The world screamed as Inanna cut it in half.
But then it would. Complaining sonofabitch, it was.
It was a scream heard in dreams, on the edge of the wind, and across the wastelands of this lava ridge. A near-silent scream of mercy unheeded, of regret turned into Forget. The crimson radiance of the borderland seemed to freeze as Inanna’s power cut through its rules.
Lukas wasn’t sure exactly what Inanna had done. One moment, the behemoth of flame and lava was rising, its hands converging around them, and the world itself bending backwards to manifest its wishes. A sea of boiling lava had risen from the floors into the sky, like a titanic wall, surrounding him from all sides. Kinetomancy or not, it was a weight beyond he could ever imagine.
A man could not hold back a mountain.
It would squash him.
Then Inanna stepped forward. His body, following her command like a marionette, raised his right arm.
And the world stopped.
A power that butchered gods held the mountain in place. What was this demon, or this terrain of crimson, before that?
“What…” He heard Tanya croak. “What just happened?”
Lukas didn’t answer. He couldn’t. For he was floating like an ethereal wraith that was both inside and out of his own body. Seeing the world both through his own eyes and the ones attached to his body. He didn’t know if this was what televangelists and mystics referred to as an Out-Of-Body experience, but whatever it was, he would not get used to it.
No more how many times Inanna shoved him through it.
Instead, he just stared at the surrounding impossibility in wonder.
The world, as Tanya had put it, stopped. Just not the way she thought it was. Instead, it was like everything came at him — at them, and somewhere along the line they hit an invisible barrier and just stopped.
Regardless of its mass, or momentum, or the pull of gravity acting upon it.
Naturally, the Omphalos within him went crazy.
Initiating Parallel Matrices
Safety off! Overclock Set!
Intercepting Routines
Enact
Just like the last time.
Soul Alteration Detected!
Attempting Prime Host Augmentation…
FAILED!
Soul Siphon Attempted…
FAILED!
Soul Siphon Attempted…
FAILED!
No new Soul Prototype Detected.
Rejected.
Adding Altered Data to Prime Host
The last time Inanna had taken over, it had been during the fight against Tanya. Despite being under Babysitter Protocol, the Omphalos had thrown a liberal ten thousand units of free soul capacity at him, just to grab Inanna’s power. Now, with the Warmonger Protocol in place, and the endless soul capacity at its command, the Omphalos had no such restrictions.
It wanted everything Inanna was showing.
Every. Single. Bit.
SKILL UPGRADE Registered!
SKILL
LEVEL
SOUL CAPACITY REQUIRED
Kinetomancy (APEX)
4
850000
DESCRIPTION
Absolute Manipulation of magnitude and direction of Momentum Vectors
Whatever shock and disbelief he’d have experienced vaporized as Lukas felt the world whimper and whine around him. It was as if Inanna’s very presence was a kind of weight on the borderland itself, a gravity that strained space around it. Her kinetomancy, now in its truest form, was a power older and deeper and deadlier than anything it could conceive. Beside it, even the flaming titan seemed as frail and as transient as fleeting shadows.
“What… What did you do?” He heard Tanya ask.
“Stay put. Do not futily exercise your mind. This power is beyond you.”
The voice was quiet, mellow and resonant. Though the volume never lifted, it could be heard over the white noise of the apocalypse all around.
“You…” Tanya croaked, “You are not Lukas.”
A shadow of a smile flickered on Inanna’s — his face at her words.
“I am he, but he is not Me.”
Which, in Lukas’s opinion, meant all kinds of bad. If Inanna was describing herself as him, then that meant the divinity probably affected him in more ways than he could imagine.
“The mortal would have given you your freedom. He would have you make your own choices, craft your own destiny. To be more than the puppet you’re born to be.”
What are you doing? He wanted to yell. But Tanya couldn’t hear him. Only Inanna could, and she was using this opportunity to speak directly to Tanya. He could only hope that this single conversation would not spit on the fruits he had worked hard to gain.
“I — I'm no one’s puppet,” Tanya claimed, slowly pushing herself to stand up.
