The Quantum Wanderer

Marcelo’s POV

I start shooting out the railgun nails. I kill the first one, the second one, the third one. They are still charging me. I would like to take a look at how my girls are doing, but I have to pay attention.

The fourth one protects his rib cage with the axes, using them like a shield. The shot still packs a punch, the flat of the axe blade hits the soldier in chest. The armor helps dissipate the rest of the shot’s energy. He keeps running.

I aim at his head. He lifts the axes, but that’s what I intended. I use that fraction of second to send a nail at his chest. He drops dead, like the others.

The wave is getting close. My sword is ready. I am ready.

The first one reaches with a sword attack, I parry with my left arm, trusting the armor and the neutron crystals on my skin. I cut him in half, easily. I keep with the movement, and I fall a second one. The ones that are close are staring me, in a wary position.

At this point, I hear a roar coming in from the sky. It is a mix of rage and pain. I look very quickly, Ruby managed to tear off the front leg of the ryu she was battling.

I turn my attention back to the group in front of me.

Then an earthquake makes it really hard to keep standing. I would loose my balance if I tried to attack, but so would them.

The image of a woman, as high as the castle, appears in front of it. It is more of a projection, as if using only gold light to produce an image. We all stare at her.

“ENOUGH! I TIRE OF THIS PATHETIC DISPLAY!”

The guards immediately kneel down. All of them. They were charging, they were swinging their swords, and now they are all kneeling. I am incredulous at the scene. Stopping mid battle? Really? I extend the my arms toward them. They would be sitting ducks. At the same time, this feels weird.

I take several steps back, placing myself in a safer distance. I turn around, still wary of the soldiers. To my back.

The huge projection like was initially looking at the air battle, but then turns her gaze towards me. She takes a step forward towards me. The first step brings her close to me. Her size shrinks, she stays a little taller than me.

She is wearing some royalty clothing. A very detailed and embroidery kimono, with a very elaborate hair.

She looks at the air battle, and snaps her fingers.

The ryu shine in golden light. They recover immediately and grow larger. I charge the goddess and cut through her. As my sword go through her body it already fixes itself. Even the clothing is fixed.

She grabs my hand, and she is strong enough to make me let the sword go. I loose my focus, I didn’t expect something like that.

She punches me, everything goes dark for an instant, then it looks like static before I can look around again. I am on the floor, I sit up. She is looking at me like I am a toddler throwing a tantrum.

She looks at the air battle. Things are now ugly to my girls. The now bigger ryus are envolving them, like a snake the envelops a prey. Their claws, now with a gold shine, start trying to dig at the scales. And they manage to take some off.

Muninn splits from the air battle, and comes our way.

I stand on my knees, and shoot a rail gun at the goddess. She smacks the nails to the side with a fan. She then opens the fan and uses it on herself.

I grab another nail. I make it float in front of me, it is very important that it is only hit by the target. I use the magic to do the transformation, matter, energy, antimatter. I shoot it.

Again, the nail is repelled by the closed fan. I look at it, now sticking on the ground, close to her. This doesn’t make sense. She sneers towards me.

“Are you done?”

I see my sword close to her. She looks up, something got her attention for a second. I make myself into the cloud of possibilities. I am going to take that sword and slice her into a million pieces from her back.

***

Cecilia’s POV

The kitsune and I are in a stand still. Then I point my left hand at her and shoot. She steps to the left, positioning herself in a sideways stance, shooting me with the flame. I step to the side, another flame comes my way, I slice it while we hear the explosive sound of the nail hitting the trees behind her.

Then the earthquake. We can still see the palace from here. The huge image of the goddess. The kitsune in front of me starts shining. She extends her right hand, and a golden spear appear in it.

She charges. She is fast. I try fire magic. It fails. I try earth magic. It fails. She sweeps the spear, I parry it and try a counterattack with the sword. She parries the blade with the other side of the spear, and pushes it straight into my face.

