Tormule
Tormule
Behind Tormule's stupidly rigid face, Aslan's consciousness sank. The rapid descent was like being dragged under by the churn of a subsea volcano.
His awareness plunged past the boundary of the unconscious, through the surface and into the depths beyond.
In Geladrion, the unconscious was the threshold of the soul, and Aslan immediately recognized where his had arrived.
Beyond a darkness that seemed to writhe and swallow his soul whole, he regained his senses and things that were not quite things came into full view.
Tormule was there.
The Tormule of not long ago—before Rumel had dealt him his first death.
Aslan regarded him with a silent gaze, then glanced down to find himself clad in simple leather armor and a ragged cloak.
He carried not a single weapon.
Neither the armor on his body nor the cloak around his shoulders was thick enough to stop an attack.
Barely better than naked. Aslan patted himself down to confirm the fact, then looked steadily at Tormule.
Wariness flickered across Tormule's face, twisted by bewilderment and shock.
He gripped his spear with arrogant confidence. He clearly could not understand how someone had stepped so boldly into his mental world.
Some hidden scheme or purpose must lie behind it—the thought gnawed at him, conflict crowding his mind. Still, he shook off the suspicion and let his spear hang loose.
In Tormule's right hand was a spear.
A black, gleaming blade of the type one would call a partisan.
The dark spear, so similar to the white-iron spear Rumel had taken from him, seethed with mana painfully familiar to Aslan.
The mana was unmistakably Bolen's necromancy.
Not a perfect copy, of course. It differed.
Unlike Bolen's necromancy, which generally carried no supplementary effects, this mana produced something nearly akin to an infection.
A cut or a stab, and you became Tormule.
More precisely, his soul was implanted, and you became a puppet moving to his will.
That made Tormule absolutely dominant in this world.
Given that this was Tormule's mental domain, he could be beaten again and again, but a single mistake would spell defeat.
And unless Tormule gave up, the contest had no end. For Aslan, dragged into this space, a path to victory barely existed.
For Tormule, victory came easily.
The moment an opponent set foot in his mental world, they were stripped of weapons and armor, left with few means of resistance.
Tormule knew this. Aslan had known it from the instant he entered this space.
Countless souls had withered here. Aslan could guess how many citizens of Asan had died.
His opponent was a man who had once been Master of the Spear. There was no way to win barehanded. Not even a master of unarmed combat could bring down the Unyielding One.
The only thing needed to defeat Tormule was to break the magic bound to that spear.
Aslan raised his fists. Lightly, tap-tap, he bounced on his feet, then straightened.
Tormule blinked at the sight.
Standing there with fists raised and not a single weapon—it radiated the confidence of a man who thought he could face Tormule with his bare hands.
The armor on his body was meaningless. A direct hit from Tormule's spiral spear would shred mere leather.
And yet barehanded.
Bare fists, as if mocking Tormule, who had once been Master of the Spear.
Tormule absorbed all of it and ground his teeth.
"Are you mocking me... Aslan?"
Aslan did not answer. He stood silent, both fists raised, glaring at Tormule, and that composed calm was something Tormule could not stomach.
It felt like contempt.
It felt like an insult—you lost to a woman who had held a spear barely a year, the new Master of the Spear.
He would tear that face apart. Ravage the soul. And in the end, seize the body. Tormule spat the curses rising in his throat through clenched teeth and lunged.
A spear thrust shot through the windless void. A vivid black spear that did not dissolve into the darkness. Aslan watched the blade scream toward his head and angled his body away.
Shhiing!
The spear grazed a few strands of hair and punched through the space where his head had been. Aslan tracked the black-stained blade with a flick of his eyes and fixed his glare back on Tormule.
Whoom!
Extend, angle, retract. The spear blade closed in to slice his throat. Aslan dropped lower to avoid it and planted one hand against the floor.
Crack!
He braced against the planted hand, tilted his body farther, and kicked. A sweeping strike rising from the ground curved wide and slammed into Tormule's flank.
"Guh—!"
Tormule staggered back. As Aslan straightened, Tormule steadied himself and swung the spear. A thrust delivered with a quick release of his left hand. A strike so swift that an untrained warrior could not evade it even while watching.
