33
The Void Seeker champion stood eight feet tall, its form a nightmarish fusion of wolf and shadow that seemed to absorb light from the air around it. Dark tendrils writhed from its body like living smoke, each one tipped with hunger that made my skin crawl with instinctive revulsion.
"You smell of stolen power," it said, its voice layered with harmonics that belonged to dozens of different supernatural bloodlines. "Eclipse Covenant, yes, but also traces of others we have consumed. How fitting that you carry fragments of our previous victories."
I circled the creature warily, noting how the corruption spread from its footsteps in perfect circles. The ground beneath it was already turning to ash, the very stones cracking under the weight of unnatural emptiness.
"What did the Eclipse Covenant do to deserve your hatred?" I asked, genuinely curious despite the circumstances.
The champion's laugh was like breaking glass mixed with distant screams. "They offered what we perfected unity through consumption. But their method was flawed, incomplete. They connected willing minds while we consume all consciousness. They enhanced individuals while we absorb entire bloodlines."
"You're saying we're similar?"
"You are what we were before we achieved perfection. Weak. Sentimental. Constrained by morality that prevents true power."
Dark tendrils lashed out without warning, seeking to wrap around my arms and begin the draining process. But silver fire erupted from my skin, meeting the corruption with blazing radiance that sent the champion staggering backward.
"Interesting," it hissed. "Your power burns cleaner than most. When we consume it, the enhancement will be... significant."
More tendrils emerged, these ones coordinated in patterns designed to overwhelm any single defender. I dodged what I could and burned through the rest, but each use of power felt different somehow as though something was being siphoned away even when my defenses held.
Through the network, I felt similar sensations from alliance members watching the battle. The Void Seeker's presence was affecting everyone connected to me, slowly draining energy through bonds that had been designed to share strength.
"You feel it now," the champion said with satisfaction. "The inevitable pull. Every moment you remain connected to your allies, we grow stronger while they grow weaker."
It was right. The network that was our greatest strength was becoming a liability, allowing the Void Seekers to drain the entire alliance through our shared bonds.
I had to choose: maintain the connections and watch everyone I cared about slowly consumed, or sever the network and face this creature alone with whatever individual power I could muster.
The decision crystallized instantly.
Instead of severing the connections, I opened them wider.
Silver fire blazed from every alliance member simultaneously as I stopped trying to control the flow of power through our bonds. Instead of limiting what they could share, I let them pour everything they had into our collective strength.
The champion recoiled as though struck. "What are you doing?"
"Showing you the difference between consumption and connection," I replied, silver radiance building around me like a miniature sun.
The power flowing through the network wasn't being diminished by the Void Seeker's draining attempts it was being amplified. Each alliance member's contribution multiplied rather than divided, creating a feedback loop that grew stronger with every passing second.
"Impossible," the champion snarled, dark tendrils lashing out with desperate fury. "Supernatural energy cannot be infinitely renewed!"
"You're right," I agreed, catching its attacks in silver nets that burned through corruption like acid. "It can't be infinitely renewed. But it can be infinitely shared."
The distinction was crucial. The Void Seekers had spent centuries learning to drain finite sources of power, consuming abilities that were limited by individual capacity. But the Eclipse Covenant network wasn't based on individual capacity it was based on willing connection between hundreds of enhanced wolves.
Each time the champion tried to drain power from me, it encountered not a single source but an entire network willing to share their strength. The consumption attempt triggered defensive responses from every connected wolf, creating a cascade effect that sent power flooding back through the very channels the Void Seekers were using to drain us.
"You cannot reverse the flow!" the champion screamed, its form beginning to destabilize as conflicting energies tore through its artificial enhancement. "We are consumption incarnate! We are hunger perfected!"
"You are parasites," I corrected, gathering network power into a final strike. "And parasites die when they encounter immune systems stronger than their ability to feed."
Silver fire erupted from my hands in a column that stretched toward the sky, visible for hundreds of miles in every direction. But this wasn't destructive energy it was connective force, reaching out to touch every Void Seeker in range.
Instead of trying to destroy them, I offered them what the Eclipse Covenant had always offered: choice.
The artificial bonds holding them together, the consumed abilities that defined their existence, the hunger that drove them all of it was offered genuine connection in place of parasitic consumption.
Some rejected the offer, their forms dissolving into ash as they chose destruction over transformation. But others... others felt what it was like to truly connect with another consciousness, to share strength rather than steal it.
The champion collapsed first, its composite nature unable to handle the cascade of genuine emotions flowing through reformed bonds. But as it fell, silver light erupted from its dissolving form all the abilities it had consumed over the centuries, released back to the spiritual realm where they belonged.
Across the corrupted battlefield, similar transformations were occurring. Void Seekers were either dissolving into nothingness or undergoing fundamental change as their artificial enhancement gave way to natural connection.
When the silver fire finally faded, I found myself standing on ground that was already beginning to heal, surrounded by perhaps two dozen wolves who looked confused but whole. Former Void Seekers who had chosen transformation over dissolution, their hunger replaced by the same connective bonds that linked alliance members.
"It's over," I whispered, hardly daring to believe it myself.
But even as the words left my mouth, I felt something new stirring at the edges of my consciousness. Other supernatural entities, drawn by the massive display of power, beginning to investigate what had happened here.
The Void Seekers had been only the first challenge.
The real test of what we had built was just beginning.