Topher sighed. "Everybody always goes straight to murder as the solution. Think, goddamn it!" He shook his fist at the Infinite King. "This doesn't have to end in a fight! Why not just step down, even just for a trial run?"

Yariel's face was a mask of despair. "That's not how any of this works. Being the Infinite King has just as many rules as it does powers; and one thing it prohibits me from doing is handing over my power willingly. Not hard to guess that a previous holder was tricked, charmed, or coerced into giving it up; so a subsequent one patched that hole."

"Uh huh." Topher crossed his arms. "And is there a vulnerability where you have to murder children? Is that a requirement that comes with the title?"

"It is," Yariel said mournfully, "if you want to do the job right." He flourished his scepter, and a golden sweep of power detonated over Topher's head; the shockwave alone nearly knocked him down, and it was only by binding himself to the floor with Attract Object that he kept his feet. "Hotaka and the others would have kept you in one place, wiping their noses and cooking them rice; I needed you mobile, with something to prove and something to avenge. You probably won't do anything like that if you become the Infinite King; not right away." His empty, sightless eyes, filled to the brim with mourning and steel, met Topher's uncomprehending gaze. "But give it a hundred years or so, after almost everyone you care about is dead and you've seen what happens when you don't have the stomach to do what's necessary, and you'll get some practice in."

"Cut the shit," Topher howled, his savaged heart wounded and bleeding. He barreled forward, taking the other man's shirt in his fists; Yariel twitched, but didn't react. "You coulda killed me a dozen times over! You want something else -- to change my mind, or make me doubt myself -- and it's fucking infuriating! All you're doing is dragging this out!" Frustrated, he hurled the shorter man backwards onto the beanbag chair; Yariel landed in it with a ridiculous poofing noise. "What is it you don't want me to figure out?!"

"Your Skill," Yariel admitted, then clapped his free hand over his mouth. "Ah, dammit," he moaned. "Now you've really forced my hand." With obvious reluctance, he clambered to his feet and directed the scepter in Topher's direction.

"My --" Topher began, but his speech was abruptly cut off by the impact. The cataclysm which erupted in and around him was so incandescent it dwarfed everything he could imagine; it felt like the big bang had gone off directly inside his head. The reverberating, helix-like cloud of the concussion tore him apart down to his atomic components; logically, it should have been instantaneous death that didn't hurt at all, but Topher was never so lucky. Groaning, he felt himself being reassembled instantaneously in the same spot he'd stood a moment before; Yariel blasted him over and over, with barely a second's pause in between, but each time Topher recovered instantaneously from the destruction just the same. For a subjective eternity, he was torn apart again and again; but eventually, Yariel lowered the scepter and watched him impassively as he reassembled himself yet again.

"It's a pretty good tactic," he admitted with obvious admiration. "I can't kill you with force. You want to try beating me up physically too, or should we move on to the next phase?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Topher sputtered. He started to pick up the Kiku-no-Tsurugi again, paused, and changed his mind; he put his fists on his hips and faced his enemy squarely. "I'm not playing your game. Go fuck yourself."

Yariel nodded. "Okay. I think this next part is my best shot; I know every spell, so it's a much stronger advantage." Banishing the golden scepter, he cracked his knuckles, then raised his hands delicately in a spellcasting gesture. "With any luck, I'll eventually find one that unbinds you, but who knows? You might get lucky too. I'll go first." He sucked in a deep breath; Topher's guts clenched, and he summoned his Stylus, quickly recasting his Arch Shielding spell.

"Kuul Rosh Danx, Shoi Ghon Cairei," Yariel intoned; instantly, Topher felt himself coming apart at the seams. His own life essence was boiling inside him, tearing his own body apart as his very MP was converted directly to akasha within his soul. He screamed in involuntary torment, but the pain doubled him over and choked off his cry even as he howled; hunched over in agony, his left hand traced the rune for Rosh in the air, blunting and reversing the attack long enough for him to gasp out a counterspell. "Xym Uud Viak," he choked out, "Xegar Moj Kuus Koreq." Instantly, the pain vanished; he straightened up with a gasp of relief, then narrowed his eyes at Yariel, who was already casting another spell. "Oh no you don't, fucker. Voq Nimaq!" The spell, totally unlike anything he'd ever cast or even read about before, was nevertheless ready on his tongue in an instant; dimly, he wondered where he'd gotten it even as it took effect.

The cracked, gossamer film that enveloped the Infinite King twisted weirdly, as though moving backwards in time; Topher saw lines appear in the other man's face and his hair begin to thin before he shook off the effect and returned to youthfulness. "Not bad," he admitted placidly. "I see you're getting better at Kilimancy already. But I still have some time to catch up, I think; Sha Bwin Hoqnat Meigu, Eid Elrr Sha Solmi!" He reached out grasping hands towards Topher, despite being nearly twenty feet away, even as he wrestled with the question of what "Kilimancy" might be; then, with a curious discontinuity, Yariel's hands were abruptly inside his body, pulling his head and his neck apart with slow but inexorable force.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Ghk!" Topher felt his wind choked off; without a windpipe, he couldn't cast, but he didn't need to speak to use his Skill. Defining a quick line of nodes, he launched the Kiku-no-Tsurugi into whirling motion; Yariel frowned as the blade chopped off both his arms at the mid-bicep, though no blood spurted from the stumps. Topher, feeling sick, wrestled the dismembered arms out of his own throat and tossed them to the floor disgustedly. "Gah! Fucking gross, man!"

