Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3) (54 page)

“Are you a deity?”

“Yes,” the elf said. He offered her hand. “I see a
glorious future for you.”

The human reached out, grabbed the offered hand, and just
like that, she became a grotesque monster. Bellowing in pain, he rammed her
head into the wall until his head split open, but that only caused more pain.
The blasphemous elf sighed and snapped his fingers a second time. The monster
burst into flames and became charcoal.

“The lab results were more positive.” 

An ethereal hand clamped around her body. It squeezed hard
enough to crush both arms and several ribs and yet the elf did not die. He
tried to spin her head around, but her powers did not work. Suddenly, it forced
him face first into the dirt.

“Are you a deity?”

“No,” the elf confessed. “I am fashioned into the likeness
of a deity, and I have powers similar to a deity, but I am not a deity myself.”

“Then SUBMIT!”

The ethereal hand leeched the chaos from her body and thus
rendered him mortal. Then it crushed her. When his immortal soul attempted to
flee to the Abyss, the human reached out with another ordercrafted hand and
snatched it out of the air. It thrashed desperately, but there was no escape.
The ordercrafter ate it.

Then, a bolt out of the blue struck the ordercrafter and
melted away his power, leaving her defenseless before the newcomer. This fourth
figure was also golden-haired, pointy-eared, glowing, and floating, but unlike
the last one, there was no mistaking the inner divinity. Just like the first
two, this trickster’s gender was a mystery to Eric.

“Are you a deity?”

The trickster reached through her mouth and into his soul
and grabbed the most recently eaten one and ripped it out. Ignoring the pain
she caused to the human, he returned the soul to its former vessel.

“Yes.”

A cloud of otherworldly smoke appeared out of nowhere and
encompassed the pained human. Her eyes lit up and he stood up with newfound
strength.

“This is her deity,” the enforcer said.

“If we fight this, then whole area will be devastated,” the
trickster said.

“This will ensure stability by any means.”

“No more.”

She ripped off his right arm and shoved it into the mortal
at her side. The human spasmed as pure chaos rushed through his system. Her
hair regained its golden hue and his physical injuries mended, but her
spiritual one remained. He crouched behind the trickster’s legs and stared with
wide-eyed and dry-throated terror at the enforcer-possessed human. The
trickster patted her head.

“Again?”

The elf shook his/her head. “Never again, ever.”

All four figures disappeared and the ashes of the fifth
blew away. Eric assumed a thinking pose as he tried to make sense of what he had
just seen.

“That can’t be right. The place and the time are correct,
but it was so short and the genders kept switching…” He snapped his fingers.
“Compression! Geologic time is different from human time. I need to reconfigure
the clock.”

By the time he figured out how to do that, he had to rewind
another two thousand years in order to make use of what he’d learned. After
watching the scene a second time, he applied his new skill and the minute-long
event separated into an affair spanning centuries. Just as Annala said, it was
indeed more complicated than what he had just witnessed. He watched it several
times from different angles to gain new perspectives. It was a heady tonic to
watch the struggles of lesser beings from on high.

“Annala is one of them.”

“What?”

“One of the ‘lesser beings’ here is Annala; one among
billions. Can you find her? If you succeed, you will pass my test.”

“My third one. I accept.”

“Fair warning; she may not be as you remember her.”

A girl awoke with a start. Heart beating furiously and
sweat circling her brow, she sat up. Looking around, she saw no sign of anyone;
a curious thing because she thought she heard someone call her. The sun was
peeking through the windows, so she decided to dress. She put on a robe and
walked to the back of her home for the morning cleansing ritual.

She took extra care washing her hair. Its rich
golden-brown color was proof that she was the granddaughter of Lady Chaos. She
could not be permanently injured, never ill, never die, and her beauty would
only grow as she aged. She was truly blessed.

