“Problem solved.”
The vapors from Gruffle’s corpse abruptly engulfed Eric. Annala watched in horror as the dark mists swirled. Nocking an arrow, she fired into them. They continued swirling, and when they stopped, Eric had become a reaper.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Annala punctuated each with a smack of her bow. “I created this area specifically so this wouldn’t happen! I told you not to do something this monumental without telling me! Now it’s all been for nothing! I failed. I can’t beat Death, even if I make myself the goddess of my own world...”
“So that’s what this is about,” Eric said. “It’s not Gruffle, but that I would turn into him.”
Annala bowed her head and wept. Eric lifted her chin.
“Please don’t cry. It’s not as bad as you think.”
She glared at him through her tears. “You’re an abyssal reaper. How could this possibly not be as bad as I think?”
“Because I’m not a reaper.”
The chaos blade of his scythe retracted and the scythe itself reverted to a mage’s spear. His wings fell off and he took off the reaper’s robe. All three of them burst into black flames.
“I am a black fire deity who has been radiated with chaos. As an immortal, I am not part of Death’s general jurisdiction, and as a chaotic creature, I existed above him in the divine hierarchy. The Reaper of Gods is not a reaper.”
“That makes sense...” Annala sniffed, “but I still...”
Eric dried her tears. “Have faith in me. Otherwise, I’m going to get jealous of Quando.”
More tears came to her eyes. “What does your guild captain have to do with any of this?”
Eric put on a look of mock hurt. “His girlfriend trusts him to defeat any number of ordercrafters, yet mine doesn’t think I can handle a single dimwitted reaper.”
“He’s still a reaper! You can’t defeat him outside of my world. I want you to win, of course, and so I made it easy for you, but outside, you have no such support!”
Eric hugged her and caressed her. She nuzzled him. Kallen looked away. No one except Tasio and Nunnal ever comforted her like that.
“At the start of this, I admit I couldn’t face him,” Eric said. “I needed you to protect me. Under your care, I ascended to godhood. You’ve kept me alive long enough for me to defeat him permanently. Please allow me to prove you’ve accomplished your self-assigned mission.”
She sniffed again. “Alright,” she said at last. “I’ll let you go.”
With great reluctance, she left his embrace and nocked another arrow to her bow. She aimed it high and released a stream of golden-brown light that stretched all the way to the horizon. It landed beyond.
“Follow this light and you’ll arrive at the next world.”
Eric kissed her forehead. “Thank you.”
In following the arrow, they left the recreation of medieval Isaryu and entered a boundless world not defined by shape or color. It all rushed by them like water in a river. Perrault gripped Eric and Kallen’s left and right hands as she spearheaded their progress. After one hundred and eight steps, the world took on a new shape. It was a valley of iron and steel. A handy porthole revealed the emptiness of space. They were in a space station.
Beyond the catwalk’s railing and closer to the far end of the “valley,” a flaming machine threw out heat and radiation. Moving closer, they saw Annala flying around on a scooter shooting holy arrows. On an arc that took her close to them, she looked in their direction and winked.
Her arrows dotted the reactor like quills. They transformed the heat into chill and the radiation into inert chemicals. Once the machine cooled, she landed near its opening and turned her scooter back into a staff.
She then stuck it into the furnace to rekindle its fuel supply and then spat to further invigorate it. The machine turned over several times and then hummed instead of wheezed. The unitard-clad crew around her sighed with relief.
Annala spat onto her hands and rubbed them together until a golden-brown glow appeared. She then offered them the glowing slime. A crewmember in a hazmat suit approached with a thick metal container and held it out for her at the end of a pole. She dropped the slime inside and said, “That should be more than enough to get you the rest of the way to Tron Spatrus.”
“Thank you, Lady Priestess,” the captain said. “Another forty-two minutes and we would’ve been toast.”
“Don’t mention it,” Annala said. “I’m here to help. Oh, excuse me.”
