Chapter 303. Welcome to Hell (Patreon)

“You come for me,” Bresnir continues. “It is an unwanted summons, though I suppose most would say as much. Imagine my surprise when not one, but two come for my soul.” Her demeanor is icy, resigned, but there is a roiling current beneath the surface. An unwillingness to give up.

“You laid a trap for us and hid,” Red states impassively.

“I knew no simple trap could kill an ascendant,” she replies.

“Why do it, then?”

“If I had not, you would have destroyed the site where I commenced my ascension,” she explains.

That’s not necessarily true, but it sounds reasonable. Still, Bresnir is the leader of a criminal empire–I’d be shocked if she wasn’t skilled in explaining away her decisions as sensible.

“With your resources, you could have done more to force our hand and ensure your ascent,” Red remarks. “I’ve seen the plans in your mind. You had many, including one to hold millions of civilians as ransom for your own life.”

Her heart beats faster. “What I have planned is not what I have done,” she replies.

Red holds out his hands. “But why come to us like this? It almost feels like you have given up.”

“The plan of which you spoke… it would not have worked.” She narrows her eyes in scrutiny.  “First off, it was too complicated. But second, you are mighty ascendants. To think I could effectively blackmail you into letting me ascend is the greatest hubris I can imagine.”

She exhales sharply. “I thought long and hard about how to deal with this day, and in the end, I concluded that there is only one path forward.” She withdraws a whip from a void storage at her belt. “I will fight, and I will receive mercy or die.”

Her body armor activates and her necklace glows a malevolent green. Her mouth becomes incorporeal again.

I don’t do anything; instead, I watch Red. Ultimately, he is the ascendant conducting the trial.

Bresnir screams silently and bites back tears–I assume from the pain of a mental assault–as she stomps forward, launching herself toward Red with powerful, reinforced legs. With the suit, her age is inconsequential. The whip slices at the air, Dark dancing around it and disintegrating whatever it touches–so far, only bits of the ground and some pieces of the bone wyrm. Only her fingers are vulnerable where they grip the hilt; she needs them to be corporeal for the whip to have physical substance.

Red dodges out of the bone wyrm and makes a flicking motion with his hands. Every time, Bresnir flinches, stunned, and loses control of the whip. A few times it threatens to cut its wielder open instead, though Bresnir’s incorporeality prevents her from sustaining injuries.

“Why play with her?” I ask Red.

“I’m not entirely messing around. This necklace she activated isn’t half bad,” he replies. “Combined with her own mental defenses, it makes killing her a bit harder. But its energy is limited. It won’t be long…”

“You could just kick her with ascendant energy. It would probably nullify enough of her incorporeality to kill her.”

“It would,” Red agrees. “I’ve done it in a scenario.”

“So you are playing with her!”

“I’m judging her,” Red states. “And so far, I don’t think we’ve seen what she has to offer. Is this really the best a peak Dark practitioner can do?”

As though Bresnir can hear his admonishing thoughts, her eyes blaze silver and the panthers assemble around her, their bodies rippling with darkness. Red cannot use his Remorse to hurt the panthers, but I know his ascendant energy can dispatch them easily enough.

“You are an assassin,” Red says. “Speak, I won’t attack your mouth.”

She chooses to believe him and takes a deep breath, as though coming up for air after a long dive. I realize that she wouldn’t have been able to breathe this entire fight without leaving herself vulnerable; Red’s invitation to talk is a mercy.

“Wrong,” she grunts. “I am the Dark Mistress. I fought until I reached the point where I didn’t need to fight anymore. You come for me in my old age, poised with the very affinities I am most weak against–Regret and Remorse.”

Old age is a bit of a stretch. She can’t be more than sixty.

Red smiles. “You had us scanned for our affinities when we listened to your second’s recording, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she hisses. “That is why I know I have no chance. Single-affinity Dark practitioners win by being unpredictable and switching between potent offense and defense. Your Regret nullifies my unpredictability. Your Remorse affinity and ascendant energy ruin my defense. Only offense remains, but if I can never strike you, I can never win.”

She comes at Red again with the whip, its sinuous length indeed moving in an unpredictable way, defying the path physics would dictate. It must be an intelligent weapon like the glosSword I once wielded. At the same time, two panthers leap at him, their Dark-coated claws promising grievous wounds if allowed to reach his body.

Red dodges one of the panthers, kicks Bresnir, and jabs the second panther with a hand. Bresnir and the second panther fly back, the combustive power of Red’s ascendant energy overpowering.

Red clenches his hand into a fist; I sense several small abrasions coating it, amounting to little more than a scrape. Still, it means that the ascendant energy couldn’t fully protect him from the disintegrating power of Bresnir’s Dark energy.

He whips around and kicks at the other panther as it comes for him, caving in its chest.

Neither panther gets back up.

