Changeling

3.6

This was the second portal since the fort to be reactive as a whole and Nestra believed this was going to become the norm. Her training didn’t cover that.

It was kind of exciting.

She kept following the same direction at a good pace until she heard feet stomping around a corner. She stopped. It sounded like more people this time. Reinforced patrols? Nice. As far as she knew, monster numbers were fixed inside of a portal world so that simply meant she would have to fight less encounters. Holding her breath, she waited until they approached. Just there, at the corner.

The first guards just turned the corner when she used momentum to appear before them. Masks. She couldn’t see their faces. A sideway slash imbued with mana, just to be sure. Gain the advantage. Two dead, cloven in two. Forward. She killed the next pair on two clean strikes while they were raising their rifles. Go with the flow. Every step is part of a whole, a perfection in motion designed to take down the opposition in the most elegant, flawless way possible. Art given form. Dive under a jumping hound. Stab another as it rushes her. Crush the jellyfish just as it charges. The timing must be perfect. She smashed through the patrol in a whirlwind of violence before they could recover, before they could bring their numbers to bear.

Lots of numbers.

This patrol was more than twice the previous one, with new variants. One of the creatures had four arms, each ending in a blade that seems grafted there. It twisted on itself to deliver four blows. Weak, all of them. Nestra took a step back then caught a wrist with a devastating blow, severing it. The dervish creature stumbled. The next blow killed it. Nestra felt power seeping into her again, more speed this time. She—

Pain.

A shock, a stumble forward. A spike hit her lower back. The projectile fell, not having penetrated deep enough to stick. Blood. Hers. She turned and killed a hound but the rifleman took a step back as he reloaded. Use momentum and kill it, then turn and stumble back. A second jellyfish creature unleashed a shockwave of electricity. The beasts near it were unaffected. Two guards raised their pneumatic guns.

Use momentum to rush forward. Errant indigo bolts danced on her arms, the remnants of the jellyfish spell. They tingled painfully and her arm spasmed but she endured. She brute-force smashed through the second dervish and killed the jellyfish with a single decapitating strike. Only a couple of guards left but she heard it. Rushing feet coming from, well.

The guards were running away, though it felt more like a tactic than real fear. She hesitated and that hesitation cost her. The Stalk of the Scornful Crescent stopped with her doubt. Continue or run in the other direction? To remain untouchable or to crush relentlessly.

She didn’t know.

There were just too many parameters she couldn’t understand. Maybe it would be best to continue a running battle. She had mapped enough of the place to avoid being cornered or escape. She turned, and that was when a sharp pain lanced through her left arm.

There was a needle in it. A long, very thin black needle. Through it. Her panicked eyes found a creature emerging from a puddle of darkness on the nearby wall, torso half exposed to reveal a black leather coat and a steel mask, bare except for two eye slits. The assassin carried a hand crossbow, now empty though it was already pulling back the string.

Nestra struck but the creature was already disappearing and the tip of her blade only tore pieces of rust-colored gravel. The alarm sound redoubled and new eructed words came with increasing urgency.

“Fuck.”

Nestra ran away. The assassin was a level of magnitude faster than the others. Mid D-class, she’d say. About as fast as her. That could only mean one thing. Errant boss.

Sometimes, the commander or most dangerous beast of a world didn’t wait at the end but preferred to harass the invaders during the whole trip. That was the case here. She should have — aaarg. She wasn’t taking this seriously enough! Portal Worlds killed raiders every day all across the planet and she’d seen it as a distraction because it had been too easy.

The weird benefactors had sent her here as a lesson.

Nestra pulled the spike. At least it wasn’t poisoned or she would have felt it now. What a disaster.

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Ok, calm down.

She would return to the entrance just in case she had to escape, but her goal would also be to take down patrols as fast as possible. The assassin was probably stalking her so she ought to watch out for that. Ahead of her, a spot of deeper darkness spread over a wall, at the exact half distance between two bleary light sources. She could only see it because her dark vision was perfect. It disappeared soon after. The assassin was biding its time but… perhaps she could lure it out. Ignoring the pain in her arm and back, Nestra decided to veer to the side where she heard a patrol, a smaller one this time. Not all of them had had the time to converge, it seemed. She charged forward using momentum to crash against the guards once more, their rifles unable to follow.

Fighting while keeping an eye out was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. Tensions grasped her heart with its cold touch but she didn’t relent. Open with the guards, kill the hounds next. She was already familiar with the perfect path. It had already become… less exciting. Too predictable. A dot on the wall there.

Another.

