The Ruler of Ruin

My mind drifted while I healed, but Arx Maxima woke me from my reverie with a demand.

“Get up, you’re fully healed now. Let us recover my crystal.” If Arx Maxima had hands, she’d have been gesturing with them wildly, and if she had legs, she would’ve been jumping up and down with impatience. Instead, she just bobbed up and down in the air while she demanded I get up.

“It smells like the misbegotten, rotten taint of Mithras in here,” I cursed. I summoned Delerium of Ruin to my hand and used the spear to rise. The crescent-moon blade at the end of the haft sliced into the stone of the cavern when I put my weight on it but given the catastrophic damage I’d already caused to the subterranean substructure under this cave, I very much doubted it would be the nail in the coffin of the chambers stability.

“You transitioned from a faithful of Mithras to a heresy spouting infidel in record time.” Arx Maxima didn’t seem to be judging me, just making an idle observation. Or was that approval in her tone? We were both proud of me, go team … us. I should probably figure out what team Arx and I were on, but it seemed to be a safe assumption we were on the opposition team to Mithras.

“Well, yeah. When your god turns out to be a dickhole who banishes you for reasons you can’t even control, wants you dead or at least to die, and possesses your brother, that’s a great time to turn on the asshole.” I muttered and envisioned a series of increasingly tall walls, then created a ramp over them, so I could get a better look at the remains of the Broodmother.

“The more you use your abilities, the easier it will be to construct and develop new powers.” Arx Maxima said. She clearly approved of my proactive use. If a hammer was the only tool you had, all your problems look like nails. When walls are a tool, what does that make your problems look like? Wind? Rain? Wild animals? Dropping things on other things worked great though, almost as well as a hammer would have.

“Oh, really? What about Administrator? Vector Sense is constantly going, I haven’t learned anything new yet. Also, where is this fragment of yours? This is a huge corpse.” I wasn’t going to dissect and dismember this giant crab to find a needle in the crab-stack.

With the elevation provided by my makeshift ramp, I stood at eye-level with one of the lifeless eyes of the Broodmother. The huge unmoving open eye creeped me out a little, its stare felt accusatory. The once beautiful chamber of the cavern had become the scene of indiscriminate slaughter of an entire crab family, and its natural beauty had turned into a haunting monument to the supremacy of rock over crustaceous flesh. An over-ripe, foul-smelling tribute that made my stomach roil and my nose burn. Even if I had a pot of boiling water and some butter, the smell had penetrated me to the point there was no way I could bring myself to eat the crabs.

"Familiarity is generated by and from repetition, from which recognition emerges. It is through recognition that we develop refinement, and through steady practice, we achieve innate proficiency, paving the way for creativity to spark innovation and advancement." Arx Maxima floated over my shoulder while she answered me.

I didn’t really find her answer satisfactory. I understood the concept or idea she tried to hint at, but it felt lacking. I had run spear drills until my hands bled, and while years of diligence had left me a highly skilled spearman, a five-year-old with an early developed gift could’ve trounced me. My takeaway from it all was that familiarity with the concepts I had bound would lead to increases in my ability to use them and develop the abilities I hadn’t yet, but that I was a long way from being an unstoppable champion.

“Here,” Arx Maxima said as her crystal spilled a dash of light across the area beneath her.

“What do I do?” I asked. I didn’t fancy the idea of butchering the carcass of the Broodmother unless I absolutely had to. It was so enormous and had suffered such intense structural damage I couldn’t help but imagine being trapped under thousands of pounds of crabmeat, cursed to chew my way out.

“Hold Delerium of Ruin aloft with your right hand. Touch my crystal with your left hand. Focus your Vector Sense on my crystal.” Arx Maxima spoke to me in her instructor voice. I did as she bid, held my spear aloft and touched her crystal, and examined the vectors she possessed.

Unlike when I normally saw new Vectors pop up with their diagrams, Arx Maxima had a lot of different vectors associated with her. I didn’t know what many of them were, as they lacked labels.

