The battle wasn’t over, but Zi-Lor was aware of her dropped guard having been a grievous and unrecoverable mistake in the same moment David’s hand wrapped around her neck. He allowed her head to turn and meet his eyes from behind before the end.
Amanda didn’t scream or yell or stare. She instead turned quickly to escape and gather more help, well-aware of this act being entirely at David’s mercy. Luckily, he was feeling merciful… and hungry, so moved back to the task at hand.
It did not take long for her to reach the battlefield back outside the ruined walls. Twenty seconds or so of quiet flight passing over destroyed and half-destroyed buildings whose nature was irrelevant in absence of their occupants. For all these houses, all this destruction, one would expect a cacophony of families in search of children, husbands and wives for spouses, friends and lovers for each other and for perfect strangers in need of a helping hand.
And yet the flight was silent save for the rushing of wind and flapping of hair and cloak. These people had sheltered her for nothing and given Henry— David— a respite, a place to train and grow stronger for his own benefit and this is how he would repay them? Thousands of bodies destroyed past the point of needing graves, whole families destroyed where no memories of them ever existing would remain. And for what? If David had stayed to help Grandmaster Anderson the fight would have been easy. If Chen-Thai and Zi-Lor hadn’t in their moment of victory over the foot soldiers had to retreat and defend the city but instead joined David and Chad Anderson against the foes who had vastly underestimated them how would it have gone?
No, she knew this wasn’t right. Zorvilon hadn’t miscalculated and brought fewer men than he should have. He brought enough to win a discoordinated fight against a foe forced to defend itself from within as he struck from without. But Amanda knew this situation wasn’t one where they could afford to fight amongst themselves, not just the Left Hand of God but Zorvilon and his Covenant also. They allowed a foe that grew stronger with every body slain to gorge itself on an entire city. How long would it take for him to grow too strong for even all of them together to defeat?
She reached an exhausted and yet still-fighting Ultra-Grand-Supreme-Omega-Undefeated-Heavenly-Zenith-of-All-Creation-Absolute-Master-of-Quintessence-and-Stacker-of-Paper-to-Fill-the-Heavens-as-Dao-of-all-Things-Green-and-Powerful-Mega-Elder-Dao-of-the-Art-of-Left-Handedness-and-Writing-With-a-Slightly-Damp-Quill-to-Summon-the-Brightest-Star-of-Heaven-Figher-of-Gods-to-a-Perfect-Standstill-as-the-Favorite-Son-of-Heaven Chad Anderson still aglow with his dark star of the perfect absence of all power. His strength was so legendary it bent light and the techniques of his opponents in equal measure. For all Indevelyn’s efforts to absorb his energy, it was fruitless for he leaked less in every moment. For all Dagon’s efforts to wrest control of the energy of Yaldabaoth in the air— for which he was successful— Chad did not need it. His strength was not found in Yaldabaoth, in taking from others, from gods; it was found from within and from without and from the sky and earth and trees. He didn’t lead this sect against the world because it was easy. He did it because it was right and because the correct path isn’t the one well-traveled, it’s the straight line in all directions none are bold enough to blaze for themselves.
He fought Dagon, Indevin, and Zorvilon to a standstill as they hurled all manner of technique at him to obliterate the terrain for miles around. The battlefield was a desert of ash, a moonscape, an alien world alight with fire and soot to black out the sky in which the only light came as it passed to Master Anderson’s absolute dark radiance. No technique could touch him. Nothing could even get close, and when it did the underlying structure was countered.
But neither could Chad’s attacks reach the well-coordinated trio of gods in full control of the battlefield. They could dance and counter his every move with two of their own as the other momentarily defended and themself countered. No matter how strong he was, the gulf in power became irrelevant in the face of small numbers.
Amanda knew she couldn’t sway the tide of battle, but there was one tool left in her arsenal. She could try to speak, but her words would fall on deaf ears— quite literally considering how loud the constant explosions were. But while she would be unable to convince or even successfully communicate with anyone presently on the battlefield without distracting and perhaps endangering Master Anderson’s current precarious position, it was possible to gain enough strength to temporarily stop the proceedings. There was no way to know the cost of the maneuver, however.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Ever since awakening Amanda had been looking into her situation, her lost memories, her new ones. It wasn’t uncommon, though the specifics were. All gods replaced pieces of the self they injected themselves into— their vessels were never strong enough to maintain themselves, and the new contents of the body would repair their cracked vessel with its new strength. How much of a host would be lost was always unknowable as it depended on both the strength of the host and god and chance. Sometimes the pieces would fall sharply and shatter on the edge striking earth, sometimes a blunt face would strike in a dull thud.
