Abyssal Planes: Creation's Bane Book 4, page 1
Copyright © 2023 Kevin Sinclair
All rights reserved.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and situations portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.
The Author has no medical experience whatsoever and is in no way offering dietary or health advice. Any situation herein, are purely of the author's imagination.
All resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
For more Information email:
havok@kevinsinclair.co.uk
First edition 2023
Thanks
This book is my story, but there are a few great people who helped me get it over the line that I’d like to thank. Alicia Sit for her thorough and timely Editing skills alongside majestic proof-reading skills of Elias Dantas.
Then out of left field, we have Joel Kilpatrick who absolutely smashed it with the cover on this one. For the typography I have the amazingly talented Stephen Landry to thank once again.
Contents
Copyright © 2023 Kevin Sinclair
Thanks
A Light Jog Down Memory Lane
Chapter 1 Insight
Chapter 2 Plans
Chapter 3 A Small Favor
Chapter 4 Looming Obelisk of Randomness
Chapter 5 Expansive Plans
Chapter 6 Food for Thought
Chapter 7 To Elvia (Mal)
Chapter 8 Takeover (Clive)
Chapter 9 Natom’s Place
Chapter 10 Humble Abodes
Chapter 11 Stirring the Pot
Chapter 12 All in good Time (Mal)
Chapter 13 Friends, Foes, and Followers
Chapter 14 Of Trees and Kings
Chapter 15 Halfway to Home
Chapter 16 Breaking Point
Chapter 17 What Comes Around
Chapter 18 The Price of Power
Chapter 19 For God’s Sake
Chapter 20 Familiar Faces
Chapter 21 The Weight of Death
Chapter 22 Footloose
Chapter 23 The Hand of Clive
Chapter 24 Dangling
Chapter 25 Filling Storm
Chapter 26 Follow the Leader
Chapter 27 Viva Espana
Chapter 28 Fan-Tastic
Chapter 29 Off to the Shops
Chapter 30 Adminished
Chapter 31 The Disciplinary Council
Chapter 32 What Gods are These?
Chapter 33 Time to Fly
Chapter 34 Glassy Eyes
Chapter 35 Answers
Chapter 36 Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
Chapter 37 Waiting With Impetus
Chapter 38 The Top Job
Chapter 39 Unpeaceful
Chapter 40 No Doubt
Chapter 41 Sarth
Chapter 42 The Craft of War
Chapter 43 Arteries
Chapter 44 Weapons before bed
Chapter 45 Spear of Distraction
Chapter 46 Gentle Persuasion
Chapter 47 Dissolving
Chapter 48 Judge and Jury
Chapter 49 Truth and Choices
Chapter 50 Baby Steps
Chapter 51 Quick-Fix
Chapter 52 Dragon-Bear
Chapter 53 The Haunting
Chapter 54 Power Hunt
Chapter 55 The Power of the Decaydance
Chapter 56 Moving on Up
Chapter 57 Clerics ‘R Us
Chapter 58 For Clive’s Sake
Chapter 59 Lawless
Chapter 60 Leveling in a Rush
Chapter 61 Awesome Foursome
Chapter 62 Dark Days Ahead
Chapter 63 Space to move
Chapter 64 God of Terror
Chapter 65 Desolation is a Dick
Chapter 66 Sweeping the Decks
Chapter 67 Dragons take Flight
Chapter 68 Dodgy Deals
Chapter 69 The Beast-Kin of Cethain (Sania)
Chapter 70 The Turning Tide (Justice)
Chapter 71 Justice in Time
Chapter 72 Shifting Perceptions
Chapter 73 Onnekus
Chapter 74 Fight Club
Chapter 75 An Invitation
Chapter 76 The Light Show
A Light Jog Down
Memory Lane
It was a dark and stormy night. Somewhere in the world when Clive was knocked out and kidnapped by a demon.
It’s times like that when the minimum amount of effort you put in to maintaining your friendships really comes to fruition. With one hastily typed message, Clive’s three best friends and a dog named Boris, came to his rescue.
Though rescue is a strong word as they all ended up running through a portal into the often brutal and unforgiving world of Falritas.
Cue problems:
Problem number one: Having the strength of an average ten year old on Falritas.
Problem number two: Being stabbed with a cursed knife that slowly turns Clive into a demon.
Honestly, they had a lot more problems, but for a light jog, this should do.
Finding help in a nearby town, Clive and co made friends at the temple of Devotion, enlisting the aid of a strong and beautiful priestess named Elsbeth. From a nearby tavern, they hired a wily Dokalfar adventurer named Angelica who agreed to help them on their journey to meet the strongest man on the planet. The world famous Natom Hilgresh.
This is where problem number three comes in: Angelica had a bounty on her head. And one of Clive’s friends would pay the ultimate price for that deception in a chapter named A Sachet of Daztchup.
Soon after that, the somewhat diminished troop meets a band of Wultr and in a series of unfortunate events, Clive accidentally forms a soul bond with Sania essentially making her a slave to his will.
No one was particularly happy about that, but unless you’re reading this so you don’t have to read the books, you should know, she became his soul mate after reforging their connection to one of equality between them.
