Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3)

by Brian Wilkerson

  “Hypocrite! Your host stalked me for months despite the local government’s laws against stalking and the laws against private ordercrafters. He disrupted my life, sowed disorder in my community, locked this thing on my neck against my will, and kidnapped me. You yourself disapproved of that last one! Now here you are vandalizing like the original vandals! How can a being that protests to embody Truth and Rule of Law defend against such hypocrisy?”

  Order hesitated. His pilfered body stopped moving and his aura dimmed a degree. Lacking his direction, the enforcers also lacked his vitality and elves all over the village suddenly found themselves an easier fight. Alexis fought her way out of her silver vapor cage and Meza banished the ones that attacked himself. Nulso’s body stone alone, except for Annala.

  She backhanded him on the other cheek and again denounced him.

  “You are like Theodosius I, who claimed to be the legitimate 167th Western Emor Emperor because he occupied the capital and convinced the Eastern Emor Emperor that it was so! In truth, he was a thug and a bandit who conquered with thugs and bandits. All you prove here is that your precious ‘stability’ is nothing but brute force and fear. Such things are chaotic in nature, devoid of any ‘law’ except the ‘Law of the Jungle.’”

  An ethereal tendril wound itself about Annala’s waist and up towards her neck and the collar resting there. Annala didn’t flinch; her fist clenched, her shoulders tensed, and sweat broke out all over her body, but she didn’t blink or look away. Neither did Nulso’s body. His sense of awareness was focused solely on Annala. Alexis and Meza took this opportunity to finally pierce his Order Shield. Annala’s intervention provided the opening they needed. To make sure Order didn’t notice, Annala slapped him a third time and continued her scathing criticism.

  “You can’t kidnap me. You yourself recognized me as Eric’s property. To do so would be stealing. You can’t justify that. You can’t even use Eminent Domain because you lack the consent of the governed to form a ruling body of law.”

  Sagart whispered hymns to boost Alexis’ and Meza’s strength.

  “A mind such as yours is wasted serving Lady Chaos. You should join my administrators. I would place you in charge of every elf on this world; slave or free. I’ll even remove the collar.”

  Alexis and Meza, working together and with the power of Sister Sagart's prayers, finally broke through. The latter ripped open a body-sized hole in the Order Shield with his bastard sword and the former lunged with her rapier. Order ignored the wound to his vessel. Hearing Annala’s reply was more important.

  She smiled politely. “I must respectfully decline. While it is a tempting offer, the job security leaves something to be desired.”

  Nulso’s body laughed. It was dry, mirthless, and robotic, but a laugh nonetheless. Then he bashed Alexis and Meza aside as easily as swatting bugs. They tumbled head and over heels away from him. It was terribly rude for them to interrupt his conversation. They stood up and attacked again. Braced by Sagart’s holy support, they were ready for another round.

  “A polite elf; will wonders never cease? To answer your question, this world must be tamed before it can become truly orderly. As I said before, right now, it is a powder keg. Furthermore, I am not invading. I was invited.”

  All four elves present stopped whatever they were doing. Order did not abide lies. His honesty was a fundamental aspect of reality. It alone maintained the consistency of the Great Tree That Supports the Worlds and stabilized every world fruit. If he said he was invited, then there could no doubt that it was an irrefutable fact. However, none of them could imagine who would do such a thing.

  “Y…you are Lunas’ proxy?” Annala asked.

  “No. That little shit was being obnoxious. I am here at the request of someone else, whose identity I cannot reveal. Do you have any further objections to my actions?”

  Annala slowly shook her head.

  “So be it. If Eric’s property is what you wish to be, then so you shall remain forever.”

  His tendril tapped the collar and Annala was obscured by opaque eldritch light. A second later, it revealed her, and her hair was stark white from root to tip. Even her skin was paler than before. The tendril withdrew and Annala knelt at Nulso’s feet.

  “Maiden, return to your master.”

  Annala stood, curtsied, and said, “Yes, Lord Order.”

