Shadowbane

"Alicia will also be at the Summit. Or so she said the last time she was here about six months ago." Aresa replied.

"I doubt she purposely withheld that information from you, so something else must have happened. But even with that said, it's still for the best that I ask her directly so I can see how she replies. In fact, make sure she doesn't even know I'm here until I see her in person. I want the first thing I ask her during her initial surprise to be about the agent Arkaios had sent to the Lizardmen so everyone would know what was happening to us on Veca."

Xi clapped her hands, "Okay, okay, we understand. Now keep going! I want to see what's down under that dig site."

I brought the memory back to when we first walked through the gates of the underground city.

"A city...?" Kai said.

Xi stood up and looked around the city, "And it's massive! I can't even see the walls on either side. Err, that might be because of all the fog though?"

"The fog is annoying. Rei, is it always going to be like this?" Aresa asked.

"If you hate this just wait until we enter the Abyssal realm... Although I suppose from a memory perspective it won't be as bad for you guys. You're lucky you weren't there in person. On some level, I actually really liked the place, but the atmosphere was so oppressive that even I was beginning to struggle after spending a day down there. Without Nisha, the others never would have made it."

Xi and Kai were excitedly discussing everything around them while watching our groups attempts to infiltrate the city. It was kind of funny seeing Kai just as excited as Xi was, which is the complete opposite of his usual stoic expression. Aresa however, watched it all in silence. It wasn't until I exited that long tunnel down into the God of the Abyss's area that she finally reacted. Kai and Xi were dumbstruck, but Aresa quickly dropped a theory that I found rather fascinating.

"Those fingers... I wonder if they represent every race in the universe? Or maybe only this galaxy?" She said.

"But then what would that make him? An amalgamation of the universe itself? What if it's the other way around, and he is the reason we all exist?"

Now that really caught the sibling's attention. We spent the next half hour zooming in on each of the hands and trying to see how many types of fingers we could match to a specific race, but to our surprise, we could only account for twenty percent of them.

Aresa hummed while tapping her chin, "It must be the universe then... Assuming my theory is even right! Because there's no way the Eldritch would allow so many other races to exist in the same galaxy as them without being on one of their worlds. Surely Mother would find a way to drag them all here to add more fodder for the machine."

"The 'machine' being the system they have here? Where they foster the growth of humanoid creatures so Meiza'thul can keep collecting souls?"

Aresa nodded, "Yes... Most people haven't figured that out yet, sadly. I thought about spreading everything I knew about it in Viseux, but I didn't know what kind of response it would bring. I already had enough people wanting me dead there. And I was scared of Rai'ga, so..."

"About that, Lady Aresa. Do we need to be near Mother for her to collect our souls?" Kai asked.

"Yes to that as well, and that's why they would never allow people or aliens of any kind to just live on another planet peacefully in this galaxy. It wouldn't be long before a portal opened up on their world and the super powerful Eldritch who live on Mother would appear through it. They'd probably consume a large amount of the inhabitants and bring the rest back to breed. My Mother, Shiva, had lots of notes for me on the manner and told me they had done that once before in the past. I don't know if it was a portal, but they did bring a race from a nearby planet here long long ago. The Dragonkin. I've only seen a few though, so I don't know what moon or planet they usually dwell on."

"I've met a whole three in my life. Two in Xelba, and that one I freed from Terra'ka's cages. I talked to him a little but I can't remember what the conversation was about." I could bring that memory up while we're in my soul realm, but I don't see the point. I doubt he said anything that matters to us at the moment.

Xi pointed at the 'Museum' on the platform in the memory. "That! I want to know what is inside of that. What kind of building could be in a place like this? I bet it's pure nightmare fuel... Please tell me you went inside it, Rei."

"I did, and that was definitely the most interesting part of this entire... Whatever this was. Hang on, I'll fast forward to that part too, but only after I show you one other thing real quick."

The siblings, still as excited as ever, slunk back onto the couch, waiting for me to move on to the next memory.

I fast-forwarded the memory, showing the me of old following in the tracks of that ethereal spider as it climbed the other marble building. Once we were back in the city, all three of them went from wearing confused to worried expressions as they realized what had happened while I was down near the God of the Abyss.

"It was reset, but you were left behind? Is that what happened?" Xi asked.

"Yes. Arkaios told me later that he had lost his connection to me at some point, which we concluded was the result of me coming within a certain distance of the Abyssal God. And once that happened he paid closer attention to the other group's connections to him, making sure the same thing wasn't happening to them, which is exactly what happened. They descended the stairs toward the Abyssal God and Arkaios had to quickly activate the reset to make sure he didn't lose them as well."

