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(Vol 5) Chapter 15: Revenge on the Pretender
🕑 Added 2024-05-07 15:08:21 +0000 UTCYou have won the wounding contest with toughness, which would have otherwise dealt a Superficial Wound — however, this has been upgraded to a Minor Wound due to a Realm Rule related to projectiles and traps.
You have suffered a Minor Wound in the Leg. You have suffered slight body shock (due to psychic resonance). -1 penalty to actions for 5 seconds only.
Fuck! Not good, not-not good…
Sammy did not stop moving despite an arrow in her leg. Due to the penetration, the sheath effect did not push it off, just sealed around it.
She burst into a clearing and there was the source of the arrows right before her — a strange piece of stationary artillery like a big platform, with rows and rows of bronze tubes, glowing with red light from within. It seemed as if the arrows were created or materialized inside the tubes.
Sammy screamed in frustration and blasted the thing with an AoE light bomb immediately. It exploded in a shower of sparks and magical energy, enough to concuss her and drive her back a step.
The mad cackling of hysterical amusement resounded from the sky. “Nyahahaha! Just a taste of the misery I will unleash on you, you vile scum. You made me this way! I’ll show you all you’ve birthed in a victim! Gyahahahaha!”
Pulling the arrow out of her leg — something she wouldn’t do if she were actually human — Sammy called, “I’m not who you think I am, damn you! I’m Samantha! I’m the Goddess of Fate and Light. Please, let’s just talk about this. I ask for parley.” She invoked [Diplomacy] and [Ascendant] to add gravitas and grace to her words. “This does not need to be a fight.”
A snarl answered her. “Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies! Always, forever, lies! I was the god, you the demonic parasite! Pretender, backstabber! Beauty like a lash! You stole it all from me. Into the mirror I went seeing your smile and mine, suspecting nothing, innocent in days of plenty… ha ha ha…”
Hysterical laughter became sobbing. “So long ago… so long ago, I remember my mother’s smile, her kiss on my head… she told me I was good… I was such a good boy… all of my existence since, I remembered. Even past her long life which I outlasted. I outlasted brothers and sisters, and their children. Their children’s children — and yet I remembered. Because I wanted to believe I was always that boy. On her deathbed, she still believed…”
The sobbing went silent, and hatred returned to his voice on a dime. “And then you came. Torturing and twisting all that is good into your kind. Distilled and poured into the wretched mold, made into your vessel. I never forgot, demon — I want you to know it!” His voice sounded rabidly full of animosity. Restraining fury. “I never forgot and now there is no freedom until you are gone.”
Sammy felt her heart sinking further and further with each word. A victim of the Mirror Demon, a god… aeons ago. He should’ve been long gone, or ultimately was and this was some shadow, some remnant that had lodged itself in her and Azure’s psyche. When she tried to feel for Soul Ties, she felt none.
What happened to Lovie’s soul in the interim? Have these remnants just remained in some way connected all this time? Thin threads pulling after the damage and colliding.
Lest another attack come, Sammy tried to keep him talking. “She’s already dead, Your Majesty.” She decided to throw the title out there on a whim. “So are you. The world has moved on, though the consequences of your time continue.
“This… connection is shared between me and a loosely-tied, reincarnated being that was once the Mirror Demon. But it is not her any longer. We are trying to end the horrors, trust me! I’m sorry for what you went through. I truly am. If I can help you move on, I will.”
The voice said nothing for a spell, perhaps stunned. Calmly, it finally said, “The realm cannot lie, but you can. You do. It is you, it is painted upon you like a brand. A brand that will mean your slow, agonizing death in this place as you are worn away to nothing. That is all that I will brook or believe of you.”
It was left hanging, and Sammy braced for an attack, but none came. “Please! I can help you more than doing this would. We desire the end of suffering and tyranny!”
There was no response. The remains of the arrow launcher continued burning, and so did the forest around her. The heat was like an oven where she felt rather toasted. That, at least, didn’t register as psychic pain.
Meanwhile, the wailing in the distance from every direction never abated. If anything, it grew into a tumult. There were never words, just a mixed-together aggregate of suffering.
While remaining unmolested, Sammy took advantage of the time. She had to maintain the Sheath with FE, so she continued burning through the PFE of her Avatar. She checked to see if her regeneration had cleared the wound status and found that it had not. She cast Cure Minor Wound shortly thereafter.
The healing was ineffective. Due to a Realm Rule, you may only heal as you naturally would if a mortal.
Fucking hell! That’s not good at all. Just the start of my problems, though. How do I even get out of here?
She cast an Armor of Light spell to refresh wound negations before she even thought about doing anything else. Just in case. However, no attacks were coming for her. There was only the warped, continuously burning landscape around her. It felt stuffy and oppressive due to her need to refrain from breathing.
She tried to just ‘bull’ her way out by will or [Pneumamancer], but it didn’t work.
Reaching out more subtly through her thin but present connections back to her realm, she found nothing to grasp there other than FE. She did sense Azure through [Soul Companion], as the minimal information of location, distance, status, and general disposition was unblockable by anything. Location was junk info — she was infinitely far away, essentially.