  Guided by the spiritual leash on her neck, she walked off the battlefield in a state of serenity. With interest, Order noticed that she was headed towards Hariana Inquires. Regardless of what the elves were planning, it was irrelevant. Any resistance against his actions was futile.

  “Those who are empowered by Order the First Born are feeble before Lady Chaos the Matriarch. In her name, bow down!”

  The vessel's knees buckled. Order's aura dimmed and thinned. Two golden blades impaled his chest through his back. They glowed with the divinity of their owner, Tasio the Trickster. His face was a mask of cold fury and his killing intent knocked five years out of everyone nearby.

  “You crossed the line, Order. I was going to allow my chosen to destroy this vessel, but now I will do it myself!”

  Nulso's head spun one hundred and eighty degrees and said,

  “This vessel is irrelevant. Would you not prefer to rescue your ‘grandchildren’? My fragments are delivering them to Latrot as we speak.”

  “Abyss take you!”

  He tossed his right-handed divine blade to Meza and the left-handed to Alexis. His armor followed and split between them. Now he was dressed in a simple cloak and sandals. In his right hand, he carried a shepherd’s crook. This was his guise as “Tasio the Shepherd of Elves.” At once, the pair of elves glowed with the same divine light as their deity.

  “You have my full authority as Seraph of Chaos. Kill him with my blessing.”

  The guardian and the ordercrafter hunter made the Triangle of Arin. Tasio nodded and vanished. In response, Order summoned more enforcers to guard his vessel while it recovered.

  Meza pointed accusingly at him with his gloved hand and a chaotic-orderly hybrid aura glowed from it. He raised his new blade above his head. Alexis charged her own with chaotic verses pounding in her mind. Already divine chaos, it charged even further. Together, they agitated the new enforcers out of their orbits.

  “All things arose from Chaos, and therefore all things are the children of Chaos. She is their mother, their grandmother, their matriarch!”

  Meza spoke slowly and deliberately. Each word was a gouge in the enforcer's power and a jab at Order himself. Alexis was a flurry of activity. Dancing around the corpse, she smote enforcers with quick and practiced strikes.

  “She is head of the Family of Creation and therefore its authority figure. As a servant of authority, it is your duty to obey.”

  Every word was backed by Meza’s iron will and genuine piety, and every one of them weakened the enforcers, thus making them easy prey for Alexis’ divine and elven swords. She cut through half of them before the end of the verse.

  “You are a contradiction of purpose; a defiance of authority!”

  The remaining enforcers could no longer withstand Meza’s words and Alexis’ chaotic blades. They faded out of physical reality and Alexis fired a chaosified mana beam that finished them. It washed over Nulso’s corpse and melted the front of its Order Shield. Then she jumped back and prepared to attack the main threat directly.

  “You disrupt the peaceful life here. Your actions invalidate any welcome you may have received from a resident here.”

  Alexis jump-slashed the corpse's chest, but it blocked the divine sword with its staff, thus leaving itself open for a jab to the face with her smaller elven sword. It tried to grab her with its empty hand, but she jumped back and brought the divine sword down on its elbow, severing it.

  Meza was now close enough to attack physically. He followed up her attacks by chambering and thrusting straight through the vessel's chest. Then he removed one hand from the sword's hilt and placed it over
Nulso's face.

  "I came to give sight to the blind and take it from the seeing."

  Golden-brown light flashed and disfigured it.

  The vessel was cut, burned, and mutating. It was blind. Its head and limbs hung on to the main body by threads. Its aura burned and steamed from contact with so much chaos. Yet Order himself remained unharmed. With a single thought, he greyed out the immediate area and used its mana to restore his vessel's essential functions and reattach its arm.

  “I recognize this combo. You are Meza, the Ordercrafter Killer. I have lost many servants to you.”

  Meza drew back his divine blade for another swing. “Namagomi knows me by name? I’m flattered.”

