Rift Detected
Lukas didn’t know how to react. One moment Meynte held his gaze, a cold, calculating expression on Tanya’s youthful face, and the next, she had sidestepped to the left and—
—Vanished.
It wasn’t high speed motion. It wasn’t aeromancy or illusion or some twisted metamancy either. She didn’t even teleport or open a Well or anything remotely like that. She just took a step and went away, as if stepping behind a pole and never appearing on the other side.
Gone. Just like that.
Except in her case, ‘gone’ meant appearing exactly one feet away behind him.
Rift Detected
Predator Found You
His instincts taking over, Lukas instantly threw himself forward and twisted his body into a roll, evading half a dozen shards of frost that impaled the ground from behind him. Lukas felt a strange pressure right next to his ear and turned around with a flaming fist but Meynte was there, intercepting his punch by grabbing his wrist and OHMYGODTHEPAIN—
His arm practically exploded with shards of blood-coated frost, tearing out of his skin like upturned coffins. Lukas howled and dropped to the floor as Everfrost hungrily devoured the impossibly high amounts of lifeforce flowing through him, and frosting his blood itself, making his arm look like some demonic porcupine. He frantically shifted his focus away from his body to dull the pain and ruthlessly cut off lifeforce, shunting away Everfrost’s fuel.
But it was too late. His arm was gone.
Completely gone.
“AGUILAR!” Maude cried out, horror in her voice as he felt the Frost escaped his control, forcing its way out of the no-lifeforce boundary he had crafted around it with a noise not unlike tearing paper. Lukas took another deep breath, forcing himself to ignore the pain and remain calm and—
“BEHIND YOU!”
It was too late. Meynte appeared in front of Maude, and impaled a shard of Everfrost.
Right above the left kidney.
Maude croaked, her shell-shocked eyes staring at Meynte’s face, before her legs gave away, and she dropped down to the ground, spasming. Meynte stood her tallest, and put her arms on her waist, peering down at her spasming form.
“Disappointing!” He heard her mutter. “How such a frail creature overwhelmed my servant is beyond me.”
It took Lukas a lot of concentration to free up enough mental cycles to make word sounds with his mouth, but he wasn’t just going to lie down there.
“Unlike you, that frail creature doesn’t need petty tricks to win.”
Meynte spun around. Lukas had expected another blow, but instead, he found a small smile cruelly curved upon her lips.
“Guess you’re finally taking me seriously.” He gasped.
That smile again. “This body is frail, Soulcrafter,” she said, “I can only use so much before it tears apart.”
Soulcrafter. She was using that term again. At least this one sounded important. He had been called Mortal, Anomaly and Outsider before, but this one felt more significant than the others.
He wondered why.
Pushing himself against his remaining arm, he got up on his knees. Prophylaxis could work on his destroyed arm, eventually that is, but he didn’t have the time or the inclination to wait that long. The problem was, Meynte wouldn’t let him prepare. Only option, he’d need to keep her busy. And for that, he needed to bifurcate his mind.
Accessing Skill: Tachypsychia (Level-2)
THUMPPP!!
The burning pain from losing an arm subsided. The tension was gone. Or rather, his mind, his perception magnified itself exponentially. The entire universe shrank until it was just within his mind. Time slowed down, and where it was a second outside, it was easily half an hour within his mindscape.
All the time he needed to think, to plan and to execute.
His destroyed arm was barely an issue. Even Prophylaxis, slow as it was, could heal it back. It’d take him over a day with copious amounts of lifeforce, but it’d be done. Anything that was part of his physical body could be healed back using that function. The Everfrost slowly corrupting the rest of his flesh was a minor irritation, but exuding a reasonable amount of fire mana out of his body would flush it out.
The lifeforce he had just lost? That was more of a problem, but hardly unsalvageable. Shifting to a lifeforce-intensive prototype like the bylestyr would instantly double the production and get him up to snuff.
That only left the major problem. Meynte. Using Kinetomancy wasn’t an option. Best case scenario — he’d strike her and kill Tanya in that same strike. Worst-case scenario — she’d step through those micro-second rifts into the Haze and completely evade his strike, leaving him with only a sensory overload and a brain aneurysm if he was lucky. That left a limited number of options and none of them fitted the entire bill.
