Chapter 358 - The Stifled Sword II

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Dear Diary,

We finally managed to get out of the weird country with all of the Sunaks. I can’t believe there are actually roads! And really good ones too! Master says that the people here in Moros are really unpredictable and that we need to be careful.

All the ones we met were really nice, but apparently, they can get really violent really fast, and there are always a whole bunch of wars and stuff.

Ms. Olga says we’re almost there. I didn’t realize, but we’ve already been out on the road for two whole months! I miss mom and dad even more now, but I’m really excited too. I can’t wait to see what Ms. Olga’s home is like.

Lia

___

A room at the local inn could not be secured. Though the Cadrian army had evacuated much of the city ahead of the conflict and spread all sorts of propaganda, the lack of board was not any fault of theirs. The local merchants came flooding back into town as soon as the northlanders’ ships departed. A few heartbeats later and it was back to business as usual. Though some parts of the city had ultimately been destroyed, the Cadrians won handily enough to prevent the damage from spreading. It spanned only three of the seventy-odd blocks between the city’s two ends.

And though Claire and her companions had clearly been a part of the problem, the locals did not brand them as criminals. They cared little for the conflict, in spite of the resulting damage. It was simply a part of the local culture. Skarnia’s nobles had their wallets fattened by the merchants’ taxes, and the local lord was happy to cover the reconstruction and compensate the individuals affected for any items lost in the conflict.

It was not just insurance that drove their decision, but also an increase in profit. The particularly savvy had pedalled a mix of magnifying tools, food, and drinks to sate the curiosities and appetites of the many interested in the unscheduled event; it had practically devolved into a city-wide party.

So why then would Claire and her companions be stranded?

The answer was as simple as it was measurable. Despite having observed and processed the national zeitgeist, they lacked the one thing that the locals cared most about.

Money.

They were dead broke.

That wasn’t to say that they had no assets to their names. Technically, they still had their wagon and the six turberi responsible for pulling it, and Claire suspected that there were likely a few coins to be scrounged if they sifted through all the items placed therein. But it only accounted for a small portion of their resources. The party’s wallet was in Chloe’s hands. By kidnapping her, the enemy had inadvertently frozen their financial accounts.

There wasn’t much that they could do for cash. They had a few dead birds stashed in Sylvia’s tail, but none of the merchants were looking to accept them. The Cadrians had missed the opportunity to take in their prey; every last soldier had been forced to evacuate as soon as the fox’s spell was cast, and consequently, there was a sudden influx in the supply of high-level birds. There were more of them on the ground than the local craftsmen could meaningfully process; the excess would only decay and go to waste.

Though certainly annoying, the lack of shelter was ultimately a minor inconvenience. The fox was already out of the bag, so Sylvia slapped something together as they ventured beyond the city’s limits. The building itself was nothing special, just a quick copy-and-paste of the home they had in Vel’khagan. Lana and Krail were appalled by the display of power, but feeling too tired to care, Claire ignored their impressions, wandered upstairs, and planted her face in bed.

Knowing that the home was fake did nothing to stop her from basking in the familiar scents and sensations. The terms of its existence were irrelevant. The shop was technically just an illusion as well, but it was powerful enough that it may as well have been real. At the very least, there hadn’t existed a soul in Vel’khagan that had ever doubted its presence.

She was asleep before the count of three, with Sylvia still in her arms and half-smothered into the sheets. On a typical day, she would have retained the ability to feel the fox’s fluff, but all sensations were stolen without a moment’s delay. She wasn’t even given the opportunity to select her destination; she was falling through the darkness as soon as her eyes were closed.

She tried to steady herself. She spread her wings wide to absolutely no avail. She couldn’t stop falling; her chest didn’t respond when she reached for her key, and none of the usual doors appeared. But despite the abnormalities, she wasn’t the slightest bit concerned. She enjoyed her descent. Stretching her arms, she melded into the bottomless sky and became one with its wuthering turbulence. That was when the ground finally returned. It slowly formed beneath her, so far away that she could barely make it out. She expected to land as it drew closer, but her body passed right through, only for it to form again even further away.

Thrice it happened. She broke through every ground level she passed as her mind sank deeper into the darkest depths. And then, the falling suddenly stopped. The sensation of the rushing wind was suddenly taken away.

Faint lights appeared in her surroundings, gradually forming the floor into a room and the room into a house. And then, she finally saw him, sitting on his couch and floating behind it as always, both his body and his spirit staring at a brightly lit screen. Headhydra was with him. She was sitting on the couch, half asleep with a box tucked into her lap. She continued to manipulate its buttons even as her consciousness waned, her eyes as focused as she could make them.