She marched to a porthole and stepped through the metal plating into the vacuum of space. There she continued walking along the ship’s frame until she was at its furthest point. Then she pointed at empty space and, further off in the distance, a ship exploded. Then she walked back inside.
“Soldiers, I think you’ll be pleased to hear that I just destroyed the drone ship carrying your new armaments.”
“You what?” the captain demanded.
“I can’t have you taking those things to Tron Spatrus. You’d crush the rebellion in no time at all. I want it to continue.”
“Why in the name of the emperor would we be pleased to hear that?” the captain exclaimed.
“You have more options now,” Annala said. “Before, you had to follow orders. Now you can go to Tron Spatrus and help with recreation, the rebellion, desert, fight without the new weapons, or try to get new ones. I have given you the gift of opportunity!”
She smiled perkily at their scowls of frustration. One of them smacked her, but his hand bounced off her skin. He growled and then yelled as his hand transformed into an omega region snail. The other soldiers stayed clear of her.
Atop the railing, the trio watched with interest. It was obvious which personality they landed in.
“This should be easy,” Eric said. “I’ll just quote scripture about how bad it is to imprison someone.”
He leapt towards her, but she waggled her finger and vanished before he reached her. It was so sudden, he almost flew into the furnace. By bringing his feet up and pushing against the air, he arrested his motion and landed in the midst of the soldiers. They looked at him in shock and drew lasers guns.
“Stowaway!”
“Go away.” Eric knocked them all down with his spirit power. Then he jumped back to Perrault. “What happened?”
“Did you expect a chaos priestess to stay in one place for more than a moment?” the familiar asked. “She’s already in another scenario. Hold on tight and I’ll take you to her.”
The scenery shifted again and they were in a junkyard where Annala was teaching children how to create new stuff from the old stuff. Eric ran to her, but she disappeared again. The same thing happened in a farmer’s field, a hospital, a graveyard, and a music concert.
“How do we catch up with her if she keeps moving?” Kallen asked.
“You don’t,” Perrault replied. “That’s the point. Annala knows that if you ask this aspect of her, she will immediately allow you to pass on to the next world, so she’s preventing you from doing so by staying away from you.”
The three of them were sitting on the trunk of a giant tree. Like Dnnac, this was a sage tree at the center of an elven village. They had just missed Annala preaching her version of Lady Chaos to the local elves. Kallen scooted next to Perrault and scratched her behind the ears.
“Be a good girl and call to her,” she said as if to a pet.
Perrault swatted her hand away. “No.”
They jumped randomly from scenario to scenario, trying to reach the elusive priestess. In each one, Annala overturned the future of those living there and moved on before the trio could lay a hand on her. In one scenario, by sheer chance, they dropped in at the same time that she did. She turned pale with fright and jumped into the next scenario immediately.
“It is impossible to catch a goddess in her own world,” Perrault said after the nth scenario. “You might as well give up and enjoy the scenery.”
“We’ll keep going as long as we have to,�
� Kallen said. “I have things to do outside this dome for Lady Chaos and no reaper is going to kill me if I leave it.”
Suddenly, time stopped. The colors in the sky bled together as if watercolors on cheap paper and the ground lost consistency as if it were bread dough. The scenario they currently inhabited crumbled in on itself.
“Perrault...” Eric said worriedly, “what’s going on?”
“The world is dissolving, obviously. It’s Kallen’s fault.”
“Why me?”
“You created an error! This world can’t maintain its structural integrity if someone declares it to be hypocritical.”
By now, the entire landscape was goop and mush. Then everything shined golden-brown. The landscape that was born in its wake was dim and grey.
The trio stood in a farmer’s field framed by mountains and set under a downcast sky. At the center was a fort with a second ring of walls to enclose the fields themselves.
Dispirited people in drab clothing and Subjugation Collars worked these fields. They moved in perfect synchronization. It reminded the trio of Sueno under the Grand Obelisk’s domination. Cautiously, Eric approached a worker and looked into his eyes. They were empty.
