125 Origin (2/2)

I frowned. I was being caught between a rock and a hard place. Neither option seemed very good at the moment. Either I tried to continue lying about myself and see what happens, or I tell him and also see what happens.

At this point, we’d been around one another for a few weeks. He probably already knew what I was doing. We’re talking about Yawm here, not some random schmuck. If anything, this was probably an opportunity to come clean about everything.

It wasn’t something I wanted to do though. There was so much uncertainty, and Yawm had deformed so many people before me. Without meaning to, I asked a question,

“Why did you create Althea the way you did?”

Yawm set his tea down on the ground beside him. His arms were long enough to reach it with ease. He crossed his fingers, resting his chin on them as he inspected me. I don’t know what he saw exactly, but he replied after some contemplation,

“To answer that question, I first must give you context. During my travels, I was picked up as an avatar of Etorhma. I accomplished many tasks in his name for many rewards. Most of what I know about the cipher came from him. That’s why I was so impressed with your own use of the language. You learned it on your own.”

Yawm leaned up, resting his back on his chair,

“I digress. During one of those many missions, I picked up useful intelligence from an information broker. One of Etorhma’s oldest avatar’s was being summoned soon. Using that information, I matched up my own summoning with his.”

Yawm raised a hand,

“That peculiar avatar had an interesting ability to travel through time, to a lesser extent. I created a singularity where he was, warping the space time he was in. This slowed him down. Before he could escape, I detonated antimatter on his location, using a thin sheet of stasis to contain the explosive damage.”

Yawm gestured outwards with a hand,

“It was a clean, effective execution. After I slayed Etorhma’s champion, the Old One did something unexpected.”

Yawm leaned towards me, the intensity of the stare like acid.

“The creature wept.”

Yawm leaned back up into his chair,

“And so, this monstrosity flooded the plain that we were summoned in. I was able to contain much of this viscous fluid that was released by him. As the pocket universe around me collapsed, Ajax warped in and pulled me out of Etorhma’s temporal plane. I can still remember the racking cries of that creature.”

Yawm squeezed both his hands into fists, “Can you imagine why I would do such a thing?”

I shook my head, curious as hell about the rest of the story.

Yawm opened a hand, “He...That avatar was the one that expunged my family. He was contracted by Schema for a bounty quest. I was given the chance to cut his throat, and I took it.”

My stomach sank at hearing that. Not the killing the avatar part but at the losing his family part. Yawm continued,

“I never intended on gaining Etorhma’s Tears. It was a result of enacting a hollow revenge. After I discovered the tears, many people wanted them. The effects of the tears on most sentients were poor at best. Poor might be the incorrect word. Exposure led to grisly and vile outcomes. I won’t go into detail about them any further.”

There was a disgust hidden in those last few words he spoke.

“On the eldritch, however, the effects were astonishing.”

Yawm raised both his hands,

“If you can imagine it, the eldritch corrupted the Old One’s essence! They deformed it into their own flesh and blood. These eldritch could tear through any material as if they were moving through air. Those creatures were deadly and dangerous, so I slayed them.”

Yawm gripped his hands into fists, “And so I discontinued my experiments. It wasn’t until much later that we discovered a fringe world at the edge of being taken over by the eldritch.”

I frowned, “You discovered Althea.”

Yawm nodded, “Among many others left of her kind. They were a unique species, naturally given an affinity for Arcane Blood. They were clustered on a mountain, hidden from the rest of their world. Before the eldritch decimated them, I took the species under my wing.”

Yawm waved a hand around, as if he were grasping for details,

“They were a prideful species, even more stubborn than we porytians. They would raise their young in caverns until they were adolescents. Until then, they weren’t allowed to see natural light. As I learned about them, they learned of me. The situation devolved once they learned of the potential hidden among the cipher.”

Yawm lifted and turned his arms, showing several of the markings of his cipher,

“They wanted to know how I fought the eldritch with such ease. I told them it was the cipher etched on my skin. I refused them, not because I wished to horde the knowledge but because I didn’t want them exiled from Schema’s system. They ignored me, trying to carve the cipher on their own.”

I grimaced, “There’s no way that worked out.”

