The Newt and Demon-8.75 - Nukes

Sarisa shifted uncomfortably on the spot. The metropolis world of Khahak wasn’t appealing to most people that had barely left their home town, which just so happened to be a tiny swamp town. Most people from Broken Tusk would feel like a fish out of water when placed in such a scenario. But Theo thought it was important to perform some experiments. Of all the people in town, she had actually visited the Middle Realms more than most. This put her in a unique position, something equating to exposure therapy with the higher realms.

"You don't have a job, right?” Sarisa asked, arms folded as she scooted away from a passing group on the busy streets. She looked up at the dizzying heights of the arbiter's citadel and shook her head. A moment later, her red-brown skin went a shade of green. “Buildings shouldn't be that tall.”

"Now, are you feeling sick because of vertigo or from exposure to the energy here?" Theo asked, tilting his head as he studied her. "Let me know if you get any headaches, joint aches, a runny nose, or perhaps congestion in general."

"Are those the side effects of being exposed to the middle realms?" Tresk asked.

"No, but you never know when they'll develop. Anyway, I thought we would take the long way to the Citadel, you know, taking in the sights, enjoying the sounds…”

“And the smells," Tresk said, sniffing the air. "I don't know what that guy's cooking, but I want some of it."

Before making their way to the Citadel proper, the group stopped for some food. There were plenty of street vendors hawking their wares, and a lot of the food here was monster meat. There was some value in eating that kind of meat. Theo understood that, depending on the quality of the monster, the energy inside would be more dense or something. He didn't really know how it was supposed to work in this world, and at this point he was afraid to ask.

The first floor of the Citadel was as intimidating as the image it struck across the skyline. People were bustling, with administrators and officials moving about with the efficiency of their station. Off to the side was the elevator, which was currently packed. Theo considered for only a moment breaking his promise to himself to move through normal means. Eventually, the trio got in line to take the magical elevator, as it was incredibly efficient. It didn't take long for it to be their turn, and they were soon zooming up to the top floor. Of course, Sarisa threw up, much to the dismay of the other passengers, but after that, she was feeling much better.

"I really don't feel the realm's effects as much this time," Sarisa said, stretching out as they stepped onto the top floor of the Citadel. "Maybe you're right. Maybe this exposure stuff is actually working."

“That might be the case,” Theo conceded. "More than likely you have an amount of tolerance, but I don't understand the mechanics specifically. Initially, I thought it was that your soul was bound to the mortal plane, which meant that you were deprived of an intrinsic energy source, but lately I've been leaning towards the idea that the more potent energies here are the thing poisoning you."

"I'm being poisoned?" Sarisa asked, looking around indignantly. "So your grand experiment is to slowly poison me until I build up a tolerance? Actually, that checks out. I’ve got a scorpion if anyone wants a quick sting.”

“Oh, me!” Tresk said, holding up her hand.

Theo was subjected to the scene of his companions allowing themselves to be stung by a scorpion in the hallowed halls of the Arbiter. He waited until his desire to linger expired, then urged both of them down the hall. Of course, the Arbiter’s Citadel was a lavished thing. There wasn’t a wall without a fresco, painting, or other adornment that marked it as an important thing in a building of important things. Eventually, he knocked on the massive double doors.

“Well, I didn’t expect you to use the correct entrance to my office,” Khahar said, the door swinging open with his words. “What a lovely change of pace.”

“We’re busting you out, buddy!” Tresk shouted, pumping her fists and giving nothing in particular the finger. “Screw you system! We’re springing my boy!”

Khahar blinked, watching as the group approached. “As much as I appreciate the sentiment, what is a mortal doing here?”

“Experiments,” Theo said, shaking his head. “Just pretend she isn’t here.”

“Wow,” Sarisa said. “Thanks.”

“What brings you to the citadel?” Khahar asked. “I’m afraid I need more information than you guys breaking me out.”

"The answer to that question is the answer to the previous question," Theo said, pointing his finger in the air, like the nerd he was. “Experiments. I've recently come into possession of an obscene amount of aligned energy, and I wanted to run some experiments on your realm."

Khahar offered him a quizzical look, as though he doubted every word the alchemist said. "You're going to experiment on my realm?" he asked, scratching his chin as though he couldn't fathom what was happening. "And what exactly does that entail?"

Theo rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. “The problem with your realm is that you have a pseudo Ascendant Realm. You took a realm and bound it to the Throne of the Arbiter. The problem there is that your throne already has a realm, so you mixed two realms. Not to toot my own horn, but we actually have experience with this.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“You see,” Tresk said, pushing up a non-existent pair of glasses. “We mixed the concepts of the Dream Realm with actualized concepts of the Throne Realm. The difference is that the Dream Realm was a sentient, maybe sapient, thing. She reformed herself around the Throne of the Dreamwalker, creating a new version of Tero’gal. But we had to split the realm generated by the Throne of the Dreamer into a moon, otherwise the concepts couldn’t exist together.”

“Which means,” Theo continued. “We need to split your realms like an atom.”

Khahar blinked a few times. “Theo, you know what happens when you split an atom, right?”

“Kaboom!” Tresk shouted, throwing her hands into the air. “Yeah, things go boom. But we’re going to control the split with all this fancy energy we found. No one was using it. We just found it. Don’t ask questions.”

