Chapter 38 (Patreon)

You wanna know the weirdest thing about being in space? Or, at least, your own inner understanding of space?

Things get weirdly four dimensional, and distance… well, distance became nigh impossible to calculate, which is why I currently had no clue just how far away the distant stars were to my current position. There were a veritable infinite amount of them, twinkling and glimmering all around me, spread out just enough to not ruin the mysterious aesthetic of the cosmos.

Intrinsically, deep within, I knew that they weren’t actually stars.

No… they were motes of light. My motes of light.

The Celestial Grimoire, made metaphysical.

I leaned back against the oddly comfortable throne that I ‘reigned’ from, an ornate and ostentatious work of art that seemed vaguely alien-like in its design. Carved from what seemed to be some sleek, ebony-colored space rock and gilded with criss-crossing veins of gold metal that seemed to glow with mana, the entire look seemed kinda silly considering I was wearing jeans, combat boots, and a trashy anime t-shirt.

I crossed my ankle over my knee, leaning my chin down against my knuckle in the quintessential ‘arrogant ruler’ pose, and stared down at the only other living being in my Reality Marble.

Rune.

She was uncaged now, the Gilded Cage apparently deciding to stay behind on boring ol’ Earth Bet, but she didn’t seem excited about her newfound freedom. It seemed like the opposite, actually - the girl was actively panicking, breathing harshly through both her nose and mouth as she did her best to simulate the Caveman Spongebob meme, all the way up to the incoherent babbling.

I gestured with my left hand, an almost bored ‘come here’ motion with my index finger, and out in the distance, a mote of light shined a little brighter than all the rest. For the slightest moment, my sharp eyes were blinded by the appearance of a dark, impenetrable fog as dense and wide as space was infinite before it disappeared, and Ulgu answered my beckoning.

No words were needed, no channeling necessary for the spellcasting - merely a gesture and my will.

Beneath her feet, a yawning portal similar to the rift that acted as the activation of my Reality Marble materialized, sucking the frightened girl in before she could even inhale enough breath to scream.

A mere second later, that same portal spat her out in front of me, Rune falling to her hands and knees on what appeared to be thin air and screaming once she recognized the fact. Dully, I noticed that her voice - and, quite possibly, my voice as well - held an echoing aftereffect, like we were yelling in a large, enclosed space.

“Fuck! Oh, what the fuck?! I’m not- I’m not falling? But, but-”

“You ‘prolly don’t have much oxygen in space,” I deadpanned, watching her flounder around with pitying amusement clear in my eyes. “I wouldn’t waste it screaming like you're Tom and Jerry.”

Her head jerked up abruptly at the sound of my voice, and raw relief at seeing a familiar, if relatively unfriendly, face shone in her panic-stricken eyes. “Avalon! Holy shit, where the fuck are we? What the hell was that crazy magic bullshit you were shouting- or, or saying? Are we in fucking outerspace what the fuck is happening what the fuck are you-”

God damn, motormouth.

“Rune!” I interrupted loudly, my amusement diminishing in the face of her panicked rambles. “Relax. Keep the run-on sentences to fifteen words or less.”

Out of breath and on the verge of what looked like a fucking panic attack, the blonde teenager abruptly stiffened and released a low, shuddering sigh. When she looked at me again, her face was devoid of emotion - save the shining of her eyes and the uncertain frown on her lips. “No. Hell no. You don’t get to just say ‘haha, chiiill’ in that stupid jazzy voice of yours after pulling me into the fucking Twilight Zone!” She twisted around on unsteady feet, not at all used to standing on literal nothing. 

“This is freaking trippy.”

It was trippy,  for sure, but I was more preoccupied with compartmentalizing the innate understanding the perk gave me about my Reality Marble. It was less of an ‘internal user manual’, and more of a… rough awareness of what it was, and what it did. If the perk hadn’t given it to me, then Hidden Intuition would’ve come to an accurate conclusion with time, because what I felt was… interesting. Concerning, for sure, but interesting.

My entire soul was, for all intents and purposes… the Celestial Grimoire. A gateway to infinite magical power. And, within my Reality Marble, I could use everything I’ve unlocked from the Grimoire without limitations.

Absolutely no limitations, whatsoever.

