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Chapter 120 - Prayer, SC
🕑 Added 2024-10-07 22:23:05 +0000 UTCAs the slap landed flesh splattered on the walls as if it had suddenly turned into water. It wiggled and churned, trying to reform under the whispers of a corrupted spell to no avail. Skin followed it too. Human skin, now a thin layer of a membrane and worn like a suit over an undead face and undead body.
The Prophet was bare now. Revealed for the world to see. The slap hadn’t simply pushed the effects of the strange spell away. It had also shown the true nature of the one who had made so much trouble.
And Sunday knew him.
A chance meeting so long ago, when Vyn had first led him to the doors of the Arcanum. He was no mastermind or a person of power and importance. He was no one. A reject that had been turned in the line right before Sunday. An undead with a shoddy mohawk.
A familiar look was in his eyes as he bared his teeth and stared at Sunday. All signs of laughter were gone, but the green hue covering his skin was very, very familiar. The deadly wight woman had said that there were two Divine in the mix… how did that work? One prophet, two deities?
Whatever.
There was a burst and a palm struck Sunday’s chest with force enough to shatter the stone walls of the Arcanum. However, Sunday was already gone. A single step to the side had made him fall apart into tiny molecules. In this state, he could feel the pulse of the world. The order of things and their places and significance. It was a tapestry so much above what his mind could understand that it explained the constant static.
He couldn’t stay long in it, and he didn’t know how to move great distances as Chaotic Step had done on its own. But this was a beginning at the very least. It was control. The buzzing grew stronger with each part of a moment Sunday traveled in this state. He knew what it was doing as if the knowledge was part of him all along.
It was protecting him from utter and irreversible madness. It was censorship. The secrets of the universe were, after all, no for the likes of him. Not for thieves. And yet the Chaotic Step was proving to be much more than he had taken it for. It was a state of being during passage, like water turning into vapor only to fall back as water, but on a scale that was hard to comprehend.
It made too much sense. This was not true chaos.
Sunday reappeared and a second slap echoed through the hall just as flesh started growing again upon the wretched body of the sorry undead. Once again, it fell apart as if the spell itself had been canceled. As if the slap took something out of it and simply shattered it.
The prophet was sent hurling through the hall by some inexplicable force. Sunday was sure that no matter how strong he had grown, he was not capable of sending people flying with a mere slap just yet. His talent was doing the heavy lifting, and that was all just fine.
A slap. An open hand. An opportunity to grasp whatever your heart desires…Bring it to this world, and take it as your own!
A voice different than the narrator. A gentle and yet somewhat arrogant voice. Sunday stepped forward and once again everything became grainy, falling apart into the tiniest red and black dots, threatening to sink into a world of nothingness.
It was somewhat unpleasant, but as he exited that strange place Sunday was once again before the Prophet, or what remained of him. With each slap, something was taken. He could feel it better with the second one. A thread was pulled and severed. One of many, but yet its absence seemed to do a lot of damage…
“Who do you worship?” Sunday asked suddenly.
The question had almost appeared on its own, but he saw the lady in a black nod from the side. Her eyes were like two gemstones always shining at his back. His movements or actions were scrutinized, and even the empowered talents did little to calm Sunday down.
“Y-you. You should be broken! You should be severed from this world! Why? Why?!”
Sunday shrugged. He didn’t exactly understand why he was feeling the way he was feeling or why he was suddenly capable of using his so-called Talents, but he wasn’t about to complain. Explanations were bound to come once he finished the job before him.
The Baron appeared nearby in the next moment. The buffs had worn out, and he cut a sorry state. His clothing hadn’t managed to handle the transformation well and hung loose and torn on his bony body. There was quite an ugly expression on his face and he moved faster than Sunday could follow.
There was something strange going on with the power levels here. Sunday still felt the threat of the Baron clear as day and he was sure the wight could kill them all, and yet the one who had won against both Baron and Mera was now so weak against him… Something was definitely strange.
“Back down, vampire. This is not your fight.”
The strange woman was standing in front of the Baron now, holding his wrist like he was an unruly child trying to do something bad.
“Not my fight?!” The Baron roared, then swung with his clawed hand.
Sunday didn’t see the attack, but he saw the result of it. The Baron was thrown, broken, and bent next to the body of the one called Trust.
Piling them up…
Sunday’s eyes finally found Mera as he looked around. She was up in the corner of a wall, watching everything while her human flesh seemed to be slowly regrowing upon the constructs of Mesmer Steel. Good, at the least she was well.
“Get to it,” the woman shot at him, and Sunday felt like he had to salute her.
Instead, he turned toward the wiggling form of the Prophet.
What am I supposed to do with him? It’s just a guy who got rejected by the Arcanum, so he went to the other side. It kind of makes sense… It did from a street rat’s point of view. Who knew what the story behind his choices was? Sure, he was mad now—
A fist punched Sunday in the face and sent him reeling back.
“Just stay down you goddamn fool!” Sunday exclaimed. Was his nose broken? Who cared, he didn’t need it.
The Prophet screamed and rushed. No more massive tumor-like flesh grew out of him, but now he was glowing green and his muscles were swelling… much like Mera. The same Divine? Wasn’t Joy a different one? Or was that the second one? What a combination.
