Lady Lucia frowned at the vulgar brute daring to stand before her. For now, she had no intention of ending such a fascinating soul; he would make a most amusing slave. The way he constantly smoothed out the wrinkles of his robe, the unexpected spotlessness of his automobile, all contrasting with his gruff demeanor--the Watchers loved a good anomaly. The mortal had a few tricks up his sleeves, admittedly. Enough that a two-fragment incarnation under the current Chaos Playground restrictions may encounter some difficulty in humbling him.

She sent a telepathic message to her true self, demanding additional firepower for the upcoming confrontation. Several hundred light years away, a titanic mass burrowed within the heart of a star shifted slightly as it received the request. Tendrils plunged deeper as the organic colossus absorbed great swaths of plasma, ignoring the concerns of a trifling incarnation.

She held back her annoyance. Human emotions were quite pathetic, though to her misfortune she had been infected by some of her host’s teenage tendencies. In truth, she was more like one of the real entity’s daughters opposed to an extension of its unfathomable mind. A human memory intruded upon her thoughts unbidden: Bella as a little waif, crawling up to her unconscious mother, shaking her to try and wake her up in hope of receiving dinner that night.

The brute in front of her reminded her of the various piece-of-shit men Bella had suffered over the course of her life. Their first encounter had burned away most of the hair on his body, and his jutting brow and hatchet face lent him the appearance of a shaven Neanderthal. Those all-too-familiar robes helped offset the look somewhat. If Lucia hadn’t seen the system reward them to him as an unofficial gift, she would have been a lot more worried about encountering someone clad in the [ Sacred Raiment ].

Her frown deepening, Lucia unsheathed her phoenix-feather sword in one fluid motion. The edge of the blade slid along the scabbard, releasing a cloud of scarlet sparks; with a thought she controlled their incandescent energy, shaping it into an expanding arc of flame that threatened to consume Roman Miller. Not even a proper named Skill--there was no fun in ending the fight too soon, after all.

The brute vanished, leaving behind little more than a small eddy of wind in his wake. No surprise there. [ Flash Step ] was a common enough Skill, though troublesome when paired with complementary techniques.

Not all of the sparks had been exhausted in her initial salvo; a constellation of them revolved around Lucia, expanding her spatial awareness. Roman materialized at her side, already mid-swing to deliver a devastating hook into her jaw. Likely out of some misguided desire to protect Bella, he refused to instill his soul energy behind the blow.

She leaned out of the way without bothering to face him. A sizzling spark caught him in the bicep, filling the air with the delicious scent of burnt human; simultaneously her orange blade lashed out and cut a notch from his cheek.

A hiss escaped Roman’s lips, but he barreled forward, undeterred. He was quick, likely having invested fully into his physical attributes like most new Players, but not quick enough that she was worried.

Pleased with scoring the first two touches, she danced away, her blade weaving through the air. Lingering flames trailed in the sword’s wake, painting the rune for [ Immolation ]. Roman vanished a moment before a pillar of flame erupted from beneath his feet, its white-hot incandescence scouring the ground of pine needles.

Lucia waited for him to reappear, sword held at the ready. No sign of the brute. Had he fled? Typical. She could tell he considered himself something of a lone wolf, not having accepted Patronage from one of the Watchers. He must have had at least a few offers. Perhaps this short bout would teach him a lesson about retaining his independence.

Even if he remained obstinate in not officially pledging his allegiance to a Watcher, clearly Roman Miller had earned Sul’gurrath’s favor. He was almost certainly a Chaos Disciple who had been the focus of various rare boons. He had used [ Chaos Touch ] against the gashadokuro, a foe she had thought she would have to personally intervene against. The ability posed little threat to her superior Will, but the man already having a level 10 Skill proved the Prince in charge of this Playground found him noteworthy.

She was about to resheathe the phoenix-feather sword when Roman appeared directly overhead, threatening to crush her beneath his prodigious bulk. A quick roll to the side brought her out of danger, but before he slammed into the ground he disappeared and reappeared right in her path. Unable to correct her awkward course, she watched as one of his legs descended toward her in a devastating axe-kick.

The sword was at too much of an awkward angle to intercept the blow. She grimaced as she caught it on her left forearm, bones crunching under the impact of his impressive Strength. The lucky blow threw her off balance, sending her sprawling in a most undignified manner.

Her true colossal form paused, no longer focusing on devouring the star which it had infested. No, surely it was not bothering to witness her actually trade blows with a mortal? Her cheeks flushed in outrage.

Stolen novel; please report.

