Menogra the Black, the Shadow Queen, the Vile Manipulator, and bearer of a thousand names on a thousand worlds, was unhappy. When she was unhappy, people suffered – as the inhabitants of the Doorworld of Heinorous were currently discovering.
Screams and wails of despair floated up to her as she hovered, invisible and immaterial, far above the capital of the most powerful nation on that planet. Those were music to her ears, of course, but they weren’t why she’d deigned to leave the Nexus and enter this world. No, that was to personally experience the influx of souls she was about to receive, all thanks to one of her faithful Inquisitors. That one had completed her mission, and while things hadn’t gone exactly as Menogra hoped, the results were good enough, and Menogra would soon reap the rewards of her minion’s actions.
She watched, her deific senses able to see every part of this world at once, as the biotech menace her Inquisitor unleashed spread across the globe. Heinorous was a high-tech world, with a tech rating of ninety-three, although the people of that world hadn’t come close to reaching the heights of their technology yet. Eventually, they would be able to develop warp technology that propelled them between stars, master the energy-generating powers of black holes and wormholes, and design weapons that could obliterate entire stars with a single shot.
However, that wasn’t what made Heinorous interesting to her. It also had a decent magic rating of fifty-five, meaning most people could use magic in their daily lives. The world’s unique magic had to be imbued into inorganic substances to work, though, so the sole intelligent species of this world had long ago learned how to incorporate magic into their technology. That slowed their technological growth, of course, but it also allowed them to produce devices that would have been impossible on lower-magic worlds, such as perpetual motion generators, engines that ran without fuel, and a worldwide telepathic communications network.
The one thing that magic couldn’t do on that world was affect living creatures directly – at least, it had never been able to. A government-funded research team had been trying for a decade to create a sort of nano-link that could attach directly to the genetic code and cellular structure of an organism and funnel magic into it, all with no success. At least, not until her minion came to “assist” them. Thanks to their SARA’s help, her Inquisitor had discovered a way to make the bio-link work, giving each person the ability to channel magical energy into their bodies and thus become stronger and more powerful than they could ever have dreamed. It seemed like a beneficial thing, a way to improve society, but in fact it was an insidious device of destruction.
Said Inquisitor sat in the lab where she’d helped design this masterpiece of death, staring at one of the magical display screens that this world used to entertain themselves. Menogra delighted in the horror in the woman’s eyes, the shame and guilt that spread through her soul as she realized that she’d doomed this entire world.
“H-how?” she asked aloud, her stricken voice an exquisite symphony of pain. “How did this happen?”
“What do you mean, ‘how did this happen’?” the man beside her, the lead researcher of the team and once a highly respected scientist – soon to be utterly disgraced if not executed for his actions – snapped in a furious voice. “This was your design! You tell me!”
“It – it shouldn’t have!” she protested. “The nano-virus was designed to link to the X-chromosome and activate dormant genes on it, ones that let your – I mean, our ancient ancestors use magic directly!”
“Instead, it shattered that chromosome and spread its genetic material throughout the nucleus, interfering with replication and protein synthesis,” the man replied angrily. “It’s 99% lethal in women, Alana! 99%!”
“But – it shouldn’t have…” The woman’s face drained of color as her SARA explained to her what happened. “The magical fluxes. They mutated the virus. I – I didn’t take them into account!” She shook her head.
“You should have!” he roared. “Instead, you created a deadly pathogen with an R-naught rating of fifty – FIFTY! – that broke free of containment! You’ve killed the entire world!”
Menogra knew that was an exaggeration, of course. The world wouldn’t die – that didn’t suit her purposes. Half of the men in this world would die, and almost all the women. The virus, maintained by the nanotechnology and magical energy feeding it, would remain endemic in the population, so half of all male births and 99% of female births would lead to the infant’s death. Those who survived, though – now and in the future – would be stronger, faster, and longer-lived than any person of this world had ever been, with the ability to manipulate magic instinctively. And that would irrevocably change the balance of this world, shifting it in her favor, and feeding her the lion’s share of all the souls lost to the virus.
The virus would, on average, leave the few women who survived far stronger than men. With those women being few in number and thus incredibly valuable as breeding resources but far too powerful to be enslaved for those purposes, this world would slowly shift into becoming a matriarchy, altering its path significantly. Technological innovation would slow as resources were shifted into things like infrastructure to maintain civilization with a vastly diminished population, and more research would go into futile attempts to nullify the nano-virus and boost fertility and birth rates to offset those losses. Things like individual freedoms over reproduction would be stifled in the face of the need to reproduce, leading to the most powerful females creating fiefdoms in which they ruled like dictators.
Menogra couldn’t see the future – no being, no matter how powerful, truly could – but she could see the likely paths that this world would follow. She’d felt the rising imbalance in this world as their scientists came closer to achieving their goals, and she’d sent an Inquisitor that she predicted would see those goals through to a fatal conclusion. Her Inquisitor hadn’t meant to cause a worldwide catastrophe, of course, and the despair and guilt she felt over what she’d accidentally done made Menogra’s victory all the sweeter. This had been an utter triumph.
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Unfortunately, Menogra’s predictions didn’t always pan out, and one of her failures was the reason for her current unhappiness.
“Report on the rogue Inquisitor,” she thought silently.
“Inquisitor John Gilliam completed a mission on the Doorworld of Puraschim,” her SARA spoke silently in the depths of her mind. “The balance was disrupted, but the new formation is 92.6% likely to be unfavorable to you.”
Menogra ground her insubstantial teeth. “What did he do?” she demanded.
