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Luka's Story-Paradox	By : Ditmag Category: +M through R > Monster Girl Quest Views: 2709 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Monster Girl Quest Paradox is the intellectual property of Tortorro Restistance. I make no money from this.

Chapter List
- 88
- 89
- 90
Even when I had died, I didn’t feel dead, if that makes sense. Let me elaborate. During the over one thousand years between Ilias intercepting my soul and me ending up on the Paradox world, it felt like a long sleep. Ilias would visit me in my dreams, although I couldn’t remember any specific conversations or visions. I just knew that she had been there and been a mostly comforting presence. Whatever the Dark God had done to me, it felt like truly dying. A million years could have passed. A second could have passed.
But I didn’t actually die. I was needed. It was the story of my life. Someone always needed me, specifically my power, for something. At first I feared that the Dark God had taken my power and then done horrible things with it. I’d been warned that was possible. While my power couldn’t be kept without my consent, if I could be knocked out, it could definitely be stolen and used for a time. But I was still the only true wielder. There were certain things that were beyond even her capabilities, even with my power added to her own. As I found out when I slowly began to regain consciousness.
I couldn’t see anything. I felt that I was still restrained, but I was no longer in a bed. Both arms and legs were inside something…. Squishy. I felt cold metal all over my torso. There were also the sounds, as if I was in an MRI machine. Loud banging. Something would whir to life, but then slowly wind back down. Each time whatever it was came to life, I would feel as if my soul was being yanked out of my body. I’d sag in relief when it stopped. It wasn’t pain in the same sense as…. What? It was so hard to remember. Something bad had happened. The faces of two women I loved flashed through my mind. Alice! Tamamo! But their faces turned into something sinister, cruel… predatory. There was no comfort in thinking about them.
Whatever machine I was hooked up to whirred to life again. My body stretched taut involuntarily. It was a horrible feeling, not physical, but metaphysical, and I was sure I’d never felt anything metaphysical before. Was this what the true hell was like, your soul being tortured rather than your body, since you no longer had a body to torture? Who was doing this to me? Why did they hate me so much?
The machine died down again. The “pain” didn’t last a second beyond the machine shutting down, and the memory of it was impossible to retain. That was a mercy. At least until the machine started up again.
“Darn it! It’s still not working! Why isn’t it working?!”
“We have failed. We have done a great evil for nothing, sister. We should have realized that we could only gain his aid through his free will.”
“We’re too close to give up now!”
“Do as you think best, sister. But should you fail, return him to his world. And let us pray that he doesn’t come back the Child of Judgment. I fear his judgment will be terrible indeed.”
“We could just kill him. He’s completely at our mercy.”
“That is not the Dark God’s will. Keep trying, but once you have exhausted every alternative, return him. I must depart, now. We must begin discussing contingencies.”
“There are no contingencies! This either works, or we die! Whether chaos or judgment claims us, the result is the same! I will not give up!”
There was no further response from the second individual. The voices sounded familiar, and yet I couldn’t place them. Didn’t I love the higher pitched voice? Or did I hate her? I couldn’t remember.
The machine came to life again, with more intensity than before. I didn’t scream audibly, but inside every part of my inner being cried out. It seemed to go on forever, the spiritual pain only becoming more intense, the machine becoming louder and louder. And then it stopped again, the pain and even the memory of the pain gone.
“Shiitake mushrooms!”
I began to come to in a more conscious sense. My eyes opened slowly and my vision became less blurry. Physical pain began to set in. I began to remember what had happened to me before I lost consciousness. Tamamo. I remembered her bloody face, the demonic look in her eyes. Her cruelty. How could she have done such terrible things to me? The merciful, rational part of my brain understood. She had people she loved just like I did, and she would do anything to protect them. But of what worth was love and protectiveness when it was not tempered by any sort of moral compass? I dimly remembered reading a book about a queen who had loved her children so much that she schemed, plotted, and murdered to keep them safe. In the end, she had lost them all, in large part precisely because she was a schemer, and because her lack of basic decency and mercy had been passed down to her son, who had been assassinated because of his cruelty. Cruelty only begets more cruelty. The rational, merciful part of my brain, that part that had ruled my actions my entire life, urged me to pity Tamamo rather than hate her. But another, darker part of me wanted to hurt her the way she had hurt me. The residual pain I was still feeling tipped the balance towards my dark side.