  Nulso’s body glared. On the next attack, it caught the blades with its bare hands. This was a costly maneuver. The hands were now mutating and ruined but worse still was the effect on the vessel itself. To block divine blades, Order had to push more of his own divinity through the vessel than it could safely handle. It was now deteriorating at an accelerated rate. However, it enabled him to hold the elves in place while his ethereal hands plunged into them.

  While both were hardy warriors wearing armor warded specifically to protect against intrusion by ordercraft, in addition to the divine authority granted to them by Tasio, they simply weren’t good enough to stop Order himself. He found their souls and Seed of Chaos with only little more difficulty than Quando's. Their endless supplies of kon were also available to him and he siphoned them freely to restore his vessel to perfect health and condition.

  "Those touched by chaos will never falter!" Meza recited. "Their sword shall pierce any shield and their willpower shall burst all restraints! They shall be free all the days of their lives! Thus says the Matriarch!"

  Order squashed his psalm's power. A layman's prayers were nothing when both his soul and seed were gripped by the All-Encompassing Hand. Those of a priestess were no better. Ten enforcers enveloped Sagart and suppressed all her holy power while they drained her of it.

  “Lady Chaos did not give birth to me. My consciousness created my form within her body and then I expelled myself. Therefore, I created myself.”

  “Blasphemy!” Meza shouted while struggling in his grip. “Heretic!”

  Order ignored him and continued concentrating the seeds within his opponents, but it was slow and difficult. The male, he observed, was powered by his hatred of all things Orderly and based in the horrible things he’d seen ordercrafters do. The female, he observed, was powered by her fear of the same and what happened to her. Together with Nulso’s inability to act as a proper channel for his power, he couldn’t simply brute force the seeds out of them.

  If he tried, then his vessel would collapse immediately and he would fail in his goal to subjugate this village. If he searched for weaker prey, they might destroy his vessel before he could accomplish his objective. With Tasio’s authority, it was entirely possible. Never let it be said that Order is impatient.

  “Meza Filef, look around you.”

  Enforcers blockaded his village. They chased his people, knocked them out, and stole their power. Even the guardians and ordercrafter hunters were being subdued. Many trees were burning; homes and businesses ruined. The Sage Tree, Dnnac itself, was occupied by them.

  “You have failed.”

  A spark of despair flashed in Meza’s heart and Order exploited it. With a final yank, he pulled Meza’s seed from his body. Then he dropped Meza, now white-haired and feeble, but Alexis remained defiant. Despite the immense spiritual and physical pain involved in the process, she refused to let go of her seed.

  “You gain nothing by resisting me. Even if you prevent me from taking your seed, you will not escape my host’s implosion. As I speak, it is collapsing. At this range, it will drag you with it and you shall spend eternity in a cold, silent, and empty void.”

  Such a fate terrified Alexis more than Order’s enslavement and undercut her resistance to him. He wrenched her seed from her body and she joined Meza on the ground. In each hand, he held a Seed of Chaos. He had to act fast, before his host broke down completely.

  Its stomach had already collapsed and been replaced by a hole into nothingness. This hole was expanding, and when it broke the boundaries of the body, it would implode. His own Stability Authority would prevent it from turning into a black hole and so the initial implosion would only take about one tenth of the village with it. Thus, it was imperative that he destroy the entire village and enslave all its denizens before that happened.

  With no one left to challenge him, he prepared to fire again. One to destroy Dnnac and another, Hariana Inquires. The two of them together would plunge this village into oblivion. In one move, he would derail the technology exchange, prevent any future exchange from ever happening again, keep elven slaves in their rightful place, and obliterate The Trickster’s Chosen, thereby thwarting any plans Lady Chaos might have for them.

  He fired.

  “Even now, return to me with all your heart!”

  One of the seeds soared away from Hariana Inquires to Meza’s hand. It rested in the palm of his Order Negator Gauntlet. He pressed that hand against his chest, returned to his elven state, and pointed at the second with the same glove.

  “Your faith has made you well!”

  The glove shined with the eldritch light of Order mixed with the golden-brown of Chaos, and that same hybrid glow surrounded the second seed. It swerved away from the Sage Tree and instead arrived at Meza’s hand. He shot it to Alexis’ body and cured her mortality.

