บท 16: Teatime with the Dark Mistress
*Knock-Knock-Knock*
When Desmond knocked the stone forehead of the statue and infused the statue of the goddess with his essence, he fell forwards into a world not his own.
His stomach lurched forwards, while his neck rocked backwards, and he suddenly found himself in an oddly familiar setting. In a span of time slightly faster than the speed of thought, the marchen had been torn from conventional reality and brought to a place that lay somewhere between the realm of concrete objects and the realm of concepts. A place infinitely close to the endless void and backstage areas of all creation.
He looked around and felt a sense of nostalgia. It was a strange feeling to have when one considered that he actually couldn't remember exactly when he was last somewhere similar. Perhaps it was simply all just due to the fact that the words "cold, dark, and deep" had the same womb-like connotations for beings born within the shadows, as the words "warm, soft, and moist" had for those born within the light.
Desmond rolled his shoulders and felt his entire body being pressed upon by a familiar crushing pressure. The pressure was so extreme it could turn coal into diamonds and a normal man into a shapeless red smear.
For Desmond however, it was a comfortable feeling. The pressure honed him like flames hone metal, making his bones creak, forcing his flesh and muscle into a continuous rigor. Within this pressure his darkness became ten times darker, and his light had to flare brighter than ever before to keep from being overwhelmed.
While Desmond was sure his host had meant to use this pressure to cow him, for tintenklopfers like him, beings known for napping within the hearts of dark stars, this kind of environment was a gift.
After a few minutes of walking aimlessly Desmond discovered a path, a white road paved with shattered bones and old sea shells. On a whim, he sprouted three extra sets of legs for himself, growing them from his back and shoulders. Then he traveled as a man-spider, scuttling up the road while whistling a jaunty tune.
He eventually found the estate of the space's owner. The estate was located behind a wall of steel, jade, and powdered pearl.
After reverting back to his default form, Desmond craned his neck upwards, looking over the wall's top and saw a palace not unlike the palace within his own inner world. The only difference was that his palace had a few less towers, lacked the under-the-sea motif, and wasn't covered in countless gaudy gemstones.
Near the center of the north wall was a gate, and past this gate was a long winding path where the bones and stones were replaced with an ominous purple metal. Poisonous for both body and mind.
Desmond looked at the path and smiled, aware that this was yet another form of harassment from his host. If he were an ordinary being his powers would have been restrained, and he'd have been forced to walk that path and hope that his willpower kept him alive long enough for him to meet with the demon waiting on the other end.
Fortunately, instead of having magic, he 'was' magic. His power was his own, and seeing that the other party had no interest in being polite, Desmond decided that he wouldn't be polite either.
Before doing anything else, Desmond took a breather to enjoy the environment and make use of a few preparations he'd made for the coming moments. He drank several of the more important potions that he'd had Monday running around buying the ingredients for. Then he triggered several spells that he'd cast before the hunt even began. Letting them build up a suitable charge till the moment was right.
It was only after he'd finished with these preparations that Desmond dared cast his will across the space, and proceeded to cover the entire area with his marchen's aura, following this up by forcefully bringing the space into his influence.
According to the rules of decorum that higher-entities followed, it was bad enough to scan another's inner-space without permission. In much the same way that having a kiss on the cheek turn into an unwelcome kiss on the mouth with tongue, asserting one's influence on other's space was taking things to a whole other level of offense.
The closest human equivalent would be breaking into someone's house, going through their things, kicking their dog, bullying their kids, seducing all their spouses, and then being cheeky enough to attempt to change the ownership title for the house itself afterwards.
It was basically marking the other person's soul as if it were your own, or as if you were planning to make that other person fall completely under your dominion. A truly audacious move, that would incite even the most peaceful of beings to violence.
The moment Desmond had finished doing so, the whole space shook, the air growing gloomier and more heavy as a soul-rattling roar issued out from the palace.
Desmond chuckled glad to see that he'd gotten exactly the response he'd wanted. Then he used the mental map he'd created while he was busy getting a rise out of his host to teleport himself onto the grounds of the palace.
A single step would take Desmond from the gate of the estate to a garden behind its palace. In one smooth motion he turned around, swept off his hat and gave his host a courtly bow.
"Greetings, my lady." said Desmond.
"Hmph, Impudent…" said the owner of the space. A beautiful, woman with a head that was slightly too large and skin that seemed to ripple and pulse.
