So close to 250 followers and I don’t have the free time to write a bonus chapter T.T
I keep trying to put some artwork in here, but I am having some trouble, so I apologies if DeMorte’s spirit animal/image will not load – Fan art by F(art) – should be in the spoiler.
Spoiler :
https%3a%2f%2fs21.postimg.org%2faib306dpj%2fl_12.jpg [https://s21.postimg.org/aib306dpj/l_12.jpg]
Note: The dungeon mental test that DeMorte took was not a deep mental assault like the one in this chapter, which actually takes place in his inner mind. If he had gone further down into the dungeon, he might have reached a boss that could launch such mental attacks, but who knows…
By the way, this entire chapter will occur faster than the time it takes you to read it. The results will be in the next chapter and I hope that everyone appreciates how it ends… that said, I actually felt a surprising lack of skill when writing this chapter. I am an amateur, but I still want to do better
Oh and it should go without saying that: when I do my rewrite, I will be very annoyed at any spoilers. Especially as I hope to introduce a lot of hints and foreshadowing throughout the rewrite in reference to what happens at the end of this chapter and the beginning of the next.
Chapter 39: Bella Horrida Bella
Stoning soot, I thought to myself as I stared up at the sky. It was slowly lightening up as dawn was imminent, but some of the soot from the slum fire had covered me in my sleep.
I would normally have just cast a simple spell to clean myself, but I did not want to chance someone seeing it with their mage sight. Between the guards at the inns, the wards on most places the guards were not allowed to search (Ie: the Sister’s temple), and the regular patrols I did not have choice in where I slept.
In the end I went to sleep in the corner of an alley with piece cloth covering my face. Had it not been for the combination of the handful of runes that I carved and the slum fire I imagine that I would have been forced to compress my sleep. In fact I was tempted to do just that, but with the possibility of being seen and with Bella agitated to the point of trying to interfere with the spell.
I ended up waking 6 times in the night, 3 times for patrols that went past the alley where I was sleeping, 2 times for random noises, and once when some guards walked through the alley and were fooled by the runes I carved. I dropped back off to my light sleep each time and mostly ignored the thin layer of soot that grew during this period.
Now that dawn was approaching though, I was trying to brush it off with annoyance. The fire itself had either gone out or had been put out during the night, but I was still going to be dealing with the aftereffects of that fire for the next few days at least.
If I was lucky, people would blame the guards for what happened and make their jobs even harder, but if I was unlucky, they would blame me. Though, with my ability to change my face it would likely just lead to more pointless violence. If necessary, I was sure that I could dodge the guard for the next few days and then walk out the gates.
There was were only 2 things I was worried about when it came to the search, beside the fact that I could be noticed by a random mage on patrol. First was that I would not be able to get access to water, which would severely hurt me over the next few days. Second, that my pursuers would realize that they only needed to check mages to catch me.
Given that the population of mages in the city likely did not exceed a thousand, it would be far easier to simply make a list of mages currently in the city. Given the fact that inns were currently being watched and the nobles were incredibly proud of their blood, it would likely be very easy to smoke me out.
In the event someone figured that out, I had a plan to impersonate someone else to escape, but it would be far more difficult to do that as I would have to identify and incapacitate the mage in question first.
I could change my face, but not my magic and if they remembered how many circles of mana I had, it would make my life even harder as I searched for a non-noble mage of my level of power. Nobles would have Proofs of their lineage that the guards would recognize
There was another plan I had as back-up, but I hardly wanted to trust the amount of people necessary to fake being foreign nobility. The Histones being a key component as they would have to collaborate to a certain extent in addition to letting my collecting the mithril disk and my bone armor.
I quietly sighed to myself and got up to stretch for a moment. The runes around me discouraged looking in my direction and emphasized a forgetfulness that would ideally keep anyone from even remembering that this little corner of the alley existed. That said, I could not move around too much as, even knowing the runes were there, I still had to be aware of the effects they had on my own mind.
Finally I sat down and took a few deep breaths before I turned my attention inward.