Once I could see well enough, I took in my surroundings, analyzed my situation. I was bandaged up around my torso, with a metal cylinder holding me in place, extending from my chest to just below my waist. The bandages were bloody. I couldn’t see my fingers and toes. They were being held by some kind of techno-organic machinery. It was surprisingly comfortable, as if my limbs were being gently held in place by soft, gooey flesh. The scientific part of my brain, although not in the class of a Promestein, Tamamo, or even an Alice, guessed that they would be as strong as any steel, and probably superior for conductivity. The kind of conductivity needed to leech power out of my body. So that was their plan. I must be strapped into their super weapon and they are trying to extract my power from me. Had they succeeded? Probably not, otherwise they wouldn’t still be trying. They had intended to commit genocide, using me, while I was asleep. It was the greatest violation I had ever experienced. I’d forgiven a lot in my time, but this…. Unforgiveable.
In front of me was a large window. Above the window, I could see a giant turret. That must be the business end of the super weapon. To my horror, in front of me, off in the distance, were two worlds. The weapon must be in subspace. The one below, barely visible unless I craned my neck to look down, was the Paradox world. Since it was in subspace and not literally there, I saw it as I imagined it. A world of lush green, although corrupted by seven rifts spread all over its surface. The world the turret was pointed at was the Angel World. While from actual space the Angel World probably looked very similar to the Paradox world, in subspace my mortal consciousness saw it as a world of bright, pure light and beauty. Then I saw the world slightly above me. It was a red, bloody world, a world of darkness and evil. Monster World. Makai.
I still couldn’t feel my power. But I knew with absolute certainty that it was there, if only because the machine kept on trying to siphon it out of me. As if on queue, the machine spun up again. My body went taut again as my soul screamed. I began to fight it physically. It was futile. The membranes binding my limbs made loud, obscene sounds but only tightened their grip on me as I struggled.
“Luka!” a small, high pitched voice yelled from directly in front of me.
I looked down slightly. Tamamo! Not the evil version, but the Paradox version! She had come for me!
“Tamamo! Get me out of here! They’re trying to do something terrible!”
“I know, Luka!” Tamamo said. “But I’m not actually here physically. I’m just a projection! You’re going to have to get out of this yourself!”
“I can’t!” I protested. “They expelled the spirits from my heart and blinded me to my power! I’m not strong enough to break these bonds!”
“You have to!” Tamamo urged. “Our lives are in your hands!”
“It hurts so much, Tamamo!”
“Think of your loved ones, Luka! We need you! This thing is drawing your power out, isn’t it?”
“I- It sure feels like it!” I gasped, struggling against my bonds and the pain.
“That means you can feel your power! Use it!”
I tried grabbing it but it felt like trying to grab water from a fast moving rapids. Every time I’d get a small amount of it, it would be sucked out by the machine.
“I…. I can’t!” I said. “It’s pulling it out of me too fast! I can’t grip it!”
Little Tamamo was looking up at the turret, the barrel of which was starting to glow with a white light.
“I’ve got an idea, Luka! Do you trust me?”
I looked at Tamamo, so innocent looking despite her ancient nature. Nothing like the fully grown Tamamo who had hurt me so badly and was now trying to use me to kill everyone I loved.
“Always, Tamamo. Tell me what to do.”
“Since you can’t use your power to break out, you’re going to have to overload it. Push, Luka! Give it so much power that the stupid big gun blows up! Then they can’t hurt us with it! Can you do that, Luka? Put all of your love for us into that weapon! Destroy it and then come back to us!”