  “You used my own authority against me. Impressive.”

  “My every moment is dedicated to stopping you and humans that serve you. My soul is polarized against you. I will use every tool at my disposal, even your blasphemous power.”

  “You are not the first elf to say those words. You will be my slave yet.”

  Meza took up both divine swords and brandished them. “Bring it on, Namagomi!”

  He sliced and slashed and cut with the authority of his deity. This was a style created three thousand years ago, and one he mastered three hundred years ago. No one had bested him in it except the current grandmaster, and yet, he still couldn't best Order.

  The eldritch god had more experience than any elf could ever have. He exploited the mutation of his vessel's arms to make them stronger and faster. Even when the vessel was fatally injured, he used stolen kon to mend the damage instantly. Finally screaming with rage and fear, Meza attacked recklessly. Order took the wind out of him by punching his stomach. The elf warrior sank to his knees, breathing heavily.

  "Elves may have conquered Death, but you will never conquer me. Between us, I am the one who is truly eternal. Despite all your spells, technology, prayers, and sweat, you have inflicted no lasting damage to my vessel. This outcome, where you kneel before me, was, is, and always will be inevitable."

  Suddenly, his vessel was blind once more. Annoyed, he searched for its cause among spiritual, magical, and religious sources. These were the lines elves typically thought along when trying to disable his vessels, on the absurd notion that they could somehow harm him personally. They never tried anything chemical or biological, so Order did not immediately check for anything chemical or biological. This was why he didn't notice the pair of spiders racing down his vessel and jumping to the ground.

  Annala chose the dress she did because Eric recommended it, and he recommended it because Tiza hid her mother's tiny helpers inside it. When Annala smacked Nulso's corpse, she unknowingly provided them the bridge to their target. More were waiting nearby in case she didn't get the chance. With their mission accomplished, they returned to their mistress' daughter. She was waiting nearby with her new best friend and a second nasty surprise.

  "A tent may be able to fight, but can she throw?"

  "Ha! Heleti Amateur Darts champion two years running."

  Together, they threw a total of thirty-two Order Nullifying Snares and all of them hit their mark. Nulso's corpse was now enshrouded
by the chaosified threads and pulled to the ground by their weight. The girls high-fived.

  Further annoyed, Order immediately burned through five of them. This was nothing more than a minor delay. Then he heard someone playing “Flight of the Valkyries.”

  “What madness is that Trickster up to now?”

  From the direction of Hariana Inquires, a dust cloud stirred. A terrible rumbling and chorus of roars was heard. As it approached, Nulso’s ears determined it to be a stampede of monsters.

  All of them were subjects of Nunnal’s mana mutation research, the HPLC. All of them were horribly mutated and resembled no creature known to man or spirit. Order himself had never seen their like before. As a single mass, they ran in his direction and were led by three creatures mightier than any of them.

  These three ran along each flank of the monster horde like sheepdogs. To the left was a chimera wielding a white staff bearing a clear arrowhead crystal. She shouted at the monsters and struck the strays to keep the pack together. To the right was a blue-furred unicorn with a silver horn; in its teeth was a white staff. Both of them fired into the horde to mend damages each did to others, to amplify their defenses, and keep them in line. At the rear was a grendel wielding a black staff who ensured that none of them wandered off or escaped.

  Order sent his hands into their minds and encountered resistance in all of them. Without Nulso’s eyes, he couldn’t distinguish monster from demon or mana breed. All of them were so heavily infused with chaos that they formed an amorphous mass. He couldn’t immediately take control of any of them, and Nulso’s body was so entrapped by the chaotic nets that it couldn’t avoid being run over by them.

  Biting, clawing, raking, constricting, and smashing; even as they were absorbed into the void in his host’s stomach, they continued tearing at him. With so much damage and chaos, Order could not properly channel his power through his host. The unicorn zapped it to further disorient it and maintain the mob's consistency around it.