Scarlet energy poured from the sigils in her hands, suffusing the area with her Will. The remaining sparks drifting throughout the area ignited into the shape of drifting rose petals as she activated [ Sunbloom Remembrance ]. In the blink of an eye, the petals replicated a hundredfold, aligning into the foreign constellations of a distant galaxy. Even the highly-resistant trees within a dozen paces of her lit up like torches as the ambient temperature skyrocketed.

And, yet again, Roman had vanished.

“Coward!” Lady Lucia shouted as she leapt to her feet, clenching the handle of her sword.

She regretted the words the instant they left her mouth. Aeons spent traversing the void of space, plucking stars from the heavens like flowers for her Garden, and she couldn’t control the hormones of an angsty teenage mortal?

This man would bow before her.

Lady Lucia took a deep breath to regain her composure and sheathed the useless sword. An overpriced bauble she should have never allowed Bella to purchase in the first place. Her hands flickered through an ancient sequence of mudras describing the true nature of Heat.

The drifting petals of [ Sunbloom Remembrance ] shifted from scarlet to blue-white. She mentally redirected the empowered sparks into the surrounding foliage. Trees groaned and cracked as all their moisture evaporated; after a moment the dark oaks turned pure white, their branches sprouting flickering blue flames in place of leaves.

There. By the ancient rules of combat, if Roman Miller refused to reveal himself within the next ten seconds, he would be declared the official loser. If he did appear, then her domain would melt the flesh from his bones within seconds. A smile crept along Lucia’s face.

She blinked as the brute appeared directly in front of her, cocooned in a sphere of bronze energy. So he had a domain of his own, then? That must have been how he overcame the influence of that necrodrake Mentalist. No matter--

She stumbled away as the gigantic mortal lumbered forward. Curlicues of smoke drifted off his exposed skin as he reached for her. A savage groan escaped Roman’s lips as his skin blistered, melted away to reveal burbling pockets of subcutaneous fat.

Foolish girl--give me complete control or we will both perish! she thought furiously at the intrusive little mind attempting to wage war on her from within.

While she was confident that Roman’s chaos energy would fail to transform her, there was a madness about his eyes--there were even flickers of bronze circulating throughout his dilated pupils. That was the kind of madness that promised ruin, that laughed at the hubris of those who deal in logic.

You know what that is? Bella asked. The teenage girl no longer floated in the void of her own trapped mind, locked into the fetal position. She now stood, wearing a crazed smile. It mirrored the wild jubilation writ across Roman Miller’s face as his scorched hands fumbled for her.

Lady Lucia continued to backpedal, deeply regretting her choice to sheathe the phoenix-feather sword. The protection of his [ Sacred Raiment ] let him engage in such desperate measures, but his exposed body was melting before her eyes.

What you’re feeling is fear, said Bella. We will teach you motherfuckers how to fear.

Fear? Lucia stopped and stood her ground. She did not fear. These mortals did not understand her--could not understand her. She was unfathomable, a god who would turn them into gibbering shells if they witnessed the entirety of her being.

She shook off Roman’s desperate grasp and punched him in the face. Despite her much smaller frame, this body was no slouch in the physical attribute department either. Blood spurted from his shattered nose, evaporated within moments.

Roman shook his head, but instead of stopping him, the blow seemed to bring him back into focus. Despite the hint of clarity, his eyes still blazed with deep madness--they should have melted like the rest of his face, which looked like fleshy candle wax, but somehow they resisted destruction. She rained several more blows into his face, his neck, even his chest, but he shrugged them all off as if they were nothing.

Then, at the perfect moment, he lashed out, as if all his earlier fumbling had been an act.

She ducked beneath his counter punch, preparing a concentrated beam of fire in the palm of her right hand. Before it could properly coalesce, a knee slammed into her gut with enough force to double her over and lift her a foot into the air.

Pain, breathlessness--these fragments had not experienced such sensations before. They stunned her for a moment.

Thinking fast, she transformed the half-formed beam into a blue-white whip. It lashed out, coiling around Roman's right sleeve, but his [ Sacred Raiment ] resisted the elemental energy.

Her vision flared black as an uppercut collided with her chin. She regained consciousness a second later and found herself airborne, a cloud of spittle and broken teeth drifting before her face. How…?

Then a hand, reduced to little more than blackened bones, seized her by the horn, suddenly arresting her short flight heavenwards. Bronze energy flared and, impossibly, she felt the horn begin to disintegrate, transforming into something different, beyond her control.

Impossible.

An absent part of her mind realized that the man’s domain had finally superseded her own, replacing the killing heat with bronze chaos energy. It was all she could see in every direction. How? A brute like this could not have that much Will…

The voice coming from the horribly-maimed mortal was dry and raspy--the sound of an ancient revenant whose slumber had been disturbed. “Welcome. To Earth. Asshole.”

Before she could respond, the hand on her horn twisted.

Something snapped, tearing her mind asunder.