Chapter 908 - 907: A Body Without Precedent

Simon vanished before the two bloodlines collided.

He appeared beneath the Byakko’s descending paw and caught it with his left hand. His right closed around the Uruqath’s fist.

BOOM!

One of his knees struck the ground.

Their strength pressed through him, but his Will reached past the attacks and seized the intentions driving them.

The claw stopped above his head.

The Uruqath’s wings strained against something they could not cut.

"You mistake your ancestry for authority."

Simon slowly straightened.

"This is my body. Not a kingdom for either of you to conquer."

The tiger growled. The Daemon’s third eyelid twitched.

Simon’s eyes became completely black.

Both manifestations recoiled from what looked back through them.

"I don’t give two fucks how much I suffered to obtain you. I will shatter you both before I let you decide how I live."

The darkness seemed deeper than his face could contain.

"Disobey me, and neither bloodline will see daylight again. There are other paths to the peak. I will take them."

His voice dropped.

"Decide whether you want to remain my blood... or become another meal."

The Uruqath remembered the screams of its ancestors that had accompanied its ascent. The Byakko felt the hunger waiting behind Simon’s restraint.

Neither doubted him.

The claws withdrew, and the six translucent wings lowered.

Simon held them a moment longer, until cooperation replaced the desire to strike.

Then his eyes returned to normal.

He released them and sighed.

"Was that so difficult?"

The mountain stopped trembling, but fractures remained between it and the suspended terraces.

Simon inspected his physical body.

Silver skin and tiger stripes. Four ivory horns. Feline ears. A closed third eye. Six detached wings that shuddered whenever the Byakko’s power entered his back.

One bloodline yielded whenever he drew on the other.

They had stopped attacking each other, but they had not become whole.

’What a waste.’

Simon sat cross-legged.

Dividing his body into territories would preserve the problem. Forcing their complete shapes together would produce a creature neither could properly inhabit.

He considered using Devour.

No. He needed both lineages intact, not whatever remained after one consumed the other.

Their instincts offered another answer.

His flesh was still changing. Instead of forcing their power to cooperate inside two competing bodies, he could make them build one together.

"Come closer."

He placed a palm against each manifestation.

"Show me what you can become."

In Velmora, his sternum cracked.

Blood ran across the inscriptions.

Lilith looked down sharply.

"Mortal."

"Please watch my surroundings and protect me."

Lilith frowned.

"... Fine."

His shoulders spread. Muscle tore from bone, then fastened itself farther apart. His spine lengthened until his seated body rose noticeably above its previous height.

Unholy Regeneration followed the changes, repairing the damage without restoring the discarded shape.

His jaw began extending.

"No."

Simon clenched his teeth.

The Byakko wanted its bite. He let the canines lengthen but held his face humanlike, refusing the muzzle pushing beneath his skin.

Bone ground against bone.

When his mouth finally closed, two sharp points rested behind his lips.

His skin darkened to a smooth ash-grey. Broad ivory stripes emerged along his ribs, curving upward toward his back.

Below the elbows, his arms became nearly black beneath the Chaos Wraps. The same darkness covered his lower legs.

His fingers lengthened slightly.

Black claws emerged, curved inward, then withdrew when he relaxed them.

His hands still belonged on a sword’s hilt.

Then the horns moved.

Their roots tore through his scalp.

Simon’s vision blurred. He held both bloodlines steady while they tried to arrange four horns around the same skull.

"Not backward."

The upper pair straightened into tall ivory spires, their black tips hooking forward above his forehead.

The lower pair thickened at his temples and curved downward beside his ears. Their ends turned outward near his jaw, leaving his face framed between two upward horns and two descending ones.

Black ridges ran along the ivory. White seams marked the darker pair.

The third eye at the centre of his forehead remained, and it did not open.

Blood dripped from all four roots.

Lilith pressed the runes above his brows until the wounds closed.

"Truly a greedy and arrogant bastard."

She shook her head, gave him a look and returned to the array.

The ring behind him buckled.

Its six wings jerked toward his body.