The Winds here were… overpowering. With abilities like Weapon Magic or my Gaster Blasters, I used the mana already stored within my body. It was a roaring waterfall outside of my Reality Marble, but within - I could feel the energy infusing my body, filling my core, and it was… still. So overwhelmingly massive and full that there was no current or flow - it just was. Like making one of those two by two eternal water pools in Minecraft.

The Winds, however - they were different. The strength and efficiency of my spells pulled from them relied solely on the quantity of the Winds around me, which is why more fiery locales and situations made Aqshy spells stronger and easier to cast, and soaring through the sky on a stormy night made Azyr a breeze to channel. 

Going by what I’d briefly seen of the Grey Winds when I channeled them to teleport Rune to me, the Winds were similarly eternal here - mixing together in a coexisting harmony that was next to impossible to witness in the real world. Maybe that’s what those colors were when I was summoning my Reality Marble - the Winds coalescing together and preparing themselves for… what, the biggest buff of their lives?

‘Ha… I’m referring to magic as actual fuckin’ living beings now. I’m going crazy.’

But regardless of the specifics, I felt that I was understanding my Reality Marble more. The incantation had been somewhat on the nose, but I was starting to feel that it had been fairly literal as well. A soul that never faded, one that was ‘free of all limits’... infinite mana and access to the Winds was the very definition of ‘limitless’, added on by the fact that I could chain-cast spells wordlessly and with simple gestures.

The only aspect that I was still relatively confused about was what it meant by ‘reigning supreme’. If Reality Marbles were the spirit and souls of a mage turned physical, then ‘infinite powah’ was understandable considering who and what I was - I’ve already obtained immortality, and I was quite intent on achieving great personal power and wealth over the next… well, eternity I had ahead of me.

But ‘reigning supreme’? I had no real desire to be some king, although I was fucking heavy with the whole ‘cosmic throne’ thing I had going on here. The only way I could see being a king working out for me is if I had someone, or multiple someones, pulling the majority of the weight while I smited - smote? - opposing armies with hellfire and lightning.

Then again, it was possible that I was looking at it too literally.

“-you even listening to me? Hell-ooo, earth to Mr. Kidnapper,” Rune was quasi-shouting, waving her hands in front of my face. She seemed calmer now, more intrigued than anything, but there was a muted wariness and fear that she was keeping a tight lid on - something that I spotted with only a brief glance.

I was going to wave her away with only the briefest touch of Azyr, utilizing some of the infinite Wind to lift her in the air like a balloon with its string cut, but a thought came to me as I looked into Rune’s stormy blue eyes. It was a semi-random one, spurred on by my previous mental debate on what, exactly, the ‘reign supreme’ aspect of my incantation implies, but…

“Tammy.” 

The sudden utterance of her name shocked and frightened her. She flinched back, arms dropping to wrap around her midsection protectively. I couldn’t blame her for the paranoia, considering I was her ‘jailor’ right now, but it felt odd. I wasn’t used to people fearing me in that way.

“Wh-what?” Rune muttered warily, taking a couple steps back. Her footing was better, at least.

“Do me a solid,” I began calmly, gesturing to the empty space behind her. “Use your powers on those metal blocks right there. Just don’t send ‘em my way - you won’t like my get-back.”

She blinked, now more confused than scared, and instinctively turned to look at what I was pointing to. “Huh? There’s not shit here but freaking stars and-”

Chamon harkened instantly to my call, its reactivity fluid and fast enough to make my channeling outside of the Reality Marble seem amateurish in comparison. There was no real focus needed outside of pure intent and will, no incantations muttered or shouted in the Elven tongue.

Replication of Levorg was normally a spell used to create something from nothing, the scope of which was limited by how much magic was expended with use. The only other real limits were the fact that you couldn’t create living beings and that whatever you conjured would disappear at any point between one to eight hours. 

There was a sort of… innate timer in the back of my head, keeping track of roughly how long I could keep up my Reality Marble before the World got all pissy at me and decided to shut it down like a rowdy block party, but the timer wasn’t ticking down as fast as I thought it would be.

