Rise Of The Mirror King

Chapter 23: Sargon Homunculus

AMELIA'S POV

The shattered pieces of the testing orb lay scattered across the stone floor like a warning. The silence in the room was absolute, heavy enough to drown out the ringing in my ears.

"You," the creature repeated from atop the ruined table, its small, human-like face twisting into a mocking grin. "Finally."

"Did it... did it just speak?" someone stammered from the back rows.

Vance didn't answer. He didn't even move. The instructor's eyes were wide, staring at the simian frame, the translucent dragon wings, and the dull golden scales lining its spine. His hand was white-knuckled against the hilt of his blade, his breathing completely arrested.

I could bet the same thing was on his mind.

Symon had a way of exceeding your expectations. It was almost as if he always meant to. To leave you wondering what kind of person he was. But right now, I think he had exceeded his own expectations. I had only seen him like this once; that time we faced a Berserker.

"What is that?" Flairstain muttered. No one answered. I'm not sure anyone could. Well, except for Zeldryl and his sister. They looked like they had seen that creature before. He exchanged a glance with her.

"Is there something you two aren't telling me?" Vance stepped forward. Even as he spoke, his eyes never left the familiar on the table. He wasn't just scared; he was also shaken.

"That thing is not supposed to be here." Zeldryl managed to say. He started marching toward Symon, his voice low. "Send it back."

Whether Symon heard it or not, he didn't turn. He went over the seats and stood before the familiar.

"Am I the only one seeing the aura that thing is giving off?" Ace stepped forward. Of course she could see it; being a weretiger gave her eyes the ability to see into a soul. I needn't see the aura; I felt it across my skin. The fine hairs on the back of my neck snapped upright, prickling with the sudden weight of unseen eyes.

"You know what that is?" Baron asked. He was looking at Mazikeen. She took a moment to nod.

"It's called a Sargon Homunculus. An engineered abomination—a construct from the Great War of Odbeara.

My blood ran cold. The old textbooks in the library rarely touched on the Great War, but everyone knew the legends of Nimbus.

"Before his imprisonment, Nimbus had committed the ultimate taboo—fusing human souls and bodies with different simians to create the perfect foot soldiers. Weapons designed specifically to control, amplify, and systematically steal mana from their enemies." Mazikeen explained.

The homunculi were thought to be extinct, or at least dormant.

This only meant two things. Either Nimbus' prison was weakening, or Symon's soul was tied to Tartarus; neither was good news.

"You're kidding, right? A Homunculus!" Baron whipped around to look at it once more, like seeing it again would make the realization sit well.

"That's why it can speak." Ace muttered to no one.

When my eyes met Lucifero's, his expression was cold. His hand was clutching the hilt of his sword. "I can't believe you're impressed by that." He said, and turned away from me.

"Why now?" Vance asked. We all looked at him.

"What to do now?" Baron asked.

"We exorcise it," Zeldryl growled, drawing his sword in one fluid motion. He glanced over his shoulder at Lucifero, a silent command passing between them.

Lucifero understood immediately. He stepped forward without a word, drawing his own blade, and the two of them settled shoulder to shoulder, a wall of cold steel and colder intent.

"I'm sure there's another way we can go about this," Ace pleaded. Vance said nothing to support her.

"Zeldryl's right." He said, "All you stay back."

"Your friends don't want me here," The Simian said. Sending everyone's heart into a frenzy.

"What are you?' I heard Symon ask. He sank to one knee, like talking to a child.

"You know what I am; you summoned me here."

"Symon! Get away from it." Vance ordered. Symon neither turned nor answered him. He went on speaking to the Simian.

"It has insane healing ability; hit it with everything you've got." With that, Zeldryl assumed an attack stance. My heart shuddered.

"Symon will get caught in that attack," I said, my voice louder than I had planned.

"Fine by me," Lucifero muttered and assumed a stance as well.

"Symon, for the last time, step away from that monster."

Symon rose gently. "It's not a monster; it's sentient, and it has a name." He turned around, and only then did he realize his position.

His eyes locked on Vance. "What's the meaning of this?"

"A Sargon Homunculus has no business in this realm; what you summoned is a ghost from our past, one that is going to corrupt your soul," Vance explained.

"How are you sure about that?"

"Symon, listen," Baron stepped forward from the group. "You don't want that thing's soul rubbing off on you."

