Chapter 53: Broken Shields

-Mary/NOMAD/It’s complicated POV-

Mary screams, only she isn’t sure she does. Her body remains as quiet as the grave as dozens of shells impact her body. Each hits a vital area, and yet none truly hurt her – only causing a faint ache, as if the pain was a scream was muffled behind a wall of fabric. Present, but far away.

She was both present, and not. She blinked, and her vision returned to the inky darkness of the other place. A flash like a synapse firing revealed endless islands of crystals turning upon themselves. Another blink and she was back in Jinzhou, her body foreign and her power godlike.

Yet it wasn’t her power anymore, perhaps it never had been.

An arm - that wasn’t her arm – moved without her will and sent a scintillating wave of black nothingness towards the sniper. It didn’t travel, not truly, one second the world was clear and pristine and the next it was as if something had taken a black brushstroke to reality itself.

The opponent, whoever they were, clearly weren’t dissuaded – landing shots across the city with uncanny accuracy. This time they aimed for her joints, understanding that they would be unable to truly harm her – instead aiming to slow her down. Her body buckled, but didn’t fall.

Distantly she felt an alien anger pressing against her, the sheer all-encompassing nature of that mind threatening to swallow her up. It wasn’t an anger aimed at her, that she knew, and it wasn’t even meant to be shared with her. Its thoughts were simply too vast for her not to hear.

It didn’t understand why the fragments of metal were hitting it. It had attempted to divert them away, freeze them in place and even shunt them into another dimension. Instead the bullets swerved back, refused to be stopped and even broke through dimensional locks in order to hit them.

And it couldn’t understand why. The bullets were well made, beyond the capabilities of the host species to make, but they were still ordinary lumps of metal. There was no higher order dimensionality, no outside interference detected, so why was it happening?!

Mary felt a sharp pain race through her as the creature’s thoughts once more bled into her own.

‘Does it matter?’ She yelled back, feeling like an ant facing a typhoon. ‘It doesn’t matter how, we just know it’s going to hit us regardless of what we do! So why not use that power of yours to make sure it doesn’t matter that they can hit us, make us tougher or something!’

She felt the mind slow, processing the influx of data, and she realised with a slow creeping horror that this thing had hear her. She was just yelling in frustration, it wasn’t meant to actually listen to her!

The projectiles came once more, the crack of sonic booms only heralding their arrival after they had hit. But this time it was different, now the boring nanometal heads of the rounds failed to penetrate at all – glancing of their body without so much as a scratch.

Mary knew how it had done this, too. Just before impact it had…removed space between atoms? No, shortened the space between the atoms of it’s outer shell – all while being careful to make sure they didn’t touch.

The thing had spatially locked it’s own skin in place, and was still moving despite that.

Mary could feel the endless, almost certainly neurotic, calculations happening to facilitate this effect. How the thing was carefully shifting the spatial position of each atom with every picosecond that passed.

The sniper was now of no effect to them, and Mary felt a deep well of possessive pride that she knew was aimed at her. She had no physical form but she nevertheless felt a shiver run down her spine, the icy grip of fear holding her tight.

Had she just made this thing stronger?

No, the idea was banished as soon as it arrived – for she could feel the insane, almost endless, well of power that the creature held. The first time she had felt it was when they had broken through her prisoner. The feeling made her choke, she had never felt anything like it. Enough energy to scorch the planet to cinders, enough that she couldn’t imagine anything being able to stand up to it.

Except that wasn’t the case.

She blinked, returning to the ocean of black. Upon that turbulent storm of nonexistence she could see crystalline towers and eldritch light pulsate like some profane heart.

She looked down, whatever she used for eyes in this place locking on to the red crystal floor. The light refracted in those crystals showed her other worlds, other universes. So many different places passing like a frenzied blur. Yet there was more.

In that crystal that was a world, that was a god, that was a child, that was a tiny fraction she saw herself. She saw the being she was attached to. She saw the terrible power.

And as she looked back to those lone islands she knew they were not alone, and felt nothing but horror.

Just one of these things was a being no amount of humans could understand, a thing capable of destroying everything she had ever known and ever will know. Only kept in place by arcane rules she didn’t understand, and whose existence spoke of higher entities – ones that could enforce these rules.

She blinked again, eager to return to her tiny world and remain ignorant.

The fight wasn’t going well for the sniper, they were still hitting the being she was increasingly believing was her power but the shots did nothing. All the while her power was prowling closer and closer with each fired bullet.

She wondered why it didn’t just teleport itself to him, why it didn’t erase the distance like she knew it could. Perhaps it was attempting to scare the irritant that it still couldn’t understand, or perhaps it was to lure any further tricks out before it crushed him and moved on to the rest of Jinzhou.

She was conflicted at the notion. On the one hand this city had been the place she had suffered far more than she had ever believed she could, each day a twisted parody of her trigger event.

