HTG - Chapter 189

Kalon

Chapter One-Hundred-Eighty-Nine: Ulatar - Part Two

Planet: Etheria

Kotina’s watchful gaze travels from the cave’s entrance to my hand as I pick up the shard of Etherium. Light blossoms from the deep blue crystalline structure. Cracks in it create a cloudy view. It is small, but it is extremely potent. My will threads into desire and pulls the Etheric Maka from the shard. Energy vibrates up my arm and travels toward my heart. With the help of Sha I condense it with the rest. Kotina’s eyes widen as she watches the shard start to turn from blue toward a deep red. There is little Netheric Maka in it, which tells me whenever this shard was formed it was mostly Etheric. Unbalanced.

Yet when it reaches a balanced state, the place between Etheric and Netheric time crawls in my perception and I feel strange as I hold the shard. Like it wants to be in balance. Yet I feel the saturated Etheric Maka in the air trying to pull into the void. It is strange. On Ora, Netheric Maka is so abundant that Etherium turns quickly into Netherium without much effort needed.

I have always wondered what the real difference between them is. When I was younger, I thought Netherium evil, because it is what I was taught. It is what I saw. My eyes have witnessed many falling to Netheric Maka poisoning. The slow death until they become Shulka.

More memories flood my mind when I consider what I heard Doctor Hemalia saying… about the tests they performed on me when I was Mallock’s prisoner. They studied my blood and the effects it had. Is it just my blood? Or is it something else. Something to do with the golden eyes, or perhaps the unknown entity Krotha thinks I carry. There are so many questions that I have. Things that I should find out for myself.

The shard is a violet color for a brief moment before it shifts to red.

“What was that?” Kotina asks me.

“You felt it?”

“I felt something, like a strange cadence in the mana.”

“So did I… I think perhaps I can combine them…” I pause thinking on what Dargo told me before. That it is hubris to think one can control both forms of Maka at once. Yet I have cycled them rapidly before. Even felt them in my body at once. I remember the vibrations were immense, but it did not kill me. Nor does it kill a normal person in small amounts.

“Oh, runt,” Kotina says shaking her head, “Please don’t try something so foolish. People can use both, to an extent, once they run out, but…” she pauses, curiosity flaring in her eyes for a moment, “But you don’t change… you don’t become a Krothaspawn, and you can use Etherium… what’s that even mean? Can all Netheric users use both?”

“There’s one way to find out,” I say, pulling back Etheric Maka into the shard, bringing it closer to the purple color again.

“That’s dangerous runt, trying to balance a shard has been known to cause explosions. They are attracted to the imbalance of their inverse, but if they are equal it isn’t pretty. I’ve seen holos of people try to balance them both in their bodies,” she swallows and splays her hand, “They eventually explode… violently.”

Amon appears from the shadows, his voice pays a warning to me in my mind.

Do not try to tread where mortals and gods are not allowed. The one whose spark I carried, they made the same mistake. That is…

“That is why their legacy is Ata and Sha…” I whisper, blinking, thinking… “They tried to balance it?”

He nods, looking down as though caught in memory.

“You talking to your demon friend again?”

“Yes.”

“Right… and is he trying to tell you to do this?”

I shake my head, “Only Krotha and those she controls try to control me. She now answers to my commands.”

“For now,” Kotina says, giving me a wary eye, “If that changes, you’ll let me know, yeah?”

“Besides, Amon is saying what you said, that I should not try it, that…”

The shard pulses in my hand… the energy is stirring. The vibrations become swifter and swifter until Kotina leaps forward, taking the shard and throwing it out of the cave. The shard explodes, resonating with all the Maka in the cave, thunderous vibrations that I feel deep in my chest.

“I said not to do that, I…” she breathes out furiously, “I literally just said it would explode.”

Having never seen it happen before, I didn’t know. She did just say that though… why was I so foolish? So reckless?

My head lowers slightly, “Apologies, ma’am.”

She sighs, her anger dissipating as she leans against the wall, “Impressive that you managed to do it though, that means your mana control is top notch.” Seeing my expression she adds, “That’s a great thing once you pass the fifth, it means whatever element you resonate well with will be easier to control. Still though,” her face becomes sterner for a moment, “Don’t do that again, even small amounts can be catastrophic. Larger ones can destroy ships and cities.”

“For a moment it felt like it could be balanced, that moment stretched and I was lost in it.”

“Try not to get lost in it again, otherwise you’re liable to lose your head… literally.”

I nod, staring at another shard upon the ground near me. Taking it gingerly into my hand, I feel the pulse but I do not try to hold it as I drain it and channel the Maka into my core, leaving only Netherium in its wake.

“Right, show me,” Kotina says, leaning closer, eyes peering closely.

It is harder to pull the Netherium from this shard, there is so much Etheric Maka trying to change it back into Etherium. Yet, I manage. The rhythm that Zarae showed me before is my guide as I remove every vibration of energy from the shard until it flickers black and disintegrates into dust in my palm.