Inanna laughed at her, her voice resonating with scorn. “When have you been anything else?”
“I—” Tanya began, but right then, the fiery beast before them let out an enormous roar, and came for them, only to be held at bay by the sphere’s power.
Inanna casually waved her hand, and the creature exploded into smithereens.
—Only to reform into a thousand smaller forms as they attacked the sphere from all sides.
“Do not worry,” said Inanna, as if she had just not thrashed a colossal demon around like a baby. “I will force you into an accord with the mortal. Bind you to him. His nigh infinite resources will cure you of your pesky limitations. His power will revert you to your truest self, and grant you the power to conquer your own demons.”
Tanya staggered back. “How do you—”
“I know you more than you do yourself. I was the one that cut you off from the instincts of that cold hunger.”
Lukas watched as Tanya went absolutely still.
The fear in her eyes made Inanna smile.
“Do not fret. I will give you more than you can imagine. I will make you reclaim your power. Make you whole again. Turn you into a force that leaves nothing but a cold, hungry emptiness in its wake. But first…”
Her lips twisted. It reminded Lukas of a barbed knife.
“First, I will crush you. Shatter your pride. Drag you into my dominion, kicking and screaming. Crush that defiance from your eyes and turn you into a pliant slave, to go forth and crush the world in my name. Oh, I know it sounds cruel, but after all… I can hardly leave a treasure like you alone.”
Her words were accompanied with absolute certainty, like they were a truth of the universe. Like, a law that she ordained upon destiny itself. It didn’t matter what Tanya thought of them. It didn’t matter that Inanna would fade soon and would not return until Lukas brought her back. It didn’t matter that Lukas disagreed with her decision.
“I won’t,” Tanya argued weakly, still trying to push herself up, ‘I’ll fight you.”
“So spirited,” Inanna laughed. “It’s obnoxious, but I can’t help but laugh.” Tanya’s strained expression made her laugh harder. “You do not wish to attract my ire. If I accidentally damage you, I will regret it deeply. It would be like… blinding a great artist, like cutting off a bard’s tongue. Destroying a work of true art. Do you know how that would pain me?”
“You…” Tanya stammered, “you. Who are you?”
Inanna smiled. “A pebble does not need to know the ocean. Be content in your ignorance.”
Tanya looked like she wanted to contest that, but one look from Inanna and her jaws shut tightly, as if sealed by invisible hands. She tried vainly to open her mouth, even using her hands to pull her jaws apart, but to no avail.
“Quiet, pet. I will not have you interrupt my entertainment.”
As Inanna uttered those words, lightning streaked across the sky. The terrain, or whatever was left of it, exploded. Seas of lava rose to touch the sky like giant leviathans, before coming down to crash at them. Tornadoes swept across the plain. Mountains collapsed. Volcanoes exploded. Chasms formed for hundreds and thousands of miles. The world was mad, and was coming to devour the sphere Inanna had crafted around them. Reality itself wanted to erase them out of existence for shattering its conventions.
It hit the sphere like a runaway truck hitting a runaway barrier.
This was Inanna’s power. This was kinetomancy, and the Omphalos had grabbed it. With power like this, he’d be able to—
“Do nothing,” Inanna’s voice reverberated all around him. “Not against that.”
The colossal demon loomed over them, a creature straight from Lovecraftian nightmares, with a skull meshed with flames that made for its head and draconic serpentine creatures arising out of its claws. The lower half had condensed into a fiery abomination, giving it a twisted, genie-like appearance. This… Just what was this…
The Screen flashed right then.
IFRIT KING
Fire-Incarnate. Pinnacle of its kind. Natural-born.
“… a King?” He mumbled. This titanic demon was an ifrit King? He had learnt about Warlords and Kings from Tanya, but had always imagined them as impossibly powerful entities, but limited to his scale of comprehension. He had experienced the sheer power of Level-3, both when fighting against it, and after assimilating that power for himself. He had felt the acute sense of vulnerability when Tanya had appeared in that giant, avian cloak of darkness with wings spanning out into the sky. Tanya, who had admitted to having a single Level-4 skill, no matter how ill-equipped she was at handling it.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Lukas knew from a theoretical standpoint, a King, who boasted off at least one Level-5 skill, would be exponentially more powerful than a Level-4. In his mind, he had conjured an image closer to Inanna—the reflection as he knew her. An entity so powerful that even a tiny fraction of her skill was enough to wreak havoc of untold proportions.