On the other hand, Jinzhou’s apathetic cruelty almost seemed comforting, familiar, in the face of the awesome scale she had just been introduced to.

The man her body was hunting down, was running now. He eschewed the rooftops and clambered into the forest. His shots were no longer hitting them, though not for lack of accuracy. He was instead aiming to create rubble and wreckage in their path, to slow them down.

It didn’t avail him.

In the end he was forced to run to the edge of the barrier that had shielded Jinzhou from reprisal, his back pressed against the obsidian walls that marked the border of this land.

Now that they were almost close enough to touch, she could see the man for the very first time. The man was swaddled in rich light blue robes, the decadence of his clothing contrasted sharply with the image of the cold pragmatic man she had been expecting.

His features were pleasing to the eye, but not in the way the bowman’s had been, all muscle and looking as if he had stepped out of a hero’s storybook. His were more understated, more plain. There were no flaws, everything perfectly symmetrical, yet somehow her eyes seemed to occasionally wander off his face.

A stranger effect, then.

The man knew he was trapped, eyes searching for escape routes, while clutching his rifle tightly. Yet, it was rather hard to escape from a being that can control space, each opening was little more than an illusion.

Her power, her other half, was almost exuding gleeful bloodlust. It was a feeling, she realised, that was the closest to human she had ever felt from the eldritch horror. It felt primitive, almost base, that such a mighty creature could feel such a thing, yet it did.

Her body raised it’s clawed hand, intent on finishing it. The hand hung in the air for but a moment, the other mind still wondering if the sniper had anymore tricks up his sleeve, before it sliced down.

Snap!

The swipe went wide as something collided with them, Mary having just enough time to see the sniper’s panicked expression melt away into a pleased smile.

A trick, she realised.

The other half realised it too, as the body reeled and tried to claw at whatever was forcing them through the spatial barrier. The attacks hit nothing as they were pulled further and further away.

Mary could feel her power sending panicked queries to others of its kind, requesting further computation power, more powerful scans of the area. For the shard could not uncover the mechanism behind their forceful ejection from the city.

From the indentations upon their form, it concluded something large and with teeth was dragging them along with it. Yet to all their many sensors it was not present. Electromagnetic, thermal, gravitational, higher dimensional lensing, none of them worked!

Mary once more felt a jolt of fear, or was it joy, at the idea.

One thing was for sure, this creature – whatever it was – craved destruction. Not out of malice or hate, but simply because it believed that it was the best way forwards. It had stolen her body and freedom, made the worst day in her life infinitely worse by its mere presence – and yet she could tell it adored her, wished to protect her from anything.

Whatever was left of her shuddered at the thought, if this is what it could do to someone it cared about then what would it do to anyone else?

No, this thing had to be stopped.

She couldn’t do it, she was little more than a bird trapped in a cage, but she could refuse to help.

She remembered the fight against the sniper, how it had struggled to adapt and kept repeated the same tired strategy over and over. Until she had made a suggestion, not expecting to be heard. Once the idea was put forwards it had used it with ruthless precision, turning what should have been a hard fought slog into a one sided hunt.

So, despite wanting to see, she blinked once again and found herself among the isles wrapped in darkness.

Her form, the avatar she was permitted to use in this place, sat upon an outcrop of spiralling crystals and curled into a ball. Her head rested against her knees, the feeling unpleasant in how different it was from how it should have been – too hard and cold. She closed her eyes and attempted to drown out the information, the fight, her experiences, all of it.

Until the fight was over the thing that had taken her freedom would get no help from her.

- Lán sè POV-

The dragon swam without movement, riding on invisible currents that some might call ‘The Dragon’s Way’ or perhaps ‘Leylines’.

The concepts were the same.

The veins of life and magic were immature, still. The wellspring of energy that was its master’s domain had yet to truly breathe life into this stagnant world.

Lán sè was aware of it’s nature, of the fact that it wasn’t real – or hadn’t been at least. For Lán sè was an amalgamation of all dragons the creator had access to.

It could remember it’s many heads being decapitated and a sword being pulled from the cadaver that remained.

He remembered leaving drained lakes in his wake, his feud against the king of heaven legendary.

She remembered being blessed by a sun god, a dragon shaped mark on her shoulder and a transformation into a being that dwelled in the oceans.

It remembered all of this and more.

Yet, the fragmentary nature of it’s existence only made the cracks wide enough to see the flaws. The masses that lacked faces, the motivations that seemed so one-dimensional and the endings that were so abrupt and sharp you could cut steel with them.

It’s nature was something it had gone to great lengths to ponder, as it napped in the shade of trees. It was something it pondered even now, as it dragged a twisted and broken soul alongside it.

The poor soul had tried in vain to escape, to fight back. Even now Lán sè could feel the disturbances in base reality attempting to grasp at his form, yet reality could not touch what was currently fantastical in nature.