They find Natom and he agrees to train Clive in harnessing the true power of Neuma. An abundant universal power that most can only channel through a bond with a god. Mal, one of Clive’s friends, wants to become more powerful too, so in order to access the power, he joins Devotion’s followers with an aim of becoming a paladin.
Problem four: Joel is kidnapped in the capital city of Knuntang. The country where Natom lives.
Problem five: Clive, Sania and Natom go to help and successfully rescue Joel, but it turns out Natom is an absolute fucking nutter. Which is confirmed when he chops Clive’s legs off in a fit of rage.
The curse Clive is fighting against becomes his greatest asset when he uses Demonic regeneration to regrow his legs. But the sudden change in his appearance puts him at odds with the goddess of Devotion and inevitably Elsbeth and Mal.
Deserted by the two of them, he heads into the mountains with Sania, Joel and Lierin. They soon find Sania’s pack and move north in an effort to communicate with Darkness.
What they find is more Wultr and other Beast kin, pushed from the war ravaged lands of Kalabri. A fight ensues over territory and Clive is able to best their leader with his burgeoning new powers. The two packs merge and the early stages of Far Reach becoming a town begins.
With war all around them and refugees coming in regularly, Clive rescues a group of desperate Dokalfar, and is able to pull their queen, Danivra out of a coma with the aid of a bond. Danivra soon becomes a close confidant and advisor, even with the news that she is the grandmother of Angelica.
With Natom keeping an eye on Clive waiting for him to reach his next stage of Evolution, and War growing ever more intense all around, Clive and his growing network of allies head into the Nideland. A sprawling system of tunnels ruled by the followers of Darkness. The most helpful and prevalent of those are the Dwarves who lead Clive further north to find the most powerful refugees in Kalabri to help in their plight and offer them a place to live and fight from.
Bringing together Olata, the Queen of the Fae, Wind of the Wild, the Father of the Wultr and with the unintentional aid of Stada the Gran, the most powerful of the Nystiobek they are able to defeat Natom. If only temporarily for he, like Clive, has access to an Ethereal Soul. An Immortal Core that cannot be destroyed by normal means.
What follows is a ragged escape south, battling against the god of both Destruction’s and Justice’s forces, while the relationship between Clive and the Dwarves continues to sour.
The end result of this journey is an uneasy alliance with Devotion and war with Darkness and his followers.
But Clive and his own followers are getting stronger by the day, and with the arrival of Chosen on Falritas including Mal, who is gifted two hundred levels from Devotion at Clive’s request.
Clive himself unlocks a new race named the Alo-im and gains even more affinity with Neuma from the transformation.
Darkness concentrates briefly on retaking Kalabri and beating back the forces of Justice and Destruction, forcing Destruction into an alliance with him.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to save Mal, Clive befriends the beleaguered god of Death and makes a deal with him. In exchange for returning
With a more powerful army to wield and the use of portals, Clive is able to trick Darkness’s forces, and Destruction, sensing an opportunity to ditch Darkness and further her own ambitions, makes an alliance with him. One enforced by a mutual soul bond allowing him to enter Malatia and kill Darkness’s champion, the Dark Fae queen, Yolleaba. This sets up a confrontation with the avatar of Darkness himself.
With no hope of besting the avatar, Clive unleashes an almighty Ethereal Explosion with which he intended to kill Darkness’s Avatar and destroy his temple, while accepting that he would be sacrificing himself. He managed to do two of those things, but the Avatar of Darkness survived and captured Clive’s Ethereal Soul.
Whilst unknowingly in the void of Darkness’s custody, Clive’s growing Pantheon fought for Darkness’s expulsion from Falritas with the help of a new addition. The goddess of Peace. Together they forced the hand of the council of gods and had Clive’s soul freed and Darkness banished from Falritas.
A resounding success if not for Clive being dead. Now he has to get his head around that little setback and still lead his followers in the difficult times ahead.
Chapter 1
Insight
All four of our Pantheon gods now wore a variation of the same sour expression across their mentally projected images. It seemed that they didn’t want to answer.
At my side in that void-like space we used to speak together, Sania, unable to produce a physical projection here, instead floated by my side as the gray and golden orb of her Ethereal Soul. Her presence was comforting at a time when I needed all the comfort I could get.
“Hello!” I said, waving my arms around. “Can you guys hear me? Can I rebuild my body?”
It fell to Devotion to deliver the blow. “Sadly, it won’t be possible to rebuild your body as you’ve done in the past, Clive. You see, it’s not your body which requires the time to rebuild, but your Mortal Core. That which inhabits and maintains your physical form. That is why people without Ethereal Cores perish with death.”
“Well, fuck,” I grumbled, looking around.
Even though Darkness had been booted from Falritas and it appeared we were relatively safe, the news still hit me hard. There was still so much work to do. With Peace in the Pantheon now, we were duty-bound to go and help her in the war against Desolation and War. Then there was Kalabri to re-occupy after Darkness’s dismissal from the planet.
“I haven’t got time to be dead. Do you have any other ideas?” I asked, attempting and failing to keep the desperation from my voice.