“That world is a taming-class world, and it was put at risk by the actions of a former failed Inquisitor of Gelmir the Golden. She introduced a SARA-like system to that world, and over time, it had destabilized, introducing weaknesses and causing the local fauna to become aggressive and dangerous. Inquisitor Gilliam stopped that weakness from spreading across most of that world and repaired the damage, actually upgrading the SARA system in the process.”
She felt a touch of glee at how Gelmir, one of her rivals, would have reacted to his Inquisitor not only failing but creating something that caused two separate imbalances. That glee was smothered by her fury at her wayward Inquisitor, though.
“Predicted result?”
“78.3% likelihood that the repairs will spread across that world within several generations, shielding them from further instabilities and further cementing the balance there. 99.1% likelihood that this will allow the sapient race there to completely subjugate that world within two centuries. 6.7% likelihood that the alterations will deteriorate and create a greater imbalance within a millennium.”
Menogra screamed in fury, and dark power blasted from her as she did, power that would manifest as a series of freakish weather phenomena over time. She wished she could reach down and rip the souls from a few thousand people to satiate her rage, but the accursed Pact forbade it. Menogra hated the Pact, and she hated the fact that she’d been essentially forced to bond herself to it even more. The Pact forbade her from directly taking mortal lives or removing their free will. She couldn’t alter a world’s balance on her own and had to rely on agents to do it for her.
Still, she pushed the edges of the Pact constantly – every Power did. She’d all but stolen Gilliam’s choice away from him, for example. Her Inquisitor had tricked his former partner Skye into revealing his next mission and then leaked that information to his victim. That same Inquisitor headed up the team sent to capture him, making sure to herd him exactly where Menogra wanted him and to box him in. Even so, the man had a choice: he could have tried to fight or bluff his way out, and considering his skills, there was a chance that either might work. She hadn’t taken all his choices away from him, just given him one that was far less objectionable than the others – and he’d taken it, as she predicted.
And that was where her predictions went awry. John Gilliam was a selfish, arrogant man who cared only for himself and had never created a meaningful bond with another person in his life. He’d left his family behind without hesitation; he’d cast aside his allegiance to his nation for the promise of money; he’d spent a lifetime learning how to build trust in others for the purpose of betraying that trust. His was a soul destined for her or someone like her, and she’d sent him to Kuan Yang knowing that he’d investigate the School of Earthly Fires, that he’d penetrate their organization, and that his actions would force them to act rashly in fear of their secret being leaked. Their understanding of bonding a Beast Core was incomplete, and the flaws in their theories would eventually doom most of their cultivators, sending their souls her way. He’d done everything she wanted, everything she could have hoped, and in return, she’d offered him a reward that he’d desired for years: peace.
She’d been shocked and infuriated when he not only refused her reward but set himself against her! He, a pathetic human from an almost magic-free world with no understanding of the true reality, dared to defy her! She’d never come closer to breaking the Pact than in that moment, when she wanted to rip out his still-beating heart and feast on it before his eyes, keeping him alive so he could watch. She wanted to take his soul and use it as a plaything, venting her rage and frustration on his immortal being for a few thousand years. She wanted all that and more – but instead, she’d been forced to let him defy her, to swallow his threats and arrogance. Anything else would have broken the Pact.
She’d bent the Pact, twisted its terms to violate its spirit, and pushed the edges of it as far as she could, but she never broke it. The Pact bound her immortal essence to it, and if she broke it, it would strip her of much of her power. The others would turn on her in an instant and tear her apart, draining away what was left of her essence and casting her broken soul adrift in the void between Doorworlds. She would be left broken, nearly powerless, helpless to watch as her hated rivals gained the power she couldn’t, and that fate would last for eternity. That was why only two Powers had ever broken the Pact. None wanted to become a helpless shade watching the game instead of a player in it.
She had more leeway with her Inquisitors than with other mortals. Her curse on Gilliam was as far as she could go to harm him: a weakness that he could eventually throw off on his own, and one whose primary goal was to keep him out of the Nexus, the one place where he could gain everything he wanted. She could command his body, cajole him, intervene directly to encourage him to do as she wanted, but she couldn’t control his will. Once he made a choice, she couldn’t force him to unmake it. And now that he’d broken free of her, she couldn’t even control which worlds he went to; his Seal would draw him naturally to a world with imbalance. He could stop himself from traveling, of course, if he really wanted to, but he didn’t. He was on a quest for absolution, and that quest would draw him into world after world, keeping him from remaining on one for long.
“Where is he now?” she asked as her rage cooled and reason returned. She couldn’t control him, but he was still her Inquisitor, linked to her, and she could track and monitor him as she wished.
“Sojnheim,” her SARA replied promptly.
“Do I have any assets there?”
“A few, but not many. It’s a low-tier world, as all the worlds he’s gone to so far have been.”
“Activate them. Have them watch for him.”
“What are their orders? Should they kill him?”
“No,” Menogra chuckled. “Not yet. I want him to taste failure first. I want to break him.” She glanced down at her Inquisitor below, who’d broken into a storm of weeping as despair crushed her. This was the first of many breakings Menogra would inflict on her, shattering her illusion that she could help the worlds she visited and driving home her true purpose: not to fix the balance but to topple it, to force the world to adopt a new one far more to Menogra’s liking. Once she’d accepted her destiny, the Inquisitor would become a far more potent tool – and an utterly pliable one.
One way or another, she’d do the same to John Gilliam. The Faceless Man and rogue Inquisitor would be hers once more, and once he was, she would see him dead and play with his soul for eternity. Menogra neither forgave nor forgot, and her vengeance burned eternal…