The ashes before Strife

Episode 8 : Changing ; 4

I stared at the purple shimmer that looked like broken glass shifting in the air in the center of the room, I lifted my hospital bed with white tentacles from the corrupted veins in the floor lifting me.

"Care to tell me why you are blessing me with your presence in the dead of night brother?" The shimmer then transformed into a purple sludge body in the shape of a human slightly floating above the floor as his tail waved in the air 'i came to see what could have triggered the recent changes inside your body. I must say it's impressive for you to get a dragon's heart even if it is only half of one.'

I grew slightly surprised waking up fully now "So dragons are even feared back in Duatten the realm of monsters?"

'Sorta. They represent destruction incarnate no matter where you are but back in Duatten they would be equivalent to just below middle class in strength. Low stage silver in your terms. The one you got would classify amongst the weakest.' I felt disappointed in his words considering how hard it was to beat.

I nodded understanding what he was saying "okay~... now care to tell me what you meant when you said my body was changing? I doubt your talking about my injuries so don't play dumb and just tell me."

He stretched out his hand for lupra to sniff who cowered away the second her nose passed through his hand "Ghost!"

'I mean to say that thanks to your injuries whatever that silver liquid was that Dendra fed you, it's now healing up your body replacing some of you with itself in a near-perfect copy' i looked at him waiting to say what this meant. It doesn't sound bad nor good since it's healing my body faster than I could.

"You gonna say how that's bad for me then?" he began to float around the room randomly as Lupra carefully watched him 'Well that's the thing. It is actually a lot better for us than I originally thought when it comes to using attrium and the future.'

Not understanding him and starting to get annoyed by him continuously dropping short I spoke angrily "could you just tell me what that means? I don't have as good of knowledge of this world as I like to think Incursik."

His head then jerked to me whilst floating in the corner of the room as if he had zoned out of reality 'huh? Oh sorry, I'm also watching the silver stuff inside you while talking to you so I'm trying to multitask here.'

He swam his way through the air getting above me 'so here's what I should say, princess, attrium is not really usable by a physical being but is a lot easier to control for something spiritual like me. The ashreaver liquid as I've come to call it is turning your body into part physical flesh and part fake physical flesh made of attrium'

"So I'm not dying right?"

'On the contrary. It's like your body is going through its very own alchemy process like the magnum opus to create a philosopher's stone in four stages. If it could get to every part of your body you could very well become immortal. But of course, it's only on the second stage, and for that to happen your entire body would have to be turned inside out which is impossible for you to survive.' I grew disgusted as the image of a mess of undying flesh appeared in my mind.

"So I'm becoming something other than a demon?"

'Sorta but not really. In reality, you are just getting an upgrade to how you can use attrium. You could think of yourself as some sort of homunculus if ya want but so long as you've got those horns that are not gonna happen. But for instance, you couldn't corrupt your own body before right? If you did now you would succeed though you'd only be a puppet controlled by strings ignoring your body's limits."

"Uh-huh" lupra couldn't tell whether to be afraid of the purple spirit in the air wandering back and forth on the edge of the bed watching me have a casual conversation with it, I now only just realized that she could also see him but assumed its something involved with our contract. "So if I were to corrupt my own body what kind of risks and benefits would there be?"