Chapter 4 #3
It was the same combination now of auras he’d used to such deadly affect against Kessa Dorn only a day or so ago, slowing her down, muting her powers, bringing her phenomenal power to a register he could handle.
Harald’s four Thrones thrummed as they empowered his auras, and he felt ennobled, made fell, his will tangible and clamping down on all around him.
The abyss was right there, just beyond his grasp.
Its void and depths promised to consume all that opposed him.
Within the limits of his aura all was reduced, silenced, muffled, and constrained.
His will was made supreme, his authority extended.
While a supreme foe like Brauxis might be able to shrug off its effects, Harald knew that those of his own stature or below would be rendered terrified and diminished, their reactions slowed, their thoughts mired in cold mud, their attacks clumsy, their fear spiking into terror.
“Very good, very scary,” rumbled Brauxis. “Now. These are the blossoms of the same plant. Trace their stems to the root. Find their commonality. All manifest from your essence: thus, you must dive deep into its core and simplify.”
Harald lowered his chin and closed his eyes once more. He could sense the crown of twilight fire that burned about his brow. The abyss. It was an entity of darkness and subtraction. His was a dark, imperial might. He dealt in dread, in obfuscation, in frigid death and total dominion.
Down Harald sank, toward his Cosmos. But the answer wouldn’t lie there, would it?
He’d never seen any sign of his powers made manifest in that starry space.
Instead, he reached out for his auras, tried to sense how they emerged from his core, from his Thrones, where the abyss intersected with his essence.
At first, it was an exercise in frustration, like trying to grapple ink spilled into a pond. His auras were diffuse and washed about his clumsy attempts to define and understand them.
But still his Thrones roared on, and still Harald persevered. Sweat prickled his brow. Shadows, cold, authority, and numbness. Fear, might, dominion, and dread. His auras revolved around these concepts, augmented each other, forged a greater whole.
Time lost meaning.
Shadowpaw returned to his Cosmos.
Eventually his Thrones failed him, and he gasped. Opened his eyes. Saw Brauxis yet placidly levitating, Kársek gone.
“You progress. Go rest. We continue when you are ready.”
Harald stumbled back to his chamber. Slept. Ate. His schedule hadn’t aligned with the others; when he awoke, he was alone. He ate again, returned to the cavern, found Brauxis awaiting him.
He resumed meditating.
Day after day. His mind became strange to him, his thoughts fey. When he met with Nessa and Sam, they, too, were preoccupied, so that by common agreement, they gave each other space.
More days passed. Harald began to feel himself a creature of the void. Life and his waking hours revolved around meditation and his auras, while his dreams were dark and terrifying.
The Demon Seed was a throbbing, demanding presence deep in his Cosmos. It approved of the path he was treading.
Harald put its desires out of mind.
His breakthrough occurred one day when, by instinct almost random, he decided to open the Maw of the Starless Deep while seeking to trace the roots of his auras.
Did the Maw not make manifest the abyss itself?
Was it not a tangible connection to the void?
He didn’t overthink the impulse, but with eyes still closed, summoned the great rift, and felt it tear open the very side of the cavern.
“Ho!” cried out Brauxis, more surprised than alarmed.
Harald ignored him. Focused, instead, on how his auras reacted to the Maw.
He could sense the abyss, right there, gaping beside him.
Its essence laid bare. Its nature revealed.
And with it acting like a baleful lantern, he saw at last what he had long theorized and sought: the way his three auras arose from his Cosmos.
They condensed into being just above the Fallen Angel’s sanctum in his depths, rising from a singular spout like a fountain of darkness, to spiral and split into three essences that blossomed in the waking world as his auras.
The Aching Depths. Sovereign Silence. Thronebound Mantle.
Each distinct but merely emphasizing a different aspect of his base power.
Harald reached down, down toward that singular source, and grasped it.
Retracted his auras while elevating the core.
His soul struggled. His Cosmos rippled. His Thrones roared.
The essence fought him, much as a deeply embedded root might refuse to be torn free, but Harald sought to embody the abyss in his mind, made himself lordly and cold and demanding, and finally the heart of his power rose and became manifest.
Passive Ability Awakened: Crown of the Abyssal Tyrant
Your scattered dominions of shadow, silence, and authority have collapsed into a single sovereign presence. The abyss no longer answers your will—it radiates from it. Where you stand, fear settles, perception falters, and lesser powers bow or break.