ALL NOVEL 27
The battle up the tower had been grueling. The black blood of the mutants littered the floor and walls as they ran unceasingly in my direction. The heartache, the pain, the fear, the anxiety. I had left it all at the door. I had cried, sobbed even. I had screamed my curses at the world. I had felt insignificant and worthless. The only emotion left was white-hot rage.
I had become a destroying angel. My blade hummed with the overcharge of Mana. With single strokes of it, dozens of mutants turned to paste. I was unstoppable and unrelenting. At the end of the day, either I or whatever was at the top of this tower would be dead.
The tower started off as any tower should. Inside was a mass of tunnels that either deadened or traveled upwards. As I climbed, however, a familiar feeling had overtaken me. The inside of the tower seemed larger than the outside. I felt like I was climbing inside endless branches in an unfathomably large tree. A tree that I had become quite accustomed to over the past years.
I was now quite certain that the mutants were arriving from outside of our own leaf. They had burrowed like parasites through the World Tree and were infecting its leaves. Why hadn’t Iggy told me before? How deep was the infestation? The unending swarm would remain unending until either the hole was closed or the source was cut off.
I traveled for days through the tunnels. I found branches that opened up to towers on other leaves. With a slash of my sword, the tunnel collapsed. I knew it wasn’t a permanent solution and that a new tunnel could be dug, but it would perhaps buy the inhabitance of those leafs time to bolster their defenses.
The continual hoard acted as a beacon as to what direction I should be heading. If I came to a split, I followed their chittering or waited for the next wave to descend. After one week, three days, sixteen hours, and twenty-five minutes, the tunnel finally opened up to a massive cavern.
The cavern was like a widened section of the tunnels that seemed to stretch on for miles. Occasional massive stalactites and stalagmites the size of skyscrapers jutted out of the ground. While several smaller tunnels could be seen jutting off the sides, one gigantic one was seen on the other side that curved upward. Something told me that tunnel was the final path to where I needed to go. I began to make my way across the massive cavern.
It was then that I noticed the bodies littered all over the ground. Hundreds of young women in brightly colored clothes lay in shambles all along the floor of the cavern. As I got closer, I saw that there were a few left who were fighting with each other on the far end. In the sky hovered three nearly incorporeal entities.
As I neared the end of the cavern, I saw as three girls ended the life of another. My scanners told me that they were the last three alive among all of the fallen. The oddly-dressed trio noticed me and jumped back in defense.
‘Halt, who are you?!’
The words had come from a plucky blond wearing a witch costume made of blacks and golds. She had to be barely in her twenties.
‘Does it really matter? I’m not here to participate in whatever moronic cosplay war you decided to fight in the middle of the mutant territory. I’m just passing by.’
I pointed to the large tunnel at the end as I continued to walk. The girl in the maid costume with the white hair readied a large sword while the third girl, who had to be pushing twelve, stepped back into a rearguard position.
‘By order of the Fairy Queen. No one is allowed to enter into there. Turn around, we won’t ask you again.’
She readied a scepter she was holding as if getting ready to attack. I sighed and put away my blade.
‘I don’t care who this fairy person is, but you really don’t want to do that. I have a good hunch that whatever is up there is on the verge of destroying my home world, and I’m not going to let three children playing dress-up get in the way of my world's existence.’
The youngest of the three was next to speak up. She was in a crimson and silver robe and had strange moon eyes. She clutched tightly to her shepherds’ hook as she spoke.
‘W…we are not playing dress-up! We are dignified Fairybond! We serve the Fairy Queen and ensure the balance of the whole universe.’
‘And you seem to be doing a bang-up job of it too.’
I gestured to the battlefield of colorful bodies that littered the ground.
‘I’m going up that tunnel. Get in my way, and you will join your companions.’
I turned and started to walk when a flash of yellow energy appeared from the witch girls’ scepter.
‘Planar Chains!’
Shink, shink, shink!
Yellow energy chains appeared from the ground and wrapped around me.
‘Cute.’
The small child slammed her staff into the ground and stone spikes protruding out of the ground at forty-five-degree angles, smashing into my armor and pinning me in place. The maid girl made a mighty leap into the air and came down slashing her broadsword into my shoulder. I didn’t move.
