Chapter 49: Moirai (Patreon)

Chapter 49: Moirai

I was screaming.

At first, that was all I knew. The agony.

Black and Red mana, in a perfectly chaotic imbalance, flowed into me like lava through the unmoving channels of my body, where tt burned and burned and burned.

But it did not balance. Instead, it skewed me in more directions, over, under, around.

I was stretched, like taffy, from one direction, and compressed, like diamond, from the other. I was stone. I was fire. 

I was both.

I was neither.

Slowly, laboriously, I mastered the pain. I forced myself past it. Forced myself back to the present. I tilted my head back up. Each movement was like breaking a dozen ribs. Staying still, on the other hand, was truly agonizing. But then, when was the last time the universe gave me good choices.

My muscles wouldn’t start moving, but chaos wouldn’t abide them staying still either. I couldn’t say that the paradox was to my advantage, but it was enough to keep me stable for the moment.

I looked at Klarion. There was something like honest shock on his face. His eyes were wide, and mouth gaping. For once, his pallor looked all too natural, all too real. He started to whisper half formed words. I let him speak as I burned.

“What did you do?” he asked. Then my hand was on his chest, fingers splayed. I looked at the appendage curiously, I hadn’t felt it move. He sputtered.

I pushed. Mana burned through my core, singing my soul. The spell ripped itself from my fingertips, scouring my skin raw. 

Klarion stumbled backwards half a step, than another. Dust trailed off his form, into thick flakes like burning paper. His arms came up, grabbing at something in the air in front of him.

“I…” he said.

“Vanish,” I whispered. And his body trailed away into ashes.

My arm sank back down to my side. Then, taking a deep breath, I forced my body into motion. Each step, I shattered the ossifying bonds of my cells with chaotic mana, and order forged them anew. One foot, then the other, I turned trailing motes of star stuff stitched together with entropy.

It hurt. It hurt so much. I felt tears trailing down my cheeks, they fell like stars, flashing out of existence before they could hit the floor. I imagine I must have looked like a star about to explode, when I staggered over to Kent.

“Hey,” I rasped, shattering his bonds with a flex of my will. The words felt foreign on my lips. Like they belonged to someone else. “Hey, Kent, come on.”

He let out a shuddering break, cracking open his tired blue eyes once again. “You really did a number on yourself, Kid,” he said. He made no move to stand, instead he let out a rough chuckle. It sounded wet.

“Kent,” I tried again. “We have to go.” I shifted half a step to the left, leaving behind a golden after image that cracked like a chrysalis. I was…running out of time, wasn’t I? Still, I had enough to get him out of here. I reached out a hand, but Kent caught my wrist.

His lips twitched into a small smile. “I’m afraid I’m not—” he coughed once. My eyes widened when his hand came away red. The scent of iron filled the air. “I’m not, going much of anywhere, young lady.”

I shook my head. It sounded like deadwood crashing to the ground.

Kent continued, “You, on the other hand, have a pretty serious problem on your hands.” His smile looked too jovial, too free, I wanted to yell at him. “That’s some serious magic you’re…throwing around there.” Something in my chest tightened as he repeated those words, the first thing he’d said, the day we met.

“Kent,” I said. “Don’t—don’t…”

“None of that, now,” Kent said. “We all have our time, young lady…” Another fit of coughs. “And we… all need to learn when it’s time to let go.”

“It’s not your time yet,” I snarled. A wave of explosions rippled through my body, chaos clashing with order, a million times in a heartbeat. I grit my teeth. Shaping a spell was difficult, now, as my soul was ground down between two opposing forces, but I would make do. I needed to. “It’s not!”

“You’re wrong, my dear,” he said. “After all, it’s the duty of the older generation to shepherd the younger. One last time, then.” A cough. “Let me show you an old favorite…of mine.” 

He traced a line across my collar bone with one finger, gentle light blossoming in its wake. I recognized it instantly, the same spell he’d used to patch up the streets of San Francisco after our first clash with Klarion. It washed over me gently, like a warm breeze, like a summer song. Wherever the light reached, I felt the ravenous currents inside of me…calm. I gasped as the order and chaos settled into a balance. Where the ravages of energy had clashed, they now flowed past each other. Order provided the structure, and chaos the impetus. Like building blocks, it all settled into place.

“Useful spell…that,” he said.

“How?” I breathed.

“Ah well, Order doesn’t function,” Kent said, “without a bit of chaos to go with it. I just…set things right.” Then he sighed. “Look out for the others, will you?”

I gaped, snapping back to the matter at hand. I reached out, shaping a spell again. “Kent, no, I can get you out of here! Just, hold on for a little longer, and—”

He cut me off with a chuckled. I tried to form the healing spell he’d just shown me, but it slipped out of my grasp. Something had changed and I couldn’t…I couldn’t— “You really do remind me of her, Taylor,” Kent said. “You have the same fire as my Inza. A real…” His hand slipped off my wrist.

Tears pricked at my eyes. “Pistol, that woman,” I finished. With trembling hands, I closed his eyes.

Then I screamed.

My magic, the power that I’d been unable to grasp consciously, exploded out of me in a wave. The walls of the room cracked, splintering, but I couldn’t care less. I collapsed over Kent’s lifeless chest as the facility rumbled, willing his heart to beat again.

