Crimson Ascension

Arzhan returned every hour. Every hour, Draven wanted to die. Hatred, grief, revenge—none of that mattered; the pain was all that remained. The Evoker ravaged his soul with needles forged of misty green hexion, piercing the essence of his being while leaving his body untouched. Escaping the pain was impossible.

Just end it already.

Every time Arzhan's thunderous step echoed down the hallway, Draven hid himself deeper within himself, taking solace from the Three Tenets. It was the only way to protect his sanity. The giant man showed no knowledge of his origins, so Nerovian must have kept that piece of information to himself.

Draven did not.

He spewed every secret he had, every answer to every question Arzhan asked. It was the truth, he swore, but Arzhan merely responded with a callous, "Do you expect me to believe it?"

The only things Draven kept to himself were Aemon's part in this and his ability to see the runes. Everything else he told. But it was not enough. It was never enough. The pain came again, stronger than usual, intent on finally breaking the shield surrounding his astra. His throat had long since stopped making sounds.

His consciousness retreated inside his astra, hiding amidst the giant lake that had become his reserve, yet the pain still followed. He hid further inside the lake of hexion, shivering inside the fruits of his training. The torturous stabs did not relent.

Draven looked at the rift that floated inside of him—the bridge between himself and the crimson realm. He had never attempted to pass through it before. The consequences of it might have once made him hesitate; he had so much to lose, once. Not anymore.

Draven jumped through it. The pain vanished.

***

Space distorted around him. Draven lost all senses and thought for a second—for eternity. Cold stone pressed against his back. The pain was gone; he realized. With a startled gasp, he came to himself.

Obsidian floor, forged of smooth, liquid stone, stretched around him. It looked like a twisted form of glass, too dark to see through. Walls sprouted from the ground, forming intricate designs of artfully crafted lines and patterns. There were no lightspheres or torches to illuminate the strange room, yet his vision stretched on unimpeded.

The Sixfold Corridor.

"Asthagon!" He stood up, surprised to find all his limbs there. "Asthagon! Where are you?" He shouted the name, but only the sound of his voice echoed back.

Minutes passed, and the strange man with silver skin and golden hair never showed himself.

The hallway that led to the corridor itself was nowhere to be seen; there were no exits to this place, a plain square room with nothing else but empty space and his soul. The thought of being trapped in it for all eternity was terrifying, but it somehow paled compared to the prospects of returning to his body.

Draven closed his eyes, feeling the tiredness that spread throughout his entire being, and let the whispers of sleep take him to a place where he had nothing to worry about. He slept for hours, or even days—no way of telling without the torches. For the first time in weeks, he felt like a person again. No Sovrans to torture him, no goal to drive him to insanity, no family to call his own.

He hugged his knees and sobbed. Dan and his mother were gone. He had failed—by the Maker, he had failed them all.

Helvan had failed him. With all his power, aided by the vast network of the Witnesses of the Beyond, that heartless man still fell short of keeping his word. Abyss take him and tear his soul to shreds! All it would have taken was Helvan and another Empyrean to rescue Draven's family.

It was all so simple, but he still failed. The elderly Sovran never cared to try.

I hope he dies a horrible death. After everything he put Draven through, he was not even man enough to fulfill his end of the bargain. Bastard! Piece of shit! I hope you die screaming!

Draven punched the walls, roaring all his frustration, rage, and grief into the ears of no one. His knuckles bled, his bones cracked, and that took him aback. Even as a soul, his spiritual body seemed to behave like flesh and blood. He urged hexion to fix the damage, hearing the distant beat of his heart devouring it and reverting the damage throughout his body.

The wounds closed promptly.

Draven was not afraid to admit he knew little about the Sixfold Corridor, but as far as common sense went, he was the only person to visit it twice.

He still had a connection to his reserve of refined hexion. He could channel it inside his spiritual body, but what about emitting it? The feathers forged of veotherium restricted his Empyrean abilities to nothing, yet he was unsure if their clutches stretched into this place.

One way to find out.

Draven inscribed his intent into the will-imbued hexion and let it fly outside of his body as a sphere of blood. The goblet shot out of his finger, shattering against the wall without leaving a scratch. He tested again, with the same outcome.

