of this phenomenon. Taking in her core directly would allow for a greater analysis of what was within, far greater than what the Collector had been able to glean from by devouring a hand.

The Collector reached a clawed finger down to the female daemon's small heart. It had to tear the organ out soon before the disintegration reached it and potentially spread to the Collector.

The female specimen managed to reach out and hold her remaining hand around the Collector's finger in a spurt of energy that should not have been possible by any calculative standards.

The Collector heard her voice.

'There...there you are.'

The Collector stopped. The female daemon was too deteriorated to control the output of her emotions through their psionic link, and the Collector was too weakened to limit this either.

It felt relief from her.

Happiness.

Then, sadness.

'I'm going to the dark place, aren't I?'

The Collector understood what she meant through the simplified messaging of their psionic link. It did not tear her heart away immediately, even as the disintegration began to spread from her face to her neck. It gave her time.

'Yes,' said the Collector.

'I…I don't want to go there. I don't want to be alone.'

The Collector did not respond.

'I don't want to go to the dark place. I want to go there. The place you told me about.'

'You wish to enter the Collective.'

'Yes. Yes. That's it. You…you told me about it. There is no pain there, right?'

'No.'

'There…there's no hate…'

'No.'

'Lonely. Will…will I...be alone?'

'No. You will be enshrined within a greatness occupied by many that have been worthy.

You will not be alone.

In time, I myself will join the greatness of this unity.'

The specimen smiled, and then grew still. Her hand dropped from the Collector's finger. She had expired, her neural functioning nearly completely deteriorated by the disintegration of her brain. Soon enough, the rest of her body would follow.

The Collector reached into her chest and withdrew her heart. It stood up on its serpentine tail, looking at the tiny little thing slowly stopping its beating in the center of its palm.

Raging, ice-filled winds howled around a vast landscape of snowy, barren ice. In the midst of it, there stood alone the Collector, staring down at the tiny red dot in its hand as crystals of ice began to clump over it.

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