The Gamer Chapter 1558 – Shattered Minds [Eliana POV] (Patreon)

“Can that old fuck move any slower?!” the failed goddess cursed to herself. Orkos was dragging himself to the teleporter, sometimes stopping, having forgotten where he currently was. ‘Seriously, what the fuck? Wow, can you be any meaner to the old and retarded, you utter cunt?’

The interrupting thoughts of her own voice were hardly a surprise anymore. Eliana had gone through so many stages of split personality at this point that having a voice that was mostly her own, but not entirely, was no longer surprising. That was to say that it was her, but it was not her, because she was the overlap and the extremes. Were Eliza and Thana not real or was Eliana not? Who could even tell at this point?

‘Can we at least get along and fuck that guy’s day up?’ she asked herself. Uncertainty was the answer. The human had suffered under the hands of someone she loved. Was he the one that deserved to be culled first or was it the goddess that killed his people? The doubt wormed itself between the split of her mind, prying it apart like barnacles between the planks of a ship hull. The whole structure strained. Eliana hissed, shaking her head against the dizziness.

Orkos was suddenly there, marching past her while she fought to assert herself – except there was no asserting herself. There was no convincing the other side and neither held more sway. Her soul switched between human and the death of humans and her body switched between immense and divine power by consequence. Her heart beat with unsteady drums.

She had to force herself to move, dragging herself to the teleporter. Once through, her dual mind had something to inspect in unison.

The petrified forest was a forest in the truest sense. More than just an assortment of stone trees, the forest had its earthen cliffs and upturned roots, its trenches and its hills. The air smelled dusty, the lack of actual biology around giving everything a layer of stagnancy. It was beautiful and it was bizarre.

“Romulus has too much fucking money,” Eliana mumbled, dragging her fingers over the life-like bark of a granite birch. First her fingertip then her claws bumped over the uneven stone, until the bone exoskeleton had turned too sharp, cutting trenches instead. The plates of white and underlying rivers of crimson formed a tough layer that was as much armour as it was an extension of herself.

She stopped at a spray-painted X, a more obvious mark of a starting position than any before. Orkos stumbled to his own spot. Looking at him brought the clashing doubts back. The explosion in the distance began the fight.

Eliana just stood there. ‘MOVE, BITCH!’ she told herself and then she did. Planting one step carefully after the other, she walked towards Orkos.

The jittery, confused old man looked at her with his head tilted. Even the flares of the Aura of Humanity’s Bane did not dissuade him. It was arguable whether he, in his current form, was even properly affected by it.

Covered in her carapace, robes and other clothes properly stowed away (for once sparing them the ripping), Eliana stopped in front of the old man. She looked into confused, prismatic eyes. “Are you sure it was Nathalia?”

“Nathalia…?” Orkos tilted his head, then his expression turned grim. “Nathalia… why would you bring up that name? Do you know where she is?”

“Are you fucking with my soul, you crusty… victim?” Eliana stumbled over her insult, torn between anger and empathy. “You fought her two day-“

“Oh, Manna!” Orkos suddenly stammered, his voice creepily boyish, despite his rust-spotted face. “Is everything alright? You’re so short and pale and… there’s this horrible air to you. Did you meet the fire spirits?”

Eliana grit her teeth. “Fuck,” she cursed. “FUCK!” She hurled a punch at a nearby tree, turning the petrified flora into sand, splinters, and a falling treetop. “HOW FUCKING DARE YOU, JOSEF!” she screamed at somewhere, anywhere, hoping the cameras would pick it up. “YOU SPINELESS ASSHOLE OF A COWARD! I’LL BASH YOUR SKULL INTO THE FLOOR UNTIL IT’S AS PULPY AS YOUR FUCKING HONOUR! I’LL PULL YOUR SHITTER THROUGH YOUR LUNGS, YOU-“

“That is quite enough.” Orkos’ stern voice only gave her a brief moment of warning before she was blown back by a wave of energy.

Eliana was blasted into a cliffside, cutting a humanoid hole into the stone. Any pain she felt was immediately healed and she broke out of the stone no worse for wear. “Unleash right now,” she demanded, her voice a wolfish growl.