Aresa elbowed me again, "He made the right choice. I would've done the same thing. You will most likely be fine alone, wherever you are. But it was too risky to leave the others to their own devices."

"Oh yeah, I'm definitely not holding it against him. I'm glad he brought them back and reset the underground city to its original state. As it was, those trees would've eventually given up and allowed the plagued Crotia and casters into the building. At which point we would've been forced to fight our way upstairs until Arkaios could connect to all of us again, or we would've been left with no choice but to flee to the Abyssal Realm, which is over there." I zoomed in on one of the other cavern exits.

There's a very good chance that the others would not have survived during the time it would have taken me to find the stairs leading back into the city.

I skipped ahead to the moment I tried to open the Museum doors. When that girl suddenly appeared, Aresa and the two siblings all jumped.

"Hahahaha I knew that would scare at least one of you, but not all three!"

After the monster girl led me inside Xi finally said, "What is that? And I couldn't make out a single word she uttered."

"Why would you follow her into the building?! I would have run away the second she appeared." Aresa said.

"It's hard to explain. She might have cast something on me without my knowledge, as I don't know if any of my own kind can pierce my veil like that. But regardless of whether she did something to me or it was purely my own instincts at work, I was certain that this girl wouldn't try to harm me so long as I didn't do anything ridiculous. Like breaking things inside of the building."

"She's beautiful... In a haunting kind of way." Kai said.

"As in you find her aesthetically pleasing as a whole, or a 'I wish I could have sex with her' kind of beauty?"

"The latter..." Kai said.

I paused the memory as all three of us looked at Kai, which made him quickly come out of whatever daze he was in. "... Sorry, I meant the former. Please accept my apologies, ladies. It's been a long day."

"... Right. Well, I'm sure she's single, since she's alone in this Museum. I'll be sure to put a good word in for you the next time I'm there."

I meant that as a dumb joke. I didn't think he'd actually respond like that.

"Wait! What about those drawings I found in your room back when we lived with our parents? You know, the ones with the monster girls doing things to each other? You said those were pieces of art you confiscated from a thief, and I believed you at the time. But now that I've seen this..." Xi narrowed her eyes at Kai.

"Enough about that, you obviously misunderstood me." Kai pointed at one of the murals on the wall, "I want to know what all of this is. Although I think I already know since Rei had just called this place a 'Museum'."

Aresa's eyes practically sparkled when she heard that. "Oooh!! So this place should be a treasure trove of information!"

We spent about an hour discussing the Crotia, Aliens, and the main Gods. And when it got to the minor Gods is when things became even more interesting. We were currently at the part of the memory where the monster girl was in my soul realm, assisting me in acquiring my halo.

"I can't believe I was right..." Aresa trailed off.

"About what?"

"We've had problems with a few Abyss creatures in Termia, and so I had to spend some time learning as much as I could about them about half a year ago. It's surprisingly difficult to get information on them by the way, because most of the attacks take place inside Viktor's borders. And he does an annoyingly good job of preventing information from leaking out of his nation. It happens sometimes, but not all that often."

Aresa continued, "And what I was alluding to, is uh, while I was pouring over the information related to the Abyss, I began to wonder if your change was somehow related to them. There wasn't anything concrete to my thoughts. It's more like I just had a feeling?"

"The Lady raises a good point. I didn't notice it at first, but what you are is more aligned with these Abyssal Gods and not what is coming out of the other three realms. And it was always strange that your change took place in the Xerath's realm of all places. If your change had to come from one of the three-dimensional beasts assaulting our realm, then hands down I would've thought the Eldritch were responsible. Maybe the Demons. But definitely not the Xerath." Kai said, and his sister agreed with him.

"Strangely enough, I always thought the Demons were responsible. You see them all the time in the Xerath's realm. But let's put this aside for now, I want to get to the part where I flip through the rest of the Minor Gods in the books. If you're having trouble with the Abyss, then maybe something in there will look similar to whatever is attacking you."

Page after page Rei flipped through, but there were only a few times the group had asked me to pause so they could discuss something. But it was never anything of significant importance. They had merely noticed that a few of the Gods looked similar to Abyssal creatures they had seen in leaked images coming out of Xel'nethra.

"Wait, that one!" Xi yelled, pointing at a familiar-looking Minor God.

"He's the one bothering you? That can't be a small issue for you guys then. Because I saw what he was capable of during the assault on Xethra."

The God Xi had pointed to was the multi-faced God who had taken control of several people inside of Xethra before forcing them to kill their own comrades. And if I remember correctly, didn't one of the people there say that it had even taken control of the guy controlling the railgun operator on the airship? I swear they said that a lot of people died because of that.

