Chapter 61

Nic flexed his hand open and shut, trying to focus in on the feeling of the Aleph.

Antares was ravenous, consuming…

Fomalhaut was violent and shaky, trying to rip free of his control…

Regulus was sickly and addictive, a surging strength in his chest…

Feeling them out, Nic pushed all three’s power down into his left arm. Instantly the limb began to swell and deform, tumors pushing out beneath the skin. Then they shrank away, replaced by glass quills sprouting from his flesh. As the quills shrank and receded in turn, he was left with a coating of crystalline black scales running from shoulder to wrist.

It was like riding a storm. You couldn’t direct or control it; you could only choose where you wanted to leap off.

Fomalhaut burned and destroyed the bonds within his cells, allowing them to mutate. Regulus guided them to swell and multiply at massive speeds. Antares consumed the failures, allowing him to strip away the countless failed genetic paths.

He could feel his muscle, flesh, and fat contracting and collapsing, could see snakelike growths surging underneath his slimy skin. As he released the energy and vented the tainted Essence with a breath, they shrank away, leaving worm-like patterns on his arm.

Thrusting his arm forward, he compared against a palm-strike from the right.

It might have been his imagination…

But the left arm felt faintly stronger. It was barely noticeable, but he’d only been practicing for a dozen odd minutes. If the gains were cumulative, then over time…

“Can this be used to refine the body past the System’s limits?” He asked.

“In theory, yes; these runes could be named as a truly priceless body cultivation treasure, for they present a road as limitless as the Dao.” The Dialectical answered, glancing up at the sky. The sails were coming closer, closer… “But that will take time. And our time is nearly at an end.”

“I’ll see you again.” Nic said, lifting Peacemaker onto his shoulder and standing. “One set left to collect…”

“Confidence I hope is not misplaced.” Bending its stick-thin limb to its waist, the Dialectical bowed, and stepped back through a portal that snapped open behind it.

For a moment Nic considered attacking. Trying to brute force his way through the portal, and escape the ambush into an entirely different world. But that would mean throwing himself into one of the System’s homeworlds, and as a wanted criminal who’d just attacked a servant of the System. Going from the frying pan to the fire was one thing…

But that seemed like a bad trade.

Still, in that one instant, his eyes sparked like flint, and the Dialectical noticed. “Ah. Young master allow me to assure you…” It’s tone was mild amusement. “You would not like it where I’m going.”

And then it was gone.

Nic stood up. Gwungo was wriggling around his arm, examining the scales with tiny, delicate feelers of slime. “Gwungo thinks you’re like Gwungo now… Shapefree and happy!”

Smiling, Nic petted the feelers and made the little slime giggle. “Not quite as free as you. I’m still shaped like myself.”

“Gwungo is always Gwungo shaped.” The slime said, suddenly so serious that Nic almost laughed.

“Sure are.” He said, and looked  up. The sails were here. The ships had arrived, their prows come cresting over the final dunes. He could see sand devils clinging to the rigging and preparing the ballista. The sides of the ship glittered with runes and formation disks, the fruits of Seoona’s dark sciences. Not just any ships then.

The three flagships of her fleet.

Ascended devils leapt down, landing on the ground. They rushed towards Nic as the first ship turned, trying to draw him into the dead angle of its ballista shots. Nic responded with a backwards kick, using his control over the sand underfoot to send him flying as a wall of spikes erupted in front of the sand devils, barring their path.

“Gwungo! Leash to Peacemaker!” As he flung his glaive, Gwungo attached in a long, sticky line spiraling out behind the throw like the chain of a harpoon. Peacemaker slammed into the ship’s deck and Nic was pulled forward like a rocket.

He unleashed the Hand of Ash as he arrived, a massive palm of swirling dust annihilating sand devils and crushing their bodies to pulp. As he ripped Peacemaker free again he spun, slicing the head off an Ascended devil hidden among the crowd, waiting to ambush.