He had not imagined a re-enactment of Godzilla in a Christian Hell theme.
“You are giving it too much credit, mortal,” said Inanna, speaking through his lips. ‘King it might be, but it is like an infant. As your Schema suggested, a Natural-Born.”
Lukas had not, in all honesty, registered that final bit. He knew that kami, much like monsters of the Crypt, were devoid of any and all soul capacity. Whatever level they were born in, they stayed that way. That was why they needed to latch on a proper host, and gobble up their soul capacity to evolve and become more. It was why Asukan spiritists always attempted to capture Level-1 or in rare cases, Level-2 kami, because they’d require a far lesser amount of soul capacity to bind. Once that was done, the spiritist used the kami to train and level-up.
But to be simply born as a Level-5?
“Spectacular, isn’t it?” asked the Goddess. “A most worthy pet.”
An image of Inanna sitting on her throne came to mind, with this monster, now shrunken in size and coiled around protectively around her, lying on its belly. The demon snored loudly, as Inanna casually petted it on its head.
That he could imagine such a thing without a hitch told him just how twisted his life had become.
“Will you kill it?”
She shook her head. “That body is an illusion, conjured out of mana. Destroying that creature would require me to actually wield my kinetomancy.”
Lukas looked around at the casual way she held the world around her at a pause. Nothing, matter, energy or anything in between, had penetrated that shell she had crafted around them. If this wasn’t the full power of kinetomancy…
“You’re a child, mortal. A child staring at the infiniteness of the ocean before him. No matter how much you try, you cannot fit it into your vision.”
“Then why aren’t you using it?”
Inanna threw her head back and laughed. For Lukas, it was like watching a moving image of himself performing the same actions, only superimposed by Inanna.
“Your greed knows no bounds, Mortal. I have already blessed you with a power beyond your wildest dreams, and you still seek for more?”
Lukas flushed at that, embarrassed.
“There is no shame in aiming for greater heights, mortal. But power beyond your capabilities will kill you. My kinetomancy, even the paltry amount I’ve granted you, is a legacy far deadlier than you imagine. My belief is that it will destroy you.”
That wasn’t ominous at all.
“While your world shard allows you to hold my skill, your body will break trying to wield it. It is not I that is lacking here. It is you..”
Inanna turned towards the ifrit king, who was constantly trying to grab them. It had gone from raising mountains of lava to turning the air itself to steam, to conjuring bolts of lightning.
“Enough!” Inanna’s voice resonated into the sky. “You’re but an infant before me. You seek war, but do not know how to win it.”
She raised her right hand —
“Bow.”
— and snapped her fingers.
An overwhelming feeling of something crashed upon the world. The tides of lava were pulled downward with extreme prejudice, and whatever was left of the terrain cracked and imploded downward, as if the gravitational pull spiked by a thousand times. Even the ifrit king, who had transformed into a hundred smaller forms, was sent crashing into the sea of flames, none of its forms even holding their heads upright.
Bowing before Her.
Lukas stared in awe. Pulling on something’s motion was a task that was difficult even on the best of days. And that went exponentially high for large-sized objects. Just manipulating one of the bylestyr’s motions once had gotten him to pant, despite operating with his newfound power levels. Inanna had just manipulated the power of gravity upon a terrain spanning across miles, including everything upon it.
And she had done it casually with a snap of her fingers.
Meanwhile, a different thought was running through his mind. This creature, or creatures, were all components of the Ifrit King. A being with Level-5 skill, or skills. Nevertheless, it was still a kami. And he had a very convenient function that could help him grab it.
“Your greed will bring about your ruin, Mortal,” Inanna admonished, breaking him out of his thoughts.