“You can call this Annala’s ‘safe mode,’” Perrault said. “After the crash this world experienced, it rebooted into a form that could safely handle the error that caused the crash. It won’t be able to change anymore.”
“That means Annala can’t run from us anymore!” Eric exclaimed.
“It also means she will be much harder to reach,” Perrault said. “If at all possible, these worlds try to fulfill their basic function, which is to keep you trapped here so you stay alive.”
She pointed at the tower, behind the walls, which were guarded by soldiers on top and at the gates. Everything was warded with ordercraft and the soldiers themselves were ordercrafters. Empowering them both was an order obelisk in the fort’s courtyard. Outside the walls, there was no cover at all for fifty feet.
“Annala’s in the very top of that.”
“Of course she is,” Eric groaned. “Nothing’s easy anymore.” He pulled out his mage spear. “Let’s get to it.”
There was no point in stealth because the local lord already knew their plan. So Eric and Kallen dashed to the front door and stabbed the ordercrafters guarding it. Their demon strength pushed their chaos blades hilt deep. The guards fell like scarecrows.
The gate fell just as quickly. After dissolving the ordercraft runes reinforcing it, punching it down was a simple matter. More ordercrafters were waiting for them in the courtyard and they fared just as well as the outside guards. By the time they were all dead, disabled, or disintegrating, the two chaos mages had only broken a sweat.
“Maybe she wants us to ‘rescue’ her,” Eric said.
“Maybe...” Kallen agreed, “but the paradox means she’s going to make it difficult.”
Kallen jumped up, plunged her mage spear into the top of the order obelisk, and sliced it in two as she dropped. Each half fell away from the other and hit the ground at the same time she did. Then she held the mage spear aloft and spoke a chaotic hymn.
“Those who died in violence, go now in peace. May the power of chaos free your soul and grant you a fresh start in your next life. Praise be to Lady Chaos, now and forever.”
Her spirit light pulsed and a wave of energy washed over the fallen ordercrafters. Chains of ethereal non-light appeared around their bodies and shattered to impotent links.
The sound of a door unlocking echoed in the courtyard. The entrance to the tower swung open. The pair entered with Perrault bringing up the rear.
The first room of the tower contained nothing but a flight of stairs and Tahart Ligo guarding it. The orc stock trader was even fatter and uglier than Eric remembered. He told Kallen to stay out of this one and assumed his grendel form. Five minutes later, Kallen asked, “Was that necessary?”
“Absolutely!” Grendel said through a mouthful of orc meat.
They ascended the staircase and found an elf that Eric didn’t recognize. Kallen did, and she told Eric to stay back. She became a chimera and delighted in the enemy’s healing factor for five minutes before killing them.
“Who was that?”
“Childhood bully. It was nostalgic.”
The third floor was guarded by Nulso Xialin. He summoned the Armor of Stability and beckoned them forward. This time, the chaos mages attacked together. What would have been a challenge for either one of them alone was manageable for them together. Without Order’s direct presence, Nulso wasn’t strong enough to fight a battle on two fronts. They penetrated his armor and then his heart.
“Golden hair...” he croaked. Then he disintegrated.
The fourth floor was their destination. At the opposite end of the room was his girlfriend and her little sister. Her wrists were chained above her head and her ankles shackled together. A rag was tied behind her teeth. Between her and them was a cage. They advanced and she screamed,
“BEEEEE HHNNNNDDD YMMMM!”
Eric and Kallen stepped to either side and a wind spell blew past them and into Annala’s cage, rustling her hair and clothes. At the fourth floor’s entrance was Kaiba Gunrai. He wasn’t wearing armor like they expected but a power suit made of silk and satin.
“Bad girl,” he said affably. “You’re not supposed to warn them.”
He snapped his fingers and red light channeled into Annala from the chains. She screamed into the gag and jerked back and forth.
Eric punched him with the right hand of the grendel, but Gunrai held it back with one of his own. Kallen tried her chimera arm and he did the same thing. Then he generated a black and white snake tail and bit the both of them. They withdrew to neutralize his poison.
