Chapter 167: Overwhelming

Author note: Reminder: No chapter on the upcoming Saturday. Also, this is a double chapter. Enjoy!

Chapter 167: Overwhelming

A single breath. That was all it took for the Godeater parasite to recognize the souls in his proximity and activate. Like a starving predator finding a lame gazelle on the savannah, Walker felt the moment his whole body went into hunger overdrive.

Fuck me, he thought to himself as every feeling in his body focused on the former Primigenials spinning in a corruscating splash of colors before him.

Within a blink, two souls entered through the gateway of his mouth just as the Book of Souls exited his chest as a part of step two. It opened its cover, revealing both a pink and a gray set of pages manifesting within. The thickness of their memories was greater by far than Triton’s, but not nearly as bad as Kwayas.

As had happened in the past, the memories tried and failed to grab him as the Book of Souls fought back against the parasite’s impulsive control issue. While his Icon focused on keeping the past at bay, in the present, Walker adjusted to his soul holding just a little bit more power.

It felt like putting on a new suit, freshly tailored. Just a little too snug, but one that he knew would fill out with time as he stretched himself.

The plan was simple. Absorb the souls, adjust to them, then get ready for more.

Allow his Icon to filter the memories and information as best as it could, and don’t take on so many that they both become overwhelmed.

It was a nice plan, but as has been said, no plan survives first contact.

Taking half a second to calm down as the energy rush was more euphoric than he felt it had any right to be, he looked at the spinning maelstrom of shifting white and black.

No rest for the wicked.

Walker breathed in again, watching four souls break off from the slowly exploding bomb.

Four more sets of colored pages filled out his Icon, just as he received an update that floated into his overlay.

Standard Godeater Threshold met

Empowered souls obtained: Eleven

Reversing physical damage and restoring natural longevity

Walker couldn’t see it, but the wrinkles covering his forehead and the corners of his eyes disappeared as if they’d never been there in the first place. His hair also went through its own shift, changing from the grays that had sat on it since his first extended trip to the Ulysses-verse, back to the brown he’d arrived on Sonata with.

Adjusting to the souls wasn’t easy. His Icon was doing its best to sort the memories, filtering them and allowing Walker to continue, but the four that arrived were old. Ancient. Multi-thousand-year-old beings. Even with the burst of energy propping him up, it felt like his soul was being wrung dry, tempered by the souls of people time had forgotten.

Visually and through something more, instinct perhaps, Walker could tell that the spinning energy was only getting faster. If it were allowed to explode, that wouldn’t just be the end of him and Sonata, but likely, the end of the fourth rendition entirely.

He had to move faster, but the pain of it was slowly building up- as if his soul were two sizes too small for what was coming. Glaring at the spinning energy as if it were at fault, Walker mentally braced himself, then took a deep breath.

Ten souls shot out, one red-colored soul looking twice as thick as the others. It hit him with the power of a train, physically knocking him back in space hard enough that he had just enough wherewithal to harden the area behind him, lest he leave the small bubble of the created Continuum. Already, he knew that this soul was different from the others, and the system agreed with him.

Unique soul acquired

…

Enhanced Godeater Threshold met

Empowered souls obtained: Twenty

Unique souls obtained: One

Physical conditions improved

As his soul further tempered itself on the power of others and Walker’s Icon took up ten new sets of pages, his body went through several adjustments. Like a balloon expanding, so too did his muscles, pushing out once, twice, three times before contracting down to twice the size they’d previously held.

Walker had always been just a little heavyset, a man who had focused on the mind more than the body, but if someone were to look at him now, they’d assume he lived and breathed in the gym experience, throwing fist bumps, chugging protein shakes, and suddenly falling in love with his mirror.

His mind, however, was suffering some serious damage.

A negative feedback loop quickly formed from the overabundance of soul energy, shifting back and forth between Walker and his struggling Icon. He was having a hard time keeping his eyes from glazing over as memories from the eleven new souls quickly threw themselves into his own.

Already, even though he’d only absorbed a little over fifteen of them, he was having a difficult time distinguishing his reality from the ones brought through the connection. One moment, he was staring at spiraling energy attempting to destroy him and the rendition, the next, a woman gave him a cheeky smile, causing his heart to lurch.

It felt like his psyche was being ripped to shreds.

“Breathe through the pain,” Walker said with a half-lidded glare at the spiraling energy, “Breathe through the pain.”