“Do you know what a magnet is?”

“What? Magnet? You mean like a lodestone?”

"Yes, indeed, a lodestone acts as a magnet. Magnets generate both forces of attraction and repulsion. Attraction is the force that pulls objects closer together, while repulsion is the contrary force that pushes them further away. Pay attention to this vector, right here. Our objective is to alter it. We will convert the force from repulsion to attraction by adjusting its orientation to point in my direction, instead of away. Then we will increase the amplitude dramatically, which should lure the fragment out in the open, where I will reassimilate it."

I followed what Arx Maxima wanted me to do, but I’ll be honest that I only vaguely understood this guided crash course in vector manipulation. Maybe she had over-simplified things too much, in reducing the forces of the world to an arrow. Was this an attack on my intelligence?

“Okay, I’ve got that visualized in my head. How do I… make it happen?” I felt like a virgin, which I was, about to have sex for the first time, which I wasn’t. I had the vaguest notion of what I was supposed to do, and no more. I focused more and more on the vector that Arx Maxima wanted me to change and visualized the change of vectors.

My head swam. Symbols I’d never seen cascaded across my vision. Sweat poured down my forehead. The more I concentrated on changing the repulsion to attraction, and making it stronger, the more throbbing aches passed through my mind. I was locked in a struggle with some force that prevented me from succeeding. I fell back on the one trait I knew could produce results, the one trait that had never failed me. Stubbornness.

“Arrow goes up! Change!” I shouted at the intangible forces arrayed against me. For a brief moment I envisioned Mithras and the silhoutes of other powerful conceptual entities I hadn’t yet glimpsed, peering down at me from a vast distance, all wishing for my failure. Fuck Mithras, and those other people too! I would succeed, and one day stick a pin in that asshole. I felt a kinship for Corvusol and his continuous battle against the silver-orange sun.

My head felt like a gong struck by a baseball bat, shivers of pain rocked through my brain, and then the world slipped sideways a little. Everything, for a fraction of a second, seemed malleable. Changeable. If I knew just a little bit more, I could have made everything better. The strange epiphany didn’t last long, because not one, but three golden crystal fragments flew swiftly through the air to impact Arx Maxima. I had changed the arrow… go me.

One fragment came from the corpse of the Broodmother. Another came from what I assumed to be the primary male, who’d been unlucky and probably got crushed to death in the first volley of walls I had dropped. The third shot out of the ceiling a few seconds behind the other two, it must have been further away, or been more firmly entrapped than the other two. All three were composed of the same crystal that made up Arx Maxima, golden and cracked, and each leaked tiny amounts of violet mist.

The strange, potent, violet mists flowed from the crystals and my body seemed to hunger for them, or maybe they hungered for me, because the mists flowed into me. Only as I felt the energy flow into me, did I realize how much energy I had used, still used, to make Arx Maxima attract her fragments.

“Are you almost done? This is surprisingly draining” I muttered.

“Decrease the amplitude if you need but maintain the direction. Assimilation is in process. Indexing…. Indexing… Integration… Verifying Contents…. Optimizing Index… Complete.” Arx Maxima updated me continually through the process. Or I assume she felt she was being informative, but I didn’t understand what she’d done until first one crystal, then the next, and then the final one all merged into her diamond shaped form, which increased in size. Not nearly by as much as I would have expected though, she was still much tinier than Corvusol’s black crystal.

Arx Maxima produced additional trickles of the violet mist than she had previously, but less than she and the three fragments had produced in total. It was still more than enough for me to feel like my energy was high within thirty seconds of releasing the modified vector.

“Good job, Emery. Not only have you unlocked Modify Vector, but you drew out multiple of my fragments. I have clothing for you to cover your fleshy bits.”

“Clothes?” I practically shouted in joy, but then a blinding light flared from Arx Maxima. My retinas burned, and the intense light triggered painful stabbing in my head. I focused on pushing energy through Fortress Restoration to fix my eyes and the pain that threatened to rip my brain apart. Maybe I strained something when I unlocked Modify Vector?

