Forged Legacy

Chapter 174 - Scorched Avarice

[Are you sure you’re ready? What if you get stuck inside the vision and I’m not able to break you out?]

We won’t add any extra ingredients this time, so you’ll be free to start banging on the illusion just like the dragon spirit. Just to be safe, I’m also going to try infusing the inkwell with my legacy before I drop in Varek’s.

[How’s that supposed to help?]

I figure it might help remind me who I am. I wasn’t even trying to break out of Marcus’ Imprint because I really believed I was him.

[Alright, fine, but I want to start with the Mark first, just in case your plan doesn’t work,] Julius relented.

Taking a seat on the hard wooden stool, Harvey plopped the inkwell onto the workbench. Cerulean stains still marred the steel from his earlier refinement, forcing him to carry the large cauldron inside and kick his mom out of the kitchen so he could scrub it clean in the sink.

“What is this stuff?” Cassandra asked, looking over Harvey’s shoulder as he scrubbed.

“Ink,” he responded nonchalantly.

“You make it yourself, right? What did you use for this batch?”

“Nothing too crazy. Just some blood and an Imprint I looted off the necrolord prophet I killed during my last trial,” Harvey replied, grinning as his mom’s eyes went wide.

“Blood? Whose blood?” she stammered.

“Mine! Didn’t I tell you that?” Harvey laughed. “I’m cleaning it out so I can go make some more using a Mark from this demon I killed.”

His mother stared at him, not saying anything for a long moment as she struggled to find the words. Eventually, she gave up, sighing loudly and telling him, “I know I asked you guys to keep me clued in about what’s going on, but feel free to spare me the details sometimes.”

Harvey made sure to rinse out the cauldron well before drying it with one of the dish towels. He’d happily fight an entire squad of Helltaurs before telling his Mom he’d turned one of her towels blue. Finally ready, he sliced open his palm and pulled out Varek’s Mark.

Like the Imprint he’d taken from Marcus, this was a Resonance-based aspect of Varek’s legacy, containing distilled infernal resonance. The antithesis of the holy resonance Harvey had been familiarizing himself with, he was interested to see firsthand what kind of experiences would attune someone to the infernal resonance. In the same way that a Stain for an angel could be a Mark for a demon due to differing perspectives, what was hellish to one person could be banal to someone else.

I guess we’re lucky to have a vision to show us what the infernal resonance is all about. You ready?

[You’re not. Don’t forget to add your aura in with the blood.]

I’m getting to it.

Harvey’s aura was ever-present, but most of the time it was kept politely restrained to the limits of his own body. His extremely high Willpower added mass to the muscle of his aura, but he’d yet to develop the fine control he’d seen some of the angels use with their own. Luckily, adding the multifarious aspects of his legacy into the inkwell was as simple as shoving some of his mental energy into his blood, which greedily accepted it as the runes covering the cauldron spurned it on.

Letting out a deep breath, Harvey dropped in the crystalline tattoo, feeling his mind slip away.

“Come on, baby. I just need a sip,” the demoness who’d been cuddling up to Varek for the past hour begged as she reached for the half-empty bottle resting on his leg. Her hand was gently shaking, an early sign of withdrawals setting in. Just as her fingers reached the glass, he used the arm draped around her shoulder to yank her back by her hair.

“Get your own,” Varek snarled, laughing heartily as she whimpered in pain. Her lips quivered as he raised the bottle to his lips, never breaking eye contact as he poured the rest of the purple liquid into his mouth. A fresh wave of euphoria shuddered through him as the thick, rich taste of Blissfire coated his tongue. It was almost as sweet as all the money he’d won at the casino that day. Almost.

“Can… can,” she stuttered. “Can you pay me now? I’ll buy two more bottles for us! We can share!”

“Can, can, can,” Varek mocked. “Can you shut your damn mouth? You’re ruining my high.”

Lying his head back against the plush velvet booth, Varek closed his eyes and focused on the waves of pleasure tingling across his skin. Despite desperately holding on to the sensation, he found it fading faster and faster. The effects would still linger for a couple of hours, but the rush was gone until he got himself another bottle.

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“You know what? Here. I’m feeling generous today,” Varek said, sending enough merit for two more bottles to the woman curled under his arm. “Go get me two more, and I’ll let you have a sip.”

The demoness bolted to the bar, not needing to be told twice. She screamed at the bartender, but he had a dozen similar strung-out demons all doing the same. It made the plush establishment unbearably loud, especially with the raucous laughter coming from the large group sitting in the booth right behind him.

Normally, that didn’t bother Varek, but something about this place felt wrong. He unbuttoned the top three buttons of his silk dress shirt, trying to cool down as the room suddenly felt unbearably hot. Berus was always hot, nestled deep within Hell’s territory and terraformed thousands of years ago by Lucifer himself, but this wasn’t the result of the abyssal flames he was used to.

