Chapter 1769: Corrupting The Seed Elura the Empyrean of Life had given birth to eight children, and the first seven were primal entities, born from the forces of nature. Rowan had no chance of knowing his siblings before they were killed by the Reflections of the Eye of Time, and their bloodlines warped into the monsters known as the Gods of Trion. After the destruction of that planet and all it stood for, Rowan harvested his family’s bloodlines. At first, it was out of a solemn need to put the issues of the past to rest, but as he grew more powerful and began unlocking the mysteries of his past, Rowan began to search deeper into the core of these bloodlines. His present level was far above that of Elura and the Eye of Time, making it particularly easy for him to discern the truths. His brothers and sister were born pure, free of the machinations of the Primordials. When Elura, the Empyrean of Life, was born and sent to the lower realms in preparation for Rowan’s birth, she did as her nature had dictated and created life from the forces around her. Her seven children, Truiplop, Hekaton, Metagei, Pyanop, Yuleti, Maimak, and Anthesterion, were the product of her essence without the corruption of the Primordials, and although they were not sentient in any manner that a mortal would understand, they were aware and noble. They loved their mother and protected Trion and many other planets in the galaxy. When the Primordials were ready to begin their plans to unveil the secrets of Eosah, they activated their pawn, the Eye of Time. Elura was seized by the Third Prince and made to become the womb, where one part of Eos’ consciousness was to be born, Romion. His siblings were never part of the grand design, even the perpetrators themselves, who were responsible for birthing a portion of Eos’s consciousness, were not aware of their part in the entire saga. His siblings were killed, but they were not mortal beings whose essence was easily dissipated. In death, they were still aware, and the Reflections knew of this, so instead of allowing them to rest in peace, their bodies and souls were crafted into God Sparks, and the Gods of Trion were born. Rowan was now a powerful Creator. He was able to extract the essence of his siblings from the remains of Trion and slowly nurtured them. Originally, he believed that with his powers, he could give them a lifetime of bliss, but his siblings were all like him, stubborn, loyal, and vengeful. Of all the Thrones made by the Primordial, Telmus possessed the power of the bloodline of Trion, essentially making Telmus Rowan’s little cousin. This made this entire battle a family affair, and the Primordials, like always, were the ones who interfered with their family. When his siblings were aware of the battle between their descendants and Rowan, it was inevitable that they chose to be part of it... Like him, they now understood the actual cause of their mother’s pain, and they came for blood. ’Romion has been fighting alone for too long, brothers, sister, it is time for us to do our share.’ ® When the transformation began, Rowan pulled back his influence from the seed in order to give his siblings the power to make their bodies without his interference, and the result surprised him. A loud roar that caused the audience in the arena to roar alongside, as the cry ignited something inside the souls of all who heard it. The roar was alien and utterly familiar, filled with the pain of loss and the quest for vengeance. Telmus stood steady as a shockwave tore past him and slammed into the edges of the Arena, his white hair fluttering in the wind. He could have interrupted the transformation, but why would he need to do something so despicable? It was not as if he were afraid. In his heart was a faint sound like the demon’s voice, and Telmus suppressed it, giving all his attention to the emerging power in front of him. Then, everything changed. Telmus could feel a surge of darkness and malevolence rising from beneath the Arena, believing that Primordial Demon wanted to act against him for his act of defiance, Telmus grinned, he wanted to fight against Rowan alone, but he was not against fighting Xylos at the same time. In the next breath, however, Telmus discovered that the target of this darkness was not him, but... "BOOM!" An eruption of despair and madness burst out of the Arena, pouring into the seed that had begun to transform, corrupting the process of resurrection, and making a mockery out of the resurrection of the seven. Telmus screamed in anger as the mocking voice of the Primordial Demon crept into his soul, "If you think this battle will go according to your wish, then you have no idea what forces you toy with." ® To Rowan and the Primordials, the Arena was a massive chessboard, where Telmus and his siblings were the pieces. Unveiling the lost bloodlines of his siblings was Rowan making the first move, and he took back his hand, and as he had