Naturally, he needed to look elsewhere for a better weapon. Or rather, the right monster.
Luckily, he had an entire arsenal of monsters saved up in his Anomaly-brain.
Accessing Monster Prototype Array…
Images flashed across his mind’s eye. They came by the dozens by the second, and then by hundreds. Most of them were discarded preemptively for their lack of versatility in the fight. His thoughts lingered on the Dranzithl, for its limitless regeneration. That would definitely repair his arm within seconds. But the dranzithl was an uncontrollable berserker and insanity was the last thing he needed right now.
His thoughts rested on Kirin, a creature that just had to yokai. Its speed was beyond anything he had ever seen, and could serve as a strong counter to Meynte’s ability to access the Haze. Several monsters came in with half a dozen passive skills that would buff him in ways, but none of them were a solid answer to his insane requirements. Really, why hadn’t he done this before?
Right. That was because he had developed an inferiority complex from seeing other powerful individuals like Tanya and Hreidmar and gone with the individual approach, a complete reversal to his original decision.
Inanna had always been in favor of developing the individual, and Lukas, out of sheer defiance, had gone the other route to develop the Anomaly in him. And then in a twist of irony, he had gotten so sentimental about her sacrifice, that he had changed tracks to develop the individual within him.
Inanna couldn’t have put it better.
— In your relentless trials to gain what you seek, you’ve forgotten a very simple truth. One that is the bedrock of your existence —
He was a world.
Soulcrafter, Meynte had called him. And only Omphaloi had the power to craft souls. And what were Omphaloi if not worlds?
Meynte was a world-eater. He was a world.
Meynte was the End of Potential. He was its Creator.
This was never Lukas Aguilar’s battle. This was the battle of a World against its predator. A world that had all the skills it needed to achieve that victory. But even now, Lukas was trying to select a particular prototype to solve his problem. To be his miracle.
I’m such an idiot.
Warmonger Protocol Active
Safety Off
THUMP! Thump! Thump!!!!
“Ah,” he heard Meynte whisper, her hands crossed behind her back. “If only the others had possessed such determination.”
“The others?” He asked.
The smile deepened. If she wanted to kill him, she could have done it a hundred times already. But she didn’t. She was playing with him. She wanted to see what he could do, what his limits were. Her destroying his arm was little more than a small experiment. She was his mad scientist and he was her guinea-pig.
Well, this guinea-pig had seen the world outside the laboratory. It was time the scientist knew that.
“Say, that vanishing technique you use,” said Lukas, now standing up. The frost had cauterized his arm, leaving a stump just below the elbow. Prophylaxis was working on it, but it would take time, and he had alternative options in mind.
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Meynte cocked her head.
“You’re accessing the Haze, aren't you? The Ikai realm. Everyone thinks that the Haze overlaps the real world only at certain spots which they call Wells. But that’s not true, is it? The Ikai is everywhere, overlapping the real world at every single point. And if you know how, then you can straddle the line between worlds, wandering from one existence to another as easily as walking through open doors.”
“So…” she murmured. “You know. I’m not sure if anyone told you this, but for an Outsider, you’re dangerously well-informed.”
“I try to keep up with stuff,” said Lukas. “Knowledge is power and all that.”
“That it is, that it is,” she murmured, closing her eyes as her body swayed slightly, as if dancing to an absent wind. “Tell me, Soulcrafter,” she whispered. “Were you speaking truth? Are you the one that keeps the Cruelest Winter at bay?”
Ah. Of course. That would have definitely held her attention.
Good for him.
Accessing Puppeteer Protocol
Reforging Accessory Heteromorph
Blob was in dire need of an upgrade if it was to count for something. And he needed Meynte to give him the time to do exactly that.
Lukas just smiled. For what use were words when silence was enough.
“I see,” said Meynte, exhaling. “That complicates matters. Tell me, Soulcrafter, should you die, would that mean Fimbulwinter would surge back within this frail form?”
It wouldn’t. He wasn’t the one sealing Fimbulwinter away. It was Inanna’s spell, empowered by her divinity. While he was reasonably sure he could undo it, it would possibly remain even after his demise.
