Transcending Limitations

by Brian Wilkerson

  The former slaves of Order, now zealots of Annala, rushed forward in mindless devotion and fury. Without looking or gesturing, Order tossed them aside. They were less than flies to him. With his unmatched power flowing through the Nulso Rages, he crushed them with this model’s brutality. Then he turned his sights on the demons, and his attention by itself stunned Eric. Kallen wasn’t affected because her River of Chaos enlightenment was still active. For the moment, she was a chaotic deity.

  “Liar.”

  That was all it took. Kallen’s false divinity was based on fooling local reality and Order controlled local reality. Lying to Order wasn’t done, so Kallen’s divinity was undone. As soon as she was mortal again, the cool-down time kicked in and Kallen passed out. The Ordercrafter Hunters were next.

  All it took was a single gesture to subdue all of them. Even Meza couldn’t stand against Order when he possessed five vessels in his own territory. Sagart’s hymns couldn’t empower them enough to escape and her crosier couldn’t help them breach Order’s Lawful Shield. Neither could Annala’s arrows. The difference in power was too great.

  “As the greatest triumph can become the darkest hour,” Sagart recited, “so too can the darkest hour become the greatest triumph. All things are possible with Lady Chaos, and her son, the Overturner of Fortune, together with the Spirit of Fre—”

  One Nulso Rage punched her stomach. It stood over her as she crumpled and said, “Where’s your god now?”

  Belldandy impaled that Nulso Rage with two needles. With effort, she penetrated both the Lawful Shield and its orc-like skin. All her attack accomplished was an annoyed stare.

  “Not you. You are a pale-faced imitation.”

  From the sky came Tasio in his guise as the Reaper of Gods. He drew back for a Reaper Cleave, but another Nulso Rage snatched the shaft and used it to slam him into the ground.

  “Not you either. You are a glorified errand boy. I refer to the erratic bitch who calls herself my mother.”

  All the elves panicked, save Meza, and even he felt they were doomed. None of them feared more than Annala. So recently freed from complete subjugation, she was more viscerally aware of what it meant than anyone here. Her mind raced to find a solution, but there was nothing.

  No matter how hard they fought, Order would simply bring more reinforcements and wear them down by attrition. In all her study of scripture, there was no verse or hymn that could save them now. All she could hope for was a kind master...

  As soon as the thought formed, it filled her mind. Her lingering brainwashing rushed forth to resume dominance. Master! Master, please tell me what to do! Master, I need you! Master, do whatever you want to me! She quelled it.

  Disregarding words, she focused on her faith and prayed for the one thing that could save them all. Immediately, a tiny ember made itself known inside her soul.

  If I do this, then you will never be the same again. It might make things worse. Are you sure?

  Annala nodded.

  As you wish, granddaughter….

  The ember roared into a blaze! It spread to every corner of Annala’s body and boiled over into a colossal pillar of light, power, and love. The Nulso Rages shielded their eyes and hissed in pain. Everyone else gazed in slack-jawed awe, especially Belldandy and Tasio. Annala’s body levitated off the ground and that ground rapidly shifted through one hundred and eight manifestations. Her hair and eyes shined of the purest chaotic light. Nothing else seemed real; just delusions of a fevered mind. The vessel floated to the first Nulso Rage and said, “You called, my son?”

  The Nulso Rage fired Orderly Suppression Beams from both hands. Annala’s body mimed yawning. Pulling out an arrow from her quiver, the vessel waved it to the side and it transformed into a double-sided halberd. Her attack was faster than the mortal eye could see. Order himself could only watch.

  Annala’s body zoomed behind the first and cut it in half sideways, then zoomed to the second and cut it in half left to right, then jumped above the third and cut it in half top to bottom, and then stepped to the side of the fourth and stabbed it center mass. Cracks raced to its edges and it shattered. Finally, the vessel returned to position.

  The possessed priestess transformed the halberd back into an arrow, fit it to her bow, and drew it back. Smiling at the fifth and final Nulso Rage, she released it.

