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The Gamer Chapter 1561 – Great Empty One [Nia POV]
🕑 Added 2023-11-13 15:51:16 +0000 UTCThe Father of Arcane waved his hand again, scattering prismatic stars in the wake of his motion. They flew, deceptively slow, towards their target. Feet drew little circles in the open space, writing the first of many runes. All over the Illusion Barrier, runic formations appeared, immediately opening up to create arc lances the size of towers and the heads of mana chains clustered into dozens.
“You must be undone!” the seventh force incarnate declared.
The asteroid field turned into a cataclysmic display of absolute magic. What Orkos had needed his circle for was Arkan’s right of creation.
Nia moved. Her visor could not be used without burning her eyes, but the silvery lines, mostly concentrated on her back, allowed her to sense ambient mana. Even in an ocean of static, the approaching thunder strikes of the various spells reached her sixth sense.
The pariah ran. Catastrophic spellworks punched holes through asteroids. The stone did not shatter, the disintegration of its mass too absolute. Twisting, turning and requesting the aid of the reality that loved her, she manoeuvred through the hail of chains. Blaring loudly, the Father of Arcane sent air-burning rays after her.
The blank struck. In a sole opening, she rushed up the rattling chains of mana, leapt and teleported, delivering a swing of her black blade. Her first attack in this fight had been worrisome for the Father of Arcane. After his first Unleash, her attacks had been promising, if diminished. When her attack now collided with the particle skin that covered the cosmic, shifting sands, Arkan swat it aside. His magic was too dense to be struck, like a butter knife could not cut stone.
Empty eyes flickered for a split second in her direction, the many colours of many arcane energies interweaving in a second. Nia immediately fled, barely escaping a duo of arcana strikes descending where she had been.
Nia appeared elsewhere and her weirdness immediately clued the arcane in as to where. A shushing wave unleashed an arcane shock that rippled through reality, taking apart and feeding on the various other spells his numerous circles continued to unleash into the space.
A plea was sent and reality disagreed. The Blue Queen grabbed Nia’s neck from behind and held her in place, like a cruel parent that had had enough of her spoiled child’s requests. Needle-like fingers dug into her skin. They hurt more than the scorching azure that washed over her like liquid fire and lightning.
Nia felt the other side pull at her. “Where [your skin is exposed] our favour does [not] reach you,” the Great Empty One croaked, looming through the spaces her fading form could see, even with burning eyes. The cloak of unspoken truths was lifted and the ruler of the Nirvana towered above her as a mass of potential, awaiting her decisions with one eye.
“No cruel father am I,” the Great Empty One droned on, as the Blue Queen released her spoiled child. Nia dropped to her knees, the skin where the voided dress did not cover her turned blue and black from arcane fire. “0pen heart and open \/eil, shall not bring you torment, favoured maiden – only an alien blessing they will not understand.”
“They don’t need to understand,” Nia whispered past cracked lips. She looked to the Blue Queen, to the creature of skin like untreated leather, covered in hanging skin adorning her as a tattered dress. Bone-like protrusions formed a crown around the top of her empty skull. “Those that matter love me anyhow.”
The Blue Queen gently touched Nia’s cheek and the damage she sustained was removed. Not so the fading she had endured to diminish it to the point of survival. The avatar of reality disappeared into a cloud of butterflies, revealing behind it a purple beam flying towards the pariah.
Nia’s translucency worsened, a sacrifice made to undo enough of the attack to jump out of the way. A mere thought about requesting more favours from reality created a resounding tutting in her head. The Blue Queen was more likely to hinder than help if she asked again so soon after having been allowed to heal herself.
Nia tried to find a way out. A strategy to allow her victory. Each contemplated thought was accompanied by a variety of spells striking her. The very air burned with arcane fire, every last rock tumbling through the simulated space just a surface for the supernatural energies to linger. Where she ran, her feet left cleansed footprints in the blue flames. Each step pushed her further towards the Nirvana. She could see, like through a fish-eye lens, into the empty prosperity.
‘It must be,’ Nia thought and breathed in deeply the arcane air. Almost, she was pulled over, then she did as Alice had so often demonstrated and went through the looking glass.
