CHAPTER 254: PERISH, FOUL CREATURE

Corporate espionage.

That’s what they called it, saying we stole from Vortex Industries—we’re in a completely different country, with our own set of nano-technology, but they’re trying to claim a lawsuit against us?

So what if we recruited scientists and borrowed designs from their memories? Copyright is a thing of the past; innovation does not need to bend to the silly rules of failing government bodies. We’re talking about advancing humankind past these basic fleshy sponges.

Fuck them.

Just keep issuing delays. Let them spend as much money as they want. When we’re done, we’ll make a nice tidy profit in China, and it won’t matter anyway.

-Ethan Princeton, Memo from CEO of BioTransform to Law Team (2nd Era, 2108)

With their foe right in front of them and his brother at his side, Erec launched himself at the false Goddess with the confidence of a Knight knowing they were at the edge of victory. He shot into the air with a pulse jet of silver fire, then slowed. The presence pushing back against him made his body lose velocity; her intense hatred dominated the air. Every part of him was compressed and repelled as he sped toward her.

In response, he only pushed all the harder, his silver flames flaring as he reduced the pressure and let free his inner Knight.

Three seconds later, he reached her, near the roof of the Cavern, and tore his axe through the air with the full intent to end her in a single mighty swing.

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. Her fingers raised in response, those long nails functioning like whips, catching his axe, wrapping around his silver weapon, and locking it there; he fought back, smashing against them and trying to cut through. It was as if their two presences wrestled in the air, and she won out, repelling him with a flare of copper fire.

Priming him to dart in with another slice.

This time, she deflected the blow with several nails, and then another tore through his chest with a terrible pain that radiated deeper, as if she’d slashed through his physical form and scratched at his soul itself.

Erec ignored it, twisting his axe to go for another hit. Only for it to meet those claw-like nails again; she was moving too fast, and he couldn’t see the ghostly form of where she would go. That was wrong; his instincts had adapted so well to utilizing the prediction module that he’d been thrown off without it.

“Where tis the ghost?” Erec asked, the two parts of him melding even as they fought.

[The anomalous energy is disrupting quantum physics. Making it… Useless. Sorry, buckeroo, you’ll need to handle this manually. I’m assisting your body however I can.] VAL assured with a buzz.

Erec nodded as he pulled back from the burning woman. Now that he understood, he would adapt. Technology was a stopgap anyway. Better to rely on his intuition and reflexes in a fight like this, against such a powerful foe.

He let the inferno expand inside of him and then went in for another attack. She moved to block, and he sent a pulse of silver fire outward toward her shoulder in a sudden distraction. Then her guard slipped. Making his opening, Erec hit her with a slash that jerked her body, barely catching it with her arm and sending her spiraling away.

She was back in front of him with a boom of copper fire, and on him in an instant, crashing into him and sending their battle through the air. The two went around each other, cuts and axe blows meeting in mid-air as they twisted and streaked like twin comets of metallic fire.

Erec adapted to her fighting. Though she matched him for speed, he pulled upon his experience, countering with feints and strength, contributing to his defense. Even with all that, he got nowhere, focusing on deflecting and repelling what he could through strategic cuts and pulses of fire. All the while, his anger mounted. Each time his axe met her nails, it was like having the force of a boulder smashed into him.

Worse, it went beyond a physical weight to her attacks. Her hate lashed against his mind and his Silver Fire, trying to stretch deeper and hurt his soul itself, and that desire to ruin him colored the world around them, encouraging it to be rid of him.

It made his limbs slower, his axe less responsive. It made it so that her fingernails began to twist and elongate, more whips than nails. They also gained the ability to dart around and follow him, making it easier to slip through his guard and plunge into the fleshy body beneath. Blood spilled from Erec. Warm, awful blood ran down from several places as the Armor beneath his silver fire was easily torn through like a tin can.

“Perish, foul creature!” He yelled, his strength rebounding as he turned the pain into more fuel.

He grasped it, pulling more on the Round Table, his speed suddenly increased, letting him crash his axe into her—it slipped past her nails and with an impossible edge and a strength that tore the muscles beneath his skin, his axe connected with her lower body. In one violent jerk, he separated her into two halves, the lower body dropped from them and puffed away into ash as it stopped burning.

Erec’s axe twirled as he spun it to lash out with another strike, but he was stopped by another pulse of brilliant copper fire, sending him darting away through the air as it threatened to burn him up. ȒÃΝ𝖔𐌱Εṡ

When he saw the false Goddess again, flames shot out from the upper half of her body and condensed back into the legs before. He felt like he’d hurt her—felt a pain radiating outward. But it wasn’t enough.

“You are nothing. NOTHING!” She screamed, “DIE!”

And then she brought both hands down, all ten nails suddenly scrambling towards him through the air like bullets, aimed right for his heart.