“How does the mortal play into this?” Khahar asked suspiciously.

“Inside you, there are three wolves,” Tresk explained. “Throne, middle, and mortal.”

“So we’re going to split those parts into distinct things, and reforge your soul,” Theo said. “Right now, Khahar, as a soul, is attached to his mortal body, the Throne of the Arbiter, and the combined Throneworld of the Arbiter and the Realm known as Khahak. So, we’ll remove that attachment, make a moon, and bingo, bango, bongo, you’re all good.”

Khahar leveled his gaze at Theo, narrowing his eyes. “This idea is very idiotic.”

“Sorry, buddy. You have a job,” Tresk said. “As much as you wanna languish here in your perfect city, you need to help. Yeah, maybe you can travel to the other Middle Realms, or even go to the heavens. But I bet you start feeling like this poor sick puppy after a while.”

“Because you’re not using your Arbiter’s Core like you should,” Theo said.

“You two… are very annoying,” Khahar said, jabbing a finger between Theo and Tresk. “One of you can talk. You know that, right? It doesn’t have to be a back and forth ordeal.”

“Why,” Theo started.

“Not?” Tresk finished.

Khahar let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re not going to leave this alone, are you?”

“Nope. And, we need you to get a better name for your moon. If you call it Khahap or some crap like that, I’m gonna riot,” Tresk said, folding her arms. “Now, make yourself ready. This will hurt.”

“Wait!” Khahar shouted. Almost all of his collected personality faded in an instant. “Do you guys even know what you’re doing?”

“Duh,” Tresk said. “We’ve done this before.”

“Just hold still,” Theo said, holding his hands out. “This will hurt. A lot.”

Sarisa scampered to the corner of the room, hands over her face as she whimpered. Tresk held the marble of a world in her hand, ready to start her part. Theo wasn’t sure if they needed to merge to make this happen, but he was certain they could split Khahar’s soul, and instigate a migration of the Throne of the Arbiter in the same breath. It was mostly a matter of taking his soul out of the equation, and letting the world do the rest. Once Khahak got its sense as an entity back, everything else would come naturally. The excess energy would just help things along.

Theo’s aura flashed out without warning, washing over Khahar. He was screaming right away, the insane power held within his soul released as a blast of energy. Tresk held up the marble of power, pinching it between her fingers. It shattered, releasing excess energy with an alignment close enough to Khahar’s own concepts. She withdrew five more, repeating the process as the Arbiter writhed on the ground.

“You good, Sarisa?” Theo asked, looking back as he controlled his aura.

“No! I wanna go home!” she shouted back.

“Almost done,” Theo said, turning back to set his focus on Khahar once again. “Feels like the world is responding, right?”

Tresk nodded, pointing toward the Throne of the Arbiter. “Yep. She’s splitting apart. The conceptual integrity of the planet feels good, too.”

“His soul just doesn’t want to peel away,” Theo said. “Just let go of what you were, Khahar.”

“I cannot!” Khahar shouted back.

Theo doubled the power of his aura, infusing it with every last drop of the Reforge Soul concept he could muster. “This isn’t an option,” he said. “Remember, you’ve got a job to do.”

Khahar buckled under the weight of Theo’s aura. As much as he wanted to fight back against the tide, there was a point where even his stubborn personality would bend. That point came when the world split, the Throne of the Arbiter fading away in a blink. Khahak, as an entity, gained recognition in a flash. The world rumbled as it sorted through whatever energy held it together. Although he couldn’t see it, he was certain the Throne of the Arbiter had been shot into space around the planet, forming a symbiotic moon.

Once the planet released its connection with the throne, Khahar’s soul was next. Flames erupted from his skin, creating a shroud of heat intense enough to melt the stone beneath him. The impure energies of a false god melted away with the stone as the mortal ties that made the beating heart of every Throne Holder returned. A flash of energy shot out from his body, and Theo was almost too late in creating the barriers around him. If not for his danger sense, the alchemist would’ve surely seen that nuclear explosion he had been promised.

In an instant, the room went from a rush of ominous sounds to absolute silence. Only the ragged breathing of Khahar was heard, punctuated here and there with the frightened whimpering of Sarisa.

“Everyone got all their limbs? Everyone still has their eyebrows?” Theo asked.

“I never had them to begin with,” Tresk said with a shrug. She scampered over to the window, pointing upward. “Look! A baby moon!”

“It's a boy!” Theo shouted. “Congratulations, Khahar!”

“I hate you both,” Khahar said, coughing and rolling around on the ground. “I’ve never experienced such pain.”

“Can I go home, now!?” Sarisa shouted frantically from the side of the room.

Theo smiled, approaching the woman and giving her a once-over with his senses. She had absorbed an amount of the potent energy they had released, meaning her body had enough of the ‘poison’ to process for a while. With a wave of his hand, he sent her back home. He had all the information he needed to make an assessment.

“Well, how about we go have a look at your new moon,” Theo said. “Then we can test the reforging. It happened a lot quicker than most, so you should feel lucky.”

Khahar finally rose to his feet, his fur matted in some places and burned in others. “Oh, I just feel so lucky. With friends like you, who needs nukes?”