A part of Nestra’s brain panicked but the rest focused, slicing at the head of the assassin as it appeared. It saw her. It tried to pull back. Nestra felt it strain against the mana, resisting it to hide back into the shadows but it was in vain. The assassin used the darkness as a tool. It didn’t understand it enough to reverse the spell’s course and so darkness pushed it forward just as it was originally meant to do. There was so much powerless rage in the assassin’s gaze as it died that Nestra felt like she was looking at herself. Diving low, she hid behind the jellyfish and thrust up and through its brain just as a long dark spike embedded itself in its flaccid body. There was now a third pool of darkness emerging from a side wall. Three assassins. And this one would have a perfect vantage.

Desperate times, desperate measures.

Nestra called upon precision. The power guided her muscles for a perfect throw. The assassins’ eyes widened in fright behind its mask when it saw her move but it was too late. With unerring accuracy, her blade flew through the air. It landed in the assassin’s chest with a ghastly wet sound.

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This left two guards, the second assassin who now had a clear path towards her, and a Nestra with a wounded left arm, a pistol on her left hip she couldn’t properly reach, and not a shitload of options.

Had to try it.

She lacked training but… no choice. Sometimes, one had to use weapons they had not mastered yet.

She was going to cast a spell.

Nestra extended her fingers towards the assassin as it aimed, the two guards lifting their rifles to the side as well. She drew mana from her electric core like she did to coat her blade but this time, she pulled a lot of it. A lot. Almost half of her reserves were drained in a single instant as an unseen charge of power gathered around her extended digits. When she felt ready, she pushed.

Nestra knew how lightning worked but the way she perceived it was different. A terrible excess formed on the chest of the assassin, an abundance that warped the world around it while an equally dreadful longing remained at Nestra’s fingertips. It was more than electrons, it was an imbalance in the mana of the world that absolutely must be corrected. At this precise instant, Nestra was no longer in control. The spell was cast. The imbalance was here. Now, it would be corrected, and neither Nestra, nor any creature here, nor perhaps even Shinran could stop it from happening.

BOOM.

The two points linked and lightning was made. It was black at its core and gray in the shockwave of superheated air exploding outward. It was loud, deafeningly so, and it was powerful, unexpectedly so.

The gray spell obliterated the assassin, the guards, the walls, and Nestra’s eardrums. It seared a memory in her cornea she would carry all her life, one of wonder and of vertigo before a force she guided rather than controlled. It also sent her careening against unyielding brick in a shower of debris and body parts.

“Ow!”

The bells of every church in threshold decided that now was a good time for a concerto. Nestra propped herself up and failed, then she tried again. No time to be distracted. Had made enough mistakes already. Couldn’t let her guard down.

“Ow. Ok. Not in enclosed space. Noted.”

Stumbling, she raced to grab her sword and a smattering of needles dropped by the dead assassin while she was at it. Had to make some distance. Bleeding now. Couldn’t hear properly either.

Nestra shook her head and walked at a sedate pace, careful to check all her corners. There were no more pools of darkness which meant that the three assassins were probably it. Most likely. Her hearing returned after a minute or two and the bleeding slowed down as well but she still stopped in a corner to apply some basic potions.

It was good to be prepared.

With the bleeding stopped, Nestra took a look at the wounds. Gray skin closed over the vanishing gashes. They were already itching. Only her arm was still painful but it had been run through and a slow move proved it could work without issue. In front of her, stomping noises announced the coming of another patrol.

“Alright.”

Nestra changed tactics. Rather than killing everything methodically, she went through the formation like a hot knife through butter, only reversing at the end for another pass. That way, there was always a guard between herself and other guards. It worked really well. She only wished she could spend more time killing the dervishes so she could study their movements. After that, her path led her to another section of the maze.

This one was a sort of barracks with narrow cots and lockers. Some rooms looked like charging stations with strange fluids leaking from unraveling cords while others were kennels, some still hosting baying pale hounds she killed anyway. A mess occupied the center of the place with vats of bubbling food sitting against the wall. They smelled vile and didn’t look much better so Nestra regrettably left them alone. The kitchen wasn’t inspiring either. All the ingredients came in discolored bricks with solid parts frozen in them, some looking like maggots.

Disappointing.

Nestra hit the jackpot when she found three dervishes in a tiny training room.

“Aaaah, finally.”

The creatures threw themselves at her, each one hampering the other by being in the way, so Nestra killed two using her superior strength before engaging the last one. She let the survivor charge her in a twisting hurricane of blades, pushing it back with measured slices. A momentum back led to the dervish rushing forward, closing the distance and leaving a shallow slice on her leg. She kicked it away and it charged back. Nestra countered with a thrust which the dervish failed to stop.The wound gave it pause, but only for an instant. It simply charged again.