Erec shot back with a burst of fire, but she kept up, her nails closing in the distance between him and them. He put everything he could into a retreat and clipped his shoulder into a building, sending him careening outward and into the ground as, in a split second, he lost control of the flight. Those stabbing needles of copper fire were upon him, poised to run him through and burn him from the inside out.

Right before they could hit, a barrier of earth surrounded him. He felt the thrum of the world around him, a familiar earthly power that could only belong to his brother. There was a SLAM as the entire mound of earth shook and a second later, cracked open.

The nails were gone. The attack was repelled.

This gave Erec a wonderful view of the burning copper woman struggling to fend off dozens of earthen spears jutting into her from the ground, as she danced between them while they spawned without pause. In the distance, Erec saw his brother charging. The massive form of the stone giant strode over and towered over them all.

The false Goddess took to the sky to evade the earth spike below, only for one of his brother's massive stone hands to smash into her from above and crack her back into the ground with a bounce; she seemed stunned for a second, hit with such mass and power that it was hard to deal with. Spears spiked into her as she got up, her fiery body jerking as the earth itself tore into her, now closer to Erec than before.

Another opening. Erec forced his body to move, the silver fire healing his bones and torn muscles as he jetted through the air and slashed his axe downward like a reaper taking a soul; her arms met it, forearms sliced in deeply as he pushed with all of his strength.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Two arms gave out and crumbled into ash. He felt her searing cries of pain in his head, as the limbs made of fire reformed in a second.

But they weren’t done. Bedwyr loomed from above and stabbed downward with his spear's tip, which was the size of a pillar, slamming straight into her. Erec darted back as he saw it coming—the tip of that weapon meeting a copper shield as the false Goddess screamed and fought back, repulsing the spear, rebounding it back into the air.

The heaviness increased. More of her was coming through to this mortal form as she lent more of her hidden power into the fight. If this body were a window, then as she pressed more of her soul through it, she was exposing more of herself for them to hurt. But with this exposure came greater power.

Bedwyr stumbled as she jumped up, and then her claws expanded, going wide into ten massive fiery lashes that crashed into the stone and melted the rock in searing bright lines that criss-crossed the stone giant. The giant sculpture of Bedwyr crumbled into pieces as she cut through its limbs and arms, eviscerating it in a single move.

But to do it, she’d left her back exposed.

Erec saw the opportunity as all ten of her weapons were distracted and took his chance, coming from behind and once more splitting the copper form of the Goddess with an angled slice that tore through the shoulders.

The screeching this time was more than ever before, her pain radiating out as the consequence of her putting more of herself into this world, which was exploited. The more present she was, the more she could be hurt. Erec understood: the way that she was fighting, the power she was wielding, and how, second by second, she was growing more used to this body that she had subsumed and taken control of. The cost, of course, was that she was investing herself. With every single second and every single attack, she was bringing more of her soul to bear in this earthly vessel.

And with it, he knew she could be hurt.

Copper fire leaked from the back in a plume of flames as her body reformed; bits of it fell to the ground and burned away. Bits of her soul, torn off in the attack as he sheared through her with his axe.

“That which doth bleed, dies,” Erec yelled, voice radiating.

The mound of rubble that had been his brother shuffled around within. Bedwyr climbed out of it, a smaller version than the giant, but still with rocks clinging to his armor. Erec jumped over to him, offering his brother a hand to pull him the rest of the way out of the pile. Then, together, they stared at the burning copper of the woman above.

"You two are nothing," she screamed. Her voice rocked through the cavern, even just its power brushing away the mist creeping in from Dame Morgana’s spell. As he focused on this woman, he barely made out the rest of the battlefield, seeing people struggling and his fellow knights fighting to bring this fight to an end. He could only help people who were faring well despite the destruction. Chained men had stopped raining down from above, at the very least. “Let me show you TRUE power.”

And then he felt it—another pulse of fire. The copper around her burned brighter, painful to look at as it burned with the sun’s brightness. Around him, the heat took on the feel of a desert; his Armor had too many holes and dents in it to keep it out. Not even the silver fire that surrounded him as Armor could do anything to keep it at bay.

Her divinity streaked out, the touch of a god that had been able to tear the world itself was coming free, and with it came a battering ram of willpower and hate into Erec’s mind. And pain. So much pain. Hundreds of years of condensed agony funneled together in one giant vortex that had shaped the woman he saw before him now.

In a second, he understood her. This wasn't a human anymore. She hadn't been for a long time. She was so consumed in her grief and hatred that that is all that she had become. Nothing more and nothing less now. And to the end of the earth, she would chase him and kill him. She was now an incarnation of vengeance, and this had given her a shard of divinity.

So too, though, was that of the Round Table. A thing that the divines craved a seat too. A power that transcended mortality. Erec grinned; her might was powerful. But he had Bedwyr next to him, and the two of them could take this challenge.

