477 To March Across the World

He raised a palm, and the runes across him dimmed, all light siphoning into his body. He fed on it while squeezing his hand. A ripple raced across reality. It coursed over my dimensional wake, and my eyes widened. The magic carried the depth of laws within. Torix stood, his body imposing and regal.

"You wish to hear of it? Hm, a lecture. An astute idea."

Dominion oozed from his body, drenching his surroundings in the dark ichor. Lightning of several elements arced from the puddles of darkness, each cackle humming with hidden danger. His eyes carried the depth of worlds and the weight of secrets. Each step sent a tremor across reality, and he raised his hand.

"I believe a demonstration is in order."

Chapter Begin

Torix's eyes flared bright as he raised a hand. Mana coalesced into his palm before he reached toward me. I raised a brow before light beamed over me from Torix's palm. All over me, umbral flames erupted from under my skin, eroding me from within. I frowned, my face heated to a bright glow under the dark shadows.

"Is this supposed to hurt me or-"

Torix snapped his fingers, and the flames shifted into a strange poison before fragmenting out as ice. It melted my body before freezing and shattering it in tandem. Abandoning the ruined vessel, I walked out of the ether before clapping my hands.

"I have to admit, that was an enormous amount of damage. How'd you-"

Torix swiped his hand, and the same light touched the edge of the horizon. It swallowed all it touched in dark flames. I darted sideways, jumping off the cracking ice. Torix disrupted my gravitation via his own, and I tumbled sideways. I peered up, and Torix hovered into the air, his body floating through antigravity. I gazed at my hands, each of them ablaze.

While not outright crippling, the surging heat singed my skin and crept into my body. I tried shaking them off, but the flames persisted. Torix gazed at his newly clawed hands.

"It would seem you're unable to even tolerate a mere fusion of basic elements. How trite."

I smiled back. Banter, huh?

"There's no reason to talk down about your technique. Trite, maybe, but it’s at least novel," I said.

He cackled.

"And enough to tear you to dust."

My skin rippled as if alive, and it consumed the embedded mana in seconds.

"Or be consumed."

I darted towards him, and he took out the dark staff I gave him a year ago. It smashed against my forearm, and antigravity burrowed in. I floated off the ground for a moment. Torix channeled during my surprise, mana building around us at an otherworldly pace. It oozed out of him before the liquid mana coalesced and fell like gemstones around us. The crystallized energy snapped at me as I leaped off a gravity well toward him.

Torix raised a palm, and a plume of ice pierced out to me. It swarmed over my vision, encompassing my body. Wrestling myself free, I unleashed a wave of gravitation. The ice liquified, and a bolt of Torix's magic fought against my own. Strands of something infested my mana flows, and they rendered them null and mute.

I blinked as my sorcery fell apart. Torix remade the ice, and the growing panel held me in a pseudo-stasis. Wielding my full strength, I lifted my arm to shatter the frozen mass around me, but it melted into water as I did. I kept sloshing around, and for a moment, I was helpless. I continued swinging my arms around, unaccustomed to navigating a world through physical means rather than gravity.

Torix tiled his head. His words pierced our surroundings.

“Ah, I see you’ve chosen to emulate a fish choking on air.”

I grinned, the exhilaration of a tough battle flowing through me. I mouthed,

“Then let’s go.”

I shifted my from, dense panels of metal giving me excellent grip on the water. I flowed forward, and the water shifted into red flames. Heavy as lead yet as thin as fire, the scorching blaze weighed me down while sticking to my skin like syrup. I writhed around like a soldier enveloped in napalm. I spoke, my voice raspy from the heat.

"You're blending magics together in a way that doesn't make sense. Shouldn’t be impossible?"

Torix lazily swung his staff about.

"It is."

My voice gurgled on melting metal.

"Then how are you-"

He pointed the staff at me.

"I simply make it so regardless."

I clapped my hands together, ushering forth a shockwave. Fire jettisoned in every direction from the clap, but Torix shifted it into light the moment it came near him. He smiled as the healing glow washed over his metallic robes. The magic refilled his mana and health to its utmost extent. I gawked at him, wondering how he accomplished all of this.

