Chapter 48: Destiny (Patreon)

Chapter 48: Destiny

Klarion’s face rippled like putty beneath my fist. The bomb erupted in a tight beam, blasting the Lord of Chaos across the room. Inside of me, the Lord of Order screamed.

I was screaming too.

My vision flickered red, then blue. I casted. The mammoths thundered past me, unable to attack. Easy, fucking simple.

It could have been like this from the start.

I felt Fate pounding against my skill like a bad migraine. He struggled against my power, to exert control. But my shard had hacked the connection. Assumed direct control.

My breath came in short gasps, limbs trembling in turn. My fingers clenched and released. For a second, I tried to control my subconscious reactions. But the moment I turned my attention to my emotions, Fate started to make headway. I felt him worming his way back in.

I cursed. Let my power manage that then, and leave the rest to me. My vision darkened. If I barely had the attention to control my body, then I’d eat my emotions this one time.

It was all rage.

Klarion leapt from the cloud of dust and smoke. At a flex of my will, a golden shield popped into place over Kent.

Klarion grinned his rictus grin, head tilting to the side like a carrion bird. “Looks like somebody—”

I blasted forward. Something cracked, a torrent of mana flowing into me from the Helm. Klarion twisted—

A foot crashed into my stomach. A disc of light sliced through his shadow. A moment late.

I tumbled through the air. A shriek tore itself from my lips as fire and lightning hounded me. I needed more. More power. I ripped it from the helm, sending an explosion of golden light out from me in each direction.

Klarion’s spells shattered. He stared at me, dumbstruck. I landed on the ground, tattered cloak settling down around me. The tears stitched themselves back together with black thread. 

Across the hall, Klarion took a moment to regain his balance. I didn’t give him that chance.

I blurred to the right, sweeping between my foe and Kent. The mammoths charged again. I slipped through them like greased lightning.

Golden light met red. The clash of our magic shattered the ground, spider webbing it like glass.

Another exchange followed, and I felt a savage glee rise up in my chest as I slowly pushed Klarion back. I wove my spells into Fate’s arsenal with ease. Without his little pets, Klarion took blow after blow. A touch of frostbite on his fingers, singed fabric on his arm, lightning nipping at his ankles.

I gnawed at him, snipping away inches at a time. Before, it wouldn’t have mattered, I didn’t have the staying power to put him down, but now… now I had all the strength I could possibly need. 

I widened the hole in the dam, letting all of the white mana of the Plane of Order pour into me like rain.

Klarion huffed as I forced him back. “When did you learn to be so fun, old goat?” he called, but his grin was strained.

I laughed, spinning to the side as Klarion threw one of his pets at me. His eyes widened at the sound of my voice. My voice, not that amalgamation of Fate’s.

In lieu of an answer, I gathered my power inward for the barest of seconds. Casting my arms wide, torrents of black mana leapt from my fingers. They formed the ghostly shape of my Ankhs for a brief moment, before ashing the flesh of both his beasts. I laughed even louder as the bones fell to the floor. Klarion’s runes could not stop my magic.

“You aren’t fighting Fate anymore,” I whispered. I felt my smile grow sharp as word echoed around the room. “He would be far more merciful.”

Klarion blinked at my words, his too large eyes widening even further. 

I dived, dragging a comet tail of mana in my wake.

“Wait, you mean you—”

I crashed into Klarion like the tide. My mana provided the lattice, and fate’s the power. I dragged the massive spell behind me, hands gripping it just as it became defined, just as it became real.

I slammed Klarion with it, a giant blade mana, given shape by my rage at Klarion, and given purpose by my joy at watching him bleed. The spell screamed through the air, bearing with it a windstorm of blades.

Klarion crossed his arms over his stomach just in time for the spell to shred the fabric of his sleeves, leaving only scoured flesh behind.

I saw his body bend over my attack, gangly torso folding double over his legs. With a savage grin, I let it fly.