But Meynte didn’t need to know that.
Accessing Monster Prototype: Dranzithl
Accessing Skill: Regeneration
Just a few more minutes. He could feel the lifeforce within him double, then triple and so on. He added anomalous energy into the mix to speeden up the process.
“Of course it would,” Meynte spoke up suddenly. “Silly me! The death of the caster would define the end of the spell. I cannot fathom the intricacy of a mortal spell that can hold back a taboo, but I have never come across a soulcrafter either….”
She met his gaze.
“You are right. I, the Glacier Queen, took Fimbulwinter out of its frozen heart in Hvergelmir, allowing it a second chance to manifest in this Universe. But have you wondered, why is Fimbulwinter dead set against me?”
He had, but not in that exact perspective. He had been too overwhelmed at being privately addressed by a Taboo manifesting as his friend’s avatar, while trying to figure out how to stop a ghost from possessing Tanya and taking over her. He had never addressed the issue of why Fimbulwinter wanted Tanya to be in control and not Meynte, the original wielder of its power.
“Makes you wonder, does it not?” asked Meynte. “That power that I stole from the heart of Niflheim, that power that made me Empress. That Taboo that resurfaces in every single one of my descendants. That Taboo fights me. Do you know why?”
Lukas shook his head.
“Because I know what it is. What it truly is. What it will do to the Universe when unleashed.”
Lukas stilled. “It would take the world back to the Formless Infinity. The Void. It would—”
“End everything in existence,” said Meynte. “Even the Yokai.”
That made a lot of sense. At the same time, it raised even more questions.
“Then why did you…” He began, only to freeze, as Meynte did something that truly terrified him.
She smiled. And it was genuine.
“Hubris,” said Meynte, a bittersweet expression on her face. “Little did I fathom what it was I was Ascending with, Soulcrafter. And when I realized it, it was already too late. There is a reason why Fimbulwinter was trapped within Hvergelmir. It serves a purpose in the grand scheme of things. But I, in my foolishness, took with me a fraction of it. A fraction that contained in it, the power of the End, a devourer so vast and infinite that even my own soul couldn’t take it. Before I could act, it tore into my soul, corrupting it, fashioning an avatar that co-existed within me. A soul of Ice.”
“Ice is my soul,” Lukas murmured, his fists clenched. Had Everfrost, like Solana, played upon him? Yes. Definitely yes. And if that was true, what were the chances that Meynte too, was doing the same? Inanna had once told him that the best lies were those that held a sliver of falsehood within an ocean of truth.
Maybe the Legend of the Key truly meant something. Solana, as twisted as she was, was acting on things she believed in. It was the complete truth, but enough to convince her to continue on her path for six centuries. Everfrost too had given Lukas a truth, and like Solana, it too was incomplete. And now Meynte…
“Ice is my soul,” repeated the Empress. “An aria that neither me, nor any of my descendants ever learnt, and yet, it instinctively arose out of our lips. Because it stemmed from the corruption in our souls.”
Lukas glanced at his arm. The regeneration had begun. Just a few more minutes. He’d have to keep the Empress busy.
“Before I knew it, the avatar had grown. The more I used Everfrost, the further I became vulnerable to its whispers, to its corruptive influence. It spoke of destruction, of bloodshed, of annihilation of this entire universe, and how I would be the fulcrum of that apocalypse.”
Lukas staggered. Not long ago, he had been privy to another Everfrost-user talking about her past. About how a young girl, terrified of her own power, had been subjected to similar whispers. How an innocent little girl had been shaped by that malevolent force, guiding her actions in ways that stripped herself of her innocence, turning her life into a maelstrom of dread and despair. Had Meynte too been in Tanya’s shoes, trying to cling to her own individuality as Everfrost took away parts of her soul piece by piece? Maybe she too was different, back then. Rational. One that would preside over an entire kingdom and ensure its prosperity. Maybe she knew how terrible and wrong the power within her was. Maybe she had even tried to cull it, tried finding ways to do a lesser evil, or even tried to get some good result out of it.
Even if he managed to overthrow Meynte today, how long before Tanya would stand in her place? How long before she became the next Meynte?
