《Retribution Engine》194 - Empire of Mind
Advertisement
Zelsys backed off and summoned up a storm of fireflies, spreading out her arms and with a stomp bringing uncountable sand-grains into the air. Each and every one she transformed into ball lightning, conjuring forth ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand fireflies.
Unleashing them upon the titan carved a hole into the Queen head, blasting a channel through her skull, and even as she fired off a barrage of fireflies, Zelsys conjured yet more to continue her onslaught, but she was cut short. Even though she could focus on the mind-splinter controlling the giant to sense its intent, she used it only to ensure that she could dodge away in time, and that she could do so in a way clearly visible to the Primordial Self.
She wasn’t really fighting here. She was trying to illustrate a point. The futility of fighting alone.
Minutes passed and they struggled against the impossible monstrosity, and only when the Primordial Self had managed to - with great struggle - rip off one of the Composite Titan’s fingers, did it see the futility of its task.
A single finger, and it had nearly destroyed itself, suffering dozens of dismemberments and close self-reconstructions in mere minutes. Even if it could hold itself together without issue, even if its wounds healed in seconds to the bubbling of blood and sizzling of steam, it would eventually grow tired and too weak to fight, according to the laws of its own nature as it understood them.
The Primordial Self leapt down on the ground next to Zelsys, who had constructed a defensive formation of Fulgur-imbued green glass, making it seem like she was just trying to survive, when in reality she had known the beast would come here, and she had set it up so that the shield would be guaranteed to deflect at least one of the titan’s blows.
Advertisement
For a few moments, both halves of Zelsys stood there, staring herself down.
She thought of using pictographs, of literally illustrating her intentions, but abstraction was in the realm of man, it was not under the purview of instinct. That alone was proven by the total lack of a reaction to the very obvious pictograph she’d etched into the glass platform they stood on. It depicted each of them striking the titan in turn and falling, then both of them striking it at once and the titan falling; as simplified as it could conceivably be.
The Primordial Self had looked at it, tilted its head and furrowed its brow, then looked up at Zelsys, gaze utterly devoid of any reaction or understanding. Its eyes burned only with an overwhelming desire to eliminate an immediate existential threat, a desire that Zelsys played into by nodding and grabbing her cleaver, pointing at her beast-self, then at the Composite Titan before she held her cleaver with both hands and willed it to grow.
It began to grow, and grow, and grow, taking on not the shape of a Thundersaw Beast, but maintaining its own as it sprawled out behind Zelsys into meters of length in red-hot cold-iron. Even its handle grew in size, handlebars forming in the blackstone as it did.
Sheer size and the basic flow of time were both things the Primordial Self understood, and it understood that the cleaver would take a while before it got big enough… And as an instinctive hunter, the Primordial Self also understood stalling tactics.
Zelsys poured every ounce of will she could muster into the cleaver, forcing it to grow larger and larger as her imagined armor of lightning faded and dissolved, the focus which kept it existent cannibalized. The Composite Titan’s fist connected, and her Fulgur-glass barrier erupted outward in a hailstorm of glass and lightning, so forcefully it managed to knock the gigantic limb back.
Advertisement
In this brief time the Primordial Self had managed to get to the beast’s three heads, ripping at its eyes so savagely it actually got the giant’s attention, in no small part because its controlling intelligence was still just a piece of Zelsys and it still shared her end goal.
When the cleaver’s metal body wouldn’t grow any further and it still didn’t suffice, Zelsys called upon her memories of the Living Storm and her catching of a lightning bolt, exerting her will over the dream to conjure an all-consuming lightning-strike from the clear sky, holding one arm up while hefting the cleaver’s colossal mass upon the other’s shoulder.
Everything became white-burning clarity when it struck, a divine waterfall that split in her hand and flowed through her without even the tiniest of resistance, the searing fury of the heavens slithering across her body like a deadly serpent that had been tamed. It enveloped the cleaver and wrapped itself along its blade, lashing out at the sand all around, melting it, and binding the glass to the blade to grow it further still. Underneath its force, influenced by the memory of Thundercannon, two glass firing chambers were formed at the cleaver’s base, filled with great shards of green glass that lazily floated in seething, pseudo-liquid congealed lightning.
Even as Zelsys felt her own thoughtform manifestation fraying at the seams, she pushed on.
It was in these moments that the Composite Titan threw down the Primordial Self, the Queen’s head limply flailing from its neck, as did its wings, tail, and stone arms dangle from its body. The Titan reared back, bringing down its fist upon the Primordial Self, only for the beast-woman to emit a ground-splitting howl that shattered a nearby plate of sand-glass, two fragments of which she took hold of. Before the fist could impact, Zel’s beast-self leapt onto it and sprinted up the Titan’s moving arm faster than the arm itself moved, ripping and tearing flesh using two massive shards of fulgurglass as she went.
Even as the Primordial Self’s thoughtform manifestation began visibly fraying at the seams, it pushed on.
A river of emerald-green vital fluids spilled forth as the tumorous arm lost cohesion underneath the beast-self’s instinctual onslaught, melting into a slurry of Viriditas and decoherent connective tissue.
Zelsys glanced backwards, witnessing a colossal monstrosity of cold-iron, glass, and lightning, which tapered off to a wicked point, and she knew that it was finished.
But she couldn’t lift it.