Red’s kick leaves a sizable dent in Bresnir’s armor, partially disregarding her defenses. Even so, she somersaults and leaps back to her feet. She holds her arms up in a ready stance, her whip grasped firmly. She spits blood on the ground. The third and final panther supports her with his body, offsetting the quivering of her legs.

She’s in a suit made to increase her strength and durability. Her legs aren’t shaking from weakness, but from fear.

With red tinged teeth, she launches herself forward, the second panther ducking around to approach Red from behind. Bresnir’s whip dances around Red like a storm of black metal, the assault impossible to fully dodge with the panther threatening violence at the rear.

Red kicks off the ground, his ascendant energy launching him gracefully out of danger.

Suddenly, Bresnir gasps and keels over, her incorporeality vanishing. The panther comes to her side and enters a defensive crouch.

“The necklace ran out of energy,” Red says, confirming my suspicions. He walks toward Bresnir. “Do you know what I’m going to do?”

“Honestly, no.” I can think of arguments for both killing and bringing Bresnir to Eternity. We’ve had an entire five rounds to judge Bresnir, to see her mettle, to see how far she would go to save herself. Is someone responsible for what they haven’t done, but would be willing to do? Moreover, what makes someone worthy of ascending, anyway? In the moment, surrounded by carnage and fleeing civilians, condemnation is easy and natural. But there is no universal moral code that condemns anything that Bresnir has done.

Moreover, should we judge this Bresnir based on her four predecessors? If I were to judge her based on the current round alone, I would probably lean towards ascending her, even if her ploy with the disintegrating wire mesh was annoying.

I raise my eyes to the sky. In Holiday’s school, nothing is easy, nothing is simple. What a surprise, I tell Maria.

She mentally sighs. In the end, it comes down to one thing: exercising good judgment.

“Good judgment,” Red repeats, scraping Maria’s thoughts from my mind. “Who among us can claim to have such a thing? I have seen this woman’s thoughts, her dreams, her life. I know her as intimately as the characters from my films. I know the kind of role she would play, and still I hesitate in my choice. If even I cannot judge the worthiness of a single such woman, how can you? How can anyone?”

He comes to her and kneels.

Gasping like a fish, she asks, “What… what have you shown me?”

“Kyla Bresnir, I have shown you Eternity.”

“It’s… desolation,” she says. “An endless land filled by people like me. How could such a place be real? How could that… how could that be all that awaits us?” Fresh tears paint her cheeks. “It’s hell.”

Red smiles. “There can be beauty in hell. Now tell me, do you wish to live?”

“Living hell… or death,” she says softly. “I’ll live forever if I go there?”

“You will,” Red says, the statement a simplification of the true reality. “What would you do with your forever? Many in Eternity wish for death and cannot receive it. I ask this not to test you, but to remind you that to ascend is, in a sense, choosing damnation.” He turns to me. “Ancient Black, do you have anything to add?”

Somewhat caught off guard, I consider my words. This isn’t real–Red knows that. Even so, it’s likely that ascendants will watch, at a bare minimum, the last moments of the final round. This is a performance for them.

“I thought you didn’t want to win,” I think to Red. “This isn’t the performance of a loser.”

“It’s not as much a performance as it is what I would actually do,” he admits. “Aren’t you stimulated by this discussion?”

I can’t in good faith call this a discussion, but I understand what he’s saying.

I sigh and walk to Red’s side. “Bresnir, Eternity is a land where anything is possible. I would wish it upon my greatest friend, as well as my greatest enemy. It is a hell for some, a paradise for others. Which one you deserve is irrelevant.” I take a breath. “Do you want to die now, or live forever?”

She speaks after a long silence. “How could anyone want to live forever?”

“What is your decision?” Red asks me. “Yours and Maria’s.”

“After our time together, you should know it. I think we must all be in agreement by now.”

Red turns to me and smiles. “I suppose we must be.”

With that, Red grabs Bresnir, then wraps his other arm in mine and presses on the return beacon in his jacket.

With a twist of the fabric of reality, we’re elsewhere–a shadowed hall with large supporting pillars and a colorful mosaic of a star on the ceiling, mirrored by similar tiles on the floor, the tile path bordered by an expanse of dark, elegant stone.

Bresnir looks up at the Hall of Ascension, her eyes wide with both wonder and horror. Red strides forward without a second glance, leaving Bresnir bruised and bleeding–and probably with a massive migraine–on the floor.

“Welcome,” he says lightly, “to hell.”

“Round complete.” Holiday’s voice resounds through the cavernous space. I realize it might be the last time we ever hear the voice of Discardia. Part of me is relieved, though another part is surprisingly disappointed.

“Ascendant Red chose to ascend with Kyla Bresnir. Returning to the lobby now.”

[ hope folks enjoyed the discardia mini arc. 5 rounds ended up being hella longer than i thought, but they were fun ways to show a lot of worldbuilding we haven't yet had a chance to explore. as always, thanks for reading. also, i got the cover art for book 5! it's on the discord in #tml-art-gallery. i also added it as an attachment here. ]