Crimson Core

After some time…

They got to the mansion, and immediately she was helped down by Gilbert whose eye contact with Kai was somewhat dreadful with a trace of shock. She disappeared into her chambers.

Before Kai could enter the mansion a servant ran up to him and informed him, “My Lord Marshall sends for you.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Sigh… Right then.” Kai left the servant and walked into the mansion towards the study of which majestic engraving still marveled him.

Kai, after some time of walking, stopped in front of the big brown hardwood door.

“…Come in.” A familiar deep melancholy voice sounded within his soul.

Kai entered the room after the door opened itself, it was as though he was experiencing Deja Vu. Lord Marshall was standing in front of the window behind his desk, facing the mansion’s big black gate. “Please have a sit, Kai.” But this time the sun was setting.

“Yes. Thank you, milord.” Kai walked forward and sat down on the chair in front of him.

Lord Marshall turned around walked towards his chair and sat down. “I have a message for you from the academic bureau,” Pulling out a sealed scroll he handed it over to Kai.

“Open it it’s for you,” he leaned back into his chair and took a more relaxed pose as Kai proceeded to open the sealed scroll.

The scroll read:

Kai, as a result of his unusual performance on the test, would be admitted to the central continent’s academy for further investigations.

After reading the letter Kai closed it and handed it back to Lord Marshall. “No keep it, you will need it to enter the Central Continents School of Magic.”

“Thank you, milord,” Kai withdrew his hand with the scroll in it.

“Kai boy, what did you say happened to your parents again?” Lord Marshall asked in a calm collected royal voice— Something was up.

“Milord, I never met my parents I don’t remember them. I lived with my grandmother until she died a year ago.” Kai told him the truth about what he had grown up with.

His face became solemn as he asked, “Let me see… Apart from your parents dying before you had matured, nothing else happened to you that is out of the natural?”

“No, nothing at all.” Kai reassured.

“It’s alright. You may leave and keep that scroll safe. It’s the only one. If it gets lost you will have to wait for next year.” Lord Marshall reminded.

“Thank you for the reminder, milord,” Kai bowed and left the room.

“Is he telling me the truth? Or does he not remember? Is he hiding the truth from me?”

When outside of the study, Kai walked briskly to his chamber to take a cool bath. It didn’t take long before he was already seated on his bed about to lay down and sleep, but something kept him thinking.

“Hey, freeloader! Are you awake?” Kai called out in a whisper.

“Did you just call me, a deity, a freeloader?!?” The familiar voice sounded shocked.

“So? That’s what you are, but enough of that I have something to ask you,”

“You sure are a crazy young man, but be free to ask your questions.” The familiar voice said.

“Did you enter into a pact with someone else before me?” Kai was simply curious.

“Jealous are we?” It was clear that the deity was feeling smug. “No, I didn’t enter a pact with anyone before you. Your predecessor was a poor and hungry man who came to me by chance. And as a deity, I gracefully granted him power and wealth,” the voice in his head explained.

“I am not jealous, you crazy being. Another thing what am I? I mean what did you do to me?” Kai was so curious at that time, he just had to ask.

“How do I put it… You are me and I am you. We share the same soul now. That’s how I brought you to life,” the voice in his head boasted.

“Alright, so if we are one what are you?”

“I am a god. The god of death. To put it simply I control how people die and I take them to the afterlife.”

“Right, answer this question… If you are a deity of death? Does it mean I am also a deity of death?” Kai asked.

“No, it means you are an angel of death!” The voice in Kai’s head stated the fact with so much intensity that his insides began to churn. Thank goodness he was the only one hearing this.

“I am a demon?” This was big news; Kai was in such disbelieve.

“You could call yourself that…”

“OK, so the crystal ball glowed because I have blood magic?”

“Yes, but that ball was so crude… When you advance I will help you know what your capabilities are. Forget what that man told you, I mean the floating man that gave you my heart.”

