Chapter Fourteen: Borrowed Power, The Outer Verse Slaughter
The final, blinding light of the transformation faded, leaving the figure of Urca standing motionless on the gore-slick, alien ground. The transformation was complete. The sleek, pale skin of the young man was gone, replaced by a towering, utterly terrifying form—the Battle Form of the Totem's chosen vessel.
He was encased in dense, obsidian armor that seemed to be forged from frozen darkness, absorbing all surrounding light. His limbs were elongated, ending in massive, clawed gauntlets, and razor-sharp, crystalline spikes jutted from his shoulders. His head was helmeted, its face nothing but a smooth, seamless mask with two swirling, internal vortices of primal, hungry Origin energy where his eyes should have been.
A low, grinding sound—the voice of the Totem—reverberated from the figure's chest. "Let me borrow your body, eh…"
The Totem was asserting its right to use the full capacity of its vessel. It raised one colossal, clawed hand, commanding the power. The immense, chaotic reservoir of energy within Urca strained against the foreign will.
The little parasite resists. The fool is loyal only to the boy. Very well. The vessel is the master of the Origin, not I. I will take what I can.
A visible ripple of black energy exploded around the obsidian figure, the manifestation of the Origin fiercely resisting the full takeover. The Totem was forced to recognize the inherent loyalty of the power source to Urca's consciousness. It could tap the energy, but not command the full flood. It settled, with clear, primal resentment, for roughly 10% of the vessel's total available cosmic force.
"A taste of power is enough for now," the Totem growled through the form, the sound a promise of devastation. "Let the fool see what true consumption feels like."
The silence that had gripped the battlefield broke. The collective psychic shriek of terror from the minor gods and eldritch horrors turned into panicked, desperate movement. They had witnessed the birth of a power they couldn't comprehend—a force that belonged to no known pantheon in the First Plane.
A Minor God—a being composed of brilliant, geometric crystal—screamed a psychic command: "Hold the line! It is not of the First Plane! It is not recognized! Isolate and destroy!"
"Recognition is irrelevant," the Totem hissed, its Battle Form moving with impossible, fluid speed. "Consumption is the only law."
The slaughter began.
Possessed Urca moved with terrifying speed, a blur of obsidian against the chaotic backdrop of the battlefield. He didn't dodge the colossal crystalline fist of the Minor God; he met it head-on. His clawed gauntlet slammed into the shimmering limb, and a shockwave of pure Origin energy erupted outward.
The crystalline structure didn't just crack; it imploded, shattering into dust that screamed with psychic agony before being consumed by the swirling vortexes in Urca's helm. The Minor God's psychic shriek cut off abruptly as its core essence was ripped free and devoured. Around him, tentacles thicker than city blocks lashed out from an Eldritch Horror, dripping corrosive ichor. Urca pivoted, his movements impossibly fluid, and a sweep of his clawed hand severed them like rotten vines.
Black, viscous blood sprayed, sizzling where it hit his armor, but he didn't flinch. He plunged his other clawed hand deep into the Horror's pulsating main mass. There was a wet, tearing sound, followed by a guttural roar that shook the very fabric of the plane as the Horror's core was violently extracted and consumed.
The battlefield erupted into pandemonium. Beings that moments before had been locked in their own eternal struggle now turned their combined fury towards this terrifying anomaly. A barrage of chaotic magic erupted—blinding beams of starlight, waves of psychic disintegration, bolts of pure entropy—all converging on the dark figure.
Urca didn't retreat. He raised his arms, and a shield of pure, swirling Origin energy, dark as the void between stars, flared into existence. The impacts were cataclysmic, shaking the ground and tearing rents in the alien sky. The shield held, absorbing the raw power, feeding the Totem's hunger.
With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, Urca dispersed the shield, unleashing the absorbed energy back outward in a devastating pulse of pure negation. The wave ripped through the front ranks of attackers, disintegrating lesser horrors and staggering the minor gods. The air filled with the scent of ozone and burnt divinity.
A towering Immortal, wielding a sword forged from captured supernovae, saw an opening and charged. Its steps shook the ground. Urca met the charge, not with evasion, but with terrifying aggression. He ducked beneath the sweeping blade, the heat singing the air inches from his helm, and drove upward.