The red eye of the smith of the null-stuff greeted her as much as its never-formed mouth. She rammed her hand down a throat endlessly shallow and pulled it back out in a shower of viscous black. The looking glass blinked shut and the Nirvana itself shoved her back. “Not quite yet,” gargled the Weaponmaster.
Arm covered to the shoulder in the void, Nia gripped an incoming spell and sunk into it. The crystallized arcane energies turned mushy under her touch, then melted entirely, like cotton candy in the hands of a raccoon. A saddening picture, the most saddening picture, and the otherworldly entities that looked down on her efforts joined in a cacophony of empathetic wailing.
The Father of Arcane forged between his hands a new comet. It moved at speeds that would have left Sylph in the dust. Nia’s perception slowed it only when it was about to hit her. Adrenaline and reflexes combined. The silver paths in her skin burned in the presence of such powerful magic.
Wave after wave of colour-annihilating minus-energy unfolded around her. An undoing flower, beating back this spell and all others that collapsed on her position. Again and again, until Nia’s form had faded to an outline. The colour of her blonde hair was washed out, leaving only the intense blue of her eyes.
All spells around her were annihilated. Undone by a presence that reached out through her like nothing had ever been able to let it reach through. Fuzzy nothingness extended out from her skin, eliminating more than just the arcane. The very light passing through the area around her was swallowed up and then the darkness too was denied its existence. Reality hissed, backing away from her beloved maiden, as the null staked its claim over her twofold desired soul. Time itself seemed to unravel while Nia stood in a blotch of colourless uncreation.
“One eye,” the Great Empty One offered. “For [you] to [see now] from this point onwards, my little butterfly.”
Nia gazed at the denizens of the other side, few of them as they were in her presence at this time. Her hand ran through the needles of the Nevr’ests fur and listened to the adorable rattling of its fractal throat. She looked at her hands. One so translucent she could only see its outline, redrawn in deep blue by a queen that would not let her go so easily. The other, steeped in null-stuff, black and outlined white.
Her eyes stayed still while she beheld all those around her. Those other entities that loved her, that awaited her fading eagerly not out of malevolence but out of a love for her. She smiled, knowing that all that made her strange gave her company few others could comprehend.
“Nia!” she heard the distant shout of her darling. He worried she would fade and she smiled.
“For the fact he taught you how to smile, we will not keep you now,” the Great Empty One assured, “but you only have two eyes. Lea\/e one and [all my aid shall be yours. Empty wings of nothing shall forge I, and on them you shall soar].”
“Then so it shall be, Great Empty One,” Nia answered happily. “I don’t want to favour only one world.”
And the Great Empty One grinned.
White like paper layered on her skin as the Weaponmaster grabbed her hand and stretched it thin. Black was turned to strings and layered into paths and rings. Nothing carved into her eye, turning blue into dye. Nirvana claimed this colour bright, in its place putting vast un-light. When the time returned to its flow, Arkan loomed over her in a terrible glow.
And recoiled most certainly.
Peering with the eye of the Great Empty One, Nia surged forwards. Her hands held no weapon. For this enemy, there was no weapon more terrible than her hand. The Father of Arcane recoiled with terror greater than anything he had displayed at the beginning of the fight. The disgust contorted his empty features and his grain-borne being rippled when she touched his arm.
Fingers without nails, ending in black-painted tips, unmade what they sensed. The very essence of a god, unmade under her tactile senses. Where her hand travelled, reality was rent open and the colourlessness stuck to Arkan even after he magus stepped away.
Nia fell and landed on a shattered asteroid. Her form was covered entirely by the impossible fabric of her dress. Her right eye was covered, as if bandaged, and her skirt flowed endlessly into the ground she stood upon. Her platinum blonde ponytail curved in erratic formations, lingering between six wings of silver nerves stretching void between their synapses. They were as thin as translucent silk and moved in every breeze. Black, symmetrical, fractal patterns were stretched up and down her paper skin, like etchings on an elder carving.
And her new eye stared at Arkan. At the bit of Nirvana she had carved into his arm and the spells that he was weaving. All of them that flew towards her unravelled. Barely reclaimed calm was replaced with absolute horror.
