Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3) (31 page)

“Hello, my Golden Hair. Today, you will be mine.”

Then he noticed the choker at her neck. He did not frown
because the Order Obelisk refused to allow it. No emotion was allowed on his
face. Instead, he felt only a mild annoyance.

“I see. That boy has already claimed you for his own.”

Annala glared up at him. “I belong to no one, and even if
I did, I’d call Eric ‘master’ long before you!”

He held the Subjugation Collar in his left hand. “I have
time to change that.”

Meanwhile, a portal opened outside the castle and dumped
Eric on the far end of the drawbridge. The activist groups were still present
and watched him crash.

His body was a mess. His soul was bruised. His mind was
working on basic instincts until it restored higher functions. By the monstrous
will of the grendel, he forced his body to heal as quickly as possible.

A troll approached him with a club in one of his two wolf
arms. He roared at the threat and struggled to his feet. They collapsed
underneath him.

Gruffle snickered. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

Inside the Royal Mage’s tower, a portal opened and dropped
Basilard. He landed on his feet, ready to counter anything that attacked him.
Seeing nothing, he dashed for the exit, but a blaze of intense fire blocked the
doorway. It vanished before Basilard could douse it and revealed something
else; someone else.

It was a tall man with orange hair. He wore a mage robe
with ordercraft symbols just like Dannaigh. A staff with red and purple jewels
at each end was gripped in his right hand.

“We meet again, Mr. Bladi.”

“Sequitor…What are you doing here?”

“A new line of business.”

He chucked lightning. Basilard deflected it but only with
great effort. Ice blocks formed around his feet in the meantime. He struggled
to free them and Sequitor cast a fourth spell. Three spheres of energy appeared
around Basilard in the form of a triangle. They formed three lances made of
three elements.

“Fire shall incinerate the impure.”

The fire lance struck Basilard, but his barrier held it
back. Its heat seeped through and caused him to sweat. Then the lances of water
launched.

“Water shall cleanse the repentant.”

The water lance soared like a missile, through Basilard’s
barrier, and then through Basilard himself. The lightning lance followed on its
heels and struck the advantage of the opening created by the first two. The
veteran mage was simultaneously frozen, burned, and electrocuted. He slumped
forward.

“Lightning shall illuminate the truth.”

Nolien’s portal dropped him in the servant’s quarters. He
ran as fast as he could to the courtyard, but on his way, he heard a scream. His
upbringing compelled him to investigate and he found a soldier menacing a maid
in a side room. Reluctantly, he raced into the room and the soldier turned away
from his prey to face this interloper. The maid cowered in a corner, and behind
her back, she snapped her fingers. The door slammed shut behind Nolien and
locked.

The soldier chopped with his sword and Nolien blocked with
his staff. He was careful to angle his staff to blunt the force and better
direct the blade away from himself. He followed through the motion to smack the
soldier in the head with the butt of the staff and then strike him in the
throat. The soldier fell backwards and lay still.

“Are you all right, miss?”

The maid threw her arms around his neck, heaped praises on
him, and shoved a tiny poison-laden needle into his neck. To her surprise, he
dodged easily. Then he grabbed her arms, twisted them around her back, and
secured them with a zip tie.

“If you want to pull the ‘Decoy Damsel’ trick, then you’ll
have to go back in time before Tsilaer beat that foolishness out of me.”

He pushed her to the ground and spun around in time to
parry a thrust from the supposedly fallen soldier. His foe turned the blade
sideways and then knocked him over with a bat swing. He rolled to his feet and
chanted Nerve Paralysis, but it dissipated on contact with the armor. He dodged
one swipe and ducked another while chanting Darkness Smog and it too
dissipated. For that, he was kicked in the gut. When the soldier drew back
their sword, he retreated to analyze what just happened.

He examined the armor and the runes on it. He used Magic
Sight to look for further information and saw a void around the armor. It was
absorbing mana, which meant it was anti-magic armor. He threw experimental mana
bolts to test his theory and all of them passed straight into the armor without
impact.

What did Tsilaer say about fighting mage killers?

Tiza's portal dropped her directly outside the castle
dungeons. Before her feet hit the ground, a force sent her tumbling through the
open door. She landed in a cloud of dust that sprang up all over the main
containment room. She coughed several times to clear her lungs of it. Then she
raised her barrier to block a spell from someone at the top of the stairs. She
crossed her arms in front of her and thrust them upwards to deflect it to the
ceiling. It shattered on contact.

