Primer looked out over the burning settlement from his sky-high vantage, the light of torched homes reflecting in his eyes. The chorus of screams reached him like livestock dragged kicking and squealing to the slaughter.

  It was such a shame they’d forced his hand, he thought—his slender silhouette outlined against an overcast sky, awash with a reflected red and orange hue. He wasn’t averse to killing, but neither was he a major proponent of it. He didn’t enjoy it like so many of his colleagues. He merely did what was asked of him. What was deemed necessary.

  He sensed the slight distortion in space before he saw it. Without even turning his head, he felt the moment when the two emerged. Blinking into existence two dozen paces behind him.

  “Wait-! What do you think you’re-! Eeep!”

  The second female sighed.

  “I thought I told you to brace yourself.”

  “Yes, well! You did mention something along those lines, briefly. Though, if you’ll recall, you said nothing about sudden teleportation, nor that I should be expected to produce a flying artifact!”

  “And now? Would you consider yourself sufficiently informed?”

  “At this point it would be rather hard not to be! Uh… Ahem. That is to say, yes. Thank you for that. You can unhand me now.”

  “If you’re sure?”

  “Very,” the first female said through clenched teeth.

  And so saying, the two females parted ever so slightly.

  “Now, if you’re finished griping, I have a task for you. Keep this one busy while I go and have a chat with its progenitor.”

  Primer stirred at this, finally turning around to face these intruders.

  “That cannot be allowed to happen, I am afraid.”

  The first female flinched, as if only seeing him now for the first time.

  “T-that’s-!” the white haired one stammered.

  “Your adversary, yes. Do not worry needlessly. I have gauged his strength to be comparable to your own. More or less.”

  “More or less?!”

  “You all look the same to me, if I’m being honest, but I’m sure the difference can’t be too great.”

  “But that’s-! You don’t understand! Those robes! That aura! If I’m not mistaken that right there is the very thing that slew Earl Grayhem and all twelve of his retainers. Cultivators, I feel compelled to inform you, with access to all seventy two of their spiritual nodes!”

  “A regrettable action, if a necessary one,” Primer explained. “Mother decreed it be so. Just as she made it very clear that she is not to be disturbed. Not under any circumstance.”

  “As do you?” the second female ignored him. “I fail to see the issue here.”

  “I-! That’s-! While it’s true I’ve found some success in the foundation realm, must I remind you that there is only one of me?”

  “And? What of it?”

  “You can’t possibly expect me to-!”

  “I can, and you will. Do not worry. As I said, you need not defeat him outright. Merely keep him occupied for a time.”

  “But I can’t-!”

  “You must. Please don’t tell me the frontier families have fallen so far as to make this mere pup a genuine challenge? Your ancestors would be ashamed to see what’s become of their once grand legacy.”

  “I-!” the first female failed to respond, merely grew darker about the neck and face.

  Primer’s eye twitched. Why did it feel like he was being disregarded? No matter. Raising a delicate finger, he twirled it about lazily, evoking, as he did so, a conceptually empowered technique.

  Void-touched spirit energy began to swirl above his fingertip. Coalescing into beads of liquid darkness. Beads which gravitated, unerringly towards a central hole of light devouring pitch. In mere moments, one fifth of his total spirit reserves had been compressed into a trembling, volatile dollop of darkness.

  With a flick of his wrist, he released it.

  And in so doing, everything before him promptly ceased to be in a wide, cone shaped radius. The burning city vanished. The cloud cover evaporated, revealing the stark blue sky and noonday sun above. The very air howled as it rushed to fill the sudden vacuum—tearing at anything and everything with a terrible whoosh.

  Thunderous clap was followed by concussive shockwave as all the debris that’d been drawn in, was then forcefully propelled—exploding outward to ravage what little remained upright. Clouds of dust, drawn in and then forcefully expelled, now billowing in thick, impenetrable waves. A grit laden tsunami which quickly consumed the fresh ruins of a once bustling rural sprawl. Frost crept up the hem of his robes, the pervasive chill nipping at exposed skin, his every breath exiting his gills in large, misty clouds.

  Primer inspected his handiwork, the world blanketed in an abrupt and utter silence. He was seized by an inexplicable feeling of unease. By all rights, he should have been relieved, and yet…?

  A sudden presence just behind him. Simply appearing there without any semblance of warning. The warm damp of a predator breathing down his neck. Overbearing. Overwhelming. Fathomless in its profundity. As if a creature too immense for this world. A mountain bearing all of its considerable weight down upon him. The full breadth of the sky turning its gaze his way.

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  Entirely free of malice, spite, or malevolence, but no less terrifying for their absence. If anything, the studied impartiality just made what happened next all the more spine chilling. Before Primer could even begin to respond, there came a tearing sensation, followed immediately by a disconcerting weightlessness. Turning his head toward the uncanny sensation, he was greeted by the spurting stump of his left arm. Only then did the pain begin to set in. He screamed.

  “If it helps,” someone, or something, spoke into his right ear. “Know that I have no intention of harming your progenitor. She was someone I called a good friend after all, once upon a time. Even despite her betrayal, I bear her no ill will.”

  Turning her back to him, the intruder—the… ally?—called out to the other.

  “There! This should do as a suitable handicap.”