Useless.

Kent had saved my life, but in doing so, he’d changed something fundamental about me. Something I couldn’t yet understand. It left me neck deep in mana, but with no way to direct it. And so, once again, I’d been useless.

My power prodded at me, and slowly, agonizingly, I tried to reassert control over my emotions. But they were too far gone, I couldn’t think past the vice grip on my chest, the heat behind my eyes. Instead, I wept, even as the air roiled around me, I wept useless tears, as my useless power tried to get me to pay attention to it.

Then, a door hissed open, and a bolt of lightning threw me across the room.

I remembered Klarion’s help. With my power I forced my spasm limbs into action, rolling out of the way of the follow up laser. I slashed my hand through the air, but nothing followed. The currents inside me continued to shift and turn, beyond my reach.

“Interesting,” came the thing’s text to speech voice. I could only glare as the disembodied brain rolled into the room. Its chrome body reminded me of R2, only larger, and a thousand times more sinister. “I am surprised that you are still capable of movement.”

Bereft of other options, I charged across the floor, tears still streaming down my cheeks.

“How uncouth,” the thing said. Arms folded out of the grey body, each one tipped with a weapon. “Not to mention useless.”

The word burned more than the laser that raked past my side. I rolled, leaping back again as the machine continued to pepper me. “What do you even want?” I screamed. “Do you fucks need to stick your nose in everything?”

The thing answered with a pulse of electricity to my chest, throwing me back. I bounced across the cracked tiles. “I am a man of science, mon ami. You and your little allies have destroyed all of my previous material. So I am looking for new subjects, no?”

I bared my teeth, grasping ineffectually at my mana once more. It twitched. Then another laser drove me back into the ground. I gasped as my emotions threatened to overtake me once more, to drown me.

Useless.

Something metal pushed down on my back, a sob ripped its way out of my lips. I no longer had the strength of will to hold it back. “Now, now,” the voice said. “There is no need to be so upset. I will take good care of you.”

Good care of you.

The words echoed in my ears, voice warping in my ears. For a second it sounded like Emma.

Something broke and—

A single shard flew through space, severed from its governing bodies but no less because of it.

—Suddenly, I understood. With a flex of will, my magic rose, all the things I could not grasp now flowing back into my fingers. It erupted from my skin in a wave.

I came to my feet, teeth barred, tears streaming. Wings popped out of the machine’s body, and it stayed in the air. This time, I caught its answering barrage on a golden shield.

My reflection in the light drew me aside, even as lasers and lightning pounded the construct. It…it was Kent’s spell, and I—

I blast of purple light shattered the shield, it missed, but I felt something rip through me all the same. I wilted, even as more and more spell fire filled the air. I could shape my mana, now, but I couldn’t hold back the storm of emotions in my chest.

I sank to the ground, lasers peppering the area around me. With one hand, then two, I threw every spell I could think of at my foe. Waves of light and shadow crested over the battlefield as my sorrow slowly shifted into something else. I felt sparks of fire in my breast, and I fed them.

The brain continued to dodge, but as my misery gave way to rage, I attacked even more aggressively. Orange lightning tore holes in the ceiling, golden ankhs dusted the walls. I didn’t care. All I wanted was to see this machine ground into scrap.

Then it pulled out something new, something it had learned from Klarion. A bubble of magic to shield it from my attacks. But it was made of mana, of Chaos. And that, I realized, with a savage grin, meant it was mine.

My fingers twisted into a claw. The shield twisted, and I wrapped it tight around each and every piece of metal.

Gasping, I said, “They say that brains have no nerve endings, that they can’t feel pain, or touch.” I clenched my hand into a fist, and the shield changed. It clamped over the brain itself, Order imposing over it a simulacrum of a full nervous system. “You will wish that was true.” With Chaos, I lit every one of those synapses aflame.

I stood there, rage burning bright in my breast, until I saw a blood vessel pop. A synthetic liquid spilled out into the glass dome covering the brain. Another burst, then a third. The metal shell let out a warbling screech of feedback and agony.

And then nothing.

The metal shell crashed to the ground, shattering into pieces. I stared at it, uncomprehending. It…was dead? 

“Hey,” I said, zapping it with a bolt of lightning. “Hey! Get up!” I threw it across the room, into the wall. “Get up!” I screamed. “Get up!” I crushed it with gravity. “Move, dammit! Just fight me, you bastard!”

I stood there, panting, spent, and watched as a clear fluid seeped from the wreckage of metal onto the shattered ground.

“Why,” I whispered.

Just as quick as it had come, my range drained away. I sank down to the floor, bereft. My head slumped down. It all felt so…heavy. I leaned to the side, and then I fell. My head hit the floor with a dull crack. I did not move, even as I felt a trickle of something wet and hot seep into my hair.

And that was how Raven found me.

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A/N: I'm not happy with the pacing of this one, but at the same time, neither part was long enough for its own chapter, and so the end of the Klarion fight and the whole Brain fight get put together. It's probably a bit fast, but then, I don't feel like this scene can be stretched much more before it becomes...campy. It was hard enough to write as is.

Next chapter will give space for decompressing. Let's see if I can't finally get myself out of this slump where I can't finish a chapter two weeks in a row...