Her attacker shut the door behind him and calmly walked
down the stairs. He had the height of a boy about her age, maybe a few years
younger. It was hard to tell because a blank mask concealed his face. Similarly,
blank armor concealed his body to his fingertips. Nothing about his identity
was given away except for his right hand. It held a rowan staff.

"If a damsel wanders into a dungeon, she will soon be
in distress."

 Even his voice was modulated to give it a creepy and toneless
sound, but Tiza wasn't impressed. Her Third Eye saw right through his mask and
its magic. His hair and eye color were the same as Nolien’s, and there were
other resemblances too. Then there was the “spare heir” medallion hanging
around his neck. It was simple to connect the dots.

"If a Dosh makes a dare, he will soon be in
danger."

The blank mage did a double take. Tiza raised a hand to
her mouth as she'd seen some haughty rich girls do and continued, "I'm
right, aren't I? That disguise is pitiful. You'd think the House of Heleti
could make something better, but then again, you're only a second son."

"Second-born but FIRST RATE! I mean...I don't know
what you're talking about. I am the Blank Mage that was sent by your mother to
retrieve you."

Tiza scoffed. "I know who my mother is and she
wouldn’t send a loser like you.”

Dosh Heleti brandished his staff and fired a hailstorm of
bolts. Tiza dodged them despite the confined area and her fashionable heels.
She ducked and weaved to the evil healer. Those bolts she couldn’t dodge she
deflected with her gloved hands. Dosh amplified his volley, but she closed the
distance regardless. When she was finally in arm’s reach, she delivered an
upset punch to the solar plexus followed by an upper cut to his nose. The combo
left him flat on his ass.

“Just like I thought. You’re squishier than Tenderfoot.”

A shrill ring in her ears alerted her to a back attack and
she ducked just in time to avoid a spell bolt, then rolled to avoid another.
Every bolt Dosh fired came back at her. Despite dodging them all a second time,
they were ready for a third pass.

“You’ll need more than that to beat me. I do this every
day.” Privately, she added, “But it’s normally not this tiring.”

This time, they didn’t wait their turn. All of them turned
around as soon as Tiza dodged, making tighter circles each time. One struck the
back of her leg, making her stumble, and then they all hit at once. Every part
of her body hurt, her head throbbed, and she breathed heavily, but she stayed
on her feet. Then Dosh swept them out from under her.

She landed hard on her side. She rolled on instinct, but
the move was sluggish. Dosh easily pinned her in place by sitting on her back.
He placed one hand on her head and the other near her heart.

“Sedation!”

Boosted by the Order Domination Field, the spell
overwhelmed her defenses. Immediately, she felt weak and unfocused. Her vision
blurred. Dosh pulled two pairs of handcuffs from his pocket.

“Who’s the loser now?”

In a small storage closet in a remote part of the castle,
Kallen peacefully meditated. Legs crossed, hands folded, eyes closed, and
breathing steadily, she contemplated the Mystery of Chaos. She expanded her
senses to include all the phases of reality and the River of Mana that bound
them all together. She prayed for the fundamental energy that created the world
and destroyed it. In this area where Order claimed absolute control, she
focused on the chaos of her own body and soul, the legacy of her parents’ work,
and the tip of her crystal.

Back in reality, her sidekick was anything but calm.

In a fighting stance, she dual wielded scimitars. They
hadn’t been attacked by anything since the initial burst, but fresh adrenaline
was still pumping through her body. They were in the midst of an Order take
over and her boss was off in Lala land. It was all up to her to protect her
body! How could she possibly be calm?  

“Hurry up with the mystical mojo, Boss!” she muttered. “We
could be attacked any—”

The door burst off its hinges and she jumped forward to
skewer the first intruder. Elven metallurgy pierced the soldier’s armor and she
kicked it back outside. An earth spell replaced the door and another one threw
bars across it.

“Go the abyss away!” she shouted. “You’re not getting in
here!”

In the castle courtyard, twenty soldiers had taken up
positions around the Obelisk. They were all large, broad, and clad from head to
toe in thick Ordercraft Armor.
Around them lay the corpses of royal
guards. Their bodies were broken and their souls fed to the Obelisk to increase
its power and range. Then someone jumped out of a fourth-story window.

While in free fall, he grew six extra limbs, turned them
all into spears, and impaled ten of the soldiers with extreme prejudice. The
chaotic power within the spears negated the bonuses given to them by the Order
Domination Field and killed them instantly. The remaining half regrouped and
scattered, thereby dodging the next two strikes. The elf rolled on impact and
threw his arms out in a wide arc that prevented them from taking advantage of
his recovery.