Walker took a deep breath and created the candle in the darkness. Rather than feed it his emotions, he fed it every memory that kept trying to intrusively dive into the forefront of his thoughts. The Book of Souls lifted up as it gave him a mental tap, forcing him to squint at it with one eye half open.

A red pawprint now landed on the cyan branches of the tree on the cover.

Walker snorted, “What the fuck is this now.”

That’s the thing, Walker. I didn’t do that. I’m simply a representative of your soul and whatever shape it’s in.

“So what does it mean? Why is that on the cover?”

It likely has something to do with the Godeater parasite, but I do not know. I’m sorry.

Walker returned to the candle for a few more seconds, giving the Book of Souls time to digest, before stilling his mind and opening his eyes. This was going to fuck him up, bad, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Physical aspects aside, the only brightness in the murky dark of his current actions was that his connection to the Book of Souls was growing stronger. What had once seemed like a tenuous feeling became solidified. A thin line no thicker than one you might use to go fishing, putting on a weight that was hard to define- As if they were becoming one entity from two. He could now sense when the Icon needed more time, as well as gain a simple idea of the soul they’d taken in.

Though the unique soul was still being processed, the other fifteen he’d recently absorbed were complete. Snatches of memories tried to parse through, but they were weaker now. Instead, he gained a sense of the power these Primigenials had once held. Animal-like abilities from a few. A bond with working in stonecutting. Painting. Poetry. If the moment weren’t so dire, he felt like he’d want to dive into the memories. To see what life had been like for these people who had given up their lives so he might save his own.

But there wasn’t time for that now.

Closing his eyes once more, he focused on the candle, clearing the mechanism of his thoughts, then took a very deep breath. The cascading and crushing memories flooded in.

With each breath, the Godeater parasite seemed to grow in strength. The Book of Souls quickly became overwhelmed, throwing Walker into a cascade of images and lives that were not his own.

He was a soldier, no, a carpenter, no, giving birth. Dozens then hundreds of memories began to flood him, and Walker took them all. The candle in his mind flickered, drifting into the darkness and back again as he almost lost control. When the memories began to overwhelm him, he tried slipping past them with memories of his own, dodging them by throwing his own life at the lives of the longer lived.

The candle burned all the brighter as he gained better control of how to manage things.

Though he did his best, he couldn’t help being affected by the memories. So many were filled with love, then tragedy. Violence, then peace. One after another, the cycles of the immortal wanderers known as Primigenials became a part of him. A brand on his soul. A hero’s journey through dozens of heroes' journeys. Walker took another breath as soon as his Icon felt like it had a small handle on things, and it began all over again.

A double dose of something powerful struck him, almost causing him to lose focus momentarily.

Two Unique souls acquired

…

Advanced Godeater Threshold met

Empowered souls obtained: Forty-seven

Unique souls obtained: Three

Sensory conditions improved

The sound of blood rushing through his body burst into full and loud clarity. Smells, particularly the smell of his blood, gore, and sweat-stained clothes, rushed into his nose. He found the metal taste in his mouth strong enough to force a slight gag, just as his clothes brushed against his skin, the feeling not unlike hundreds of feathers lightly touching his body.

The sudden influx of so many sensations distracted Walker enough that he inevitably made a mistake. Mentally recovering from countering a Primigenial’s connection to love with Walker’s own connection to hatred, he missed a mental beat as his overpowered senses threw him out of the candle and the darkness. Like a great wave cresting over the horizon in slow motion, Walker got a full view as the Primigenial’s memory slid down, overtaking his vision.

A cold and brittle feeling gripped his heart as he was driven under the emotional veneer of the memory. Feeling himself plunge into an icy memory of revenge, he tried to counter with an image of Valerie, but the memory was far too weak, shattering on first contact and driving him into the passenger seat of the soul’s power.

Blood.

Crows squawking over the many bodies of the slain while a light snowfall drifted down on the unmoving.

A chipped sword lifted in terrible triumph, the only figure still standing amidst a mountain of bodies.

“My child!” Walker felt himself screaming into the sky. “You’ve killed my child! So I have taken all that you have from you!” He laughed giddily, the high pitch at odds with the bloody moment. “Where’s your future now, son of the sky! Where’s your salvation!”

Walker watched as a yellow beam dropped down from above, a man standing in its place as it disappeared. He threw out a lifted, open palm, wherein a flame burned.

A brightly burning flame held-

The candle returned as Walker pushed out of the memory. With a gasp, he quickly latched on to his sense of self, throwing some of his best memories at the one trying to drag him under. Laughter, soft hands and hard kisses, a neighborhood kid he taught how to play catch, once upon a time. The memory calmed itself as he took a deep breath in, trying to push the cold, dead feeling surrounding his heart away.