expected, the Primordials made their move. Rowan paused to consider what would happen, as he was already preparing his next hand. ® It started with a sound like a great tree being sundered. A strand of vibrant, earthy green energy—the essence of Truiplop—was ripped from the spectral form. It wasn’t light; it was the concept of growth, of forests, of deep, patient life, torn raw and screaming from the rivers of history. The seed, which should have been a fountain of vitality, was now a nexus of the hungry void; it consumed the essence of Truilop, and a leg of knotted, darkwood, and thorned vine snapped into existence, pulsing with stolen vitality. Next, a crackle of blinding, white-hot energy—the legacy of Hekaton—was seized. The silent lightning fought, spitting and arcing, but was ruthlessly subdued, forced into the forming body. An arm of crackling, unstable energy solidified, sheathed in a carapace of blackened, glass-like material forged from the lightning’s own fury. A groan of shifting continents heralded the theft of Metagei’s power. Telmus felt a deep, sympathetic ache in his own bones as the essence of stone and earth, the very power in his veins, was violated and taken. It formed the creature’s torso—a rugged, mountainous landscape of obsidian and granite, webbed with fissures that glowed with a captive, terrestrial fire. The air itself seemed to sigh a lament as Pyanop’s essence—the crispness of autumn, the bounty of the harvest, the melancholy of shortening days—was harvested. It became the other arm, a limb that seemed made of swirling, desiccated leaves and sharpened husks, whispering with the ghost of dead seasons. A cold so intense it burned sliced through the arena as Yuleti’s lineage was torn away. The clarity of ice, the patience of glaciers, and the unyielding nature of the deepest frost were forced into the coalescing horror. It formed the second leg, a pillar of perfectly clear, blue-black ice that smoked with absolute zero, its surface impossibly smooth and hard. The theft of Maimak’s power was a volcanic eruption in reverse. The fury of magma, the primal heat of the world’s core, was drawn inward, compressed into a raging inferno contained within the granite torso. It burst forth to form a hunched, bestial back, covered in sharp, igneous rock that dripped with smoldering, molten slag. Finally, the essence of Anthesterion was plucked. The vibrant, terrifying cycle of life and death, of blooming flowers and rotting decay, was the last thread woven in. It became the thing’s skin, a translucent, membrane-like layer stretched over the monstrous form, through which the other stolen powers could be seen, festering and mingling. A sweet, cloying scent of blossoms and rot emanated from it. The process was an abomination. It was not creation, but a brutal, cosmic taxidermy. The assembled form was a patchwork horror, a golem of stolen divinity. It stood on Truiplop’s leg and Yuleti’s leg, its body Metagei’s stone and Maimak’s fire, its arms Hekaton’s lightning and Pyanop’s decay, all sheathed in Anthesterion’s morbid life-death cycle. Its head was the last thing to form—a misshapen orb that seemed to rotate slowly, presenting a different awful aspect with each turn. One moment, it was a mask of Yuleti’s frozen ice, the next a smoldering volcanic rock of Maimak, and then a twisted knot of thorned wood of Truiplop. It took a step. The white disc of the Arena did not crack, however, where Truiplop’s thorned foot touched, life erupted—a violent, cancerous growth of thorns and grasping vines that immediately turned black and died. Where Yuleti’s icy leg met the stone, a permanent, dead patch of absolute frost spread like a fungus. The entity raised Hekaton’s lightning arm. Energy crackled, but it was sickly, corrupted, a puppet’s imitation of true power. It turned its rotating head, and for a moment, the face of storm-wracked rock settled, and two fissures opened, filling with the captive, burning light of Maimak’s magma. Those eyes fixed on Telmus. They did not see a warrior. They saw a missing piece. The seventh bloodline. The one that had escaped the harvest. A psychic wave, composed of seven distinct, tortured voices—the stolen echoes of his siblings—hammered into Telmus’s mind. It was not a word, but a command, a need, an all-consuming emptiness that recognized its other half. It was the hunger of Xylos, the Primordial Demon, who was given a voice through the stolen blood of his family. "Join. Us." Then, this abomination charged toward Telmus, who seemed frozen in shock and rage as the massive lightning fist of Hekaton slammed into his body. He was blasted to the other end of the Arena, his body wreathed with lightning powerful enough to turn a million dimensions to ash. The crooning voice of Primordial Demon echoed in his heart, "Your victory or loss means nothing. You were always my piece in this game, Telmus, to do with as I please; somehow, you forgot your place."