Ripples in the fabric of reality held that answer, and they ushered off of him. Before I could gather more resolve, Torix pressed his advantage. He slammed his staff into the ice, and spirits erupted from a blue fire below. The specters crawled into different forms of ice, creating puppets that sprinted toward me. I met one head-on, slamming my fist into its face. It turned into water before my skin sizzled from exposure to the liquid. I grimaced.

"Acid, huh?"

Torix raised a finger in indignation.

"Do you remember all of that research into some poisonous, alcoholic beverages?"

I scoffed.

"Yeah, you've interrogated nearly every empire we've come in contact with for that information."

"I have, and that verdant, essential, and most important of missions finally bore fruit. I know of many poisons for those made of metal now. These are simply the most potent of the bunch, all of them mixed together, and then turned into something your armor struggles to consume. Antimagic and antimetal."

Before I replied, the icy warriors dogpiled me from all directions, but I liquified my body to dodge their strikes. Torix adjusted, and the icy puppets began melting on contact with me. Acid mixed into molten metal, and my body cried out in loud, clangerous hissing. I bubbled to nothing before walking out of the ether once more.

One of the puppets splashed over my face, and I laughed as silver blood fell from my eyes.

"Hah, ha, this is getting interesting. Anything more permanent, perhaps?"

Torix applied the puppets once more, but I was ready. They ran in from all angles, ice crystals expanding from under their footsteps. I outmaneuvered them, moving and melting as I needed to. I generated plumes of air from my fists, and once liquified, the spirits splashed outward from me. Angling their sprays, I had them jet towards Torix during my melee.

Torix waved hand, acid turning to healing light once more. I hit my fists together, pacing to him. He raised his hand, and my body heated from conducting an overwhelming flood of mana. I became a blazing, blue sun. Our surroundings erupted as the ice melted, evaporated, and then separated into its base elements. I reached out my hands, and a wave of gravitation unloaded over the battlefield.

It came and crushed, devastating all. Torix leaned down before grabbing his staff in both hands. An antigravity shell encompassed him as all of his surroundings compressed deep below. Ice caved into an untouched continent below, and the dark stone breathed its first breath of fresh air in eons.

I smiled.

"Let's turn it up a notch."

The ice and earth roared and howled as it cracked and crumbled. As if rendered alive, this plateau writhed and palpitated under the strain of magic. I raised a hand, and collisions of telekinetic forces collided around Torix. Shockwaves erupted and cascaded into a kinetic blender. The matter around him dissolved. The air howled. The sky cried out in excruciation as its entirety erupted.

Torix raised a hand, and ice rose. It covered him in a shell before darkness bled into the ice. It turned purple, becoming voided. It cracked but absorbed the impact of my force blender. I charged at him, time magic primed and ready. Torix stepped forward, space blending between us. He popped up in front of me before slamming his hand into my stomach.

Caught off guard, I took the blow, wondering what he was up to. A wave of cold infused through my body, but I did not move. Torix reared his hand back, the limb bent.

"You were always hard-headed, but this is ridiculous."

I pointed at his mushed fingers.

"Look, I gotta hand it to you, Torix. You’re a one man arm-y."

"Oh, by Schema, anything but puns."

Reverberations built around me as the spirits from the icy soldiers rushed into my body. They converted from ice to sharpness, a conceptual bleeding that I didn’t understand. The forces carried unbelievable potency, and I crumbled as my body was carved into tiny pieces. Before I melted, Torix bolted forward and slammed his staff into the ground.

Still lingering within my body, the lingering spirits of sharpness detonated, becoming a psionic burst. Portions of my memory disappeared as I fell apart. Unable to hold myself together, I watched Torix raise a hand. A series of runes appeared over us, a ritual forming in moments. I arose from nothing, my previous body rendered useless yet remade in seconds.

"You're going to need to change your angles of attack. This is delaying the inevitable."

