Markus

  The little skank actually attacked me! I didn’t think she’d really have the balls. I haven’t actually felt pain in . . . I’m not certain. And she knows the weakness of nexus energy too, it seems. I can feel the venom tearing through my veins, distracting my nexus energy as it rushes to heal the continuous damage the toxin does. I smile, even as my mouth fills with blood.

  “I see you’ve fought sages before, dear Lillith,” I taunt, “But if you think this will kill me, you have only fought the rejects. The completed mementos. The weakest. Yes, your poison will distract some portion of the nexus energy. Just enough that I will have to think a little to snuff you from existence. I may even have to stretch first. But even that won’t last long.” I grab her wrist with my right hand and pull. She . . . doesn’t budge. I have to use nexus energy just to slowly move her hand. She certainly is strong, but not strong enough. I simply have to change reality so her claws are no longer embedded in my flesh. Even this she manages to resist, but it’s only a matter of time. My assistant is trying to say something through the enchanted earring I wear, but I tune her out, too focused on the task at hand.

  “All you’ve done is piss me off and give me an excuse to kill you in front of the crowd.” I continue, calmly exerting more energy on her, demanding that her hand and my body separate. “The moment I remove your hand, my body will heal and your admittedly impressive venom will be ejected. Then I will beat you to death in front of all these people. Well, as soon as you tell me how you got here, that is. You don’t seem to have any nexus energy yourself, but you do have a certain . . . earthly aspect to you.” I am growing irritated with her. Her grief mana must provide her resistance to nexus energy. Annoying, but I suppose it explains how she got through the Nexus in the first place. I wonder why grief would do that. Does she just cry so much it gets annoyed away? I suppose it doesn’t matter, and I shift my focus to my own body.

  My expertise is not in manipulating my own body, but I can do a little if needed. Her claws are hardly long enough to do any real damage. It’s a surface level change, and a temporary one. I lose my control over my nexus energy, for only a moment. Like nearly dropping a bar of soap. This poison is using more of it than I would expect, far more than any previous attempt at poisoning has managed, which is interesting, but still nothing to worry about. I focus just a little more, turning off the pain, the aching, the faint smell of almonds. This time I easily grip the world and it ripples as I exert my will on it, conforming to my designs and melting my skin around the girl’s fingers. A half step back and I am free from the assault, my skin, and even my shirt, already stitching themselves back together.

  She doesn’t hesitate, leveraging the hand I still have gripped by the wrist and pulling my arm to her mouth. Seconds after I free myself, she is already sinking fangs into my forearm. Literal fangs, apparently. She definitely has the help of another sage. She must have gotten her Earth mannerisms from whoever’s been modifying her body like this for her. Although, some of these seem new, since being locked up. She must have a way to hide them. Ugh, she has another type of venom, flooding my veins through this new wound. What a pest. I am weary of these games. She has done enough damage to thoroughly convince the crowd of her identity. It is time to remove her. Permanently.

  I face reality. The reality of this girl, stabbing me, biting me. Poisoning me. And I reject it. I am the Gladiator Sage. The sage of combat, life, death, and pain. All of these belong to me, and the very air will comply with my opinions on them. In one moment, we are struggling as she bites me. In the next she is wrapped in roots and vines, being torn off of me. These are not the mundane plants of nature mana, but the truly living creations of the nexus. They move of their own accord, following the instruction I built into them on creation. They are strong, determined, and unstoppable. No fire of mana will burn them. No water mana will dry them out. And no human strength will tear them. Not without nexus energy.

  It is unpleasant, ripping her off of me. Or rather, it’s literal. Even as she is pulled from me by the sapient roots of reality itself, she refuses to loosen the grip her jaw has on me. She is determined to fill my veins with every ounce of venom she can, and her jaw strength is incredible. I have to sacrifice my pound of flesh to pull her off. I grimace at the blood and the muscle as they rip from my arm, leaving the wet grease of living game dripping from her too sharp teeth. She spits my flesh onto the ground even as she is crushed. It’s uncomfortable, but pain is my domain and I have taken it away. New pain doesn’t last long, fading even before the injury itself heals. Which will be any minute now. What is that almond smell?