My nose breaks, my eyes water. Another incoming stab from the spear, this one aimed at my heart. I try to side step it, but it still hits my left arm.

I can feel the mana consumption from the regenerating runes in my bones. I still blow out chunks of blood that are inside my nose.

The kitsune tries to go by me to reach Akiko, but get her attention back with an attempt to cut her in half. She defends with the spear to her side, as if she were hiding behind it. She jumps while I try to recover my instance, her spear hit me on the right shoulder. She pins me to the ground. I shout in pain.

My right arm is useless. While the spear is there, regeneration will not work. She pins down my left arm, and raises her free hand. A the yellow fire, then it becomes blue.

My life flashes before my eyes. This wasn’t training.

“SISTER! NO!” The male voice cries out. A shout that let all pride go. Begging. “Sister! Please don’t… I beg you.”

The kitsune turns her head towards Akiko and Kage. Akiko was covering him with her body. Her left arm with pieces of the forearm replaced by stains of blood. The two weasels dead at her feet.

His breathing is very shallow. That scream took all the energy he had. Akiko is still crying, a mix of sadness, hate, and physical pain.

The pressure around my neck alleviates a little, and the kitsune looks at the couple by the rock. Her face goes through several different emotions.

She stands up, I am still pinned to the ground by the spear. She gets near the couple. She snaps her fingers, and another flame comes up in hand, then the other. Then both flames become green instead of blue.

Kage’s expression change from exasperation to just the pained expression. She throws the two flames towards the couple. I try to get up from the floor, but the pain on my shoulder is too much.

The green flames hit them, and the flames travel, as if they had their own will, towards the wounds. Then the wounds regenerate under the flame. The kitsune walks back towards me. She reaches for the spear and looks at the couple. After a nod from Akiko, she removes the spear. Damn this shit hurts.

I feel the mana being used, my regeneration acting up. I stand up slowly, and I put the sword in the scabbard.

The kitsune walks back towards the couple, I follow her. She keeps watching while climbs the two feet of wall, hugging Kage and kissing him. The scene feels like a puppy that has been too long away from his favorite human.

The kitsune sighs.

“Unfortunately, this is about what I can do for you. I could lead you to your child, so that you can visit her a last time, but I don’t have the key to her cell.”

Akiko gets back to the ground. I turn to her.

“Excuse me.”

I pour mana throughout my body, specially my bones and muscles, like Marcelo taught me to. Then I pour mana in the sword. I might not be at his level, but this thing should be able to cut this.

I let out a roar and land a hit on the chain by Kage’s left foot.

The bell like sound of metal against metal is really loud. I look at the chain. I can notice the place where I hit it, but this wasn’t enough to cut it.

Still, both kitsunes are amazed.

“You managed to hurt this chain? That’s new!” the female kitsune says.

I look at her. I am a little disappointed at myself. The chain is marked, sure, but it is going to take a lot of hits to break it at this pace. But then I have an idea. What if…

“Can you pour that blue fire, or anything stronger, on this blade? It was designed to absorb mana.”

The kitsune touches the blade, and I can see her fire attuned mana spreading. I put my hand on top of hers, and I mix in my mana, moving hers around in the high frequency. The sword goes through all the colors in the rainbow, until it goes violet, and then back to metal, but with a weird feeling around it. It’s now or never.

I raise the sword, and again try the cut with both hands. The sword cuts the chain, and embeds itself in the stone. I pull it out, and proceed to cut the other chains. Kage slides down the stone, and falls on his hands and knees. Akiko help him up. The female kitsune is just stunned with the scene. She is looking at the broken chain. Akiko breaks the silence.

“Can we go save my child now?” Akiko asks.

“Our child.” Kage answers with a weak voice.

The female kitsune wakes up from the scene, and stands up.

“Sure, in by a leaf, in by a tree. We may even break her free with that sword.”

She looks at the forest nearby. Her tails move in the in wind, and shine a little bit. Two foxes come from the forest. They transform into a couple. Their tail shine throughout the transformation, and they are clothed in a split second.