“You know him!?” Kai began to wonder what else this deity was not telling him.

“I am all knowing; he is your predecessor. I gave him second-rate knowledge he did not have enough potential to use my heart to its highest threshold. But you do because we share souls.”

“I don’t know what to say now…” At this point Kai was flustered.

“You don’t need to say anything, just allow me to lead you,” the voice said.

“Alright I don’t have any choice, do I?”

“NO, and good night.”

After his conversation with the deity in his head he was about to lay down and sleep when he heard a knock on the door to his room.

“Come in.” The door opened and the first thing he saw was blue locks of hair then a familiar face.

“Are you busy?” Asked Chelsea in an unintentional but extremely coquettish manner.

“Not at all, please do come in.” Chelsea entered the room with utmost caution as though she were entering a dangerous place.

She walked slowly and stood in front of him. This was a feast for any eyes and a stimulant for his member. Chelsea stood in front of Kai, “I have something to tell you.”

Still, sitting on his bed, he looked up to face Chelsea, “I am all ears, my lady. Would you not sit down?” He asked, with such calmness and majesty that he shocked even himself.

“No, let’s go out. There is something want to show you,” she extended her hand for him to take it.

Kai took her hand and was led to her chamber. At this point he was already imagining some crazy things, his member was already on the verge of bursting out of his sleeping clothes.

They kept walking deeper into her bedroom. This was the point he was waiting for, if she was the one that would initiate it why would he not accept her?

They kept walking and she opened a door leading into her tiny library. ‘What the…?’

He thought they were about to… What was he even thinking? She was the daughter of a Lord!

She stopped abruptly. “What is it?” Kai asked.

“I am about to show you something… Something you would have to take to your grave, Give me your word that you would keep this a secret.” Chelsea was solemn.

He had to think this through, but he knew Chelsea would never tell him something like that if it was not important to her. “I, Kai give you my word to never let what you are about to show me, be known to another.”

“All alright, my mother before she died was a Terramancer, a Nobel-ranked mage. And this was her chamber. My father gave it to me as I reminded him of my mother whom he loved so much…” She paused.

“Go on I am listening,” he urged her. She had already piqued his interest

“Alright, so my mother was a Noble ranked mage. From what I heard about her from my father, she had an obsession with hidden history,” Chelsea moved towards the shelf closest to her and pulled a book out of place, pulled another one, and pulled the third book from different levels of the shelf. Then she put them back in ways different than how they were when they came.

—Crack whizz whizz—

The shelf made some weird noises and the ground in front of the shelf opened up. Leading through a flight of stairs into a dark place.

“Don’t tell me you are scared; Come on let’s go.” Chelsea took a torch hanging from the wall and lit it with a pair of flint stones. She started walking into the darkness.

They walked for a long time, and the stairs still did not seem to end. The flaming torch didn’t even help, and the flight of stairs was still dark, he looked behind and all he could see was glooming darkness.

“Are we not there yet?” Kai just had to ask. It seemed they were walking for what seemed like hours on these spiral flights of stairs.

“We are almost there, Don’t tell me you are already tired?” Chelsea asked with a smug expression.

“No, but I need to sleep. If I had known this was what you called me out for I would have declined.”

“Here it is!” Chelsea exclaimed.

“Finally…” They had gotten to the end of the stairs and entered what seemed to be a large underground meeting room— No, it was too big to be a simple meeting room. It looked colossal, not in height though, but it covered a wide expanse of land.

“How come no one knows about this place?” He had to ask Chelsea, because this was almost as big as the whole manor.

“My father knows about it, but he doesn’t know how I usually get in here, let’s hurry before he notices that we are here.” Chelsea walked faster to the huge door that was its entrance; And pushed it, it was surprisingly light for its size. Chelsea opened it without as much as breaking a sweat.

—Swoosh—

“Come on we don’t have all day!” Chelsea urged him on.

“Alright am coming.” Kai picked up the pace.

