It wasn’t the kind of pain that cripples the body.
The Void was comprised entirely of darkness element and just like an Abomination, Derek lacked pain receptors. What tormented him was an aching of the mind, caused by the constant corruption the spreading Chaos inflicted upon him.
The Cursed Element didn’t just turn the darkness into more Chaos, it also twisted Derek’s personality. The lack of light element marred an Abomination’s life force until it affected their psyche.
The effects produced by the alterations were completely random. Some Abominations became geniuses. A few found enlightenment. The vast majority of the Abominations, however, became raving mad.
‘I need to feed, but not on humans!’ Derek thought, his mind echoing with pangs of hunger and Ezio’s laughter.
The Void could almost hear his Earth’s father mocking Derek for his weakness from the grave. It was the reason the Void avoided human settlements.
‘Life isn’t a comic. The odds of finding more criminals are damn low. If I get too close to people, I’ll kill whoever I meet.’ He would stop at a safe distance from the villages and sniff the air.
If he saw wildfires or smelled lots of blood, it would have meant that something bad was happening and that there was someone bad he could feed upon. Unluckily, there was no such thing.
Only warm lights came from the windows and the sounds of conversation between neighbors.
The hunger blessed Abominations with powerful senses.
The Void could now spot all kinds of life forms and sources of world energy without even looking. In a corner of his mind, he saw life forces like lights of varying intensity while world energy was like a discordant song.
It was all around him, but it was a weak cacophony that barely provided him any nourishment. The people in the various villages shone with lights so small that Derek knew they wouldn’t last him five minutes.
‘Even cows are stronger! I could feast on the cattle, but if I do that, the farmers will die of starvation. At that point, I might as well kill them too. It would be an act of mercy.’ The Void drooled at the thought of feasting on the animals first and the humans later.
A white bead of saliva slipped through his fangs and sizzled on contact with his black skin, snapping him out of his reverie.
‘No. I can’t do it. I don’t know why, but I can’t do it.’ The Void resumed his flight while the Voidfeather did his best to push the memories of Lith’s family to the surface of the Abomination’s mind.
‘Indeed, I can’t.’ The Dragon snorted. ‘I didn’t come so far, I didn’t sacrifice so much just to ruin years of hard work for a measly meal. If I hurt someone like Raaz, if I make a baby like Elysia an orphan, even if my family forgives me, I’d never forgive myself.’
The Voidfeather Dragon scanned the darkness of the night, hoping to find a mana geyser but to no avail. Lith had never been to the Hessar region and mana geysers were rare.
Finding one while moving in a random direction would have been nothing short of a miracle.
It was the reason when the Void felt several lights shining from a distance, he considered himself lucky. There were many of them, and all were stronger than a human.
‘Magical bandits!’ He thought. ‘Let them be fat and juicy magical bandits. After all, I can use magic. The old man and the highway robbers used wands. It’s only natural that other people can use magic and taste much better.’
Derek was right, but also wrong.
Mogar was full of magic users but they didn’t camp outside in groups during the night. What he had perceived turned out to be a herd of wild buffalos. They had chosen a river bank surrounded by tall grass as their resting place.
Most of the animals were asleep and only a few of them stood guard, sniffing the air and shaking their long ears to follow the weird noise. Derek still had no idea what gravity fusion was and the flaps of his wings were as silent as a firework.
He was still too far away to alarm the buffalos but his approach had put the sentinels on guard.
‘Fuck me sideways, they are just wild cows.’ He thought, blinded by the darkness and his ignorance. ‘Still better than nothing.’
The Void had only one way not to make a ruckus. He conjured an updraft that made up for his poor control and brought him high enough to escape detection. From that distance, he was a black blot, making him invisible to the animals’ poor eyesight.
He approached his prey slowly, gliding through the hair to not make noise. Then, when he was above the herd, he let himself fall like a kinetic missile.
He chose an empty area in the middle of the sleeping buffalos as his landing spot, to make sure none of them would die. Between the Void’s weight and the gravitational acceleration, the impact produced a shockwave that sent the beasts flying and raised a dust cloud that hindered their senses.
“It’s feeding time!” Black tendrils sprouted from his body, wrapping themselves around the still-stunned animals and absorbing their vitality.
The male buffalos came to fight the unknown attacker and fell prey to the Abomination. The cows and calves tried to run away, but chaos and dust made the frenzied animals either bump into each other or end up in front of the Void.
He wanted to drain them in an instant. To enjoy that blissful moment when his hunger would disappear. Yet he knew that it would only last one moment. After that, his hunger would return and he would suffer until he found more prey.
“I’m not that stupid. A partial but longer-lasting relief is better than short-term happiness.” He said, feeling no guilt at the agonizing screams of the buffalos as they writhed in the attempt to escape his grip.
“I couldn’t agree more, brother.” A male voice said from behind, making Derek turn around. “Please, let them go. If you kill the entire herd, we will have to abandon our home and starve until we find some food.”
In the moonlight, Derek could see a full pack of grey-furred wolves snarling and growling at him from a safe distance. At their head, there was a red-furred wolf the size of a horse that Lith would have recognized as a Ry.
The vision stunned the Void as the yellow eyes of the Ry turned emerald and his voice sounded exactly like Protector’s. It was a trick played on his mind by his guilty conscience and the Voidfeather Dragon.
“Listen, pal, that’s none of my business.” Derek replied. “The strong eats and the weak gets eaten. I don’t see why I should be the one starving.”
“For the same reason I could have killed all the buffalos by myself but I limited to one of them at a time.” The fake Protector replied. “For balance. Just like you said, feeding my pack for a long time is better than giving them a huge feast followed by weeks of hunger.
“Please, I can smell it in you.”