“I’ll try!”
I steeled myself and, instead of trying to pluck my power from that strong current I started going with it. It was as if instead of trying to grab water from the harsh rapids, I had jumped in and was swimming with it, propelling myself faster and faster, ever faster. The barrel of the super weapon was glowing brightly now.
“Luka, it’s working! Keep doing it! Push harder! You can do it!”
I screamed as I strained with the effort. My determination to save my friends and get back to them drove me to new heights. Suddenly, the huge gun detonated. But it didn’t explode. Instead, a beam of white light blasted out of it, heading towards the Angel World. I looked down at Tamamo again. All innocence was gone from that little face. Her face held a sneer of triumph. She changed into her true form. The form of the woman who had tortured me.
“Congratulations, Luka,” the high pitched voice dropping an octave. “You did it.”
No. This couldn’t be happening. I’d been tricked. Tricked into murdering an entire universe. My dismay turned into rage. The machine was still going, still powering the energy weapon, still drawing my power out of me. The beam was fast, but not instantaneous. It would take a minute to reach the Angel World. There was still time for me to do…. Something.
I hadn’t been able to grab my power from the current, but I had been able to swim with it, to push it even faster. Maybe I could try swimming against it? I began drawing my power back in, trying to depower the weapon.
“What are you doing?!” evil Tamamo demanded to know. “Stop that! Oh, never mind. Knock yourself out, idiot! There’s already enough power in that beam to vaporize Angel World!”
Tamamo was so pleased with herself and blinded by her bloodlust that she wasn’t thinking ahead. Sure, she’d tricked me into firing that weapon at her hated enemies, but she needed me to destroy the Paradox world more. How would she do that now? But that was tomorrow’s problem. Today I had to save the Angel World. The bullet had already left the gun, so to speak. It couldn’t be taken back. The beam grew longer, extending from the weapon and getting ever close to Angel World. Like a phaser in Star Trek.
But did it have to be a phaser? That was obviously what Tamamo had designed it to be similar to, even if she didn’t specifically know what a phaser was, not being a Trekkie. But my mind conceptualized it as a phaser, so a phaser it was, since it used my power to fire. I didn’t want it to be a phaser. I looked again at the three worlds within my view. No, let’s not make it a phaser. Let’s not try to pull it back. Let’s make it something else.
My anger and pain vanished, despite the machine still pulling my power out of me. I became dead calm, serene, as I concentrated on the phaser blast and decided with absolute certainty that reality was whatever I made it. Both the angels and monsters were about to have their own reality altered, and drastically.
Tamamo yelled out in triumph as the beam struck the Angel World. Her cheer turned into confusion when the Angel World didn’t blow up. The beam simply held it in place.
“What did you do!?” Tamamo raged. “Why didn’t it go kablooey?!”
“Because I didn’t want it to,” I replied simply, fixing her with a steely glare. “Does a god need any other reason?”
“Make it do what I designed it to do! This Demiurge is mine! I built it! Me! Those angels are pure evil! Destroy them! Kill them all! Or I’ll unhook you from that machine and do things to you that you can’t even imagine!”
I was no longer afraid. I had decided on my course and as crazy as it was, I would not be swayed from it.
“Tamamo…. Go away. I’m busy here.”
I couldn’t lash out with my power directly. The machine and the seal saw to that. But the Demiurge as she called it was no longer hers. It was mine. I could only use my power through it for the moment, but it was a superweapon. I could make use of it.
I surged power through the machine, redirecting it towards the window. It shattered, exploding out into subspace. The rush of air escaping blew Tamamo outside. Good. She was annoying. Now to really get to work.
What I had done was turned the phaser into a tractor beam. I was glad I’d watched a lot of TV during my life, and read a lot of comic books. If I could make a Captain America shield, I could make a tractor beam. Why not? I directed the traffic beam to pull Angel World towards me. Slowly, ponderously, Angel World began moving towards me. I redirected the gun turret to Makai. I fired the beam. The beam held Makai in place. I began pulling it towards me as well. A third beam extended towards the Paradox world. I began pulling it to a point I had selected. A point where all three worlds would meet.
