229 Necromancy (1/2)
Soul energy was invisible to mortals and even to outsiders, but it wasn't invisible to me. Not anymore at least. As I began to pull soul fragments towards my outstretched hand, I began to see purple lines appear in the air around my hand. Soul fragments, the tiny chunks of souls left over when an extraplanar entity dies in the dimension of its birth were flowing into my hand. As they were I began to utilize another power.
I possessed a number of nasty abilities that were tied specifically to theft. I could steal essentially anything from a target that I wanted, and today, atop the ruins of the depopulated city, what I want to steal were memories. As soul fragments flowed into me I began to steal their memories. And in doing so I swiftly began to learn.
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One of my greatest abilities was my ability to learn. I possessed a number of ways to learn, and one of my personal favorites was when I learned at the expense of my enemies. In the moments after I began to drain knowledge from the remains of my enemies I felt an incredible amount of information begin to flood my senses.
I was using ”Greater Drain” on what was left of my enemies. As I did I ignored their class-levels and focused specifically on stealing everything they had ever learned. I was a gluttonous parasite, feeding on the lived experiences of others. Every memory of every sensation each member of the horde of demons had locked away in their minds were now being recalled and experienced by me, and it was a lot to take in.
I experienced every sin even the lowliest member of the city committed. Every murder, every instance of adultery, every lie, every threat whispered, it all hit me at once. It was a lot, but it was also good. I closed my eyes and shivered in delight. I was also experiencing the taste of every mortal they devoured, and the sensations of every time they had sex.
The collective weight of every memory, thought, and secret, possessed by over two thousands demons, many of whom were many millennia old, was immense. But it also wasn't enough for my mind. The more I learned the more knowledge I wanted. The more sin I got to live through, the more sin I wanted to inflict.
I witnessed vivid memories of cities, regions, countries, and even planets brought to ruin by the machinations of clever demons, ones whose intelligence apparently dwarfed Agustino's. Demons who had succeeded in their goals. One day I planned to make them my servants as well.
After a few moments, seconds after I absorbed the last soul fragment, I finished acquiring the last memory, last thought, and last secret of the final demon I had killed, I opened my eyes again. I felt... different, compared to how I felt before I began to absorb their memories.
The oldest demons who had been in the city were over three quarters of a million years old. The youngest had still been several thousand years old. More than three hundred of the two thousand plus demons were old enough to remember the end of the mythic age, and a portion of my mind fixated on their knowledge.
I mulled over that amazing reality, that such chaotic and evil entities could survive so long, while I summoned a loyal servant to my side. I sent my most loyal lieutenant a mental message calling her to my side, along with granting her permission to move through my shadow. A second later I shivered as I felt a creature pull herself up out of the ground behind me. She grunted as she did so, annoyed at having to exert so much effort.
I silently grabbed her using telekinesis and lifted her out of my shadow, before gently placing her down next to me. Without even glancing at her I smiled and greeted her with a bit of warmth.
”Hello Sombra. How are you?” I asked, my voice filling her mind and causing a healthy rush of shadowy, demonic blood to flood her cheeks. And elsewhere. Sombra shivered and momentarily bit her lips before gathering herself enough to respond to me.
”Hello master. I am good. Thank you for calling me over to your side.” She said, speaking softly. She looked different.
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Sombra was a praereptor demoness. She was a demon of envy and shadows, and was the very first demon I had ever brought over to my side. She was also the first incorporeal creature I had ever given a form too.
The shadowy demoness was given the form of a heart-achingly beautiful drider woman, just without the spider lower half that driders were known for. And at the moment she was wearing clothes, but she wasn't wearing a top. Her dark breasts, including fully hardened, diamond-like nipples, were exposed to the damp air of the demonic swamp. She was wearing pants, and shoes, but the demoness did not like shirts or other clothes that covered the top half of her body and so she didn't wear them.
She had blemishless skin and was always happy to flaunt her body, given to her by the master she very literally worshiped and served. She wanted to inspire envy in those she felt were lesser beings, and that was everyone but me.
The demoness was wearing makeup. She had applied a shade of lipstick to her full lips and when she smiled her darkened lips were extra desirable. As a creature of lust I was incapable of being truly distracted by lust, but even I had to admit that Sombra, whose body was modelled after the first creature I had ever been attracted too, was almost distractingly attractive to me at the moment. That said I calmly refocused and spoke once again to the demoness.
”I am happy to see you, little one.” I told her, causing her to smile radiantly at me, even as her scarlet eyes widened in shock at my words.
”Master, do you have need of my power?” She asked, assuming I wanted her by my side because of her utility. I shook my head at her question before responding with words.
”Sombra... I am the source of your power, why do you think I would need you for your power?” I asked curiously. I was a creature of potentially infinite power, and to date the only creature I had met who could challenge me was a vestige, an almost undead remnant of another deity's power that comes into existence when a god perishes. I chuckled after asking her my question and began to speak again.
”I have called you here to be by my side. Nothing more... Nothing less.” I informed the shadow demoness. These words brought a smile to her face. And then she began to study her surroundings. I watched as she did this, while mentally ordering the infested pair of demons I had seized control of to stay away from her.
Upon seeing her the demons had been filled with an urge to infect her with the spores I had infected them with and thus subsume her will. My spores were in all likelihood my most dangerous power, as they could infect anyone and anything, even the undead and extraplanar entities. And what's more is that the spores that infested people were filled with a powerful urge to spread spores to most lifeforms that weren't also infested.
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”Althos... Spread us!” A voice whispered in my head. It was a friendly voice, and judging from the tone of the whisper it appeared to believe that subsuming more creatures into the super hivemind it and I ran was doing something kind. I gritted my teeth, and sent a mental message right back to the creature who had spoken to me.
”Not to her.” I whispered, sending a message back to the bizarre, mind-subsuming entity known as the subdomain of fungi. The creature was one of the subdomains I ignored more than others, as the entity had a strange fixation with absorbing entities into the interplanetary and interdimensional hivemind that was mental network of minds linked by my parasitic spore power.
The fungal subdomain and I commanded the super hivemind created by my ”parasitic spore” power. To date I had only really used this particular power on a few demons and on a test world that I was willing to wish my more apocalyptic powers on. I wasn't eager to spread it rampantly throughout the Heart of Darkness. Maybe someday, but not now. Not yet.