The hatred burning inside Draven was strong, but the sheer weight of reality had suppressed it; to get revenge over those who took his family from him required power and experience he did not have. Until now. This changed everything. The Sixfold Corridor was the key to his escape—to his vengeance.

Other Menders emitted hexion without hurting themselves, something which undoubtedly saved a lot of their reserves. But whenever Draven tried, there was always an exit wound. That had to change. He sat and focused his intent on the hexion.

Blood sphere. Gentle.

The hexion traveled inside of him, fracturing blood vessels as if it was a foreign parasite wreaking havoc on its way out. It came out of his finger alongside droplets of blood on its tow. Better, but still not good enough. He was missing something.

Again and again, he tried, the attempt not even making a dent in the giant reserve he had secured. The damage diminished every time, but as soon as he lost focus or tried to attack with little thought behind it, an accident would occur.

"Shit!" Draven looked down at his finger, or what remained of it. To his surprise, Dyad Vessel did not suppress or absorb the pain.

Flesh hung by the skin as the bone lay exposed. Blood splashed in front of him in a violent spurt of red that colored the monochrome black. Draven tried to shoot consecutive spheres as fast as possible, but somewhere along the line he had forgotten the word gentle, and the hexion avenged its earlier mild behavior.

It had to be kept it in check.

Inscribing his intent into it each time proved a hindrance; Nobody he met seemed to have this problem, which meant Draven was stupid or his approach to emitting was wrong.

An idea bloomed in his mind as he remembered his battle against Altavir.

Instead of inscribing only parts of his reserve, the droplets that were about to be used, he turned to the whole thing and said, "Gentle. No harm." It shuddered, ripples spreading through it as his will mixed into it, acknowledging the command. "Oh, no liquid either." Mist poured out of Altavir's body, not liquid hexion; maybe there was a reason for that. "Mist."

Gentle. Harmless. Mist.

He pointed out his finger and mist streamed out of it, congealing into a sphere before flying and striking the wall without destroying his finger. It was so simple.

Damn, Myra, why didn't you tell me this before?

Draven inspected his body with his senses, and sure enough, the hexion had damaged nothing—no ruptured blood vessel, no broken skin, not even a scratch. The only drawback was that the speed at which those spheres congealed was slower than before, and that gave an enemy plenty of time to prepare for an incoming assault.

With a deep breath, he repeated the process with single-minded focus. One time. Ten times. One hundred times. One thousand times. Until he lost count.

Congealing the hexion became faster, instinctual. With each attempt, he glimpsed the road of optimizing the process just a little more. "Mist. Instant," he said to himself, but the words were directed to the reserve within him.

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Draven did not know for how long he sat down, only that his reserve was now half of what it had once been, even though he had consistently been beckoning and imbuing more hexion. He raised his finger, and a congealed blood sphere materialized almost instantly before crashing against the wall.

For a little while, he forgot about his grief, or the fate that awaited him. For an unknown stretch of time, Draven gazed at the fruit of his hard work and took pride in it. But a goal, once completed, was only an achievement, a sweetness that lasted but a moment between rest and the next step.

He had finally learned how to walk, but that alone brought no lasting satisfaction. To accomplish his revenge, he would need to learn how to sprint faster than anyone else.

***

Hunger never came.

Even after what must have been weeks, his stomach never rumbled or asked for food. Draven remembered little of his previous visit to the Sixfold Corridor, only that it had been long enough to drive a normal person insane—years, perhaps. He might not be the average Sovran or miner, but keeping his sanity had to be a feat aided by the timeless place where he stood.

The corridor preserved it somehow. No hunger. No exhaustion. No insanity.

Tendrils of streaming mist stretched around him in all directions. It was harder than he thought, much more difficult than shooting blood spheres. The action required precise control and a great deal of experience.

Draven lacked both.

Intent traveled through one tendril, far from his body, and a blood spike shot toward the floor after a few seconds. Slow, far too slow to be of any use, but there was potential in it. As reluctant as he was to admit it, Altavir taught him more than Myra in all her lessons—the man was a master in all regards.

