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81- Feeding Time
🕑 Added 2025-09-29 06:24:16 +0000 UTCVraxious- ?
Slev looked at Vrax in sheer disbelief. “Have to show me? Are you suicidal? I just told you I am a Sanctuary Breaker. In the real world I'm a sitting duck; in here I'm a fucking god!” Slev seemed genuinely a mix of frustrated and baffled, pushing into concerned.
“Yes, I get it! Let's make a deal: every question you answer for me, I'll answer one for you.” Vrax said, attempting to remain diplomatic while hiding his sheer excitement. Vrax had thought it would take him a lifetime to find someone to ask these questions to; classes that dealt with sanctuaries directly were basically as uncommon as Unique.
Slev gave a sly chuckle. “Sure, I’ll humor your madness; this can only benefit me. Even if you lie, I can still glean information from it, but you go first.”
Vrax’s intense and sudden smile shook Slev’s certainty even further; he couldn’t tell if Vrax was insane or if there was something he had missed. “Again, where is our sanctuary located? I know it's in us, but it's somewhere else too, right?”
Slev sighed and shook his head slightly. “Yes, your sanctuary is your soul, so it’s always with you, but metaphysically it is also contained within one of the god’s divine realms; that’s what holds it tight and immutable, unless essence is used. What realm it's in barely matters and can change throughout your life depending on your faith and what you do.” Then, almost snidely, as an afterthought, he added, “Well, immutable to most...”
Vrax’s mind started swirling with theories. Wait, but mine's been like this since I first accessed my sanctuary...but by then I had already ventured into the forsaken lands...this has to do with That fucker Vurune doesn’t it I mean, that’s not a surprise. But why would his be any different? An ancient god is still a god, right?...and it still doesn’t answer the rest of the fuckery.
“Now my turn. The nightmarish demon masquerading as a twisted dragon, what is its true name? After I’m done with you, I might dabble into that power myself. I’m admittedly impressed at its sheer gravitas.” Slev said while drumming his fingers along a notebook he had materialized.
Vrax looked in sheer surprise at him. "Uhh...Duchess Phobos, first of her name...is what I named her. "Technically she’s a Dreadfeast Drake; I bought her for way too much coin at a market.”
Slev’s quill shredded the page he was frantically scribbling on in confusion. “Pardon!? Did you just say that you bought her...by all the dark wills, I can tell by your face you aren’t lying. That means you are a tamer...what skill did you use to bind the beast to yourself?” Slev asked hungrily.
Vrax shook his head. “Nope, my turn. So…hypothetically…what if a god’s power was diminished in its domain, like if it was, say, long forgotten…what would happen?”
Slev looked intrigued by the question. “Hmm, hypothetically, you are reaching into the territory the scholars of the fall of Elysium argue about daily. In my opinion, if that happened, the god would have to have died or been near enough to death to not matter anymore. But I suppose the souls in its care would go to the next most appropriate domain as their domain faded away…” Vrax was nodding excitedly. Making a go-on hand gesture, Slev stopped his explanation to ask his own question.
“Your taming skill—how many bonded creatures can you have?” He looked exceedingly smug at this question, like Vrax was handing him the knife he would use to gut him with.
Vrax sighed. “Man, it’s not a taming skill; those fuckers don’t listen to me. There is no limit to it.” Slev's face dropped another notch, but Vrax launched into his next question.
“Okay, okay, another…hypothetical: if a god’s domain doesn’t fade when he does, what moves into the now ungoverned space? Let's add on that what moved in really, really wants to eat the single soul that's left alone in a now emptyish domain.” Vrax was making a lot of guesses here, but he felt like he was on the right track.
Slev's smirk fully disappeared. “That’s not a question; that’s a fucking jest. The things that lurk in the dark between the light of the gods aren’t something any of us should ever discuss, and your thinly veiled attempt at bluffing is over!” He angrily hooked his fingers into Vrax’s cloak and stepped in close.
Slev hatefully whispered to Vrax, “I am fucking immortal here. I am tired of your games. No matter what you do or how you think this will go, I cannot stay dead here. We can battle endlessly, and I will always rise again until I seal your skills and grind your soul to dust.”
Vrax whispered back as the world around them warped, “Oh fuck, man, I’m so sorry for what’s about to happen.” Vrax cringed; this was going to be traumatic even for him.