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Diving into a mentally constructed world was odd at the best of times, but diving into one where there was an unnatural barrier in it was even stranger. Though it did help me give some mental structure to the place that Bella and I were about to fight.
Quite simply, mental world constructs were fake realities that mages built up throughout their lives. Non-mages could have strong mental defenses too, but those were usually specially trained individuals. Individual mental fortitude would vary from individual to individual, but actually having a mental defense prepared to receive magical intrusions was something that had to be specifically practiced.
Namely, this was because all physical appearances were just elaborate metaphors for the individual in question.
My personal mental defense was a massive stone castle carved from solid rock that thrust up out of a mountain chain, towering above everything near it. The outside had iron covering almost every centimeter and the cliffs around it were so shear that they would be impossible in real life. It was also protected by a magic ward so powerful that is was making the whole thing shimmer.
This reflected the personality that I tried to show others in my previous life. It was tall, tough, imposing, and meant to be visibly intimidating. It also drew attention away from the surrounding mountains, which were filled with mental traps and mentally deployable forces. Oh, and my personal spirit manifestation.
I learned about halfway through my previous life that mental attacks mostly a contest of will, but one of the common trappings of those mental attacks was forcing people to fight in this imaginary world. Mages who used mental attacks frequently sent giant mental armies, which could access certain secrets that naturally manifested themselves in someone’s mental world.
As for the Nalk barrier and its mental manifestation, it was a giant white oblong shape that reminded me of an egg. It was currently floating in the sky defying all physics as a few cracks started to spread out from the bottom. It looked like the cracks would soon spread to the rest of the structure and I would finally be able to deal with Bella.
I blinked and shook my head for a moment, this world was all in my head and I had to remember that. It did not matter what the thing looked like, it only mattered when it broke and Bella came out. At that time she would face me on my terms and in my mental construct.
When Bella came out of that egg like barrier of the Nalks, she would have to deal with the same mental defenses that destroyed the dozen or so attempts to mentally break me.
As I saw the cracks expanding I smiled and closed my eyes to test the barrier with my mind. It was almost ready.
The natural laws of the world would not apply here, mana could be infinite, my stone castle would float in the air if the mountain collapsed underneath it, and I knew every inch of the mountains surrounding my castle without looking. I was prepared for any mental attack and no trained mage that I had ever met would be able to fight through my defenses.
That was my stupid mistake, I forgot that Bella was not trained and only learned by talking to me or reading bits and pieces of my mind.
When the egg cracks finally expanded to their maximum, the egg shattered into a billion pieces and I found myself shielding my eyes.
Bella’s mental defense was a star. A stoning STAR!
Instantly all the snow, the few trees, and the variety of mountain wildlife that naturally populated my mental construct burst into flame and the area surrounding the mountains rapidly turned into desert. There was also a large and continuous bombardment of radiation, just to annoy me.
Amateurs always did the strangest things like that, they simply did not know better. As a result, they could sometimes pull off miracles simply by accident.
I felt Bella’s will rush at me all at once and I had to applaud her for bravery at the minimum. The light, heat, and radiation were manifestations of her will and they were thrown at me with all of her might behind them. There was no dialog or bantering to allow me to try and simply persuade her to give up, just a shear blast of will, determination, and a fair bit of hate.
Of all of these, only the hate concerned me. Another aspect of the mental constructs, was to create a ‘safe’ zone to fight without simply blasting someone with your will directly. No matter how irradiated this mental place became, my brain would not be fried as long as it was just effecting my mental construct.
Unfortunately, if she simply blasted away with her will like she was now, it might spill over and actually cook our brain for a bit. This applied for any 2 or more people who attacked someone else mentally as anyone could try to fry another person’s brain if they were connected. The problem was that we shared the brain that she was endangering!
As long as 2 different people were both mentally connected, I could do the same to them so it was an effective threat when attacking someone else, but that hardly mattered when we were stuck with any damages afterwards.
That was why most constructs were fortresses, they represented who we the owners were in a relatively safe area to fight from. Someone who wanted to resist a mental assault without frying their own brain had to compromise and create something that represented both their personality and their will to fight off mental attacks.