In three quick heartbeats, Nic danced like a reaping wind through the ranks of the devils aboard the ship. They screamed pitiful insect screams as his blade chopped through arms, opened throats, split chests in half to expose beating organs beneath. Every time his Hand of Ash lashed out, a half-dozen bodies were thrown into the air like broken dolls.

In the space of three heartbeats–

The first of Seoona’s ships was a ruined wreck painted by the gore and dying bodies of her servants.

The second and third ship had already realized the first one was lost. They lifted their shields and fired, ballista bolts smashing into the sand-colored wood of the ship Nic was wrecking. There was a brief flash of runes–

And Nic felt a sudden cry of terror from his Eight-Eyed Mantle. Something below the deck. His mind spun through possibilities in a split instant, and he realized–

This ship was a decoy. Worse, a trap.

Nic sprinted for the mast, teleporting, crying out– “Leash!”

Gwungo snapped up to the sail’s crossbeam and lifted him in a lightning-fast snap of elastic slime, launching him high over the ship like a slingshot. It was barely in time. The ballista bolts detonated, and beneath the deck, dozens of barrels of explosive went up in a roaring belch of flame that tore the ship’s hull apart like tissue paper. Shrapnel boomed in all direction, and the air shook with impact.

Nic was thrown straight upwards, tumbling in the smoke and confusion of the detonation. He flailed, twisted, and–

Stopped.

His feet made contact with the air like it was solid ground, and he flew, standing on the wind above the battlefield.

Below, the sand devils who’d emerged from the first ship had collected into a formation-beast. Their bodies hung suspended inside the half-translucent flesh of a massive green-gold cobra, its jaws outstretched to send a jet of corrosive bile towards Nic.

He easily dodged aside. The outline of the sun burned behind him, and Nic saw the chance to try out his newest technique. The gift of the Sun God…

Zenith’s Wrath.

A second sun flashed into being behind him, a red sun marked with ashen Aleph runes eclipsing the true desert sun, their light combining into a brilliant halo of blood and gold.

A brilliant red beam lashed out from the core of the illusionary sun, like a blade of sunlight made manifest. With the chop of Nic’s hand for direction it sliced down and carved the snake in two. The destruction was instant, total, beautiful. The bodies left nothing but swirls of ash behind as the sand below was carved into molten glass.

He spun, and the beam refocused, lashing out again towards the second ship. It pierced through the shield with a shattering of light and tore the hull in two. It only took a split instant–

But it exhausted every ounce of aura in Nic’s body. He dropped from the air, landing heavily and gasping. “Tomb…” It was the most purely demanding technique Nic had ever encountered. He understood now why the Pharaoh's Heart method focused so utterly on capacity. So long as you could fuel this all-consuming technique, you could shatter your foes by sheer force.

The third ship sailed into sight around the wreck of the first two, ballistas trained on him.

Nic forced his aching body to lunge aside as a bolt pierced into the sand where he’d been. He had nothing left to dodge the detonation as the bolt shattered– he was picked and thrown across the sand, shards of metal and wood piercing into his flesh as the impact lifted him, the breath leaving his chest in a brutal sledgehammer-blow.

He rolled across the dune, down, stumbling onto his feet as the ship came crashing after him, tearing through the entire dune in a spray of sand. Devils leapt from the sides, already flowing into formation. They fused into a massive green-gold scarab and shot through the air on buzzing wings.

Nic understood.

Now that the decoy ship had failed to land a decisive blow, their tactic was to wear him down, coming at him relentlessly without ever deploying too much of their strength. He’d face an endless series of opponents, until his aura and Essence were spent.

It was a strategy that had worked for them once before. But they’d miscalculated.

They had no idea how quickly he could recover now.

“Redjaw, come out!”

On his command, the massive lindwurm burst from the tattoo on Nic’s arm. His skin gleamed with slimy mucus and vivid orange-yellow tones, head lifting towards the sky to howl in bloodthirst as the tendrils that emerged from his blind eye sockets lashed at the air.

The mark Talnu’Mo had inscribed on Redjaw’s belly flared. Nic could feel the air shift and fill with electric charge as the souls of the dead screamed, and their bodies dissolved into droplets of blood that flew into Redjaw’s body, reinforcing him.