Maybe it was due to the comparably boring and mundane existence of Earth Bet compared to the World of Fate/Stay, but the initial mana depletion to invoke my Reality Marble had been surprisingly low. Not tiny, for sure - it took a decent portion, maybe about thirty five to forty percent, but the cost to maintain versus the cost to invoke was pretty fucking lopsided. There was, in essence, two ‘cores’ in me right now - the one that I was actively using, which was the infinite mana one that allowed me to fill the entirety of space with glowing golden spears, and the partially depleted one that was acting as a ‘backup’. 

The backup was my real core, the one depleting slowly overtime as a result of me keeping my Reality Marble activated. If I had to guess, I’d say that I had a few hours of use before I started to run on empty.

In a place like this, where ‘infinite power’ seemed to be the theme… I wouldn’t even need a fraction of that for most of my enemies on Earth Bet.

It was kinda foreboding, the amount of power I felt here, in my own realm. ‘Reign Supreme’ in-fucking-deed.

What materialized a scant fifteen or so feet behind Rune, towering over the shellshocked girl, were humongous blocks made of gleaming, burnished gold. Each cube had to weigh at least a few dozen tons, and there were about ten of them in total, sitting neatly and orderly beside one another in a straight line. Creating them were as simple as thinking of the spell, imagining the gold blocks, and simply gathering the Yellow Winds-

Only… I may have overcompensated a little bit. I was used to the normal flow of Aethyr that I’d created on Earth Bet, not the ridiculous amount that diffused the atmosphere here.

“... Avalon,” Rune breathed, staring up at the enormous golden blocks with her mouth wide open. “Be honest with me: are you actually a fucking wizard?”

When I didn’t respond immediately, too busy examining my magical handiwork from my perch on the hereby-dubbed ‘Cosmic Throne’, the teen twisted on her feet and glared at me - only, instead of anger in her gaze, there was a smoldering look of fear, amazement, and complete and utter bewilderment.

“Because, if you are,” she continued pointedly, her hoarse voice breathy from badly-suppressed awe, “I wanna see more. This is-” A giggle, half-delirious and half-amazed, ripped itself from her throat. “This is more than some bullshit Trump power, isn’t it? No illusions or dollar-store boomer hat trick like what Myrddin pulls over in Chicago…” 

Rune turned back around, walking forward until she was standing right in front of the innermost gold block. She touched it, hesitantly at first, and then with increasing excitement and strength when she realized that it was actual, real gold. “It’s fucking real…”

I gestured downwards with my index finger, and she gasped as the cube - standing at about twenty foot tall and just as wide - abruptly shrunk to a small fraction of its former size. Reversing the transmutation process was as simple as sapping the majority of the Yellow Wind from the block, and my Reality Marble made that child’s play.

“You’re bein’ awfully earnest and respectful for a white supremacist,” I noted idly, a small smirk forming on my lips as Rune’s cheeks erupted in flames.

“Hop off it,” she snorted, crouching down to trace her finger slowly over the top of the much smaller gold-cube. “I already told you - I can respect power when it’s proven to me, and we’re in… I don’t fucking know where. Outerspace? Some sort of…-”

“Extradimensional plane of existence carved within a private domain, separated from this World.”

Her finger stopped tracing for a moment, before continuing. “...Right, whatever. As much as I hate to say it, this is way above my paygrade. I have my pride, but I don’t… I don’t have a death wish. You could’ve easily dropped one of these bad boys on my head and called it a day.” There was frustration there, a lot of it. Self-pity, anger, respect, disgust…

A lot to fucking unpack.

Conveyance brought me right beside the girl, hands in my pockets, but other than a flinch and a muttered curse, she didn’t react. 

I tilted my head, watching as she traced the same odd, loopy symbol over the gleaming metal. “You wanted me to kill you earlier.” There was no judgment in my voice, merely curiosity.

“Right, ‘cause hanging by my wrists and ankles in a birdcage, trapped and powerless in front of the fucking magical black bogeyman is the best scenario for sound mental health.” Her finger started to move faster, a sense of frustration in her movements that was beginning to border on panic.

I inclined my head seriously. “As a real mental health advocate, I’m always happy to help.”

Rune’s lips twitched in spite of herself. “Screw you.”

She traced her rune into the cube again, her hand becoming a sporadic blur, and a hiss of annoyance escaped her clenched teeth when it didn’t even shift an inch. “What the fuck.”

