Chapter 19
The Crown of the Eternal Court appeared about Harald’s brow as the Aetherlight Circlet dropped into his palm.
Cold fire burned his scalp. Rippling fingers of power dug into his mind, through his being into his essence. He felt his Cosmos surge like an ocean beneath hurricane winds, and his whole body tensed, then strained as he fell back against the tiles.
The Crown’s hunger became tangible, real, ferocious.
It sensed a lack of Courtiers. More, it sensed how Harald had no intention of binding other beings to his will. Its hunger hung poised but a moment and then turned upon him.
And began to devour who he was.
Harald fought not to resist. Why should he? This was what he wanted. Yet the process was awful, terrifying, and deeply wrong.
The might that he’d grown accustomed to began to evaporate. System messages began to appear in his vision, overlapping each other so that he could only read snippets, and these only briefly before the intensity forced him to close his eyes.
Messages indicating his new levels, each lower than the last.
Messages indicating the loss of stat points.
Harald felt the seismic changes in his core. Felt the abyss retreat from him, his consolidated powers crack and fall apart into their constituent pieces as one by one he lost access to them all.
The Well in his chest sealed shut and disappeared. The shadows leached out of his flesh. His authority lost its supernatural girding.
So much that he’d taken for granted. So much that he’d learned to lean on without realizing.
And then, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, pain.
Rich and heady, unfurling within him as he lost Shadow Fortitude, so that his flesh seemed to come alive to sensation, to loss, to privation.
Harald gasped, his back arching, and then everything got worse.
His Cosmos began to warp.
His Ego stat was dropping precipitously, but Harald forced himself to overcome the pain and dive deep toward the Fallen Angel. Down into the darkness he delved, sinking toward that churning feeling of constraint and mutation.
The billion pinpricks of divine light rose into view, the Fallen Angel in his Cosmos slumbering, and around him hung his Artifacts, his Shadow Servitors, Shadowpaw.
But everything else was in flux.
The Artifact was reforging him anew.
Harald could only stare as the Demon Seed burned blackly, a dark core in the vortex of swirling majestic power. A tornado of shadows was revolving around him, remolding the very walls of his Cosmos.
It was beyond Harald’s ken.
Distantly, he felt more powers be consumed by the Crown. More strength, more resilience, more of his very sense of self.
But then, at last, just as he was beginning to despair, to think he’d wagered recklessly, the balance tilted.
The Crown of the Eternal Court ceased to drink of his essence and instead appeared before him within the Cosmos, across from his Demon Seed.
It hung there glowing with seductive light, black as liquid oil with shimmers of lavender passing over it, tined and bejeweled, malevolent yet rich with power.
But not alien.
He’d been reworked in some fundamental way that made the Crown part of him, part of his very weft and weave. A keystone in the very arch of his composition.
Harald drifted closer, extended a hand tentatively. Focused on the glimmering Endowment, and thought… Eclavistra?
Nothing. Or was that a faint ripple of amusement?
Harald watched the Crown warily. Was there anything emanating from it?
Not that he could tell. Nothing overt. Knowing the demon queen, she’d seek to manipulate him subtly, change his opinion on his priorities, seduce him into aligning with her goals.
Harald grinned, malevolence arising within him.
Which meant he had only one single overriding goal now: to destroy Eclavistra before she could manage to ensnare him.
Inhaling deeply, Harald looked around his Cosmos. Shadowpaw paced back and forth as always, but the three Shadow Handmaidens were gone, destroyed by the loss of his Grave Concordat power. Good. The less of Eclavistra’s essence he had around him, the better.
Gone also was the demonic reservoir created by Demonic Assimilation. Even better. With it gone, the last of Eclavistra’s demon-tainted essence was burned away.
His Artifacts remained. The Aureate Master. Chyron’s Scourge. The Solace of Aurelum. He startled: only three? Had he lost—no. He’d released the Aetherlight Circlet for the Crown, which had become an Endowment.
Could he now bind five total Artifacts?
Harald cast one last lingering look at the slumbering Fallen Angel and then rose back to his conscious self.
The air felt cold, the wind piercing, and he realized he was shivering.
Resisting the urge to hug himself, he picked himself out of the hole in the rooftop and gingerly eased over to a hale section of tiles.
By the angels, he felt weak. His frame had withered, his breath felt shallow, and when was the last time he’d eaten? His stomach growled and he felt lightheaded.
Harald checked his screen.
