The Gamer Chapter 1533 – “So much of me is timber” [Nathalia POV] (Patreon)

Whether there was a pit where her stomach should have been or not, the dragoness had to win. Raising a titanic claw, she met the first strike of Orkos with a swing quick enough to disperse a hurricane.

Five blast rays were launched and five blast rays met them halfway through the air, fired from five hovering creations of mana that roughly resembled her mate’s Companion Cube.

The adjusted trajectory caused the spells to slam into Nathalia’s fingers, blasting them back. The strength of the impact was surprising, painful, and welcome. Growling with the entirety of her jagged form, the dragoness embraced the danger she was in. A distraction from all these doubts she had not needed to feel for over ten millennia.

Where her hand had failed to connect, her open maw was happy to deliver the pain instead. From the depths of her being, fire torrented forwards like the merciless onslaught of an erupting volcano. Orkos was enveloped for several seconds, before his speed allowed him to escape the apocalyptic cone of red fire.

Nathalia moved forwards, crossing dozens of metres with each step. Under her claws, the molten ocean was as firm as she needed it to be to remain standing. A beat of her tail on the surface caused a massive ripple. The last vestiges of firm metal were swallowed up by the wave, leaving only an incandescent ocean as hot as Nathalia’s rage.

The tail slam had brought with it an infusion of her mana into the expanse. An infusion that now unloaded in various geysers, attempting to swallow Orkos as he flew around her like a blue and purple comet. He swerved around each obstacle, annoyingly apt, and launched a variety of spells at her. Purple, black, red, green, the arc lances and blast rays slammed into her titanic hide, sending shards of obsidian splintering off, many of them bigger than house walls.

Lesser injuries were swiftly clogged by hardening magma, but some craters marked her like pocks. Twisting around with the grace of a cat, Nathalia swiped. Once, she narrowly missed Orkos. Twice, he blocked her attacks with spells. Then, during the third wave of attacks, she caught him.

Her enormous fingers clenched around the man. A mortal may have compared it to grasping a wasp. She could feel the sting of the particle skin resisting her hold, but even that spell had its limits. Drawing back her fist, she slammed Orkos into the depths of the ocean before his arcane might could blow her fingers open. She left him to the devices of the molten metal, attempting to crush his form with the power she, as a goddess, was entitled to.

A mound was formed, a spiralling prison, and had barely begun to harden when he burst out in an opening flower of mana barriers. The blue that enveloped him grew only more powerful. “Enough of the games,” he declared.

“GAMES?!” Nathalia bellowed, her voice turning into fire. From the shattered cliffs that were her maw, the torrent of heat flowed, turning the ocean ever brighter. Magus step moved Orkos out of the cone of flame in an instant. Nathalia followed him and he kept on teleporting each time she caught up to him.

“Witness it, my former pupils, world!” Orkos annoyingly addressed the onlookers. “This is the giant on whose shoulders you stand upon! It is time for one more lesson by this old man. Behold the true might of magic, untainted by the restriction of the elements! Raw power, formed only by the will that wields it!” He clapped his hands together. “I AM ORKOS, FOUNDER OF THE AZURE TRIBE, PROTECTOR OF ITS WALLS, CREATOR OF THE FIRST SCHOOLS OF ARCANE! I AM THE GRANDFATHER OF THE FLOWS OF AZURE AND PURPLE! WITNESS ME AND LEARN! TRUE – ARCANE – DOMINION!”

Hands parted in a wide gesture and the sky answered to Orkos’ will. The blue of the empyrean itself was pale against the empyreal circles of magic that etched themselves into the sky. Layer upon layer of concentric runes and sigils formed a ritual so grand that Nathalia could not even begin to fathom what they said in detail. A being as pure of magic as her, however, understood the flow above instinctually. For all the complexities of it, there was one simple phrase carved into it.

‘This piece of the world belongs to me.’

Nathalia’s eyes moved down suddenly and she threw herself at Orkos with all she could muster. She had believed herself a force nigh unstoppable but, although she was right, slamming into a wall of white mana so grand that even she came to a standstill had that annoying doubt flicker inside her again.

‘What have I been doing since I ascended?’

The intrusive thought was swept aside as she shook her head to recover from the concussive stop. Her claws dragged over the barrier, testing its durability. Marks were left behind, like a diamond scratching through glass. The barrier was durable, yes, but not indestructible. Information that was most valuable when more of the enormous walls appeared around her, boxing her enormous form in and then slowly, gradually, narrowing down.

‘Have I experienced anything I can be proud of?’

Nathalia was squeezed down, like a rat in a cruel cage. The white walls turned her proud form into a squished display piece. Growling and struggling, the dragoness refused this treatment with all her might. Frustration towards her own pesky thoughts was turned into a flame that torrented from her titanic jaws. The combined might of her body and fire was enough to shatter the mana barriers. She landed on her side in the molten metal, cracking the thin layer of black that had begun to form on its surface.

‘Is there anything that I’ve built?’

