NOVEL SIMPLE Tear Between Worlds
I was back above the tear between worlds. My form was naked, I could not bear to wear any reminder of earth. The golden edges were smooth and beautiful to behold. My spiritual strength grew from having received love and compassion, and then gifting back to myself.
“You are powerful Maradon.” I chuckled grimly. “But, you cannot send me back. You don’t have the skill.”
He was upset, “Perhaps not.” He raised his hand, “But, you are mortal. I wonder how you bear it? “Who even are you? She sent you from across dimensions. Ha, ha, ha. No wonder she has been quiet. She’s in the Fae-sleep.” He pushed me into the next waking nightmare. “After I am through with you I will make a bride of the ice cube.” I heard him say as I fell.
Who was he talking about? I sent myself across worlds. What ice cube? His statements left me with confusion and questions.
I passed through the darkest hole, an endless pit of black I tumbled down. I screamed at first, and then I slipped into boredom. I grew to find peace in the silence and comfort even as I was weightless.
I was transformed into part of a cliff on a bleak shore. Tens of thousands of years passed as the waves slowly eroded the cliff. I became a pebble on a beach. I was tossed about by the tides. Pulled and pushed. I endured until I was ground into sand.
The entire time I was conscious but unfeeling and unthinking. I was aware and that was my everything. I endured the pointless existence of a speck of sand. After an eternity, I eroded into nothing.
“No more.”
I reformed back into my astral body whose golden edges thickened. Neither death nor existence troubled me. I shaped into my sorcerer's robes. The form of clothes gifted by Iris.
“Your fantastic deceits lead me to a greater truth. I thank you for your guidance.”
I bowed, a simple bob of the head with my eyes locked on him.
“How about…”
I encased him in a bubble of magic.
His magic backfired on himself.
“See how you like it.”
He broke out in half a second. But he looked haggard and aged. I analysed the spell. Time-dilation? Whatever happens in the spell occurs in less than a second in Elfhame.
“It seems if you will not bend, I must break you. I would say to tell that bitch that she will become my bride no matter how long she hides but you will be dead before the sun rises.”
He looked down and I followed his gaze.
At the edges of strata, hanging off a non-existent boundary line between Elfhame and Tír na nÓg. We looked down on Tír na nÓg like astronauts staring at Earth. It was a small land in a large globe. I could see where Rome most likely was. The shape of the globe was similar to Earth, but stranger and utterly different in small ways. He zoomed in until we hovered over Ferisdarm.
“You understand that you are weak? Do you see the ants down there, they are struggling for their lives. I don’t. You are like them. Weak. An insect who believes a lie that they are better. I have strength, I can do what I want. I soar above, I alone stand above all the rest superior to the mindless masses who crawl along the ground. You are feeble and you will be crushed into the dirt! I’m going to hurt her… I’ll make her scream my name, every last one you touched I’ll break. It’s a shame you won’t live long enough to see the light leave their eyes. Have you ever seen a woman with her tits ripped off? I’ll toss them around the camp after, they’ll choke on their own blood after being impaled by the ogres!” He laughed at the end of his monologue.
I smirked, “Have you finished your deranged dialogue?”
I grabbed him, burning through my mana to grant me strength, and threw him through the rip in the stratas.
In doing so, in a moment of righteous fury, I gave up heaven for earth; paradise for a dream. Some might judge my choice as unworthy in the abstract.
All I can say to justify my action was that I did not understand the consequences and the regrets are mine. Unlike the Fae, I did not have the draw of home, and henceforth the temptations of flesh prevented me from returning to Elfhame.
I flew after, blasting him through it, shooting from my hands a beam of brilliant blue. I followed after through the rainbow road between worlds. Amidst the lightshow, my flesh rejoined, peeling back on until I had my body again.
In the black deep space above the globe, we faced off, he was a perfect copy of my body, readying for the next clash.
“Witty. But know true terror.”
Maradon expanded beyond Tír na nÓg, he towered until he straddled the globe itself. He was but an illusion. All the grander he pretended, he had thrown mostly lies in my face.
“You forget once I have drained your corpse, I will finally have power to dispose of those foreign gods. After I have crushed them under my fist, I will not stop there, every nook and cranny of the land will be under my reach. I will be Maradon the ruler of all of Abo. Lord of all the lands.”
I was but a speck of flesh floating at his head. A fearless smile warmed my spirits. There is nothing quite like excitement of death defying odds.
“Is that all the power you have?” I mocked.
He pulled his arm back. I flew away. Then thrust forward and unleashed a planet destroying blast. The blast hit a far off moon that exploded into debris. Again, a lie.
I heaved heavy breaths as my mana reserves burned away.
A ray of disintegration launched from Maradon’s colossal hand. I constructed a hardened metal shield. I strengthened the shield as it fried and tore away. If it hit the globe great destruction would follow. Real destruction. The ray finished and I flew away out of the planet’s way.
Neither storm nor steel would serve against this foe. However, what had worked against the child may succeed with the parent. Where I had grown the tree to an elder, Maradon could live as a human.
He chased and I flew further out of reach. I carefully worked my magic, I altered his body reshaping the organic form just enough that he would no longer be recognised as me. I had broken free of each of his past deceits. I ripped away his last and greatest lie of stealing my identity.
Maradon roars in fury and his eyes widen in abject terror.
“Breeder of lies and cruelty, I deny you the abyss from whence you came, you shall know the pain you wrought and bear it until the end of your new mortal days!” I shouted.
The colour fades from Maradon’s cheeks, slowly the flesh peels back as the death’s face rears forward and the lungs empty of life, my hated foe raising a hand to strike me down.
My lips curled under the wry acknowledgement that whatever he could do, I could do better. He shrank. But, I rose high beyond cloud and air till I was above the curve of the planet that was now my responsibility to defend.
The millions, however many hundred of thousands of miles below, knew nothing of the battle warring above them. The last great battle between the mightiest ever representatives of Seelie and Unseelie courts. The outcome of which would determine not only Ferisdarm, or Tír na nÓg but the entire globe.
“You are a creature of magic. You cannot triumph over the Master. I am magically grounded, world creating.” A strand of magic from my mind floated away. A universe birthed and among the strata of dimensions a new one teaming with magic flourished. “I am magic.”
I held his physical body and ripped the astral body from him. I grounded the former into dust that drifted away into deep space.
I grinned cruelly, “So this is your magical essence.”
“No!”
“In your place of greatest power. You tormented me. Yet, you showed your greatest vulnerability. The irony.”
I extended my hands towards his essence. I tore him apart scrap by scrap until he was shredded into almost nothing. Stripped of power, I reformed him into a human. I sank slowly down to Ferisdarm in love with the silence and peace. I let myself drift as I indulged in the emotion that was overjoyous pleasure at victory.
I descended through clouds and across the sky onto Ferisdarm. I dropped Maradon by himself in the forest. Me, I saw Morgana and Tara where surrounded by over a thousand dead corpses. I dropped down behind them.
The Unseelie were routed, but the fight wasn’t over yet. There was still Iris and Bomdall.