The look on her face went from joy from making contact to surprise at finally realizing it had done no damage. I cocked my visored head to the side and reached out and grabbed the wrist holding the sword. The rock spikes crumbled like dust and the yellow chains snapped with little effort as I moved. I twisted my arm and her wrist made a crack and her sword fell to the ground.
She kneeled and held her hand against her body and she screamed. I kicked her for good measure, and I heard her leg bone crack as she slid across the ground twenty or so yards. The two other girls screamed in horror as their companion lay crumpled in a ball on the floor.
‘Your tricks won’t work on me and I don’t have much patience left. Stand down or your neck is the next bone you will hear break.’
The two girls stepped back in fear as I continued my walk to the final tunnel. The three incorporeal entities took note of me and fluttered down to greet me. Their forms became more solid as they did. One was a beautiful woman with blond hair and a flowing white dress and purple butterfly wings. The second was a small woman in dark grey cloth with metallic wings and a blindfold on.
The third was a scrawny blond woman with a pixie cut spiked up and a toothy grin permanently plastered on her face. She was almost so skinny it hurt to look at her. She had four insect wings that flittered every now and again, even when she had landed.
‘One of you must be the Fairy Queen, I presume?’
The blond with the purple wings spoke up first.
‘That is I, child. And I am going to have to ask you to turn back. We are debating on whether it is appropriate to continue to shelter the Revenant Hive Queen or to destroy her. Until we know what is best for the World Tree, we cannot act.’
‘And the death and carnage behind me? Is that the debate?’
‘Regrettably, yes. My sister and I believe that the hive is important for the balance and the improvement of the fairy-kin. My second sister, here, decided to turn half of our followers against us to destroy the Queen. She will be dealt with according to our laws, and then we will continue our debate.’
It was at this point that I noticed a shimmering collar on the neck of the blindfolded fairy. She stood emotionless throughout the exchange.
‘Well, that was TMI and a lot of family drama. You guys can continue your debate or whatever. I’m going to go kill the hive-thingy and end what seems to be a universal plight across all of the world tree. I’ll let you know how it goes when I’m done.’
The skinny fairy darted up into the air and hissed. An aura of oppression radiated out of her. As she spoke, as fast as lightning, she darted from side to side.
‘And what authority do you have that you can go against the fairy realm? We are the supreme power. How do you even hope to go against us?’
‘By the authority of Yggdrasil, the World Tree’s Avatar. I am her Magus, and I have been tasked with eliminating these creatures from her branches.’
Sure, her name was a mouthful, but it helped to remember it when someone felt like they needed to appeal to authority. Sure, Iggy was pretty elusive in what information she ever gave out, and had never explicitly given me the charge to clear out the monsters. But why else would she give me these powers when my world was overrun with mutant monsters? I held up my wrist to reveal the blue magic circle that signified my bond to the World Tree and its energies.
‘That complicates things.’
‘Impossible!’
The two fairies looked on in disbelief at my circle as a slight snicker could be heard from behind them. They turned to look at the blindfolded fairy as her chuckle turned into full-blown laughter. The look of annoyance on their faces was evident. I shrugged and walked through the three fairies. My body passed through them like I was walking through a subtle mist.
‘It looks like you have family issues to work out. And since you are just projections of yourselves from another location, you won’t be getting in my way any time soon. You and Iggy can have a little heart to heart later. I’m going to kill the Hive Queen.’
As I walked toward the tunnel, I heard the two yelling out to me. Things like ‘Wait!’, ‘We need to talk!’, ‘You can’t just rush into these things!’ All things I had heard before. People of power will always drag their feet and fight while the world dies. What is there to talk about? Before me is a tree. The tree had a bug infestation. I kill the big bug, and the infestation stops. What more is there to it?
Their cries muffled out as I ascended the last tunnel. I felt the pangs of fatigue set in and pulled Mana into my core to push it away. The walls began to be covered in a web-like organic material. I slashed through it and trudged forward.
The tunnel gave way to a second cavern, much larger than the first. It was full of the web-like material as well as hordes and hordes of mutants. At the far end was a massive creature with four gigantic arms and an insect-like body. The body rose up to four stories to the form of an upper torso of a beautiful woman. She hissed at me when she noticed me, and all the hordes stopped and turned in my direction.
‘You must be the queen! I’ve come to air my grievances!’
I blinked forward rapidly as the swarm crashed down on me.