To beat someone like him, Draven had to at least approach his level; Dyad Vessel was unlikely to work again—Altavir knew of it.

He sat down in the middle of the room, letting the tendrils spread from him like blood vessels eager to irrigate the obsidian confines of the obsidian chamber. There was no sensitivity to the network of woven hexion, so it failed when used to perceive incoming objects—it was immaterial, after all, just a glorified stream of mist that somehow held its shape.

The issue with emitting so far outside his body was that his will took too long to reach the ends; it traveled with a speed almost visible. But he wondered if that was the right approach. Whenever Altavir used the technique, it was as if his Presence was stretched throughout the entire hallway.

Myra once said that a Presence was the manifestation of will outside the confines of one's soul.

Draven let his will spread throughout the room. The gigantic fog visibly diminished, and a tightness in his forehead struck him—the start of a headache.

Spike!

The thought spread from his soul to his Presence like an exploding spark. A crimson spike congealed in the far ends of the room and shot at the wall, exploding in a shower of crystalline shrapnel that soon dissipated into mist.

It was instant, but it also drained his will, leaving him more susceptible to succumbing to any Psykers or suppression from other Empyreans. No wonder Myra had said to use it sparingly; it was a double-edged sword.

Time continued to pass, or perhaps it did not pass at all. Draven wondered if it was possible to return at all. Was he entrapped in the corridor forever? Replicating the same process used to get here did not wrench him back to Elysium. He was trapped, having escaped from one prison to another.

At least there's no pain in this one, he thought. Training was an efficient way to keep his mind away from what happened in the chamber.

Empyrean Art became his solace in solitude. Draven continued to refine what he had seen, what he had heard about what Menders were able to do. Spheres, spikes, tendrils, domes of protection—it all came easier after thousands of failures. The Art of Ruling and the forging of a Blood Armament still eluded him, as there was no foreign blood to rule in this place and he was still not one bit better at wielding weapons.

When his abilities as an Empyrean plateaued, he began amassing hexion inside his astra. Refine. Compress. Repeat. Draven went through the motions, powering through the pain, forcing his astra to expand. Lesser Reverence would get him nowhere; his enemies were stronger than that. Surprising them again was wishful thinking.

I need power! He gritted his teeth as his astra expanded. Blood seeped out of his mouth as he forced his will to push the refined hexion against the insides of the crimson sun that burned within himself. More. It's not enough!

Days passed in motionless silence, in single-minded focus, until he felt a change within himself. Projecting his consciousness outside the small sun, Draven realized it was much larger than before—at least double its original size after Heightening.

The scripture appeared in front of his eyes, confirming his suspicion.

Draven Von Astrais
Dyad Vessel: Refinement [Median]
Blood Path: Reverence [Median]

Not enough. Draven closed his eyes again, resuming his training regimen. Each realm had a barrier that prevented progress at the end of its road, but he was far from it. Until he reached it, stopping was foolish.

The flows of time did not touch flesh or signal a new day with any noticeable changes to the environment, but Draven knew months had passed. It did not matter, in the end. As long as he was stronger by the time an opportunity came, his hard work would pay off.

The gigantic cloud of his will forced the refined hexion against the boundaries of his astra. Faster. Continuous. Draven willed the lake of red to revolve into a whirlpool, leveraging the raging liquid to shave away at the insides of his small sun. As he did, he beckoned more from the rift, imbued it, and commanded it to do the same.

An ethereal chime rang through his soul, as his astra doubled in size once more. The crystalline walls that built his astra became harder, less malleable. With an exhausted sigh, Draven summoned the scripture once again.

Draven Von Astrais
Dyad Vessel: Refinement [Median]
Blood Path: Reverence [Greater]

Finally. He let himself lay down in the plain room, taking pleasure in the minimum comfort after an untold amount of time pushing his limits. Helvan was an Eminence, if his conversation with Corvanis at the Overseer Tower was to be taken seriously. Given that Altavir had a similar feeling to his Presence, he might be just as strong.

Draven still fell short of matching the bald man in raw power, but such complications were the least of his problems. A battle between them would never happen as long as he remained trapped in the Sixfold Corridor.