Nathalia leapt from her lying position straight at Orkos. The master of the arcane launched two already prepared arc lances at her. One, she managed to evade, the other hit her in the shoulder, blasting a hole the size of a bus into her just as she put weight on that limb. She went back down, screaming in terror and rage as she did.

‘Am I losing?’

She hit the surface of the ocean, concentration wavering, and began to sink.

‘Can I not even destroy this enemy?’

She refused to let the answer to that question be yes and rose back from the ocean with all her might. Orkos wore a grim smile, right up until she shattered through the renewed barrier he had put up. Hot rage turned the magma pulsing through her, gushing out through her wounds, white with incandescence. Fast, faster than she had ever been before, she brought her claw down.

It was repelled by an explosive surge of Orkos’ defences. Still grim, no longer smiling, he waved his hands in esoteric gestures. Energy drained from the circles above, unleashed in terrible spell after terrible spell. Feeling nothing but aggression, Nathalia advanced through it all. There was no choice but to destroy him before he destroyed her. She was THE Flame of Destruction, black dragon, ender of all that she cared to end.

The black-white of obsidian and pure incandescence slammed into the black-white of arcane at its most aggressive and most defensive. Over and over again, Orkos battered her with spells. One of her gargantuan horns was blown off her head, while her jaws closed in on her enemy. He teleported away, but she could feel his cool body in the burning air behind her. Her enormous tail slammed into him and the entirety of the circle above flickered from the sheer expense particle skin took to uphold.

Then, the dominion circle above collapsed into a singular point.

“My magnum opus: arcana strike,” Orkos spoke and pointed downwards.

The singularity of arcane might fell. It was a dense, swirling sphere, embodying all the frequencies of arcane. The sphere reflected in Nathalia’s eye and in that moment she saw what others had always seen in her: a catastrophe inevitable.

Surging forwards, Nathalia managed to evade a direct hit to the head, but that was all she could do. The attack slammed into her flank instead. The prismatic sphere unleashed in a cataclysmic bloom. Energies atomized her molten blood and jagged obsidian body.

There was a blissful moment where the damage was too sudden to feel pain.

Then, her life blood gushed out of her in great rivers and the torment set in. From the base of her right leg to the shoulder of the same side, her flank was gone. The expansion had not been equal, her inner layers denser than her outer ones, preventing the arcana strike from undoing her spine. Besides that, all was gone. Cracked, ground down to nothing, and scattered in the arcane winds.

Nathalia collapsed once again, barely able to bite back the pain. She would not give Orkos the satisfaction of hearing her scream. The terribly powerful man hovered down, the trail of blue he left not as dense as before. She had taken her toll on him, that much was for sure, even if he, like John, annoyingly protected a likely soft body behind incredible defences.

“I dreamt of this day,” Orkos stated, hovering in front of her face. “When I would finally punish you for what you did. When I finally would have ANSWERS!” A mana barrier shaped like a pillar came down on Nathalia, slamming down on her hurt shoulder.

This time, she screamed.

Orkos seemed to take no pleasure in it or, perhaps, not enough. A second pillar slammed into her exposed stomach. A third penetrated her tail. All nailed her to the loose bed of the metal ocean. “Answer me – why did you burn down Atlatan?” Orkos asked, calmly. “Did you do it because you were bored?”

‘What have I been doing since I ascended? I destroyed things that bothered me. Sometimes for good reasons, usually just because I wanted to.’

“Did you do it to brag?”

‘Have I experienced anything I can be proud of? I thought I did, to revel in excess is only natural, right? But what do I have to share, besides tales of men that did not bore me and food I did not prepare?’

“Did we live on your territory?”

‘Is there anything I’ve built? Romulus has his expansive realm, the Rat does too, even those that I share my mate with have each their own accomplishments and I… I have attached myself to Scarlett and entertain myself with her ventures, not truly carrying myself.’

“Answer me, Nathalia, before I send you back in shame!”

‘Am I losing? Does it matter? I have lost to others before, to Romulus and Tiamat but… there I just survived and returned to a life of day to day pleasures. Now I will… I will be disappointing people I love…’

Orkos just stared, waiting for her to say anything.

‘Can I not even destroy this enemy? What am I good for, if not? Just a pretty face and title in a harem that rapidly catches up to my power? What do I give that cannot be replaced? Why would they keep putting up with me, after all I have done?’ Then, it all came to a singular question. ‘Do I even deserve to be loved?’

A few seconds of ragged breathing.

‘No,’ answered her subconscious.

An answer that made her blood run cold.

‘Not as I am now.’

The gargantuan form of the dragon began to shrink. The giant pillars dragged through her flesh, ripping out and leaving yet more nasty wounds. When she was reduced to her human form, sitting before Orkos, she was as much open, glowing wounds as she was her usual attractive self. Slowly, she fought herself to her feet.

“Not even going to face me in your true form anymore?” Orkos asked with contempt in his voice.

The contempt was just, she had to admit.