Twenty more souls entered the contest for his sanity as the Godeater further pushed for satiation.

Like this, Walker tempered his soul, increasing his connection to his icon. Twenty more souls became thirty more, a unique thrown into the mix. Then forty, fifty, and beyond. Walker had never had a reasonable estimate of how many Primigenials sat within the Tree of the Gods, but as the updates came in, he had a clearer idea.

One Unique soul acquired

…

Two Unique souls acquired

…

The Book of Souls flipped towards him, its cover now holding twelve new markings that he saw from a squinted eye. Fruits on a tree. From feeling alone, he knew each was a branch’s prime. A connection to the power and life of beings who’d once lead a family of Primordials. As the Icon absorbed further memories, it strained to condense back down in size.

Twice more he crossed thresholds for the Godeater parasite, the first one increasing his connection to the universe, whatever that meant, and the second, activating some kind of ability system.

One he’d declined with great effort.

He wouldn’t be beholden to whatever abilities the Evolvers tried to throw at him, like crumbs to a rat. They’d done this to him. They’d done something like this to everyone. Whether it was the starving and sick people of Luck’s Haven, or the poor souls who had died on a planet, relegated to the Omega Protocol. Walker would have none of it.

Another update came in, and Walker took a chance. Opening his eyes, he looked out at the spinning energy still building itself into a frenzied explosion. Unlike when he’d first spotted it, it was no longer shifting back and forth between white and black coloring. Now, it was a kaleidoscopic rainbow, beautiful if not for the fact that it was trying to kill everyone in the Rendition.

The energy of the building soul bomb had slowed, giving him more time, while also allowing him to spot a miasmic cloud of purple within the spiral. The last pieces of Kwaya danced among the multicolored remnants of Earth’s gods, bottling them up for her own nefarious plan.

But Walker had his own plans, and looked at his last update again.

Elite Godeater Threshold met

Empowered souls obtained: Five-hundred and seventy-three

Unique souls obtained: Eighteen

Targeted ingestion obtained

A memory spiked into his vision, but he batted it off, though not without some trouble. Like all things, practice makes everything easier, even the invasive movements of events long lost to the past.

Walker looked over at his Icon, unsurprised to see it condense in size as the last set of souls was finally digested. Its pages flourished once before settling. Walker’s eye caught hundreds of colors within that were as varied as the spinning energy of Kwaya’s soul bomb.

“How many more do you think we need to absorb?”

You know the answer to that.

And shockingly enough, he did. With each strengthening of his connection to the Book of Souls, they had needed to speak less and less. Only, he’d been so busy defending himself from the Primigenials' memories that it’d barely registered.

He knew without looking that the Godeater was already filled by more than seventy-five percent. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to look.

Turning on Soul Vision, Walker extended his soul and looked down at himself.

The once black lines running throughout his body were no longer black. Instead, they were filled with the same rainbow of colors found within the pages of his Icon. As he stared at the Godeater Parasite, he thought he saw movement. Pushing closer and using his newly upgraded senses, both the physical and universal kind, Walker found something disturbing.

The colors were retreating, shrinking back to the black marked soul of the parasite. If his instincts were right, that didn’t mean the parasite was going to go dormant. It meant he had to fill the Godeater up to the brink before it would finally leave him alone.

Pulling back to himself, Walker cursed, “Fuck!”

Yes.

“It’s fucking-”

I know. And you know what we need to do now.

He did.

Looking back at Ra’Jin, no longer ponderously making his way to Sonata, Walker’s heart lurched. The few Planeteaters he’d seen with a thin shine of Temporal energy had already made their stops. Now, each and every Planeteater held the same hazily opaque resources. As if it had spread to the others the moment it had reached the mothership. Dozens more Planeteaters were now making their way to the gargantuan figure, it’s gap-toothed smile digging into Walker’s building fury. His senses picked up several more souls caught in their bodies.

Artemis

Aphrodite

Heph

Fillion

Ra

Walker shook his head. I can’t panic. It’ll only make things worse. The best thing I can do, is get stronger, and fuck up all of their plans.

He knew what he had to do. Walker raised both hands up. In a splash of rainbow color, he covered them in the newly prismatic energy of his soul. With a flick of effort, Walker expanded the size of the hands until each was the size of his own body, then split each into three, ending with six extensions of himself, barely contained by the small size of the time shelter he’d built.

