Chapter 2307

Chapter 2307

Mae Myrna floated in an abyss. Darkness whispered behind her ears, flitting back and forth in the edges of her vision. Her heart had been hacked hollow by an ice pick and left to dry; she wondered if she would ever feel real again. Her image curled inward on itself, losing all the carefully crafted momentum she had built up over the past few weeks, since isolating her area. The darkness used small fingers, removing her foundation grain by grain.

She felt so empty. Her eyes just fixated on the ground. The darkness pulsed, urging her to speak. Her tongue felt swollen and the words left her sick. “I... am nothing.”

Yet she could not stop speaking them.

“I deserve...”

“I am nothing.”

“I... I just wanted-”

“Just nothing.”

“I deserve...”

In reality, she sat in her room, with a meal set out in front of her. Brilliantly woven tapestries sang gallant colors along the wall, a collection of gemstones filled a shelf behind her, and all of the furniture was solid wood she had carved herself. This was home. At one point steam had wafted off of the delicious-smelling pork chops, but she had been hunched over the table so long that it had cooled away to inertness.

Since the darkness came, she had not moved but to whisper.

Now the strange insight that revealed the dark certainty had vanished, but for a bit, it had felt like Mae had been able to see through the fabric of existence. She saw herself how she truly was, a pale imitation of a true being that had existed in the past. She saw the arc of that woman’s path, felt sure she would have become that woman, except-

“We all deserve...” Mae mumbled the words, her image trying to find its legs once more. Time mattered for individuals who existed and she didn’t. But for every rotation of her world state image, the foundation collapsed a bit more completely. She couldn’t escape this loop.

“I am nothing. We deserve... nothing...” Mae felt tears coursing down her cheeks. She knew this was not the path she was supposed to walk. She didn’t want to die, a snake devouring its tail until its body vanished. But she also knew that now that she had seen through the bedrock of her existence, she couldn’t perpetuate a lie. They did not call her the Patron of Truth for nothing. She refused to lie to herself.

Armed with this new knowledge, her image began to change.

There was no other way to survive.

*****

Devick stood in front of a triptych mirror and swayed back and forth, almost in awe of what she saw. Zethusala clicked in admiration. “You are a rare beauty, Miss Devick.”

“Please, this old thing? I’m hardly fit to clean the stables.” Devick fluttered her lashes, flush with possibilities. Because this version of herself, pampered and emphasized in all the right ways, was a version of herself that could be a queen. A version that could match a man called Randidly Ghosthound.

A deep green gown, almost the same color as Nether King Hungry Eye’s irises, hugged her torso and blossomed out into a cascading brilliance of embroidery and opulence past her waist. One of the workers at the boutique had brushed her hair until it fell in soft ringlets around her face. Each crimson strand glittered with tiny motes of gold. The choker wrought by the Nether King’s hands for her sat around her pale neck, a powerful accent piece that added a hint of seductive mystery to her figure.

The two brass automatons moved back and forth around her to admire her from other angles. As they used their precise hands to reposition her gown for perfection, Devick’s heart beat with a strange vulnerability.

She looked at herself now and saw softness and warmth. She had been dressed up to be a beauty queen, not the fickle demon of the Hobfootie court, not the bloodthirsty bearer of Malice the Needle-Toothed Hare, not a lieutenant in the armed forces that methodically hunted and slaughtered Nether patrols.

“Shoulda brought my fucking horse,” The man muttered, his powerful image of adventure and possibilities enduring the assault from the other’s image.

Scowling, the Turtleline brought his other hand around and hammered the guard. With it came a wave of salty water from his image, forcing the hat-wearing man back and soaking Devick to the skin. All the fancy silk and embroidery now hung lank across her body, making her resemble a day-old pile of wash.

At the very least, that shock of cold woke her up. She felt very far from the glittering facade she had briefly witnessed in the triptych mirror. Far from the visage she had imagined, totally imagined, next to Nether King Hungry Eye’s side.

No matter what she was now, she hated her current self enough to finally move. A little at first, but that hatred bubbled through her and forcibly subdued the panic and anxiety.

When the anxiety refused to concede, Devick simply smothered that useless emotion and tossed it into the dark corners of her heart.

Devick kept trying to breathe, but her chest cavity seemed smaller and smaller with each attempt. Her lungs could barely inflate, her heart could only flutter. The hat-wearing man twisted away and slammed a fist against the Turtleline’s shell, but barely did any damage. With a gesture, a pillar of surging seawater exploded beneath the defender and sent him scrambling backward.

Devick’s hands trembled as she reached down and tore the bottom of her gown. She started mid-thigh, tearing away the smooth silk and leaving a ragged emerald edge. Part of the puffy, chiffon underdress frothed out around her legs. The sleeves, so slender and elegant looking, she ripped away entirely, baring her arms to the shoulder. She licked her lips, looking at her pale skin.

Panic and desperation had created giant red splotches across her limbs.

And that’s fine. What does it matter how I look? Because in the end, I’m just... Devick felt the tears she had thought were coming for so long began to build in the corners of her eyes. Because I’m just... whatever. Don’t try and fucking label yourself, just kill the assholes and figure the rest out later.

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate has begun to evolve! Recalculating...

Warning, as your Grand Fate has achieved many Levels, the results may be a degraded version-

Pantheon intervention. Recalculating...

Hungry Eye’s choker began to heat. A half dozen more Turtlelines were loping across the broken land from Homewell. Devick’s eyes burned as her hatred found an outlet. So what if she just spent her entire life playing at being someone she was not? So what if she had no foundation for her wild imaginings? Because right now, Hungry Eye needed protection. Her problems seemed petty by comparison.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? How fucking petty I am. Devick grimaced. Following her instincts, she reached into the air and grasped. From the absence, she pulled down a heavy obsidian mask. It manifested uncomfortably warm to the touch. Malice chittered with excitement as she shifted her existence, infecting and strengthening herself through the Grand Fate. Devick slid the strange mask into place across her face.

The features were entirely blank except for two holes for eyes and a pre-carved mouth, eternally frowning. From the top, two corkscrew ears twisted out, laying a little below horizontal. From the chin, two sharpened tusks jutted straight downward. The Turtlelines whooped and manifested their various images. They weren’t overly powerful, so it was easy to look past their details and just see enemies.

And in front of her, an enemy had earned only one sort of ending.

She settled down, feeling strangely boneless. Her arms were limp, hanging straight down. She twisted her neck side to side, rocking her frowning face back and forth. Underneath the mask, her tears came pouring out. She ached. She wanted too much, but she had no idea how to grasp it.

More than anything, she wanted Hungry Eye to need her. And as that core wish solidified, her neck began to twist.

At about halfway, her head now horizontal, Devick felt strange. But a wild glee had risen in her heart, the specter of that bloodthirsty monster that always existed beneath the surface. This time, she embraced it fully. And her head kept twisting past the explicable. In reality, her spine should have snapped as she torqued her neck around. But it seemed too easy, her chin clicking around like the hand of a clock.

The reversed perspective meant the mask’s mouth leered out at the world, ends turned up in mad gaiety. In her heart, Devick felt a wild joy surge through her. Two demonic horns stuck straight up from her head. Two strange whiskered curled sideways from her chin. New eye holes appeared on the top of the mask, revealing irises that seared crimson.

Congratulations! Your Grand Fate Maverick’s Barbaric Imperative has evolved into the Grand Fate Malice, Merry Consort of Perdition. Levels will be maintained!