Advertisement
- In Serial33 Chapters
Doll of Death
A 10-year-old girl with no family was raised by an organization of assassins. Due to her killing all their best clients she was hated by everyone. After reaching the bottom line of the organization she was poisoned but found out about it and decided to bring everyone down with her. This is her story afterward in a different world where death is always a looming threat. She will have to do what she knows best to survive even without being human anymore. ______________________ Girl in cover from Pinterest.
8 124 - In Serial28 Chapters
Bullets & Spells
Worlds collide when a young woman is saved by a witch after being double-crossed. The fates of Hollyhock and Hazel become entwined as they delve deeper into their respective worlds of crime and magic. Can they survive the journey for the truth about who they are, how they fit in with their peoples, what destiny has in store for them; and perhaps most importantly, what they mean to each other? Can an assassin and a witch really be together, or are bullets and spells too different to coexist?
8 126 - In Serial6 Chapters
The Genre of My Life Was Randomized?
The wheel spun and the genre changed. In every chapter, a new canvas made up of a thousand words was formed. I, the creator, do not know the future of this novel. I, the author, is but a mere slave that writes and creates what the wheel has given. What would happen after? What fate awaits the main character? When would you encounter the next chapter? Besides the latter, only the wheel could answer. Author's Note:Salutations dear reader. I'd like to dissuade you from reading this novel due to the following facts: 1. I am an amateur/new/beginner writer so it could be said that I don't know what I'm doing. 2. This novel is something which I wrote in order to hone my skills in adaptability, creativity, and writing in of itself. 3. Every chapter was made after spinning a wheel with the genres: Action, Horror, Romance, Comedy, Fantasy (as of writing) twice. The genres then would be showed in the chapter through theme, part of the story, flow, character, or whatever man idk. In case the wheel would show the same genre twice, the chapter itself would have the result as the main theme of the story with the other genres being free to use in order to fully show the theme. 4. I'm basically yoloing the story, trying to make sense of it even with the randomness of the current and future chapters; I swear I'm not a masochi.. *ahem* moving on, a variable left by the previous chapter won't suddenly just disappear because the next chapter doesn't have the same genre as before, meaning if a character that fits a genre was shown on let's say "Chapter 1", said character wouldn't just disappear or cease to exist for no reason at "Chapter 2" or the following chapters just because the character doesn't fit the genres. To make it short this isn't a collection of short stories but one big story instead. 5. Etc.
8 138 - In Serial15 Chapters
The Last Death Mage
Since time immemorial humanity has always feared and shunned what it didn’t understand. Over time this changed a bit to encompass things that didn’t conform to their thoughts and ideals. Due to humanity’s stubbornness with which the enforced their ideals many lives were lost and changed. When humanity first clashed with monsters and the beings that use magic, this trait caused many bloody fights. Over time the fights escalated into battles and full on war on several occasions. Humanity due to their adaptability and persistence won many of these altercations, causing huge casualties to the magical beings. Humanity did not come out unscathed however; many of the empires and civilizations noted in human history fell due to these battles and wars. Eventually over time humanity and the magical beings came to a sort of agreement. Magic and the beings associated with it faded into the background of history, being relegated to myth and legend. Humanity meanwhile advanced leaps and bounds once magic faded, leading to our current level of civilization. Not all magical beings were content with this, thus they did their own actions and killed or fed on humans. This has led to many organizations to be formed concerning this, on both the side of humanity and the side of magical beings. They regulate and control the use of magic as well as protect humanity from the darker things that are now not but myth to them, but there is a reason humanity instinctually fears the dark. Unfortunately there are always those that are unsatisfied by the status quo, and those that are prejudiced against things that are different. This is a story of a young man who wanted nothing more than to be normal. Unfortunately Fate and the world he lives in do not easily allow that this, thus his life changed, not for the better. Everyone has heard of or read stories about monsters and legends, heroes and villains, this is one such story. Hi, this is my second attempt at a story here, the first was before the major overhaul happened and i lost everything related to that story due to PC troubles. I hope you enjoy this if you dont please leave some constructive criticism in the comments. An Editor and the like will be needed, but I will edit as problems are pointed out and as i proof read. This story will have no set schedule, unless of course I decide to type up a bunch in succession then i will note that in a chapter beforehand. ADDED NOTE: most sexual content will be in Interludes or sub chapters with a .5 attached. Profanity and gore however shall be plenty in the actual story, though the descriptives for the gore may be added later. (For example, in the prologue that gave a hint at what happened to the MC, will be enhanced so that the gore invokes more descriptive/complete mental pictures, though it may wait.) ~Tyroth Gideon
8 152 - In Serial12 Chapters
A Mob Boss's Alliance (Side story to Book 3 New York Mafia Trilogy)
This book is story of Anna and Arturo from the New York Mafia Trilogy. You can read this at the same time as A Mob Boss's Heirs (after you read A Mob Boss's Family) Arturo and Anna are from the same underground criminal world. They know the rules, they know the dangers, they know it all. Would they ever be happy as a couple? Cover by @Shanteena
8 150 - In Serial24 Chapters
Sontails - Madly in love
Y R U Madly in Love?A world known murderer and unstable fox is on the lose, he leaves a path of death, but also a path of riddles and mysteries behind him.Can the one who has the task be able to catch him? Or will something else block his mission...?One riddle alone can create a vision, but many more will create a memory.
8 195