Once she was clean, dry, and clothed, she stepped inside
the kitchen. As a chaotic acolyte, it was her job to make the morning meal. Her
teacher’s wife caught and picked a lot of good food, so she was never hungry.
In fact, with all the available ingredients, she could experiment: these nuts
grounded into a powder and mixed with this sap made a tasty sauce, and boiling
these certain leaves made a refreshing tea. Other experiments, she blushed to
think, were not as successful. Her teacher and his wife ate them nonetheless
and with good humor.

"Good morning, Annala," an old man said. Most of
his hair fell down his face rather than his head. In that regard, he was
similar to men his age, but his ears told otherwise.

"Good morning, Teacher," Annala said, bowing.

"Did you slept well?"

“I had a strange dream.”

“What have I taught you about dreams?"

"They are messages from The Trickster and we should
pay heed to them. The reason they're so weird is because he wants us improve
our reasoning by deciphering them."

The old wiseman smiled kindly. "That's my favorite
student."

The younger frowned. "I'm your only student."

"Good! Then I won't have to disappoint anyone when
you finally succeed me."

This was a game they had played for as long as she could
remember. She hoped to continue playing it forever and why not? Both of them
were immortal.

If Annala closed her eyes, she could still remember the
scene. Now it was gone...they were gone; killed by mortals. To think that the
immortality bestowed upon them by Grandmother Chaos could be revoked made her
shudder. She had never seen such eldritch magic before. Her fellow soldiers
counted on her to protect them from it.

Far from her secluded village, she marched with a company
of elven warriors. They traveled the countryside searching for signs of the
dark arts so they could kill its practitioners. Thus far, every human
settlement they came across used it and so they had been very busy.

Her job was to project the blessings of Grandmother Chaos
to shield and inspire those around her. Between her power and their valor, even
the empowered fiends were no match. Every trace was wiped out as if it had
never been there. Humans bred like rats so there would be no harm done to their
total population. Besides, they weren’t going to live much longer anyway. Their
quality of life was so poor, their already short lives were cut even shorter.
All she and her companions did was deny them a year or two.

She shuddered. The others noticed and guessed its cause
but said nothing. None of them wanted to talk about the blasphemous power they
fought against. All of them were too scared to think about it. The only reason
they sought it out was because they were more afraid of its users appearing on
their doorstep without warning. There were rumors that an entire village had
been enslaved and their imaginations spun ever more horrid tales of what
happened to them.

An ethereal hand pulled her mind out of the illusion and
back into reality. She was in a dungeon and tormented by an ordercrafter. That
was what these fiends called themselves: “Those empowered by Order to bring
stability to this world.” In addition to the physical imprisonment, they pulled
their captives back and forth from illusions to blur their distinction of
reality and break their will.

Her wrists were shackled above her head and pulled so high
she stood on her tiptoes, while her ankles were secured with manacles bolted to
the floor. In normal circumstances, she could escape from these as easily as
breathing via shapeshifting, but a metal collar clenched tight around her neck
suppressed her chaotic ability. It made her weaker than a magic-less mortal.

“The Age of Elves is over,” the ordercrafter said. “Never
again will your kind threaten us. You belong under our feet and putting those
clever minds of yours to our benefit.”

“Go to the Abyss, temp!”

The ordercrafter forced a rag into her mouth. She tossed
her head and thrashed in her restraints, but it was tied behind her head. The
blood that was drenching it dripped down her throat and infected her with its
diseases. They would cause her tremendous pain but wouldn’t kill her. While
diminished, her Seed of Chaos would still prevent her death. Escape was
impossible.

Again, she woke up. She was in her bed, in her home, in
her village. She told herself it was a dream and recited the mantra her
therapist taught her.

“This is not an illusion; this is reality. I was rescued.
I was saved. Tasio freed me from their clutches. He is my savior. He will come
when I say, ‘Tasio, Tasio, Tasio!’”

The Trickster appeared at her bedside and smiled kindly at
her. There was no mistaking his divinity, his radiance, or his Lady Chaos
derived goodness.