Sunday dodged another haymaker and slapped again. And again. And again. He fell into the routine of the dance he had performed so long ago. Weaving and bobbing around the attacks like he was made to do it. Chaotic Step worked in unison with it all, allowing him to simply move through the Prophet, appear at his back, dodge an attack that threatened to rip off his head, and overall do as he pleased.
It was interesting, if nauseating. The world of chaos during the moments of transition was growing more and more real, much like the red world shown by the Berserk Moon. He wondered if there was a connection there… With each step, Sunday felt growth. Closeness to the fundamental building blocks of the world, how they danced, free of rules and burdens.
And each step brought him closer to the dark vortex in the middle. Not physically. He simply felt it less dangerous. Less alien. It could be a tool to serve a purpose. And all he needed to do was give a little of himself…
This is fucked up.
Sunday focused on using his talents instead. He needed to savor this sensation. Learn all he could. The power given to him was not as overwhelming as he wished, but it was more than he could’ve called upon before without spells. Essence was limiting, and while the potential of spells was unimaginable, talents would always be there for him. They were part of him.
The black sands the woman had poured into his mouth had done something strange, and Sunday knew the effect was fleeing. It was not his own understanding fueling him right now, although he was pretty sure everything was becoming quite a bit clearer.
With a spin on his heel, Sunday’s hand wrapped around the Prophet's shoulder, while his other hand delivered yet another massive slap. It was a strange way to fight, but with each successful attack, the Prophet was growing weaker.
An open hand takes, huh?
It was a beat-down chipping away at godly power, but Sunday felt that something was off. It was too easy. There was an absence and he didn’t know if it was due to his slaps or due to something else. Could a Divine simply sever the connection? The Prophet was currently not much better than Vela had been, and all his attacks were a futile effort.
“One ran away… Typical. Only the lessers stay. In time you’ll learn to keep them in place.”
It was the woman who spoke as Sunday delivered the beatdown. He didn’t even have to use Chaotic Step anymore. The Prophet had fallen to the level of a drunk, but he still tried to counter.
“How about seeing if the legends are true?”
“What do you mean?” Sunday asked.
He couldn’t trust her, but she had done what no one else could. She had made him whole. Sunday barely stepped back as she moved and her hand grabbed the face of the now pathetic prophet. He hung from her palm and his eyes turned upward in their sockets.
“All we need is a name,” she said.
Sunday’s eyes widened. He had a name… Vera had let slip. Even now it burned in his mind as it was called. The undead struggled in the woman’s grip, his eyes bulging. Something dark dripped from his mouth. Had he bitten his tongue?
“Beauty and strength, huh… so you were given a suit of human skin and steroids, while the Joyous one left you hanging. Tezzith, was it?”
The reaction was instant. The Prophet screamed and thrashed into the woman’s hand and she let go as sickly green energy permeated each of his orifices, swelling his body further, and turning him into a grotesque mockery of himself. Flesh wiggled, green, and wrong. It fell apart rather than lash out like it had before, however.
“Pray,” the woman said.
“What?”
“You know the name,” she smiled. There was murder in that smile. “Pray. I’m here don’t you worry your idiotic head. Let’s see if a god bleeds.”
Insane and rude.
“How do I even pray?”
“Make up something. All that matters is that you put your heart into it. Lesser Divine are but former shells of themselves. The one you know as Joy is stronger still, but this one…? A small-time deity even at the peak of its power. Look how it struggles to corrupt the broken spells inside him. Pathetic.”
Sunday nodded. This was all too complicated, but he remembered the terror of each worshipper he had mentioned praying to.
Here it goes… He tried the trick Old Rud had drilled into him when he had the orphans dealing with churches and missionaries. There had to be a sufficient level of convincing that he was actually moved by their words and was now a believer before they gave aid. As if faith could be forced by withholding help. Bastards.
“Oh, the great god of beauty and strength… Oh, Tezzit. Grant me an audience, and let me slap you silly like I did to your followers. Amen.”
There was silence, broken only by the moans of the Prophet who was now a ball of green.
“The fuck was that?”
“What do you mean the fuck was that?! I prayed, didn’t I?”
“This half-assed—”
The hall shook and green smog burst out of everywhere. The Prophet’s mutating body twisted and churned, then exploded showering them in green goo. The woman remained clean, but Sunday was too slow to fall apart.
It didn’t matter right now though.
The Baron hissed.
Mera tried to melt into the wall.
Trust continued pretending to be death.
The woman next to Sunday licked her lips and two gruesome blades appeared in her hands.
“This one I won’t sit out. I’ll need you though.”
There was a person before them. Nine feet tall, and beautiful. It was difficult to say whether it was a man or a woman, but that quickly became irrelevant as the features twisted into a large sharp smile. Two lantern-like red eyes shone through the green smog.
It spoke words in some foreign language, and the world trembled with it.
Sunday swallowed heavy. The disgust he felt was driving him crazy, and so was the anger rising inside of him. He wanted nothing more than to tear this thing apart.
But could he? This was a god after all, even if it was meant to be lesser.
The narrator sounded very chipper as it spoke in his mind.
