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“We never bring up how she knows what she knows, capiche?”
Bao, Aisha, and the Twins nodded while Mike, Juan, and Alexander grumbled.
“There aren’t any half-measures in this; you disagree, you leave the group.”
Mike, incensed, got up in my face.
“Now, listen here—”
Just when would he learn that calling someone a bitch was a patently-bad idea? Especially so when everyone had superhuman abilities that defied reality itself.
////
Entity: [Omniglot//Moonscorched]
Sphera: [Golgotha], [Luna], [Empyrea]
Para-class: [Red-Aphelion]
Esoterica: [Atlas]
Hubris: [Titanomachia]
Reliquary: [-]
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Esoterica: [Atlas]
Ignosis: [The esoterica of {Atlas} derives from the sphera of {Golgotha}; establishes a commissural tract in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of strength to the platonic ideals of lifting and bearing weight.]
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Hubris: [Titanomachia]
Ignosis: [The hubris of {Titanomachia} derives from the sphera of {Empyrea} and {Luna}; establishes an antipodal ligature in the implanted entity matrix between the esoterica of {Atlas} to the platonic ideals of weightlessness and freefall.]
////
I had the entirety of a tectonic-plate’s mass as a fulcrum to put my ego against, and all I needed to do was to press the lever down. Strength surged through me, and I felt my muscles and bones gain the weight of a titan. It took no small amount of self-control to have restraint in this state.
My hands clapped together fast enough to ignite the air in between my palms into plasma and thunder.
That shut up Mike as fell on his ass twice on the same god-damned day. His blood-splattered jacket was now scorched at the chest.
I hoped that the second show of strength would finally teach him a lesson but I doubted it—that kinda brain-rot wasn’t so easily excised; when I dormed with Mike, I’d seen him read Ayn Rand and like it.
I returned to hopping between feet so that my esoterica was canceled-out by its hubris. So long as only a single foot touched the ground, I wouldn’t suddenly become a demi-god. Thankfully, we were under the lip of an underground parking lot (as we were wont to do) rather than an enclosed space, else I would’ve deafened the lot of them. They’d thought I had avoided direct combat ‘cause of fear—my hopping did look like a nervous tick and all—but it was out of an abundance of caution.
I rather liked the earth’s crust where it currently was.
“Capiche? You saw the convulsions just as I did. I’m not putting her through that again.”
It took him a minute but Mike nodded sullenly. I looked at the rest of them and got much faster responses than that of the quarterback.
“Okay. Let’s establish a whatchamacallit—” I snapped my fingers, eureka instead of thunder this time. “A watch-shift or whatever it’s called. I’ll take first watch. Aisha, you take second…”
////
Mama Mia was still sleeping and so I had to take her tenuous place as leader while the waxing gibbous moon took to the sky. The [Termina]’s five eyes wept tears of quicksilver, the gargantuan drops nearing the surface slower than earth-standard gravity—[Mercuria]’s anomalies ate through cars, any metal, really, growing bigger by the minute as a slow wave of inexorable death.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
I morbidly wondered what would happen if they got into a volcano and reached the planet’s core through a gap in the plates. Would it be game-over, just like that?
For now, whenever I connected to the earth, bearing its weight on the soles of my feet, I felt no significant difference in mass. That had become a habit ever since the ‘clipse. My intuitive sense through a connection worked only on contiguous bodies—certain buildings were not considered part of the earth while some merged with [Golgotha] like ticks on her skin.
We kept to the low ground underneath a stone outcrop, two kilometers from the ocean and four from the city, in what amounted to an anemic forest that was dead all around without sunlight. Mary had told us on the first day of the Apoch, in no uncertain terms, to avoid any metal like the plague during a Weeping-Moon. We even threw away our cellphones, dead weight that they were; the ‘clipse was accompanied by an electromagnetic pulse of some kind, though that was just my two cents.
A silver tsunami crawled along what was once called Basstown, submerging buildings only to leave concrete husks in its wake. The Mercurian anomalies were like reverse scarabs, caring only for the metal bones instead of the stone flesh of the once-bustling metropolis.
Eventually, something had to give; a wayward blob of quicksilver found its way towards us.
////
Entity: [Amalgam]
Sphera: [Golgotha], [Luna], [Mercuria]
Para-class: [Red-Aphelion]
Esoterica: [Magnum-Opus]
Hubris: [Achluophobia]
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Esoterica: [Magnum-Opus]
Ignosis: [The esoterica of {Magnum-Opus} derives from the sphera of {Luna} and {Mercuria}; establishes a commissural tract in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of self to the platonic ideal of metal.]
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Hubris: [Achluophobia]
Ignosis: [The hubris of {Achluophobia} derives from the sphera of {Luna} and {Golgotha}; establishes an antipodal ligature in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of mass to the platonic ideals of darkness and movement.]
////
The encroaching wave of death was a singular anomaly, the avatar of an Outsider.
Mary had cautioned us to run away from anything with the red-aphelion para-class—those had an exception for every rule, powers ranging from paltry red-class all the way to the penultimate step on Jacob’s Ladder, the universal mean that you could measure an entity against.
I knew very well the power of a red-aphelion class esoterica given that I had one.
The achilles’ heel of the [Amalgam] was that it needed to expend its metallic mass to be able to move, doubly so because of the darkness. It was only because of its hubris hamstringing itself that the Outsider would not devour the entire earth in a single night.
The trick to surviving a Weeping Moon was to see it less as a battle and more as a marathon and quite literally, too; running’s a better use of your energy.
But, you see, there’s a fly in the pudding: we didn’t have anywhere to run to. Mary hadn’t planned on us going back instead of crossing the ocean, so she hadn’t given details on the geography of Basstown—there was no need in her mind.
I pulled up my sleeves, set my feet firmly against the earth and told the nine schmucks behind me: “Cover your ears, this is gonna be loud.”
[Atlas] was too much power to be able to properly wield; it made me into a ye-olde musket that couldn’t fire in the rain, that would dislocate your shoulder with its recoil.
I kicked-off the ground and the world moved around me as I stood still, a thunderclap left in my wake. The concept of strength was malleable; it could mean many things. The concept of freefall as well.
I wasn’t weightless in the air but instead a bullet with the world on its shoulders. So long as I didn’t lose altitude or get a chill in my stomach, I wasn’t vulnerable.
If the Outsider was surprised, it didn’t show on its non-existent mug as I barreled into it. My hands touched mass and I cocked back a fistfull of stuff faster than sound, the fluid dynamics creating laced waves of force that shunted away from my elbow like God Himself had loaded His shotgun.
I punched; a hurricane erupted from my outspread finger-tips.
Though the ignosis of my esoterica hadn’t specified, I could confine to where I applied my paradoxical strength.
I sent the goddamn flood back up into the moon, far and away.
Weightlessness finally took hold and robbed me of my strength as my horizontal vector became vertical, altitude beginning to drop.
As I tumbled ass-over-kettle in the air, I couldn’t help but grin. As my legs bent in ways they shouldn’t upon touching back down to earth, I laughed. Even as my shins broke open, boneshards erupting from their mangled heap, I rasped in jubilation.
The bruises were gonna be a sonuvabitch, that was for sure.
////
Eriu-Catholics were known for swearing worse than sailors—made sense given they were cut from the same sail. The Emerald Isle was said to be born from a wayward curse of God Himself.
“Hell take me, chew me, and spit me out, I was not expecting that.”
Seeing as the rest were still stupefied in awe, I ran towards the general direction of wherever Noah fell.
“Bao, Eli, take care of Mary. Mike, come with me.”
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