“Thou art a pathetic false deity. Fall to your knees and beg for your life.” He taunted, his voice fighting against the battering of emotions. His blood flowed as everything in him turned to the current second. Truly a glorious battle.

But still, her power surprised him. Before, he’d been able to keep pace with her.

Then the eye-searing sight of her vanished, and reappeared. She was next to them in a split second as her power blazed in one overwhelming act. He blinked, and she was in front of them. Her attention focused not on killing him, but solely on Bedwyr.

His brother did not have the same instincts. His mantle was still too fresh, and she’d seen the weak link. Ten fiery whips hit him, several running through his chest and guts with gouts of blood rushing out as Bedwyr cried. Another wrapped around his right wrist, and seared through it like molten metal poured onto a plant; the acrid scent of burning flesh and pain came in a second.

This was for him.

Time slowed as he saw another one of those flaming tendrils go for Bedwyr’s throat, to melt through it and take off his brother’s head.

He understood. She wanted to make him suffer, to feel all the pain she had. To witness a loss that echoed all of the people that mattered to her that she’d lost. And she was going to do it in this fight, before finishing him off. Now that she’d bothered to invest a heavy portion of herself into the battle, she would delight in the damage she could cause.

Go fuck thyself.

Erec acted, tearing forward at a speed he'd never been capable of. The air boomed with sound as he appeared between her and that last tendril, the head of his axe flaring with a bright silver light, pushing back against the attack and whacking it away. And then he rammed his shoulder into her. The two of them flew, their burning fires intermingling, shoving her as far away as he could from his wounded brother.

They crashed through a building and cratered into the wall of the cavern. Erec’s hand grabbed her face, and then yanked it forward and slammed it into the wall behind her, again and again. Bone snapping and deforming her head with each beat.

She cackled. Her weapons stretched behind him and tore at his back, slicing through his silver fires, the Armor below, and down to the bones themselves. Carving her hate into him. He gasped for air before the fiery silver inferno inside of him healed again. And she scratched again and again. The pain was ever-increasing with each lash, as it impacted not just him but clawed even further, scratching at his soul itself.

Erec raged against it, his silver flames increasing in his palm as he turned her head into a pulp. She hurt too, with every beat. The two let it out on one another, their screaming anger and pain a self-fueling fire as both copper and silver bent and twisted amongst one another in a raging hell.

He smashed her face into the ground, feeling the skull beneath its surface begin to crack, and smashed it some more until it pulped out, seared away. Nothing left behind. Nothing left in his hand but the disfigured remains of a coppery fire.

Yet she wasn't dead. She was laughing underneath him.

"Suffer," she screamed.

And then a sudden pulse of copper threw him away, tumbling through the air and then into a building. His breath came in a heaving gasp as he landed. The silver fire in him was starting to slow. He could feel it. Every cut she left him was like a scorch mark in his soul, weakening his connection to his mantle. He hadn't fully melded with it. The two of them hadn't become one. Dimly, he felt Bedwyr's mantle fading away as his brother lost connection to his strength. Maybe, perhaps, because he was dying.

Even now, Erec saw his foe's coppery form stand up from her crushing defeat, from where he had smashed her head in. Her glow radiates outward and once more becomes a domineering presence. And everything around it. She was the queen—the one who would rule them all, the one whom they should all obey; her might screamed at him.

He stared at her, feeling hopeless as his mantle disconnected from his body, as he felt himself weakening, as he felt the after-effects of burning fury. His mantle, for so long together and drawn out the furthest it had been, had taken a toll on his body unlike any other.

Blood ran down from his eyes, his lungs still not healed, his soul scratched over and wounded from her many strikes. But there she was, still ready to go. If anything, her presence had come out even more in this world, even though he’d managed to slice it and wound it. He’d brought her pain, but she was still here, present, and still having a lot of fight in her. And, as she promised him, she would kill everyone he cared about in front of him before finally doing him the service of snuffing out his arrogant little silver fire.

Erec stared at her, her eyes pure malice and hatred as she stared back, and then he felt a flare. Another mantle. The essence of the table flooded back into the fight, pushing forward and calling for action from its Knights.

He looked at Bedwyr, his brother's collapsed body not that far away, unable to tell if it was even breathing at all. Nothing was there, and that brought a knife twist to his gut. If not Bedwyr… Then whom?

A bolt of electricity slammed into the Goddess from behind. In a second, the world was blinded and filled with pure white, and then Erec heard the clap that would shatter eardrums. Her whole form was disrupted as her limbs shook. It was as if someone had taken heaven's whole might in a storm and condensed it down into one single strike.

He looked at the source. Colin stood there, his lightning sword having taken on a golden cast, his eyes sparking with a golden current as he stepped forward.

In his face, in that mantle, Erec recognized the might of Kay, brought once more to this world.