  All of Nulso Rage’s power, boosted by Order’s presence and amplified further by Latrot’s Grand Obelisk and Orderly Compliance Array, was but a shroud. The arrow gored its target’s forehead and detonated, obliterating the Nulso. Turning to the raiding party, Annala’s body said the following and her words filled their hearts with the purest of hope and dread.

  “Any longer and she will cease to be. Take good care of her, for she is my granddaughter, with whom I am well pleased.”

  The holy light disappeared and Annala’s body fell to earth. Lady Chaos’ Divine Presence was gone, but Order’s did not fill the void. The area was baked in the truest chaos, and as such, resembled something out of an acid trip.

  One thousand colors, one thousand sounds, one thousand tastes, one thousand sensations, and one thousand smells battered the senses. Gravity was gone and back again in random degrees in random areas. The Sun and the Moon engaged in dogfighting overhead, throwing day and night into absurdity, but only for this region of the planet. Every living thing, and a great many nonliving things, had mutated into bizarre shapes and babbled incoherently. It was so nonsensical and outright contradictory, that Eric counted it a miracle that he wasn’t a bipedal octopus yodeling in Najican.

  He was the first to recover. While he didn’t have genuine chaos seeds in his body, he had experienced the kind of mind scrambling associated with sudden exposure to high degrees of chaos-like energy. He recalled his identity because his mutation hardwired it into him. Once he did this, his body reflected this belief and he became a grendel.

  Kallen returned to full consciousness at the same time. The true divinity of Lady Chaos and its rule-breaking nature wiped out the cool-down time for her River of Chaos enlightenment and restored her vitality to the maximum. She hadn’t felt so alive in ages.

  Their first action was to rush to Annala’s side. Kallen reached her first and cradled her in her own lap. Eric settled for sitting close and calling to her.

  “Annala! Can you hear us? Annala!”

  Annala opened her eyes and Eric saw unadulterated madness in them. The insanity of a monster was nothing in comparison. It frightened him.

  “AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH! I can see it! The true nature of the world!! It’s so obvious! All of us were fools!”

  She jumped to her feet and did a pirouette. Like a trickster, her feet were held aloft by her divinity. Again her eyes met Eric’s, and he was seized by the feeling that she wasn’t looking at him but in and through him. Then she placed a hand to her mouth and coughed.

  “Excuse me. That was rude. BAGHA JEPUR PAKLJR!”

  She did five summersaults in mid-air, and upon concluding the last one, she blew a raspberry at the ground. Then she laughed, grimaced, and cried; when she moved, she created after-images that did all these things at the same time.

  “Scoop headphones pudding computer,” she said calmly. “Attack the squirrel octopus! Red fungus is a funny metaphor, but it can’t be a smooth butler.”

  “Annala...what are you talking about?” Eric asked.

  She tilted her head. “Annala? Is that something to eat?” As Eric and Kallen’s faces fell into horror, she grinned. “Don’t worry, my darlings, Mommy didn’t forget herself. At least not this time. By the orange, what helicopter is it today?”

  Taking out five arrows, she placed them against her bow and aimed at the sky. A tremendous magic circle appeared beneath her, more elaborate than anything any of them had ever seen. She fired and the five arrows became five bolts of divine retribution raining back on the town. They demolished the five obelisks. Their shockwaves shook not only the town but the foundations of the world.

  I
t began to tear. It resembled more of a patchwork quilt than the permanent boundaries of reality. Bits of the sky began to bulge as something pushed its way in. Swatches of ground began to thin as chaos ate away at its integrity. The only one not horrified was Annala.

  “This place is beyond saving-picture frame,” she said calmly. “It is too cardboard stepped in Order’s power. I will table save it with black steel hoop Grandmother’s boundless love. I WILL SEND IT TO HER BOSOM!”

  A second chaos wave radiated from her. Belldandy and Tasio redirected it away from the raiders to save their sanity. There was a limit to what their minds and souls could stand and it was reached with the first wave.

  “Excuse me,” Annala said. “She wants me to do this myself because of her advocacy of free will. It has to be my own action instead of her possession. My choice!”

  She placed ten arrows on her bow, somehow fitting them all on the string. As if in a classroom, she serenely listed the towns she was targeting and all the people she would “save” by this action. The number was in the hundreds of thousands.