If only I knew how to get back.

"Aiden!" A faceless man appeared out of nowhere. His voice was frantic and muffled.

"Where are you?" he insisted, pivoting his head from side to side as if looking for something.

"Who are you?" He pointed a finger at the faceless man, but it was a tendril behind his back that spelled his doom. A blood sphere congealed instantly and pierced through where the creature's head had just been. "Bet you didn't see that one coming—"

"Aiden!" The faceless man resembled Aemon the more it talked. "Can you hear me?" He looked around, but there was no recognition on his face. His eyes blinked and squinted as if he had trouble seeing.

"Guess I'm crazy now, Aemon." Draven sat down with his back against the wall. The figure did not seem to hear him.

Maybe the Sixfold Corridor can only hold insanity for so long. An errand thought brought Draven back to the time where Helvan warned him about speaking the Maker's name out loud. A Dreamer could hear their name being spoken, depending on how powerful they were.

"Aemon?" Draven tried, but the figure still looked confused. "That's not your name, is it? You've always hated it, Finn."

Finn's eyes snapped to him with undisguised surprise. A smile blossomed on his face, but none of the playfulness that he once had accompanied it.

"Are you deaf, man? I've been looking for you… for four days! Where is this place? Where are you?" Finn tried to move, but something held him still.

"Well, Finn, it's a long story. They captured me. Tortured me." Draven hesitated, the memory of what followed bringing back the pain he had been trying to bury. "Killed my family."

"Maker's mercy." Finn looked at him, and Draven was glad to see no pity in his eyes. Otherwise, Draven might have just broken down into tears.

"What's a soon-to-be dead guy gonna do about it?" Draven laughed to himself. "As for where this place is, it might be the Sixfold Corridor. I've been here for a long time now. I'm probably dead, and this is all a hallucination. Maybe this is the abyss! It's not as cold as they said, though."

"Snap out of it, man!" Finn roared suddenly. "I'm here to get you back, and I'm real alright."

"We've been looking for you for days, Aiden. Four days! Wherever they hid you, none of us can find; someone is blocking Myra from tracking your blood, and even the Evoker Helvan hired lost track of your soul just before we tracked you down. But I found you, and I'm gonna bring you back."

"There's nothing left for me to go back to, Finn." The surprise on Finn's face shamed Draven to the core. Finn had not given up on him, but Draven had given up on himself. "Nothing but pain."

Finn roared, shattering the restraints that held him in place, and walked toward him.

"If you want to stay here, I'm okay with it," Finn said, surprising him.

"The world is an ugly place, Aiden. You and I know that damn well." Finn sat beside him, eyes looking ahead. "Sometimes I just want to watch it all burn. That bastard who forced himself on my mother, the ones that treat us like cattle. Everyone can just drop dead. Or that was what I used to think."

"Theodore is strict, and he beat me up with the ladle a few too many times, but whenever I got tired, he's the first one to tell me to get some rest. Weird, right? You know, Eridol risked his own skin to get that girl out of the city." Finn spoke with a collected voice devoid of bluster.

"The world is only as ugly as the people in power make it to be, man. That's what I realized." His voice cracked. "Sovrans, Low Bloods, miners—we are all the same, deep down. Or are you gonna tell me there are only good people in your district? I'm not gonna forgive what my father did, but I'm not gonna turn my back on everyone else just because I can."

"You're making me sound like an uncaring asshole." Draven chuckled.

"You're strong, Aiden. Stronger than me, or so I'm told. Whatever happened to your family, we can make sure it doesn't happen to others." Finn looked at him with a blinding purpose. "Together, we have a shot at changing things." He stood up and offered Draven a hand.

"Time to go back, Aiden." His cheeky smile returned.

Draven closed his eyes.

Was it acceptable to hope again, to live for a purpose greater than revenge? The deaths of Dan and his mother had reforged who he was, shattering the naivety through which he had once perceived the world, but it did not need to snuff out all hope. He refused to let it. They might have broken him, but Draven was a Mender.

No matter how many times he fell apart, he would mend himself back together. No matter how many times it took. Until nothing else could break him.

Draven took Finn's hand, and the world shattered around them.