The phantom waited for the whole building—the whole world—to be completed before he turned to face her. Gesturing silently at the sofa, he handed her a manipulation box so she could join their contest. And for a while, that was all they did.

Time flew by. The clock did a full circle, and then a second, and eventually a third. Only then, after his win streak was finally broken, did the phantom raise his voice.

“Why don’t you use your divinity?”

She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on the box, but his expression was clear. She could see it faintly reflected in the glowing screen. He wasn’t confused or disappointed. He was outright annoyed.

Though somewhat surprised, the lyrkress pointed to her body, namely the parts that had once been broken.

The phantom frowned. “Your ascension accounts for the broken state of your body.”

She blinked. She had certainly tried before, and it had always felt like she was burning.

“User error,” he said. “You’re focusing on all the wrong parts. It’s not supposed to hurt you.”

She tilted her head.

“I’ve used more divinity than you could fathom,” he said. “You are not handling it correctly.” The phantom floated over to the window, and taking a deep breath, drew open the curtains with a set of vectors. “And that’s why this world is so broken.”

It was the first time she saw the surroundings without distortion, the first time she saw the brick houses and the metal boxes as they were meant to be, and the first time that the realm was clear.

That was when she realized. The usual blur—the veil to which she had grown so accustomed—had vanished without a trace. It was precisely its nonpresence that led to her sense of trepidation.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She didn’t know what it was or where it came from, but something about the world filled her with wave after wave of mind-numbing dread. It was almost like she feared it, like the world itself was rejecting her and slowly pushing her away. There was a pulse every few seconds, a strange sense of distortion that ate away at her sense of self.

Suddenly, it was like she was back inside her father’s room, trembling as she awaited his deathly command. Like she was standing in front of her mother’s casket, forced to prepare her flesh to be eaten. Like she was staring down Lia’s body, right after she was stolen away. There was nothing left to live for. Her fingers were cold, cold as the blood that ran through her veins.

She wanted to curl up and die, to go somewhere far, far away where the world would never reach her, somewhere she could vanish and hide and be all alone.

The sensation lasted until the first crack formed. The splinter that rent the world in two finally gave her peace of mind, doing away with the pain like it was an unfathomable illusion.

She gasped for air despite having no need. She fell to her knees and shook as she wrapped her arms around them. It lasted until another splinter made its way across the world, another explicit crack that broke her vision in two.

Panic assailed her as the horror abated. She tried to piece the world back together, instinctively reaching out in an attempt to keep it from shattering. But the phantom placed his hands on her arms and slowly shook his head.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, softly.

Though hesitant, she eventually released her hands and observed another fissure.

“What do you think divinity is?” He undid the forces holding the curtains open and allowed for them to close. The cracks fixed themselves as he did, slowly filling themselves as her vision shifted back into its rightful place.

She shook her head once they were all repaired.

“Guess.”

Claire paused for a moment to imagine a strengthened soul.

“You’re a little off base,” he said. “Divinity is the beginning and end of all things.”

The answer was met with a blink and a tilt of the head.

“It’s the most malleable, accessible, and saveable form of energy,” he explained. “Divinity can do anything. You can use it however you want to perform whatever miracle you want. It’s a be-all-end-all that lets you change the world to your liking.”

Another blink.

“It’s the power to do what cannot be done, or more specifically, the fuel that enables it. It’s what allows magic to change states of matter and spontaneously generate what there never was. It’s what the system leverages to make something out of nothing and ensure that the world continues to run.”

Claire tilted her head and lifted her hands.

“That is correct. They don’t mix,” he said. “They can’t mix. Magic is its stripped-down, purified form, missing the necessary properties and components for it to be truly unbound. Ironically, those properties are what make it so hazardous and difficult to handle.” He paused for a moment to take a breath. Even though he was a ghost. “That’s why you don’t need your dysfunctional magic circuits. You have no need for something that you can make.”

The lyrkress’ eyes glimmered, but the ghost only deepened his frown.

“Unfortunately, no, that does not mean we can fix your circuits, nor does it mean you can continue to use your magic. Few are capable of such delicate work even leveraging more systematic means. You are still broken, and unless you’re incredibly careful and sparse with the magic you use, the healing process will still be pushed back and subsequently denied. But your divinity, you can use regardless. Let it seep into the cracks. Let it spread throughout your body. Cycling it, burning it, should do more than enough to improve your strength. But if you truly wish, then you can give it form, so long as you’re careful about the shape of your use.”

Claire furrowed her brow. She didn’t think that she could do it. She couldn’t form her true ice with her divinity alone.