I was taking a big chance. I needed to concentrate, to truly believe, that what I was doing made sense. That I wouldn’t destroy all three worlds. Souls could merge, couldn’t they? They were once in a single person, so they belonged there. The same concept should apply to universes. They were once all one. Why couldn’t they be one again? I was simply restoring things to how they should have been.
The three worlds collided. The collision wasn’t violent. There was no mass destruction and death. Instead, they mixed together, embraced, as if they were long lost relatives eager to be together again. A trinity,three parts that were always meant to be a whole, returning to its true nature. When I was finished, the three worlds had become one.
It was the most beautiful world I had ever seen. Since subspace appeared to the mortal viewer as the mortal mind could process it, I knew that part of its appearance was simply how I wished to perceive it. But there was more to it than that. I had created it. One world from three. My creation could never be anything but beautiful to me.
Satisfied, I shut the machine down. I was on a winning streak. That winning streak ended abruptly. Shutting down the machine yanked it back into to real space. Daylight streamed through the broken window as the Demiurge began to free fall. I wasn’t very far up. The Demiurge’s default altitude must have been about as high as Alicetroemeria and I had seen it when it had passed over us. If I was over a populated area…. Even if I wasn’t, something this large impacting the planet would have devastating consequences. Had I saved worlds only to destroy them?
I reached for my power. It was there, waiting for me to call upon it like an old friend. The merger of the three worlds must have broken the worldwide seal. Okay then. I felt free, freeer and more powerful than I ever had. Time to save the world twice in one day.
There was no keeping the Demiurge in the air. Despite my power, I was mortal. I would tire eventually. I had to control its descent, make sure it came down gently, and not over any populated areas. The latter part was easy. I could see below me that I was about where the Makai Tartarus had been, on the Hellgondo continent. Since the Tartarus rift had once occupied that space, it was completely uninhabited, a wasteland. So that part was already taken care of for me. Now I just had to slow this thing down from free fall so that it didn’t create an extinction level event.
Levitation I knew. I hadn’t been good at it, but I realized that I’d better get good quick. I unleashed my power to its fullest, surrounding the Demiurge and trying to push it back upwards, away from the ground. I knew I wouldn’t succeed in reversing its fall. I didn’t want to reverse its fall. I wanted to slow it down. It worked. I felt the g forces as the Demiurge’s descent slowed. I just had to pray that it would be enough. I chuckled inwardly, wondering which gods would hear me now that these worlds had all been merged into one.
The impact was rough, but not catastrophic. The soft membranes holding me in place protected my body, absorbing most of the impact of the landing. The super weapon itself didn’t fare as well. The Demiurge suffered massive damage when it impacted the ground. Machinery and computers fell everywhere. Fires began to start. If I hadn’t cut the power to the Demiurge, I’m sure there would have been all sorts of alarms going off.
With another surge of power, I broke the bonds around my limbs. The steel cylinder around my torso didn’t break in such satisfying fashion, so I simply crawled out of it, falling to the ground like a sack of potatoes. Ouch. I’d put my hand out to break my fall, noticing too late that it was the hand missing a finger. I got to my feet, feeling the pain of my missing big toe. My missing nipple wasn’t making me feel very good either. I needed to get back to my friends. I needed healing, badly. I went to climb out the broken window.
I sighed in frustration. The Demiurge was buried partially under the soil. It hadn’t blasted a crater, so the world was probably safe, but it had burrowed pretty deep. I could see a little sunlight at the very top of the window, but there wasn’t enough space for me to climb out. Well, this was a large facility. I just needed to get upstairs and hopefully there would be an exit up top. If not, I’d make my own. Far easier than trying to blast through tons of soil.
