‘If everything was assured, I’d never have been born. My would-be mother, the Queen Consort of Supreme King Barron, couldn’t produce a daughter. So, my father went to another woman. After she gave birth to me, she was found and assassinated, but I would be kept as the daughter of the King. I was raised alongside my brother as unstoppable, for our reign would soon engulf the whole of Barronia and herald a new age of royals for the people. An age of freedom. Of peace. But then, one day, my brother died and I was banished from the Castle. If he could perish so easily despite the power he held, that also made me irrelevant.’
Marie’s punch fired into his face. King Barron barely dodged to the side, her knuckles scraping his right cheek and squirting out blood from a scrape. Catching his palm open and soaring from her periphery, the boxer backflipped away three times. Stopping on her knees and raising with her fists in front of her eyes, she stared at the father who’d forgotten her.
Clad in his Royal robe, King Barron scoffed. “Do you think me so cruel that I’d forget about my daughter? I’m not the one who ordered your exile, girl!”
“Don’t act like some noble father now, old man! Even if it was the hag of a Queen who wanted me out, I didn’t see you fighting for me! The daughter you wanted for so long… you just LET ME LEAVE!!”
As Marie cried with all her heart and soul, the King was taken aback. Closing his lips following a sudden gasp, his breath hitched and he shakily inhaled.
“I’m sorry.“ Barron offered his hand to her. “We don’t have to do this, please. I can dethrone my wife, banish her to the catacombs of the Capital. That way, you can stand beside me, and be my princess again.”
The boxer lowered her head. “Too little. Too late,” she said.
The Supreme King’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t understand. Her Fate is welling up again. Was she not using her Power earlier?’
Raising her open hand upon invoking her technique manifested a notebook into her palm. She carefully sighed, throwing her left hand above her to summon a pen between her two main fingers. Glaring over the edge of her journal, the Supreme King held his ground—until the moment came when her ink touched the paper. An unusual gust of wind unleashed from her soles, momentarily stripping the robe from his shoulders and sending it into the air above.
Lowering his hand as he battled through the storm, Barron’s hazy vision reflected she who laid before him: scribbling in her notebook while sat against the floor. Before he knew it—!
‘Predestined Power: Author of Destiny.’
Marie, idle on the throne room floor, scribbled rapidly into the diary’s paper. The endless words her conscience generated spelled out the information of her life—going from her full name to a full-bodied physical description.
The first step she took to achieve her victory would be the fulfillment of the many conditions set upon her Fated technique.
Moving her hand at breakneck speeds seconds away from tearing the paper, the ink slid all over the notebook until she finished with one big stroke. Aura enveloping the bulk of her arm, Marie looked up—brown eyes shining the shade of her soul.
The King walked, blonde locks swaying in the winds his daughter released. Pointing his palm forward, numerous yellow chains burst, urging to enchain the girl.
They faltered in mid-air, hovering in the space between Marie and King Barron. Her hand crumbled the paper she wrote on, and, now standing tall, threw it into the air above her. The inked words describing her frame fell from the paper as its torn remnants flew to the ground. With the grace of knowledge descending all around her, she held her pen high in the air and smiled, watching the tip glistening in the peeking sunlight.
Yet the dramatics were the least of her worries. Notwithstanding the pose she enacted, the way she stood was odd—abnormal. Then, it all made sense. The instant her eyes shot into his own, a thunderclap resounded within the Thorne room’s confines. Unwavering; the King stared ahead, spotting the embers of her soul’s raging flame burst from her chest and envelop the length of her whole.
Engulfed by Fate’s inextinguishable flame, Marie smirked and beckoned her father closer. “Come. I’ll show you what you’re missing…”
While King Barron was fighting his daughter, deep below the castle, the dead Prince stood in front of a wide and shining metallic vault. Towering over him and seemingly impermeable.
“Ten long years and the security system’s the same, huh?” He shook his head. “Ahh, dad. You never change, do you?”
