295. Finale (I) (Patreon)

It was wrong to take pleasure in the suffering of others. Even that of his enemies.

Jez knew this. And yet right and wrong were concepts which only existed in his new reality. A reality which had not yet come to pass.

And so he allowed himself this indulgence. He smiled as he prowled the corridors of the Labyrinth’s dungeons, soaking in the sounds of screaming. At first the sounds had horrified them. But hear them for moons on end and they became a sort of background noise, something the mind learns to step over on its way to a pleasant implication. This, he’d learned, was what winning sounded like.

And so he silenced that voice of guilt in his mind, a voice which had once dominated his mind, a voice quieter and quieter by the day. There was plenty of time to feel guilty. After.

As he came across one particular cell in the lineup, he was disappointed, as usual, to find it silent.

The body in this cell was shriveled, its hair long and greasy and disheveled, and his eyes sunken in but still strong, lively, bright. He was utterly silent as his neighbors writhed and howled. He seemed bored.

Even as a cocktail of some of the Multiverse’s most painful toxins wrecked his body.

When Jez entered—the whole of his new form, this great sphinxlike beast—Houyi’s expression hardly changed. He simply took Jez in, raised a brow, and asked in an utterly unimpressed tone, “And who are you supposed to be?”

“Behold,” breathed Jez. “I am the destroyer of Realms. The Prime Chimera. It is the body I shall wield to bend the Multiverse to my will. With it, I beat down your brother and obliterated the Emperor of the jiangshi. Now I shall use it to break Fate’s armies for good.”

If possible Houyi managed to appear even less impressed at that, to Jez’s annoyance.

“Good for you.”

“Even now his armies march here, to the Labyrinth, to their doom,” snapped Jez. “Where I shall draw on the vast powers of the Infinity to strike them down, and scatter their remains to the winds. This Multiversal Order, this unjust, cruel, pitiless system you have devoted your life to maintaining—it ends within the week! By my hand!”

“And you felt your time was best spent gloating here, to me, rather than preparing?” Houyi snorted. “Pathetic.”

“I require no preparation.” Jez stepped close, suddenly, and showed his tombstone teeth not a stride from Houyi’s face; he saw them reflected in Houyi’s indifferent eyes. He was not given even the satisfaction of a flinch.

“Don’t you understand? You’re finished!”

“Let this senior give you some pointers,” drawled Houyi, shoving away his face with one finger. “The task is its own reward. You should not need the reactions of others to validate you. If it is right, then do it. If it is wrong, then do not. Gloating is for the common man. For a time I thought you were uncommon.”

It was absurd that his sigh managed to wound Jez.

“I won! I defeated you!”

“Have you?” mused Houyi.

“You are in chains!”

Houyi looked at him like he knew something Jez didn’t. He had the audacity to smile.

“You cannot defeat me.”

“Deny reality all you like,” gritted Jez. “You cannot change the outcome of our duel.”

“Oh, I suspect you shall soon see it is you who are in denial. But regardless, you cannot hurt me. Nothing and no-one in the Multiverse is capable of that. Allow this senior to give you another pointer, since I appear to have the time. Nothing can hurt you unless you allow it. Nothing can defeat you unless you lose in the space of your mind.”

His eyes shone like stars, almost madly. He leaned in close, smiling with all the muscles in his withered face. “And in my mind I am undefeated.”

It was such a ghastly sight Jez leaned away. He closed his eyes—he forgot himself, as he was so often wont to do these days. Who was this raging madman? If some passerby were to see him now they’d be forgiven for thinking him the villain. No, no—calm. It was calm and calculation, ironically the two traits which practically defined Houyi, which would win the day for Jez now.

“You are provoking me. Very good, Houyi. Let us see how smug you are when I break Fate’s armies, cripple your brother, and torture him into a frothing puppet! When I make a chimera of his body, and make him beg for death’s release!”

“You do that,” said Houyi casually. Without missing a beat, the fucker. “Best of luck.”

With a frustrated scream Jez stalked away.

What he didn’t see was Houyi’s eyes tracking him as he went. If he turned then he would’ve seen a flash of pure rage in them. It vanished quick as it came.

For a few breaths, Houyi’s eyes unfocused. They stared at a wall, sliding slowly upward, but it was like he was tracking something far beyond it. Something only his eyes could see.

“Soon…” he breathed.

***

Fate was true to his word. He’d set the dropping points in a vast plain, and armies of all shapes and colors poured in out of thin air as the day went on. In a day, his army on Hell swelled so large they went horizon-to-horizon. There was Junior with his Enforcers, a spot of white in a bubbling sea of bodies. There were Sun and the army of dragons, making wide lazy circles overhead, flanked by flights of gargoyles and phoenixes and rocs circling one another, making little whirlpools of air in the sky.

On the ground, squadrons of elves rubbed shoulders with hordes of orcs. Nests of serpents slithered about them like water flowing around stones. There were dragons and drakes, hounds and orcs, goblins and tigers, all shuffling in this teeming mass. The mood was nervous, a tad somber.

Most eyes were trained on that one black line breaking the flatness of the horizon. Everpresent stormclouds swirled around its tip, spitting out forks of lightning. The Labyrinth.

Fate had gone up into the sky to give a pep talk, something to get everyone’s blood boiling. But he quickly ran into a few issues—the first was that his squeaky voice could hardly be heard over the boiling masses. And even when he managed a spell to enhance it, there was widespread confusion; not every species spoke the common tongue. Some species had no ears. Dorian saw a pack of hellhounds cocking their heads at Fate. Things had been cobbled together so fast there was no time for the logistics, the minor details, like translators. Or grand strategies.

The idea was they’d blitz Jez and catch him off guard. Fate could pull his forces to Hell faster than Jez could recall all his chimeras—and certainly the rest of his forces. Or so that was the hope.

At last Fate gave up. Instead he raised a fist, pressed it to his heart, and let out a surprisingly fervent cry. All animal passion. This they could all relate to; the armies below greeted him with a wall of noise built form a thousand unique hoots.

Sun cried out so passionately she fell off her mount. The dragon scooped her up in its paws. She popped up frazzled but grinning. He saw her mouth, “To the resistance!” And her crew colored the air with their breaths. Then she saw him looking at her, and winked.

Fate pointed to the spire, raised his eyes to the Heavens, and belted with all the air his little body could hold,

“Charge!”

A thousand thousand wings spread out. Legions of claws, boots, paws and hooves sprung forth at once. The army lurched forth as one, clouds of dust and soot springing up at their feet. From Dorian’s vantage thousands of strides in the air, it looked like a great wave crashing up the coast, its ragged edges questing toward the spire. It would be nice if the Labyrinth toppled like a sand castle.

Unfortunately, even now he could see pinpricks of gold spreading out from its tip, leaking out of its bottom like angry bees.

As far as he could tell, no chimeras.

For now, this battle would be conducted by the little folk. The true powers, the Godkings—the King of Phoenixes, Fate, Dorian, Gerard, Junior, a dozen others—hung back. Watching and waiting.

The armies met like two waves crashing. A bright line of qi marked their meeting, a clear line where Techniques smashed to bits against each other. From this high up it looked like a brilliant border drawn between two nations.

The border began to flex inward. Fate had gambled right on one count—he could summon a lot more than Jez could! And though Jez’s troops had that shimmer of Infinity on them, though one of theirs might equal two of Fate’s, they might be outnumbered by even more.

It was a pity they were severely undermanned where it mattered.

Gold brighter than all the rest flashed from the tip of the tower.   “Friends, brace yourselves!” said Fate. “Here it comes…”