If someone managed to conquer that construct… well that clearly was not an issue right now.
The issue was hate. Hate was even more dangerous than normal in such a situation where, if someone pushed too hard or attacked recklessly, they could damage your brain. That sort of thing was nothing more than a large unnecessary danger.
Bella shared part of my brain and the last thing I needed was her self-destructing because she did not want to lose. If she did, than she could cause extensive mental damage.
Though there were a few ways to counter such things, one of which I was already starting to call up, it was still worrying to have to deal with hate from Bella.
Really now, did I deserve that?
Adjusting my mental defenses, I filled the land with a familiar dark miasma, my mental rendition of Gorith’s shroud. It covered everything and I made sure that it acted as a manifestation of my will to push back Bella’s light before she could actually damage anything below the surface.
“You do realize that doing such things recklessly can cause brain damage, right Bella?” I called out casually to her, knowing that she would hear me if I wanted her to.
The star was easily visible to me now as a massive glowing sphere. I felt the light intensify as Bella tried to push down on my mind, as she tried to stamp out my existence. I shook my head sadly and rethought my plan.
I did not think that Bella was going to be this much trouble, she was a just a stoning child after all. I felt a pulse of anger at that thought and realized that she was still able to connect to me through our mental tug of war.
I tried to mentally guard my thoughts and plan out what was going to happen. Bella obviously wanted to destroy me and take over our body for herself. If that happened, my memories would likely overtake her and she might not stay sane after the experience was over. I had my damage, but even if Bella could search through my memories, it would not be the same as suddenly having them as her own experiences.
I knew I was paranoid, but I had decades of watching my back to prove that I should be! Trying to pour all of that, the memories of my life, into her in one go would be crazy. No, if she was smart, she would destroy as many of my memories as possible to keep her identity intact.
I doubted that her few cycles would make any real impact on me if it was the opposite way around so I actually planned to absorb her completely, or at least I did until now.
Her hate changed things, I would need to calm her down first and then set about proving that she had no way to win. Once that hopelessness sapped her will, I could absorb Bella with much less fuss. As I did that, I could eliminate things like her memories of hating me before I said my final goodbyes to Bella.
“Come now Bella, why are you so mad? Because I kill those who stand in my way?” I spread my shroud out so that it covered everything from my castle to the horizon. Right now it was only meant as a defensive buffer, but it would push Bella’s light back soon enough. “Everyone who ever lived has paid some post to survive and death is frequently such a cost.”
There was a cry of anger and I felt the light intensify as Bella pushed at me harder. “That is not going to work!” I called out, not meaning to taunt her, but to plant the idea of the inevitability of my victory. “Even my spirit animal did not die from that, it just warmed itself a little.”
The light shifted, concentrating directly at me and burning away a large portion of miasma the surrounded me. I took the opportunity as I mentally felt my shroud reach the edge of my mental construct, to have it start to climb the horizons.
“My physical body means nothing here Bella, I just manifest it for familiarity.”
That particular bit of information seemed to get through to her and the light’s intensity finally died down a bit. That said, my shroud’s spread significantly slowed as it reached about a quarter the way to noon above the horizon.
As it was, my shroud had spread across the entire land of my construct and I could feel under my control, but the air had become Bella’s with her unusual method of attack. Now I was trying to reclaim it without concentrating too hard, so Bella had switched to a defensive mindset and was now slowing my progress greatly.
“It is not stopping.” I said simply, emphasizing it by expanding my shroud up into the air another meter on all fronts.
I was not sure how big real stars were, since everything got smaller as distance increased, but Bella’s star was only a few hundred meters across and it would be easy enough to extinguish once I reached high enough. In the meantime, Bella would somehow have to force her light down into my caverns and inner tunnels to really defeat me.
It was possible of course, but as long as she saw herself as a being of pure light she would never be able to bend that much. If she started using her light like my shroud things might be different, but she was likely channeling one of, if not the strongest, spells I had created in this new body. It would concentrate light into an ultra-thin beam and burn its way through anything.