  “Sage Markus!” A voice screams through my earring. “She is filling the arena with some kind of mana I can’t identify!” my assistant warns. I wrinkle my nose as I examine the still open wound. It is regenerating far too slowly. My nexus energy is too distracted. I can feel it fighting the venom of her claws in my gut. I can feel it strangling the poison of her fangs in my blood. And . . . I can feel it wrestling something else in my lungs. Creating oxygen as quickly as it can, only for it to be burned up a moment later. I see. Poison gas too. Some kind of mana related to it, in any case. Interesting. Even I may struggle if I let this go on too long. It is strange, however. After she fought so hard to avoid killing her opponents, she is now sacrificing them just to kill me.

  I grin as I realize. It was all a trap. To lure me in here, something I’d never have done had she been willing to kill. She didn’t even hesitate to poison all of them the moment I was close enough to her. Clever, but the betrayal will work in my favor. When she poisons all of them like a coward, and still dies by my hand. It will only help the narrative and get me elected. It was cute, but she has to keep it up to hurt me. Unfortunately for her, I noticed too early, and now that she isn’t actively injecting venom, I know to kill her immediately, long before this grows overwhelming.

  I focus on her and click my tongue. My roots are beating her, crushing her, exerting more force than whatever enchantments she is using on her armor can counteract. But she isn’t even wincing. Just glaring at me. It must make for an interesting scene. The bloody wounds on me and the thorns digging through her scales, and neither of us reacting even a little. I’d like to fix that, but I suspect she’ll be resistant to the unique pain my Nexus energy is capable of inflicting. And, loath as I am to admit it, three sources of unusually potent poison are having an effect. A greater effect than any other poison ever has. That being the case, I can only focus on a few things at once. In addition to the rapid healing it is primarily focusing on, it is currently crushing her and mitigating my own pain. If I want to kill her and stop the mana she is releasing I’ll need to put everything I have left into demanding her death from the world.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I could perhaps order my mages to crush her mana, but asking for help to defeat her is hardly going to get me elected. I have to prove my personal competence. So I take a step forward. Red eyes lock onto mine. I order the roots to tighten their grip and grow longer thorns. She may have drawn blood from me, but I’ll draw more from her. “All these people, dead. Sacrificed for your pathetic trap. All for nothing,” I taunt. She says nothing in response, but tries to burn through me with her glare. I feel that pain even less than the numb bleeding of my gut and arm. I hold up my left hand, smirk at her, and snap my fingers.

  Again the world ripples, respecting my authority over it and contorting reality into the shape of my design. I don’t create sentient weapons this time, nor do I add or remove pain. No, I am the sage of death. I declare Lillith’s death into the world as an immutable fact. A law which cannot be defied. I don’t kill her; I choose the reality where she is dead. Like paint on a brush, the world follows each stroke of my will and descends on my enemy with finality.

  Nothing happens.

  It feels like pushing against a stone wall. The reality I have chosen, my authority, has been defied. Rejected. All of my power hit her like waves on the side of a cliff, washing away as soon as it did. I put everything into that order. And the poison is spreading. My nexus energy is frantically trying to heal me, and I am losing my grip on it. The vines and roots binding my enemy are growing erratic as my authority over them loosens. She is still held in place, but I can’t control them as well and they are becoming vulnerable. If I don’t get a handle on them, she will be free while I am still weak from the poison.

  There are only two reasons this would happen. Only two reasons such a powerful order for death would fail. One of them is easy to rule out, since the roots still exist around her. Even in the extremely unlikely event she broke free from the nexus mere moments ago, they would start to wither. She would probably heal as well, maybe even growing younger considering what I was trying to do. No, the nexus energy still exists around her, and her rejection of my reality hasn’t whiplashed in the other direction. Which leaves one possibility. A greater authority. I was overruled by a more powerful sage. A much more powerful sage, based on how ineffective my order had been. And that sage has decided life is an immutable fact about this girl. Life of a sort, in any case. It has to be the Original Sage.

