Just the faintest traces of divine energy were enough for him to track them through the outer realms. They were becoming better at hiding their presences from him, but Alarric was relentless. It mattered little how long it would take to find them… All that mattered in the end, was that eventually, he would find them.

He salivated as he thought about how good it would taste to rip into the body of the goddess of creation. How it would feel as he gorged himself on her divine essence while Oesis watched helplessly; knowing that it wouldn’t be long before Alarric consumed him as well. Their power would be his. Everything would be his. With access to the powers of life and death there would be nothing in existence that could challenge him. The powers of creation meant he could shape and bend anything and everything according to his whims. His power would be limitless.

As he navigated his immortal form through the outer realms, he caught the faintest whiff of something that resembled Oesis’s divine energy. He honed in on it like a hunter tracking a wounded animal. He followed the source to a strange barrier that he had never encountered before. It wasn’t like the one that existed between the mortal realms and the outer ones. That one was easily traversable for one such as him. No, this was something new. As he pushed against it, the surface rippled and distorted at his touch, but otherwise resisted any attempts to penetrate it.

The area around him vibrated with his anger. His fury. How dare something so utterly trivial prevent him from obtaining what was so rightfully his? His fists pounded over and over against the damnable obstruction, but nothing seemed to make a difference. He was undeterred. If he couldn’t go through it, perhaps he could go around it. He traveled up and down, and from every side, but he always seemed to reach the same obstruction no matter which route he took. As he considered every option available to him.. He knew there was only one way through this infuriating obstacle. He placed one of his hands against it and closed his eyes. Had he been in the mortal realm, the amount of power he was channeling into the barrier would have resulted in an explosion so enormous that it would have utterly obliterated everything. He hated using this much power so frivolously, but this was the first trace of his quarry he had found in a very, very long time.

The barrier did its best to resist his efforts, but it was no match for the overwhelming power he was channeling into it. As he tore it asunder, he inspected the realm that lay beyond with keen interest. Other than the extremely faint presence of divine energy he had sensed before, this realm seemed to lack any other sources of magic. As he followed the traces of energy, his body absorbed it hungrily. He followed the trail through this new outer realm until he came upon a rift that led to the mortal realm, and he growled in irritation.

For beings made of divine energy, traveling into the mortal realm was taxing and required them to contain their power within a mortal shell if they wanted to interact physically with the world around them. Containing one’s divinity was bad enough, but being forced to waste his power creating a body was infuriating. As he crossed fully into the mortal realm, he was able to sense the presence of billions of mortal souls. Despite the vast amount of living beings he sensed, there wasn’t a single trace of magical energy among any of them. Even the world with which they inhabited seemed strangely devoid of all arcane power. Fortunately, this made it incredibly easy to follow the trail of divine essence. He directed his form quickly towards the world where the trail led, and was surprised to see massive towers made of glass and metal. Never in his existence had he ever seen cities of such grandeur, and the fact they were made in the absence of magic made them even more impressive. 

Alarric followed the trail towards a section of the huge landmass dominated by tall mountains. He descended towards the ground and found himself in the middle of a small city. As he followed the trail towards a well-lit structure, a human passed through his form. While normally this would have caused him no discomfort and he would have paid it no mind, as the creature's body moved through him, it stopped and turned back as if it had sensed his presence. He moved closer to it, inspecting its frail mortal form. 

There was nothing particularly special about this specific human. Its face was a pinkish-white and it had long bright pink hair. He had never seen humans with brilliantly colored hair before, but he figured it could be the norm in this realm. The creature stared at the rough location of where Alarric's face would be if he were standing on the ground, and fidgeted nervously. The only reason he knew it was nervous was the flurry of emotions he suddenly sensed from it. From… Her. The creature was female. And she was somehow able to sense the being of immense power before her. As she moved closer to him, he suddenly realized this creature had traces of divine essence in her body.

His hunger surged and he gave only the briefest second of hesitation before he poured his power and energy into the mortal's body, intent on devouring the essence and finding out why she had traces of his quarry's divinity within her. Her eyes glowed brightly and light poured from every orifice in her body as Alarric forced himself into her very being. Before her mind was utterly consumed by his presence, he learned what he could about this world by going through all of her memories in an instant.

Her name was Dawn Abigail Kingston. She was 43 years old and she had lived almost her entire life in Cheyenne, Wyoming. She worked as a hairstylist at-

Irrelevant details. He cared little for the creature’s identity. The only thing she was good for was to explain why she contained something that did not belong to her. He pried open her thoughts and searched relentlessly for anything that could answer his questions.

He saw in her mind, and watched the memory of her getting onto the bus in the middle of the night. He watched as she greeted the friendly driver and took a seat somewhere in the middle of the bus. As she briefly looked at the other passengers, he caught a glimpse of a redheaded woman who triggered a sense of recognition within him. He tried making out the details of what the familiar woman was saying to the man driving the bus, but all he could hear was the discordant sounds from the “wireless headphones” she had put in her ears. He growled in irritation at the memory of her fidgeting with a ring on her left hand. Her husband had gotten it for her to help her with stimming- 

He forced the worthless memory aside, and went back to watching the scene on the bus. Nothing in the memory beyond the vague sense of recognition he felt from the redheaded woman seemed out of the ordinary, until the entirety of Dawn's vision was suddenly filled with a blinding white light. He watched as she shut her eyes tightly, but it made no difference. The light was so bright that it penetrated through the thin skin of her eyelids. She had groaned in pain from the intensity of it and was just about to try to find a way off the bus when everything suddenly went dark. Her memory showed her waking up to the partially blurry face of a first responder who was telling her not to move and that she was being taken to a hospital. He scanned her memory for any further traces of the strange redheaded woman, but her memories were absolutely no help in this regard. Dawn suddenly ceased to exist. Her body trembled violently and blood began to seep from her burning eyes and nose. She coughed and hacked, choking on the liquid that had filled what remained of her lungs. Alarric moved up and out of her, and like a marionette whose strings had just been cut, the body of Dawn Kingston collapsed in a bloody heap.