“Performance issues?”

“It’s not-” Rune growled, smacking the top of the metal cube with a flat open palm, and winced at the sharp, meaty slap that resulted. When she stood back up and looked over at me, cradling her reddened palm against her robes, there was an almost petulant sneer on her lips. “It’s not ‘performance issues’. I can feel the connection there, like always, but it’s… weird. Like, sporadic.”

Excitement sent tingles down my spine, but I covered my crooked grin with my hand, blocking my mouth as I adopted a ‘thinking’ pose. “Is that why your power didn’t work on the Gilded Cage?”

Her eyes narrowed, unimpressed, even as her foot began to agitatedly tap on the non-existent floor. “Is that what you call it?”

“Among other things,” I wiggled my brow, and her nose wrinkled.

“Gross. But no, whatever your sex cage had going on with it completely no-selled my telekinesis. I couldn’t feel anything. This is… different. And it’s not just my runes.” She scanned around, staring out into the bright, crystallized stars that represented my power, and a distant look overcame her face. “This whole place feels off. I can’t put my finger on it…”

That had to be enough contextual evidence, right?

Rune is agitated. Rune is agitated because her power is not working properly.

Yes, but-

Rune’s power is not working properly because your Reality Marble is interfering with her connection to her Shard.

Not the concrete and in-depth analysis I would’ve liked, but I wasn’t the most knowledgeable on the absolute headache-inducing fuckery that were Shard shenanigans in the first place. All I really knew was that they were basically alien supercomputers who forced their abilities through dimensions, finding hosts to gather data from, and that I wanted nothing to do with them. The fact that bringing Rune here fucked with her connection to her Shard was, in my opinion, a positive byproduct, but if I was interpreting what Hidden Intuition was saying correctly, then they were still working.

Just not working ‘properly’.

Which meant…

“Say, Tammy,” I murmured to the girl currently in deep thought. She flinched at my usage of her name, blinking rapidly, before turning to me with a cocked brow.

“Yeah?”

“Look up.”

“...Wha-” Her head snapped up, but there were nothing but more stars, sprawling out as far as the eye could see in the cosmos. She sighed in strangled relief, looking back towards me. “Don’t spook me out like that-”

But I was no longer beside her. In my former spot, a large, wickedly grinning goat skull stared at her, golden light beginning to shine viciously behind its bony maw.

Terror, raw and unadulterated, painted her visage pale. A runic spiral, not too dissimilar from that of a celtic knot, glowed with vibrant green energy on the top of the golden cube. It hummed with raw power, shaking and vibrating at high speeds, but Rune didn’t even notice it. 

She was too busy tripping over her robes to get away from the Gaster Blaster.

“A-Avalon, you dirty fucking ni-!”

Vrrrrr….

BOOOOOM!

Golden light, roughly the same diameter as the shrunken golden cube, blasted forth from the goat skull’s wide open mouth.

At the exact same time, the golden cube - probably weighing at least a ton - careened haphazardly into the path of the laser beam. Rune screamed, diving to her hands and knees and covering her head with both arms, but the Gaster Blaster had already closed its mouth and faded away - leaving a floating gold block that was slowly but surely drifting back down to the ‘ground’. 

All of this transpired in a very brief, and very scary - for Rune - few seconds.

“Kinda an asshole move,” I admitted, allowing my Shroud of Invisiblity spell to fade away into wispy motes of Ulgu. “But I had to surprise you for it to work, and you’re still a racist bitch, so-”

“GRAAAH!” 

There were probably hundreds of ways I could’ve dodged or countered her clumsy haymaker, half of which would have erased her from this plane of existence entirely, but I opted for a simple solution. 

My head tilted to the right, allowing the fist to sail harmlessly over my left shoulder. Her face was crimson, eyes wide with both fear and anger. In the very brief fraction of a second where I peered at her expression and slid casually around her overextended frame, I allowed Hidden Intuition to whisper its insights into my ear.

Rune is scared. Rune is embarrassed. Rune is scared and embarrassed because she almost called you a nigg-

Woaaah, hearing the hard R from my own beloved power was not in the cards today. I heard all I needed to.