I left the room I had been in, to find a hallway going in two directions. Not having any idea which way to go, I chose left at random. The place really did look like the Death Star, although rather than the cold metal of that fictional weapon, there were also organic, biological elements to it. I wasn’t sure I liked the smell. Most of the biological matter lay strewn on the ground, squishing under my feet as I limped through the facility. Debris was everywhere. It looked like it would be awhile before this weapon was good for anything. Assuming it wasn’t a total loss. I rooted for total loss. Maybe once I got outside I should make sure of it.
I found an elevator. Ah, that’s what I wanted. Except there was no power. There had to be stairs nearby. Yes, there were. I chuckled at the sign saying to use the stairs in case of fire. Makai was an almost totally unregulated world, but even the super weapons had fire safety signs.
I climbed the stairs, several floors up. The last flight led to a door to another part of the facility. Having no better idea of where to go, I pushed it open. A long hallway led to another door. There was no other place to go, so I opened it.
I’d evicted Tamamo from her prized weapon, but I still wasn’t alone. Held by bonds similar to mine were two angels, barely conscious. I rushed over to them and worked to free them. The first angel, emaciated, with untreated wounds all over her body, fell into my arms. Feeling contact with my body, she began to struggle weakly.
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” I whispered. “You’re safe now.”
“Y-You’re a man!” she said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
“I was held prisoner here, just like you. C’mon, help me get the other one free. We’re getting out of here.”
With the help of the angel I’d freed, who called herself Mariah, we managed to cut her fellow angel loose. She also reacted in panic at first, but relaxed when she saw that she was among friends. I looked around the room. It appeared to be some sort of lab.
“What is this place?” I asked. “What were they doing to you here?”
“It’s a lab,” Mariah answered. “Tamamo has been conducting experiments on us. She’s been researching chaos. Most of the time she was using those devices we were being held by to leech out our holy power for her experiments. Other times…. She did much worse to us.”
Tamamo was even more monstrous than I had even imagined. I’d thought her torture of me was something unusual, even for her, driven by her need to protect those she loved. But apparently I wasn’t her first. She’d been taking angels, probably prisoners of war from the rebellion, and performing inhumane experiments on them. At that moment I truly felt like the Child of Judgment. And Tamamo needed judgment.
But for now, two angels needed saving. I asked them if there were more prisoners in the facility. They had no idea. The second angel, Willow, said that there had once been more of them, but she didn’t know if they were dead or had just been moved. I didn’t have time to fully explore the facility. We needed to get out. I’d come back with my friends to see if we could find anymore survivors.
“How well do you know this place?” I asked them.
“We’ve been moved around from time to time, from lab to lab,” Mariah answered. “I think I’ve seen a lot of it, but it’s so big… I really don’t know.”
“Is there a higher point? I can get us out if we can just get higher.”
“I… I think so. This lab is actually lower than the last one I was in. They brought me down here on an elevator.”
“Okay, that means there will be stairs, too. Do you think you two can climb a few flights of stairs?”
“If it’ll get us out of here, we’ll climb a thousand flights,” Willow replied.
“Good. Let’s go.”
“Is she…?” Mariah asked.
“Tamamo? I don’t know. I pushed her into subspace, but I think she can get back here pretty easily. That’s why we need to move fast. She’s going to be very angry if she finds us.”
“Can you defeat her? You don’t look too good yourself.”
“I don’t really know,” I admitted. “But I have powerful friends that can help us. If we can get to them, or they can get to us… we have a chance.”
“Please… I can’t take anymore!” Mariah pleaded. “The things she did to me…. The pain! I used to never feel pain, but then when Ilias died my divinity started to fade…”
“I know, I know,” I said soothingly. “I know healers. We’ll all feel better soon. I promise. Let’s get to the top.”
We got turned around once, but eventually Mariah found the elevator that she had been brought down to that particular lab in, which led me to the stairs. We painfully climbed up several fights, until once again they ended in a door. We stepped through the door, which exited into a room.