Lids over bright blue eyes, the Prince chanted under his breath—summoning the depths of his power in the form of golden portals glowing and swirling behind him.
Angelic hands stretched out from within the gateways, sinking their claws into the vault and easily tearing it from the hinges into the wall. After throwing it aside, the angels and portals vanished, leaving Uriel in the aftermath as the metal entrance loudly thudded behind him. Taking one step through the huge hole, he was met with the innards of the safe—not anything material like money or jewelry. But just what he’d expected.
The interior dimly lit, what he sought was coated in banished seals and atop the table in the center. Yet another arm of the Disastrous Monster God. Once Uriel lifted it into his hand, an image of the villain eight-armed villain resurfaced in his mind.
‘Malum Monstrum is a legendary monster god with eight arms and just as many mouths and eyes. Ever since he came into our world, the number of murders, suicides, and unexplained abnormalities has increased tenfold. He’s said to be thousands of years old, but there’s no record of him ever existing throughout the history of our world. It’s been theorized by all Fate users alike that the infamous Disastrous Monster God instead comes from a world far beyond that of our own. He’s the strongest Displacement. Meaning beings like him aren’t supposed to exist in our world.’
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Marie struck his cheek with the back of her palm, watching him reel from the unexpected blow. The bruise plaguing his features reddened as he recovered with a lax look spread across his face. Their gaze locked when golden lighting-bolts started appeared around him.
With a briefly-deafening thunderclap, she instinctively weaved out of the way of the projectile as the stench of fire infiltrated her nostrils. Ignoring the damage done to the floor, she split apart her feet with one deep sigh and watched the lightning surrounding him quietly vanish.
“You said you wanted to fight for real, didn’t you? I’ll let some of my true power loose then. If you think you can handle it, of course—“
“Eliminate Fate’s Crown from the King and grant me some of its strength,” she said.
The speed at which she spoke was unparalleled; by the time he’d finished blinking, her words had already gone into effect. Fate’s Crown lost the golden hue brightening itself above him, leaving King Barron to watch as a replicant angelic halo burst into existence over his daughter’s head.
“Let’s go, you good-for-nothing geezer.”
‘Anything she writes on the air can become reality, huh? Despite the loss of the Crown’s additional enhancement, I can manage on my own. However, if she uses her pen again after we fight hand-to-hand, she might make herself invulnerable, thereby placing me into checkmate almost instantly. It looks like I’ll be forced to steal that pen from her and tear the Power she was marked with from her soul. All necessary for the sake of furthering the Outside Puzzle.’
Marie sped through the air and launched her arm, reaching her target and releasing yet another thunderclap that sent the tiles on the floor ripple from the wind. Her knuckles smashed Divine’s left cheek, followed by the second impact of the shockwave shooting the King through the air, back into the throne behind him.
Embers of Fate fleeing her fist, Marie hummed and waved it side to side. As her father reappeared in front of her with a cocked-back fist, she backflipped, inadvertently kicking him upside the chin and simultaneously retreating. The boxer landed carefully, watching the King advance with a stomp in his march.
‘No blood yet, huh? I can do better than that,’ she thought.
The King rushed at her and uppercut into her jaw, which Marie cleanly dodged by leaning back. Swatting his arm aside, she punched him again in the gut and caught her father by the sides of his head, guiding him into her knee to blood out from within his nose.
‘There!’ She grinned, then the smile faded with the expansion of her eyes and the shrinking of both pupils.
His hand smashed into Marie’s bust, sending her across the gold-lined floor and into the wall behind her. As it was briefly implanted with the shape of her build, the boxer groaned and removed herself, stopping on her knee while glaring at the King. Standing, she watched him manifest a golden ball and chain, while she did the same in conjuring the pen required for her technique.
In the same instant the King yanked back the chain and sent the ball grueling towards Marie, she finished scribbling on the air, making the words explode into light.
“Stat Increase!”
His eyebrow raised.
