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Blood pool
🕑 Added 2022-10-14 11:00:09 +0000 UTCSeth had the system check if everyone had arrived before creating a new portal toward the ship’s deck and starting to send people back up.
Once everyone was in, he teleported to the ship’s mast, where Hollie was speaking with Aleena. Seeing Seth appear, Hollie nodded and said: “I’m ready to leave.”
Aleena also closed the book she was occasionally peeking through, moving her eyes to the dense forest surrounding the ship and waiting to see another take off.
Seth nodded and told Tiana to warm up the balloon before Hollie raised it to the skies, beginning the second half of their journey.
The rest of the journey went on peacefully, most of the ascended spending it cultivating while the others just came to enjoy the carefree life on the ship. With Seth making sure no one was missing food or drinks, everyone eventually got used to the comfort.
Almost an entire month later, after having entered the territory of the Blood Kingdom, Seth finally received the notification he was waiting for.
<Blood Pool straight underneath our location.>
Taking a deep breath, he teleported to Hollie’s room and found her reading through a book. Over the two months of travel, piloting the ship became so easy for her that Seth wouldn’t be surprised if she could do it in her sleep.
“Can you please stop the ship here for a while?”
Hollie peeked up from her book, a curious look in her eyes as she asked: “But we’re not at the Blood Kingdom’s capital yet. Why?”
Seth smiled wryly, already used to her inquisitive nature, as he replied: “There is a place I must visit first. I’ll tell you about it another time.”
Hollie nodded, knowing she won’t get more from Seth for now, and stopped the ship, allowing it to hover in mid-air.
Seth smiled and kissed her lips briefly. “Wait for me to return.” He whispered before teleporting away.
He warped to the lands beneath, and his countenance grew serious as he looked at the inconspicuous cave in front of him.
‘Access the records and monitor any changes in real-time. Also, give me the ability to see in the dark.’
<Affirmative.>
With the system’s reply, the darkness at the cave’s entrance disappeared, the hardened rock making up the walls appearing clearly in Seth’s sight, even from the outside.
With no hesitation, Seth entered the cave, proceeding deeper inside while looking around for anything weird. The cave’s insides were completely normal at the start, but once he went in deeper, a potent blood smell started permeating the air.
After ten minutes, he felt like he was breathing gaseous blood, having to stop his sense of smell and breathing altogether using perfect body control. Even his sight would have been restricted by the misty, red atmosphere without the system’s help.
Strange, blood-red markings also started appearing on the walls around him.
‘Any information on those symbols?’
<Affirmative. They are the historic recordings of the blood race and warnings for intruders.>
‘Warnings?’ asked Seth with a scuff, ‘like anyone would be able to read their stupid scribbles.
Ignoring everything, he proceeded further down for about ten more minutes when the cave’s height started lowering until it reached the size of an average human. A small door appeared in front of Seth at the end of the tunnel.
The door seemed somewhat weird, like it was made out of blood, ripples appearing on its watery texture with each of Seth’s steps. Seth walked next to the door and sent a wave of destruction to wipe it off, unwilling to touch it.
The door disappeared when it came in contact with Seth’s energy, revealing the sight inside.
A large room was there, more extensive than even the throne room of the Oath kingdom, with blood pillars rising from the floor to the roof.
Skinny humans were inside those blood pillars, their eyes opened with a lost look inside them. They seemed dead, but Seth knew they were still alive and only kept alive to collect the blood their hearts produced, allowing it to flow down through the blood pillars into the Blood Pool underneath.
The pool was actually the strangest sight there. It was slowly bubbling, and different faces would appear on its texture from time to time.
The faces all had different expressions, but their features seemed blurry due to their liquid texture. With the door’s destruction, more faces appeared in the blood pool, seemingly surfacing from deeper underneath, and fixed their red eyes on Seth.
Having thousands of eyes suddenly look at him made even Seth slightly uncomfortable, but his expression showed no change as he stepped right inside.
Hushed voices and whispers kept ringing throughout the large hall, but Seth also paid them no mind as he stopped right at the edge of the blood pool and said: “I want to speak to your ancestor.”
His request didn’t get a proper reply, only a sudden agitation from all the faces and an increased number of indecipherable whispers sounding all around. Seth continued waiting, and the whispers only intensified when, all of a sudden, they disappeared simultaneously.
The whispers stopped, and the faces retreated into the water beneath, bringing a strange and scary stillness to the pool.
With a swooshing sound, what followed next were hundreds of blood spears, piercing the surface of the water and heading for Seth.
Smirking slightly, Seth covered himself in a bubble of destruction energy and watched calmly as the spears headed for him.
When the first spear came into contact with the destruction energy, the spear disappeared, and a pained shriek sounded briefly throughout the room.
What followed next were hundreds of distinct shrieks as all the spears were destroyed by just coming into contact with Seth’s shell.
After the last shriek, Seth absorbed the protective shell inside his body and looked back at the now turbulent blood pool.