They suddenly stood near the edge of Vrax’s essence lake; the lake hungrily crept up towards them with bubbling malevolence. The rolling grass hissed and snapped as creatures prowled throughout a daisy, tearing into an adapted toad suddenly not far from them. Then directly above they saw retrievers sailing overhead to intercept an owl midair and reel it back to its hungry colony.
Slev whirled slowly, his eyes going wide; everywhere he looked, Vrax’s creations killed and hunted without end. Sunshine suddenly flew into them from nowhere, tendrils stabbing into Slev from behind and utterly shredding him without giving him the chance to even utter a curse.
“Oh, glad you’re feeling better!” Vrax said as Sunshine blitzed past towards a Devourer in the distance. He waited a few moments, and reality shifted; Slev popped back next to him, eyes wide and filled with rage. He waved his hands, and fragments of Vrax’s sanctuary floated towards him like motes of dust, forming a shimmering armor that defied understanding and a blade seemingly made of bent space.
“What foul sorcery is this!” Slev shouted while backing up; another daisy had spotted him the second he had revived. Lunging towards him instantly.
Vrax made the most exasperated gesture imaginable. “I DON’T KNOW. That’s why I had fucking questions...oh well, I’ll give you a moment.”
Slev wielded the shimmering blade expertly, each blow into the daisy fragmented parts of its being off into a rainbow of fractal shards, seeming to actually unmake the daisy. It wasn’t enough that he managed to completely fragment its roots and half its head; it still got tendrils deep into the seams around his neck and excruciatingly, exactingly chewed through his throat and up into his brain while he tried to choke out a response.
Vrax took a seat in frustration on the side of a retriever hive like a hissy, squirming stool. It's really cool how he can use my sanctuary as a weapon and all, and the infinite respawns are absolute bullshit, but I feel like this guy is going to fucking snap before I even get the chance to find out more. Being in here without a mark of Vurune is like getting dropped into an eldritch piranha tank by a spiteful god.
Slev popped back into existence farther away this time, immediately folding reality around himself, creating almost a barricade of sorts from impossibly folded earth and grass. Unfortunately for him, one of the folds on his side had an Acidic Lurker. He was yanked off his feet and reeled in in a sizzling hiss of flesh. Vrax flinched as Slev screamed; with his armor, it took a while for the centipede legs on the lurker stalk to scoop out something vital and finally still his horrified shrieks.
The next time he ripped back into reality, Slev sprinted straight for Vrax’s [Adapt Life] sculpture. Oh fuck! Vrax stood up and sprinted after him. There was a deeply unsettling moment where it was like every single entity within the sanctuary suddenly realized there was a threat. Devourers stopped midair and slowly turned to track the intruder. A mangler tree uprooted itself and interposed itself in Slev's path.
To his credit, he didn’t slow; instead, every step he took ripped him in and out of reality like short-ranged teleports. He weaved past the tree and under a pair of diving devourers, their feeding tentacles snapping around him madly. He nearly made it to the sculpture; he jumped over a pile of rot just before it and square into a rising ethereal shadow.
Vrax flinched as the shadowy form of a woman brought into existence by the nightmare conductors lifted Slev into the air by his throat, and he screamed soundlessly, purple light pouring from his eyes for several seconds. The shadow dropped his smoking husk to the ground contemptuously, and Vrax looked slightly proud and a bit afraid towards the gleeful cackling sugar gliders perched on the sculpture of [Adapt life].
Slev burst back into reality next to the sculpture, but Vrax himself was ready this time. Weaving under a dimensional blade that Slev swung in his direction, he punched him hard in the abdomen with a fully powered smite. It practically cored the man; Slev looked down in disbelief as his insides simply dripped out in a black mass. Vrax looked at his almost sorry “Welcome to my sanctuary...when you want to answer some more questions, I’ll call them off.” A daisy hit Slev at a full sprint in the face.
The next respawn Slev didn’t even try to fight, simply focusing hard on an ability and stepping forward. There was a tearing sound as he popped out next to the sculpture and slapped a hand on it. A look of sheer victory on his face.
[Adapt Life Sealed]
Vrax looked at him incredulously for a moment... “All that does is make it so I can’t call them off…” Slev's face went from rapturous glee to sheer terror as not a single creature in the sanctuary was affected by the change. He tried to form a chisel-like hunk of energy and strike at the sculpture; he never even fully formed it before he had to dive away from a mangler tree. He hissed in anger as he spun to face it.