The room was gigantic and seemed to be a type of control center. There were stacks of servers. It looked like a Google server farm. Emergency lights were the only illumination. The angels shivered in fear. The room was claustrophobic despite its size, due to all the server racks restricting visibility. If someone was in here, an ambush would be a simple thing to pull off.
The three of us cautiously picked our way through, stepping over fallen machines and wires and debris. It was good that I cut the power, because otherwise the room would have been extremely dangerous. As it was, we risked tripping and cutting ourselves on jagged metal and glass.
We heard a loud boom. “What was that?!” Willow asked, voice quavering.
We heard it again. Louder this time. “I think we’d better hurry up,” I said.
We began moving faster through the debris. Mariah cried out as a sharp piece of metal sliced open her leg. But she kept moving. She had strong motivation to escape. I couldn’t even imagine. I’d been tortured once. They had been tortured for how long? Weeks? Months? Years? Tamamo had to pay for her crimes. No matter what her motivations, love didn’t do the kinds of things she had done. There were certain lines that should never be crossed no matter who you were trying to save.
The booms grew louder as we rushed through the server farm, cutting and bruising ourselves on jagged pieces of metal and glass. I prayed that the sounds we were hearing weren’t explosions. If the Demiurge was blowing up in a cascade of explosions, we had very little time, and even getting out might not save us.
Wait a minute, why not teleport? I’m so stupid! I thought. Then I realized…. I was no longer on the Paradox world. Or even the Monster World. There were no familiar places for me to teleport to anymore. It was a brand new world, one made of three. I had no idea where anything was anymore. Damn. Well, if it turned out that the place was exploding, I’d try it anyway. Nothing to lose in that case. But for now, the wisest course was to get out the old fashioned way. We continued on.
We heard a deafening boom right above us. Then the ceiling caved in. A large golden form dropped from the ceiling and landed on the floor. Oh, crap.
Tamamo looked none the worse for wear from getting thrown out into subspace. All I’d done was piss her off royally. She looked at me with rage in her eyes. The angels screamed and cowered behind me.
“No!” Mariah cried. “I can’t go back there! Please!”
“No worries, little angels,” Tamamo said grimly. “Your hero broke my weapon. I have no use for you anymore. Just watch while I tear him limb from limb and then I’ll kill you two nice and quick. You’ve earned a merciful death for your service.”
“No one’s dying here!” I said. “Well…. We aren’t, anyway. You I make no guarantees.”
I unleashed my power at her. The angels screamed as servers went flying. Tamamo disappeared from view. I knew she wasn’t dead. I was feeling too weak for that. But I’d definitely given her a piece of my mind. Let her pick that out of her teeth, if she still had any.
“We need to move!” I ordered.
Nodding, Willow and Mariah followed me as I raced to the other side of the room. There was a door there. Hopefully we were at the top of the facility. Maybe I should try blasting my way out now? No, if there were more floors above us I’d just bring the whole place down on our heads. I needed to be sure.
“You’re really starting to cheese my noodles!” Tamamo said from behind us.
“Mariah, Willow!” I yelled. “Run for the door! If you can find a way out, get out! Don’t wait for me!”
They didn’t have to be told twice. While they ran, I faced Tamamo, staring at her down the row of servers that still stood. Now she did look pretty beat up.
“Do you even realize what you’ve done?” Tamamo said in a low voice, advancing slowly. “You’ve doomed us all! Now we all die together!”
“Or we live together!” I countered. “Now we’re all in the same boat. There’s no world that you can destroy to stop the chaos except the one you’re standing on, right now. So let’s stop fighting and start working on defeating Black Alice!”
“Ever the peacemaker,” she laughed sarcastically. “Even now, you want to work with me rather than kill me.”
“Oh, I’ll kill you,” I said. “But we both have bigger fish to fry. As much as I want to slowly strangle you right now, we have a greater enemy. We don’t have time for this.”
“All we’ve got in our time left is to do this! You have passed a death sentence on everything I hold dear! The only consolation I have is that I get to make you suffer for it before we all pass into oblivion!”