Naturally, I had no plans to face such a threat from anyone else in the future, so I kept it very, VERY, well hidden. In fact, I would be surprised if anyone except Bella knew of it, Nalks included.
Of course, this was not reality and my shroud could simply fight back the light that Bella hit me with. “How long are you going to try and keep this up Bella?” I needed her tired, empty, and without hate, or hope if I could manage it before I pushed in on her true self.
Then she caught me off guard again.
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“Your highness?”
I jerked. “I told you not to call me that.”
“Ah, but it rouses you so well!” Osiris joked, causing a small ripple of chuckles to spread around the room. It was a familiar sound for some, but most of them thought I was odd.
Granted, as long as I paid well, my bandits would put up with almost anything. Though I had been slowly training them out of that, namely by making them accustomed to following obscure orders that made sense only in hindsight.
We were bandits and perpetuating the myth of always knowing what would happen next helped keep me at the head of the ever enlarging group.
There were about a half dozen veterans from my earlier raids who were here and almost that many new people. Of particular interest were the 2 leaders who arrived most recently arrived. They had controlled several hundred men between the 2 of them, though their names currently escaped me.
I shook my head and concentrated “Was there anything else to discuss?” It was too darn hot in here, though it was about to get much hotter. There seemed to be a general agreement to not push the current situation. The lands around the God’s Spearpoint were almost always at war, so the merchants were all too eager to accept my promise of protection.
As a result, we had been discussing expanding to the South, which was very rocky and sparsely populated. If we could secure a path through one of the few workable roads, or simply make the slaves build one, than we could potentially charge merchants to travel that route too. The reason we decided not to however, was the new war to the south.
That many army men might be a large opportunity for whores, but it would be a large risk for us, especially after our last raid claimed a few of their supply wagons.
“Alright then, off to whatever you do when you are not annoying me,” I joked, before adding, in an equally casual tone, “Ah, Rhine, stay a while would you? I wanted to talk about your men.”
“Ah, well your lordship, I seem to be having some stomach issues, so I will take-”
“Sit.” The room paused for a moment and they all turned to me as they felt my killing intent spill over and fill up the room. “The rest of you are free to go of course.” I added happily.
We were quickly left alone. I noticed his face was red and the sweating was becoming much more pronounced. “I noticed that you were bit by a Reslucian spider a few days ago, so I took the liberty of procuring the antidote.” I volunteered, pulling out a small vile and placing it on the table in front of me before standing up.
“I appreciate that, but why not say anything at the time chief?” Rhine eyed the bottle, but did not reach for it just yet.
“I am your chief now am I?” I reached out with my mana and made a simple adjustment to my personal ward. It was anchored to my gold neckless, but as weak as it was, it would turn aside a surprise attack or two, which was all it had to do. I turned my back to Rhine and walked over to the back wall, which had a very nice iron sword that was supposed to only be a decoration.
Rhine always had more power than brains, or he would have attacked me at that moment and run for his life. He would have died to the guards waiting outside, but it would have been better odds for him. As it was, he let me retrieve the sword without protest, continuing to feign loyalty.
“I do not know what you mean, you have been my chief for at least – actually it has been from winter, time really flies like that.”
“Winter?” I asked surprised, turning to face him while carefully keeping the sword balanced. Its sharp crescent shape glinted, almost evilly, as if the thing knew what was about to happen. “You have been with me that long and yet you were still stupid enough to touch my wife?” I asked quietly.
Before he could respond I activated the buildings subtle wards. They were tiny and weak, but when activated they were an excellent distraction. He instantly flexed his magic, he had around 7 circles worth of mana, and caught the wards before they actually ensnared him.
They were only a distraction though and the iron blade through his diaphragm was enough to keep him from casing anything else. The sword had a nice curve on it that was meant to make it a slashing blade, but it was never designed with the intent to use it in battle anyway.
It was only a trophy and most dismissed it as such, not realizing that a trophy could still disable you. In fact, because it was a trophy and I could swear I felt it break inside of Rhine, it was actually more useful. After all, he would have a much harder time pulling the fragments out and they would impede any attempt to cast a spell.
