[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 229 – Proving Grounds

Komachi poked her head out and pointed a paw right at the prodigious cleavage window. “Ayy, you got any snacks in there?”

Zarishna’s attention snapped to Komachi with a flicker of surprise. “I do, in fact. Have you been waiting all this time to come out, little spirit beast?” She folded her arms.

Sam was left unsure whether his pocket healer had actually managed to evade detection.

“Being a stealthy pocket healer is a great advantage in combat!” Komachi said proudly.

“An advantage you’ve now lost,” Zarishna pointed out.

“Nah, you ain’t goin’ to attack us,” she said smugly.

“Is that so?” Zarishna said, thinning her eyes. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Being useful doesn’t necessarily prohibit violence.”

Komachi stared at the Empress. Sam could practically feel her cat brain working overtime to figure out what that meant.

“She means that she can still attack us even though she thinks we’re useful tools,” Sam said, looking around at the interminable darkness.

Komachi looked around. “Well, sheeeet.”

“Yeah, but then she’ll be stuck here all on her own. I get the impression she doesn’t want that anymore than…well, any sane person.” He peered intently at the woman. “The question is: how sane are you?”

Sam wasn’t afraid of a fight. Not with the Empress. Not with anybody. But without a weapon, he was at a severe disadvantage. Not to mention, after the battle with the ogre, his MP wasn’t in the best shape. And that was the only weapon he had left.

While he wouldn’t back down from a fight, there was such a thing as being prudent.

She smirked darkly. “Sane enough to survive, and perhaps alter this Shard’s fate.”

“Sanity isn’t always necessary to survive,” Sam told her. “Sometimes it can be more of a hindrance.”

She shrugged. “It all depends on the person and their powers. There are real metamorphic dangers by delving too deeply into insanity, for one such as me.” She waved her hand dismissively. “But enough about that. Where is your weapon? You are of little use to me if you cannot fend for yourself.”

Sam didn’t like the sound of “metamorphic dangers” one bit, but he wisely kept his concerns in check. If something happened, at least it would be two against one.

“Lost it,” he answered truthfully. “Happens a lot to me, but that doesn’t mean I’m defenseless.”

Though Sam did have to admit that it dramatically weakened his martial prowess.

She frowned slowly, her brows drawing together with a mixture of amusement and concern. “Clearly that needs to be remedied…and yet something about you makes me question.” She raised up on those tentacle-like limbs again. This time, they were sheathed in swirling gray storm clouds. “Have you been doing this long?”

“Sounds like first date banter,” Sam said with a snort. “Not long enough though.”

“You are a War Incarnate,” she said, as if that explained everything. For some reason, it seemed like she was commenting on the first date quip instead of his answer.

“So I’m told.”

“Not long though.” She tapped her cheek pensively, then glanced off to the side. “And you accidentally arrived here. So you can move freely throughout this Shard’s timeline, without any of my restrictions.”

“Wait, what?”

She turned away, and seemed to float into the darkness. “Follow me. Let’s find you a weapon.”

“I want those snacks!” Komachi groused.

“I think she’s lost it if she’s talking about time travel,” Sam whispered to Komachi. “Best be on our guard.”

“I can hear you just fine,” Zarishna told him without looking over her shoulder. Her storm tendrils moved with such grace and fluidity that, if he unfocused his eyes, she seemed to be floating stately away into the dark.

With a shrug, Sam followed after her at a distance. “Then mind telling me just what you mean by being able to move throughout this Shard’s timeline? Aren’t we in Il’dran?”

“The multiverse is a vast place. It may be another one entirely.”

“Sounds like somebody doesn’t know,” Komachi snickered into a paw.

“I don’t anymore,” Zarishna said quietly.

“Aw, now you got ‘Machi feelin’ bad!”

Sam petted Komachi’s fluffy head.

“Things would be much more convenient if I had the Authority to manifest a quest readily. Perhaps it’ll happen more naturally.” They passed by more of those automaton heaps on the way to wherever they were going. “We are on my Worldshard, within the Ruins of Alzahan, a cloistered ancient superstructure where time does not move.”

“I’m not a physicist or anything,” Sam began, keeping an eye on the pile of brass limbs and scrap as they passed, “but it seems to me that time is moving here. Else we’d be frozen, wouldn’t we?”

“Time does not work like that. Perhaps, to a bystander, we would appear to be standing still. But from our point of view, we can move, talk, nearly all things we can still do. However, there are…side effects.”

“Such as?”

“Since time does not move, your natural sense for the flow of hours and minutes will degrade, since there is no time flowing around you. Likewise, food and sleep are luxuries you no longer possess. For the first few decades perhaps you will find some measure of a trance as your body goes through the motions, but you don’t need it. Time doesn’t move, so you cannot age, cannot digest your food, produce no waste, etcetera.”

Komachi made a growl in the back of her throat. “Machi still wants snacks. Don’t care if I don’t need ’em. I want ’em!”

Sam was too busy trying to unravel what Zarishna explained to him to be concerned about snacks. Komachi could have them. “That would explain the lack of a smell in here,” Sam said lightly, looking at the Empress. “Except for you. You know, I always wondered about the day-to-day realities when I watched TV shows. They never mentioned it, as if people didn’t use the bathroom even when they were trapped on an island like in Lost.”

He nearly bumped into those storm limbs. Zarishna glared down at him from above.

“Oh, are you some high-and-mighty creature that doesn’t use the bathroom?” Sam asked. “I’ll have you know, there’s a good book called Everybody Poops, it’s very enlightening.”