“No matter how many of your offspring you send to me, they would all just end up dead without me breaking a sweat. Send your ancestor out before I come inside and drag him out myself.”
With Seth’s threatening words and earlier display, the sea regained its calm once more, and another time of silence ensued. The silence was broken by the pool splitting through the middle.
Out of the pool’s depths, jet-black liquid raised to the surface and took the form of an old man’s face.
His hair was ashen, and his eyes were pitch black. The rest of his body, from the neck down, remained a puddle of black liquid floating above the blood pool. He looked at Seth with hostility and asked: “Who are you to step inside my house and kill my children? Has life on the surface been too easy for you, deciding to step in here and die?”
Seth’s smile grew wider as he noticed the old man’s strong front. “You should be thankful I decided to be polite, or I would have wiped you all from existence. A cancerous tumor that has no place in this world.”
The old man remained as nonchalant as ever, but more whispers returned, speaking the human tongue.
“Kill him.”
“Insolence.”
“Show him the might of the blood race.”
Seth ignored the voices and maintained eye contact with the old man. The old man had a trace of hesitation in his eyes as he yelled: “Silence.” As the whispers calmed down, he asked: “Who are you?”
Seth looked around the room at all the people stranded on the pillars, providing an almost endless supply of blood to the blood pool, and said: “The one who will take over these lands, the ruler of the throne of destruction, Seth.”
The old man frowned and looked Seth up and down. He had long heard of ascended, the new race that skipped to the peak of power on the continent, having even devoured a few himself, but for some reason, this brat in front of him seemed somewhat different.
Putting on a pondering look, the old man asked: “If so, why do you bother us? We have no interest in who rules the Blood Kingdom. We just want to continue our existence here in peace.”
Seth smirked and shook his head: “You might be able to easily fool others, but not me. I know all about your blood surge.” Seth continued looking at the bodies tied to the pillars again, “I also know about you requiring regular blood sacrifices.”
“Oh, and there’s also the blood sun you’ve been creating.
When Seth mentioned the blood sun, the old man erupted in a black mist, and the pool started rushing towards him again.
“What a boring bunch of fogies…” muttered Seth, spinning his time source in reverse and stopping the flood about to hit him mid-air. He then covered his legs in destruction energy and stepped forward, creating holes into the frozen blood pull with each step.
The old man was out of the time freeze’s range and yelled in a panicky voice: “Stop him. All of you. Attack, stop him.” but no matter how many attacks left the blood pool, how many people of the blood race tried to approach Seth, they all stopped without even reaching close, frozen in time.
Once he reached in front of the old man, Seth gave him a taunting smile as he deactivated his time freeze. The old man’s eyes took a crazy look inside them as all the blood started boiling: “You’re not getting your hands on it.”
Seth started laughing out loud while holding onto his stomach, making the old man wonder if he’s gone crazy, but when his laughter ended, and he removed his hand from the stomach, it was holding a shiny blood-red sphere.
The old man’s eyes shook at the sight of the sphere, floating backward in fear as he asked: “How?”
“What does it matter how? The blood sun is mine now. I must say, you people of the blood race have really worked hard your entire lives to create this. How much time has it been? An eon, two? Truly a dedicated race.”
“Who are you? You can’t possibly know all that? You’re one of them.”
To the old man’s despair, Seth shook his head and made the sphere disappear into his storage space. “I am not. I am just an ascended from the Oath Kingdom. As for how I know everything that I know, Elise was kind enough to tell me when we met.”
“THAT SINNER! THAT TRAITOR!” a bottomless rage appeared on the old man’s face as his body started covering the entire pool, turning all the blood inside back. The reaction to Elise’s name was stronger than even Seth had expected.
Seth ignored the monkey show and snapped his fingers, sending a wave of destruction to wipe a large part of the pool around him, obliterating it out of existence.
“Calm down. I don’t care about your family problems, even less about the blood sun. I just need your race to do me a favor, and I’ll return it to you. After that, you’re free to go hunt down Elise or whatever you want to do.”, said Seth calmly, still having a use for those leeches.
The old man’s face relaxed slightly as he took a deep breath and looked towards Seth’s now empty hands: “Where did you take it? I don’t feel its presence anymore. Give it back first.”
“That’s none of your business. You have two choices ahead of you. You either fulfill my small request and get your little toy back, or I’ll wipe you all here and take it for myself. Either way, I win.”
The old man started trembling, his eyes turning darker by the second, but in the end, he could only release a complex sigh as he asked: “What do you want us to do?”
Seth smiled wildly, things ending up much easier than he expected. Looking back into the old man’s dispirited eyes, Seth brought the blood sun out of his storage and threw it to him.
“I need you to do what you do best. Bleed kingdoms dry.”
Comments
Sneak
"skipped to the peak of power" would sound a little less awkward imo
AZ
A bit of an awkward phase? Maybe this might be better? "He had long heard of ascended, the new race that [skipped] at the peak of power on the continent," Is that the right word?