Before my eyes repaired themselves I could feel articles of clothing appear on me. It was especially strange to feel myself being lifted into the air for a moment, and to abruptly be wearing socks and boots. I now wore a black form fitting bodysuit with exceptionally comfortable boots, and a lightweight jacket made of very thin black fabric. The fit was perfect, and the bodysuit felt strangely pleasant against my skin. The underwear, while comfortable, felt exceptionally tiny and I missed my old boxers.

“Until you have gained access to the Envoy shop, a basic uniform of the Stellarae Enclave will have to do. It has minimal self-repair features, limited heat regulation abilities, and is slightly resistant to physical damage.”

“Thank you, Arx Maxima.” I bowed my head slightly to the crystal to show my gratitude. The difference in being a naked madman and a clothed wanderer felt like two starkly different mindsets. “It’s amazing how not having your dick hanging in the breeze makes you feel better suited to facing the problems ahead.”

“We have many difficulties yet to surmount if you wish to save your family from the grasp of Mithras. Remedying your nudity was but step one on the path.”

Mithras. Etienne. Mom and Dad. I’d gotten a little distracted with the crabs, fragments, and clothing.

“You’re right. What is our next step?” I wasn’t strong enough to assault the True World on my own. I hadn’t even unlocked a quarter of my abilities yet, and as impressive as the ones I had gained were, even people as powerful as Amaranthine or cataclysmic legendary monsters were hard pressed to assault a Castle.

“You must flesh out the rest of your abilities, train, make allies, and equip yourself more appropriately. The more fragments of myself we find along the way, the more helpful I can be.”

It never occurred to me until that moment that Arx Maxima wanted to make sure that she proved useful to me. Her guidance and powers were beyond anything I’d ever known, but as an Enkindler, I could have bound any concepts and found power for myself.

“Uhh Arx Maxima?” I asked with the subtlety of an impromptu scream.

“Yes?” Arx Maxima asked me curtly, and waited for me to articulate whatever made me mumble like an idiot.

“Are we partners? Friends? I don’t really know where I stand with you, or how I’m supposed to treat you.” I fidgeted awkwardly while I explained my source of awkwardness and uncertainty to Arx Maxima.

“We are both sapient beings working towards mutually beneficial goals. I suggest we think of one another as partners. I have entrusted you with the ability to alter the fabric of who I am, and you have imprinted me upon your very essence. As for how you should treat me, the character of our exchanges thus far is acceptable to me.”

“Alright, that wasn’t too awkward to figure out at all. So, where’s our next stop? You did say you knew where to go from here.”

“With the data from my fragments I now have a more complete map of this region. Our next destination will be a settlement of sapient beings known as Gneisslings. These silicate life forms appear to be insular, powerful, but lacking in an Enkindler. Leveraging your ability to awaken others will be your most powerful asset.”

“You mean barter by awakening people?” I grimaced. That felt wrong, somehow.

“You have little else of value,” Arx Maxima didn’t hold back.

I didn’t have anything of value. I had a spear that I could summon, and I could make walls of a strange gray stone.

“How long of a walk is it to these Gneisslings?” I asked before I jumped off the crab. A series of walls rushed up to meet me and form a stair to the ground. I needed to practice with my powers as much as I could.

“A day or two, depending on your pace,” Arx Maxima answered.

“What sort of training can I do with Modify Vector while we walk?”

“Direction and motion would be most suitable for a novice like yourself. Your lack of a basic science education will slow your progress down, but I will educate you on the journey.”

I had never heard anyone call the education of the Havenstone Academy lacking before, but Arx Maxima seemed determined to remedy my so-called ignorance with a vengeance.

“Yeah, sure. Motion.” I held up a hand and tried to make a rock shoot to it without relying on Arx Maxima’s calculations. It missed by inches and went sailing off into the cavern. The sound of it crashing against far off rocks made me glad it hadn’t hit my hand. My aim and force had been completely out of reasonable limits.

“Can’t expect perfection on your first try, right?”