They walked into the stone structure and the whole place was empty, left for a stone altar on which was a large book.

It looked familiar, He knew he had seen this book before… At least something that looked like it. “This is the book your father’s statue is holding in the center of the estate?”

“Yes that is correct, this is the book in the hands of the statue in front of the mansion. My best guess is that my mother found this place by mistake.”

“Have you tried opening the book?” Kai asked.

“Yes once or twice but could only open the first few pages, it spoke of a man. A great man, a king. His name is Salinger, he was a Saguimancer. He lived two thousand years ago. That’s the only thing I could get from the book.”

“That’s all?”

“Well no, that’s why I brought you here, at the last accessible page it stated that only a Saguimancer could gain its knowledge and wield its power.” Chelsea’s expectant eyes were glued on to him.

“So you want me to open it?”

“Yes, that’s why I brought you here.” Chelsea was brazenly using him.

‘What’s the worst that could happen? Sigh.’

Kai walked towards the book and began to open its pages. reading though it, it confirmed what Chelsea had told him; he was flipping through the pages easily. The whole place fell silent, only the sound of flipping pages reverberated throughout the hall. At a point, Chelsea forgot to breathe Kai was getting closer and closer.

“Ah!”

Kai had unexpectedly obtained a cut from flipping the pages. It was not a small cut as expected, it was deep as though he was cut by a knife.

Soon, his blood had stopped flowing and the cut had healed but something else happened. The blood that had dripped from the cut had fallen on the altar and was now tracing a weird pattern.

He turned to Chelsea who also had a confused facial expression. “Is this normal? Is it supposed to happen?”

Chelsea was as confused as Kai at this point. “I don’t know—”

Before she could complete her words, the altar before them glowed of a luminous red light. Sounds, weird sounds coming out of the altar filled the whole hall.

—Sherrie, woiiii—

“We should run!” Chelsea screamed at Kai in panic.

“No, I feel this would lead to something,” Kai sensed a bit of familiarity with the light.

“Let’s go!!”

“YOU WON’T LEAVE THIS PLACE.” The unfamiliar, gruff but loud voice that sounded like thunder came out of his mouth, Kai was no longer in control of his body, the deity inside him had possessed him.

The big book floated in the air glowing an eerie red light. His body, under the control of the deity walked towards the floating book. “Yes, come to me!”

Chelsea on the other hand had already gotten tired of screaming his name. She stood at the far end of the hall, she was scared out of her wits. She was a mess. It was visible that something had triggered something within her because she held her head and mumbled something while her body shook violently.

Kai’s body kept walking towards the floating book. When he got close enough, the deity raised his hands to touch it

“Come to me...” The deity whispered through Kai.

The book emitted a red blinding light, so bright that Kai could not see anything else. He felt blinded by the light.

After a bit of time, Kai could no longer feel his eyes burning from the light. He was in a place so unfamiliar, it looked like a garden a really beautiful garden, with two children around the ages of seven to ten years.

The two boys, brothers, something was visibly off about one of them. The older one looked healthy and lively while the younger one looked very sickly. They looked like royalty as they were dressed in expensive adornment and clothes.

Kai had one wish at this point, that someone would explain what he was seeing to him, Immediately he heard a voice, “You already found this place?”

Kai turned around to look for where the voice originated, and what he saw blew his mind. There standing was the most beautiful dark-skinned lady he had ever seen, her golden yellow eyes looked like they had been extracted from the sun.

Her black hair was as full as cotton and as smooth as silk. She was tall and endowed with curves only the gods could mold. Her hips were of a parabolic curve accentuating her breasts. Saying she looked like an hourglass would be an insult to her shape, she could only be described by two words: Drop-dead gorgeous.

“What are you looking at? You know I can hear your thoughts, right?” She walked closer to Kai, but the shocking thing was that her mouth did not move. “…and yes, we communicate with our thoughts.”