“I only have a single wife Rhine. I have plenty of slaves and whore I can and frequently do use for fun, but you touched my WIFE.” I backed away and grabbed the vile I put on the table earlier. He touched the sword, but did not try to remove it. “Now let us review, you can either sit here and wonder what will kill you faster,” I cast snip twice, ruining his Achilles tendons,” the blood loss or the poison.” I paused and waited for the screams to subside. “Or you can give me the names of those involved and I can let you go east with a small amount of gold, after receiving treatment, of course.”
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He told me everything and I just shook my head before walking past him. Naturally, I tossed the vile into his hands as I did, as I was not a monster and he deserved the alcohol that was mixed into it.
The last cohearent thing I heard him say before he popped the seal on the vile was something about going this far for some slut. I paused at the door to watch him gleefully down his last drink and wondered if he realized how close I came to turning my killing intent into bloodlust. His last comment also made me up his punishment to the worst version.
When the poison in the vial would normally cause him extreme pain for a little while before destroying his sense of pain – along with his internal organs – his last words were poorly considered.
I cast the fleshfire and walked out of the building to his screams.
Osiris and his brother were waiting outside, I gave them the names and told them to make sure that those individuals were given “the hard choice.” Their eyes twitched towards the building behind me as the screams were loud enough to interfere with my instructions. I merely activated some of the specialty commands in the wards and the sound was cut off.
“You 2 should remember that touching another man’s wife is always a dangerous thing.” I shook my head slowly before wiping some of the sweat off my face. It really was unseasonably hot today. “Make sure Rhine’s men get the basic choice unless their names come up with from the others.”
The brothers both nodded and left hurriedly, they were hard men, but fleshfire was the worst way to die. Only being brought back as an undead was seen as worse fate. I ignored the flashes of pure mana that likely signaled Rhine going insane from the pain.
The fire was easy enough to put out, if you used the right spell. Between the iron and the pain, I would actually applaud if he managed that.
At least he was isolated and unable to run around spreading the fleshfire spell. It would only burn him as things were currently.
I would feel the Guilt soon enough, but it would be worth it. I failed to protect the woman I loved and let her get raped because of it. She would recover, she was strong like that, but I still decided to clean house.
Being a bandit made ideas of love seem ridiculous and I was beyond lucky to have her. That she had been attacked, that she had been raped, and that I only had a stoning spider bite to help me figure out who did it, was unacceptable.
I looked up to the sky and wondered what would happen into the future and cursing the 2 stars for this darn heat.
Then I froze. There was only a single star in the sky.
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I ripped myself free of the memory and felt the heat that was Bella’s will.
Bella must had pushed me into that memory and hoping to get me trapped in it long enough to do what she needed to, but I had experienced it much faster than it originally happened.
Still, I realized that Bella had surprised me once again and the results were clear: most of my shroud had been pushed back and it only covered some of the mountains right now.
I growled as I let my annoyance flow from me into my shroud. Instantly my shroud once again spread throughout that land and I even pushed it a fair bit back into the sky, shoving away Bella’s determination with my own.
“That,” I announced as the shroud returned to the area it occupied before the flashback, “was annoying, but nothing more.”
I took a deep breathe to try and calm myself only to get thrown into another memory.
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We had done it.
Thousands of men and women had died, but we actually managed to destroy the entire enemy army.
We were bandits, but we actually managed to ambush and destroy a formally trained army. I could not believe it.
I was the one who planned the whole thing and I still could not believe that it happened. Enemy incompetence, wonderful topography, a stoning rockslide that grew larger than I dared hope, and surprise had created a miracle… though this miracle was certainly horrid to look at.
I had already collapsed against a rock and left the looting to those who could still move. The bodies were spread out as far as I could see directly below me, stretching around a bend where a new group of large rocks were now positioned.
They should know to wait for a fleshfire cleansing, but apparently they were determined to get to the valuables before anyone else.
Greed was a wonder all of its own.
I still could not believe it though. We stoning won.
