MAGUS INFINITE

Without the link created by the Thul with its flesh magic, there would be no way for me to push the power of Titan’s Marrow into the body of another creature, but this demon had a malleable flesh, and even its magic seemed expressly designed for transformation, but a door opened both ways... I had learned this lesson well enough when I wore the Title of Death Consort.

I reached through the bite into the dense reforged knot of its body and attempted to remodel it. I did not know what I was doing, but I did not have to know; doing this the wrong way would be equally as effective as doing it the right way in this situation.

Trying to mimic its flesh magic as much as possible, I pushed my Marrow into its malleable flesh, and I told its flesh to take a new shape, the way it had tried to tell mine.

At first it did not seem to be working, but something clicked, and the body of the Thul was revealed to me. Most of it was covered in darkness, but I was able to feel a lot of its structure, almost as if this beast was created to be shaped by the right hands.

These thoughts were disturbing, and I placed them aside, and with the limited understanding of what I was seeing, I poured as many chaotic instructions as I could into its flesh.

I told its jaw to open, its throat to widen, its core to come apart, its flesh to dance and its bones to sing... the last part did not make any sense, but I could feel the body of the Thul struggling to follow these instructions.

It had made itself infinitely editable, and I had just picked up a pen.

∞

The demon felt its flesh rebel as my will entered its body, and tried to pull its will back, to seal itself against mine, but it had already entered the pit with me, and like it or not, both of us were going to get dirty.

Sad, the Soul Flayer had once tried to do the same to me when it tore through my soul, and when the demon discovered that my soul was filled with thorns, it tried to run, and I did not let it go, even until I died... why would this Thul think I would let it escape when I had just dicovered a fun new way to channel my Titan’s Marrow that went beyond what this spell was stipulated for.

The demon pulled back, and that was a mistake, because I had it now, and since it stopped trying to hurt me, I had more chance to flood its body with poison.

I held its jaw open with its own flesh, and I reached deeper, Celestial Marrow flooding through the wound into the core of it, and I began to take it apart from the inside the way it had tried to take me.

Demonic cries that made no sense erupted from all over its body, as I unleashed chaos in its flesh. I unmade the concept of wings from its body, so even if it tried to shapeshift, only weak fleshy folds would emerge from its back,

I told the muscle to let go of the bone, and I reopened all the wounds I had inflicted with my threads that the Thul had forced closed. Not all of them had healed, but its shapeshifting had been what had kept it together; now I was reaching inside for those wounds and tearing them open.

The demon tried to fight me, but there was something about its own biology that made it weak to my touch, almost as if it was designed to be molded by the hands of a higher being, and I was not one to slap away a gift when presented to me with a smiling face.

I reached deeper into the demon until I reached its spine, and the real fun began as I began to rewrite it.

I told its spine to curl, then I forced it to knot, seeing I could do this, I pushed for it to fold in on itself, so that every signal it sent to move its flesh went nowhere, looped back, ate itself, and the Thul’s whole plastic body began to seize misfire, flesh rippling without command, spines erupting at random, its own magic turned into a convulsion it could not stop because I was holding the pen and I would not give it back.

Black blood poured out of it, and out of me where its teeth were still locked in my shoulder, and I held the bite in, would not let it retreat, as I authored it down to stillness, one seized muscle at a time, until the thing that ended worlds hung off my ruined shoulder as a knot of cramped, misfiring, weeping flesh that could no longer remember how to be anything at all.

I finally pulled myself from its broken teeth and looked at the waling ball of tumor before me. A lot of thought passed through my mind at this moment, and not all of them were good.

Tired of the sound of pain from the demon, I put a spear of Tribunal Lightning through its eyes and into its brain, burning its core and what was left of its heart.

∞

I had been killing a lot of demons recently, and essence had been filling my body, but I no longer sensed it as I once did, where I would feel a comforting warmth radiating into my bones... I had just grown too strong in such a short time, and I had forgotten in the heat of the moment that a Thul was not just an average demon, but a being that heralds the end of worlds.

I gasped in shock as warmth poured into me in a flood, and my body lit up from within, allowing me to see my glowing channels and bones. Steam poured out of me and vanished instantly as we approached the edge of space, and I could barely hold the moan of pleasure that rippled through my soul... this could be addictive in the wrong hands.

My eyes fell on the stored essence, and I smiled.

[ Stored Essence: 378,671 → 502,900/500,000 ]

If the Heavens were whole as the Hollow Avatar had said, then killing a Thul like this and gaining all this essence would have enabled me to open the fifth earth gate, but now it was not enough... I had to break it down.

The Caelith suddenly shuddered alongside my body as a chill invaded my soul, and I realized that I had just entered the darkness of the void. I had begun this loop inside my tent, and now I was in space... could my life get any crazier?