Despite the small hope I’d harbored that my Will would be able to dominate the Mindscape, Orpheus proved me wrong. In fact, he proved my assumptions to be wildly wrong, and he did so at breakneck speed.
Literally.
Orpheus was on me again, his hands as large as my face and gripping either side of my head. Crunch. He twisted his hands, and my neck snapped. Again.
The progenitor let my incorporeal form drop to the ground before he put a bit of distance between us, looking quite bored. A moment later, I was back on my feet, the illusion of my neck back to the angle it was supposed to be. The Mindscape was an interesting phenomenon. While the inhabitants fought with their Will and their minds at stake, the way they fought with their Will was represented through the physical actions of their soul bodies.
“Aren’t you getting tired of this?” Orpheus asked, a hammer materializing in his previously bare hands. He leaned casually against a giant boulder my skull had previously been shattered against, some dried blood scraping off the stone as his shoulder brushed against it.
I stretched and rotated my neck around so that it cracked a few times. “Not particularly. Rather, I am rather relieved. The kink in my neck is gone. I give you my thanks for the treatment, Progenitor.”
Orpheus sighed. “Your will is tough, but it is not yet strong enough to match mine.”
“We’ll see,” I said, continuing to stretch out my neck, which was in an incredible amount of pain. “Perhaps you will tire.” No words were spoken in response. I blinked, and he was suddenly in front of me, hands reaching out to snap my neck for the fifteenth time.
Predicting the way he’d reach out toward me based on the previous approaches, I threw myself to the side the moment he vanished from my peripheral. I may not have been able to see him move, but there was only one place he’d go for. My throat.
I tucked my chin and entered a roll as my body flew through the air. Before I landed, a dull, blinding pain erupted from my ribs as Orpheus smoothly shifted his attack from a single-handed grab to arching his new warhammer upward into my side.
Without hitting the ground, I was again blown into the air. He allowed me to simply slam into a nearby boulder and didn’t bother to approach as I struggled back to my feet.
His frown deepened when I flashed him a grin. I’d dodged him that time. He had missed me. I had predicted his movement, and he knew it.
“It won’t matter. I will simply change my approach if you start guessing.” The hilt of his hammer bounced against his shoulder like it weighed nothing. Which, I supposed, it didn’t really since we were in my Mindscape.
I shrugged. “That may be. However, you will, eventually, run out of variations. And I will learn your preferences. Your habits. And then I will find your weakness.” I bent my knees and dropped back down into a fighting stance, hands at the ready and light on my feet. “You may be more powerful than me, but you will never be able to break my mind.”
Orpheus groaned in frustration as the glint of a blue screen flickered in his gaze. “Yes, yes. I know.” He turned to face me with an annoyed expression. “It was a well-played trick. I cannot defeat you, not truly, because if I break your mind to forcefully end your Mindscape, there will be no mind left to raise into a Sire. Still, that does not mean I cannot bring you close to the breaking point. When you’re begging for death, maybe then you will see the future the System is presenting you with.”
I felt the ire inside me rage at the promise. It should have been a threat. He was threatening to beat me to death. Yet, it didn’t feel like a threat. It felt like Orpheus was stating a simple fact. A promise that he would beat me within an inch of breaking. That he would then let me heal and do it all over again. That he would slowly and painfully break my mind since breaking my incorporeal body within the Mindscape was proving impossible. Or, at least, overly arduous. I let out a snort.
All I needed to do was keep my senses open. Learn. Adapt. Grow. This was as much training as it was a death battle, though that was likely not Orpheus’ intention.
A proper warrior, her father had told the young Queen candidates as they lay on blood-soaked dirt, exhausted and surrounded by a field of corpses of their own making, “They will take everything as a lesson. They will learn even when it seems like they will not live through the experience. The moment you stop learning, stop adapting, is the moment you die."
When Orpheus’ warhammer slammed into my chest, I did not scream. When he crushed my skull, I did not wince. Even when Orpheus morphed his hammer into small daggers and slowly cut me piece to piece before allowing me to heal, I did not show him weakness. Each time I healed and each time I stared him down, letting him know the pain he inflicted on me only stirred the fire within me. Pain would not destroy my mind.
It only fueled my infinite rage.
I wasn’t sure how long passed in my Mindscape. Weeks? Months? Years? It hardly mattered. Time in a Mindscape was fractions of reality. Either way, the Nothingness had long since devoured my innate worry about time. What difference did the time make when one had already spent endless time in the Nothingness?