  The second female waved his severed arm about as if it were some captured prize. The first female merely mirrored his own look of drawn disbelief.

  “Get to it then. I’ll pop back in to check on your progress once my business is concluded.”

  “I-! I don’t-! I’m not-! Huh!?”

  “Remember! Survive!”

  And so saying, the second female disappeared. The only indication she’d ever even been there the subtle spacial distortions she left behind. Clutching at his missing arm, Primer locked eyes with the disbelieving female. They shared a look of blank incredulousness for the briefest of moments, before, as if by unspoken signal, they both leapt into action.

  Nialla was wrapping up the final repairs to her spirit, when the shockwave of a vacuum implosion tore at her hair, and violently buffeted her tentacles. Curious. Given the direction, the source of the compression wave could be none other than Primer.

  Which was odd.

  Strange, if only for the fact that he was not typically one for grandiose displays of power. And for the shockwave to have reached her all the way out here, it must have been some grandiose display indeed. Was he, perhaps, receiving more staunch resistance from the native population than previously anticipated?

  Not that he couldn’t handle whatever it was they threw at him, but still… she just couldn’t seem to kick this sudden feeling of unease.

  “So it’s true then.”

  Nialla spun, already sure of what she’d see. And, just as she’d suspected, looking no older than when last they’d parted…

  “Yuyu. You haven’t changed a bit.”

  “Nalla. I wish I could say the same.”

  “It’s been some time.”

  “Has it really? I’m surprised you noticed.”

  “Ahh… well. Guilty. I slept through most of it, to tell the truth.”

  “Indeed? And yet it appears to me you’ve been rather busy, my old enemy.”

  “There is a time for idleness. Now is clearly not that time.”

  There was a brief lull in their conversation. One in which the two old friends, turned bitter enemies, silently observed one another. Lanyue with her sharp, imperial beauty, imposing height, and completely dead eyes. Nialla, looking remarkably similar in appearance, if with a slightly stronger jawline, smaller stature, and a diseased looking albino complexion.

  “I have your son,” Nialla pronounced.

  She at least thought someone ought to get it out there.

  “For now,” was Lanyue’s response, projecting that same inane confidence that defied all known reason.

  “Oh really?” Nialla was tempted to laugh. “And how do you figure?”

  “He will prevail if he knows what’s good for him,” the woman intoned.

  This time Nialla did laugh.

  “And what precisely do you intend to do? Lecture his true soul back into this reincarnation cycle?”

  Lanyue said nothing. Nialla continued to chuckle.

  “I hate to be the one to burst your bubble—that perpetual state of self-delusion you impose upon the world? Actually, no, to tell the truth? It brings me more joy than you could possibly know. Your son is gone, Lanyue. And no matter how fervently you insist upon it being otherwise, the reality is, he won’t be coming back. I say this, not to gloat. Merely to set the record straight. Oh, but, before you begin to worry. Know that his potential is in very good hands. I will treat his vessel as if it were my own.”

  There was a pregnant pause, before Lanyue eventually replied.

  “Are you finished?”

  “More or less.”

  “Okay. Now, would you like to hear why I know that all of your decades worth of planning will inevitably come to naught? Burn away to ash, only to be carried away on the winds? Crumble to dust and slip through your fingers?”

  “Not particularly, though I suspect you’ll tell me anyway.”

  “I know because he is of my blood. I know because no son of mine would ever concede defeat to the likes of you. I know because, failing all of that, his grandfather, great grandfather, and all those ancestors who came before would be rolling in their graves to see him now!” Lanyue roared in a rare show of emotion.

  “And I know…” she spoke quietly, forcing Nialla to strain to hear her. “Because, not too long ago… a little purple window informed me of as much. And asked, very politely, that I keep you occupied until it deemed the time was right.”

  Lanyue glanced up, as if marking the positioning of the sun.

  “A time which, as it happens, appears to be a little over a quarter past noon.”

  All at once, her soul shell was thrown into turmoil. A two-pronged attack aimed directly at the most vulnerable part of any sentient creature. Feeling like the kick of restless feet inside the womb, only far less tolerable, and far too intimate. In seconds, it nearly had her passing out from the unexpected agony.

  Nearly being the operative word.

  She persevered. Smothering the willful invaders with a will of her own. Watching as their efforts slowed, their exuberance was quelled. Sweat drenched and gasping, but now with a modicum of control, she glared up at Lanyue, murder in her eyes.

  “You did this! How-?!”

  But, before the spiteful woman could open her mouth to reply. Before Nialla could wipe that inquisitive look off her face. Before she could quash the lingering resistance still wreaking havoc within her soul, a high-pitched squeal disrupted her focus. A whine that quickly morphed into a sinister growl. A growl which seemed to portend the end of the world.

  Immediately, Nialla’s entire universe shrank down to a single point. An ever-expanding void at the center of her stomach. A series of reverberations rippling outward from that spot, as a bestial hunger she knew only too well woke up with a vengeance.

  It spread out from her core like a blazing inferno.

  Subsumed her every sense, every impulse, her very mind. To be replaced by the insatiable, uncontrollable, need to feed. It devoured anything and everything that made up what she was, and then—not yet satisfied—absconded with her very awareness as well.

  Like a candle’s flame in a hurricane, all conscious thought was summarily extinguished. And her soul, surprisingly, was dragged along for the ride.