Unlike Fay, Tiyamal, or Ereta—this was a technique honed by someone not born to it. Aslan read the spearhead aimed squarely at his head by the extension of the arm behind it and tilted away, barely evading.
The blade skimmed past his eyes, retracted and swung. Aslan drove forward.
A spear's weakness was distance. Even a master lost the advantage at close range.
Of course, the risk grew with it. Aslan and Tormule were not on equal terms. What choked Aslan was overwhelming disadvantage.
A mere graze meant death. His soul would be stolen. Tormule, by contrast, would not die no matter how many times he was battered and struck.
The sole path to victory was disarming him.
To take the spear and break the magic bound to it—that alone.
To take the spear from Tormule without a single touch. Absurdly difficult. But it had to be done.
Aslan closed the distance on the faintest thread of hope and dropped his stance.
Tormule's spear blade swept past the back of Aslan's head as it retracted and swung.
The black blade carved sideways and vertically with a sound of splitting wind. Aslan moved, eyes wide, tracking the dark spearhead to evade it.
As if predicting Aslan's advance, Tormule stepped back, shifted his grip, and brought the spear down. Before the descending strike could touch his body, Aslan swung his elbow and battered the shaft aside.
Tormule retracted the deflected shaft and spun, then switched his footing, halted, and thrust. A fist-sized lump of steel shot forward, splitting the air. Too fast to see. But Aslan was Master of Combat.
If he saw the precursor of a motion, he could predict what followed.
In that sense, Tormule was not as troublesome as the Dragon-king.
The thrust descended from high to low. Aslan caught the motion an instant late, twisted to evade, and kneed the shaft away.
The spear twisted, and Aslan's body twisted with it. Tormule's full-weight downward strike had missed.
"What—!"
Tormule's appalled cry echoed through the abyss. Aslan swung his elbow into Tormule's chest.
Crrrack!
Before Tormule's body could be thrown back, Aslan pivoted and drove his fist in. The chest caved. As a body that did not truly exist screamed in pain, Aslan moved again.
He retracted the punch, flipped his hand, and struck Tormule across the face with the back of his fist.
"Guhh!"
The backhand landed, and Aslan's hand shot forward to snatch Tormule by the nape. He meant to throw him. Then break the arm and take the spear. Just as he set to execute it, the spear blade interrupted.
"Tch."
Tormule swung the shortened blade like a dagger. A crude, desperate move—and exactly what he needed.
Aslan released his neck. Tormule spun the spear so fast only afterimages remained and thrust.
The blade flew, seizing space four or five times in a single breath. Aslan had to retreat before the driving spearhead, falling back endlessly through the bottomless void to avoid it.
He tilted his head away from a blade aimed at his skull, then spun to evade the follow-up swing. When the spear thrust upward, aiming for the opening, Aslan kicked the shaft aside with his shin before it reached his body.
But the instant he blocked it, Tormule's shaft swept his shin out from under him. Aslan fell, and the spear blade plunged toward his heart.
"Kh!"
He caught the descending blade between his palms and stopped it. A chill crawled down his spine despite the fact that no cold sweat should have been able to form.
Clang!
Tormule pressed down. Aslan pushed back. At last the spearhead bit into the invisible floor of the abyss. Before Tormule could twist his wrist and carve through Aslan's throat, Aslan snapped his hips up and kicked Tormule in the face.
Tormule finally released the spear and tumbled across the floor. Before he could rise, Aslan seized the weapon.
A faint mana pulsed along the shaft. Magic built on the same framework as Bolen's necromancy. A fusion of Transmutation and Restoration Schools. Aslan grasped the structure of the spell and moved to break it immediately.
Tormule simply lunged and crashed into him first.
The two tangled together and rolled across the floor. Even as they rolled, Aslan struggled to dispel the spear's magic and Tormule struggled to stab Aslan and infect him. The two psychic forms, shedding not a drop of sweat, tumbled through the abyss before finally coming to a halt.
When they stopped, the spear blade was buried deep in Aslan's stomach.
"...Damn."
There was no pain. And that absence of pain terrified Aslan more than anything.
Soon his ego would be erased, and Tormule's soul would possess his body.