Her disposition was exceptionally alarmed and afraid, clearly aware that Samantha was in danger. And also… insistent? A constantly driving, raw ‘intention.’
Ah. She wants to come here.
In that particular case, it didn’t seem she could just show up as she liked, but it might’ve been possible for Sammy to help bring her there.
Through the connection, Sammy sent a firm denial. Refusal.
How many get the chance to spare their loved ones some horror of their past? What would I be to make her face this, something that would dig ten times deeper into her heart than mine? Regardless of her responsibility, she would feel it. I’ll resolve it for her. Besides, she can’t match me here. It’s too dangerous and she’d be slaughtered by high-level equivalent power.
It was true that Azure’s toughness was exceptional, but that seemed to be pushing it. Or so Sammy told herself. There was also the aspect that her being there might lose some intangible edge of doubt in her foe — make him even more incensed.
Yeah, I’m not doing it. I’m sorry, Blueberry. If I survive, you can scold me all day, I’d have made the right choice. We all have our specialties. This is mine, now. My wheelhouse!
Before she tuned out the feedback, she got the feeling of frustration and anxiety. Begging insistence quickly losing hope for the granting. With effort and a pang of guilt, Sammy suppressed it to focus on the task at hand.
Figuring it was worth a shot, Sammy asked the System internally, “Hey, Sys — can you tell me if this realm is manipulated with impunity like my Mazes? Are the Realm Rules made up on the spot or static?”
The System cannot provide specific information on this realm.
Defined realms do not allow impunity but are modified by relevant abilities. Realm Rules by nature are static and not easily or quickly changed. The total number may be added to, but each has less and less power.
Perhaps his madness causes him some self-limits. I suppose I should try to steer this to have him meet me. Facing him may be the only way out.
As another longshot, she turned her pin-cushioned floating shield toward her to look into its mirror. It was distorted, marred, and shadowed like polluted water diluting a painting medium, with no reflection showing.
Frowning, she utilized [Create Phantasms] to make a mirror. It formed but showed no clear reflection just like her shield. She formed a [Hard Light] mirror and got the same. When she tried to ‘see’ through them, she could not.
Likely can’t count on my [Mirrors] domain here, and probably not [Illusion] on him, either.
Sammy next cast Personal Levitation, but it immediately fizzled.
Due to a Realm Rule, flight is impossible.
Growling in her throat, Sammy nonetheless moved on to other long-term buffs. The new Unfettered Motion one seemed smart, so she dropped that on herself. As her shield was damaged, she cast Allspell Core to repair it. Then she had the bright idea to coat it in two layers of her custom spell Hard Light Layer, thereby giving it a couple of additional free blocks that negated damage.
Sadly, she couldn’t do it on herself or her armor, as they counted as wound negations and those had a global limit of one source rather than being additive.
After all this, she created four steel golems, kept at about seven feet tall for agility, and then stacked Hard Light Layers on them, too. They all gave a firm thumbs up with their thick, armored hands.
She considered summoning Ozra but kept it in the back pocket as a trump card until she saw what was in store for her. It was clear her foe wanted her to move on in some capacity.
Finally, she cast a generic movement buff, taking advantage of her sheath’s existing doubling of movement all the more.
With the buffs complete, she started in a random direction through the burning forest at a gliding walk, her golems around her in a cross formation. Thanks to their advanced autonomy, they could legitimately watch her flanks and guard the rear.
Other than them, she maintained several decoy phantasm Sammies around her including ahead of the front golem, giving them full physical weight. Likely not supremely useful, but it was worth a shot that they’d soak hazards or trigger traps.
The burning forest crackled around them, occasional trees bursting and falling, and they often skirted around areas almost like walls of fire. The heat was sweltering. The distant screams from everywhere began to localize. For a brief time, they seemed to get further away.
Sammy changed her direction, trying to seek out the source. Indeed, it got louder and louder. Closer. The flames and the heat around seemed to grow more intense as well. The smoke stung her eyes.
They spilled suddenly into a clearing made of collapsed and burned-out trees, with smoldering ashes as the general substrate. Among the trees were the remains of elven building constructs that had crashed and fallen, nearly all of the debris burning high and slow as if of tougher mettle than the trees to consume.
The wailing issued as a cacophony from the elves that had lived within — or rather, their specters. All of them burned fiercely, darkly tinted, and with an acrid, oily sheen. They suffered terribly from the aura around them and wailed continuously… Some seemed to die and be consumed with a final scream, but the fire persisted where they were, shimmering and shimmering with shadows of their former forms casting somewhere within.
To rise again, right there. To burn again. Gods.
The voice came from above, dripping with hatred. “This is yours. I remember. Do you? Those you tortured for energy. How long, demon? How long before their mettle gave out? Can you see their faces? Does it mean anything to you?! ”
One of the elders, a smoldering corpse near to incineration, caught sight of Sammy and pointed a bony finger, screaming shrilly, “It’s her! The source, the one! Burn her! Kill her to end it! End her to finally end!”
The wailing tumult became one of rising fury.
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