No, I was single-mindedly focused on one simple goal—predicting Orpheus’ next move.
For the longest time, I could not read him beyond two moves. The variations he had mastered were too great and numerous. But as time passed by, I learned which ones he favored. His first move was always a quick approach, swiftly followed by a movement shift ability that allowed him to reposition as needed. Once I’d pinned that down, I tested it. Over and over again, desperately trying to not let him catch on to what I’d learned.
I found that his repositioning was limited to shifting attack patterns. It did not lend itself to defensive maneuvers. Once I was positive my counter would work against his general movements, I set it into play.
It was my first time striking Orpheus. When he moved to reposition into a swing of his axe after I’d dodged the initial blow, I quickly moved inside his reach. Orpheus tried to shift his weight into an upward swing instead of a brutal horizontal cleave, but the handle was locked in place by the hard bone of my shin.
The surprised expression on his face filled me with satisfaction as I, at last, absolutely buried my fist into his skull with the full force of my Will. His head snapped back and twisted with the familiar crunch of a broken neck.
I stumbled forward into his limp body from the force of my blow and nearly tripped over it. Unlike Orpheus, who had allowed me time to heal each time so that he could keep inflicting pain without completely breaking my mind, I wouldn’t allow him time to heal. Pushing my Core beyond its capacity, I circulated every ounce of heart energy through me and released it throughout my Mindscape along with the most powerful burst of Will I could muster.
My authority over the Mindscape manipulated the illusionary mental world, twisting the space and environment around Orpheus into a coffin filled with sharp stakes of my energy and will. With another push of my authority, the coffin Orpheus’ broken body now lay in snapped shut and impaled him with the thousands of little luminescent stakes that shone with my heart energy until the moment the coffin closed and I couldn’t see them.
The Mindscape went silent, but I did not release it. I debated releasing it for a moment but decided not to until the System admitted its defeat. If Orpheus’ Will and mind had not been broken, I was worried the return to reality would release his mind from the coffin. Based on the information I’d learned from Orpheus, I was wholly uncertain whether the golden chains binding him were actually stopping the progenitor from breaking free or whether he was simply choosing to remain chained.
I sank to the ground, sitting on a blood-covered boulder as I waited for the System’s message. Wet blood squished underneath me when I sat. As disturbing as that felt, every rock in the vicinity was similarly drenched in gore. At least the Mindscape wasn’t portraying brain remnants on this rock.
And I was too tired to manipulate the Mindscape into cleaning itself. Or walking somewhere else.
I leaned back, propping myself up against the hard stone, and stared up at the three moons in the sky. It took me a while longer to catch my breath enough that I could speak coherently. “Hey, System? I believe my victory is now only a matter of waiting. It would be convenient if you would surrender before I am necessitated to waste more time.”
The System did not answer. Not even a single ding or beep. I understood what it was likely thinking... assuming an entity like the System thought at all. It was likely waiting for a complete result. For a mind to break or surrender.
With Orpheus locked in a coffin that would constantly rip apart his soul body during its recovery, he would be prevented from fully forming again. It would be an eternal loop of dying again and again. A very deserved loop considering the number of times he’d pummeled me. He had asked me to kill him. Multiple times. In a way, I was obliging his request.
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I smirked at nothing, intending it to be directed at the System, and allowed myself to sag down the boulder in relief. I knew I shouldn’t. Never relax until there is confirmation of death, my father had always warned. But I didn’t have the strength. My Will was pulled thin, my mind weary, and my Core drained. If Orpheus burst from the coffin somehow, I wouldn’t be able to put up any defense regardless of whether my guard was up or not.
If the Progenitor escaped, I would have to find a different way to defeat him. However, I’d cross that bridge when it started to burn. For the moment, I relaxed and tried to allow my mind to recover from its beating.
I was very lucky, I knew. If Orpheus had truly intended to kill me or break my mind, even in his current weakened state, it would have taken him a fraction of a second. Probably not even that long if I was being completely honest, and he would not have needed to move his soul form. Within the first few deaths, it had become painfully obvious that Orpheus could have simply and easily crushed me with the pressure of his Will alone.
How the Kingdom of Cael had captured Orpheus was beyond my understanding. The strength of Orpheus’ weakened Will still dwarfed mine. Not even the Demon Progenitor I’d defeated had eclipsed my Will to such an extent. In fact, mine had been nearly on par. It seemed like Orpheus had perhaps desired to be captured. To speak with me? To relay the System’s message to me? The extent of the Progenitor’s designs was unclear. Hopefully, he would die and it wouldn’t matter anymore.
