*Day 20 - Inside the Forgotten Fortress*
The God-Eater was screaming.
Not with voice—with existence. Every part of it wrong, every component suffering. Dragon bones creaked against metal that shouldn't exist. Flesh grew where it shouldn't. And at its heart, Vash'nil—
No longer an egg. No longer a dragon. Something between. Something worse.
Malakor stood before it, his father's perfect weapon, breaking apart at the seams. Dragon-fire in his left veins. Death Angel frost in his right. Human heart in the center, barely beating.
"My son," Vorgoth said from the machine's base. "Come to watch the world render?"
"Come to stop you."
"With what? You're falling apart. I designed you to."
True. Malakor could feel it—the fusion failing. Each breath pulled incompatible magics deeper. Each heartbeat pushed them toward critical mass.
The assault raged outside. Ora was coming. Everyone was coming. The fortress's flesh-walls shuddered with impacts.
"She'll be here soon," Vorgoth continued. "The Ashkore. When she touches the machine, everything activates. Prima opens. Reality becomes negotiable."
"Why?"
"Because existence is inefficient. Separation is waste. In the Prima, everything is one. Perfect. Unified. Rendered down to base components and rebuilt as singular purpose."
"That's not life—"
"Life is chaos. I offer order."
Malakor laughed. Blood came with it. "You offer nothing. You are nothing. Just a man who tortures his own son."
"I improved you."
"You broke me."
"Same thing, ultimately."
The wall exploded. Not Ora—she was still fighting through the upper levels. Duh. The gray dwarf, corruption eating him from inside, Spun Duh supporting him.
"Malakor," Duh said. Seeing him. Understanding him. One corrupted to another.
"Don't—"
But Duh was already moving. Not fast like his brother. Steady. Purposeful. He placed his hands on Malakor's chest.
"This will kill you," Malakor warned.
"Everything kills me. Just matter of timing."
Duh opened the channels. Not to take corruption—to take the incompatibility. The wrongness of dragon and angel and human trying to exist in same space.
It flowed into him like molten metal into water. Violent. Explosive. Wrong.
But also—
Malakor gasped. For the first time since his father's torture, he could think clearly. The magics still there but separated. Organized. Manageable.
Duh screamed. His gray spreading. Not just arm now—entire left side. And changing. Not just gray but scaled in places. Frosted in others. The incompatibility couldn't transform him—dwarven souls too dense—but it could remake him.
"Brother!" Spun Duh caught him as he fell.
"'m okay. Just. Different."
Half dwarf. Half something else. The corruption had found purchase in the incompatibility. Was using it to build something new.
"You idiot," Spun Duh held his brother, for once actually still. "You absolute idiot."
"Says the idiot who runs into walls."
"Walls move—"
"I know. They move out of your way." Duh tried to smile. Failed. Half his face wouldn't respond. "Can't talk much longer. Throat's changing."
"Don't—"
"Listen. Really listen for once. The corruption's not evil. Not good. Just... force. Like gravity. Like time. Can be redirected. Used. That's what she doesn't know." He looked at where Ora would enter. "What she needs to know."
Vorgoth hadn't moved during the exchange. Watching. Calculating.
"Fascinating. You redistributed the incompatibility. Didn't cure it—moved it. The corruption finds new patterns."
"Shut up," Malakor said, thinking clearly for the first time in years. His mother's voice, clear in memory: *Yellow birds carry messages between worlds.*
He understood now. His mother hadn't meant literally. She'd meant love transcends death. Memory transcends corruption.
The human heart in his chest—no longer fighting the other magics. Working with them. Dragon power. Angel precision. Human choice.
"Thank you," he told Duh.
Duh couldn't answer. His throat had crystallized. But his eyes—still aware. Still him. Trapped in body becoming something else but still fundamentally Duh.
The ceiling shattered. Ora descended like judgment. Corruption flowed from her, but also growth. Death and life in single entity.
She saw the God-Eater. Saw Vash'nil at its heart. Saw what it was becoming.
"Hello, prototype," Vorgoth said. "Welcome to your purpose."
"My purpose is my choice."
"Your existence is my design."
"Your design. My revision."
She approached the machine. Each step, it responded. Panels opening. Energy building. The Prima entity writhing behind reality's skin, wanting in.
"Don't touch it!" Thom'duhr screamed from the doorway, maps clutched, calculations running. "It's designed to—"
"I know."
She touched it anyway.
The reaction was immediate and wrong and perfect.
The machine tried to use her. Channel her corruption into opening the Prima.
But Ora had learned something from the Heart Tree. Corruption could be transformed. Redirected. Reversed.
She didn't let the machine use her.
She used it.
Pulled its energy into herself. All of it. Vash'nil's suffering. The dragon bones' memories. The metal's wrongness. Even the Prima entity trying to push through.
Took it all.
The machine died. Not dramatically. Just... stopped. Became inert materials. Bones and metal and nothing more.
Vash'nil fell from its heart. Not dragon. Not machine. Something small and broken and new.
Ora caught him. Him—not it. The egg had become a creature. Dragon-shaped but child-sized. Breathing but unconscious.
"Impossible," Vorgoth said.
"Everything's impossible until someone does it."
She turned to him. Triple-colored eyes seeing everything. "Your turn."
"You can't—I have contingencies—"
She touched him.
Not with corruption. That would be too simple. Too merciful.
She touched him with growth. With life. With aggressive, violent existence.
Roots erupted from his flesh. Not killing—growing. Using him as soil. Branches from his bones. Leaves from his eyes. He became a garden of himself, aware through every transformation.
"This is what rendering feels like," she told him. "Being broken down to components. Used for something else's purpose."
He tried to scream. Trees don't have throats.
The fortress began collapsing. Without the God-Eater's wrongness holding it together, flesh-walls rotted. Metal-doors rusted. Everything returning to what it should be.
"Move!" Marcus commanded.
They ran. Spun Duh carrying Duh. Malakor carrying Vash'nil. Ora walking calmly through catastrophe.
Outside, as the fortress became rubble, Duh managed one word through crystallized throat:
"Brothers."
Spun Duh understood. They were all brothers now. All corrupted. All changed. All choosing to be more than their damage.
Duh would never speak again. Half crystal, half flesh, all sacrifice.
But he'd live. Different. Wrong. But his.
The corruption hadn't won. Hadn't lost.
Had been negotiated with.
And sometimes that was all anyone could hope for—not victory, but negotiation.
Not healing, but living with the wound.
Not brothers of blood, but brothers of choosing to continue.
Even when continuing hurt.
Especially then.
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*End Chapter 17.5*
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