  Fuck.

  She only spared her opponents as a way of trapping me. That I could handle. But what if that was also the only reason the Original Sage attacked her in the first place? As a trap? He hasn’t made a move against us in centuries; I should have realized that one move wasn’t going to be all he had. Which means I am no longer a weakened sage against a mundane mage. I am a weakened sage against another sage who already outclassed me. But why me? Why does he want me dead, of all people? I don’t get it. Why would he upset the balance now? I have been one of the biggest contributors to his fucking collection, in quality if not quantity. Why break the peace so completely now?

  Questions for later. I need to kill this cunt and and regroup. No time to worry about optics, “Crush her mana and send the other sages in! It’s a trap!” I shout, knowing my earring will pick up my orders. There is no response. Lillith is wrestling her constraints. Tearing and ripping and destroying. Winning the freedom to fight me directly. “Now! There is no time to fuck around here!” I scream. Her feet touch the ground and her eyes are still locked on me. There is still no response. Finally I look up, and see people rushing in a panic, fleeing the stands. What is going on? Are the others under attack too?

  Lillith finally tears free, emerging from the roots. I can’t summon more, the poison is working faster than it should be. Exactly what kind of poisons are these? I can only do two things now. Heal and stop the pain. I have to give one up to fight back. I will live. I need to live. I will not die to some uppity mage bitch. I let the pain take me and try to think of something else. Life. I am the sage of life. I look for Riley’s body. I can’t bring her back from the dead, but I can puppet a corpse. Order it to use its mana. But . . . she is gone. She should be lying, dead in the dirt. The poison mana filled the arena, killing everyone but Lillith and I. So where did–

  I have no time to finish the thought as claws dig into my shoulder. My head is forced forward to see red eyes and fangs, just before the latter sink into my throat. I can feel the pain and I scream, but I won’t give up. I will live. And now that I have my hands on her, I can kill her. I can use all of my remaining nexus energy to bring death. Not to her directly, but to everything around her. The clean air she breathes. Her mana. The food she still digests. Anything foreign in her can be turned to my own poison. Even the Original Sage can’t keep her alive through anything. And I still have a lot of power, if I take just a moment away from healing myself.

  But the moment I try, there is a deafening explosion, the sun goes out, and vines erupt from the ground, wrapping themselves around both of us. Pulling us apart and to the ground. These aren’t mine. No. No no no, fuck no! I recognize these. These are the vines of the nexus. He is bringing them here. For me. I slam into the dirt, my real opponent finally appearing to take advantage of my weakness. My inability to flee. Struggling to keep my head up, I spot Riley, hacking at the vines around Lillith with her axe. Based on the way they fall apart on contact, she must be using her void mana as well. That’s not right. Why would the Original Sage attack Lillith if he is using so much authority to keep her alive? It doesn’t matter, she won’t be on his side anymore. She can help me.

  “Please!” I beg, “Kill me! Just fucking end it! I’m not healing anymore, I can’t use the nexus while fighting him alone, I can’t be taken, just kill me now!” I continue to struggle to lift my head, and I see the two women. Lillith has been freed; I guess she is the lower priority. He intends to take me. To make me into . . . I can’t. I would rather die. I will die. I need to die. I will die to Lillith, the so-called demon queen, and I will be spared. Please God, please let me die before he takes me . . .

  I actually see her start to walk toward me again, perfectly willing to comply, but Riley catches her. Stops her. The larger woman points to the east, and the two have a brief disagreement. But, short as it is, it still takes too long. I can feel it. I can feel myself being eaten by the vines. By the Nexus. The Original Sage is going to win. Oh God . . .