His obsidian claw punched through the Immortal's chest plate forged from stellar iron. There was no finesse, only brutal, overwhelming force. He ripped sideways, tearing the being open from sternum to hip. Golden, godly ichor fountained, steaming as it hit the cold ground.
The Immortal staggered, its eyes wide with disbelief before the Totem's vortexes flared, pulling its screaming essence into oblivion. Urca used the collapsing corpse as a springboard, launching himself towards a cluster of shrieking, lesser horrors, his claws already tearing through their flimsy defenses like paper.
The slaughter became a terrifying ballet of destruction. Urca was a whirlwind of obsidian death, moving with impossible speed and strength, a small, dark engine of annihilation amidst giants. He shattered crystalline limbs with crushing blows, ripped ethereal forms apart with grasping claws, and consumed the terrified essences that fled their broken vessels.
Each kill fed the Totem, each consumed scream amplified the cold, predatory satisfaction radiating from the Battle Form. The initial terror of the cosmic beings turned into frantic, disorganized retreat. They weren't fighting an enemy; they were being harvested.
The gore-slick ground became littered with the fading remnants of minor gods and horrors, the air thick with the stench of spilled divinity and primal fear. The Totem, borrowing Urca's form and a fraction of his power, was painting the battlefield in shades of despair it hadn't known for eons.
A coordinated psychic assault slammed into Urca's mind – a desperate gambit by a trio of serpentine Immortals weaving intricate patterns in the air. The sheer force threatened to liquefy his consciousness, but the Totem merely laughed, a grinding sound like continents colliding.
It channeled Origin energy through Urca's form, not as a shield, but as a counter-wave. The psychic attack hit the swirling vortexes of his helm and was instantly inverted, amplified, and hurled back. The serpentine Immortals convulsed mid-air, their intricate patterns dissolving into screams as their own minds were consumed from within, their essence ripped free and devoured before their collapsing bodies hit the blood-soaked earth.
"We were fighting a war! You ruin the purpose!" shrieked a disembodied voice from above the chaos.
"Your war is an appetizer," the Totem replied, casually annihilating a shimmering column of demon-like immortals that attempted to flank it. "The true purpose is growth. And your annihilation is the key to my vessel's education."
The sheer, sudden annihilation was too great to ignore. The destruction drew out the true, ancient powers of the sector—the leaders of the feuding factions, who had been observing the carnage from the safety of their distant dimensional pockets.
Two colossal figures materialized on the edges of the slaughter:
One was the Lord of the Sunken Spires, a being of pure, solidified dread, ancient and vast, looking like a mile-high column of shifting shadow and stone.
The second was the Emperor of the Crystalline Host, a dazzling figure of pure, blinding light and mathematics, radiating an unbearable, chaotic holiness.
The two ancient entities paused their eternal feud, their attention fully seized by the anomaly of the Totem's vessel.
——
Miles away, on the small, forgotten planet of Earth, in the luxurious and silent confines of the Rurns Estate, Kelna woke up in a state of profound, bone-deep dread.
She was sitting bolt upright in her bed, trembling despite the warmth of the expensive silk sheets. She didn't know why, but a wave of emotional nausea had washed over her, chilling her to the marrow.
What is this feeling? Dread, so heavy it feels like my bones are being crushed.
She put a trembling hand to her chest, right over her heart. She felt an invisible, agonizing tug, a profound sense of loss and cosmic violence that was entirely foreign to her simple, mundane life.
"Urca..." she whispered, the name catching in her throat. "Where are you? I feel cold, heavy, like something awful is happening far away, and it's pulling at me."
She was feeling the direct, spiritual backlash of the Totem's immense power expenditure—the violent cosmic energy vibrating through her husband's body and touching her, the Emotional Anchor, through their accidental bond.
She got out of bed, unable to settle. The air felt heavy, thick — like the atmosphere itself was holding its breath. A faint hum trembled through the window glass, too low for the ear but loud in her bones. The quiet suburban street looked peaceful, but even the shadows seemed to recoil from her touch.
Something terrible was happening, and the only person she was connected to, the only person who could possibly be involved in this scale of horror, was the man who had promised her everything. She had no idea where the man was, but her heart knew the danger was absolute.
The vast, indifferent slaughter of the Outer Verse had begun, and the ripple effect had finally reached the quiet life of the one woman who grounded the terrible power.