With a roar of rage, Tamamo charged at me, leaping and spinning in midair. A huge fireball surged from her tails,exploding server racks as it passed through the room. I put up my usual energy shield to absorb it. She expected that, however. She just wanted to get to me, to tear me apart with her bare hands. Hands that had razor sharp nails.
Those nails scratched my sides as her jaws sunk into my shoulder. She was fighting bestially, driven wild by her rage. I knew that she would tear me apart and eat my flesh once I was defeated. The wounds she inflicted were painful, but I wasn’t strapped to a bed anymore, helpless. This was a fight. I knew how to fight. Adrenaline masked the pain enough for me to retaliate. With a power infused fist, I punched her in the gut. Her earth power was no protection from my kind of power. She doubled over. A knee to her skull knocked her flat.
She swept my leg, putting me on the ground as well. She sprang up quickly and picked me up by my neck. With a roar she flung me into nearby server racks. The impact nearly broke my back. Shards of glass were sticking out of my back as I got to my feet and tried to blast her again. I missed. She wasn’t there anymore.
She reappeared behind me, slashing my back open with her claws. Her teeth sunk into my face. The way she was fighting was horrible, but in her anger she was fighting less effectively than she otherwise would have. That gave me a chance.
Despite the pain, I flipped her onto her back, part of my face going with her. I felt the side of head. My ear was gone. Tamamo was already back up. She hit me with an earth powered fist. I felt as if my chest had been caved in. Without Gnome, I had no protection from her physical attacks. If I hadn’t been an Earth man, I probably already would have been pulverized.
Wait, I knew what it was like to have the spirits! I had access to my power! That meant I could mimick the spirits! I hadn’t done it in a long time, not since Ariana, but it could be done!
“Gnome!” I said. “Lend me your power!”
Tamamo’s fist was already on its way to my jaw. It landed hard. I didn’t budge.
“Ow!” she cried, holding onto her first with her other hand.
My shadow Angel Halo was in my hand in an instant. I viciously slashed her. She cried out again and retreated. That had sobered her up quickly. I could see that she was preparing to use magic. I couldn’t let that happen. I blasted her with my power again. It was even weaker than the first one I hit her with, but it hurt her and broke her concentration. She had quick spells, though. As my shadow sword came down to finish the job of sealing her, she summoned up a dark sword of her own, blocking it.
Screaming, she slashed at me again and again. Tamamo was a skilled swordswoman, but sword use wasn’t even among her top ten abilities. She was not In my class. I parried her attacks easily and countered with small strikes of my own. She was growing steadily weaker, more clumsy. The tide had turned. Her defeat was certain. I should seal her.
I didn’t want to seal her. I wanted to hurt her. Sealing would be painful, but once sealed, the pain would end. I wanted her to feel what I had felt.
Her sword had dissipated, her concentration broken. I dispelled my own sword. She had just gotten back to her feet when I leveled her with a massive, power-infused right hook. She still had fight in her, though. Always able to spring back up no matter how badly she was hurt, she hurtled at me with her own magic infused punch. I actually felt it, my head snapping back. She hit me again and again. The punches hurt, but between my shadow earth spirit and her weakness due to my shadow sword, no real damage was being done. She was done being able to hurt me. Now it was her turn to suffer.
Or so I thought. Never underestimate the resourcefulness of an Ancestor, especially a genius like Tamamo. Not that what she did next was particularly brilliant. It was an obvious, dirty move, but effective nonetheless. I screamed as her fingers dug into my breast wound.
That did it. I infused as much power as I could into my fist and punched her in the nose. Her nose broke, blood spraying everywhere. This time she went down and didn’t get up right away. I hit her again. She went all the way down, falling onto her back. I mounted her and began raining punches down on her. Her face was turning into a bloody pulp. I still didn’t stop. All of my pain and rage, not just for myself, but for those poor angels, for all the people she’d tried to kill, went into my fists. This wasn’t revenge. It was justice.
