The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Six: Eddelin City]

Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.

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Cyk’nl loomed smokily overhead, like a hangover. Ahead of Jen, the tan expanse framing Xadrez rippled, cracked in a few places, and in blotches was replaced by a patch of Cyk’nl wall on which she recognised the tactician’s carvings she’d interrupted.

The spirit nodded with satisfaction, pulled out his dagger, and set to work. Jen’s slow approach was chided by a hiss from Fanthalion, but she kept walking until the Bio Wyrm’s protests were quelled. The air tanned as Jen got closer, watching the intensely effortless way Xadrez mapped the Observer’s destruction through the air.

The knife seemed to arc not only across Cyk’nl stone that blossomed beneath it, but with the Ovoid’s subtle guidance, through four-space as well.

Until Jen got a little too close, and the dagger’s impossible edge smacked her in the arm. Xadrez’ grip on it had been loose, and it glanced off the girl and skittered down the deserted Hydresther plaza. The ghost was absolutely still as he watched Jen appraise the perfect slit in the shoulder of her jacket, letting her deal with that before the jade figurine rumbled.

I appreciate your deigning to ask this time your highness before borrowing my knife for your own ends

but you do understand it is still rather inconvenient when I am in the middle of

When I

When I am preoccupied

The last of the tan, still prickling at the edges of Jen’s vision, melted away with an irritable little twitch of Xadrez’ head. Glancing about him, the tactician seemed to notice for the first time the cage of walls the Ovoid had sprouted around him. Jen went and fetched his dagger, passing it under a chunk of brickwork that was, in some defiance of gravity, suspended by one brick to a mucky, Ovoid-induced meld with a basalt slab.

Xadrez glanced around his calculations, possibly uncertain, then cut through a few of them and drifted his way out. He studied the mess of rock, more than a little perturbed, blinked, jammed the knife into the palm of his hand and offered it to Jen.

"I don’t need it. Thanks, though. I guess.”

An irked protest was forthcoming, but interrupted by an all-too-familiar ripple through the landscape as Cyk’nl snagged on the first couple of towers. The darting silhouettes of copbred and their mounts could be seen against the backdrop of the floating city’s failing engines. Xadrez studied the city, trying to ascertain where it would settle, before drifting off in that direction. Jen bit her lip, before tossing her chess piece at the retreating tactician. It didn’t bounce off his back, instead kind of jamming in there until Xadrez stuck his hand through his chest. His unconcerned air fully replaced by irritation now, the spirit yanked the jade figurine right out and spun round slowly to glare at Jen.

“Xadrez, those are two cities. Being demolished. I want you to do something about it.”

The spirit appraised Jen for a long moment, before drifting off. He surmised the Ovoid dragged Cyk’nl to Hydresther because there was something important for Xadrez to find, perhaps to destroy Kracht or exploit the Observer. Either way, he planned to find it.

An uncomfortably familiar click echoed behind him. Jen sported a furious expression, which would’ve merely been annoying to Xadrez were she not also sporting a cocked claw like the marlcop’s.

Xadrez wearily approached Jen, pulling out his knife and prodding her in the forehead with it. She retaliated with a pincer to the gut, and Fanthalion snaked her way out from between Jen’s shoulder blades and snarled a warning in the tactician’s face. Ignoring the Bio-Worm, Xadrez afforded the loaded claw only one glance before starting his spiel.

if you continue to interrupt my plans to destroy the Observer the destruction of two cities will be nothing

I realised this when the option was presented to launch Sk’Va into space

If I had refrained from killing Kracht then I would at this point state Maxwell would be with us were his singular life of any particular merit in the grander scheme of things

were if I to adopt your kind’s mannerisms of what you uncharitably refer to when you dislike instances of it as hypocrisy and put aside the fact I thought we just agreed upon that the cities and civilisations of a multiverse are greater than two cities which are greater in turn than the life of a dead boy and his worm

humouring you and doing even that

consider your highness the fact confirmed to me now that this is not the only battle

Cykn’l and Hydresther are not the only civilisations suffering under the Grandmasters’ tyranny

note there I rail against the plural, not the singular

Consider this duumvirate consider the chaos it is sowing across all worlds and tell me

its destruction

is not worthwhile

Xadrez finally acknowledged Fanthalion by swatting at her with the knife. In retrospect, he’d earned the consequent swirling hole in his midriff. He counted to twenty, shouldered his dagger, and tossed Jen her chess piece back. She caught it in her normal hand, thumb running over the copper-cable Worm coiled around the statuette.

That was improper of me, your highness

my apologies

but I thought with your own nation to protect from being Grandmasters’ playthings you would understand my ambitions

For how can you be so assured a city from another multiverse is not falling upon the capital of the Place as we speak

“If that was going down, Moses would’ve told me.”

Is this Moses your most faithful servant and friend

Jen nodded. She didn’t like where Xadrez was going with this.

How do you know his failure to alert you of eight or however many other warriors destroying your palace is not because he is preoccupied fighting for his life beneath the ravaged screaming skies of Chartevael

“Because then I wouldn’t be stuck in this bullshit and I’d be off and rescuing him. I know you like mathing things out or whatever, Xeddy, but things work differently for me. Different set of rules.”

Million

no billion in one chances like yourself like to think that

roguish little odds thinking perversely self-significant that they are too insignificant for the rules to apply

You will dance across my board like the rest of them

loath as I am to say it Kracht’s until-now perpetual victories are proof of that

Three clicks punctuated the air. Xadrez clutched the side of his face; had he the facial features, he would’ve been smirking.

There, your highness spat Xadrez.

now I believe you finally understand how I feel

My friend

Prior to recent developments there were reasonable odds for another explanation

but the confirmation that there are other battles that time relative within a universe has no bearing upon time in this wider space this multiverse that this situation is not anomalous through this space

it leaves me certain my friend, my liege, was kidnapped also

and the one responsible for that tore apart my world my liege’s world far beyond what they could have predicted

Heaven the ether bled and I was swept back to a place I had long-abandoned in favour of my liege’s side

these Grandmasters ripped out the tandem heart that which gave my world order and beauty in rules I could with patience discern

and now that I know without doubt it was indeed their doing their appetite for an improbable blend of blood mixed upon earth far from where it should’ve if ever warranting the torture of an entire world

I cannot forgive them

The initial vicious satisfaction in Xadrez’ words faded, to something flat and empathic and sullenly, implacably anchored in a sea of chance. The sheer solitude of it was enough to make Jen shiver.

Her arm lowered, chitin unknitting itself and fingers reforming beneath. Xadrez just floated there, the dagger dangling in one hand while the other covered the gaping hole in his face. She wasn’t sure what to say other than an awkward and downright useless apology, so Xadrez ventured one instead.

I regret my outburst, Jennifer

and the underhanded tactics I employed, emotional appeal being something I hardly see fit to use

I hope there is understanding, even if it warrants neither forgiveness or assistance in my task