Regret, terror—the emotions swirled chaotically through his mind. Aslan suppressed them and stared grimly at the spear lodged in his stomach.
"Ha, haha! I won. I won!"
Tormule's voice rang with ecstasy. Unlike Aslan, he was elated enough to leap. Aslan closed his eyes, grim.
Preparing to accept death.
Waiting for the silent, cold end.
But death did not come.
Aslan opened his eyes belatedly. Noticing that his ego had not been erased, that Tormule had not consumed his soul, he looked at Tormule.
Tormule was staring down at him with bewilderment. It was not simply the feeling that Aslan's transformation was delayed.
It was the expression of a man realizing something had gone wrong.
Aslan frowned at the sight, then his eyes flew wide at a sudden sensation.
He felt a gaze.
Not Tormule's. Tormule felt it too and lifted his head.
A fierce gaze driving down from a vast height.
An eerie sensation—like the stare of some colossal lifeform, like malevolent jealousy made manifest. Aslan and Tormule looked up at the sky of the abyss.
Something was there, beyond it.
An overwhelming presence. The fixation that overwhelming presence held for Aslan, a cloying emotion that felt as though it would physically crush his body and pulp him, made Aslan's lips part before he knew it.
"The Flock of Dusk...."
Something beyond the abyss. A will and a horizon of knowledge embroidered in the darkest burning starlight. As Aslan and Tormule stared at that gaze, the presence stared back.
The moment their eyes met, Tormule's mouth opened.
"Ah, aah...."
And knowledge seared across Tormule's mind.
One who received the Flock's power had stabbed the one who drew the Flock's gaze and had pulled that gaze here.
And so, Tormule saw what should never be seen.
The instant he saw it, Tormule knew it was something he should never have seen.
It was instinct.
An instinct carved deep into every being who had passed through its hands—every living creature in Geladrion, the evil gods, the ancient gods, the monsters.
Tormule understood.
What that immense being was.
What this world was.
And.
"You... you...!"
What Aslan was.
Like a condemned man with a rope around his neck, Tormule dropped his head so fast his neck creaked. A torrent of emotions surged through the eyes that held Aslan.
Astonishment. Panic. Revulsion. Then terror.
With black eyes clouded and wet, Tormule screamed.
"What—what the hell are you!"
He screamed though he already knew.
Though he had seen the answer, he wanted it denied, wanted to deny it.
"What the hell is this world?!"
Begging for someone to dismiss the knowledge he had gained as absurd nonsense.
He screamed, tears spilling.
"Then what—what the hell am I!"
Black crystals erupted across his body. Black blood streamed from his eyes.
Coated head to toe in black blood, paying knowledge's price, Tormule howled.
"Aaaaaaagh!"
Shrieking, he pulled the spear free. He raised it high, aimed at Aslan, and brought it down. Aslan barely managed to throw his hands up against the sudden stroke.
Crack. Crrrack.
Craaaash!
Along with some being's displeasure, the world shattered.
Countless fragments of the abyss scattered like shards of glass. Aslan plunged endlessly through the gaps.
With immense speed, Aslan fell back into reality.
As Aslan, ejected into the real world, collapsed to his knees, Tormule's body began to change.
The skin covered in Bug carapace bulged and hollowed. As if something gnawed from within. As if something tried to burst out.
Tormule's form swelled and shrank like a beating heart. He clutched his own body and trembled faintly.
"Th-thuuugh."
The sound of phlegm bubbling. The desperate groan of a man paralyzed with terror, straining to exhale. The army melted.
Everyone else could only watch, struck speechless.
No one could utter a word in the face of such overwhelming grotesquery. Tormule lifted his head.
"Ah, aagh, aaaaagh!"
The moment Tormule let out a shrill scream and tried to speak—
Splrtch!
As if crushed by a giant finger, the Bug called Tormule burst apart.
The scattered black fluid burned away in the air and vanished, and the spear Tormule had held and his army melted away.
A foul stench spread through the acrid air. A revolting odor unlike anything they had ever smelled. While everyone could only inhale, unable to exhale—
Aslan looked up at the sky without realizing it.
There was nothing there.
Only the rising sun.