With his hands, he reached forth, crossing the Continuum divide, then waited for what would happen next. Even in Walker’s advanced time, the speed at which Kwaya’s remnant energy attacked was impressive. The miasmic purple streamed toward Walker’s extended power with furious intent. It shaped itself into a sharp blade of energy, cutting towards one of Walker’s hands with unbelievable speed. But with the tempered and enhanced power of the Primigenials of Earth, the attack was doomed to fail. Using the advanced time dilation of his location, Walker ducked the slash, then latched onto the energy. With a small grunt of effort, Walker ripped it away from the spinning energy, before throwing it at his own shelter.

Without needing to communicate, The Book of Souls opened up to Kwaya's pages and moved on an intercept course. As soon as the energy crossed the first edge of the continuum divide, it touched the Icon’s pages.

It didn’t make a sound as the last of Kwaya’s energy disappeared in the universe.

Walker breathed a mental sigh. Without the remnant energy, the Primordial’s souls began to slow down, which was just what Walker was hoping for. Reaching forth with all six extensions of his soul, he grabbed onto them, separating the energy into six sections, then flung the first set at himself.

Walker breathed in.

Five Unique souls acquired

…

And about a hundred and twenty non-primes, he thought to himself before diving into the candle and the darkness. He lost track of time as screams, cries of pleasure, and quiet moments of reflection passed him by. It wasn’t like when he’d first awakened his soul. Each carried the emotion of the scene to him. A foreign substance invading him in a drive-by before being shoved away.

He was only halfway done with the souls when Walker felt a powerful shift in himself- a lurch of perspective he couldn’t explain. Without waiting to see what the change entailed, he mentally signaled the second hand to toss another group toward him, before setting up the rest in a timed sequence.

This was an all-in moment. He couldn’t chance the idea that the souls filling the Godeater parasite would be burned up before he completed his mission. He couldn’t allow the sacrifice of thousands to be placed on the altar of failure.

The second group arrived with a breath, forcing him to go on the defensive again as scenes of their lives surrounded him.

A third. Defending himself was becoming more difficult as the Book of Souls faced great difficulty absorbing so many souls, particularly the unique souls hidden within the bunch.

A fourth. He’d only just finished the second when it arrived. His mind slipped as several memories that held similarities to one another joined together on the attack. He was a baker, hiding among the mortals. He was snatched by the Earth’s Creator at the ripe age of forty-five, spending thousands of years in prison. He was a spearman, fighting across ancient Mongolia on a mission from his prime. Find the Mahrac. Kill it. This time, he was imprisoned just before he could take it down.

He was- He was- He was- He was-

Walker lived dozens of lives in the span of a heartbeat as each one vied for dominance- As each tried to imprint the importance of themselves on his psyche.

A fifth.

Walker’s mind shredded itself as he fought to maintain his sense of self among the hundreds of lives that wanted in. Spittle and blood flowed out of the side of his mouth as a cleanly bit through tongue rolled into the back of his unwilling throat.

A wordless scream erupted from his mouth as Walker clenched his hands against his sides and rejected the invasion of his sense of self. It was a sound of both abject terror and pain. A denial of change. A roar of agency, that Walker and Walker only would direct his life and the path he walked.

He fought in his mind to maintain who he was, as every memory and every life trapped in his mind and soul screamed that he needed to change. To live like them.

To be them.

A sixth.

Tears in his vocal cords no longer allowed him to scream. Instead, Walker struggled to breathe as coughing fits took over his body. Simultaneously, the Enhancement resources he’d placed himself began to run dry, burned out from both the protection of his soul from the energy he was harnessing, as well as the ravages of time itself.

But he never left the candle and the darkness. One particular memory came to the fore. A memory he clung to as the spirits of the now deceased wanted their due for his temerity.

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They’d just recalled the first cohort from Fortis after a disastrous third voyage from the starting zone. A Founder had died from a simple misunderstanding with the local giants, leading to a battle nobody had wanted.

As Asclepius and a few medically-minded Founders encircled everyone, Walker and Athena were lying in the grass some distance away. She was stroking his hair as he stared out at the future of Symphony.

“Walker, you can’t always save everyone. You know that.”

“I do, in fact, know that. I just can’t stand the idea that these brave explorers are dying before ever getting to touch down on what will be their home.”

She stroked his hair again, “And yet, tomorrow will be a new day, with new challenges and problems to overcome.”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. It’s always tomorrow to you.” Walker said with a smile in her direction, one she returned in full, lightening his heart more than a small amount.