Torix’s fire eyes flared red.

"I actually have derived just such a series of techniques for this occasion."

Torix's ritual burst as I regained movement. A spirit formed over us, one of a howling skull. It rushed over me, and the air screamed around my ears. I shivered, a pulse of fear raising up my spine. As if feeding on my emotion, the skull soaked into my dimensional wake. It created tears in my true body, reminding me of my time magic.

If not for my experience with that technique, this ability would've rendered me useless. I feigned futility, and I lunged to a knee. Torix rose a dozen spectral warriors from the residual energies, and they rushed at me once more. Sinking further in, I experienced a new kind of horror - the efficiency of a curse.

Status compromised! Curse of Entropy contracted!

It had soaked into me, changing the laws of nature and causality that normally operated as one with the world. I raised a hand, but my mana moved as if it were sludge. I lost the ability to wield it altogether, and I fell from my hovering position, burrowing into the icy sheet below. The tectonic plate below us let out a groan as I landed. I shivered as I raged against the hex, but I couldn't find a sticking point.

Even after leaving my body, I couldn't get rid of it since the magic affected me on a metaphysical level. Taking a moment, I pulled out Valgus's shackles. Torix snapped.

"Oooh, that’s cheating."

I smiled back.

"But your staff isn't?"

I put them on, and the curse voided to nothing. I should've done this against Emeralga's psionic virus as well, but I wasn't exactly given much time to think at that moment. Regardless, I gained an immediate and immense physical dominance, one I took full advantage of. I bolted towards Torix who attempted to flee.

The ice below erupted out in all directions as if a meteor struck the earth. Torix warped away, but I stopped his portal from closing by extending a strip of my armor into it. I lurched through the warp, and tendrils erupted from me as I dispersed my weight across a hundred limbs. Otherwise, I'd sink into the ground, given my density.

I slashed at Torix, and he deflected several of my bladed limbs before I sliced through one of his arms. It fell before Torix caught it in a gravity well. He pulled it back to himself and seared it back on as he winced.

"You're quite the horror, aren't you?"

I writhed around as an unending mass of hungry metal limbs.

"Oh come on, I'm not that scary. I'm like a cuddly puppy."

Torix tilted his head.

"Or a feasting cactus."

Hundreds of tendrils sliced at Torix. My helmet covered my face, and it echoed out in a haunting laugh. For once, I leaned into that odd side of myself, really hamming up the horror element for psychological damage. It worked. Torix dodged and fled in a stilted manner before one of my limbs pierced him.

The thin tendril impaled his stomach and ruptured out of his back. The limb shifted into a spiky, gripping mass before pulling him closer. It was like stabbing someone with a sword before making the blade turn into a sea urchin. It siphoned his life, and Event Horizon concentrated on the limb as other tendrils grasped toward him.

Torix gawked at me as he deflected dozens of strikes at a time.

"What happened to the whole idea of retaining your humanity? You're more of a monster now than most eldritch."

“You’ve always told me to embrace who I am.”

“Ah, but you unveil your full abilities against me of course.”

“It’s a sign of respect.”

“Hm. I can accept that.”

I slammed him into the ice below, and the sky let out groans of terror as air whirled in the distance. The ground all around us caved as miles of ice powdered into a growing blizzard. It fed on the kinetic energy unleashed by my attacks. My armor howled out, the echoes like the cries of some far-off leviathan, the eerie red glow visible within the storm.

I raised another limb before slamming it down. Torix gasped, spitting out silver blood. He put a palm on the ice, and it melted all around us. For miles in every direction, the cracking, frozen wasteland turned into an ocean. I sank into its depths, losing track of him before an odd shift developed through the liquid.

It came to life, the water becoming another one of Torix's soldiers. It smothered me in debris and silt, limiting my vision to only a few centimeters in front of my face. Torix channeled more magic, and it pulsed through his minions. The stifling water altered into oppressive fire. It tried heating me to ash, but the shackles turned my body into an immutable mass. I let out a sigh.