“I realized that no matter what I did, the Frost would ultimately take over. The whispers would eventually become the personality,” Meynte said. “I would become Everfrost. And when that happened, I’d bring about the End of the World.”
“So you stored your memories away.”
“It was one of my better ideas,” Meynte replied affably. “I knew that once I became Everfrost, Amaterasu would come for me. The World would make her come for me.”
Just like the Crypt of Fiendish Worms had dispatched the Guardian after Lukas had hacked into its consciousness.
“The rest, as they say, is history,” Meynte claimed. “We fought. I, Everfrost Incarnate, sought to end the World. Amaterasu sought to protect it. The result….”
“The desert of Namzuuhuu,” Lukas murmured. “An abomination that hates everything alive. A part of the world that rejects the world.”
“So,” she smiled. “You know that too.”
The pieces were falling into place. The Asukans, despite their high-handed preaching, were right about one thing. The yokai represented a genuine threat. More particularly, the yokai under Meynte’s command represented a genuine threat. Not just to bremetan civilization, but to themselves as well. To the entire world. And—
“You were an Oni, back in your original life. Weren’t you?”
That smile again.
Yes. That made perfect sense. The Asukans considered Oni to be the greatest threat not because of what they represented, but because Meynte was one. A creature that was the best of both worlds, and wanted to end everything.
With Meynte’s demise, the yokai kingdom had fallen. But Everfrost, being the Taboo that it was, was rejected by the Origin, and kept resurfacing through Meynte’s descendants. And Solana, being Meynte’s faithful servant, carried his wishes by bringing future yuki-onnas to the Throne, to Nidhogg’s Lair. The fool probably thought it had something to do with the End of the World, when in reality, rebirthing Meynte would cause anything but.
Unfortunately, it was easier said than done, for in every yuki-onna, lay Everfrost’s avatar — the Ice-Queen. One that resisted Meynte’s identity from taking over.
Until he, Lukas Aguilar, met Tanya, and in a spark of utter coincidence, he had within him a power that could seal Fimbulwinter away.
The Truth of Depredation that belonged to the Supreme Queen of An and Ki. One that allowed Meynte the chance to stem into Tanya’s mind and take over. Be reborn. It was such a curious set of coincidences that Lukas was having trouble not calling it Destiny.
“This…” he said at last. “Is just so fucked up!”
Meynte smiled again.
“My servant was right. You are the Key that brought about my rebirth, and the Key that keeps Everfrost from being unleashed into this world. I’m certain you have surmised, that should you unleash it, I will no longer have control over this body. But in doing so, you’d have condemned this universe.”
He clenched his jaw. He knew that. He knew exactly what Meynte meant.
“It comes down to this, soulcrafter,” said Meynte, her arms extended out, her eyes shining with victory, “You can choose to save the girl you think you know, and in doing so, condemn the world and everything in it. Or, you could understand the greater need of all, and do what’s needed. Save the world, hero. With you keeping Everfrost at bay, I will usher in a new age. Return the Yokai Kingdom to its former glory. And you shall be at my side.”
And what did THAT little invitation say about him, Lukas couldn’t help but wonder.
He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t surprised by Meynte’s blunt offer. At the same time, he had grown used to getting such offers ever since he had come to this world. Inanna had wanted him to be her henchman. Her Executioner. Solana had wanted him to fulfill his role as the Key, something he had inadvertently ended up doing. Zuken had offered him support in exchange for being a partner in gaining information. Mori had invited him to be part of the Keep. And now Meynte, the Glacier Queen herself, was offering a place by her side.
It was probably the best offer he had gotten till date, as useless as it was.
For he already knew where he stood.
“Sorry,” he said at last. “But someone once cursed me to never give up on my selfishness. That I should stay true to my beliefs no matter how many I trample upon. Even if it means I must be the invader, the monster, the conqueror… it doesn’t matter. I’m no longer allowed to pretend otherwise.”
“I see,” said Meynte, not sounding surprised at all. “In that case, Soulcrafter, I suppose I have to end you before you condemn this world.”
“Or,” said Lukas conversationally, clenching and unclenching his regenerated fingers, “I could end you before you end me.”
Meynte smiled.
“Pity.”
And then they began to kill each other.