“Only half? Hmm,” Ponix muttered to himself. “I must be
rusty.”

He zeroed in on the closest soldier while firing four
spear limbs. The soldier hacked the first, dodged the second, but the third and
fourth impaled him. Ponix transformed those spears into hooks and used him as a
bludgeon on the twelfth soldier while firing two more spear limbs at the
thirteen and fourteenth. They were guided missiles in their relentless pursuit.

Meanwhile, the fifteenth through twentieth attacked at
once. Ponix jumped up to free up his legs for striking, then retrieved two more
spears from the eleventh soldier and fired them all at the attacking soldiers.
Instead of simply dodging, they grabbed the tendrils and pulled them away from
Ponix’s main body. He grunted at the discomfort; elven shapeshifting only
extended so far. The remaining two were free to approach him unopposed.

“Always stay moving,” he muttered again. “How did I forget
that?”

By shifting into something slick and slippery, he escaped
their grasp. Then he retracted his limbs, shifted his arms into drills, and
charged forward propelled by a rear facing gas-based engine. They scattered
only for him to swivel back to face them. By then, the two remaining limbs
achieved their objectives and returned to him.

“I
am
rusty. I might as well do this the old-fashioned
way.”

He shifted his left hand into a sword and his right into a
shield while outfitting himself in his own style of armor. Dragon scales
covered him from head to toe. Only his eyes, mouth, and chaotic-colored hair
could still be seen. He lifted his weapon above his head and shouted,

“FOR LADY CHAAAAOOOSSSS!”

Kasile knew she was dying. Stripped of all mana, her
kon
was next and then her soul would be swallowed by the enforcer. That would be
the end of her, and with her, the end of the Ataidar royal line. She paled and
shriveled by the second. After all this time, the Sacred Fire bloodline would
end without a drop of it being spilled.

An electric current raced across her brain as her final
thought clicked.

She ripped out a chastity dagger and sliced down her right
arm. Blood poured from the wound and she prayed to Fiol; not as the royal and
semi-divine queen but as the Highest Public Servant. Instead of
self-congratulating praise, she spoke of earnest supplication.  

Then the back of her left palm shined. The divine crest that
was the Empty Throne of Ataidar burned in her skin. The Royal Crest that was
the Crowned Tiger followed it on her right. Her skin became incandescent and the
blood leaking from her wound became white fire. Her irises became pools of it.

She gathered the bloody fire in her hand and launched it
at the enforcer. It hissed in pain and ceased draining her. In response, she
staggered back and forth while a peal of laughter ripped from her throat. The
visiting rulers backed away.

“
No wonder I’ve had trouble controlling it! All this time, I’ve been
laboring under the wrong impression! I should incinerate the Fire Sage for his
help.”

A pillar of fire roared into life around her. She outstretched
her hands and blasted white flames to every corner of the room. It rose up the
walls and floor and echoed her glee.

“
The true source, Fire Sage! The true Authority!
Of course, I'm not queen. The throne is empty and tiger is crowned.”

She raised her right hand above her head and a combination
of blood and white flame streamed in a double helix around her arm. The blood soaked
her opera glove, but the fire didn’t touch it. She brought it down, clenched,
and both of them gushed forth.

“My
blood; my heritage; my responsibility. This is Kasile Landros Ataidar, daughter
of the daughter of Fire!”

“Madness!” Lunas exclaimed. “We must leave before she
demands sacrifices! The enforcer will hold her off!”

Most of the visitors had already fled during Kasile’s
speech. The rest followed Lunas’ command. Kasile pointed her right pointer
finger and a beam of white death lanced out at him. The enforcer intercepted
and absorbed it. The prince, last of the delegates, ran away.

“
Siron! Stop him
!
"

Pale faced and shaky-legged, Siron obeyed the command. On
his way out, he checked for his rapier and dagger. Then the door closed, the lock
melted, and a dome of white fire encompassed the door.

“
It’s just you and me now, enforcer.”

The fragment of Order twisted the room’s reality. Ethereal
lights appeared from nowhere to wrap around the unconscious guards. There were
two for every delegate, totaling over two hundred professional warriors. They
arose and arrayed themselves around Kasile. The Sacred Fire above them all
diminished and wavered. Some of it drifted into orbit around the enforcer and
alignment changed into dark Infernal Fire.

“This is not
that which needs to escape, Mortal Flesh.”

