The Fool's Freedom

Alan felt his mind shake as the being that had taken over the remnants of the corpse reached for his soul, and tried to pluck it by force. There were no skills to rely on, no shadows to summon. All he had was his strength of will and stubbornness.

It was a clash between two forces of similar nature, but he was like a small candle in front of a bonfire. The darkness tried to fight back, but the golden light was too strong and dominant. This was not the will of a mortal, nor a being of tier two.

And yet… the more he struggled the more fractures he saw in it. Holes that could be exploited. Opportunities to hurt whatever it was that had invaded through his skill. In desperation, he lunged at the opportunities he saw. His will became the nails hammered into the golden wall, seeking to grow the weakness with each strike. The mighty and arrogant presence descended again, even stronger.

It was toying with him.

“Not. Worthy. Inferior. Your world. Part of Ours.”

It enveloped him, drowned him, extinguished his mind. Memories, one by one, were plucked out of Alan’s mind like leaves and he felt the call of oblivion like never before. This was no death. This was total destruction of the soul. All his experiences were there for the taking, and they drifted away into the golden light only to be consumed.

All he had been was taken away. A robbery that left him alive, but empty.

Hollow.

Only despair. Only grayness.

And then a chuckle that made it all waver.

Beautiful and sinister at the same time. Like the clouds before a storm at sunset, painting the sky in mesmerizing gloom. Like the snow, falling from the sky so gentle and pretty, only to bring cold death upon all life. Like starlight reflected in polished glass just before it broke and cut a vein.

A hand of grace and darkness—a piece of will as dark as the space between the stars exploded outward. It reached out and took all that was stolen back, and then some.

The golden presence tried to pull away, frantic and desperate, but the dark hand didn’t let go. It was the palm of an excited girl who couldn’t yet control her strength wrapping around a golden firefly.

But it was all intentional. Innocence and cruelty were coming together into something impossible and overwhelming.

Something oddly… beautiful.

“Laughable. Something so lesser, trying to erase the mind of the one I chose? Trying to steal MY knowledge?” a voice whispered. “Know your place, little ruler.”

There was no anger in it. Only a cold order veiled as a playful suggestion.

Alan’s memories came crashing into him, and all that made him himself was returned. Memories of his childhood, of his illness, of his desire to be normal and loved, of rejection and hate. Memories of a family that would’ve been better off than him, and memories of the few friends he made throughout the years. The few warm moments, given by strangers. The lucky draws, and the rainy days that took it all away once again.

And… there was more. Something foreign and wild and dangerous that was like a caged and tortured beast wrapped in the darkness of his benefactor.

Again, he was saved by a remnant of will.

“My Scion will not succumb to the likes of you. Consider this a warning.”

The words trailed off in the end as if they echoed down a long-forgotten well that led to the core of the earth. The rest of the golden will shattered and [Will of the Dead] gently let Alan out of its control. He gasped for air and crawled backward and away from the corpse. His eyes were wide, and something wet was dripping down his face.

“Alan! Alan! Are you okay?” Mayra asked frantic.

She was next to him in a moment a few scrolls hovered around her, glowing with gentle light. Alan nodded, and only then the girl allowed herself to relax.

“Why?” Alan slowly asked.

The memories were too fresh. Too real. What had happened was dangerous and something he didn’t want to allow ever again. This being had no soul, or if it did, it belonged to someone else. A ruler. One that walked the same world as them, and wanted it all for itself.

“Why what?” Mayra asked confused.

One of the scrolls burst a dome of energy descended upon the body of the fallen four-armed being, isolating it from the world. Alan didn’t care about it at the moment. Why was it only memories of his past that had slammed into him so hard? Losing them… losing them had hurt more than he imagined. He had thought about it mere days ago, and back then they seemed like a distant unimportant period that was long gone. He was different!

Was it not so? Hadn’t he changed enough to escape that? The weight of the formative years was like a guillotine over him even now, when he could kill tens of people with but a thought. When he was stronger than almost every human he met. When he was so much more.

The weakness of his past disgusted him, but losing it scared him even more.

“Why do you care? Isn’t it better that I die? You’ll be free from your oath then.”

Mayra’s lips moved but she didn’t speak for a long while.

“I don’t want you to die.”

“I tortured you.”

“I kind of send you off-planet to get fucked… I deserved it.”

Alan looked at her silently.

“Look,” she continued. “I’m not evil. I was just a girl doing her best to find purpose and live a semi-decent life. What I’ve done since the apocalypse and the initial survival was hole up and make scrolls for Cole and his goons. I hurt some people, but this power we get… makes it so easy. You surely feel the same.”

Alan nodded.

“Yeah. It’s very easy to hurt people.”

“I almost lost myself a few times. Accepting a patron changed me and grounded me somewhat, but before that, I had some really bad skills. Like making people cough out their lungs, or bleed from their eyes. All of that was gone after the [Pact]. So was a part of me I guess. It’s hard to be empathetic nowadays… Still, could’ve picked a plague-related patron if I was really bad, you know?”

That was an option? Damn. Alan remembered getting a skill related to that… would it have led to something similar? Was [Monochrome Armor’s] purpose to lead him to where he was, then? His first skill of such a high grade… It could be all a plan set up by those stronger. Seeing how skills worked, they were a slippery slope to strange connections and destinies.