The pattern repeated a couple of times. Nestra was disappointed to see that her foe was more programmed than trained. She killed it quickly after that. She also checked the blades. They looked pretty sharp to be able to cut into her skin so she recovered a few.

Her exploration continued. The patrols were growing rare now, and the corridors more familiar. Nestra was still careful, just in case there was another surprise, but the worst had passed. The next section opened on a large room with a table at its center. A tall, bipedal creature with a large head stood up from a large chair and shot at her. Momentum let her dive to the side and then she killed him before it could reload. It didn’t offer much resistance but she still got a sizable portion of power from his body. Her mind felt keener, faster.

“Oh, you’re the commander of the base.”

She considered keeping the sidearm and eventually decided to do so as a trophy. Not like this place had been very fruitful food wise. Errrr, loot wise. She found the exit portal behind that room. It was already opened, with two crystals and some weird stones she recognized as exotic magnets. Not useful to her but they would fetch a nice price on the black market.

There was one section of the maze she’d not explored yet. She was tempted to do so. Very much tempted.

Fuck it, it would be lost when the world collapsed. Had to see it.

Nestra retraced her step and found a winding, circular set of stairs going up. It took a few minutes to reach the end, during which the explosions she’d first heard grew louder and more powerful. Finally, she found herself in what had to be an observation post doubling as a bunker.

It was also the end of the portal world, as told by the waves she felt in the fabric of reality. Come to think of it, they were a little like a portal.

The air smelled dry and rancid here. A warm wind carried an acidic stench she could not recognize under a roiling sky of sickly yellow clouds. Explosions sent plumes of smoke barely visible above a hazy cloud of dust, but sometimes their lights could be seen as ephemeral flashes in the grimy air. Distant shapes rushed away, sometimes small and humanoid and sometimes much, much larger, titans of flesh carrying weapons on their backs.

There was an uncountable amount of them. Nestra stayed for five minutes and the tide of flesh never ceased. It was a multitude sent to assault a force beyond what she could see and she knew in her heart this was a real place. This was really happening.

Placing her hand against the end of the portal world, she peered through the void to spot the opposite side and her fingers, very slowly, sank in.

She pulled back with a gasp.

That was how she went through portals. By pushing through. But then… But no, she couldn’t try. What if she got stuck there in that hellscape with no way back? That was far too dangerous.

A little spooked, Nestra made her way back to the exit portal and back into the real world.

It was rare when she got to think that Threshold smelled pleasant. The warehouse apparently harbored a collection of antique pieces of furniture, probably pre-incursion. Plastic sheets wrapped around veneered panels in a protective gaze. The smell of old wood permeated the place. As usual, there was a letter and this time, it came with a fine prize.

“A Kero nut!”

Whatever place this thing came from, the benefactor had clearly decided to return there. That was perhaps why they’d been absent for three days? She munched the treat with great gusto before unpacking the letter. Ah, Kero nuts, a balm to her soul. What made them so tasty anyway?

“Little Nezhra!

Well done tonight. As you can see, the training wheels are off and the next worlds will be harder first sphere worlds, or D-class as the humans say. It is necessary to prepare you for the future. You are going to need strength soon.

Remember, when you reach the second sphere, I will tell you what you want to know. Until then, trust me when I say this is the safest option.

I am looking forward to seeing you face to face!”

There were two hastily written notes next to the main body that showed that the benefactor was somehow keeping an eye on her. To Nestra, it just reeked of a lack of preparation.

“Little Nezhra, it appears I need to talk about ‘hubris’ now rather than later. It is the drive to win perfectly. It is what pushes you to give yourself a handicap so you can experience the enemy fully rather than just win. I will not tell you not to explore and fight on your own terms. One cannot defy their nature. Just keep in mind that this is how we die.”

Huh. But it did make sense to fight the dervish one on one to see its limit in case there was something to learn, right? How else was she supposed to make progress?

That was normal, no?

Nestra frowned. She had some thinking to do. The last piece of text had very obviously been added at the last minute.

“Little Nezhra. DO NOT CROSS INTO OTHER WORLDS NOW. DO NOT DO IT. You are not ready at all and I may not be able to follow you.”

Ah.

So, she could really cross into the other worlds. That brought its own host of questions but like most things, she was too weak for it to matter. The world was vast and Nestra was small. That was how things were, for now, but she would change that. First, going out would be a good idea.