“You know, Virgil said something interesting to me the other day.”

“Oh? And what was that?”

“He said that in emotionally available entities, sadness is caused by both knowledge and intelligence. That, the more you know, the harder it is to keep the world out and just enjoy life as it is.”

“What an odd thing for an assistant to say. Do you agree with him?”

She shrugged, “Maybe. I think, intelligence and knowledge without wisdom can create the worst kind of people. But then again, we both know who I am.”

Walker leaned against her shoulder, thinking on that for a long time as he stared at the still recovering Founders. Eventually, he looked back at Athena, “Will you marry me?”

“What? Really?” She said, turning fully to face him.

“Really, really. We don’t have to do it right away, but-” He paused, not knowing what else to say. All of the words in the back of his head had disappeared.

She didn’t wait for him to say anything else as she tackled him, giving him a passionate kiss as he hugged close to him, “Of course I will, Walker. You’re the only man I’ve ever wanted to be with.”

Lying with her like this, he felt the parasite try to rear up, but he locked it down. He wouldn’t allow it to dictate his own happiness. He wouldn’t allow anyone to. When she pulled back, he smiled up at her, “I’m not taking your last name.”

“Good, because I don’t have one. Athena Reed. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

Walker nodded, “That it does, soon-to-be-wife. That it does.”

She smiled and leaned down for another kiss, this one lasting much longer.

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Walker continued to replay the memory in his mind, over and over again. Rather than trying to defend himself from the hundreds of memories, he supercharged one of his own, using it as a shield of self strong enough to protect him from the overwhelming numbers. It didn’t matter what they hit him with, this one memory was enough to keep him going.

More time went by, until eventually, he felt a slow easing of attacks. Then, one by one, they began to disappear, locked away by an Icon that seemed to pulse from his own heart. And the pulses were getting stronger.

Walker opened his eyes, ignoring the stream of notifications trying to grab his attention. There was no more energy from the now empty space that had once held the Tree of the Gods. A hole in the ground was all that remained of its presence, as well as the one who’d made it.

The pulses seemed to take on a life of their own, as a black field of soul energy burst from him, quickly followed by another, slightly brighter one. Then another, and another. Each brighter in color than that which came before. A pressure built up in his chest, one he intrinsically knew he couldn’t hold back. Leaning into it, he pushed, forcing the last of the darkness out of his soul.

As it arced out in a halo of energy, he wasted no time. Walker covered his hands in the power of his soul and reached forth.

Each held the color green, the original identifier of his soul, but its hue had gone through a change. The dark, forest green he’d awakened had changed to a lighter tone. One that more closely resembled the color of a healthy field of grass.

With sure movements, Walker attacked the energy he’d expelled, gathering it from the Multiverse and containing it into a ball of darkness as he reapplied the Enhancement resources that were just about dried up.

Looking over at the Book of Souls, Walker thought, Step Three.

It opened its rainbow pages to the back, where nothing had yet been written and only possibilities remained. Walker crushed the Godeater parasite into the smallest possible amount he could, then threw the hateful thing at his Icon. The parasite tried to shift away, proving it had some kind of life of its own, but the Book of Souls matched it.

Two dark pages appeared within the Icon. Even as it began to settle, hands the color of midnight began to reach forth, just as hands of grass green helped the Book of Souls close its cover. A small pitched fight occurred for a few seconds before things calmed down.

Step Four.

The Book of Souls opened up to the two black pages again, and Walker wasted no time as he began to read.

Unlike reading a soul, this time, Walker was reading a soul system. The complications within were vast, but after how long he’d spent studying in the Time Rings, particularly with his own Soul system, he had an amazing grasp of how they worked. Tracing the architecture of it with his mind, he followed it back to it’s beginning, locating its origin point.

With the knowledge of how the system worked forever trapped in his mind, he extended his soul and looked at himself with his ability active. The black lines were no longer there. Instead, they were filled to the brink with the rainbow colored souls of the Primigenials, a forever mark of the time Walker had been infected, and had fought his way out through the sacrifice of others.

I’ll make it count.

Directing his soul toward the two black pages of his Icon, Walker found a small leading line trailing to his body, with another thicker form directed towards the Planeteater before it angled in a sharply different direction.

He hadn’t been able to see the system’s connection points before because he hadn’t had access. It was another hidden element of the Evolver multiverse. Something with a likely root in the Center, like those he’d found in the Assistants.

But now that he had direct access to the system, he could do something about that.