Meeting her gaze, the aged man nodded. “Let them witness one more time, the fruits of my labour, this arcane dreadnought!” A pillar of arcane enveloped Orkos for a split second, searing a hole into the treetops. Then, the geriatric was gone and left behind was an old but proudly standing man with a flowing beard of white and black mana. He rolled his shoulders. “You mentioned Nathalia?”

“Do you seriously not remember?” Thana dropped on all fours, creeping around the battlefield like a monster of bone and blood. Her mask covered her face in full, cracking open to allow the goddess of genocide to speak. “It was two days ago; you faced her in battle. You bested her.”

“I… killed Nathalia?” Orkos asked.

“No,” Thana growled, her rage rumbling in her throat. “You bested her.”

Orkos put a hand to his forehead and mumbled. “I… truly don’t remember…” he muttered and his expression fell at the realization. Thana just circled him. His eyes did not track her, there were ample opportunities to jump at him, but she refused. She refused to rip this human’s spine out, to grind his flesh into dust and his soul into energy for her onslaught.

She refused to fight him while he was suffering the most inconsequential, dire realization that anyone could ever have.

“I’m gone, aren’t I?” the demented man asked.

“Worse,” Thana answered. “You’re still here.”

Orkos looked up at the sky, blinking away prismatic tears. “Even this will fade by tomorrow.”

Thana stopped and reached up to her face. “Just fucking surrender,” Eliza said, the mask dropping off her face and into the raised palm. With human eyes, the blood mage stared at her opponent. “You shouldn’t do this kind of shit. You barely know where you are. Even I have enough respect for the elderly to not send someone like you out like a demented nuke.”

Silently, Orkos wiped his tears from the corners of his eyes and focused on the failed goddess. “I am Orkos,” he answered. “I’m the protector of the Azure Tribe. I’m the grandfather of the arcane. I have seen my home reduced to dust twice. Once the village of Altaman was burned and once-“

“Altaman?” Eliana interrupted. “Not Atlatan?”

Orkos cocked his head, moving his lips as if tasting the names. He closed his eyes. “It is worse…” he mumbled, then his eyes opened in a flash of power. “Though my mind is gone, my purpose remains!”

Eliana pressed the mask back on her face. Bits of liquid bone and blood bound the abrasive surface back to her skull. The crack split; splintered mask, needles of crystallized blood, and true teeth formed three layers as she opened her jaw wide in a scream to overpower the sound of arcane spells blaring.

In a flurry of motion, she swiped at the torrent of arcane projectiles flung in her direction. Thana hated this fight, Eliza hated this fight, and so Eliana HATED this fight. She HATED this. She HATED him. She HATED him. She HATED him and she pitied the one before her. Where mercy and murder became the same thing, where the Fateweaving delivered her from the consequence of the desire to deliver final justice to this broken mind, the failed goddess was one.

The blast ray slammed into her defensively raised arm. The attack blasted through carapace and flesh, splitting the two bones of her forearm like a cleaved log. Strings of flesh snapped the halves back together before a drop of blood could sense the pull of gravity. All that was ever evident of the wound was the wet squelching sound with which the cells realigned themselves and the click of mending carapace.

Clicking sounds echoed from Eliana’s throat while her bone structure contorted. She twisted where she stood, and simply accepted several direct blows. Holes the size of open palms were pressed through her flesh, while segment for segment an extension of her spine pushed out of her neck. She gripped the hilt and slowly pulled out the weapon of her own blood and bone. Shoulder blades elongated and sharpened were fused to a rigid spine.

“I’m no mercy. I’m no principle. I’m just the consequence of blood spilled. Humanity gnaws on itself and I burn myself to charcoal. Let it be known that I hate the butcher. I HATE HIM! NO ONE SHOULD HAVE CLAIMED THIS FAITH! BE CONQUERED! BE BROKEN! BE FORGOTTEN AND BURN!” The incantation, as much self-loathing as malevolence for all and one specifically, poured out of her monstrous mouth, even while her lungs burned under arcane fire.

Three sets of wings burst from her back. A pair of skeletal wings, more like the arms of a praying mantis than anything else. Twisted branches of a bright blue tree, beset with golden leaves twisted into screaming faces. Crimson and bright red, stretched into crystal and burning butterfly patterns. Her bones sang. Her soul sang. Her blood sang. They sang like steam whistling through the pipes of an engine. They screamed. She screamed. Her blade screamed.

