It had been a little over a week since Andrew’s introduction to Alma, in that time, he’d done a fair bit of hunting. Using his connection to the collective unconscious and his ability to read the world’s t-data to find as many large sources of magic as he could.

He wasn’t acting aimlessly, Andrew had a plan for how he would manage his time in this new world, and his existence as an eidolon in its world-eater phase. The plan had started with the construction of his current body.

Since he wasn’t concerned about fitting in with the local populace, Andrew had elected to take on a form that would be more useful for the task of magic detection and manipulation. That form was somewhat similar to form he’d had in Abwickeln, albeit more terrestrial, and less ‘aquatic’ in appearance.

His current form came across as some kind of gigantic, shaggy wolf-tree-man with long spindly limbs, but that was fine. Andrew didn’t mind looking a little monstrous all right now. He’d even finetuned the body’s proportions, and adjusted the joints, respiratory system, and musculature, so that the body would be more suitable for chasing down prey.

People always said that one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes...just sometimes, form informed conduct, and conduct informed form. That’s why uniforms, costumes, and masks, were such scary things.

By taking on a monstrous guise, the parts of Andrew that might have recoiled in horror from some of the things he’d been doing as of late were more easily put asleep and put aside. It was almost like being back in Abwickeln.

The finishing touch had been adding a long fluffy tail that he figured Sophia, who had a sweet spot for all things cute and fluffy would get a kick out of, when she saw him next.

If Andrew’s plan worked he could get back home in one month instead of four. The first part of the plan began with creating his new body. The second part involved the construction of spell module out of data and power. He’d had to kill a large number of this world’s fauna to collect enough energy but he eventually managed to get what he needed.

The spell module would be nested within his new stomach...Andrew actually wasn’t sure what the new space he’d discovered inside his soul was. It wasn’t just a subspace. There was more to it. It was almost like a genuine realm, with its own cosmic laws and natural flow.

For now Andrew was simply calling the space his stomach. He called it such because it was wear all the energy he’d been collecting was sent. He could also for some reason put himself inside the space, so maybe it really wasn’t a stomach.

As he thought about it for the hundredth time, Andrew decided perhaps it might be more appropriate to call the space his core. There was something vital about it, and he had a strong feeling that should anything untoward happen to the space, the rest of his being would suffer greatly as well.

In any case, Andrew placed his spell construct in the ‘core’ setting a partition of his mind to the task of monitoring the spell. The spell would search for two things, evil, and magic.

Whenever both were present in strong amounts the location would be drawn into his consciousness from the akashic plane.

If only one of those two things were present Andrew’s mental of the planet would be pinged and he’d have to use his judgement and the data he could pull from the collective unconsciousness to decide what to do.

Then he would travel from his core to the area to consume the souls of the wicked and drain them of their energy, and/or consume whatever magically rich items that happened to be location.

It wasn’t a very complicated plan. The most complicated part of it had been reordering the data and power around to construct the spell. However, Andrew had always been the sort to favor simple plans. Extra complications just meant having more things that could go horribly and terribly awry.

*************************************************************************************************************

After dealing with the two groups of soldiers, Andrew turned his attention to the city of Debica. He released a long sights that sent a dark glowing steam issuing out of his body. That steam was the souls of all the men he’d killed during his last meal.

Souls were immortal in the truest sense and largely indestructible. Thus rather than risk giving himself a tummy-ache, Andrew always expelled the spirits of those he’d consumed after draining them dry of the energy he needed from them.

Despite Andrew’s scale, his footfalls made no sound as he approached the city. If he wanted the earth would shake, and he’d approach with a sound like dull thunder, but that was only when there were people around, or other creatures that he needed to scare off or intimidate.

Andrew was just about to reach the city when he felt something enter into the range of his spiritual senses. It was another person, their nature and flavor was not quite bad, but not exactly good either. Andrew paused, considering whether he should try eating this one.

He used his senses to observe the newcomer. A man floated in mid-air, dressed in dark gray robes. The man had silver hair and light brown eyes, and seemed ostensibly human.

Andrew recognized the man to be a mage. The mages of this world weren’t like the mages of his world, but his time in Abwickeln had taught Andrew that magic and it utility varied from universe to universe just like all the other physical laws.

In Alma’s case, the mages were of a variety that was capable of more readily manipulating the rich if somewhat muddy power that was so abundant in this world.

Andrew observed the mage and noticed that the man was observing him as well. The man and the beast regarded each other.

Just as Andrew was considering simply ignoring the newcomer and moving on to the city, the mage attacked him. Sending a beam that was part petrification spell, and part kinetic energy, flying Andrew’s way.

*************************************************************************************************************

Halbert teleport to the scene of the latest disruption in his grand work.

If all had gone as planned, Debica would have still fallen, but Tin Reaver Mercenary company would have been slaughtered by the imperials, and Halbert would have received a portion of the death energy created by the day’s battles to fuel his future ascension.