“No… I am… timber… so much of me is… timber…” Nathalia responded and grit her teeth. Rewriting her form in reality was ever unpleasant. Adjusting her avatar alone had been annoying. Pouring her essence into a new mould, that was beyond the pain even of the wound in her side. ‘I am not this…’ she thought about her current form. Her freshly formed skin breaking off in burning flakes. ‘I am not quite this.’

Orkos launched another Arc Lance at her, causing her to stumble two steps backwards. Under flaking skin and the place where she had been hit, the rapidly moving Faith that made up her being was visible. Red and black, fire and obsidian intermingling constantly. The Faith broke her bones with a terrible snap that echoed over the battlefield, then drew muscles and sinews apart.

It hurt.

It carved into her soul.

It hurt.

Took chunks out and rearranged them.

It hurt.

Her own magic reached into her guts and twisted them around.

It hurt.

She would not be able to reverse this. Not for a long, long time.

And that was why she did it.

‘I am dragon.’

Scales, wings, and tail again shoved out of her form.

‘I am mate.’

The humanity, however, remained underneath. Even with the hole in her side and in her shoulder, she remained humanoid. Over ten millennia, she had spent clinging to her origin. She was a higher dragon, no matter what flesh she wore for entertainment. That ended now.

‘I am goddess.’

The Faith crept all over her features, turning into a quintessential stream of lava. They were more than molten rock, they were the concept itself, forged from the ideas of mankind flowing into her. From all the mortals she could never see as anything but beneath her, yet that paradoxically managed to create her.

‘I am Nathalia.’

Opening a maw of evenly sized teeth, Nathalia let out a breath like steam escaping through a tiny vent between rocks. The hot vapour disappeared with barely a cloud in the equally heated air. Her open side still dripped her lifeblood. Her claws were curved and jagged like the slope of a mountain. Her form was barely taller than before. Its femininity, however, was nearly entirely lost under the streams of lava that criss-crossed over her surface like black and incandescent static. She was dragon, human, and goddess, forged from well-founded arrogance, realized weakness, and gathered potential. The claws of her digitigrade legs dug into the cooling ocean.

Orkos threw up a barrier, but she slammed right through it. Her hand gripped the arcane master by the throat and found the last of the particle skin giving away. A mana retainment measure, as became immediately obvious. An unstable arcane of unforgiving crimson was raised up between them.

This new form of hers, it was no faster, no stronger, in no other way superior to the previous one. No, all it was was adapted to the demands of this, her new life.

Beating her black wings, she brought herself out of range of the explosion before it could go off. For a moment, she was in control of her descent, then her left wing snapped from the tax she put on it, her shoulder still torn open, and she landed on one knee. The wing fell like a piece of cloth on a broken frame.

Undisturbed, Nathalia opened her maw wide. The draconic shape of her skull became more pronounced. Chunks of metal and heat were drawn out of the environment, sucked into her mouth, which burned from coal to white ash. For a split second, she closed her teeth of obsidian and energy, then breathed out a burst of energy. All that she had previously spewed out over seconds or minutes, concentrated into a singular eruption of rock and fire.

A hand raised, Orkos shot five arcana rays, supported by five more from the companion spells. The companions constantly adjusted, keeping the overall beam steady, as it met the eruption breath head on. This lasted for only a few seconds, then, swiftly, Orkos used a chain of magus steps. All he had needed to do was play for a little bit of time to get ready for the teleportation.

The beam of concentrated doom uselessly impacted far away. Its impact sent cracks through the edge of the Protected Space that went several hundred metres up, created a massive gust of wind, and a ripple across the metal that travelled from one edge of the ocean to the other.

It had also been Nathalia’s last ditch effort.

There was no other form to revert to, true as this one was now and would be for, at the very least, hundreds of years. Collapsing, Nathalia remained on arms and legs, simply doing her best to knit her exposed surface back together. All else would heal, in time.

‘Volcanoes aren’t all destruction, they’re also where the most fertile land is found. You’re both,’ the words John had said, perhaps the first words that made her truly fall in love with him, rung in her head. She concentrated on the ground in front her, just wondering if she even…

A flash of arcane made her look up from her effort for a moment. “Tell me why,” Orkos demanded. “Even if I forget again, even if I will only remember in flashes of reason, I – must – know – why.”

Nathalia directed her gaze down again. The last trickles of her magic seeped into the metal, turned it into dirt, then dirt into fertile soil. “I do not… remember… an Atlatan,” she pressed out. “I do not know… if I destroyed it…”

“You did! Do not try to dodge the blame!”

“I am… not…” she continued, her magic turning into something in the soil. “I… likely… did… and I… and I…” she stopped for a moment, letting out a singular laugh when something green peeked out of the ground. She scooped up the little bit of soil in one hand and raised it up at Orkos with a smile. It was absurd to show it to him, but she needed to. This was a new kind of pride for her. “I’m… sorry… I’m not that… woman… anymore.”

Orkos looked at her, then the plant. He looked crestfallen and Nathalia understood. “I’m not that boy anymore either…” he mumbled and pointed the charging arc lance at her. All went white for a moment.

Then she found herself in the hospital of the coliseum.