Kotina lets out a breath, “Holy fuck. That was intense, there was a void for a moment, and then it just collapsed into dust. Strange. What else can you do?”

“My blood has the same effect on Etherium and Netherium.”

“What?”

“And I think it is poisonous to Shulka… or Krothaspawn as you know them.”

She blinks at me, “You hit your head pretty hard earlier.”

“Not so hard that I would forget something like that.”

Kotina raises an eyebrow and steps forward, examining the black dust she pauses as she pinches it in her finger, her brow furrowing deeper the closer she looks at it. “Does it… does it always make this stuff?” she asks barely loud enough over the noises of the night.

“As far as I know.”

“Right… well, don’t tell anyone else about this.”

“Why?”

She holds the dust up to the light of the Etheric shards and the strange formations in the cave, allowing it to fall into her other hand, “I’m pretty sure this is Ulatar. No… I’m fucking positive it is.”

“Why shouldn’t I tell anyone about it?”

“You remember how I said wars have been fought over handfuls of Etherius Prism Flower?”

I nod.

“This stuff is considered rarer than that. It’s the only substance that is resistant to Netheric weapons… which makes sense now, it’s the base element for it. Holy fragnuts,” she looks at me, almost fervently, “How much of this do you think you could make in a year?”

I shrug, “If I had an outlet for the energy to disperse, a lot. I once turned crates of Etherium into this dust to heal Fennec and reshape his runes.”

She blinks at me, “Wait… what?” her hand raises to silence me, “Hold that thought…”

She whips her head toward the cave’s entrance. My eyes follow, but they see nothing. It is strange though, the sounds of the feral growls have ceased, when did they stop? I was so focused on what was happening I didn’t even notice. To my right, near the cave’s mouth, a puddle on the ground is vibrating slowly in an even tempo.

Putting my bare hand to the ground, I feel the tremors now, like something is…

The earth and stone vibrate beneath me, and my heart increases. Dust sprinkles down from the ceiling, Kotina turns from me towards the noise, slowly rising, her head tilting at it.

“Ravena’s crack… that’s a big bastard,” Kotina says, rolling her neck, her helmet folding from the shoulders and covering her head as she moves towards the back wall of the cave, placing a foot against it and crouching low, “Feel the flow…”

Air cracks as the sound barrier ruptures, the rock wall spindles with cracks, and there is a flash of movement as Kotina erupts from the cave into the darkness. The ground shakes as she impacts with something outside.

“Fucking hells, you’re an ugly bastard too!” Kotina yells.

The outside of the cave rocks with a heavy thud. The face of the creature is illuminated in the light of the formations. It looks like a man who was birthed by a beetle, with hard chitin around its face, its eyes look more insectoid than a man, and it has a large bulbous body with hairs jutting out from the cracks in the thick plating of its exoskeleton. Its size is more than ten of Kotina, it lets out a shrill squeaking as it tries to get back up.

Kotina punches its face, slamming it against the wall, dusting the air. She pounds it again and again until it is still, and she is coated in its gore. She breathes heavily as she shakes the gore from her, removing her helmet. The creature is dragged slowly into the shadows by the feral growls that have returned.

“Well, waste not… want not I guess,” Kotina says, a disgusted smirk on her face.

She moves back towards me, then stops suddenly, her smirk falling from her face as she slowly turns from me to the darkness outside once more.

The growls outside have stopped suddenly again as well, there is silence, eerie silence. The hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise as the puddles in the cave tremor once more. This time the cadence is much slower, a deep rumbling of the earth, shaking dust into the air from the ceiling.

She looks at me, “We need to…”

Suddenly everything begins shaking violently, like a series of explosions going off continuously. From the ceiling of the cave, rocks tumble downward as cracks form in it. Kotina grabs me in a split second, my body feels the tug, my insides slamming from the force of the movement. We are outside now, and she is running faster than I have ever seen anyone run before, clutching me under her arm.

The wind pulls my hair back, making it hard to even breathe.

The light of day begins to crest the horizon, breathing life into the shadow’s forms. The thousands of deformities that chased us before are all gone, having retreated from it. Yet the tremoring of the earth continues to rise higher. As I turn my head back towards the sounds, my eyes bulge at what they take in.

Hundreds of paces into the sky, eyes larger than the Narok spider’s entire body stare down at us, connected to the body of a creature I do not recognize. Its neck long, connected to a shell of some kind.

Four legs as tall as buildings from the masters’ cities, the legs push it higher into the air. As it moves upwards, the hills shear under its movements. On its body thick vegetation grows, dangling like false hair, scraping the ground as the creature rises from it, as though it had been hibernating beneath it, long enough for trees to take root on its back.

The creature lets out a roar that could rend the heavens, and I feel my eardrums nearly burst from the force of it. How can such a creature exist? My eyes take in its shape and its mountainous size and do not believe what they see. How can such things be possible? Its pace is slow and steady, but the sheer size of its stride is closing the gap rapidly. From the sides of the creature, I see more beady eyes coming into view as it gains on us, hundreds of creatures like the one Kotina just killed cling to its massive legs like fleas.

Sekat.