Elias' body was being pushed deeper into the ground by the weight of the spawns falling down upon him, but his focus was not on his body, but inside his head.
The voices were rekindling the portion of himself that Elias felt was too brutal and savage for others to see, and so he always kept them hidden.
But these voices were not asking; they were practically demanding. Like soldiers kneeling in front of their king and reminding him why his voice had once shaken the very earth.
He was a vessel that was made to hold what should not be held. He could hold the Ascendant Swarm, he could hold the void, he could hold stone, and he could hold blood. Now that he held all of this, it was time for this vessel to show what it was made of… would he just be a container for these forces, or would he become something more?
Elias's body had been broken, his vitality now nearing a thousand, and his eyes made of stone suddenly flashed a prismatic light as he made the internal decision that had been with him from the moment he once understood memory… Elias stopped holding back.
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He was a container of so many forces, and yet he was wielding his power in a mechanical fashion, instead of handling them in the way they were meant to be used.
His blood whips were made of blood, and his swarm constructs were seemingly made of metal. They were separate and were not supposed to mix.
Blood and metal, a concept that was so close to what most understood as battle. Mortal soldiers worshiped the iron that was used to slay their enemies, and even Siphons made great weapons from metal, and it could be seen that no two elements were so separate and yet so close together.
What would be the worth of iron if it were not sprayed by hot blood?
What would be the worth of blood if it is not drawn out by iron…
Elias took the two elements that were closed together, and he saw the link in the way only a hunter like him could see.
Flesh and swarm… blood and iron, why do I wield them separately when they could be one?
The Art of Stone made him stone. The Crimson Vein made him know blood more deeply, and the Hollow Monarch made him void.
They were contradictions and were not supposed to coexist, but Elias was a contradiction. He held infinity in finitude, he contained the uncontainable, he was the Hollow Monarch's vessel, and the Hollow Monarch did not care about what was supposed to be possible.
He reached for the swarm while also reaching for his blood. He searched for the place where they touched, and at first he did not see them, but then he began sensing the spots where they overlapped, as he realized that the golden flecks in his blades had always been something more than decoration.
They were a gateway showing him the path to explore the farthest reaches of metal.
Originally, if Elias had inherited only the Ascendant Swarm, then this should have been a power that he could have quickly deciphered, as they were all part of the Ascendant Swarm's nature.
However, he held too much inside of him, and even with his analytical mind that could easily see into the depths of a thing, he had to be pushed to the limit to silence the noise.
Still, fusion of concepts was not something a Fury Forge should be attempting, or even a Mist Phantom, as the least requirement for such a thing was the Amber Exile stage, a stage where a Siphon was becoming exiled from his flesh, but Elias had never been taught these rules, and he did not know they were there in the first place.
He simply saw a gate, and he pushed through it, and understanding continued to flow into his mind, causing him to make vast leaps in his understanding process.
The blood whips did not cut, nor did they drain. When he used them, they dissolved as if they were made from acid.
At this time, the blood that had been coiled around his back, hanging limp and useless, began to flow once more.
They melted their way through the bodies that covered him and rose into the air, where they began to spiral upward before wrapping around his arms, his shoulders, and his chest, and then they stopped.
This action was like a gigantic beast shaking off the fleas that covered them, as the bodies pressed against Elias, all turned to ash, and this ash fed his transformation and strength, pushing more vitality and stamina into his body, causing his depletion to begin reversing.
Still, Elias's eyes were closed as he called upon metal, and the swarm answered.
The metal that had been his blade and had been reforged a thousand times as he fought seemed to have been waiting for this moment, and it flowed out of his hands, and like his blood, it rose and met the blood in the air, and they fused.
The sound of the fusion was non-existent at first, and then there was a roar as if a god had just awakened, as his Ascendant Swarm reached a new level of completion.
From his back, birthed by this fusion of blood and iron, new things emerged, and they were the fusion of his blood whips and his blades.
They were massive, curved, gleaming with the gold of the swarm and the red of his blood, and they extended from his spine like ribs, before they resolved into a shape that resembled the legs of a spider.
These massive constructs were not attached to his arms or his hands; they were part of him and moved with his will, not with his muscles, and they shot outward in a web, and an explosion of ash surrounded Elias and was all drawn into his body.
Elias slowly rose before he went still, as a statue, and the blades behind him went to work.
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