It launched the corrupted fire at her in rapid volley
spheres. She grabbed them as they came and purified them on the spot. Then she
gathered it all into a ball and pressed it against her cut. It transformed back
into blood and shot back into her system and then again into fire. There was no
difference. As blood drained from her body, fire replaced it.

“
I understand now. You accused me of lying
about my status as queen. You are right. The Fire Sage is right. I am not queen
.”

The mind-controlled bodyguards slashed with short swords
and tomahawks. Mana bolts fell like rain. Kasile smirked and generated a dome
of Sacred Fire. Not one of their bolts touched her and their weapons melted
into slag before reaching her.

“
Fiol is queen here. She has ruled for two
thousand years. I’m closer to Vice-Roy or High Priestess. Torch Day is to
remind me of this fact: I am the torch carrying the fire, not the fire itself.
”

She thrust her arms to either side and sent Sacred Fire
rolling over the bodyguards like a wave. It melted their armor and incinerated
their clothing, but did not harm them personally. She gazed appreciatively,
then snapped her fingers. Obeying her unspoken summoning, salamander spirits
appeared around her.

“
Take these people to another room. This does
not concern them
.
”
 

They nodded and scattered. While they grabbed guards large
and small, she continued,
“My divine power is similar. It’s not mine. I’m borrowing it from
the real goddess, yet I claimed that it was mine. Order is a sly bastard.”

“
Blasphemy
!”

Kasile placed her spotless left hand over her mouth in
mock apology.
“Ohh…Did
I upset the emotionless drone?”

Wind currents from nowhere gathered the bodyguards
together. They pulled the salamanders out of the air. Both flesh and flame
joined together with other objects in the room, from wooden tables to stone
masonry to metal utensils. All of it melded together by the enforcer’s command.
There was a flash like a newborn star and Kasile shielded her eyes. When she
looked again, the mass was gone and in its place was a dragon.

Taller than any giant, it wore full stainless steel scales
embossed with ordercraft runes. Divine flames illuminated its body and streaked
across it like lines of power. The enforcer flew into the head and its eyes
glowed with silver-grey light. A fighting spirit composed of ordercraft mixed
with Sacred Fire washed over Kasile and she looked upon it in fear.

“An
immortal creature forged from your own supposedly divine fire and animated by a
fragment of the Original Spirit. Self-proclaimed high priestess, let us see if
you can defeat this.”

In the rooms and hallways of the castle, tricksters fought
dimensional barriers, enforcer puppets, and mortal ordercrafters. Among them, Belldandy
was the most powerful and removed obstacles most quickly, and for this reason,
the Order Domination Field placed the most obstacles in her path. While she
relished the opportunity to kill so many minions of her evil uncle, the path to
the Obelisk was frustratingly long. Lesser tricksters faced dangers up to and
including capture and imprisonment in Latrot. Thus, they moved more carefully
and made slower progress.

In the courtyard, Tasio and Aphelion engaged in a
shapeshifter duel. Since both of them were tricksters, and thus made of chaotic
energy, their default forms couldn’t hurt the other's. The only solution was to
take a different form.

Tasio became a flying elephant that fired explosive
peanuts from its trunk. Aphelion dodged around him in the form of a
rabbit-panther hybrid. After several peanuts cratered the well-cared-for
courtyard, he generated multiple octopus tentacles to fling them back. Tasio
crashed, shifted into an air-based jellyfish on contact and squirted stingers and
ink at Aphelion. The human trickster countered by becoming human, stepping
around them, and then trod on the jellyfish with iron skin. In response, Tasio
turned into poop, and not just any poop. This was the squishiest, stinkiest,
and stickiest poop ever to smear a sole. Then he turned into a blob monster and
swallowed him whole. Aphelion became a tornado and scattered him across the
courtyard.

Outside the ordercrafter barracks, Kimberly imitated the
emergency loyalty procedures devised by Fairtheora. As the Royal Sentinel, it
was his job to protect the realm from ordercrafters. This included Kimberly and
her teammates. If there ever came a time that anyone one of them was lost to
Order’s control, then there were official methods to bring them to their senses.
First, she stood in front of Thuy and asked, “Who gave you the armor you wear?”

Order did not abide lies and so he compelled her to say, “Queen
Kasile.”

“Who gave you the home you live in?”

“Queen Kasile.”

“Who gave you the duty you live for?”

 “Queen Kasile.”

“Who do you work for?”

Given the above facts, there was only one acceptable
answer. Thuy raised her badge high and shouted, “QUEEN KASILE!” Then she rubbed
her eyes and tapped her head as if to dislodge water. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“It’s nothing. We are trained professionals.”