In a heartbeat, the shape of the spell changed. From the shape of a massive sword of energy and light, it condensed down to a single point, an arrow of radiance. That arrow drove into Klarion, shooting him across the room. He crashed into the far wall like thunder, shaking the entire facility with the impact.

I panted, but even the exhaustion of channeling so much mana could quench my glee. For a moment, my arrow glowed with unparalleled radiance. I could see Klarion, a dark silhouette speared on its tip, curled up as if to protect himself.

Then it detonated.

The air rumbled, rushing in to fill the sudden void. The sudden darkness left me even more blinded than the light. Ash and dust filled the air, in massive clouds. And for a moment, there was silence.

I lifted off the ground one more, my body still thrumming with energy. Even if that wasn’t enough to put him down, even if Klarion somehow emerged from that attack unscathed, I could keep doing this all day. Yes, no longer would I be held back by lack of power in the face of something like Klarion. I’d grind him down beneath my skill, now that he had been stripped of his only advantage over me.

With the wave of my hand, I wiped the dust from the air and—

Something cracked, inside of me. There was a ringing in my ears, like a gong. I staggered in the air, reaching up to my face…

The moment my fingers touched the helm, part of it crumbled away. I gasped as I touched my cheek. It felt warm, warmer than it should be. It was at that moment I realized that I could no longer hear Fate. His presence had vanished, even though the mana had not. It rushed into me, faster and faster, as more bits of the Helm of Fate flaked off and scattered in the wind.

Then Klarion’s laughter began to echo through the room.

I looked up, heart pounding as he dropped back to the ground. Gone was the bespoke suit, in its place was a warped and misshapen creature, jet black horns sprouting from its head. It’s contours changed from moment to moment, stretching and shrinking, twitching, like some abomination.

And all the while it laughed.

“I knew you’d be fun, girly!” it shouted, even as the laughter continued to grow louder. Harsher. “Oh fun, so much, so much fun!”

The thing dragged itself forward, sometimes on its arms, when they, for a second, grew longer than the legs. 

I raised my hand. A torrent of golden light rushed out. It slammed Klarion back into the wall, burning the stone black.

I tried to stop it, but the gush of mana was too much, too fast. I felt it strain against my soul, searing at the edges.

I gasped, taking jagged breaths as I forced it to stop. My skin was charred, fingers trembling. I clenched my hand, trying to clamp down on the storm of mana flowing into my body, but to no avail. I couldn’t hold back the tide. I swallowed as more of the Helm of Fate cracked off. Slowly, my skin began to glow.

“You broke it!” Klarion shouted. When he stepped back from the smoke this time, his form had stabilized some. It made him no less disquieting. His limbs were blackened with burnt flesh, and his face twisted, features misaligned. Only his torso looked normal, and all the more disturbing for twisted bits attached to it. “You broke the Helm of Fate!” he crowed. “No more misty namby pants around here, no sir! Now it’s just Klarion…” he grinned. “and the entire world.”

I growled, the fires of rage rising up in my chest once more. “You think I’ll let you do whatever you want?” I said, clenching my fists.

“Oh please, you’re barely holding yourself together,” Klarion said, waving his hand. “Dummy, or didn’t yah think there was a reason old Nabby did most of the heavy lifting? An itsy bitsy mortal like you couldn’t possibly handle all that power.” His grin stretched past his ears. “I’m surprised you haven’t already exploded.”

I growled at Klarion’s words. Even still, I could feel the truth of them. I felt the roiling mana within me. It pressed against my skin, and it was only the force of my will that kept it contained. Even more, so much white mana that I could never cast it all, was pressing down on me, into the Planeswalker spark nestled in my chest. I was like a pressure hose, and the moment the torrent started rushing in again, I might not be able to stop it.

It might kill me. Or it might do something even worse. My skin was glowing in truth now, with an effervescent white light. I could feel more changes begin to happen as my very being was steeped in white mana.

But before that, there was something I had to do. “I suppose I’ll just have to end you as well then,” I said, voice hard as stone. “I think I can do that much at least, before I explode.”

