Pressed for time, Karma raced across a barren wasteland at full speed, coming up on a monolithic archway that seemingly connected nothing to nowhere. Not bothering to investigate, he shot straight through.
It's a portal. If you want people to stop and marvel at it, be more original.
**
An army of ash-grey armored cavalrymen dotted the skies, upheld by pale-blue pegasi. Behind their hundred-strong curtain, their sovereign sat unmoving on an iron throne, shielded by dusky barbicans.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Karma heedlessly entered the perilous realm, his footsteps backdropped by beating wings.
4/5 of my Request entitles me to either four disparate linearity substitutes or 16-fold acceleration.
Karma craned his neck backward, basking in the eve of war.
Force begets force. Quantity begets quantity.
First linearity-thread: Divination.
Perception became variables—initial conditions in a probabilistic equation. To divine was to solve. To solve was to understand.
By understanding the present, Karma grasped the future.
By manipulating the present, Karma defined the future.
The cavalrymen urged their mounts forward, their forerunners equipped with tapered steel lances.
Second linearity-thread: Flame.
Pale-white flames enwreathed Karma in their infernal embrace, ordaining him anathema to the frigid night.
His adversaries galloped through the dismal sky, scant breaths away from commencing their onslaught.
Third linearity-thread: Slice.
Azure blades extended from his fingers, grating against the brick-inlaid terrain.
Brutal stabs pincered Karma, trailed by a cacophonous stampede.
Fourth linearity-thread: Speed.
An azure-crimson comet barreled through a line of pegasi, ending with Karma's scything blades inches away from a shield-bearer. Two burning gashes split the knight in three.
Unhindered.
Tragic whines and disemboweled soldiers plunged to the earth—the pair at Karma's front, and five others in his wake.
Planting his foot on the pegasus's ribcage, Karma launched to his next foe in a beam of white. Like light trapped between mirrors, he ping-ponged through the mythic horde, weaving a fractal of carnage.
Quick to adapt, the un-felled remainder steered their mounts into a trio of tight phalanxes. Far from being deterred, Karma accelerated in his original path, slamming into a pair of interlocked lances.
The cavalrymen braced their parry through aerial retreat, baiting him deep into their formation. In an immediate follow-up, a gauntleted fist landed square on Karma's jaw, snapping his head to its side.
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Blood spilled from his lips, the encompassing blaze and dual-wielded sabers conspicuously absent.
All had been exchanged for an invisible membrane.
The cavalry's king barked a harried order for retreat, a perspective few already mid-stride.
Earthly Domain: Karmic Collapse.
"Too late."
Open.
Murky blackness entombed the phalanx whole, uncovering the luminous threads inherent to all beings.
Except one.
Snap-snap-snap.
Men and beasts struggled in vain, betrayed by the entangling webs of their own design.
Their floundering grew ponderous, seized by constricting, woolen-gold coffins.
Karma, laughing madly through cracked and bloody lips, decisively lofted his hand in mock salute.
"Collapse."
Crunches, splatters, screams, and cries blended in an orchestra of visceral despair. It was arithmetic made physical; numerical division made bodily decomposition. Flesh crumbled into biological material into basic matter.
Only when small could become no smaller were the ashes forfeited—prizes for their un-maker.
For what could be smaller than spiritual energy?
And who more deserving of tribute than the alchemist responsible?
Outside the stygian sphere, the uncaptured phalanxes broke ranks, hammering Karma's Earthly Domain on all sides. Armaments slashed and stabbed, invariably sapped of momentum.
Until they severed empty air.
**
Scarcely a dozen of the original hundred-manned cavalry prowled tangent to Karma.
No longer did they charge him; their valor had been routed, torched, and dismembered.
Cravens. Embers of a disparaged glory. A dying wick soon to be extinguished.
"Yes ... embers, that'll do."
Three of his linearity-threads were reassigned to acceleration, working in tandem to realize Karma's masterpiece. His hands cupped empty air above his stomach, amassing a marble of incandescent flame. Paradoxically, the bead shrank inversely to its intake, akin to an embryo trapped in a womb of stone.
If my calculations are correct, then the limit of compression is—unintuitively—the limit of divergence. By denying empty space, I'm forcing the flame-attuned spiritual energy to combine with itself.
A yellow-orange glow shone through Karma's palms, melting his skin like candle wax.
And, like any siblings, they really do not appreciate being forced together.
So they react.
Quite violently.
Karma, activating his Earthly Domain's defense mechanism, ducked into a turtle position. Rather than flee, he placed himself directly between the mass of instability and the—now-risen—king.
And promptly lost consciousness.
**
Cough—"I shouldn't have done that," choked Karma, climbing out of the king's splattered entrails. The throne room lay in charred pieces several paces behind him, separated by a human-shaped tunnel roughly seven pegasi deep.
"You shouldn't have been able to in the first place," grumbled Anlîthëma. "Do you even know what you just did?"
"I haven't the slightest clue."
"Nor do I. I've lived for nearly ten millennia, and I can't venture a single justification for that much power output below the Embryonic Inquisitor realm."
Karma wiggled his brows. "Jealous?"
"Oh, quit your jeering. I was awake, you know. I saw what you did."
"Ah? Are you questioning my creativity?"
"Are you bragging about using yourself as ballista ammunition? Admittedly, I'd never seen someone use their Earthly Domain-covered head as a spear-tip to bludgeon someone to death."
Bent over and fishing through purplish intestines, Karma asked, "Are you trying to provoke a sense of humiliation or pride? I'm definitely feeling more of the latter."
"I've yet to decide. On one hand, the act of launching yourself using the most violent combustion I've ever seen is worthy of praise. On the other hand, fatally headbutting a realm-dweller while unconscious ..."
Karma grabbed a rock-like chunk from the puddle of gore.
"I vanquished a kingly foe asleep, and you're torn on whether that's an admirable feat?"
"I'm far past desensitized to your monstrous cheating inclinations. Nowadays, it's your many, many flaws that act as my primary source of entertainment."
"Fair enough," said Karma, shaking the gunk off a corked ceramic bottle. "I'll drink to that."
Gulp.
Of course, Schrödinger's Crucible didn't let Karma drink its Implicant Dew, having whisked away the glossy liquor the instant it left its container.
"Was that—"
"Shut up, shut up, shut up! I'll—"
"Flay me?"
Karma's bloodthirsty eyes snapped to his spatial pouch.
Anlîthëma rolled away in acquiescence.
**
Drenched in sweat and curled in the fetal position, Karma manically clutched at his hair, bellowing at the top of his lungs.
"WHAT.
"IS.
"HAPPENING.
"TO.
"ME?
"FUUUCKK."
**
He should be too busy to scry my thoughts ...
Anlîthëma wagered a peek at Karma's ongoing ordeal.
"GET OUT OF ME!"
Hah, this reminds me of young Monk Gyatso's novel theory regarding good and bad deeds. What did he call it again?
Karmic Retribution.