Instead, through his mental connection with the sorcerous map, Halbert watched as a third party slew both the Tin Reavers and the Imperials stealing all the death energy for themselves.

When Halbert arrived in Debica’s territory the first thing he saw was the creature. His entire train of thought ground to a halt as he beheld the beast. It was massive, and the aura it exuded was such that even he, a mage with nearly a thousand years of experience under his belt, felt himself at a loss for what to make of it.

As a young man, Halbert the Gray had often been called gloomy, now that he’d witnessed this beast he sincerely wished to slap the many people who’d called him such, and bring them here to have them witness what true gloom looked like.

Halbert’s mind tried to run through the possibility, trying to puzzle out the creature’s true nature and thus return it, and Halbert himself, to the rational world.

Was it a demon?

Was it some kind of yet undiscovered magic beast?

Was it a spirit?

Was it one of the lesser gods that sometime be seen wandering in the wild?

What was this creature?

Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t some young upstart mage piggybacking off his hard work, like Halbert had originally thought.

The questions flowed into Halbert’s mind as he tried to place the beast somewhere amongst the large number of categories, species, and genealogies that he’d read about over the centuries.

Eventually, Halbert decided that the creatures nature didn’t matter. As he met its six eyed gaze, and felt it look with the same disinterested him as a man might use to look upon an ant, Halbert decided then and there that the beast had to die.

He cast a [stoneheart] hex at the creature. The dark gray beam flew towards the beast and then immediately grounded into the dark before getting anywhere the creature. Halbert cast another stoneheart hex that beast, this time adding more power to the spell. The hex flew straight and actually managed to reach the creature.

Halbert watched with grim satisfaction as he saw the creature knocked back several yards, its claws dragging through the soil. Halbert saw the creatures emaciated chest turn gray as hex turned its insides to stone. Then Halbert’s jaw fell open as he saw the process reverse itself the creature’s shaggy hide regaining its black-red coloration.

“Impossible…”

Before Halbert could even try to puzzle out what he’d just seen, he was knocked out of the air. It turned out the beast was a caster as well. The heavy enchantments that had been woven onto and into Halbert’s robe flared to life saving Halbert from a miserable death.

Halbert groaned as his skin was scalded and all the moisture on the surface of the unprotected parts of his body were boiled away.

“Bugger!”

Incensed, the mage quickly healed himself. Rising back into the air and casting a [steel bolt barrage] at the beast. The air was filled with an explosive roaring as hundreds of massive steel spikes appeared and fired themselves at the blood-red monster. Pounding into creature as if driven by an invisible hammer.

This time instead of merely skidding backwards the beast was lifted up into the air and knocked into the far end of Debica’s territory.

Halbert grew excited as he saw that the creature was pinned down. Instead of moving it simply lay in place its back turned towards him as he cast [steel bolt barrage] after [steel bolt barrage]. Peppering the beast in an endless rain of steel spikes.

The feeling of satisfaction began to fade as the creature’s aura began to grow in strength again. The fast flying steel bolts melting into pools of gray sludge as they neared the beast’s form.

Not wanting to risk losing control of the situation, Halbert cast his strongest offensive spell, [Gorgon’s Maelstrom]. The mage’s aether took the form of a massive snake surrounded by petrified clouds, then a storm of hail stones and stoneheart bolts flew down at the beast.

Halbert felt a growing frustration and unease when instead of being torn apart, the creature managed to right itself, rising back to its feet. The beast’s baleful aura exploded and the gaze it sent towards Halbert filled his heart with dread.

Halbert’s first instinct was to try and teleport away, but the moment he tried he ended up coughing blood as the spell backfired, something that Halbert hadn’t experienced in hundreds of years. He immediately knew that it was the beast’s doing some how it had locked the surrounding space.

As the aura around the creature grew heavier, and more forbidding, Halbert cast his best [aether shield]. Putting his all into the spell because he had a feeling that his very life was on the line.

This time the creature didn’t cast a spell, it just swung one of its forelimbs at him, swatting Halbert like a gnat. Halbert was slammed into the ground by a force that could turn mountains into gravel. As his vision and coherent thoughts faded into nothing, he couldn’t help complaining at the unfairness of it all.

Elsewhere, on the site where Halbert had been gathering power for his coming ascension, a white haired young man opened his eyes, after ages of meditation. This too was Halbert. Soul splitting was one of the most mysterious and difficult arcane arts, but it was a must for any one who needed to make the risks necessary to try and ascend beyond the mortal realm.

This younger Halbert was Halbert the Gray’s true body. His heart hurt both literally and figuratively as he thought about the loss of his clone, and the sheer amount of resources that had been destroyed along with that alternate body.

Just as Halbert began thinking about how he might recoup his laws and later consider getting a little revenge and the creature that had caused the loss, he felt a new kind of pain.