Aresa rubbed her eyes and sighed, "That's one of them... So you've also dealt with him before?"

"Not directly. He had killed a lot of soldiers before we showed up in Xethra, and then during the skeletal assault I watched him kill a platoon in a cemetery before running away from the city. How long has he been a problem here?"

"Off and on for almost nine months now." Kai said before continuing, "With the last sighting being three or four months ago. I'd like to believe he's left for greener pastures, but that's most likely just wishful thinking on my part."

I continued the memory, "Tell me when you see the other one."

After only two pages were flipped over, all three of them told me to stop.

"This one...? I don't even know what I'm looking at."

"Neither do we, but it's a new threat that popped up recently. The illustration of that previous God wasn't entirely close to the reports we've received, but this one is almost an exact replica." Kai said.

The creature was similar to the girl in the Museum, in that she was human from below her head. She was also wearing a gothic dress, with this one being more noble in design. And her head was bizarre to say the least, even in comparison to the other monster girl. Her 'Face' almost looked wooden. It was circular with half of it white and the other half black, while her eyes were spaced far apart from one another. Her pupils were black with white irises, with the rest of her eyes and head looking aesthetically similar to the Museum girl. They were intricately designed in the same white ivory.

"And that right there was the problem," Aresa said, pointing at the half-black half-white wooden face of the creature. "The survivors said that the longer the fight went on, the more her face turned white, and once her face was completely white, the room was suddenly blasted with a light powerful enough to reduce our men to ashes. The only reason we had two survivors is because they were Vanguards who had just arrived at the scene. According to them, their shields had almost broken from that attack alone, and the only reason they got away was because the monster fell to her knees after the attack had finished. They said it looked like she was winded and needed a moment to compose herself."

"How recent was this attack?"

"Six days ago," Kai replied.

Shit, that was very recent. And that's one God I really don't want to do battle with. A light powerful enough to reduce soldiers to ash and nearly break the shields of seasoned Vanguards? There's no way in hell I'd survive that, even with my halo.

We kept going until the scene where the sack in the middle of the room opened up, revealing a giant eyeball. Xi was completely disgusted to say the least. And from a memory perspective, it looked like nothing had happened, so everyone was confused as they watched me idly wave goodbye to the monster girl and leave the Museum.

"What the hell was that?! Why did you not react to what had just happened?" Xi asked.

"Ahh, I guess it would look a little odd from the outside without context. That was the God of the Abyss I think. He had just filled my soul up. And strangely enough, I haven't needed to eat since then, even after reviving. Souls, I mean. I still need actual food."

The three of them weren't sure what to make of that, and since the conversation was going nowhere I skipped ahead to several different points. I showed them the Collector, the black multi-eyed creature in the lake, the amphitheater full of Crotians and Aliens kneeling in prayer, and the stairs leading back to the underground city.

"And that's the way back to the city. We come back down here again, but for now, what did you guys think of the Abyss? I think this is barely scratching the surface. Who the hell knows just how expansive this realm is. I'd like to find out one day, but it'd be really difficult to go back there, and I'd need more than mere curiosity as a reason to go back at this point."

"I really don't know what to think of it. It's extremely bizarre at a minimum." Kai said, and the two girls agreed.

"I see... Well, there's one last place to check out before we go back to the temple. This is the most important part of this entire journey down here."

I took the memory to the temple, but I began to speed up a little more, as I could see Xi was finally starting to pass out, and Aresa had whispered to me that she needed to leave soon. So I quickly showed them the minor God's resurrection(?) and the portal room that was being maintained by the zombified Demon General.

"So basically, you want me to speed up, allowing you to record everything to your own soul realms?"

"Please do... I'm sorry, Rei~." Xi said with her eyes half closed. Aresa chuckled when she saw that. "This has been really fun, but yeah, we should call it a night in the next thirty minutes. We can always discuss this later after we're given time to pour over it ourselves."

Despite her drowsed state, Xi cheered quite ecstatically when I shot the God of Change with the plasma gun. "That God creeps me out the most! It's a shame you weren't able to kill him here and now. I hate knowing that this thing is out there somewhere, doing who the hell knows what."

We sped through my return to the temple, the time I relaxed before our escape, and even the escape itself. Commentary still took place, but by the time we discussed something it was already onto the next scene. One part they found amazing was the fact that I was able to save Vi, which was something I was horribly conflicted about. Aresa picked up on that and said we'd discuss it later, but I knew she'd understand why after the Xethra siege anyway.

The charge through the underground city. Down the stairs. Fighting the God of Casters and the multi-eyed creature from the lake, and then finally leaving through the portal to Xethra passed by us. The three of them were talking during it, but I could feel a sense of dread and sadness welling up as I watched the memories playing out before me.