Name: Harald Darrowdelve
Soul Nature: Insatiable Void
Soul Rank: Divine
Soul Ability: Condemnation of Success
Class: Abyssal Acolyte
Class Actives: Abyssal Attunement
Class Passives: Depths of the Aching Abyss
Endowments: Demon Seed, Mote of Humility, Crown of the Eternal Court
Strength: 6
Dexterity: 6
Constitution: 5
Ego: 18
Presence: 8
Thrones: 4(5)/7
Scales: 10,435,333/10,000,000
Artifacts: Chyron’s Scourge, Aureate Master, Solace of Aurelum
Servitors: Shadowpaw
Harald laughed in disbelief. His stats! They were… by the angels above, the demons below, he was…
For a moment, the world reeled, and panic had him by the throat. What had he done? All that brutal work, the training, the running, lifting weights, fighting and killing, all gone, and now—and now—
Harald caught hold of his emotions and crushed them.
Took a long moment to press his thumbs into his closed eyes, pressing until he saw colored stars, and then rose unsteadily to his feet.
Dexterity 6. It felt like the tiles were slicked in oil and swaying from side to side like the deck of a moored rowboat.
A deep breath.
He may have lost his powers, his stats, but he yet had his Scourge, Shadowpaw, and profound understanding of the abyss.
More, he now effectively possessed five Thrones.
More even than Brianna Hammerfell.
Ego 18 allowed him to steady himself. He wasn’t the man he’d been months ago when he’d emerged from the dungeon after his first encounter with Vorakhar.
That Harald had been an innocent, dedicated, yes, but profoundly steeped in ignorance.
The only thing they still shared was the same ideal: to become stronger so as to make a difference.
And now? Here? Harald was a living testament to months of blood-minded dedication.
Even if the abyss had retreated from him like an ebbing tide, he knew its cold embrace, he understood its black essence, its void-filled eternity.
He was the same man who had mastered the Crown of the Abyssal Tyrant, the Well of Starless Dominion, who had manifested the abyss around him in the form of Abyssal Imperium, and who had reforged his very body with shadow and endless power via the Form of the Black Throne.
No.
He was far greater than his stats and limited powers intimated.
He was still the beast who had defeated Thracos, the monster who had cut Sythryxa’s head from her shoulders, who had slain Fosso, a dozen Handmaidens, and more.
He was Harald Darrowdelve, and the abyss was his to command.
Inhaling deeply, he tapped his Thrones.
The Throne of Harmony, claimed by Grimarque somewhere deep in the dungeon, his first and most intuitive.
Power curled up into him, that familiar wisp, that ember flaring to life.
The Throne of Shadow, held by Vorakhar, welcoming and fell.
More power surged into his form, girding his frame and strengthening his resolve.
The Throne of War. Seraphex’s claim, and one that enlivened him, quickened his desire for conflict in any and all forms.
The Throne of Knowledge, claimed by the arch demon Valthazar, and the last Throne he had claimed with the Fallen Angel’s own scales.
The four Thrones roared within him, fueling him, flooding him with divine power.
But something was different. And not just how he felt, his weakened state, his lack of powers.
The Thrones. They were burning… brighter?
He’d already grown used to what the four of them could provide, but now it felt as if each one was delivering more power.
As if their channels had widened, or the power coming from the Fallen Angel was refined.
Harald frowned and tried to focus on the sensation.
It was hard to pinpoint, exactly, but… yes. The cumulative effect of all four Thrones was somehow headier, more potent, more intense.
Amazed, delighted, Harald drank deep of their font, and then, repressing a shiver of anticipation, he tapped his newest Throne, the Crown.
Deep in his Cosmos, he felt the Endowment begin to burn, to revolve, opening like an eye, a fanged maw, and connecting him across time and space to an unholy source of power.
Eclavistra.
He drank of her essence and felt it flood into him. Opened his eyes and studied his palms, where flickers of lavender chased themselves across his skin.
The power of five Thrones. How could his body feel so weak and his soul so potent? Instinct told him he could tear boulders apart with his hands, but cold knowledge told him his body could barely batter down a wooden door.
Yet within him sang the might of angel and demon, both.
Harald exhaled shakily. He felt like a living flame himself, wavering in the gusts breathed by the abyss.
Insubstantial, burning fever-bright, truly alive, wickedly potent.
He had changed indeed. No longer was he a massive two-handed sword.
He had become a razor blade, wickedly sharp if insubstantial in comparison.
But razors could wreck terrible damage on unsuspecting flesh.
And the dungeon was filled with waiting victims.