Marie closed the distance and crashed her leg across his face, sending him reeling with a thrown-back head and blood polluting the air. But before she could pummel him with an endless barrage, the King recovered, glaring directly ahead at the boxer sprinting at him. That was the first time their fists unintentionally collided. Resulting in yet another explosive wave of force that disrupted the throne room’s fragile structure, the King raised his free fist and slammed it into the ground as Marie fell following their clash.
Recovering from the collapse with both palms supporting her backflipping upright, she watched the King’s knuckles bash into the ground, followed by a miniature tidal wave of debris that didn’t dissuade her from running back at him. The King’s right leg swung at her head, but she jumped over it just in time and dug her foot into his cheek yet again. Reeling from yet another blow, the King couldn’t help but relinquish a groan as Marie flipped over his head and landed behind him, crouched on her feet. Trying to sweep him without looking back, the boxer found herself reflexively weaving to the side once the King’s foot destroyed the ground where she was and repeatedly kept slamming into every corner of the floor she was running to.
If at first they were merely sparring, now this was the real match. The only reason she was keeping up at all was because she managed to steal a fraction of the Crown’s power from the King earlier. Regardless, he wouldn’t let her go. He kept sprinting after her. First from in front of the throne, then nearing the other pillars on the left and right of the room, before finally nearing the entrance leading into the very interior itself. As she slid to a halt before the front door and spun around, she prepared for the King to halt, while she readied her own counterattack.
That was when his fist crashed into her stomach, resulting in a black flash of lightning, that even made Marie’s eyes roll to the back of her head. Withdrawing his knuckles still crackling with black electricity, the King watched the boxer fall onto one knee and start to… disintegrate.
His eyes widened. ‘A fake!’
That was when Marie’s bulky arms locked over his chest and lifted him into the air. Throwing her over his head, the King’s face bounced off the ground and leaked blood from the side of his mouth, until he finally stopped moving at the front of the steps leading to the throne. Rising, Divine gradually reopened his eyes, to reflect his merciless daughter approaching the King to finish the job.
That was when the third and final thunderclap resounded throughout the night. An inanimate, golden lightning bolt, destroyed part of the roof, traveled through the air and made its way back to the King—its target. On the path toward him was an obstacle. That being none other than Marie Barron herself. However, it wasn’t directly through her at all.
The limb, crackling gold and sputtering out gore, flew behind her and splat onto the floor, gradually forming a puddle of crimson fluid. Looking to her mutilated stub, the boxer chuckled. She directed her gaze back to the King, who was still hunched over, heavily breathing after sustaining her attacks.
She smirked. “Even after all those hits, you were still able to mutilate me this easily. Looks like I got more training to do, huh?”
The King nodded slowly. His arms gradually lowered and as he sharply inhaled, his once-closed eyes opened a second time to spot the form of his formidable daughter.
“My offer still stands. Your strength befits that of a crown, my daughter. If you come back to me—I will banish the Queen and step down as King. Let your rule as the Supreme with Fate’s Crown atop your head and me as your true father. We can be like… a family,” he said.
Even after being offered such a paradise, the uncaring stare plaguing her pupils didn’t fade. Only when she heard her brother’s voice did her head tilt with her hand moving to her ear.
“We’re done over here. Prepare for extraction.”
“Acknowledged.” Marie looked back at her father. “Sorry, dad, but I’ll become a princess my way. Thanks for the offer though. I guess maybe you do still care.”
A heavenly gateway opened behind her. Turning toward it, she took one step in and without looking back, was consumed by the light. Ending up on the other side, she walked into the vault missing a door. However, the portal was still open behind her.
“Got what we needed?” she asked.
“Without a hitch,” her brother said, walking past her.
Her eyes followed his back. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he was engulfed by the illumination and ended up—inside the King’s throne room. Eyes shaking violently, Barron stared upon his deceased son’s breathing body as Uriel leaned on the edge of the angelic portal.
“Y-you’re…”
“In the flesh. Be sure to remember me, old King. I am the one destined to change Fate.”