Yawm shook his head, “As a fellow practitioner, you understand that. With their marred characters, they were torn asunder by the language. The wrath of the cipher deformed them utterly. They killed one another like a pit of hungry cannibals. Few survived.”

Yawm leaned forward towards me,

“Among that chaos, I discovered something extraordinary. Among the ruins of their village, there laid a woman strapped against a tree. Her belly was swollen. Dried tears traced down her cheeks. Her limbs had been dislocated, an eldritch tying her to a tree.In the end, her body was merely a catalyst for what lied within.”

Yawm looked off in a different direction, “There was something strange about it. Two open wounds were on her belly. One was where the wasp eldritch had tried laying an egg within her. The other mark was where she had tried tearing it out. I believe the remnants of that egg mixed with the already formed baby.”

I grimaced, “Althea is some sort of eldritch hybrid?”

Yawm sighed,

“Perhaps. She was like her kind, but the eldritch had infested her flesh. Once the mother died, Althea burst from its belly. She plopped onto the ground, already larger than most toddlers of her species. I believed she would be some twisted chimera. Instead, she was a crying, healthy baby.”

Yawm turned a palm towards me, “We never discovered exactly how it was created. From her mother’s carcass, we gained a genetic signature that was unusually reactive. Combine that with their Arcane Blood, and they molded together.”

Yawm steepled his fingers together,

“Still, I was in no position to care for a child. I gave her to one of the last remaining members of her species. As she aged, she grew, but so did the eldritch within her. She was a bomb waiting for detonation. Once she was about to burst, we took her from her foster parents and placed her within the confines of a lab.”

Yawm’s eyes narrowed, “It would amaze you how much tragedy there is among the stars. My lab was a home for those tragedies, a way for them to try and regain some semblance of a life.”

Yawm stared at the ground,

“There were so many failures during our time in that laboratory. Even now the thought of what I did there stings. I used the abominations of eldritch and sentients to experiments with the tears. It was by no means my proudest moment, but i was desperate for something.”

Yawm waved his hands outwards,

“I had studied the cipher and the eldritch for hundreds of years. I spent lifetimes researching the very darkest pits and deepest holes I could find. It weighed on me. I needed some breakthrough, and I had found that with Althea. I was hoping to find another breakthrough again.”

Yawm grabbed the sides his head,

“She was eldritch and took the tears without the effects that most sentients experienced. I prayed the tears would help her affliction. They made her nigh immortal and gave her the same slicing abilities as other eldritch, but it didn’t save her.”

Yawm spread his hands, “The eldritch grew within her with the same fervor as before, threatening to overwhelm her. In order to extract the eldritch essence, I used the only method I know of pulling out eldritch energy.”

Yawm formed a ball in front of him,

“We would surround her with the ‘dungeon cores’ as you call them. I would pull out energy from them, and they would in turn drain the energy from her to power themselves. Between these cleansings, we would pump Althea with sedatives. Otherwise her emotions may swell, making her energy unleash in a torrent.”

Yawm clapped his hands together, “We tried many other methods. None of them were successful.” Yawm gestured a hand to me,

“With your armor, we could have formed a conduit between you and her in order to siphon her excess energy. Any mage with experience would know that. Without something extracting her mana at a routine rate though, Althea was restricted. She would go over the edge at regular intervals.”

Yawm closed his eyes, “When I discovered that our scientists where using her for bounty hunting...”

Yawm paused, finding himself at a loss for words. He opened his eyes and steepled his fingers once more,

“I learned they were doing other questionable things within the lab. Most of them unethical and pointless. They were culled along with many other members of my ranks for that reason. I had no need for the unloyal and those that lie.”

There was some serious acid in his voice at the last word. I had a decent reason why. He continued,

“And so, you found Althea in her state. Does that explanation sate your curiosity?”

I nodded, “Uh, yeah. It does.”

We sat there, facing one another for a few minutes before Yawm picked up his tea. He sipped it in silence. A second later, he stared at me. From where I was standing, it was pretty obvious he already knew. I figured my best bet was coming clean.

“Hey Yawm.”

“What is it?”

I sighed before meeting his eye,

“I’ve been lying to you.”