“I do not know how to even respond to what continues to spill out of your mouth.” She covered her face. “Too much like my husband.”

“Heh,” Komachi said.

“Then I think we’re even,” Sam told her.

Zarishna lowered herself, seeming to sit midair, completely supported by those limbs that resembled spindly cyclones.

“How you doin’ that?” Komachi asked.

“Monster essence,” she said casually. “Djinn essence, specifically. I could [Splice] something more aggressive, if you prefer.”

“The…heck…” Komachi shook her head. “Aren’t those genies?”

“Near enough, for monsters.”

“That mean ya can fulfill wishes?” she asked hopefully.

Zarishna barked a tired laugh at that, then tossed Komachi a wrapped parcel.

Sam reached out and caught it, holding it aloft from Komachi’s greedy paws. “Later,” Sam said, putting it in his inventory. He didn’t quite trust this woman, and he didn’t think it could do much harm in his inventory for the time being.

Best not to outrightly offend her.

Komachi didn’t like this. Which wasn’t much of a surprise. She wasn’t the patient sort of cat.

Then again, was there such a thing as a patient cat when food was involved?

The Empress raised an arm that began to well with icy blue energy, and shoved it into an ornately carved golden door. From opposite sides, burning blue mana rushed through the channels cut into the metal until they met in a complicated sigil at the center.

The door split open, and Zarishna tossed a few azure blazing torches into the next chamber. She casually waved him through.

She didn’t seem inclined to go first, so neither did Sam.

“You want your weapon, don’t you?” She looked rather bored.

“And it’s in there, is it?” he asked, skeptically.

“Of course it is. I’m not fabricating you a weapon with my aether. Not without some proof. And willingness beside.” She leaned back, lounging midair. “If you’re truly a War Incarnate, you’ll have no trouble.”

Sam stepped up to the door, but aside from the blue glow cast about by the torches, he couldn’t see much. It was a fairly large room, but nothing quite so cavernous as the one he just came from. He could see the walls to the left and right, but ahead was only darkness.

He looked over at the Empress, rather, he looked up. It seemed pretty clear to Sam that since she couldn’t impress him with her similar stature, that she’d up the ante and hover over him the entire damn time she was in his presence.

Typical.

There were a thousand things Sam could have said at that moment. Most of them quite unflattering and crass. However, he decided that it didn’t matter much if there was something dangerous in the next room.

Because as soon as Sam stepped through the door, he knew that the most dangerous thing in there would be him.

“I’ll await your victory,” the Empress said, and with a wave of her hand, the doors slammed shut with a spray of sparks.

Komachi hissed at the door shutting. “What a way to get on our good side!”

“Yeah, saw that one coming,” Sam said without turning around.

From the gloom, a rattling, whirring hiss echoed out.

Not wasting a moment of the dramatic entrance this creature no doubt wanted to make, Sam rushed forward and scooped up both blue-burning torches. He tossed one as far as he could into the darkness and sprinted forward with all of his might while holding the other.

Komachi frantically scrabbled back down into his armor.

Sam’s first throw was farther than he would have thought. The torched soared end-over-end until it slammed into a monstrosity of metal.

The creature must have been dormant for a long while, because it took time to rise from the floor. Its misshapen body and limbs looked lopsided to Sam, as if somebody created it out of spare parts they had lying around.

All of this passed before Sam’s eyes as he rushed the creature, unwilling to give it a second to fully power up. He didn’t care if it was unfair, he wasn’t about to stand around like some gormless idiot while the monster in front of him charged up and became truly dangerous.

Sam didn’t see a sword on the creature, or in its misshapen hands, but that didn’t matter.

In the few seconds it took to cross the room to the creature, it had nearly risen to its full eight-foot height and towered over him. Jets of blue-tinged steam that sparkled with motes of mana hissed from various points across its tarnished brass body.

Curtains of miraculously wet seaweed were draped over it, giving it the impression of a hulking Scotsman on the warpath. Its smooth head twisted and whirred until it snapped its faceless gaze on Sam.

“Dang, that thing is cool, Sam,” Komachi admitted. Using [Bribe], coins clinked within his armor, and he felt a bit more room in there again. She began to strum her instrument, building up [Heroic Rock] that enhanced his Strength and Vigor.

Reddish orange musical notes poured out of his armor, trailing after his footfalls like ants.

Sam realized he would likely never clear the thing fully without it grasping him, but he kept his legs coiled all the same to give the impression that he intended to leap over it.

The creature clearly wasn’t stupid, because as Sam tensed a few feet away from it, he saw its piston-like limbs reach up to the sky.

Grinning, Sam let himself nearly fall forward. At the last possible moment, he twisted and kicked against the floor with all his might, sending himself sliding across the ground on his back.

With the mechanical monster’s limbs reaching above its head, it could do nothing as Sam slid across the floor and straight beneath its prodigious bulk.

As he passed, Sam tapped one mechanical leg just above the knee joint and let loose a blast of Void mana. [Void: Scour] erupted in shimmering black-and-silver flames.

Just as he guessed, the creature ran on mana. Sam kept sliding as the monster’s leg, now devoid of mana, gave out. It collapsed to one knee with a ringing gong, but it gave no time for Sam to congratulate himself.

Its upper body twisted about as if its hips were on a turntable. Several points of light began to glow ominously across its body as beams of scalding red light streaked out toward him.

Well, that’s not very fair, Sam thought, knowing full well he couldn’t dodge the attack.