There was something else, too. Life maybe? It didn’t make any sense, and Varek was starting to get a headache.

“Can you hurry the hell up?” he shouted, tearing off his suit jacket and tossing it onto the bench beside him before unbuttoning his shirt all the way.

“God, it feels like a forge… in… here.”

Harvey was back, and he grabbed onto the thread of his own aura leaking into the vision through the hole Julius created. With a mental tug, he yanked more of his latent will into Varek’s body. His influence had changed the course of the vision, pulling them away from the experience that had originally formed the demon’s infernal Mark. Harvey pushed even further, using the combination of creative and destructive force embodied by both his Forgefire Mark and Architect of the Veils End Imprint to burn down the den of iniquity around him.

The demoness Varek had been stringing along, the bartender she was begging to hand her two bottles of blissfire, and everyone else inside the den of iniquity on Varek’s home planet of Berus didn’t react as their bodies burst into flame. One by one, they turned to ash, until only Varek remained.

In the blink of an eye, Harvey was back in his own body, looking down at the ashes of the Mark floating atop his blood. Sensing the resonance within the ashes, he found it incredibly weak compared to what he’d been able to extract from Marcus. It wasn’t just the qualitative difference between a Mark and an Imprint. It was almost like the aspect had never been there.

Only hints of the indulgence, greed, and hunger Harvey had felt in the vision remained. He worked to assimilate the ash into his blood, but it was quickly dissolving into mist that the inkwell strained to expel despite Harvey’s will frantically pulling it back down. That morning, when he’d gained his Forgefire Mark after burning down Marcus’ vision, he’d somehow managed to distill the resonance within into pure essence that just so happened to look like a pile of ashes. Now, it looked like he’d burned the crystal making up the tattoo itself, and there was almost no resonance to speak of.

In a final, desperate attempt, Harvey and Julian combined their efforts to try to mix it all together anyway, crudely sculpting the resulting blood clay into a grotesque caricature of Varek that collapsed the moment his will stopped holding it in a vice grip. He kept trying as his mental energy reserves burned away, finally giving up when the runes blanketing the inkwell winked out.

“What the,” Harvey swore. He didn’t know why he’d chosen to build a figurine of Marcus and the Thanefire Drake when he made his Prophet’s Suffering Ink, but it obviously wasn’t a foolproof way to create powerful inks. Inspecting the blackish-red liquid sloshing around the cauldron with Artificer’s Eyes, he was disappointed with the results.

Item | Scorched Avarice Ink | F-Grade | Inferior

Ink mixed from the blood of Harvey Thorne and the bereft legacy of Varek Lucero. Destroyed before the legacy coalesced, only traces of Varek’s infernal avarice remain.

[Well, that didn’t work,] Julius commented.

You think? The description says we destroyed the Mark too early.

[You. You destroyed it too early. All I did was open the door for you.]

Well, who cares? That guy was a scumbag.

[That wasn’t clear when he sucked the life force of three humans into a ring?]

Thinking back to that vision made him sick to his stomach. Harvey had always struggled with worrying too much about what others think, often being called a people-pleaser or, at times, a doormat. It wasn’t something he was proud of, and he’d like to think he was doing a lot better ever since the integration. Varek, on the other hand, was the complete opposite, and spending even a few minutes walking in his shoes really threw him for a loop.

Varek didn’t have a care in the world about what other people think, at least while he was drunk on blissfire. That was some powerful stuff. Harvey could almost taste it, even though his real tongue had never come anywhere near it.

In that moment, Varek couldn’t have cared less whether that girl lived or died. He had his money, he had his poison, and he had one of many beautiful women willing to do whatever he wanted as long as they got paid for their time. It was a level of self-indulgence he couldn’t wrap his head around.

Maybe that’s the problem.

[What is?]

I don’t truly understand the infernal resonance left inside the Mark. Maybe that’s what the visions are for? To help me understand the legacy, so I know how to use it.

[So you’re saying you understand Marcus?]

Of course I do, and I guarantee Julian, the real Julian, did too. The only difference between me and Marcus is that I had good friends to talk me out of trusting the Necrolords when they said they could save us all. I know what it’s like to be so terrified you’ll go along with any plan that sounds better than fighting an army of undead a few weeks out from your old office job.

Julius took a moment to respond, his tone more somber when the consciousness returned. [Well, we'd better figure out Varek fast. That Imprint is the last bit of demon legacy we’ve got, and we’re going to need that ink if we want to bring Cash and any other angels to Hell with us.]

Harvey retrieved the Imprint from his spatial ring, turning over the crystalline tattoo of a shimmering red and gold poker chip. The thin strands of gemstone were warm to the touch, and he felt a formless pressure emanating from them, gently pressing against his own aura.

I might not know much about demon drugs, but I've got a feeling I can get a handle on greed. Just stop me if it looks like I'm about to anoint myself.