Cataclysmic spells broke against the shell the Great Empty One had put around her. Nia took a step forwards and reality humbly obliged that this was enough to appear before Arkan once again. Gently, almost, she dragged her fingers through the grains of his chest and left five impossibly white gorges.
Arkan moved. He could not stand to exist next to her. Their existences were opposite from one another but she knew the exposure. She knew the hurt humanity and magic could cause. She lived in a world of acid and he now felt the base touch of annihilation.
The avatar of magic ran. Where Nia stared, even the magus step malfunctioned. She unravelled these newfound powers slowly, those that were part of her new eye, and those that filled her for this engagement alone. The Great Empty One blessed her, but her body was not yet capable of withstanding what she wielded for long. She moved slowly after Arkan, neutralizing attack after attack thrown her way. Waves of arcane broke on her presence like waves on a mighty boulder.
The Father of Arcane struck. The massive runic circles all around the arena turned into flowing bands of energy. In this shattered asteroid field, where rocks rained like water drops, their magic drained away, Arkan formed himself a luminary body. Like the Father of Light, he stood featureless and colossal in the empyrean, his body an outline of runes and the absolute light of the unforged hearthstone sparkling in his chest.
“You can surrender,” Nia offered, her voice a cawing, croaking, cackling song.
“YOU CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO EXIST!” Arkan roared with righteous fury. “NOT IN A WORLD WHERE MY PEOPLE DO!”
“Beatrice thought you so logical… May I?” Nia directed her gaze to the Blue Queen that existed in her field of view. The love of two parents did not end because she reconnected with one and neither did the love of two worlds. Even though she gazed with the eye of another world, Nia Fae was of reality and the sovereign nodded with a gentle smile.
Standing on nothing, Nia gripped the heart of the Father of Arcane as if he was right before her and tore him down. The infinite band of runes shattered. His form returned to a human’s size.
Arkan ripped himself free. A simple act, her fingers gliding out of his body with the smoothness that one slipped through air with. Another void-filled gorge was left behind in his chest. Another patch of white purer than the darkness between the stars speckling his blue and azure form.
All of the Father of Arcane’s power was suddenly concentrated. Nia noticed, her empty eye widening. The terrorized might slammed into her stomach and did what the previous swarm of spells could not: it drove her back.
Arkan let out a triumphant, half-mad laugh. “YOU CAN BLEED!” the terrorized elemental declared, gathering his might for a second strike.
“I was always human,” Nia answered calmly, her paper-skin wings fluttering in the breeze of her motion. The unified power was immense, but it was also just one blow and one blow she could easily avoid. The Maiden of Null stepped out of the way and clawed into Arkan once again.
There were avenues for him to win.
He could have concentrated on a physical exchange. He could have aimed with more care. He could have kept his distance and waited for this blessing to inevitably run out. He could have done so many things, but all he could think about was eliminating her. He was disgusted, he was afraid, he had the mind of a hero chasing mindlessly after an evil that needed vanquishing.
And that was why Nia won. That she was the anti to his magic mattered. It mattered a whole lot. If the situation had been reversed, if she had been the one with greater power and she had flailed around as inexperienced and emotion driven as he had, then she would have lost anyhow.
Because, in the end, wielding power effectively was the most important.
Their engagements were simple, straightforward. A mage casting the most simple, destructive spell against a melee fighter using hand-to-hand combat. That his bolts could have levelled cities and that her touch undid his body handfuls of grains at a time changed nothing about the underlying motions. They were familiar. They were what she had trained for since the start.
When his body was half void, Nia raised a hand. Her fingers clicked. The void expanded beyond dormant. Arkan screamed in defiance, his existence torn apart. Then, at least, the one power beyond both intervened. The requests the Fateweavers had programmed into the Illusion Barrier gripped and Gaia whisked the seventh ruler away before he could become undone.
And the pariah stood victorious.
Comments
Marko
Fuck me Fun I love this
Phraxius
Who knows, she does seem to have a remarkable amount of control over her abilities; I can't imagine most Blanks are able to persuade Elementals that getting pets is safe.
dw7thdoctor
I assume Nia going to have to wear an eyepatch now so just doesn't cause unnecessary harm.