“I have everything you have,” he said. “All the power in Creation in all its forms is at my fingertips, and all because of her. She gave me the key to omnipotence.”
Annala hung her head in shame.
“That means this is your fault, Eric Watley. She was caught because of you.”
Annala muffled denials and yanked on her chains. Kaiba Gunrai snapped his fingers again and the pain made her stop. Eric and Kallen burned through the poison and attacked with their avatarcraft. He countered them blow for blow with divine magic of his own making.
“If Lady Chaos helps both of us, then the tipping point is our personal merit,” Gunrai said. “I have the greater strength of will, the greater piety, and the greater cunning. I am simply greater than Annala. That’s why she’s in the cage and under my authority.”
Whether it was demon abilities, magecraft, divine power, or staff combos, Gunrai met them point for point. His suit remained unstained no matter how fierce the fighting became.
“Annala doesn’t know how to defeat you,” Eric realized. “Because of what you did to her, and the way you outclass her mother, she doesn’t think you can be defeated.”
“Correct,” Gunrai said. “I am unstoppable.”
“It’s more than that,” Kallen said. “This world is a projection of Annala’s personality and specifically her religious beliefs. It’s not Gunrai himself, but what he represents.”
“I worship Lady Chaos the Unfettered,” Gunrai said. “It is the only true aspect. All the others are watered down through Order’s manipulation or earthly experiences. No rules, no boundaries, no morality; just endless freedom and possibilities.”
“In other words,” Eric said, “you do whatever you want, whenever you want, to whomever you want in pursuit of your goal.”
Gunrai nodded. “I scorn the very idea of ‘civil society’ because when two or more people live together, they have to accommodate each other. There lies the path to Order’s subjugation!”
“That’s a similar mindset to monsanity,” Kallen accused.
“Now that you mention it,” Gunrai shapeshifted into something monstrous. It resembled an organic version of the machines that harvested Annala’s body. “I’m hungry.”
“What’s the antidote?!” Kallen asked herself. “Keep him busy and I’ll ask.”
Eric nodded and covered Kallen’s retreat. He promptly got the shit beaten out of him, but Basilard’s training prepared him for that.
Meanwhile, Kallen dashed to the cage and reached past the bars. The red light shocked her, but she grit her teeth and pushed her hand far enough to pull the cleave gag out of Annala’s mouth.
“You need to leave!” Annala pleaded. “You can’t possibly beat him!”
“Little sister, remember Abbott Zorgan?”
Annala nodded meekly. “The head of Zaban Monastery in Mithra. He’s the guy who taught Uncle Mori how to live so long.”
Gunrai cut Eric’s right arm off and tossed it into a pile. His face was twisted in maniacal glee as he recited the possibilities of this unique metal. Annala averted her eyes from the sight. Kallen pressed on and said,
“Yes, his community has been inundated with sleeper agents and exploiters, but he turned them all around and made them part of his flock. Even ordercrafters respect his wisdom and judgment. We know this because Aunt Tris told us about it. He’s the opposite of Gunrai. He can beat Gunrai in every aspect from age to wisdom to piety.”
“What’s your point?”
“Any time now!” Eric shouted. He had abandoned his physical body due to the damage it had taken and was now fighting Gunrai with his spirit alone.
“You are closer to Abbot Zorgan than Gunrai,” Kallen said. “Through all the worlds we visited while chasing you, you helped the people you found. Altruistic chaos that did not seek to overturn for its own sake or to advance your own goal but because you genuinely wanted to help them. With all your experience, you can match Gunrai.”
Eric’s legs were missing. The paku that used to form them was drained into a container held by Gunrai.
“Remember Lady Chaos’ first act!” Kallen implored. “Concern for the newborn Order despite the fact that he was her opposite in every way and despised her from the beginning. Selfless love; that is true chaos. Your actions are a closer match to her than Gunrai’s!”
Transcending Limitations Page 54