She glared at Desmond with odd, long pupiled, eyes. Her nostrils flaring, her expression haughty and wrathful.
Desmond pretended not to notice the woman's irritation with his presence. Welcoming her ire just like flowers welcomed the sun. He smiled at her, walking towards the table she was sitting at, and conjured a seat for himself after she'd failed to invite him to sit.
"Hello, my name is Midnight, lord of lost nights and forgotten mornings, knocker in the dark. It's a pleasure to make your, acquaintance, Madame."
The woman sniffed, rolling her eyes because she knew exactly what Desmond was up and why he'd more or less forced his way into her demesne.
"I am Akkorokamui, Duchess of the 472nd Frozen Hell, Leader of 30,000 dark legions. Dark Goddess of Poisonous Love, Sunken Treasures, and Fleeting Beauty. Before I kill you, I would like to ask- just for the sake of my own curiosity, you see- what exactly it is you think is going to happen here." said Akkorokamui.
Desmond laughed. Ignoring the woman's stated intention of killing him.
"Well, my dear Madame Akky, I have come to make a deal with you."
"Ak-, Akky?....A deal what kind of deal do you think you can make with me, insect? Anything of yours that I want I can take from your corpse once you've died. Anything you know that I don't know will be revealed after I've flayed your puny soul and drained it of its memories." said Akkorokamui. Quickly recovering from a fluster and sneering as she responded to Desmond's cocky demeanor.
"Wait, wait, wait!...Before you do anything hasty, you really should hear me out first. I swear it's a 'really', good, deal." said Desmond. Holding one hand over the other in the universal symbol for time-out.
"Tch...Fine, what is this 'deal'?" said Akkorokamui. Crossing her arms and looking peeved.
"You leave this place, you leave this world, and you leave behind the world-core that you are using to support your hold on this place, and I promise not to kill you." said Desmond. Smiling brightly, like a child that had just used the contents of their diaper to make 'art' all over the living room walls and was now fully expecting to be praised for it.
Akkorokamui's face went blank, slackening till her face stopped looking like that of a human woman's. Then her face went dark, the female visage returning and taking on a furious expression.
"Kuh...Bastard!" roared the demon-goddess.
A bellow echoed out, shaking both the goddess' space and the world outside. Desmond smiled, still grinning like a fool as he found himself hurtling out of the palace, out of the goddess' dark realm. He hurtled through the distorted realm's sky. His body moved fast enough through the air to actually catch fire.
The whole realm shook when he finally he hit the ground, landing on the far end of the town and flattening the area around him like a meteor.
A pall of silence fell as the goddess' statue shattered, and a quivering tower of flesh arose from within the pieces. The statute turned to smoke, and the smoke turned to several hundred thousand tons of muscles, stingers, and moist, quivering, flesh.
It took a five full minutes for Akkorokamui to emerge from her inner-world but when she did, she did so a fifty-story tall nautilus. It shell was made up of bones and an ominous purples metal, and its fleshy parts had taken on a vaguely humanoid form.
The creature roared and the entire world shook from the sound of it. Then with great thunderous steps Akkorokamui charged over to the crater where Desmond lay and began to pummel him with her countless tentacles.
Her tentacles moving through space sounded like cannon fire. Each blow they landed was powerful enough to turn a mountain into gravel.
With thousands of the tentacles firing out of the demonic nautilus' shell with each passing second, the air was soon filled with great plumes of dust that covered the sun and bathed the world in shadow.
This was just the moment that Desmond was waiting for, his pre-hunt research on the dark goddess paying off, right off the bat.
Desmond had expected to have to wait a little longer, but sometimes things went horribly wrong in just the right moment.
Falling down the stairs and breaking one's leg on the morning before one was supposed to be sent out as cannon-fodder by the clan. Having the carriage breakdown just as someone was trying to drive off with it. Having your husband leave you for a prettier woman, right before his mortal enemy sends assassins to slay him in bed. Getting caught for pick-pocketing, right when some scary uncles you owed money to were about to snatch you off the street and sell you.
Sometimes things went terribly wrong in just the right moment. Just as a fire from the east could put out a fire from the west, two calamities could sometimes bring about a miracle.
In much the same way, Desmond found his luck taking a double turn. Turning for the worse and then turning for the better again.
Mid-way through the beating Akkorokamui was administering he'd started to worry that his preparations wouldn't be able to save him. The potions were meant to boost the healing-factors within his blood. The spells were meant to augment the protections on his body and soul, and help him stay conscious throughout the beating.