While I continued to wait for the System to admit its defeat, I made my way over to the shallow river and started to wash my face. It was a useless act. The moment the Mindscape ended, my soul form would vanish and my mind would return to its physical body. But that didn’t mean I had to suffer dry blood cracking whenever I moved and wet gore from Orpheus’ skull sliding down my face and torso. I knelt and reached a hand into the water to scoop some into my face.
The water, even if fake, was cool as it washed over my face. My body relaxed and I could feel some of the blood being washed away. I wished the water could do the same for my utterly depleted core.
My heart leaped into my chest as a hand burst from the river reaching straight for my face. After the time spent practicing dodging Orpheus’ initial move, my reaction was instinctual. I dodged, tucking my chin and body into a roll as I smoothly rotated away from the lake and back on my feet.
I reached into my reserves to pull on energy or Will. Nothing responded and I cursed, unsurprised. Gritting my teeth I glared at the hand that gripped the river’s edge and began to haul a body up the river.
While readying myself for another eternity of being pummeled, a head peeked over the river’s edge and it was not Orpheus. It wasn’t even close to Orpheus. It was… me?
No, her eyes weren’t red and her hair was a darker shade of brown. The girl was also much smaller. Wait, I recognized her. It was me. The ‘me’ right after I transferred to Graedon. She even wore the torn, brown peasant clothes I'd originally worn when I came to in this new world.
“Lilliana?” I asked, my mouth dropping in pure disbelief. Could it be a trick? My eyes had just started to dart around for Orpheus when the girl spoke. Her voice was soft and seemed almost rusty, as if unused for a long period. Which, in a way, it hadn’t.
“We don’t have much time,” she said quietly, glancing toward where I’d buried Orpheus. “He’ll escape soon.”
“What? How do you know that? No, hold on. How are you even here?” More questions came to mind, and my mouth was quickly unable to keep up with the piling levels of confusion. Whatever answers I may have gotten were interrupted by a terrible trembling of the entire Mindscape. “Ashwash curse it,” I groaned. He was escaping.
“When I say to, I want you to close this realm,” Lilliana said, gesturing around herself. “I can’t do much for you even though you’ve done so much to keep me alive. But I can do this. My soul is nearly gone anyway.” The girl gave me a thin, gentle smile that was so different from my own that it completely changed her features. Or, maybe, it was my expressions and personality that distorted her body.
“What are you going to do?” I didn’t need to ask, not really. There was only one thing she could do in this situation, other than join me in a beating.
“Whatever you’ve done to strengthen yourself has also strengthened my own soul,” she explained. “We are the same person. But we’re also different. I… I don’t know how I know this but I know I can defeat him. I've been without the entire time. I know you have struggled. You've struggled so much to keep us alive.” Her small voice trembled, betraying her true feelings despite the resilience I saw in her eyes. “I can do this. We can do this.” She walked up to me and I didn’t back away, watching in awe as her small hands gripped my own. I realized I was in my original body, not Lilliana’s, so I towered over her. Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off the little girl who fought against her fear. In another time she may have grown to be a powerful entity in her own right. “Just promise me one thing.” In my exhaustion and general bafflement at everything happening, I simply nodded. “Kill the Baron and Morgana,” she hissed and I felt my heart energy stir at her vehemence. “For me. And for my mother.”
Again, I nodded.
Lilliana released my hands and ran over to where Orpheus was buried and sat on the shaking ground even as cracks spread like spiderwebs throughout the Mindscape.
“Not yet,” she said, closing her eyes and holding her hands together in what I could only believe to be a prayer.
I said nothing. Part of me didn’t want to allow Lilliana to do what she was going to do. I was the Queen. I protected what was mine and annihilated what threatened mine. And, wasn't she mine? She was a part of who I was now. My rage flared. Lilliana was mine. I would not allow Orpheus or the System to take what was mi-
As if sensing my thoughts, Lilliana opened her eyes and smiled. “You have been protecting me since I called out to you. Now, let me return it." She took a deep breath. "May we one day see each other again."
“That was quite surprising,” came Orpheus's voice, no longer bored or lazy. Instead, it was filled with malevolence, cold as frozen steel.
He was still deep in the earth of the Mindscape but sounded to be quickly rising. The instant he showed, Lilliana screamed, “NOW, LILITH!”