On some level, I was actually having fun back then. Escaping a moon wrapped in madness with my friends, a group of trainee ninjas, and a Tengu was hilarious in hindsight. And it was honestly kind of magical, in a weird way... But knowing what came next, really ruined the memory for me. Yet again, that mother fucker took something away from me. I'm not even allowed to have good memories anymore. I still can't look at the memories I shared with my friends on Urza thanks to him...

It wasn't long after we arrived in Xethra that the three of them knew exactly where we were. Long before any of us in the memory did, but that's because they had seen the footage of what happened here already. What they didn't know until now though, was the existence of this portal to the Abyss on the outskirts of the city, and that our group had come through it.

"So that's how you ended up in Xethra? What a wild ride." Xi said.

Aresa chuckled despite the grim look on her face, "I had wondered how they arrived in one of Viktor's cities for so many years. And not once had I even come close to guessing what actually happened back then."

Next, we were guided to the hotel, and then we ate breakfast before the two ambassadors showed up to look through our memories of the Abyss. It was only when Viktor showed up that I had to finally pause the memory. Even Xi, whose eyes were half closed moments before, looked on in shock and horror when she saw who Vi's Father was.

I could hear Aresa grinding her teeth next to me. "I know what's going to happen next, and I really don't want to see it... But I know I need to."

'... All the more reason that I cannot allow her to go through something like that again.' Viktor said in the memory(I was now playing it at normal speed), causing Xi to stand up and flick him off with both middle fingers. "OH FUCK OFF!! OOH THIS IS SO ANNOYING!"

Kai shook his head and leaned back into the couch, "Wow... You all truly did just want to leave too. So he's the one who forced this confrontation. While I didn't believe the story Viktor had put out into the world, especially not when Lady Aresa spoke so highly of you, I was however not entirely certain if you were the reason this battle had started. After all, she did say that you wanted to kill this man."

"I don't blame you for wondering that. Even in that moment I wanted to kill him, but even so, I put the lives of the group ahead of that desire and really was just going to leave with them. But as you can see, the fucker didn't let us go. He instead decided to use us for his own purposes. And I only made it worse by attacking the town... I had to save Markus and Ishar though. And the artifact was with them too."

For the most part we skipped through the rest at a high speed, while only playing the scenes that really mattered at normal speed. Like when Nisha died, Greyson left, and when I met up with Shana.

The chatter between the three was surprisingly technical. And it was a little surprising at first until I realized why Aresa was doing it. Obviously they were gleaning everything they could from the memory related to Viktor's abilities and the fighting force at his command, even if it was thirty years ago this was still useful to them, and the Xerath would not have changed all that much. But there was another reason she was doing it. She wanted to distract herself from what she knew was about to happen. Especially since I could feel her shiver when she saw Seifer in the jail cell with the others.

Xi began to laugh hysterically when I had removed my invisibility behind a group of soldiers. Some of them began to scream in terror as I charged up my halo, and apparently she thought that was the funniest thing in the world.

Ahh shit, it's coming up soon...

Everyone filed into the truck before I sped away. I drove toward the hotel where Shana was waiting for us, and just like I had remembered, the truck was completely crushed. However, even through the memory, I wasn't able to figure out how it happened. Kai theorized it was something the airship was doing, and not an ability from the werewolf.

When the railgun killed the Tengu and wiped out the ninjas, Xi began yelling obscenities again, and her brother joined in as well after my arm was cut off. Aresa remained silent until the moment Shana's clone disappeared. She knew from that alone what that meant. So before I even saw her body, Aresa was already crying with her knees pressed up against her face. The scene kept playing out as the two siblings continued to yell at the memory(mostly Xi though).

Seifer's retreat. Markus's death, and the moment Viktor's group warped away. I hadn't noticed it back then, but this one was a little unique. I saw a purple shimmer when it happened.

"He did that through his airship, in case you were wondering. Viktor came and left from the last summit using the same spell. One of the men bragged that it was a pristine crystal he imbued it with and charged through the ship. Or so I was told. I wasn't actually on Aetheria yet at the last summit." Kai said.

Aresa lifted her head a little to watch my last conversation with Ishar before the railgun hit us. Ishar was a vanguard, so it wasn't a huge surprise that he managed to survive, but I was a complete mess. I knew it was bad at the time but to see my mostly destroyed body from the outside was pretty shocking. At this point, everyone was silent as they watched the werewolf kill Ishar and me before I climbed out of the hole in Termia.

"And now you know most of what happened. And from here there's only one more thing to show you, and then you can finally get some rest."

"What moment is that?" Kai asked.

"The moment I killed Seifer."