Like anything worth doing in the distorted realms, there was an element of gambling involved with his plan. He'd been betting that he could hold out against the dark goddess' blows long enough for the environment to change into one that he could exploit.
For a second things were looking grim, it looked like Desmond had lost his bet, and his body and soul were about to be pummeled into nothing, but right as all his measures seemed to be about to give way, his inner-marchen returned in full.
Normally, being a greater-marchen out in the distorted realms was a very bad thing. The abundant materia, or magical energy, of the distorted realm was very beneficial for him as a being made of magic, but being amongst all that magic also turned the boy into a beacon. His scent wafting through the realms and drawing the attention of countless beings, for whom the body and soul of a greater-marchen would serve as a great panacea and cultivation booster.
Fortunately, for Desmond he had the goddess present, acting as a big, angry, umbrella for him to hide under. Her suffocating presence and domineering aura would keep most other beings away for a time, and by the time the bigger entities caught hold of Desmond's scent he would either be dead having been killed by Akkorokamui, or he'd be long gone having taken his plunder and fled like a bandit.
Do note, that all of this wasn't entirely by chance, Desmond had held a sense for the timing of when his inner-marchen would return. He had wanted to be finished with the hunt before that happened, but he'd also known that he'd be more or less safe so long as he found the goddess before his inner-marchen woke up. With the awakening of his inner-marchen even turning into a boon if it happened at the right time.
As luck would have it, Desmond's calculations were close enough to the mark to save him. Right when he was about to reduced to naught but an inert red smear his inner-marchen returned, gathering the shadows to him, and gathering the sunlight that was hidden behind the clouds of dust.
The young named Desmond Aldrich was converted from a man into a singularity. His entire body became a swirling black hole that swallowed up everything within its reach.
Cars, benches, bodies, and dumpsters. Buildings, concrete, bedrock, and soil. It didn't matter whether the items were bolted down or not. Everything that was in the black and white vortex's influence was thoroughly consumed. Including a few hundred of the dark goddess' tentacles.
Akkorokamui reeled, bellowing in pain, the fleshly portions of her monstrous body contorted in outrage.
With a sound like a thousand waves crashing across a thousand shores, and a sound like a thousand young maidens being ravished by a thousand lusty demons, the demonic goddess began to chant. Switching from physical attacks to magical attacks.
The great sea of materia that presided over the distorted realms began to surge. The magical energy within the realm growing infinitely dense with each passing second, as Akkorokamui gathered more and more power for her spell.
The black hole that had once been Desmond Aldrich showed no qualms on the matter, consuming the energy that flowed into the realm as well as much of the realm itself. Not stopping at swallowing the physical materials that made up the realm, but also swallowing the time-space continuum within the realm as well.
Akkorokamui's spell was loosed and from out of nowhere appeared a grand circle of thunderheads, the dark clouds piled higher than mountains. A great storm was summoned, with great swirling winds that devastated whatever had remained of the town after Desmond had 'eaten' most of it.
Thunder boomed, and the sky was made by great dragon-like bolts of lightning that smashed down turning everything they touched into nothingness.
Akkorokamui continued chanting out of the clouds came hails. Great arrows of frozen purple poison, the size of skyscrapers.
They hurtled towards the living singularity with a speed that turned the surrounding air into fire and opened rifts to the void in their wake. When they smashed into the black and white orb, it should have released enough force to dwarf that of a small nuclear bomb.
Instead the big bangs, were turned into small whispers. The arrows hit Desmond and were immediately swallowed up. Arrow after arrow fell and was swallowed up. Bolts of lightning struck Desmond and he swallowed those too.
Enraged, the dark goddess designed to use a spell that would likely destroy the entire realm and several of its nearest neighbors calling out with a voice that was simultaneously seductive and overwhelmingly terrifying. Like a sea floor when the tide dips ultra-low right before a tsunami.
Down from the sky emerging from a portal that led the cold to 472nd Frozen Hell emerged a spear of frozen metal. This spear was Akkorokamui's life weapon. The sacred instrument she'd elected to rely on after reaching the stage of godhood.
The fifty-story tall goddess grabbed hold of the spear and used an elegant and fierce twisting motion to stab it down towards the black and white sphere before her. Banking on the destructive force of the move to tear through the suction ability of the sphere and slay the sentience that dwelt inside.