“Another bad dream?”

She nodded.

He reached out and stroked her head. She leaned into his
touch.

“Don’t be afraid. No shadow of Order can withstand the
True Light of Chaos. The Elven Nightlight will keep the monsters away.”

In the shelter of her god, she curled under the covers and
returned to blissful sleep. When she woke up the next day, again in her bed at
home, she returned to the work of the community.

There was much work to be done and fewer hands to do it.
The village was emptier than it was before the war. Losses to death, losses to
enslavement, losses to the insanity caused by both, and few were able to
replace those losses with new life. Female elves could only give birth once a
century or two, and many of them lost this century’s chance to the depraved
desires of humans, herself included.

“Never again,” she muttered to herself.

Stronger and better hidden; all villages needed to be
stronger and better hidden. Their technology had to be ever greater and reach a
plateau beyond the reach of ordercraft. Most of all, they had to develop their
personal magic and potential for chaos so that they’d never need fear the chill
of such blasphemous power ever again.

All around the village, time passed. The seasons changed,
humans were born and died, and their civilization stagnated, but the village of
elves endured and thrived. After performing all the improvements that they
could think of, they settled into their hobbies. After a long enough span of
time, many of them gave birth and happy children ran around the village causing
trouble that delighted their parents.

As they grew up, they grew bored. They wanted to leave the
village and explore the wider world. Annala argued with a younger version of
herself about how this was a terrible/essential idea. It ended with her turning
her back on herself.

“I’m an elf,” she said over her shoulder. “We were never
made to stay in one place.”

She walked beyond the Chaotic Curtain and didn’t look
back.

Walking aimlessly, she had no destination but the
direction of the wind. This was the freedom spoken of in the
Elven Tome
and preached by the priest. It wasn’t cloistering and developing power but
living a constant state of motion. That was the only way to learn new things
and to meet new people.

Every one of them was a human. It was easy to tell, given
their rounded ears. She hid her own pointed ones under a hat, just in case her
parents were right, and talked with them. Many of them were sociable and some
of them kind while others tried to steal from or take advantage of her. Even
without her chaotic power, defeating them was easy.

“Those paranoid old folks were right about one thing,” she
said to herself. “Self-defense is important when traveling.”

One day, while she was taking her leisure at a roadside
tavern, two human children threw themselves at her feet. One was male and the
other female; twins possibly.

“Priestess! Have pity on us.”

“Huh?”

“You’re the Golden-haired Priestess of Justice, right?”

Annala looked sideways. “Uhh…yeah, that’s me. What’s up?”

“Our village is beset by bandits! They’re taking all our
food and killing anyone who fights against them! Please help us!”

“What kind are they?”

“They’re Hiksoss.”

“What kind of monster is that?”

The siblings looked at each other in confusion. “They’re
monsters for sure, but not monster-monsters. They’re human.”

“Really!? Humans attacking other humans and dominating
them? Fascinating! I’ve heard about that, but I’ve never seen it before. Show
me!”

She remembered that day fondly; the day she met her two
apprentices and came to inhabit this shrine. It wasn’t easy to defeat those
bandits. All together, they inflicted damage as fast as her Seed of Chaos could
repair. Nonetheless, she succeeded in routing them. Taking so much life in
defense of still more life led to a reflective period later that day, which she
recorded in her journal. After that, she was invited to live in this shrine,
but it wasn’t as a priestess.

“Good morning, Goddess.”

“I’ve told you countless times before, a goddess I am
not.”

“You’ve been here for ages, you possess divine power, you
protect us, and you ensure our prosperity. That makes you goddess enough for
us.”

 These humans had never seen an elf; no human living had
ever seen an elf before because all of them died of old age. Between her
chaotic power, golden hair, and pointed ears, they thought she was a trickster.
She didn’t protest too much because it was kinda true; elves were created to be
lesser tricksters and so it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call them “demi-gods.”