“Help carry him.” Our kitsune tells them, and each go to one side of Kage, helping him move.

“Let’s go. “ She says.

And we start going towards the soldier camp, sneaking closer to Hikari’s cell.

***

Marcelo’s POV

I get ripped out of my superposition state, and then thrown and pinned against the ground. One of her hands hold my throat like a vice, while the other controls my right hand.

“I AM A GODDESS! I HAVE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF BELIEVERS! YOU ARE AN ANT!”

Her hand is tightening against my neck. Only my regeneration runes that I carved on my bones, with my stupid mana is keeping me alive now.

Then something happens. Muninn, that was flying towards us, opens a smile. He understood something. He opens a portal, and he is gone.

She laughs, with her booming voice that does not come from her body, but rather from the whole place.

“Pathetic! Even your critter abandons you!”

My whole life flashes in front of me. My life in Rio. My life here. My encounters. Humans. Dwarves. Demons. Elves. Dryads. Centaurs. Dragons.

The demons… My church… MY CHURCH!

I realize what Muninn understood. What he realized.

I grab the goddess’s wrist that is around my throat, and twist it. Her hand slips off my throat. Off my avatar’s throat. I realize now. Physics studies laws. Magic work within different laws.

I push the goddess’s hand from my neck. She is as flabbergasted as I am. I am still understanding. I am still diving in this new sea of consciousness, but I don’t have time for it now. I have time to reply.

“AND I AM A FUCKING GOD!”

The switch turns with this sentence. I see some golden light around, but I don’t see a source.

The goddess now has a scared expression.

I am still scared, but I don’t let it show. I reach out my hand, and my sword comes to me. It is my will, I just order it.

But this place is hers. That makes it her rules. Her divinity. The ground comes towards me. I hit the ground around me with mana that is now infused with millions of different wills coming my way.

The brute force makes the area around explode. A golden explosion.

At this point, we hear a bird cry in the sky. Huginn is now shining a gold light, something that is a mix of fluid and fire coming out of her. She comes down, and her flight is stopped by a big golden avatar from the goddess.

That gives me a second to think. A second to realize that the battle is not here. This body, it is not me. It is mine. My avatar. My connection. The real battle is close, but I have to learn a new direction. Something different than up/down, right/left and front/back. Another pair of directions.

I enter that place. No words were made to describe it. This is imaginary number in the physics equations. This is… This is… I have to create a word for it.

Not now, though.

But then the unexpected happens. The goddess’s land cry. Her avatar looks at me, horrified.

“YOU MONSTER! THEY WERE INNOCENT!”

She falls down to her knees. The land around looses some of its color.

A portal opens, Muninn comes back. He has that twisted smile on his face. He and Huggin land on the sides of the goddess’s body, now looking thinner, weak, hungry.

 I pay attention to the sound in the distance. The goddess’s reinforcement on the ryus is gone. They shrink. They get smaller than they were when we met them the first time.

The sun is dimmer. The blessing thin.

My girls are hurt, but they are in a battle. The ryus’ cries die down as their necks are snapped apart by very powerful jaws.

I turn my attention back to the goddess. Her breathing is shallow.

“You monster! You came here to be a savior, and you fight like that! Thrash! You are evil!”

I look at Muninn. He laughs. Huginn sighs, and shrugs. The goddess shouldn’t have gloated about having tens of thousands of faithful around her mountain. The mountain is now probably gone, together with most of her believers.

The goddess’s real self is also surrounded by us.

Our enemy takes a look around, a tear rolls down her face. I sigh. This has been going on for too long.

I cast my soul absorption spell on her real self, and then I break her.

Just like I had seen my whole life flashing before my life earlier, now I see hers. When she became aware. When wills were getting absorbed by this small statue in the woods. How food would be offered.

Animals would eat the offerings and mark the place as theirs. As a place of abundance. Then humans would come again with more offerings.