She took off the glove on her left hand and stuck her
finger in her mouth. Then she jammed it into Daniela’s ear. Immediately, the
younger girl jumped up and away.

“Why did you do that? I've told you to stop that ever since
we were...kids..." She bowed her head and mumbled, “Sorry, ma’am.”

Kimberly put her glove back. “What are cousins for?”

Finally, she interrupted the mercy match by pulling
Jasmine into a kiss. At first, it was like kissing a statue, but then Jasmine responded.
Kimberly pulled away at that point and said, “We can finish later.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Jasmine said sassily.

Once more united, the Royal Ordercrafter Security and
Compliance Team was an unstoppable force of law and duty. No monster could harm
them and no dimension partition could delay them. Then, with the Order Obelisk
in sight, a portal generated in their path. It opened onto a landscape with a
titanic Order Obelisk that was flanked by dozens of smaller ones acting in
concert around it. This was Blayce, capital of Latrot and home to the Grand
Obelisk.

A presence reached out of the portal and engulfed them.
With indomitable force, it dragged them in. A single thought resonated in their
minds with the power of undeniable authority.

Ordercrafters
cannot resist Order.

Back inside the castle, Fairtheora endured both enchanted phrases and
sharp words from his former partner, Dannaigh. Spontaneous clouds of hostile
magic burst all around him. Flames, toxins, hallucinations, and
transfigurations assaulted the area around him. His armor and his spirit kept
him safe from her attack but could not protect him from her words.

“Failure. Failure. Failure.
Lawbreaker!
”

She flew around him in an unpredictable yet pointless
pattern. After all these years apart, how could he attack his life partner?
Order would pay for what he did to her, along with his soft-skin puppets! He
ran towards the Order Obelisk and the ground under his feet exploded. He soared
away from the obelisk and skidded to a stop on his back.

Dannaigh hovered over him. Although her eyes were blank,
disappointment was etched in every line in her face. Her wings spread dust with
every flap. The area was saturated with it.

“
Bond-breaker.
”

All the fairy dust detonated at once. Magic beyond fire incinerated
the room and everything in it, except for its combatants. Dannaigh was
protected by her ordercraft robes and Fairtheora by his anti-ordercraft armor.
She sniffed and flew away from him.

  He desperately tried to grab her, but she dodged and
continued flying deeper into the castle. It was in the opposite direction of the
Order Obelisk. Fairtheora looked from one to the other as Dannaigh flew further
away.

“Abyss! Activate emergency protocol 42: Friend or Idol.”

His armor removed itself from his body piece by piece and
reassembled itself behind him. It saluted him and then ran towards the Order Obelisk.
Thus, he was free him to chase his brainwashed partner without technically
abandoning his post.

            Elsewhere in the castle, Siron chased Lunas to fulfill his
own orders. He ran as fast as he could, but the Order Domination Field slowed
him down while speeding up his query. Before he cleared two hallways, he was
too tired to move. While berating himself for weakness and failing his queen,
he had his own revelation. He made the Sign of Fire on his chest and intoned, “Order,
I beseech thee. I am under orders from my queen to accomplish a task within her
home and seat of governance. Please lend me thy power for what I do is lawful.”

Suddenly, he felt lighter. He could breathe easier and
even form a mana bolt in one hand. He sprinted forward.

At the end of the hallway, his path was blocked by a pair
of soldiers. He brandished a rapier and swung it at the side of the one on the
left. When it fell for the feint, he thrust center and pierced straight through
the breastplate. The soldier paused for only for a moment. Then it slashed with
its own sword and the other tried to flank.

Siron abandoned his sword, ducked under the first attack,
and sidestepped the second. Using momentum from the step, he shoulder charged the
“wounded” soldier, knocking him on his back. This way, he was still in good
shape to block an attack from the second with his gauntlet. The shock numbed it
a little and made his teeth rattle, but he shook it off and kicked the second
soldier towards the wall. When it stumbled, he jumped forward and pulled its
helmet off. Just as he expected, the controlling rune was inside. He pulled out
a dagger and stabbed it. The main body clattered to the floor in pieces. Then
he walked behind the first soldier, who was just getting up and did the same. With
both disabled, he recovered his rapier and continued sprinting.

Thanks to his own lawful nature, he received power from by
the Order Domination Field just like the automata. The bonuses canceled out and,
without them, mindless bodies of metal stood no chance against the heir of a
border dukedom.