So it swam, the creature locked between it’s jaws as it raced with it’s back to the city. It swam away from the ocean of life that was Jinzhou and plunged into the cool nascent rivers that spiralled away from it’s home.

But quickly those rivers became mere streams, which dried to puddles and then to the hint of water and nothing at all.

With a sudden, painful, jolt the dragon was forced out of nonexistence and into the real. The skull-like head of it’s prisoner locking onto it the moment it became corporeal. It struck, the blow cracking their ribs and splitting scales. Black blood dripped down the long pale limbs of the entity as it wound back to deliver another hit.

Lán sè allowed it, grunting in pain at the sensation but not allowing the creature to leave it’s jaws – even going so far as to contest it’s efforts to teleport with it’s own reserves of energy.

A clawed hand rent bloody stripes against it’s flesh. Another punch crushed an artificial organ. An errant kick carved a rend in his flesh and pulled out ligaments. A spatial tear cut him to the bone, exposing the grey metal of his skeleton. A hundred blows just like these rained down upon them without mercy or pause.

Yet Lán sè kept moving.

It could feel the confusion of the thing it held in their jaws. The damage it had wrought had turned Lán sè into little more than a broken skeleton with curtains of flesh and blood dripping of their frame. Nothing had been spared the wrath of the space manipulator’s blows.

By all rights it should be dead dozens of times over. The horrid thing had faced two paragons before it and had ended it’s fights with them in only a few minutes, yet here Lán sè was -still alive and moving- after almost half an hour of constant abuse.

While the monster did not understand Lán sè knew full well what was going on.

The creator had left them all with gifts upon their creation. Some gained enhanced intelligence, others gained an inability to miss, but he gained something even more special.

It wasn’t their knowledge of magic and Leylines, that was simply a result of practice and plenty of free time to indulge in said practice.

No, much like every other Paragon, Lán sè was empowered by its legend – if in a very specific way. With their nature as a multifaceted being gaining the traits of any one dragon had been an impossibility – even for the one who had lovingly crafted them. Instead Lán sè had gained a trait most dragons were known for, a legend that could be found even in a children’s storybook.

A dragon could only be slain by a hero.

A built in weakness, and a shield against anything else. A conceptual defiance of death with the exception of fatal strikes landed by heroes.

This creature, whatever it was, was certainly no hero. Thus it couldn’t land that final blow to put them down for good. It could shed their blood, break their bones and leave them a desiccated husk – but that was it.

Lán sè kept swimming through the air, their languid pace giving no indication of the agony they were in – but it was fine. No amount of pain would force him to drop this creature until it was safely out of their lands. That was the promise it had sworn, to be the protector of Jinzhou – as their creator intended.

Another blow struck, and Lán sè winced slightly despite himself. Then they blinked in surprise when they felt no pain.

What? Were his nerves of steel and circuit finally destroyed?

Lán sè glanced down, expecting to find the creature’s fist having broken another section of their body. Instead the claws had wrung a blow against space itself, black spiderweb cracks running across the air where it had struck. The sky shivered against the blow, and Lán sè could feel the quivers of reality against the violation the pale being had wrought.

What was it doing? Is it simply throwing a tantrum?

The claws gripped tightly to the space around it, even as it was dragged along – drawing a jagged line through space that split open into an abyss of nothing.

Lán sè was confused, bewildered even, as he had not expected what seemed like petulant rage from a creature that had seemed so cold and methodical.

The being’s other hand reached out to do the same, another rip in reality was formed and caused Lán sè’s eyes to narrow in frustration.

Then they widened as something that Lán sè had felt their entire life came undone. The intricate interplay of magic and meaning that wove together the barrier started to come undone. The fragile threads, as thin as gossamer, snapped under the strain of the screaming voids the monster was tearing into the fabric.

Of course, where else would his creator embed the magic than in the very space around Jinzhou itself. The thing might not be able to sense or understand magic, but it clearly knew enough about space to know how fragile such massive manipulations of it could be!

Lán sè snarled, the deep bass growl erupting from his clothed mouth in a burst of heat and fire – charring and melting the skin of the creature. Yet, in an ironic reversal of their previous exchange, Lán sè’s efforts were ignored – the creature simply continuing to rip and tear at the innards of reality itself.

The air quaked, light dimmed and brightened at random. The sky itself seemed to scream in protest.

Then, with the sound of a shattering mirror, the barrier that shielded Jinzhou vanished.

AN: Duh Duh Duh! So Mary’s titan has been pushed out of Jinzhou without any casualties, ignore Lu Bu, but apparently a spatial barrier might be vulnerable to large scale rips and tears in it’s foundations. Who’d have thought?

Mary’s still around and has a front row seat to things. Also may have given her shard the idea of replicating Alexandria’s shtick. So, in an effort to not help the obvious eldritch abomination, she’s begun minding her own business.

We’ll be getting back to Alexander and Renji next update!

Thanks for reading and please leave a comment!