"Magic can't affect me-"

Torix's voice was a wintry grave.

"Oh, you're more than wrong about that, disciple."

The heat...Changed. It altered into something deeper, more primal. As if finding the truth of reality and bringing it out, Torix evolved his magic. It no longer operated on a simple paradigm of changing our physical world. It changed the rules of what could and couldn't be. This law-centric sorcery collided against the shackles, and it struggled against the immutability I held.

I glanced at my palm amidst the sea of fire. My hand glowed after a few seconds, the heat burrowing in like a leech through my skin. I laughed, my voice like clanging, deep metal.

"You've figured out some law magic?"

Torix's voice pierced the howling around me.

"Is that what you call it? I assumed it was principle-based magic."

I scoffed.

"That's not a bad name, though I like mine a bit better."

"I do as well. It adds a judicial feel to it, doesn't it? I do enjoy watching those old judge based shows from your old world. They remind me of Schema’s cold, unfeeling grasp over our world."

I let out a laugh as I heaved my dimensional wake outward, applying an overwhelming, conquering force onto my surroundings. I quashed the defiance of nature, and the shifting rules fell in my favor. Torix snapped.

"Of course, you've already uncovered this little secret before I have."

I shook my head, taking off Valgus's shackles.

"I haven't figured out how to reach out and grasp reality like you. I can only manage this pale imitation of the feat."

Torix landed in front of me, electricity surging across his body.

"It seems I change nature while you subjugate it. Both are paths to power."

In graceful movements, Torix shifted himself around two of my strikes before palming my stomach. He unleashed a lightning strike in tandem. I snatched my hand forward, pulling myself away using gravity. His palm missed before I grasped the lightning and wrangled it around over my head. Torix rolled his fire eyes.

"Ah yes, as is the logical choice. A lightning cowboy."

I whipped the lightning over my head like a lasso. I threw the rope forward, and Torix tried warping away. He stepped through the veil, ending up right where he was. The lightning coiled around him as I laughed.

Torix channeled another monstrous spirit into his lightning, and it changed into some kind of hex. It soaked into the shackles before injecting into my body like water into porous stone. Rock and crags of earth exploded from within me and they fed on the metal of my skin. I took a few steps back, pieces of myself crumbling to ash.

Torix volleyed magical spell after magical spell. They pressured me and my magic alike, and the curses left me desperate for some kind of counter. They operated on an axiom I never considered - magical knowledge. Instead of infesting the mind or body like a virus, the curses acted as complex sequences of mana that messed with my mana flows.

I tried isolating them, but they blended into my own mana, becoming indistinguishable. I tried swallowing the mana into my runes, but whenever I resummoned the energy, it didn't resonate or connect to my thoughts and will as it should. It was like embedding a faulty algorithm into a software program.

Underneath the surface, the insidious energies wreaked havoc on my magic, and Torix found me floundering against the technique. He stepped closer, his hands interlocked behind himself.

"You have a nasty habit of assuming your body, mind, and spirit are impermeable. This simply isn't true, and a measure of caution is essential whenever you attempt to battle anyone. Perhaps a few sets of safety techniques will do you well?"

I listened, several minds wrestling my ravaged mana and the others wielding different means of battle in the meantime. Torix bolted toward me as I opened my dimensional storage. He tsked.

"I'm not letting you cleanse yourself with those shackles again, disciple."

"You won't need to."

His eyes flared as I moved the portal behind me and at the ground. A devastating wave of kinetic energy erupted. It slammed into the ground before mushrooming up, propelling me forward. I tore my fist through Torix's gut, and he flew backward like a speeding bullet. Wind whipped. Clouds parted.

And I followed. I faced my pocket dimension towards myself while unloading stored energies to fire me forward. I propelled like a rocket, jerking from one space to the next. Time and time again, I bolted back and forth, wielding the forces of my pocket dimension like a second source of magic.

After a minute of pure brutality, Torix gasped, his mouth leaking silver blood. He coughed.

"This is a bit much for a spar, don't you think?"