Kai’s face was already beet red. He was so embarrassed at that time.

“I know you have questions ask away.” She sat down on a chair that appeared out of nowhere.

“Please sit.”

It was now so hard for Kai to keep standing, it was a struggle to keep his balance after the deity finished saying that. He fell but landed on a chair. “Where in the heavens did this come from? Where are we?”

“Well, your consciousness is inside my book…” She made it sound as if it was what Kai was supposed to know. “…and yes, I am the deity in your head, this is one of my many forms.”

“This is what you look like? I was expecting…” He was sincerely shocked.

“What? You expected to see a man, Hahaha! You are too naïve; I have many forms.” Kai was embarrassed, he didn’t want to be embarrassed any longer, so he looked away from her.

Kai looked towards the children in front of him. It seemed they had not noticed that someone was looking at them.

“You want to know who they are, right?”

“Yes, I would be satisfied if you would tell me.” Kai said.

“All right then, the older one is King Sullivan… Well not this present King Sullivan, this is King Sullivan the first from two thousand years ago. His younger brother is your father, King Salinger.”

“My Father?” Kai simply could not comprehend what he had heard.

“Yes, your father, the sickly one is your father. At that time he was Prince Salinger.” She explained.

“This is serious, so what is happening?” Kai inquired.

“Shh… Just watch it, I haven’t watched it in ages.” Kai kept quiet and watched the scene in front of him. The two boys seemed to loved each other as brothers do; they had a close relationship with each other.

The elder brother was the ideal child, loved more than the other. As they were playing in the garden, their mother came and carried young Sullivan even though he was older and called Salinger to come along.

Salinger struggled to walk as he followed his mother behind until a servant came and carried young Salinger.

“Let us fast forward to the fun part.” The deity moved her hands and sometime of about five to ten years passed and the two brothers had grown.

Sullivan was a strong light mage, and Salinger was a normal human without any elemental or abstract affinity. Crowned with the fact that Salinger was not a mage he was also very sick, and he struggled to keep his life, but one upside to it was his high intellect.

Prince Salinger had all the time in the world, as he had no mage training to partake in because of his impairment. So, he spent all his time in the king’s library. At the age of 17 he had read all the books in his father’s library.

As a result of finishing all the books in his father’s library, Salinger had no choice but to go to the keepers of knowledge to get more books. Whilst Sullivan his brother was all the rage, he was the perfect prince, built like the choice son of the gods. The two boys grew and their enmity grew deeper.

As the life clock kept ticking, Prince Salinger met Isabella in the home of the keepers of knowledge. She was the disciple of the chief keeper, she wasn’t stunning but she was a feast for the eyes. Her blonde hair, her beautiful smile, she was truly pretty, and from what Kai watched she was friendly as well as caring because she became Salinger’s only friend.

They, Isabella and Salinger spent time together, gradually bringing them closer. It didn’t take long before Salinger fell deeply in love with her as a result of the time they spent together. Nonetheless, he was hesitant to tell her or bring her home.

He was scared she would not accept him or that his brother would, with time, snatch her from him. After some time, he gathered the courage to open up his feelings to her, and she accepted him. He took her home, despite all the bad feelings he was having.

Immediately he took Isabella home, his worst fears came true. Isabella was hooked to Sullivan, as was Sullivan fascinated by Isabella. Salinger tried his best to keep Isabella’s eyes on him, not his brother. But Isabella, as all the women from before, was attracted to his brother. She watched all his duels and watched Sullivan’s training sessions.

It had become clear, but Salinger kept his love for her and trusted that she would not do anything to hurt him. All good things must come to an end. Isabella stopped coming to meet Salinger and spent more time with Sullivan.

One day, of all the days, Salinger was looking for Isabella to spice up their relationship by taking her for a romantic dinner and spend some of the kingdom's treasury on her. He searched and searched, but he could not find her anywhere. She wasn’t in her room, not in the garden nor the library.