Amanda was strong as an immortal. She was almost unthinkably strong for someone so ordinary. An archon of common blood. A mage born not of status and the bloody fruits of wealth— the literal blood vials commonly used for advancement— but of work, lifespan, and dedication. No mortal could have reached such a point. Few immortals could ever get close. And yet she had been nearly killed by a teleportation accident in contact with a god of almost immeasurable power. A corrupt influence had tainted her soul, and Yaldabaoth had flooded in to cleanse it.
Amanda knew what it meant from the moment she awoke. It meant she was chosen by God to deliver this world from damnation, and here and now in this moment she knew… David was the damnation she had been chosen to deliver this world from.
For all her lifetime Amanda had thought she was destined for nothing. Just another mortal given an immortal lifespan to waste. A nothing stretched out into eternity as a vicious mockery— as if life itself had wanted to say “See? Even with an immortal life you’ll amount to nothing. No amount of work will take you anywhere. No amount of dedication will amount to anything. You’ll always be weak and pathetic. Your life will end one day as the world does and it will amount to nothing all the same as if it had ended thirty thousand years ago.”
But life was wrong. Amanda stood here today with a purpose. After having lived for so long, what was pain? Life was pain as it stretched out so long and everything broke down. Time did not damage her, but wounds did, and time left many of those. Her every scar ached as her thoughts passed by where they once were. It had been a year since she felt them last, but now they burned again. She would tear down the remains of this body, shatter every piece of it, destroy the immortality she had been so graced with eons ago, and she would trade it for power here and now and forever. What was self in absence of purpose? An empty thing of no substance. She had been filled with a liquid capable of remaking her from within if only she were shattered, and she would not let go of that chance here in the same moment that could spell doom for the world. Amanda would destroy herself and be remade in Yaldabaoth’s image, and that would be the culmination of her old self she had long since given up on searching for.
Amanda sat down cross-legged and began to mentally prepare herself for what was to come amidst the explosions of fire and brimstone, blood and light and lightning. Tension flooded her every muscle, bone and sinew as her jaw clenched and fingers curled into tight balls. Her blue dress robe fluttered in the wind as she slowly made her way amidst the explosions.
Grandmaster Anderson almost started to protect her, but the cold resolve in Amanda’s closed eyes spelled out her plan in its entirety. He quickly returned to his former defense of himself, trying to play along as best he could. It was quite lucky, then, that the Covenant didn’t notice her efforts, instead mistaking them for the charging of a kamikaze attack sometimes used by desperate archons with no other options available. So they instead took distance and lobbed damage from afar in an effort to prematurely detonate the effort.
Amanda’s left arm was blown apart, leaving a bloody stub of jagged flesh. Before the searing pain could end her stomach was met with a ball of acid that passed cleanly through. It burned hotter than the fire that now coiled like a snake around her right leg, animated by Zorvilon and clearly seeking her breast that all the same was pierced by lighting, making it an invalid target. The fire snake was confused and began to flail wildly about, at least until making contact with the water and then ice that diffused and shattered Amanda’s lower torso, taking out everything near and below the hip. More lighting came in after and if she had a heart left to jump Amanda was sure it would have been restarted several times in the same second every muscle left to spasm uncontrollably flung her around like nothing more than a rag-doll or corpse-puppet attached to strings of fire and ice; earth and lightning. Oh, the earth was there too, but only after she fell two stories into it, breaking her brittle bones and ashen corpse apart to scatter to the winds now blowing them back together in place.
For all the damage three gods that had once served directly under Him could deal, it wasn’t enough to counteract Yaldabaoth’s influence. And yet Amanda retained herself throughout the ordeal. It was diffuse and rapidly changing in nature by way of memory, but almost felt… no, it was the same self she had always only ever seen glimpses of in brief flashes of mastery. It was the self that had long-since mastered all techniques. That had long since transcended all pain, sorrow, loss. The self that had long since made the outcome of this battle a foregone conclusion. And she would not lose now. Not with so much lost and on the precipice of losing.