All roads led somewhere, after all.

[Will of the Dead] was dangerous, and despite the many warnings, he hadn’t really believed it was so. Once again, alive only because someone else was looking over him.

It pissed him off.

“Come on,” he said. “Enough with the mushy stuff. And for what it counts, sorry for torturing you with my curse.”

“Oh, that’s fine. It was quite enlightening. I’ve considered asking you to do it again, just not for so long… the potential for studying my subconsciousness is quite high. Knowledge of oneself is more important than most people assume. You have no idea how much trauma we all carry. Should’ve probably gone for a therapy patron or something—”

Tattoos flashed. Mayra yelped in pain, then pouted.

“Sorry, sorry.”

“The patron is listening after all.”

“Yeah… being a creature with a thousand brains has its advantages…” she mumbled.

Alan nodded absentmindedly then frowned. If he had a thousand brains he would’ve blown them up already. He was barely dealing with one…

He looked over the golden corpse and the barrier Mayra had erected, then gestured for her to lower it. There was no sense of danger coming from the body anymore. It was but a hollow thing. Worthless and lesser than it had been.

He could feel the stolen will, however. A gift from the actual witch whose steps he was following. It was wrapped by a cloth of darkness, resting somewhere inside his mind space. There was knowledge there. He had briefly taken some of it from the corpse before the golden will had appeared, but that was lost to him now. A small hole in his memory. A gap. Like going to the kitchen and forgetting what he wanted from there. Annoying, but not damaging.

What he could gain from this was important knowledge that would benefit everyone. But there was still a danger to it. While suppressed and in his consciousness, it still didn’t belong to him. Was he supposed to treat it like a snack? Consume it and obtain what it hid? Was it a test or just a gift he was too weak to take? Were there other benefits?

“Do you know anything about Wills?” Alan asked.

He bent next to the corpse and allowed his shadows to drag it into his inventory. Maybe there were classes that dealt with biology that would be interested in the body. Mr. Muge or Rosalyn probably knew of someone like that.

“All I know is that I’m too weak to manifest mine. It comes easier to some, harder to others. There are tier two and threes who have not managed to do so, but typically rarer classes might have it as a condition. It's one of the main reasons many get stuck, along with gathering insights about the universe or completing challenges that are too difficult.”

“I see.”

I know patrons can be useful… Still, fuck them. Alan looked around all the carnage and briefly wondered if he should bury his fellow humans. The rot of the forest didn’t seem to have made it to these parts. He had yet to meet one of those monsters, but from what he knew their involvement was far from over.

A newly integrated world was not just grounds for the lesser races to prosper. It was a way for forgotten powers to rise again. This was a battle of attrition. Like putting different species of ants in one habitat, and letting them duke it out. The System was truly cruel.

It didn’t take long, and it was actually a fruitful exercise, as he conjured many shadowy limbs and concentrated on burying the bodies of the fallen. Mayra remained silent all the while, muttering something under her breath. Alan didn’t ask.

They kept going through dusk and the night until a large tilted rock that seemed to be melted into one with some sort of an Old Earth monument proved sufficient shelter for Mayra to rest and for him to digest a bit of what had happened. More and more landmarks that reminded them of the world before were making an appearance somehow.

The forest was denser in these parts, but the trees no longer towered like mountain peaks around them. It was almost as if things were briefly normal. Colorful and vibrant plants with nothing alien going on about them, simple forest sounds, and even bugs. It was both wonderful and disquieting. Alan hadn’t thought he would miss the buzzing of nightlife as much.

The mana felt much the same, and yet different. He was starting to notice the discrepancies in the different species, and even in representatives of the same ones. The differences were so minute and small that most were like a trick of the mind and took all of his concentration to notice.

A brief flash of magic distracted him, and he turned toward Mayra.

“Mas—Alan,” she whispered. “Someone’s watching us.”

Alan raised an eyebrow. He had spent most of the time Mayra needed for rest observing the world around them, trying to follow the threads of the trillion flows of energy that made up all of existence and what it contained. His experience with the clash of wills had made him aware that he was not diving deep enough and not breaking things down to their fundamental parts. Understanding came from the details, not the whole.

He hadn’t noticed anyone but it was not like he could do more than a few strands at a time with his current understanding and capabilities. A living being was hard to miss though. Unless, of course, they had a way to mask their mana signatures…

“What makes you so sure?”

“It’s one of the few permanent inscriptions I have,” she showed him her forearm, where a previously invisible tattoo was now clear. It consisted of a strange symbol surrounded by four eyes. One of them was almost life-like. “One of the gifts of my patron. It’s of the ancie—”

“Got it, that’s enough info.”

This thing is useful… But if it’s of such a high tier it should have other uses too… Ah, that’s not important right now.

“Where are they?”

“I can reveal them, but it will take me out of commission for a while.”

“Go for it. I got you.”

Mayra smiled. Another of the eyes on her tattoo suddenly became alive, blinked and a barely perceptible wave of force washed the surroundings. Alan instantly felt the change, sensed the intruder, and used [Dark Step].

An axe headed for him as he reappeared near their guest, and he smiled as the shadows wrapped around it and the hand wielding it.