With time, she started blessing people going into the mountain. She saw good people and bad people. All sorts of lives, all sorts of deaths. Births. Families. Wars. Crimes. Love.

The news about the shrine blessings got around. Some true, some false, but they still spread a little. Enough that more wills would sustain her.

Her time is not our time. She never counted. The concept of life came in a different way. She saw the cycles. Life feeding on life. Nature. When her mind became abstract enough to entertain the idea of numbers, of time, and counting, there was nothing to count anymore. Too long had already passed. Alas, she never counted. She never cared.

At some point, she was able to do her creation. A small place, initially empty. Her dimension, her land.

She started willing the things she wanted. Matter. A simpler look on matter, as if the whole science stopped at simpler equations.

She created. She created her garden. And surprise! The living beings somehow received souls. The souls were not her doing, they were more of a quality inherent to life. More complex beings receive more complex souls.

Even here in her dimension, there were external laws that she could not define. Laws that are not hers, that she cannot break.

I am still absorbing her self. The past and the sadness of the present. The concept that she never did understand, that she is understanding and receiving now. Her garden’s death. Her soldiers death. Her servants death. There are thousands of beings living in this place.

I swallow the knowledge of making this. I don’t have to be this big of an asshole. Muninn did what he had to, an act of war. But the rest of this place… That would be a pity.

I raise my hand up, and use her memories to sort what I want, to channel my will. I want this place to stay.

Then I start feeling an old friend coming along. The same feeling I got when I killed the dragons. The same feeling when I advanced too fast.

Everything turns black.

***

Cecilia POV

Infiltrating the dungeon was easier than I would have ever thought. The few soldiers that we would have had to fight had their heads against the ground. They stayed in that position ever since that crazy huge golden image appeared.

They didn’t even react to us. They just looked with the side of their eyes. I could see their expressions softening as we distanced them. We didn’t wait enough to dig deep into their reasonings, though. We sped up our way.

The doors to the underground in the military shacks were not particularly strong. My sword could slice through them. We decided to use rather than question our luck.

We went down through circular stone stairs, until we found ourselves in a corridor, with cells.

The cells had no doors. Just the bars. All of the cells unused, except for one of them in the end. We can hear the noises a mother with a baby would make.

At this moment, a big explosion happens outside. We keep walking cautiously.

And then we hear a scream, anguish and pain, being shouted from the whole place.

“YOU MONSTER! THEY WERE INNOCENT!”

Not to us. Hehe. That’s what you get when my villain gets pissed, bitch!

The land around looses some of its color. The four kitsune fall to the ground, their breathing shallow.

I turn to Kage.

“What happened?”

“I… I… I don’t know. I feel… just… bad. I not pain… No, not pain… I don’t know…”

The female kitsune is sitting against the wall. I turn to her. She answers the question that is still on the air.

“The goddess… Something happened…”

“Oh… OH!”

Marcelo and the girls did something to the goddess. I sprint forward, and I charge mana to my sword. If this prison is easy to break, it is going to be now.

I cut the bars before Hikari realizes what is going on. When they fall on the stone floor, she lifts her head, looking at me.

Akiko is right behind me. She pushes me aside, and jumps inside the cell. Hikari looks at the older woman.

“Mom? MOM?!?”

“Yes, dear. LET’S GO!”

Akiko pulls Hikari up while taking care that the baby doesn’t fall. The two of them leave the cell. The come back with me and we re-encounter the group.

The baby starts crying really badly. And then the four fox like people with us start screaming, hands against their heads, curling up on the floor. I don’t know what they are experiencing, but it looks painful. Torture level painful.

Then it stops. They just stretch their limbs out on the floor, too tired from the pain to do anything but breath shallowly.

Their colors start returning. They get back to a healthy appearance.

I turn to them, focusing on the female kitsune that apparently can order the other two around.

“Are you alright? We have to go!”

She breaths shallowly, and then looks at my face. Still lying down, she answers, between breaths.

“No need. The goddess is… dead? Long live the god!”