"That's my problem to worry about," Symon said. His voice had dropped to a deep growl.

"You can die with it," Lucifero said.

Symon lowered his head. Then his shoulders began to shake violently. He was laughing like a maniac.

"I'm sick and tired of everyone constantly telling me what to do, how to live."

"Symon, you don't understand," Vance tried to reason.

"Oh, I perfectly understand." He laughed. "I'm the prodigal son, the cursed one, the one about to be attacked with no one stopping it."

Then his head snapped up, and he stepped forward. He muttered out loud, "Grey. Drop every constraint on my mana."

For a fraction of a second, nothing happened.

Then the world seemed to inhale.

[Warning: removing safety thresholds is inadvisable. Lifespan expenditure will scale exponentially.] The metallic voice filled the air.

"I know," Symon said. "Do it anyway."

The air around him cracked.

Not metaphorically — the stone beneath his boots split in jagged lines radiating outward, spider-webbing across the floor as pressure bled out of him in waves.

His shadow, cast long against the far wall by the flickering torchlight, began to shudder and stretch independently of his body, as if it belonged to something standing several feet taller.

His eyes ignited — not glowing softly the way Baron's or Ace's had, but burning, twin points of molten blue bleeding out at the edges into something closer to white. Veins of blue light traced up beneath his skin, faint and branching like lightning frozen mid-strike, visible even through the fabric of his sleeves.

The Sargon Homunculus beside him let out a low, delighted hum, as if recognizing an old and familiar song.

"Oh shit," Baron drew back.

The temperature in the room didn't drop the way it had for Lucifero, and it didn't spike the way it had for Ace.

It simply became difficult to breathe, like the air itself had thickened, pressed down by the sheer density of what was gathering in the room.

Candle flames bent sideways though there was no wind. The remaining unbroken windows rattled in their frames.

"Come at me. I dare you." Symon's voice didn't sound entirely human anymore — it was layered, like two people speaking through the same throat at once, one furious and one terrifyingly calm.

I hesitated. My body wanted to move; my feet didn't.

Mazikeen got there before I could. She stepped between the two sides in one smooth motion, her arms spread wide as if she could physically hold both factions apart by will alone.

"Stand down," she said, locking eyes with her brother first, then turning toward Symon.

It came as a shock to me when Symon actually reacted to her — the tension in his shoulders easing by a fraction, like she was the only person in the room he still recognized as being on his side.

"Move," Lucifero ordered, his blade still raised, ice curling faintly along its edge.

Mazikeen didn't move.

Instead, something in her shifted. The usual playful curve of her mouth vanished, replaced by an expression I'd never seen on her before — flat and utterly without warmth. Her eyes began to bleed red from the center outward, the color spreading like ink dropped in water.

She opened her mouth and screamed.

It wasn't a sound a person should have been able to make — shrill, piercing, closer to the shriek of a bird of prey than any human throat. I clapped both hands over my ears, and beside me I saw Baron stumble back a step, wincing.

The scream threw Lucifero's concentration for just long enough. His stance faltered, the ice along his blade cracking under his own grip, and Mazikeen crossed the distance between them in the space of a single breath.

She caught his jaw between two fingers, tilting his face toward hers, and her forked tongue flickered once against her lower lip as she spoke, low and slow, each word deliberate.

"You will stand down."

Lucifero's eyes flashed red — not his own icy blue, but a borrowed, bleeding crimson that didn't belong to him at all.

"I will stand down," he repeated, his voice flat, hollow, stripped of every trace of the venom it had carried seconds earlier.

He lowered his blade.

Beside him, Zeldryl went rigid. Whatever calculation had been running behind his eyes stopped entirely, replaced by something closer to alarm.

"Mazikeen." Her name came out sharp, almost a warning. "Release him. Now."

She didn't even glance at her brother. "Not until everyone in this room finds their nerves."

"You're overstepping."

"Overstepping is you children throwing tantrums with swords." Her voice hadn't lost its edge, but there was something colder beneath it now — something that made even Zeldryl take half a step back instead of forward. "Fix your temper, brother, or I'll fix it for you too."

For a long moment, nobody in the hall moved. Zeldryl's jaw tightened, some private battle playing out behind his expression, before he finally sheathed his sword with a sharp, resentful motion.

"Can't I have a moment of quiet?" The words landed behind me.