Her aura ignited, as blue as the lower half of her white-azure hair.

Orkos was not prepared for her. She Shifted forward at absolute speed, her claws enveloping the grandfather’s skull. Her motion was brought to an abrupt end by his particle skin, his position unmoveable.

She did not care. The skeletal wings and her blade all stabbed down, met by the flares of arcane energy. Then, Orkos actually reacted, unleashing a red wave of kinetic arcane that blew her off his form.

Her carapace shattered under the impact, shards of it dropping off, instincts dictating that they were so damaged that replacing them was simply more cost effective. With manic, amethyst eyes, Eliana snapped back to where her mercy kill was – where her target had been. Blood rushed to her ears, sharpening already absurd senses to a point where she heard the workings of her internal organs as background noise.

And she heard the displacement of air by someone using magus step.

Eliana leapt for a nearby tree. The ambient mana her body provided gave the surface just enough strength to serve as a platform, before her launching from it shattered the regular stone.

“I AM ORKOS! PROTECTOR OF THOSE THAT INHERIT THE FIRST SCHOOL OF ARCANE! WITNESS ME AND BEHOLD! TRUE – ARCA-“

Orkos was interrupted in his half-incantation as Eliana slammed into his new position with all the power of an apocalypse compacted into the frame of a short woman. Particle skin flared white, then silver. The most efficient colour made room for that of the fastest energy transferral, the protective layer struggling to keep up with the sheer might of the martial art-bolstered strike.

All the mana he had available in that moment was forced to flow to where her claws attempted to sink into his chest. The old man stared at her in surprise. Eliana knew that look. She saw it on all she sparred with, particularly the planning types. Her senses and reaction speed simply exceeded what they had accounted for.

The moment of satisfaction at her ability was short-lived. Even if he had miscalculated, at their level they had resources to spare. Less when they were fighting someone in their own weight class, but more than they would have when fighting equivalent people at a lower level. His mana reserves beat the strike and she plunged to the forest below.

‘Fucking binary cocksucking shit defenses making him fucking invulnerable or ass fucking murdered cunt blowing beaver blasting dumbfuckery!’ Worse slurs rushed through Eliana’s mind while she crashed through the stone branches of a pine tree.

“TRUE – ARCANE –“ Orkos resumed his incantation, only to have an entire tree lobbed at him like a giant spear. The pine shattered where it met him. The tip broke first, then the momentum continued to feed the rest into the destructive defense, gradually turning the entire projectile into a shower of fist-sized chunks. “DOMINION!”

Eliana hissed like a displeased lizard, while the runes appeared in the sky above. Intricate networks so grand in their potential that all she could decipher from them was the core meaning: ‘this space is mine for now’.

Had Orkos not been the forefather of arcane, he would have been a god amongst men, not held back by needing to make all the spells he learned. Had dementia not ripped apart his brain before he could reach effective immortality, perhaps he would have rivalled Romulus himself.

That entity was reduced to a tool, all because of loyalty.

It made Eliana sick.

The failed goddess leapt. Tail and wings shattered a swarm of seeking projectiles that launched from Orkos like wings of golden mana. It was a colour he had not previously used and its purpose became swiftly apparent.

The few arcane seekers that made it through her defences broke on her armour. The carapace was penetrated on the surface by the fine projectiles, but the impact was nothing compared to the initial shower of attacks she had let pass. The difference between the raw, kinetic damage and this was that the golden mana crystallized its excess energies into hardened spheres, stuck where they impacted, like bullets.

Eliana’s blood shoved the invasive objects out without issue, few as there were. “That’s the weakness,” she heard Orkos mumble.

‘Fucking smartasses,’ Eliana thought. While Orkos prepared his next trick, an expected one enveloped her. A cube of arcane barriers, pressing down on her from all directions. She let it approach, raising her right leg, letting the foot dangle, before bringing the Seismic Step down on the bottom barrier.

The technique was not meant to be used mid-air. Usually the energy that could not dissipate into the ground would rush back up her leg, but the barrier she slammed into was so strong that it took the entire energy of shattering a landscape to break through. Several arc lances flew overhead while she dropped back down.