"Oh, you're squeamish?" commented the other man, his arms reappearing as if nothing had happened. "Maybe I can use that. Elrr Voq Teijuc, Orv Mij Kuus Hognat -- let's give this a try."

Immediately, Topher felt himself begin to sweat; at first it was only anticipation of horror, but it quickly became actual horror as other mouths and eyes began to sprout from his skin. He felt a shriek grow in his throat, but it was quickly choked off as a proliferation of extra tongues began to swell and bud throughout his esophagus; his eyes twitched, bulged, and began to report nonsensical hallucinations as cancerous growths began to germinate inside his skull and twist painfully against his optic nerves.

"Help me," groaned a slobbering mouth near his right triceps. "Kill me," screamed another in between his buttocks. Topher fought down the rising panic, trying to scream and unable...

And then, involuntarily, he laughed.

"You think this is new to me?" He chuckled wetly at Yariel around a mouthful of rotten flesh and twisting teeth, who blinked in surprise; Topher reached up with jagged, misshapen fingers, and began to dig the extra growths out of his suppurating, diseased flesh, leaving behind clean and whole structure once more. "I've been used to watching my body decay out from under me ever since I started losing my hair, kid. I know how to work around nerves that won't listen, trapped between sagging vertebrae and screaming pain for weeks at a time. This ain't shit." He spun an array of nodes around and through his own body and tore himself out of himself; a grotesque lump of flesh fell to the floor and liquefied as Topher's unmarked body reconstituted itself above the mess. "But let's see how you like it. Dahf Danx Ru Om, Fuush Op Korpu!"

Instantly, Yariel began to hyperventilate; his eyes bubbled, swirled, and gleamed as jagged pupils tore themselves into his irises. Topher watched, feeling petty, as the other man fell to the ground and squirmed about, clutching his palms to his eyes in an attempt to block out the light; he didn't scream or shout, but made distressed noises deep in his throat that bespoke his suffering even more horribly. "I bet you turned off your own pain long ago," he commented bitterly, stomping over to stand by the writhing form and looking down pityingly. "But whatever bullshit protections the Infinite Kings gave themselves definitely didn't include restoring a broken sense. And you've been snuggled up in your self-satisfied little cocoon for so long that you don't know how to handle new experiences, right?" He kicked the other man in the ribs, but it didn't seem to have any effect; he did it a second time anyway for cathartic purposes, then sat down heavily on the bed and sighed. "I know you think you're smart because you've been here a hundred years, but take it from me, pal -- being old is no guarantee of being wise. Kelfir's five times older than you, and I've had to beat sense into him on more than one occasion." He watched miserably as Yariel scraped and clawed at his abruptly-functional eyes, but it did him no good; the whining, miserable noises in his throat continued unabated.

Finally, he lapsed into silence; with slow precision, Yariel levered himself up off the floor and looked upon Topher with complex and unreadable intent. "Not my preferred first sight," he grunted, then staggered to his feet. Topher warily jumped up from the bed as well, but it was clear Yariel's brain was having trouble squaring the visual information with his prior spatial understanding; he kept stumbling and wobbling about, and had to grope for a handhold on nearby furniture just to remain upright. "This is kind of picking on the disabled," he commented.

Topher scowled. "Are you fucking kidding me? That's the best retort your Super-Mega-Q-Rank Intellect can come up with?" He fired off a few more spells -- random, chaotic things he realized he was pulling out the runes swarming invisibly around them -- but none of them did anything against Yariel's limitless spiritual vastness. "You murder people that get in your way, and you think ableism is a noteworthy sin?! You think your fucking feelings are more important than other people's lives?!"

"Weren't you listening?" The other man retorted dully. "Suzume told you. 'Leadership and intelligence erode empathy', remember?" Absent-mindedly, he summoned a smoking rune above his hand; astonished, Topher recognized it as the rune Kelfir had branded himself with me. "I thought I had a way out when I saw what you did to Kelfir. But it doesn't work." Morosely, he banished it. "Infinite Kings are immune to compulsion. Even from themselves."

Then, finally, Topher understood; horribly, he understood everything. "Oh, my God," he gasped, staring at the other man in abject revulsion and pity. "You did all this..."

"Not only," Yariel corrected him glumly. "It was always the back-up plan. Each time you survived, I had to adjust; another trap, another chance. But I had to plan for the worst; if all else failed, and you became strong enough to threaten me, then I had to plan for that, too." With an effort, he opened his eyes again; his red, exhausted gaze burned into Topher's very soul. "If you were strong enough for me to use you..."

"Then I'd be strong enough," Topher croaked, "to kill you."