#eclpisedfates

Something’s missing. 

It started as a twinge, pulling like a thread unraveling, plucking like hairs being yanked from the scalp. A line drawn, tearing away. What is it? Hours pass, and it only grows like a sinkhole, drowning all thought away, an absence he hadn’t felt in a long time. It’s like hunger.

Prowling through the wastes tells so little, and yet... Eventually the immortal finds something. 

Scarred land, an explosion of magical force. It’s a crater, an absence of so much. A whole Province, just simply gone. The people, the Tower, everything thrown outward to the Wastes in chunks of rubble. If there was any flesh and bone for the beasts to consume, it had already been done. It reeks of ancient magic, and that is what has his attention more.

Days are spent circling the perimeter, thousands of miles wide-- that’s no surprise; it carried an entire country, once. When he finds nothing of interest outside, Kane steps inward, towards the center. His thorns spread out around him like claws raking the dirt, seeking anything of interest. They gouge deep trenches in the earth around him as he closed in on where the Tower used to be, red eyes blazing through his helmet. The ache feels vast here, unending.

Something blue glints as he nears, its blade cracked but not shattered. The God of the Wasteland knows its shape well, remembers its bite in his abdomen ten times over. There were none like it, unique in its bloodshed, unique like its owner.

Fingers curl around the hilt, pulling the Fang of the GodHunter out of the rubble it had become embedded in. Closer inspection finds a relic, pierced through, its magic gone. Kane plucks the broken orb from the earth, turns it over before his thorns encircle it and absorb it for a later time. Instead he focuses on the sword in his right hand, eyes narrowing. 

...Despite no sign of him, the deity does not sense the human as dead. He turns on his heel, tracking backwards towards the direction of his own Province, his feet swift. I will find out what happened. 

And find out he does. Months of digging into the very essence of the orb he recovered, of tearing it apart until there was nothing left of it to dissect. Normally he would have tried to save it, keep it like any other relic he collected, but something else eats at him from the inside. The GodHunter is missing. Such a thing shouldn’t have mattered, a singular mortal’s presence in the world disappearing, but the... emptiness. It screams at him, gouges in his veins. It’s a new feeling. 

It’s relentless. An obsession to search bordering madness.

But finally, in a shard embedded in the GodHunter’s sword, held in the fractured hard-light of the blade, was the smallest taste of Old Magic, preserved. His fist clenches around it, feels the energy thrum in his palm. It feels like... shifting sands, relocation of objects, fluttering like the heart of a bird. Rho was alive, but not here.

The God focuses on it, feels the sliver shudder in his grasp. His mind is howling, the hole tearing at his vision. I’ll find you. Thorns tear around his ankles like a river, slow at first, then a whirlpool of pitch needles. Kane can feel his armor cracking, like a force was pushing back. I will find you. White hair whips behind him, razor sharp energy carving gashes into his fingers, the wounds closing as quickly as they’re made.

His aura burns, blends with the blinding light in his hand, endless void. 

Nothingness.

And then he feels the pull. 

His thorns are the same colors as snow for only a moment, clawing towards the air. As they puncture the sky, piercing through it like breaching water, they return to their rightful ichor. The Wasteland Deity follows suit like a shooting star, his red cloak the tail of his comet. 

With a fury he collides with the ground, twin fangs slowing his descent. He tears through the earth, scars of his path. It is with a snarl that the immortal finally reaches a stop, observing the damage he’d left behind, thorns receding into his shadow.

He looks up, scarlet eyes tracing the clouds, the blue atmosphere. It is nothing like the plains he’d come from. The gnawing in his blood had not ceased with his arrival. Where am I? Kane scowls, clutching the blue fang close to his side, before raising his attention to the crunching of grass approaching.