He went to ask his brother if he had seen Isabella. Salinger came to Sullivan’s chamber and found the door open. He let himself inside, and the scene was not pleasant. Everywhere, Sullivan’s clothes as well as female’s. Salinger tried his best not to jump to conclusion at the obvious fact.

This was his brother's style. Salinger knew it too well; Sullivan would intoxicate the target with his charm, that was easy for him. Then he would bring her to his room, his lips locked unto hers. Salinger had seen this happen before him, countless of times. And each time he curse his luck in his heart. Salinger knew there was an unsuspecting girl in the room under Sullivan, soon to be discarded like the many he had seen before. He only hoped that it won't be his love.

Salinger went deeper into Sullivan’s chamber and saw his lover, Isabella riding Sullivan as if her life depended on it. The smile she had on her face; the expression of ecstasy on her face drove Salinger to his limits.

Salinger was too heartbroken to talk, he just turned around and left. He didn't know if he ran or not, his eyes were cloudy and his center disoriented. The betrayal from the woman he loved… The smug expression Sullivan always had, all these pushed Salinger to his limits. He was beyond heart broken.

“THIS HAS GONE ON LONG ENOUGH!!!”

Salinger banged on the door to his chamber in pure rage, and pain.

“After a few days, he picked up some of his saved money and books and some maps to come and find me.” The deity paused the memory to talk to Kai.

“After a few days of searching, he came upon where I was buried… My shrine. He prayed earnestly until I was tired of his disturbance and made him a false demon of death.”

“So?” Kai asked.

“So, he went back and killed Isabella with his own hands and exiled his brother…” She paused. “…I hope you get it? So, let’s get to where you come into the picture.”

The memory started playing again. It showed that Salinger’s personality had been corrupted by the power the deity gave him. After killing his whole family, he took over and began ruling the five continents.

Fast forward to what seemed like a few hundred years. King Salinger, became the overlord over the five continents. He had many wives and many children.

He married his last wife Aria. She was a mortal of high intellect as he was a hundred years ago. She had black abyssal eyes and silver-white hair. She was beautiful but not stunning and she had a resemblance to Kai.

“That’s your mother and she is pregnant for you now, let’s continue…” The deity seemed to rush this part, but Kai didn’t seem to notice.

A day came a few weeks after Kai had been born, King Salinger called Aria into his chamber. “Take this with you and activate it with your blood. A war is coming. Take Marshall with you to the western continent, in the heart of the leviathan forest…”

“Yes, My Lord.” Aria was visibly sad that it had come to this, but she had been preparing for this. The visible unrest in the palace had riddled it for months. It was a matter of time before the news was public.

Aria took baby Kai to the forest with the help of Marshall, the only son of king Salinger's right hand man, Mason. She activated the artefact with her blood, and it glowed a red light. She dropped it on top of baby Kai and it wrapped around him and transformed into a relatively huge rock.

Aria wailed as Marshall told her that it was time for them to go. This made Kai’s heart unexpectedly writhe in pain as he watched her tears flow. She was up and ready to go when night crawlers appeared and killed her and injured Marshall before he escaped to his father’s mansion.

“I have a question, how old am I?” Kai popped the question, it had been on his mind for a long time now.

“Well, you are around two thousand years old. You would have stayed longer if the magic had not worn out twenty years ago and that old woman found you.”

“If I may ask, how old are you?” Kai asked again, this time out of curiosity.

“You can’t ask a lady that question, young man! But I will tell you this, I made a pact with your father, that his last son will become my successor. Soon you would understand,” she stood up and made a gesture for Kai to stand as well.

“Will I get corrupted?” He asked with concern in his eyes.

“Yes. Your personality has to be compatible with your element. The process should start from tomorrow morning.”

“You can’t be serious now, are you?” Kai asked in disbelief.

“I am, you need to sleep. Don’t think much of it, you won't even notice— let’s go.”