  “I came not to bring war but peace,” she decreed. A third chaos wave radiated out of her. “Only those that are free can know peace because there is no tyrant threatening them. The Sword of Damocles shall be smote by the Arrow of Annala!”

  Eric and Kallen tried to stop her, but her spirit kept them at bay. They could only watch the tragedy unfold. Laughing madly, Annala loosed the arrows and they soared into the heavens. There they split into ten directions, leaving streaks of golden-brown in their wake.

  “Don’t worry,” she said to everyone she was going to nuke. “You won’t feel a thing.”

  These golden-brown streaks gave way to ribbons of rainbow-colored light. They undulated in the sky like the Aura Borealis. It was a beautiful sight, but it alarmed Eric. These lights were not a harmless atmospheric phenomenon but the Veins of Noitearc. Unfiltered energy of all kinds now poured into the world.

  Spirits wailed as they flew through the sky. Earth and sky mutated and exploded in contact with the purest life. Golems ripped themselves out of the orderfied stone and sylphs generated by the dozens. The town had fully transformed into a Class “A” Chaotic Zone and the worst was still to come.

  The scars in reality corroded and the colors melded into pitch black. Gleaming eyes glowed from within the darkness. Something entered the world and its crossing caused mortals and gods alike to panic. Order’s presence itself reviled its contact.

  “We have to leave now!” Tasio shouted. “Everybody around me! I’ll teleport us out!”

  Madness; Fear; Despair; Hunger; Sickness; Disappearance of Identity. All of these feelings entered into the physical world but did not become physical. Order’s presence were eldritch to Creation because it was the opposite of it, but it still stood in contrast to it and had a purpose in it. These Creatures-From-The-Veins did not. They simply existed in the abstract and exuded a fundamental wrongness in everything they encountered. With their entrance, reality began to collapse.

  Order, who had previously been gathering more units to combat the elves, suddenly shifted commands to containment and quarantine.

  Annala watched all this happen with gladness in her heart. She was aware of it all through the extension of her senses granted to her by Lady Chaos. However, though she was aware of it, she comprehended it not, because she was looking through the eyes of Lady Chaos. The eldest god and Sea of Chaos believed that “life,” “death,” “time,” and “finite existence” were things that happened to lesser beings. While everyone else was struggling to stay sane, she felt only a manic sense of contentment.

  “Destruction and Creation are one and the same. CARPET! All those people shall be reborn in better condition. Such is Chaos!”

  “Annala, we have to go!” Eric shouted.

  The countryside surrounding Sueno was falling away. The sky surrounding it was blanking to white, then blinking erratic colors. The Creatures-From-The-Veins grew nearer.

  “I can’t leave yet,” Annala said, tranquility itself. “There are too many more people that I need to save from Order.”

  The town walls were gone. Everyone else, Belldandy included, grabbed some piece of Tasio and Sagart led them in prayer to boost his power as Patron of the Elven Race. Tasio himself tensed for what would be a one-shot attempt.

  Eric extended his hand and shouted, “Annala, I love you! Please take my hand!”

  Annala’s eyes welled up. “Oh, Eric! That’s so sweet of you.” She accepted his hand. “I love you too.”

  Eric yanked her forward and wrapped his other arm around her. Releasing Annala’s hand, he grabbed the hem of Tasio’s reaper cloak and nodded. Tasio spread his Divine Presence over them and used all his godly power to teleport them out of the town.

  They hurtled through space and time like a clumsy rocket. They bounced off something, redirected, and then crashed. The group tumbled across the ground, be they human, elf, or deity. Then Eric threw up.

  Annala rushed to support him and rub his back. “Apple square hiccup?”

  Eric wiped his mouth. “…Huh?”

  “The good news is, we’re out of the quarantined area,” Tasio said. His feet were on the ground. “The bad news is, we’re still in Latrot.”

  “Great-godfather, can you teleport us the rest of the way?” Cinder asked.

  “If I did that, then I would steal Meza’s thunder for the rescue.” He ruffled her hair and she giggled. “Rest assured, if there is a need for a quick escape, then I will provide one. Until then, I will hover over you like a cloud or a comet and allow Meza to lead the way out of slavery.”