Halbert’s eyes widened in alarm as he felt something vital being torn from him.The glowing gray death energy of the ascension pool began to dim as the pool’s level began to fall. Halbert gazed around in panic as he saw his ascension pool begin to drain away and a sizable portion of his soul was siphoned to parts unknown.

“W-, What the deuce?! My ascension pool!...My beautiful ascension pool! What in the nine hells is happening!?”

*************************************************************************************************************

Andrew ran his long red tongue along his elongated maw. He’d been perplexed at first when after killing the mage, he’d found that the mage had no soul. However, after incurring such a heavy loss of power after that fight, there was no way Andrew was just going to let things lie.

Andrew plumbed his connection to the akashic plane and the collective unconscious to find out who exactly his attacker was. Andrew learned that the mage was Halbert LLoyd, aka Halbert the Gray.

Andrew used the context supplied by the information he’d gathered parse the data within the mage’s corpses. He discovered that the mage he’d just fought had actually just been a magically created duplicate. A clone created with the blood and a fragment of the soul, of the mage he’d been fighting.

The information Andrew found helped him make up his mind on whether Halbert the mage, was naughty or nice. So feeling a tad hotter under the collar than he perhaps had any right to be, Andrew decided to finish off the mage lest he become a problem later on.

Andrew burned up much of the power he’d gathered from the soldiers he’d just eaten to directly consume the mage’s soul and the external power that mage had folded into his soul. Andrew used the corpse’s t-data and the strong connection that formerly existed between the clone and its original, to directly attack the original mage.

Andrew noted with a gruff sense of satisfaction that his actions had paid off quite nicely. The pool of external energy that the mage had been folding into his soul was almost bigger than all the energy that Halbert had collected over the past two days combined.

Andrew stood shaking himself, an action that was likely far more hound-like than he’d intended it to be. He gazed down at the young woman he’d been protecting, a troublesome human, whose relative innocence and unexpected survival after the soldiers’ raid, had nearly cost Andrew his life.

His human-side and meagre but strict moral code had required that Andrew save her rather than letting her be turned into colateral damage during his and the mage’s fight. To do otherwise would be crossing a line that seperated Andrew from the many figurative and literal monsters, and asshats, that he had met both in Harlow and Abwickeln.

However now the fight was over, so the little human was no longer Andrew’s concern. Her life or death would now have nothing to do with him.

Andrew trotted towards the city, eager to finally consume the magical relics that had been sealed in the city, beneath the mayor’s house. There was a set of bones belonging to a long dead monarch, a mage-king, that had been buried beneath the town along with many of the monarch’s possession.

The city of Debica was built out in the middle of nowhere as the fallen mage-king’s sepulcher and the city’s first denizens were charged with the task of keeping a vigil just in case the mage-king decided that death was a little too restful.

Of course, all this was ages ago. Only immortals who’d been around and paying attention back then, or beings like Andrew who were good at sniffing out dangerous and powerful secrets, were privy to this information.

************************************************************************************************************

Eloise stood shell-shocked, watching as the imposing figure of the black-red beast receded from her view. She’d regained consciousness just in time to see the creature kill the mercenary who’d destroyed her town when they were supposed to defend it and the hateful imperials who’d put all the survivors under sword.

Eloise had been trying to get away. She’d used a sharp rock to saw through the ropes that bound her. Then she’d planned to run for the woods, or at least she’d planned to try to run, the damn mercenary had hamstrung her. He’d likely planned to have a healer see to the matter later, when he was ready to sell her. It was a common method used by slavers in Azotou.

When the beast was knocked towards by the strange mage’s assault. Instead of simply flattening her, by some miracle, it ended up falling right next to her instead of on top of her.

She’d remember the moment that its six fiery orange eyes met her two blue-green ones till the day she died.

She stood frozen, expecting to be killed, expecting to be eaten. Piss and other unpleasant things, joined the blood and sweat that had soaked through her uniform. Instead, as the mage’s assault fell towards her position, the beast shielded her. Using its body to protect her from harm.

Then the creature healed her injuries somehow knowing she was hurt. Healing her so she could flee out of the range of danger.

Now as Eloise watched the beast approach the town she couldn’t help wondering if it was indeed a beast and not some kind of avenging angel.

She wondered if the endless war between Dytika and Antoli had drawn on so long that the wardens of hell had entered the world of men to whisk away sinners early for the sake of saving time.

Aware that her mental exhaustion and overwrought state might be effecting her thinking. Eloise simply shook her head and focused and taking breaths.

She remembered her post, she remembered her duty, she remembered the strong likelihood that there were at least a small handful of souls that had managed to hide themselves away.

Then she began to walk towards the town. Feeling inexplicably secure in the knowledge that the creature would hurt neither her nor the surviving townsfolk. Though it had eaten the soldiers, and killed the mage, it seemed that ordinary, decent folk, weren’t on the strange monster’s menu.