I moved directly into her personal space in a blur of speed, too swift and too nimble for her mind to keep up with - nonetheless for her body to physically react to. I could have disabled her with any form of magic, sweep her legs out from under her, give her the ol’ pimp hand and lay her out at my feet… but that wouldn’t have taught her anything. She was reacting off of adrenaline and fear, almost definitely not realizing what had just transpired with her powers. She probably thought I would hurt her for almost calling me a ‘nigger’ again.

I mean, I was going to - hurt her, that is. Just not with a five-knuckle shuffle to the cheek meat.

SMACK!

“E-eeek!”

My hand left an after-image behind as it slapped meatily against the girl’s surprisingly muscular bubble butt. The thickness of her robes threatened to dampen the impact, but I was well beyond Brute range in strength at this point - it sounded like a fucking fire cracker went off when I smacked it. I followed through, smoothly transitioning into a kneel with my hand extended outwards as she collapsed bonelessly to the ‘ground’.

Maybe I’d decorate a little, establish some sort of grand-looking dais like the Tournament of Power. It really was trippy as hell.

“And to think I was debating labeling you a ‘recovering neo-nazi’. For shame, Tams.” I shook my head, only slightly disappointed in the girl. It wasn’t like my hopes were extremely high in the first place, and I did spontaneously attack her out of nowhere, so I wasn’t surprised in the slightest.

The punch was sorta unexpected, though.

“Ow ow owww, fuck!” she whimpered pitifully, both hands massaging the tender flesh of her ass cheeks from over the top of her dirty robes. When it was clear that that wouldn’t make the sting go away, she rolled over and shot me a red-faced glare. “Y-you’re the one who attacked me! Why am I getting punished?!”

“Nah,” I stood back up and waggled my finger, looking, once again, like a stern and disappointed father. Clearly these women never had a proper one growing up. “You apologize for the attempted slur first. It’s part of the healing process.”

The way she rolled her eyes to the back of her head actually did make me feel like a dad for a second. It was both gross and enriching. “Come the fuck on-”

“One,” I counted, raising the same finger I’d just been wagging. 

Her nose wrinkled. “I’m not your freaking-”

“Two…” 

“Avalon, you-”

“If I get to three, I can promise you that you’re not gonna see any more of my ‘magic’.”

That got to her. Biting her lip to hold back an instinctive denial, Rune swallowed her pride like it was the grossest thing she’d ever tasted. “... I shouldn’t have said what I said.” she grumbled, wincing as she clambered back to her feet. 

“And?”

Her glare turned scornful. “And,” she continued, jutting her chin out, “I’ll watch my mouth from now on. Because, clearly, you don’t know how to keep your hands to yourself…” She rubbed her butt as she grumbled, looking away from me.

With what I knew from Worm, this was probably the best I was going to get on such short notice. Baby steps - like teaching a wombat to fly. Whether or not she was truly apologetic was inconsequential; I knew that she’d felt embarrassment for the way that she responded, and that was something I could horn in over time. I had no intention of keeping her as a prisoner for days on end, locked away in my basement. That would be fucking hell to properly keep an eye on, even with 084 acting as my pseudo-robotic Alfred. 

The whole play was to soften her up in spite of her warped ideologies, worm my way into her heart in that annoying way I knew I tended to do.

This was just another step towards the climax.

“Good girl,” I smirked, putting on satisfied airs, and watched for it.

Slightly widened eyes. Look of forced disgust. Catching of the breath.

Rune is flustered. Rune is grossed out. Rune is grossed out that she is flustered.

“Kill me if you have to, j-just don’t ever say that to me again,” she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Noted,” I replied easily, dismissing the fake bravado. I looked to the row of ridiculously oversized blocks of gold, and waved a hand towards them, snuffing out the Yellow Wind keeping them in existence. The normal duration for objects created by Replication of Levorg was usually one to eight hours, but I estimated that, with the ambient oversaturation of Chamon in my Reality Marble, anything created here could possibly feed on itself indefinitely in an eternal loop of magic.

Possibly. It would depend entirely on if changes in my Reality Marble persisted between uses. I was leaning towards ‘no’, but I desperately wanted to create a Tournament of Power expy here so I was hoping for a miracle. 

For now, all of my created blocks of gold - sans the smaller one I shrunk for Rune - disappeared without a trace.