“That would be where you’re mistaken.” He extended a hand towards her and drew a golden energy from the depths of her shard. It swirled around his fingers and gathered in the palm of his hand. “Divinity is malleable energy. And energy is simply a function of mass, distance, and time.”

There was a ticking sound as he crushed the golden mist between his fingers. It was quick at first, clicking nonstop like a magical engine, but each tick drained its speed, slowing it to a dead snail’s pace. Everything suddenly stopped. The curtains halted, the clock stopped ticking, and Headhydra’s avatar—which had been beating up hers while she looked away from the screen—froze in the middle of throwing a punch. The pause only lasted for a few seconds. The avatar resumed its attack after a brief delay, striking as usual, as if it had never been present at all.

“We don’t have much time,” he said. “The god of the hunt already has his eyes set on your back. There wasn’t much left to begin with, all the more reason for this to be done.”

The house vanished with a snap of his fingers. It was replaced by a wide open field filled with brilliant white flowers that reached as high as her knees. It almost seemed endless, stretching so far that she couldn’t see an end no matter where she looked. The petals didn’t move when she touched them, but they swayed gently in the wind, in the breeze that failed to billow through her hair even as it passed through her body.

Headhydra appeared to suffer from the same phenomenon. She was standing a fair ways away, all nine heads craned as high as they could go so she could observe the world from up above. The man’s body was the only thing that could touch the world. It was sitting naked, cross-legged in the flowers with their petals as the only tool to preserve his decency. He was even more dishevelled than his usual shaggy self, with everything from his beard to his chest hair to his arm hair so overgrown that he could almost pass for a sasquatch.

“And for that reason, you can’t leave this place until you’ve mastered it.” He turned his eyes to the nine-headed lizard. “Farenlight, if you could.”

Headhydra nodded her heads religiously. Divinity, bursts of red and black, began to swell from her core, extending from within and reaching into each of her limbs and necks. She grew to the size she had in life, but with far greater strength coursing through her veins. Claire could tell, not only from the supreme confidence she exuded but in the way her own body reacted. A primal fear welled up within her, albeit one that she quickly dismissed. It was just Headhydra. There was no reason to embrace her terror.

“Oh, and before we begin.” The phantom snapped his fingers and floated right in front of her face. “We should close the gap between your physical and spiritual forms.” Pain coursed through her the moment his finger touched her forehead. And the world was fractured again. But unlike the last time, it wasn’t the space itself that was torn. The crack in her vision moved with her head; it was impressed directly upon her body.

Looking down, she found them spread throughout, worming its way through her frame just like the breaks in her circuits. Worst of all was the way they felt. The liberation that had accompanied her journey into the abyss, the permanent aching she had finally escaped, had returned to haunt her again.

Claire met the man with a glare, but he remained unbothered.

“It’s only temporary,” he said, with a smile. “Good luck.”

No sooner than he spoke had she suffered an attack. Headhydra closed the distance between them and forced their bodies to collide. It shouldn’t have mattered much. She didn’t bite. It was just a tackle. And yet, the lyrkress’ arm was broken. Her joints and tendons were twisted out of shape and even the bone itself was snapped. It was the sort of injury that she had forgotten for two whole ascensions, the sort of injury she hadn’t expected to have to endure again.

She could tell exactly what she did.

Headhydra had channelled her divinity through her body on contact. She forced it into the existing weak points and ripped her body apart. Blood sprayed from the parts where her flesh was twisted open, even though there was no real flesh to be had.

Claire took a breath and raised her guard as the monstrosity approached her again. She tried channelling her own divinity throughout her body, in spite of the rampant pain. She forced it through right as the hydra wrapped around, but the second clash was hardly any more successful. She managed to prevent any further breakage, but she could feel the cracks that formed in her body, the cracks that spread throughout her frame.

Her divinity wasn’t enough on its own.

Even in equal quantity, it failed to match what the hydra delivered.

She couldn’t decode the reason, not even as the phantom heaved a tired sigh.

“Why do you insist on using that broken shell?” His disappointed words echoed through the back of her mind. “Who do you think you are? What do you think you are?”

The question only confused her, which prompted him to shake his head.

“If you want your divinity to shine, then do away with your petty disguise,” he said. “Lay your true form bare.”

He forcefully changed her body, stripping away the flesh that existed for make-believe.

“Show me, show this world the reason you deserve to reign.”

The words were pretty, almost easy to believe.

But Claire knew better than anyone.

The power he offered was not the power she sought.

Still, if he was refusing to release her, then she had little choice but to play along.