Simon screamed as six roots forced themselves beneath his shoulder blades, joining nerves that had never carried such sensations.

The detached ring dissolved into the new joints.

Wings unfolded from his back in three pairs.

Each was broad near its root and narrowed into a long, backward-curving point. A smooth ivory spar ran along its leading edge.

Black membranes stretched beneath the spars, silver on their undersides.

Then slits opened through those membranes.

They ran in orderly rows from root to tip, exposing hollow chambers instead of the ground behind them. Each slit could open and close independently.

The wings inhaled.

Dust raced toward Simon.

The Byakko supplied the wind. The Uruqath made the chambers fold deeper than the wings were thick.

Simon felt pressure gathering beneath every black surface.

He turned the lowest pair, and their slits snapped shut on one side and opened on the other.

Six narrow jets screamed across the ruins.

A broken wall split into clean sections.

The wings had not flapped, and Simon’s eyes flickered with a strange light.

He bared his teeth.

’Keep that.’

Then the pressure reached his body.

His chest convulsed.

The wings were gathering more force than his old pathways could distribute. Both bloodlines offered solutions, each trying to pull his organs into a different arrangement.

Simon forced them to stop.

"Together."

Something began forming beneath his sternum, at the solar plexus.

At first, it felt like a stone trapped inside him.

Then it turned.

His upper abdomen split.

Lilith caught his shoulder before the pain could pull him out of position.

"Do not move."

A clear corner pushed through the blood.

Another followed.

Inside Simon, the bloodlines folded a small chamber from living tissue and enclosed it in something hard and transparent.

A cube.

It was roughly the size of his fist.

Most of it remained within his body. Its forward face settled against the opening, turned so its corners pointed up, down, and sideways.

Skin closed around the bevelled edges.

A dark, glasslike diamond remained visible at his solar plexus.

Inside it, nine white currents circled a black centre.

Every time they reached a corner, the space inside folded and returned them along another face.

None collided.

Sky-blue lightning followed their paths.

Simon’s breath caught.

The cube was not another Demon Heart. Instead, it gave both bloodlines a shared place to shape the power his heart supplied.

The pressure from his wings entered it.

Instead of bursting through his chest, it divided and returned through the new pathways, reaching his hands, horns, and wings without forcing either bloodline aside.

His instincts had wanted a junction, and his Will had made them build one.

Lilith watched the cube with intrigue.

"That was not part of either bloodline."

"I know."

The black channel surged.

Tarvak’s remaining flesh twisted around a hard swelling beneath his ribs. It tried to become angular, failed, and opened into several mouths full of splintered bone.

Once again, Lilith diverted the malformed growth before it reached his heart.

"Try to finish before you invent something else."

Simon barely heard her.

The final changes were happening together.

His wings widened, the upper pair rising high, the middle spreading broadly, and the lower curving down behind him. Their silver undersides caught the lightning.

White hair fell to the middle of his back, between their roots.

His ears retained their sharp feline points.

No tail emerged.

The Byakko’s nine currents had found their place inside the new organ instead.

In the manifestation world, wind passed through the silver arches. Mountain stone joined the terraces without either cracking.

Simon loosened his Will, and neither bloodline tried to withdraw or tried to fight back.

He removed his hands.

The connection held.

His physical eyes opened.

Sky-blue irises surrounded vertical pupils edged with silver. The familiar broken black rings remained. Above them, the third eyelid lay closed between the four horns.

Crimson thunder rolled across Velmora.

Simon stayed seated beneath it, six wings extended above the bloodied array.

He drew upon both lineages.

The exposed face of the cube at his solar plexus brightened.

Every wing answered.

His Infernal Heart had not advanced, but the resistance within his own blood was gone.

Simon looked down at the reflection beneath him.

The fangs, the four horns, the three eyes. The wings breathing through their black membranes. The cube inside his body.

He let the Uruqath’s power rise.

The Nine-Tailed Byakko rose with it.

Neither needed to make room.

There was finally enough of him for both.

Suddenly, the sky rumbled and Simon looked up.

RUMBLE!!!!