Chapter 19 Essence In Hell

Chapter 19 Essence In Hell
After Jorren handed the letter to the guide and settled him, he began his way back to the lower tiers, his eyes peeled. His tactical intelligence was on high alert, and if as something as little as a fly followed him, he would know. 

So far, his walk in the frigid air had been lonely. Jorren didn’t know if that was a normal thing or something he should be scared about. He didn’t have a category to classify it. But one thing was in his mind. To get the mission over with and make his second ascension. It meant his fractured soul would be mended to an extent, with a perk that no man would be able to use the Hollow salt against him.

His hands were shoved into empty pockets as he walked, and the codex soft touch against his ribs was imminent. As he approached the gates of the lower tiers, the mark in his hand thrummed with more heat. It was not hot enough to be searing, but it wasn’t warm either.

The codex on the other hand, hummed a low vibration against his ribs. Jorren noticed a cluster of shrubs and walked over to make his first pit stop. 

Then he closed his eyes, and the world around him turned a skeletal grey. From his position, he could see very being in the Guide before him, moving about like soft, orange balls.

After a moment, flaring balls headed towards the gate before scattering in different directions. Jorren opened his eyes and glanced at his watch. It was exactly two hours from when he left the house, as the Keeper had predicted, and they were making their switch. 

Jorren watched, his tactical intelligence watching the movements of the guide enforcers. He could tell that the enforcers had their guard up from the way their essence flared, and making any funny moves around them at this point will result in an arrest.

So, he waited and studied their movement, their gestured communication, and how the told each other that the five minutes window had arrived for them to make their first perimeter chest. 

In a moment, Epaphras was abandoned. Jorren wanted to move at this time, but his tactical intelligence stopped him. He needed to be sure that he understood how the men made their meet up before the thirty minutes gap that led them to check the perimeter again.

In a moment, the men returned, and Jorren took note. They didn’t talk much, and they stood at a respectable distance away from each other. 

Jorren timed them for another thirty minutes and as soon as their thirty minutes were over and they began to head off, Jorren reached into the core of his soul and pushed for the nothingness within him. 

It was the same thing he did growing up that made the light die one second before the oil dried, and the three second delay that his sister experienced at the tap as he was trying to fetch water. He could slow down time for the rest of the world around him, but he couldn’t stop it.

As the men were out of sight, Jorren walked out of his hiding place and headed towards the guide enforcer at the gate. As he approached, the man turned to him and stretched his hand. 

“Stop right there,” he commanded. “Your essence signature.”

Jorren didn’t stop. He kept walking, each step a calculated menance.

“Thale, what in the—” the man stopped himself and took a step back, hands still outstretched.

Jorren closed his eyes, and the reality around him was quickly replaced by the grey-silver reality that reveals the shit and dirt that the system of the outside world.

On Epaphras chest, golden orange light that flickered widely gathered like sea waves, growing for a moment before coming at Jorren. The flickering light approached Jorren like tidal sea waves before consuming his entire vision.

His skin exploded in a flood of pain. He stopped walking, forcing himself not to focus on the pain consuming his flesh and focusing on the the core of his soul. The training the Keeper gave him by submerging him in a bowl of ice came back, and he tried to visualize the searing heat around him but it was impossible. It felt like his skin was dripping like waterdrops.

Then it happened. The codex vibrated against his ribs, and the grey-silver reality shifted to an unearthly purple, and his fractured architecture appeared in his vision. Just like he had done at other times, he didn’t try to reduce the fire, but he pulled some jagged cracks in his soul architecture open. 

Yellow light from nowhere began filling up three specific spaces like water would fill a deep crack on a hard clay floor, and Jorren kept it up. He was absorbing the full essence output, but he wasn’t converting it yet. 

The conversion would be the basis of his healing, and the predicator for his soul architecture to mend.

He focused on the yellow light filling the hollow spaces, and pushed the darkness within him against the yellow lights, and after a moment, they began to turn purple, and then to grey silver, becoming one with the hollows of his fractured soul.

When a masculine gasp echoed before him, he opened his eyes. 

The flames around him had disappeared, and though Epaphras had his hand outstretched, nothing was happening. In his chest, Jorren could see  a little orange light flickering before dying out.

“What have you done, Thale?” Epaphras cried.

Jorren began backing away from him, and he glanced this way and that way before raising an alarm.

“Attention!” He cried. “Low tier. There is a corruption! I know him.”

But Jorren spun around, clutching the codex against his chest and became one with the darkness around him, heading back from whence he came as he head the faint pounding of boots approaching. His skin still burned with excruciating pain, and a major parts of his clothes was charred from the high essence output, but he was still intact.

He thought of killing Epaphras, but he didn’t have to. Ridding one of their essence and converting it was worse than death. It was the greatest wickedness you could do to any soul, so he did enough.