“There is one option available to you,” Destruction said. Her teasing, sultry voice was gone, replaced by one of determination. “Create an Avatar which you can inhabit. At least in part.”
“I’ll do that then,” I said eagerly, grasping at her words like a starving man grasping at food.
“It won’t be an immediate solution, due to your level. An Avatar is an intermediate-level artifact. I know you are currently only capable of creating a basic artifact. I admit I cannot remember the exact Ethereal Stage at which you will be able to do this.”
Devotion jumped back into the conversation at that point. “Stage Six. He will be able to create one then.” Her eyes took on an excited gleam as she focused on me. “That will have the secondary effect of reducing the time needed for Clive’s Mortal Core to reform. Sixty days, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Yeah, but that’s two whole Ethereal Stages! How the hell am I supposed to do that while stuck as a ball of fucking light? I know my Immortal Shell gives me a level, and it’s fairly close to completion but…”
“Sadly, that won’t be a viable route to growth,” Death interjected. “You need a Mortal Core to continue your progression with your Immortal Shell. We must z other paths.”
I threw my arms in the air. “Fucking great! What about reaching my next Physical Evolution? Seraphim, or whatever the Alo-im equivalent is?”
“Very much the same. While you are dead, you cannot level. Only your Ethereal Stage can increase.”
“So how can you guys level still?” I said, desperately searching for a loophole of any kind.
“Because we’re not Dead,” Destruction replied, as if the answer was obvious. Which, on reflection, I supposed it was.
“Our cores combine into a God Core once you reach your final Evolution at Level 1000,” Devotion explained calmly, without any of Destruction’s gusto. “And of course, your Ethereal Core is at Stage Ten.”
It all made an annoying amount of sense, and it was good to hear exactly what happened. How one became a god. Why Mortal Core powers mattered so much to future followers. It didn’t, however, help my current predicament.
“So, if Immortal Shell and further leveling are off the table, what the fuck do I do? What other options are available?
“Bonding with all of the ambient Neumas you are capable of resonating with must also be done through your Mortal Core,” Death added unhelpfully.
“Well thanks, Death, I’ll not try that one out next, shall I?”
He chuckled at my sarcasm, and held out a hand to calm me from ranting further.
“One million followers will give you another stage. You must be close to that by now, with those you took from me? If you were able to send your people out to convert others, then you could reach Ethereal Stage Five.”
“I will make sure this is done,” Sania said. Her disembodied voice almost trembled with the strength of her conviction. “We will put everything we have into finding you those followers.”
“Thank you. It’s gonna be tough though. Can’t bloody raid Kalabri or Nuinaer, can we? All those Neutrals, ripe for the plucking and there’s a ban on them,” I said, trying not to grumble.
“There might be some remaining who were not affiliated with Darkness,” Destruction said. “However, I believe I have a far better idea for you. Knuntang has been filled with Neutrals since the day Creation left. Even if I do say so myself, they are very desperate at the moment under my occupation and unlikely to follow my fair stewardship any time soon.” She finished her statement with an evil chuckle, and I asked myself again what I’d done getting involved with her.
I didn’t really know how to respond, but Sania was up to the challenge. “We obviously can’t attack your forces, Destruction. But if we could come in as a liberator, that might make any conversions a lot easier.”
Destruction snorted with laughter. “I can make that easier for you, too. There is a parcel of land in Knuntang that forms part of the boundary of the Craster Mountains that I have no interest in holding in the coming months. I give it freely to Far Reach. Though you can tell the people of Knuntang that you have liberated it. Which won’t be too far from the truth.”
I couldn’t fight the laugh that escaped from me. I knew instantly which parcel of land Destruction was talking about. “This bit of land,” I said slowly, “it wouldn’t happen to contain a home belonging to a certain Natom Hilgresh, would it? The place where he is due to be reborn in the not-so-distant future?”
“Ah!” Destruction said loudly, with an excited clap. “You know of the area I speak! How convenient. So, would you like to take control of the area?”
“Yes!” Sania said before I could respond. “We’ll take the land. Can you provide a map of the area you’re willing to hand over? I’ll send people immediately.”
“You must send Danivra,” Devotion said. “She should do the majority of any conversions.”
I sensed Sania’s surprise and confusion as she struggled with a response for a moment. “Danivra would be an excellent choice, but I believe she has her sights set on retaking Helvien and Rushing.”
“Be that as it may, once Clive has reached Ethereal Stage Five, he will have an option to create a Church Leader. A Mother or Father. In doing so, he can attain Ethereal Stage Six. As Danivra is the most advanced in her worship levels with Clive, she is the obvious choice. Even then, the position isn’t easily attained. There will still be a long way to go for her to have processed enough Ethereal Neuma, but converting the majority of those required to reach one million followers will go a long way to taking her there. I promise this will be the fastest way for Clive to reach Ethereal Stage Six and build an Avatar artifact.”
“Then so shall it be. Andalar and Aslin will be up to the challenge of retaking Helvien and Rushing, I’m sure,” Sania said. The finality had me worried for anyone who questioned the changes in plan.