Alarric considered his next course of action carefully. The white light that the mortal woman had witnessed was most certainly the doing of a divine being, most likely Oesis or Ura. Their presence had no doubt left a mark on all those in the vicinity. He needed to find this redheaded woman. Her familiarity and proximity to whatever that light had been put her right in the center of all of this. He was grateful he had taken knowledge of this world from the mortal woman’s mind. While she may not have known the woman personally, she at least had enough details in her memory from the couple of times she had seen her on the bus.

Her name tag that read “Erin” indicated she worked at a place–a restaurant–called Allie’s Diner. The familiarity with which she chatted with the bus driver showed a level of connection that Alarric could use to locate her. Brief flashes of others being taken to the hospital lent credence to the possibility that this “Erin” could have been taken there as well. According to the mortal’s memory, most humans spent as little time in hospitals as they could manage. Given that this event with the light had taken place nearly three months prior, he weighed all of his options.

The easiest option was to travel to Erin’s place of employment. While Dawn herself had never eaten there, she at least knew roughly where it was indicated. He floated upwards, scanning the city for features that he could recognize from the mortal woman’s memories. After a moment he found what he was looking for and moved quickly in that direction. He found himself in the middle of a noisy room filled with dozens of humans all eating and talking loudly. None of them carried a shred of the divine essence he was seeking, but he recognized the name tags that several of them wore. He moved towards one of them; a man whose name tag read “Corey.” He watched as the man smiled at a pair of humans and said something that Alarric didn’t bother to understand. As Alarric channeled his power into the mortal male’s body, he dropped the large plate of food suddenly and his eyes rolled back into his head. Several humans began shouting loudly and they began to swarm around Corey with looks of panic, fear, and confusion as light began to emanate from his body. Alarric watched in amusement as they tried in vain to get the man to respond. He felt the quickly diminishing presence of the mortal as he pushed fully into his mind.

Corey had had a crush on Erin for nearly four months before he learned that she was a lesbian. While he was inwardly crushed, he was at least happy that she was willing to be his friend. She became a regular at the game night he hosted every Sunday night, and–

Alarric pushed the surface thoughts of Erin away as he looked through the mortal’s memories. Corey had been concerned when he heard that the bus that Erin took home every night had crashed. But he was just as confused as everyone else had been when he learned that there was no sign of Erin. He had joined the search party to help find her or to at least discover some trace of what had happened, but nothing ever-

Anger coursed through Alarric’s form. A low growl bubbled up out of his throat, and he heard in grim satisfaction as Corey’s body made the same noise. He pushed his power into the mortal’s extremities and allowed his pent up rage to guide his actions. He shoved the humans who were pressing into him away with a divinely-enhanced strength and watched as several of them were thrown across the room. One woman, the shift manager named Linda, hit the wall with a force strong enough to shatter her skull. A man, one who had claimed to be some sort of doctor, had been flung back against the edge of one of the tables. His body was partially bisected and his upper half smacked back onto the table where a young couple were enjoying their burgers. The light that poured from every hole in his body intensified and he contorted the muscles in the mortal’s face into an over exaggerated smile. He forced Corey’s body to reach down and pluck two shiny utensils off the table in front of him. He glanced down at both of the objects in his hands, and then looked around the room once, before plunging both of the metal objects deep into his eye sockets. Corey’s body convulsed several times, and Alarric pulled out of it before it could collapse with him still inside of it. He let out a deep sigh of relief, his anger feeling sated for the moment.

Alarric floated upwards, his thoughts wandering and drifting towards what to do next. As he considered his options, he caught the scent of another trace of divine essence. He moved quickly, guiding his form over the mass of land until he came to a place Dawn and Corey’s memories recognized as California. He followed the faint trail, hoping that he would have better luck than before. 

Just as he was about to reach the heart of a massive city with huge towers and millions of mortals, he felt something shake through his entire body like the concussive blast of an explosion. He knew whatever caused this feeling was in an extremely distant place, likely several realms away, but this sudden burst of power was unlike anything he had ever sensed. It dwarfed the power of all the gods and goddesses within him combined, and all at once he was filled with the most intense hunger that he had ever felt in his entire existence. He needed this power. He needed it. More than he had ever needed anything before. He burned through his divine essence freely, focusing on nothing beyond the gnawing, aching hunger that consumed his every thought and drove him forward as he moved towards what would soon be his.

Roseofblades

Writing this character has got to be one of the most challenging things I've done as an author. He is so unlike anything else I've written, but I feel like this chapter came out far better than I was expecting. Hopefully the next time I have to write a chapter from his perspective it won't be as difficult. Either way, the next few chapters will be up fairly quickly since writing from our girls' perspectives is far easier for me.