Then I realized that I had no choice, the Guilt had carefully taken count of every death that was my fault and was preparing them. I could feel the mass of shadows, of souls, moving at the edge of my senses and shuddered in fear.
The others would survive, but would I?
I pulled myself from the memory as the shadows of the Guilt dove at me.
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Stones, it had to be that memory. “Honestly Bella, why are you still fighting?” I shouted, breaking free almost instantly. I had passed out that day, but the nightmares from the Guilt seized me for days afterwards and nearly drove me mad. Only Osiris had kept everyone together and away from me while that happened.
It was certainly not a pleasant memory to suddenly be forced to relieve, even if only in part. Stoning Bella.
I tried to calm myself and pushed my shroud out more forcibly. If I had to pound the lesson into her head, then so be it, but I was getting tired of this nonsense.
I pushed my shroud out, forcing her light back and making her concentrate on defending star from the encroaching darkness that was my shroud.
As she did, the world grew dimmer and my shroud swallowed the sky above her. My dark shroud now dominated the land, although it was growing increasingly hard to reach her star through only this level of willpower.
Thankfully, I could still press harder, though it would be easier once she finally gave up.
“Would you give up?” The voice was melodic, a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, with a lovely chime that I did not think we had in the real world.
“I would negotiate after I realized that there was no way to win Bella, if you have been searching my memories that much you understand that I have done it before.”
“Negotiate? How could I? Do you know what it is like watching you DeMorte? It is horrible, especially when I know what you are thinking. Even when you have sex you are busy treating your partner as if they are a possible threat! I do not even want to go into how to think about how the defenses of every building you go into or how to sack each city we see.”
I allowed myself a slight grimace, it was hard to see things from her point of view, but I suddenly felt like I could at least partly understand what she meant. “I am paranoid Bella, I have known that for decades, but I have always had reason to be and each time I let my guard down something like that incident that got us arrested pops up.”
“You mean the incident that was completely by accident and which resulted in us hiding in a night soil cart!? The incident where you deliberately made that poor woman die because you refused to even try and talk her down? Just so that you could avoid feeling guilty?! THAT INCIDENT?”
I felt the light intensify, and I sighed disappointedly. Bella still did not understand, though I did empathize with her to a certain extent. “She made her choice Bella, even the Nalks cannot guarantee what someone will do. Besides, the Guilt’s real impact relies more on reminding me that every life is precious in its own way. It was always the most powerful dissuader, but it never stopped me. It only made me that much more resolved when I decided to kill someone.”
“Do you honestly think that make me feel better?”
“I will still kill who I need to Bella. From now until the day I am finally free of the Guilt and even after that. In fact, I would say that you would come to the same conclusion Bella.”
“What?”
I sighed and felt sadness creep into my heart. For the first time I stopped the encroachment of my shroud on her star, though I did not let her regain what I had taken. “Bella, even if I suddenly gave up and you absorbed me, do you really think that you would turn out differently? It is our past that makes us who we are and you have only been looking through my past, not living it Bella.”
“That might be true DeMorte, but you cannot see yourself for the monster you became so long ago. I kept looking through your memories to find some key event that made you this way, but there was not just some moment that changed everything. There were moments, choices, and events that shaped who you are, but that was THEN.
“You have all the experience of your past life DeMorte, but you do not understand this one. You could be an anonymous mender and save more lives in this life than even you took in your previous one! You chose to keep being the ‘Bandit King’ though and it took you nearly getting executed to remember that you needed follower to BE a King.”
I actually flinched at that. She was right. Coming here with all of my memories could have actually been some form of Nalk trap. I was a known quantity to them, someone they could rely on to be stuck in the past.
I did try. Originally I indulged myself in a part of my personality that had practically been starved over the decades, my thirst for knowledge. However, after I left Entrials it had slowly fallen by the wayside and I found myself acting instinctively.
Adventurers were self-righteous mercenaries out to kill me. Authority figures would always see me as a criminal, even if they did not know the full extent of my crimes. The ‘holy’ institutions were power hungry who would purge me if they knew who I was.