I snapped off the Mindscape just as a second, smaller Mindscape overlapped with mine and imploded around Lilliana and Orpheus.
The sensation of the transition was jarring, as if my very essence was being pulled through a narrow tunnel. I was back in my physical body, gasping for air and drenched in sweat. My surroundings slowly came into focus. The cold, sterile environment of the chamber in the Kingdom of Cael.
"Lilliana?" a voice called out, tentative and concerned. Dralos.
"I'm here," I managed to say, my voice hoarse. A headache painfully pounded inside my head as something ugly squirmed in my gut at the last, sad smile Lilliana had given to me.
Dralos' voice came low and gruff. Older than I remembered. "Did it work?"
I took a deep breath, feeling the weight of exhaustion settling over me once more. "I am not sure. The System has yet to respond. Orpheus... he might still be alive." Both of our heads snapped toward the body of Orpheus, which still hung limp in the cradle of his golden chains.
As if on cue, a faint chime echoed in the chamber, and a holographic display materialized before me. The System's message was brief, but it carried the weight of finality.
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: VICTORY CONFIRMED. ORPHEUS TERMINATED.]
[REWARD: You will soon be provided with a piece of the system. The Main System will not interfere with the split system.]
Relief and something close to sorrow washed over me in equal measure. Lilliana's final act had ensured our victory but at the cost of her life. Even though I had not even known she was alive within me, I now felt something empty in my core. As if something important was missing. The Baron and Morgana would both die. I would make sure of it.
I climbed to my feet from where I sat, a small amount of heart energy beginning to circulate. I didn't have time to labor over what had happened or what I had unknowingly lost. Or whether it was even lost. I didn't have the information and I was running out of time for my plan.
Nor did I have time to think about the cracks that had appeared in my Mindscape. I would deal with it later. I needed to continue moving forward.
The throbbing pain in my head intensified, but I buried the pain just like I had buried Orpheus. I was the Queen of Aedronir. People around me died. I killed whatever stood in my way, no matter what they were. People fought and died for me. That’s just how it was.
That’s… how it was. How it should be!
Something came over me and under my breath, I whispered, "We will have our vengeance, Lilliana." Dralos shot me a confused look, but I ignored the Draconian. The fire of vengeance igniting within my core as I spoke the words.
The battle was not over, but with Lilliana's sacrifice, we had gained a crucial victory and I needed to cement it. I didn’t know whether Orpheus’ death, assuming he truly was dead and not merely “defeated” like the Demon Progenitor had been, would cancel the System’s hold on the slaves already embedded with the System. If the System was still running in them, I needed to move quickly before the Administrators caught wind of my movements and blocked me from obtaining my slave army.
"I need to understand what I have gained from this victory," I commanded Dralos, stumbling over to the cushioned chair Darmond had used. "Prepare the slaves in our section for me. I want them armed by the time I'm ready. Don't kill Chella just yet. I made a mistake telling you to kill Darmond before we figured out where Radford Coldrun is. I want to... speak with him."
"As you wish, my Queen." Dralos bowed low and made to depart.
"How long was I gone for," I asked as Dralos reached the still-opened door to the slime tunnels.
The Draconian's lips pursed in thought for a moment. "My Queen, it is my belief you were in combat with the Sire for somewhere near 3-4 hours."
I nodded and dismissed him. That was much longer than I'd planned for when I'd begun my attack on the Colosseum's slavers. Fortunately, if no one had attempted to find me, then they were likely under the belief that Darmond was still doing his experiments. But that wouldn't last forever. I doubted it would last past the hour considering the Cael King had acknowledged my nobility. Even if I was a prisoner of war and some sort of disrespect was intended toward the Lysorian King by keeping me in the slave dungeons, there would be a limit. I knew from experience nobility despised allowing common-blooded individuals to feel superior to those with noble blood, regardless of how they felt about the other noble. Someone would come looking at some point, even if only out of a misplaced ego trip.
I closed my eyes and turned inward just as a new System message dinged. The expected blue screen and white text never appeared.
What appeared in front of me was a heavy, pitch-black screen adorned only by scribbled texts in blood-like ink.
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: Congratulations on your victory, Awakened.]
[REWARD: You have been awarded your own System based on the color of your soul]
[MAIN SYSTEM WARNING: Systems were not meant to be controlled. A System being controlled by a Host will fight back. If the System is not kept under absolute control, the Host will face Corruption.]