Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2432 Fallen

The doors continued to move as the resonance between the five Fallen Madness Disciples deepened, every pulse of their Wills followed by another low groan from the enormous structure in the distance.

At first, the effect remained limited to the battlefield around them, but it didn't take long before the surrounding Hell began responding as well, obsidian mountains trembling while rivers of lava crawled backward along slopes they had descended moments earlier.

Sylas' expression grew more serious as he watched the changes spread, though his hands never stopped moving. Emerald Strokes passed through the golden mechanisms Caelum continued forming around the five Fallen Madness Disciples, Sylas bending Time through Space while Caelum continuously altered when those interactions were allowed to occur.

Caelum had stopped trying to kill him outright several exchanges ago, and Sylas could see why. Whatever he had expected when he released the Fallen Madness Disciples from the black cylinder, it clearly wasn't this. His attention was increasingly divided between Sylas and the growing resonance he was desperately attempting to suppress.

One of the Fallen Madness Disciples released a roar as its Greed pulled violently at the surrounding Aether, taking so much that its flesh began swelling beneath the pressure. Caelum immediately layered several temporal mechanisms over its body and shifted the excess into another moment, only for Sylas to cut through one of those structures and force him to rebuild it before the unstable Aether tore the creature apart.

Sylas watched the response with a flicker of interest before pressing again. Caelum had protected the two remaining Silvers almost automatically throughout their earlier exchange, but now every attack Sylas directed toward the Fallen Madness Disciples drew his attention first.

Sylas sent three emerald formations through a fold in Space, forcing Caelum to choose between preserving the temporal structures around the Fallen Madness Disciples and maintaining the protections around his companions. Caelum hesitated for less than an instant before abandoning the latter, and that moment was enough for one Silver to be caught between two conflicting stretches of Time until her flesh withered and restored itself so violently that her body tore apart.

The other Silver reacted fast enough to retreat, but not fast enough to escape Sylas. Space folded beneath his feet and deposited him beside one of the Fallen Madness Disciples just as its Will erupted, a warped claw tearing through his torso before Caelum could spare enough concentration to interfere.

Caelum didn't even look toward them as they died and Sylas' eyes narrowed.

Whatever these five Fallen represented, Caelum valued them above two Silver Acolytes, and that was difficult to dismiss as simple practicality. Sylas didn't yet know why Caelum had been collecting Fallen Madness Disciples that should have been little more than failed remnants of dead Paths, but every new reaction made it increasingly obvious there was something unusual about these particular five.

Their Wills layered again, and this time the effect was strong enough that the ground beneath them warped outward in a broad circle. The Greed of one pulled at Aether, another reached for strength it didn't possess, while a third remained almost entirely focused on Sylas' Virtue Seed, yet instead of those differences causing conflict, they seemed to reinforce one another.

The phenomenon spread farther with every passing breath. Distant Fallen Madness Disciples began screaming as their own Wills reacted to the five, some collapsing to their knees while others rushed blindly toward the source as though something inside them had suddenly become impossible to ignore.

Fanelei moved closer to Cheri, her usual amusement completely gone as she stared toward the doors.

"Something is wrong," she spoke, and this time there was enough weight in her voice that Sylas gave the words more consideration than the obvious statement deserved.

Fanelei had already been consumed by Madness once and dragged into Hell because of it, which gave her instincts here more value than most. Sylas could sense the same pressure she did, but what bothered him wasn't simply the strength gathering behind the doors. It was the structure of the doors themselves.

His Runeweaver Eyes had been studying them since they first began opening, and the farther they moved, the more of their internal construction became visible. Hell Runes covered almost everything, but beneath those layers were metallic pathways and mechanical junctions that reminded Sylas immediately of what he had just seen inside Caelum's black cylinder.

Technology.

The thought remained in Sylas' mind as he redirected another golden temporal mechanism and sent it folding into itself.

Now that he had noticed the connection, older memories began organizing themselves around it. Professors had always carried an unusual amount of technology with them, even if their mutations and bizarre bodies made it easy to overlook where biology ended and machinery began.

The first Professor Sylas had ever seen without Legacy's concealment had replaced enormous portions of his body with metal, wires and tubes running between his organs while mechanical devices sat where his eyes should have been.

And again, Germaine was less obvious only because her mutations drew more attention, but even the penis she had given herself functioned through the same strange blending of biology and machinery that Professors seemed so fond of using.

Sylas had never attached much importance to it before because there had been no reason to. Professors were obsessed with personal evolution, so using technology to replace weaknesses in their bodies was no stranger than someone else relying on Genes, treasures, or Rune formations to accomplish the same thing.

However... technology embedded this deeply into Hell was something else entirely. Especially after he deduced that the Omnimous just might be from another universe.

Caelum's cylinder contained it, and now the enormous doors before them did as well, with pieces of machinery woven so thoroughly through the Hell Rune Creation that separating the two required Sylas to actively focus. The coincidence was beginning to feel increasingly less like one, especially when the cylinder had somehow kept the five Fallen Madness Disciples stable until the moment Caelum released them.

Another wave of Greed exploded outward, and the doors groaned as they opened farther than they had at any point before. Caelum's face finally lost the last trace of enjoyment from their battle, his mechanical eyes shifting between the five Fallen Madness Disciples and the widening darkness ahead as though he was beginning to understand that something had gone very wrong.

Sylas eased his pressure on him without stopping entirely, allowing Caelum just enough room to continue struggling against the resonance. He didn't care about giving the man a chance to recover, he simply wanted to see what happened when the five Wills were allowed to continue interacting.

The darkness behind the doors shifted as two enormous yellow eyes opened within it, jagged pupils contracting while the pressure rolling out from the five Fallen Madness Disciples continued to climb. Caelum froze for a fraction of a second, while Fanelei's Aether rose around her instinctively and Cheri took a small step backward.

Sylas didn't look at the eyes for long.

His gaze dropped to the five Fallen Madness Disciples instead, moving from one to the next as several disconnected thoughts finally began fitting together. Something in his eyes changed as the last piece he needed fell into place.