I was not always wrong, but I had certainly not been completely right.
I… Wait, when did I think that again?
I blinked and felt something push my emotions down. An old weight, whose return made me realize that there was something odd about the way Bella was talking, as if-
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“I cannot.” I said softly, it hurt. It hurt far, far more than any wound I had received before.
Tears rolled down her perfect face. I made her cry and now I was telling her that I could not go with her. It hurt.
“This from the man,” a short, harsh, bark of a laugh escaped her, “who always insists that people make their own choices? The man who insists that you cannot ‘make’ anyone do anything?”
“You know what will happen if I leave.” She had to understand. We had been together long enough that she had to.
“That is their choice to make. Besides, I am not worried about what happens if you leave, but if you stay.”
“Mort, Ra is challenging you tomorrow. Do you honestly was to fight-” I gave her a look which made her brake off the name before she said it. “Do you want to fight Osiris’ nephew?”
“It is his choice.” I said coldly, before I continued more warmly, “I do not want to of course, but I will face whoever thinks that they can lead the other better than me.”
“In a duel?! Of all the things you have come up with that has to be the closest you have ever come to deliberately sending yourself to Gorith.”
“I can win Mar, you know I-”
“THAT IS THE PROBLEM!” I barely kept my jaw from dropping. Mar had not shouted in- “You cannot always win! You keep fighting and some day you will die!” She reached forward and cupped my face in her hands. I felt the mana pulsing through them, but ignored it. “How many are you going to kill before you have had enough?! Are you going to wait until more of our children challenge you? What, are you even going to wait until Regus is old enough to try and kill you?”
I almost snorted at that, but I knew that I had to take her seriously… Though, if Regus could ever hurt me with his mother hovering over him at all times, I would really be done for. I doubted I would ever understand why that woman did not go back to her comfortable living after I freed her. She was certainly shameless enough in the company she kept after me.
I saw my wife take a deep breath and spoke quickly before she started shooting lightning out of her eyes (with or without magic.) “My existence as the so called ‘king’ keeps the peace. As it is, I barely have the rest organized into those 4 factions. Even if I get them down to just 2 they still might implode.” I gently touched my hands to hers as I saw the lightning still dance behind her eyes. “No matter how far we go, or how well we hide, I would still be haunted by what happened after and that is assuming that we live long enough to hear about it.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, while I felt her hands go slack. I did not like the way this was going.
When she opened her eyes, the sadness she put into the look she gave was heartbreaking. “We are both getting old Mort, do you really think that anyone will know who we are?” She pulled her hands down, but I refused to let them go.
I nodded. “There is always someone who will sell that sort of information and if we tried to stay we both know that I would get caught up in thing again. Besides,” I gave her my best grin, “we are not that old.”
She forcibly pulled her hands away and looked me in the eyes. “I am serious.”
I dropped the grin, but held her eyes. “So am I.”
She stared for a moment, testing me, before she sighed and seemed to age before my eyes. To me she was still perfect, but I suddenly found myself noticing the wrinkles around her eyes and the dark circles under them… how long had they been there? “I am tired, Mort. Tired of all the blood, all the pain, all the paranoia, all of it.”
“What are our choices? You know I cannot leave and I cannot stay, but I do want
“I made my choice Mort.” She walked around me and shrugged off my attempt to grab her by the shoulder, cracking her mana dangerously. “Now you make your.”
She was right, it was a choice and it was one I already made.
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Rage. Dry tears. Hope. Anger. Heat. Hate. Blinding light. Rage. Desperation. Yearning. Pain. Rage. Nerviousness. The feeling of being melted. Love. Rage. Fear.
RAGE.
Glass shattered.
My weight pushed.
The light faded.
A whimper floated.
The Shadows came.
No resisting.
You cannot resist yourself… can you?
DeMorte.
Not “Demorte,” not “deMorte,” but DeMorte.
I was DeMorte… but I was born something else. It was so similar, so close, but now the shadows called. The weight pressed, pushed me forward.
The world moved for that weight. I only helped direct it.