I got above him.

"One last exchange first."

I collided my fist against his back, launching him into the ground. I shifted forward, once more lobbed by my pocket dimension. As a dark meteor, I collided against Torix, and the earth cried out in agony. It shivered and trembled and splintered. Pieces of stone melted to magma. Entire seas of ice evaporated around us.

Miles of a frozen ocean, a record of time that hadn't changed for millions of years, disintegrated to nothing. Around us, space rippled. It tore in several spaces, and to my horror, dungeons leading to other worlds spawned. Monsters clawed for escape before the thin dimensional rips restored themselves. Parts of monsters cleaved from the closing dimensional spaces, but they left their mark on my mind. 

Still, we remained. I reached out a hand as Torix's chest regenerated.

"You're tougher than you think, but yeah, let's call it a day after the dimensional collapse."

Torix peered at the sky, much of his robe golden and resplendent.

"Hm, it would appear I closed the gap less than I had thought. Truly a disappointment."

I blinked.

"I haven't been pushed this hard since Valgus. Well, maybe with Emeralga's psionic virus, but I can't say that for certain. Either way, this was a serious battle, and I had to dip deep into what I was capable of."

Torix lifted his head, and his fiery eyes burned bright.

"A psionic virus? Consider me intrigued. Speaking of intriguing, what do you think of that sudden exposure event?"

I frowned at several spots that had opened up.

"I think Earth's dimensional fabric is thin, and it's only a matter of time before it splinters into something unrecognizable."

My voice carried a deeper sadness than I expected. Torix interlocked his hands behind himself.

"I'm sorry your home is so close to the brink while I've been learning magic. I feel…Inadequate."

He sat up, and I sat down.

"Please, don't apologize. This...It's the same for me. I was learning about something called fractals."

"Now I'm salivating at the prospective knowledge. Do tell."

I raised a brow.

"Do skeletons salivate?"

He gave a curt glare.

"And do disciples lack the ability to understand context or expressions?"

I shrugged.

"Maybe a little. Anyway, here's what happened-"

In the aftermath of our calamitous battle, we spoke. I told him of Rebirth, the fractals, and my growing imperial burden. Torix listened, and as I finished speaking he let out a long laugh.

"You're the worst emperor I've ever heard of. What kind of ruler finds the act of governance boring? That is the entire occupation."

I shrugged. 

"It's one thing to try and save humanity. It's an entirely different thing to go in and establish the needed framework for their prosperity. If you add in the sheer volume of work and how tedious it is, I really don't know what to do."

Torix's eyes flared bright.

"It's simple. You do what you must, but you also find means and methods to delegate."

I frowned.

"I have. I've found ways of handling the eldritch on most worlds using spirits and golems. I have the albony addressing our economic situation, put the gialgathens to task on Blegara, and I had the educational facilities built up on Mt. Verner to help prop up our mages. It just feels like there's a never-ending list of things to do despite what I've done."

Torix leaned closer.

"And how is that such a bad thing, exactly?"

I took a breath.

"My training is falling behind."

Torix spread his hands.

"Yet I was crushed after dedicating myself to only personal growth over the last many months."

I narrowed my eyes.

"Crushed? Far from it. That curse is still raging in my system."

Torix let out a sigh.

"It's by no means an unbeatable technique. All you must do is isolate where the mana flows are disrupted and isolate them. Once done, pull them aside in the same manner as a surgeon cuts out a tumor. The curse may emerge intact if you are careful enough."

I closed my eyes and inspected my energy emanations. The pulses shifted around in stilted, jittering oscillations like the shambling steps of a zombie. Finding each of them, I isolated a source of disruption where mana reversed flow, causing every ensuing force to backfire. Taking a few minutes, I condensed those pieces into a tightened ball of disruption.

I put several fingertips against my forehead and pulled the chaotic energies out of my mind and body. It was the skull Torix implanted in me earlier. Torix gave me an approving nod before snapping his fingers. The curse faded to nothing, and I laughed.