“But—”
“It is a King,” said Inanna. “Even if you were to siphon it, its presence would overwhelm yours. Your body would be destroyed, your mind unraveled by the weight of its presence, and the Omphalos would choose itself over you.”
Lukas clenched his fists. Even with everything he had gained, it was always an uphill climb.
Inanna looked at him, amused. “And there is the mortal from my memories. Always impatient for more, regardless of what it may cost him. Experience has mellowed you, but it is still there. Look within yourself, for there lies a power more dangerous than anything you can ever imagine.”
Lukas stared at her for a moment. Then he nodded.
“It is time,” she said, “Use the Awareness. Open a rift.”
Lukas blinked. “Open a rift? I can’t — I barely tore the bruise open, and it was already—”
“Lukas Aguilar.”
Whatever he was about to say died in his throat.
“You carry my Pendant. I forged your soul from my Divinity. The Supreme Queen’s powers are yours to wield. You are a world. Opening a rift… it is not even a challenge compared to what is coming.”
A wave of nostalgia hit him as he looked at the familiar glint in her eyes. “You always were a hard taskmaster.”
“You have taken it upon yourself to bring me back.”
He drew in a breath and let it out. Then he nodded.
Inanna smiled, and a sudden pulling sensation gripped Lukas. He didn’t fight it. The next time he opened his eyes, he was back in control. His body was his. The sphere was still holding true, as was the infinite gravity she had exerted upon the world. And Inanna—
“Open the rift, mortal,” her voice whispered in his ear. “It is time. My power will hold the King back until you do so.”
He heard the unspoken implication. The moment he opened a rift, Inanna would fade, leaving him alone again.
His heart rebelled against the idea. He had finally gotten to see her again. Why must she… Why must he lose her all over again?
Can you not… stay in my mind again? Or in the pendant? Like before?
The silence that followed for the next two seconds had a beautiful melancholy in it.
“My Pendant carried a sliver of the Supreme Queen, manifested by the faith She harvested from the masses. She sacrificed herself to forge a divine soul, You, too, hold her vigil. And now it is gone.”
Why? He wanted to scream. He had used anomalous energy to manifest her. Surely he could do it again in the future?
A soft breeze hit his cheek.
“Perhaps you speak truly. But you must exercise caution, mortal, or your zeal will herald your defeat.”
“I— I don’t understand.”
“The Supreme Queen’s divinity forged you. That is true. But you are an ephemeral flame compared to the shining star of her brilliance. Even the tiniest shard of a star shines infinitely brighter than a flickering candle.”
Lukas was seeing what she was trying to tell him. “I was right then. A part of you still exists within that divinity.”
“It is not the divinity that contains me, mortal. It is Me that exudes that divinity. You have reversed the concept.”
“But—”
“Back in her day, a defiant mortal Inanna, withstood the forbidden flames of the Vikahl Ashlands, with nothing but kinetomancy. And on this day, you, Mortal, endured the king born from flame, using nothing but kinetomancy. When you used the power of Creation to bring me forth, it manifested Me in all my glory. But in doing so, lessened the divinity that slumbers within you. If you summon me again, the Supreme Queen will perhaps fade away.”
Lukas did not know whether to laugh or cry. His attempts had been in the right direction, his trials vindicated by Inanna’s manifestation. Every single time he had felt Inanna’s presence rising within him, every single time he had performed something spectacular and unexplainable with kinetomancy, he was actually channeling the divinity, sparking its proverbial engine. And finally, he had manifested her completely.
And in doing so, hurt his own chances of truly bringing her back.
Every single time he succeeded by a tiny amount, he exhausted a fraction of that divinity. And now, there was very little left.
Inanna… she had put his absolute trust in him. She knew he wouldn’t betray her, because his faith in his ideals was absolute. He would never betray her because, in doing so, he would betray himself. And now, despite knowing a way to manifest her again, despite knowing that he succeeded, he’d have to drop it, or else risk losing her forever.
Even when he won, he lost.
Such a twisted irony.
He didn’t even realize that his cheeks had gone wet. “I… That will not deter me. I will find a different way. I found one, I can find another. Just watch me.”