The shadows screamed. They flowed through my body, but I had lost my body.
How did that happen?
Ah yes, I was fighting that young girl. The bright little girl. The ignorant little girl.
That old body did not fit me. I knew what did though, the one that had always been me.
The hiss reverberated in existence itself.
There was nothing. No mountains, no bandits, no castle. There was me.
I felt the dull pain from the blinded left and right eyes. It still felt natural though, it felt like my previous form was just a lie.
An eye on the future. An eye on the past. Two eyes on the present.
My scales were falling off. Baked off in the heat, in the light, but the old scars were still visible. Scars from war, from death, betrayal, and life in general.
I hissed and used the shadows, they poured out of my mouths, eager to drown the infernal light that was causing so much trouble.
I was wrong.
I was not DeMorte.
I was the Bandit King.
* * *
I do not want to die. I do NOT want to DIE. I DO NOT WANT TO DIE! Bella screamed her defiance in her mind, but it did no good.
For a moment, she had pushed back the darkness, pushed back DeMorte himself so far that his defenses, starting with the ward around his castle had started to collapse.
She thought that she had won, that her final push of her own emotions into DeMorte, combined with the most important memory that she could reach, had pushed him over the edge.
It had, just not in the way she intended.
She even burned away his physical form, but now there was something so much more terrifying in his place.
DeMorte’s spirit and identity, given form as what he called a three headed king hydra, was now DeMorte himself.
That was an odd twist, but she could deal with it, what terrified her though was what was coming out of the snake’s heads.
Shadows, screeching ghosts of the past came flying out and were blocking out her will and pushing her back. Not only that, but they also seemed to destroy the very area that they were fighting in. The mountains were stripped away, leaving hollow, empty remains of darkness. The sight of the hydra itself was wrong too.
Where DeMorte’s spirit usually had its share of wounds and scars, but now it was missing large parts of its body and instead of the innards she expected, Bella saw a whirling black mass. Not only that, but when she concentrated for a moment, she noticed that there were black lines covering the whole creature.
It looked like all the nerves or mana pathways in it had been turned pitch black and then someone become visible on the surface of the creature.
It felt… wrong. Evil.
The shadows only further reinforced that fact as Bella felt their anger and frustration ripple through her mind.
Bella barely had time to wonder what was going on before it the shadows came at her. All of her will, her control was quickly pushed back.
“What is going on?! DeMorte! DeMorte, what did you do?”
She screamed, fought, and raged, but there was no response.
She was going to die.
No… No! NoNoNo. No! I am not going to die! Think, think, think you stupid brain!
Why was this happening? That was the key, what was happening right now? Was this even DeMorte anymore? Did I kill him and not even realize it?!
The darkness was getting closer.
Darkness? Wait, it was just his shroud before.
Now it was darkness though, darkness controlled by those shadows.
Wait, could that… be the Guilt?
There was another hiss that shook the mental form of this world and Bella suddenly felt truly helpless. The thing she was facing was what made DeMorte into the creature she hated and feared in equal measure. Even if she kept the latter hidden away.
She was going to die. Not to DeMorte, the person she had known for so long and the one she originally mistook for her ‘real’ father, but this abomination of a curse.
The mental construct unraveled below her and all that remained was darkness. An endless sea of darkness.
Is there any way to survive this?
The darkness poured at her as her will faltered, it was so close. Would it hurt less if she just gave up?
…Fear struck again before she could decide. She wanted to live.
Her light, her will pushed back the darkness again, but she realized that, without the mental construct, she was in danger of giving them both brain damage.
Stone it, I will not die, even if I have to burn us both. I WILL NOT DIE!
She concentrated her will and made the shadows burn. They were still pushing her, but she burned them away
Then, as they were closing in on her star, draining it of its light and warmth, she gambled.
Concentrating her will into a few points, she burned her way through the darkness. Not as a sphere of light, but as half a dozen beams of pure destructive will.
DeMorte had told her the way to win without even realizing it, but now she had to hope that she was strong enough to actually pull it off.
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Will you hate me if I turn foreshadowing into a pun? :P