As the lindwurm galloped across the sand towards the oncoming scarab his size doubled, and doubled again, until each footstep shook the earth.

Like the meeting of titans, Redjaw slammed into the scarab. There was a single moment of struggle, and then Redjaw smashed the formation-beast down into the ground and bit into its throat with his gaping, reptilian jaws. The formation shattered and his poison tendrils caught the devils as they fled.

Nic grinned. Talnu’Mo had undersold just how powerful this mark was. With so many bodies to devour, it was almost unstoppable.

As for himself, he had struck Peacemaker into the ground and drawn the bow Hollowsong. It wasn’t a moment too soon, because the ship was already wheeling a ballista about to focus fire on Redjaw. A bolt shot through the air–

And Nic struck it down with an explosive talisman arrow, the first, smaller explosion detonating the bolt before it could reach its target. As the other two ballista fired in sequence he laid down a rain of arrows, defending Redjaw and picking off the sand devils who’d managed to escape the failing formation.

Two more formation-beasts leapt from the final ship, a mantis and a black scorpion.

Nic shoved his bow away and drew Peacemaker once more, rushing to reinforce Redjaw as the two beasts closed in. He sailed across the sand on a rolling wave of dust, which became a massive hand and reached out to grab the mantis from the air. It burst free almost instantly, tearing through the loose sand, but Nic had already sprinted up the arm to arrive.

His blade swung towards its head, and it gave up an arm to parry, the blow chopping through the illusionary flesh with ease. It swung in retaliation with its remaining scythe-limb, but Nic wasn’t there. He’d teleported behind and his blade decapitated the head in one stroke.

Still fighting, the mantis swirled about, but once again Nic was already gone. He struck its wings off its back now and they both plummeted towards the ground.

The feeling in his veins was pure exhilaration. Nic had never been able to fight so freely, to expend so much power so quickly. His inner sun was constantly replenishing him with a never-ending stream that allowed him to fight, seemingly forever.

As they hit the ground he unleashed the Hand of Ash, shattering the formation beast entirely and slaughtering the devils within. In the distance, Redjaw had finished tearing apart the scorpion. The lindwurm was beginning to shrink now, the tattoo-mark’s moment of all-powerful battle rage fading.

“Come back.” Nic commanded, and Redjaw turned into a stream of inky energy that flowed into his arm and became a tattoo once again.

The ship was turning, reloading, preparing for another ballista salvo…

Nic unleashed his domain.

The ship’s progress lurched to a halt as the sand underfoot turned to deep, swampy mud. Legions of reeds burst forward and pushed up against the hull, dragging it to a halt. Ancient mangrove trees grew around it and paralyzed any last chance of escape.

The devils aboard were panicking.

Nic was grinning.

From within the shield, all around the ship, five pillars of mud lifted into the air. A massive hand emerged from beneath the vessel–

And with a squeeze of his hand, Nic crushed every soul aboard, the wood splintering, the mast snapping in two, the devils screaming as they were wrung out to yellow pulp…

He opened his hand again and the domain collapsed, the ruined remains of the ship left sticking out of a muddy crater.

But his danger sense was still stinging in the back of his ears.

The fight wasn’t over, even though every opponent he could see had been slain.

On the eastern side of the valley where he’d fought, Seoona appeared, stepping out of a black portal that rippled and reflected the world like a dark mirror.

On the opposite side, an invisibility technique was released and the two demons, the musician and the pygmy, flickered into view.

“It seems your plan to wear him out is a total failure.” The musician said, smiling gently. “Perhaps a new one is in order…”

“Cooperate.” The pygmy barked. “It’s in our best interests to delay our fight until this pest is dead.”

“Very well.” Seoona agreed. “We will have a ceasefire, until we’ve finished off our mutual foe.”

“Anyone care to hear my proposal?” Nic called out. He leveled Peacemaker at Seoona. “I say, fuck you all, it’s time to die!”