"You could get rid of it whenever you wanted, huh?"

His fiery eyes bobbed and shined as if twinkling.

"It was a teachable moment. Regardless, my plans should make your current issues far less pressing. You may be given some of the time you so desperately crave as well."

"Actually, let’s quit talking about me for a minute. How did your trails go?"

Torix took a breath.

"It was akin to pulling teeth. Each of them required many weeks of mind bending conceptualization. As I understand it, I was put into impossible scenarios to demonstrate the superiority of each element. Turning ice into fire. Light into darkness. Even air into stone. It all seemed impossible, but I struggled on while observing the rulers of my trails."

Torix raised a hand.

"You see, each primeval wished for me to prove their innate dominance. That demonstrated an inherent egocentrism that I took advantage of. I played them against one another. In their clashes, they would wield magic imbued with laws, as you put it. At that point, the blending of various elements occurred. While no easy task, I derived various computations from the clashes. It was akin to observing chemical reactions, in a way."

Torix raised a hand.

"I spent many months mastering the concepts inside their various worlds. I traveled and watched primevals battle. It was something that, once provoked, could not be stopped. They relished any opportunity to demonstrate their sovereignty over their brethren. It was as you said during your recounting of the lottery - they were born for battle."

Torix peered at the sky.

"So I carved out the various secrets they held. Once I honed the edges of each element, I then fought against the elemental rulers of each plane. It required an utter mastery of their embodiment. Otherwise, I couldn't fully kill them. It was as if they regenerated from the very concept itself rather than from anything physical."

I nodded.

"That's where the opposing elements came in, right?"

"Precisely. By supplanting the source of their power, I could destroy them. Light to darkness. Darkness to light. Fire to water, and so on."

I scoffed.

"That sounds way more practical than beating them until they expire."

Torix rolled his fire eyes.

"Not all of us can simply punch the concept of fire to death."

I swung a hand.

"I mean, with enough gumption, you'd be surprised."

He waved a hand.

"Speaking of gumption, my plans moving forward are along the same vein: I will siege the Earth."

I raised my brow.

"Oh, what’s the plan?"

Torix stood up.

"An expected one. I'll be leading an undead armada to the cities of your planet and conquering them from the avatars of the Old Ones."

I leaned back.

"What's got you revved up for something like that?"

Torix floated his staff over one of his hands.

"It's less that I'm motivated and more so that I'm finally able to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time."

"Conquering the Earth?"

"But of course. I have long wished to kill vast swaths of mutated wildlife and the malevolent eldritch. I shall take those who have died and give their bodies a new purpose, all the while building an enormous army that shall tend to the lands once I leave. During this vast siege, I shall gain utter and complete control of this planet for us. Once done, we may finally emphasize planetary reforms."

He spread his hands.

"I shall incorporate portions of all our forces. Your war golems. The strongest of our gialgathens. The eltaris’ greatest warriors. The Vagnis’ shadow and water mages. The skeptiles’ spirits. The albony’s logisticians. The luminari’s light sorcerers. Even humanities adaptable forces and the Omega Strains. They shall all be made to bear down upon this world alongside my undead legion.”

His voice echoed in the distance.

“It will be glorious."

I stood up.

"It sounds bloody."

"Far from it. I shall create far more life than I take."

"Not to disparage, but won't they be mindless puppets?"

Torix whirled his hand. A plume of death’s principles spiraled around him, the energy a mix of calm specters and oozing green-gray energy.

"Not if I'm able to circumvent the limitations of the undead and generate something beyond what my forefathers believed capable."

I crossed my arms.

"Forefathers? You were spawned by the undead?"

"Not at all. I mentioned it before, but my clan never believed in the latent abilities behind undead magic. They thought of it in terms of its limitations, not its potential, and that is why I shall prove them wrong once more."

The death in Torix's palm spiraled into a tiny light, one that denoted something opposite to its eerie origins. It reverberated with untamed, chaotic possibility.

"I shall conquer death by making it into life. A new set of races shall be born, and I shall be their primogenitor."