“I wish I could fucking kill gravity,” Eliana growled. Lightning fast, she dashed off to the side, causing sonic booms whenever she turned direction to avoid the hail of attacks coming her way. There was an end to this arcane dominion spell and all she had to do was wait it out. If it was his mana reserves against her health reserves, the blood mage would trust in her own regeneration. For once, however, she did not have the luxury to shrug off whatever damage was thrown at her.

Especially not since the hundreds of seekers swarming after her were all golden. A few of them caught her. The foreign objects simultaneously introduced into her carapace caused it to crack, like a glass bottle filled with freezing water. Healing the cracks was possible, but each iteration would make her carapace more crooked. She had to remove the bullets from her body and that was costlier and more involved than just healing. Regenerating, Eliana was more than used to.

Drawing in air and concentrating ki in her lungs, the goddess of genocide prepared herself for one freeing move. She stopped at a clearing, where the sound could travel clearly. Immediately, all of the seekers surrounded her, like intelligent missiles.

A cataclysmic scream emptied the air in her lungs. Infused soundwaves carried in them the might of her violence, blasting back the golden rays. It wasn’t the most effective way to handle arcane spells. Since each individual seeker was rather weak, it worked here. The Beast Scream echoed away and there was quiet for just one moment.

“Arcana Strike.”

The diminished runes above consolidated into one point and the mass of black arcane descended. Eliana wrapped herself in a cocoon of her Bloodburn wings and awaited the inevitable. There was a moment of nothing. Then, there was a moment of absolute nothing.

Eliana was blasted apart. Wings were rent from her back, her carapace blown from the blood and her skin. The sword in her hand flew away when the hand holding it no longer existed. The destruction disintegrated her from all sides. It reached her head. Then she was gone.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Pain.

Her consciousness flared back into being amongst the familiar sting of full body torture. Scattered meat turned from charred to bloody, to liquid, to a pool that a naked hand reached out of. “You can’t be real,” she heard Orkos whisper, while the failed goddess dragged herself out of her own ichor and back into life. The pool of blood at the bottom of the crackling crater stayed attached to her back, splitting into her six wings.

Eliana gave her opponent a mad smile. She felt like laughing, but it got stuck in her throat when she remembered what she was fighting. She looked at her hand and the patches of skin and exoskeleton that covered her muscles. The air burned on exposed arteries and one lidless eyeball. Even her regeneration was being stretched by all of this.

“I’m very fucking real.” She extended a hand to the side. An umbilical cord sought out the heart of her sword. The creation of bone was as much part of her as any other of her joints. The weapon snapped back to her just in time to break the singular arc lance that was thrown at her with a vertical slash. The rest of her skin knit itself back together, leaving her a naked, six-winged woman, crouching down and leaping.

Orkos used a magus step to get out of the way. Eliana heard where he arrived before the teleportation was complete. All movement spells, except those anti-spells of the creepy cute cunt, had a delay, however miniscule. She twisted in the air and launched her sword, causing it to impact where Orkos was before he could react again. The tip of the weapon met the white particle skin – and broke through.

The stream of blood between the heart of her weapon and her left arm turned impossibly viscous, then pulled her towards it. With herself lodged in his ribcage, Orkos could not teleport again. He tried to blow up the handle of the sword, but his hastily weaved spell did not have the destructive power to destroy the most hardened bone she could make. There was a reason why the sword was the only object that had survived the explosion whole.

Freshly grown claws, the only part of her carapace yet to return, dug into his skull and squeezed. “Just die!” Thana howled.

“I will not fail my people again!” Orkos shouted back. The grains under his metallic skin audibly rattled, streaming in flowing circuitry to power a spell within. “The Arkan… my people!”

“I won’t fail my fucking guy,” Eliza growled.

“END!” Eliana sent a surge of blood through the spine of her blade. A cascade of thorns exploded within the ribcage of the arcane elemental.

Then Eliana suddenly dropped. The person she had held onto was no longer there. Only Fateweaving had the power to remove someone under such circumstances.

‘I fucking did it!’ Eliana thought and hit the ground.

The impact was enough for her to pass out.