And then I stopped. She was barely conscious, but her face was defiant. She was daring me to finish her. What did she have to lose? She thought she was dead anyway due to what I had done. She didn’t see that I had given all three worlds hope, not death. We could still win.
“What are you waiting for?” she said through a mouth nearly empty of teeth. “Just trying to make me suffer more? Looks like we’re more alike than you’d like to admit.”
It wasn’t her words that stopped me. It was her face. It reminded me of another Tamamo, one who had been horribly disfigured by someone like me. Daniel’s motives had been almost understandable, just like Tamamo’s in torturing me. He had been attacked out of nowhere, by Six Ancestors who feared him. He had reacted with deadly force and had sent Tamamo back as a message. But that kind of brutality was never justified. Not if you wanted to be able to look at yourself in the mirror.
“Luka, stop!” I heard little Tamamo say behind me. “You’ll kill her!”
“I’ve already stopped,” I said. “It’s over.”
I got up and walked away from evil Tamamo. Little Tamamo stood over her, considering for a moment. I knew that look. It wasn’t that she didn’t want evil Tamamo dead. She just didn’t want me to have to live with it. Little Tamamo’s tails swished threateningly. I turned away. It was her decision. I wasn’t going to stick my neck out for someone so evil.
More of my friends streamed into the room. Alice caught me as I stumbled. “Oh my goddess! What did they do to you!?”
“Goddess?” Ilias asked. “Is there something you want to tell me, Alice?”
“Never mind,” Alice replied. “That was Ariana talking. This scenario is very familiar to her. Now would you shut up and start making him better?!”
Little Tamamo was still standing over evil Tamamo’s prone form. The moment seemed to have passed. She apparently wasn’t going to kill her. Evil Tamamo, realizing that, got to her feet. She fixed her cold eye, the one that wasn’t shut completely, on me.
“I hate you. I hate you! You’ve destroyed everything I care about! You should have just killed me!” she raged. “Mark my words, hero. The suffering I gave you was nothing! You haven’t even learned the meaning of suffering! My sisters and I will see this world burn before it falls into chaos! Do you hear me, Luka! Everyone, everything you love! It’s all going to burn! And you with it!”
“You can shut all the way up!” Little Tamamo said, wrapping a tail around evil Tamamo’s neck. Evil Tamamo was too weak to free herself. She gagged and gasped as little Tamamo’s tail tightened around her neck. With one final croak, she collapsed. Little Tamamo withdrew her tail.
“Tamamo, is she?” I asked.
“Dead? No,” little Tamamo answered. “Not that she doesn’t deserve it. I just don’t want her merging with me. As dangerous as she is, death would only make her more dangerous. I was never this bad, Luka. But I was pretty bad. I still have that darkness within me. I can’t afford to have her as part of me yet.”
“Do you think if you merged that she would be dominant?” Alice asked.
“Dominant? No,” Tamamo answered. “Her mind is weak. Mother always said I was impressionable, and she was right. I did evil because others did evil. Only I did it better, because I wanted to be the best. I wanted to please mother. I’m stronger now. I would completely dominate her. But she’d always be that devil on my shoulder, making me want to do things I should never do again. I’ve never fully repented for those crimes. I still think about some of them and smile. It would be all too easy to tempt me back into evil. Except it wouldn’t be her doing it. She’d just be that devil on my shoulder. The actual person doing those horrible things would be me.”
“So what now? Can we even hold her prisoner?” I asked.
“We leave her here,” Tamamo said. “It will take some time for her to heal as badly as you’ve beaten her up. Let her sisters recover her. We’re about to have big problems.”
“What exactly did you do, Luka?” Alice asked. “The geography. The Tartarus that was here! It’s all changed!”
“Three became one,” Tamamo said.
“I don’t understand.”
“I do,” Ilias interjected. “Somehow he merged our world and the two opposing worlds. But that means…”
“War,” Tamamo finished.
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Luka's Story-Paradox