He never got to strike. His escape had taken him straight into a stream of cascading dandelions; this death was horrible even by Vrax’s standards. He staggered away as vein divers poured into him, more and more blood pouring from his every orifice. Then the mangler tree got ahold of him, practically popping him like an overripe berry.
[Adapt Life Unsealed]
Gods, if all the skills he uses to do actual damage take him ages to use, all he can do is dash around and temporarily turn off my skills. Vrax sat back down near [Adapt Life] and started settling in for the show. Duchess had finally slinked over. And Slev was staring at her in sheer confusion. “How...how are all these things here? The worst sanctuary holds maybe one or two soul-bound beasts! WHAT IS THIS HELL?” Vrax wanted to answer, but Duchess exploded into motion.
She feigned attacking, and Slev crumpled space where he thought she was going. She trilled at him in amusement and then began mimicking the haunting sobs of the troll she had kept alive for a concerning amount of time at this point. Vrax paled. “No seriously, man, please give up soon. I cannot deal with her having another ‘pet.’ That shit is fucked up!”
There was a sudden flick of her tail, and Slev's head spiraled off into the tall grass. He rose from the grass near Vrax in confusion... “What…what killed me… I don’t remember the last… Oh god…” He trailed off as the duchess’s maws suddenly closed over his head with a crunch. He rose again from the grass next to Vrax, looking utterly terrified and spinning around. “We’re…what…what…killed me…” His head went flying again before he even saw Duchess this time.
Vrax rubbed his brow in frustration and avoided looking for the next few minutes as duchess introduced him to her own special version of hunting. Well fuck, I guess I'm just going to have to try and slap a mark on him if I expect him to survive long enough to talk to. Vrax settled in and started inspecting some of his more minor creations that hid among the tall grass, like the few bugs he had given extra limbs to for fun.
Vrax wandered around for a good while trying to ignore what was happening all across his sanctum. Duchess was more or less giving everything in the sanctum a turn at eating the bastard. She fed him into the retrievers a few dozen times, then grew bored and moved on to the devourer flocks.
This continued throughout all his creations for far, far longer than Vrax was comfortable with. Gods, man, please surrender soon; this is excessive. Vrax grumbled to himself as he watched Duchess and Sunshine in the world's most awful game of tug-of-war. But the man hadn’t broken yet.
The Siren's Call Daisy seemed to be the final straw, surprisingly. It had to be how he kept reviving in an ever-growing statue garden that was formed with ice sculptures made from nothing but his own corpses.
Slev’s sobbing form burst forth in a tangle into Vrax's sanctum again. “Please, please, whatever you are, stop. I’m sorry! I surrender!” Slev froze as a tongue gently grabbed his chin and turned his head so it was staring straight into Duchess’s maws. She trilled madly as she began cutting him apart in thin slices from the toes up a hand span at a time with savage whips of her tail. He made it nearly to the groin before he died from the shock and blood loss.
Okay, thank fuck, let's stop this. I'm not going to sleep for a week. “Duchess, bring him over to the edge, please!” Vrax shouted at her; she had him impaled by four of her hands. She huffed at Vrax but seemingly understood his intent, bounding towards the edges of his sanctuary while her impaled cargo screamed incoherently.
Vrax followed, walking up to the nearly insensate Sanctuary Breaker. “Alright, motherfucker, I told you I needed to show you something! So what the fuck! Is this shit!” Vrax pointed angrily at a humanoid shape that was pressed against the walls of his sanctuary, the outline of a lolling tongue and claws visible as they reached towards Slev longingly. Duchess trilled in excitement and pressed his face against the boundary wall.
Comments
Demolition D
🤔im not sure if I should be cackling madly or grimacing... I mean when he first introduced this guy i instantly was like, yup hope he dies horribly! But now im torn between, a sympathetic "put the poor bastard down" and "HAHAHAH YES! THATS WHAT YOU GET! " laughing as Dutchess carries him out into the between worlds to be a snack for those things.🤔🤷... .. nah he is and has been a terrible person. Im going with the cackling!!👍
jollybane
Whaattt...the Vurune worshipers were totally a peaceful..not at all weird group of nature loving hippies.....XD
jollybane
Thank you very much!
James Faulkner
Oh man Slev is totally gonna get yoinked across the boundary and into Vurune’s realm lmao. My money is on him either ending up as a soulless husk or a mad priest who (re?)starts the Cult of Vurune after he is let out of the realm 😂
Beeees!
I knew this was gonna be a satisfying chapter, but I honestly underestimated it. Bravo, truly a masterpiece