Klarion laughed. “Hit me!” he shouted. “Oh, oh! Go on. Hit me!”

I led the floodgates come down.

Klarion threw himself to the side as hammer blows of golden light smashed through the air. I sent blades and shockwaves of light after him, ahead of him, shaping and spending mana as fast as I could. It was enough to keep me afloat, but the genie was well and truly out of the bottle now. A tsunami of white mana tore through me at every second, I felt myself begin to change, to ward.

I pushed all of that out of my mind, even as I felt tears pricking at my eyes. Instead, I focused all of my efforts on this singular goal.

I would not let Klarion escape alive.

I made a storm around me, golden light twisting into a tornado. No matter how quickly Klarion scuttled—like a crab, like a roach—he couldn’t escape every blow. Once more, his wounds began to pile up as the wind howled around us both.

Each time he began to teleport, I shattered it with a counterspell. They were difficult to form in white, but I had enough mana to tether him down. It was crude and inefficient.

But it was orderly.

I found, as the Helm of Fate continued to crumble, that I had very little else to fall back on.

With a wave of my hand, I slammed Klarion into the ground. He roared, I smothered the backlash of black fire with the slightest effort. Arcs of golden light pecked at him like hummingbirds.

“GrrrGGGAAAA Enough!” Klarion shouted. 

He threw a javelin of crimson and orange at me, I blocked it with a hand, already preparing to stop his next teleport.

Instead, he crashed into the shield surrounding Kent shoulder first. It shattered like glass. My heart leapt into my throat, or, it tried to. My instinctive response was smothered beneath waves and waves of order.

Even still, I was enough myself to stop the assault.

“Yessss,” Klarion hissed, fingers curling around Kent’s neck. “That’s right, just stay riiiiiiiight there.”

My hand trembled. It was an entirely involuntary movement.

“You can’t hold him there forever,” I said. “And if you hurt him I’ll kill you.”

Klarion smiled. “I don’t need the old man forever,” he said. “Just long enough for you to go all pop goes the weasel. And then who knows, maybe I’ll even let him go!” Klarion cackled.

“You know,” Kent said. The laughing stopped. “Funning thing about being a practitioner is that we don’t really need to move to cast spells, it just makes it easier.” Both of us stared. “The most important thing, is concentration.”

Klarion snarled, hand coming up—

A bubbled of golden light bloomed out of Kent’s chest. It pushed Klarion back half a step, and just that, before it popped. Lingering traceries of light outlined his bones. My eyes widened. Klarion flinched. His stomach—

I dove, crashing into Klarion before he could get his arms back around Kent’s neck. We hit the ground and skid, digging a deep trench. Gold waves of light washed off of me in pulses, pounding Klarion into the dirt even as I wrapped my hand around his neck.

He tried to hit me back, clawed hand bouncing off of my order infused skin. The Helm of Fate broke apart, leaving us face to face now. I could see my glowing visage reflected in his shark black eyes.

But none of that mattered, compared to what I’d just seen, the silhouette of something curled up inside his stomach? The way he always seemed to protect his torso? How Teekle had all but vanished, even though I knew he needed it nearby? With a single spell, Kent had given me all I needed to win this fight.

I plunged my hand, glowing like the sun, into Klarion’s stomach, and ripped out the cat that he had hidden there.

It yowled, coming out of its trance the moment my magic touched it. Klarion screamed, thrashing weakly. I held one in each hand, and both of them powerless. I tightened my grip around Teekle’s neck, feeling the chaotic mix of black and red mana pushing against me. I could see it, flowing from the Plane of Chaos into Klarion. The cat was the link.

Klarion glared up at me. “I’ll be back,” he spat. “Even if you kill Teekle, I’ll come back, and next time, no one, NO ONE, will be there to stop me! I’ll be BACK!”

“No,” I said, “you won’t.”

And then I plunged my soul into the chaotic mana, and claimed it.