“Are you going to tell me why you randomly tried to kill me, or am I supposed to just ignore that it happened?” 

I gave her a look of boredom. “Look around you, Tammy. Look at what I’ve done so far. You think if I wanted to kill you, I would’ve failed?” 

She frowned, but looked thoughtful as she glanced down at the golden cube. She wasn’t a stupid girl - it only took a couple moments for her to realize what had happened. “... Ohhhh. Shit. But how-”

“Your powers are wonky here. Instinctive. ‘Prolly ‘cause of the whole ‘extradimensional plane of existence’ thing I was joshin’ about earlier.”

I jumped at her, nothing more than a broadening of my shoulders and half-lunge, and she flinched back, the rune on the golden cube glowing viridian as it ate the short distance between me and it at the speed of a fucking baseball. It was impressive, but I’d dodged rocks the speed of bullets already. It took only a glance and a yank of magic to will the heavy mass of metal out of existence.

I continued smoothly, ignoring her wide-eyed stare. “You could probably feel out how to make it work with enough time here, or if you’re actively trying to kill me.” Some capes, like Lung, would not be too impeded by the odd way my Reality Marble interacted with Shard-based powers. The man was already all instinct and ‘hoo-rah’ small dick energy, so bringing him in here would probably just make him scale even faster.

Not that it would matter.

Others, who relied on actively utilizing their powers through external channels - such as Rune - would have a more complicated time. It would still work, obviously, but fine control wouldn’t be possible unless they were extremely quick on the uptake.

An unexpected side-effect, and one that I was uncertain of being purposeful, but I could work with it. I could adapt.

“And why would the, uh, ‘extra-dimensional’ part of this whole…” Rune gestured all around, shaking her head at the pure ‘WTF’ of it all, “Circus-fest affect my powers? What the heck does that even have to do with anything?”

…

“Ooh,” I winced, glancing back at my throne and gesturing with my head. It careened forward according to my will, a nifty trick that I actually didn’t know was a thing but appreciated the coolness of regardless, and I collapsed back into it. “That’s… a lot to unpack.”

“Try me,” she stubbornly shot back, looking even more determined.

I paused. It was hard to tell, especially without any real frame of reference, but I was willing to bet that, if the connection between her Shard and her brain was being ‘interfered with’ by my Reality Marble… the Shard probably couldn’t hear what was happening live, right?

I wasn’t on air?

If so… then maybe I could come clean about my ambitions to Cass, and possibly Trainwreck and Sherrel, earlier than I’d originally estimated. I hadn’t had any luck in figuring out a way to shield them or disconnect them for their Shards, although I did have a few ideas with crafting accessories and trying to Infuse them with anti-possession magics.

That was for another time, though. For now…

“Sure,” I allowed, propping my chin up on my fist and meeting Rune’s gaze directly. “Let’s see… to start off with, Tams - what, exactly, do you know about Scion?”

A couple minutes later, as I got into the nitty-gritty of Entities and Shards, a naked golden man with depression hadn’t ripped its way through my Reality Marble and turned me to dust, so…

I figured I was in the clear.

__________________________________

A/N:

Really wanted to get this out that I completely forgot to add my usual Author's Notes!

So - no roll for this chapter, but CP is steadily increasing. It's at... 1100 now, I believe, after adding the 2k Amy interlude in one of the previous chapters. We get some interaction with Rune, and finally, the reveal of what his Reality Marble, Celestial Grimoire, does.

I'm not going to lie - I got big inspiration from Thanos for the setting here. Google 'Thanos Space Throne' for an idea as to what inspired me! Additionally, 'Celestial' implies the cosmos so that was also a big driving force.

In layman's terms, his RM allows him infinite mana, little to no casting time, and the ability to chain cast to a speed of basically casting multiple spells at the same time. I think most people gathered what it would be based on the incantation. It scales, as well, so the more perks he gains through the Grimoire and the more magic he learns, the more he can do inside.

I didn't want to flex everything he can do in there too much because I want to save it for an actual big fight, but trust me - it's badass.

Next chapter will most likely be some more magic experimentation, him going over what he has Infused and maybe Infusing more things, and then shit'll pop off some more. As always, the train keeps chugging along.

See you all soon!