  Eric sent him a dry look. “I suppose he’ll be turning rocks into bread and drawing water from stones too?”

  Meza nodded. “If necessary.”

  “Bad taste in sauce!” Annala declared. Her spirit was flaring up as a blue aura, and Lady Chaos’s golden-brown taint shined like bruises in it. “Fan clipboard immediate transfer!”

  Sagart placed a hand on her shoulder. Smiling kindly, she said, “Annala, sweetie, I love your determination, but our only option is running as fast as we can. Tasio himself has difficulty teleporting in this country, so there’s no way we can.”

  Annala glared at her with the greatest defiance and buffeted her with a pulse of her chaosified aura. Sagart landed on her side and her crosier and tome flew from her hands. Looking down on her, Annala raised her right hand and snapped her fingers.

  The area around them shifted. Gridlines drew themselves in the air and land as though the world were an engineer’s sketchpad. Annala drew a circle between two of them and pressed her hand against it. Instantly, runes filled its interior as wide and tall as an orc. The circle flashed and opened onto a cozy-looking hamlet.

  Elven clergy looked back at her from the other side with shock and confusion equal to Sagart’s own. She looked to her student, who smirked back at her.

  “Oh, ye of little faith.”

  Chapter 7 Your Purpose

  Teleportation ranked among the most difficult and energy-expensive forms of magic. Eric didn’t know a single human capable of it on their own, and even Annala’s great-grandparents did it wrong half the time. Her mother required a laboratory to support her. Yet Annala did it herself without incantations, a focus, or any kind of magical machinery. She didn’t even use her paidrin or tome. What’s more, she created a gate instead of “simply” moving herself.

  “Time and space are nothing to me,” she declared, eyes glowing with holy power. “Distance does not exist to one blessed with the Hands of Lady Chaos.”

  A chaotic pulse ran through her body like a lightning bolt before exiting through her feet and into the ground. Lines of power raced away from her in jagged lines. Ice instantly became geysers and the soil underneath exploded. More sylphs and gnomes spawned from them and screeched. Annala slew them all without blinking.

  “Your choices are as follows: walk through the Orderly Reality Vice, stay here and face Order,
or follow my portal to the Light of Avalon monastery.”

  Cinder was the first to decide. She treaded to the portal’s threshold and looked up at her idol. Annala nodded and that was all she needed. She stepped forward and placed one foot on lush grass. Leaving Latrot’s night, she entered Avalon’s day. Smiling under the sun, she waved to her fellow former slaves. One by one, they followed her.

  All of them were nervous and scared as they crossed over, but once they were through, they smiled like she did. So thrilled were they to be out from under Order’s oppressive gaze, some of them started dancing.

  A pillar of chaotic power ruptured Annala’s body. Her face lost all expression. She laughed and then she screamed. Her body melted into a puddle. The archery equipment and paidrin fell to the ground, but her dress, cloak, and veil did not. The outfit hovered as if she were still wearing it.

  The parade of slaves paused. Without her directing them, they didn’t know what to do. The outfit raised its sleeve to point at the portal and so the line continued moving. Then the puddle shot back up and filled out into Annala’s body. Her vocal cords were still screaming. She took three ragged breaths before it happened again.

  This time, her clothes fell as well and only her tainted spirit marked her place. Again, the former slaves stopped.

  “Move along, dearies,” Sagart said. “Please follow Cinder. Annala is performing a ritual to keep the portal open. Move along.”

  The portal flickered and cracks appeared in the earth and sky at its borders. Meza was the first to notice and his response was to signal stabilization orders to his subordinates while pushing the former slaves through faster. When Annala’s body reconstituted itself a second time, she stepped away from the portal and drew her bow.

  The magic circle of genocide took shape again. Annala’s chaos-tainted aura flared brighter and loomed larger. She was muttering calculations when Meza yanked the bow out of her hands.

  “How dare loom interrupt carrot holy miss!” Chaotic sparks ran up and down her body, and where they ran, her body changed. It was only for a second, but it happened every second. “Pot mist ad-mini mercy tong—”