“Perhaps that is why She chose you, mortal.” Inanna’s voice was getting softer, distant, like she was going further and further away from him. “She was a rule breaker, as are you. Travel down her path, harness what you have given. And someday, we might meet again. But until that happens, this is farewell.”
“Lukas—” Tanya whimpered, “Lukas, look—”
He didn’t need to. He could feel it. The power of the Sphere was weakening, just like Inanna had said.
“Stay still,” he said. “I’ll open a rift.”
“But — the Well—”
“Silence!” He snapped, and narrowed his eyes. He was sure that Inanna was watching. Wherever she was. She had told him he could do that. He would not fail her. He had established the connection before. And he would do it again.
Capacitance Active
Reverse Shift Active
Energy Drain Active
He held out his hands as pure, anomalous energy poured out of them.
Establishing Nexus…
Registering…
There was no need to perform Consciousness Shift this time around. He had already connected himself with the realm before. He just needed to do it again.
An Anomaly of a Lostbelt touched a broken realm.
Grabbed the edges of its existence.
And pulled.
Bridge Established
Opening rift…
He would be lying if he said he didn’t hesitate. The information that flooded his mind at speeds and quantities beyond what the mortal mind could process. Even with Level-2 Tachypsychia, he'd be hard pressed to process even a ten-thousandth of it. This Haze, it was outside of proper Time and proper Space, existing in nothing between one moment and the next.
Lukas hesitated, even though it could get him killed. He hesitated because to charge blindly forward would surely get him killed.
The Haze, no, the Ikai Realm — wasn’t a singular existence. It was a reticulum that connected various worlds — borderlands, singularities and maybe even other mini-realms, binding them together in ways beyond his comprehension. It both did and did not exist. Cascading layers of realities manifested all around him, just a footstep from him, and yet, an eternity away. It was warm and damp, painfully humid and bitterly cold. It was magic and it was impossible.
And it was filled with energy.
Endless, unadulterated, potent energy.
And before he knew it, Blob reacted.
Rollback Protocol Activated
Attempting Reverse Corruption…
One moment it was acting as a protective vest. Now? The aqāru expanded, covered every inch of his body, and expanded outward, like a large, flappy cape, increasing its surface area as it greedily gobbled the surrounding energy.
It did not matter. For just a single second of exposure was enough to charge his Omphalos reserves several times over.
Attempting…
FAILED!
Attempting…
FAILED!
Attempting…
FAILED!
Attempting…
FAILED!
And on and on it went. It tried a hundred times. It failed a hundred times. And on and on and on. The rift enlarged with every passing second. Just a little more and it'd be enough. A storm of images and perception hit his mind. Animals, plants, terrain, craters, cities, forests, volcanoes, oceans, visible and invisible, worlds of color and utter, utter blackness.
Up. Down. Right. Left. Within. Without. Whole. Disjointed.
And absolutely unending.
Every inch of his body painfully protested. Blood was already pouring down his eyes and nose. His skull felt like it was being crushed like a tomato. Neural Suppression had already lost it. So how was he keeping up?
Discerning familiar locations…
Identifying…
He thought he saw something familiar. Sand. A red sun. An endless desert. A lost kingdom. A woman’s face. Solar flares coming down like the judgment of a wrathful god—
“TANYA!”
He couldn’t say anything further. His whole body was burning. He could only hope that the physical sensation he felt around his waist were her hands.
Attempting…
Success!
Rollback Complete!
Accessing 16159 skills..
Accessing CRYPT OF FIENDISH WORMS…
Establishing Bridge…
Yes. He saw it now. He knew what this was. And with that, came an equally horrifying realization. He knew where he was going to come out from, or more importantly, in whose room.
No rest for the wicked! Lukas thought deliriously, as an impossible vacuum pulled him and Tanya in, as a tremendous roar shook the world he left behind. The last thing he could see was a pair of very familiar, jet black eyes looking at him with a mix of suspicion and delight before he crashed into a wall on the other side.
Prime Host is no longer in combat
Accelerating Spiritual Augmentation
All Systems Shutting Down for Upgrade