The whole realm shook, and the skies of the realm's thirty nearest neighbors shook as well. For a moment it seemed like the attack had worked. The singularity's spin seemed to slow, and its suction seemed to weaken. It looked like Desmond's come back would be cut short.
Then suddenly, the whole world exploded. Flashing white and then black before fading to nothing.
The dark goddess tried to escape her monstrous visage growing pale with fear. She'd thought it was just a technique. The suction had been too weak, there'd been no sign of stringulation, and no sign of an accretion disk. How could she have expected that the little marchen could actually turn himself into a calamitous dark star?
If she had known that the little pest was so sinister, there was no way she'd have allowed herself to be tricked into quarreling with him. Even bears knew how to fear wasps and bees, being great didn't mean thinking oneself untouchable by the beings beneath you. With all the years that she had lived how could she not know what happens when a dark star dies? The aggrieved goddess couldn't help wondering why such a dangerous insect hadn't been more colorfully coated.
Akkorokamui tried to escape, attempting to open a portal that would let her return back to her home in the frozen hell.
Unfortunately the local space-time continuum was currently too unstable and space-time magic could not be used. The goddess tried to hide within her shell and was horrified as she watched the black and white light erode her shell into nothing.
The explosion that would follow would be loud enough that many gods and angels in the heavens, devils in the hells, and spirit-kings, sovereigns-overlords, and fae-royals in the realms in between, would feel it.
In a single instant, thirty-two realms of Nishant's collection of distorted realities would disappear completely. The space that they'd occupied being swallowed up in such a fashion that any gods or devils that had presided over those spaces would briefly wonder if they'd only imagined the existence of those realms.
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Meanwhile, a certain young lady would suddenly find herself in an entirely different setting.
Being an at least half-way responsible employer, Desmond had given his assistant a few fall-backs to use in case things didn't go as planned.
Being a diligent and intelligent right-hand woman, Monday had paid close attention when her employer was explaining what she should do if during the hunt she should suddenly realize that the whole world seemed like it was about to shake itself to bits.
Once the dog-headed giantess broke through the walls of the settlement and started killing everyone wearing a doll-mask, Monday was freed from having to deal with the cult's guards.
Thus Monday was gifted the leeway watch in horror and awe, as her employer hurtled through the sky and was then subsequently pummeled by a creature that looked like giant shelled-squid doing its best impersonation of a beautiful woman.
When Desmond turned into a black hole and started consuming the surrounding space, swallowing entire buildings and pulling down clouds from the sky, Monday wisely triggered the first of the escape charms that she'd been given. Activating the road-flare shaped artifact with her internal materia and letting it carry her off to a nearby realm.
When even that new realm began to shake as great black clouds covered the sky for hundreds of thousands of miles, and lightning that could devastate entire cities began striking the ground at random, Monday pulled out one of the 'go-home' charms she'd been given. Deciding it was time to use the escape artifacts that would send her out of the distorted realm altogether and return her to the core world.
She escaped by the skin of her teeth, barely exiting the area before the time-space within that portion of the distorted realm became too unstable for the artifact's teleportation magic to work.
Monday found herself back inside the main hall of the red-brick building that she'd gradually begun to think of as her home. Her heartbeat raced with the last dregs of her post battle adrenaline, and her anxiety over her employer's safety.
For a good two days she simply sat and worried, wondering what she'd do if the man never came back. A cold analytical voice reminded Monday that she was sitting on a secured account with roughly 15.8 million crowns in it.
This was the 'little' that she'd been able to siphon out of Otieno Corporations holdings and hide-away after she'd sent Desmond to destroy the company that her mother had built and her mother's betrayers had stolen.
The voice reminded Monday that she was technically still moderately wealthy and sitting on an I.Q. in the high 300s. It told her that even if the world around her was still mostly alien and scary, As the only daughter of the brilliant and capable Adriana Otieno, she was tough enough, strong enough, and smart enough to make it on her own.
Then another voice, slightly quieter but equally strong spoke up, simply calling her name, and all Monday felt was relief.
"Miss Tien.... A little assistance please."
The 'other' voice in her head like the first voice, but this new voice wasn't her own. Monday turned her attention inwards and was felt her legs go soft as she realized that the connection between herself and her employer was still there. It seemed slightly different somehow, but it was still there, which meant he was still alive.
"Sir?" said Monday. Answering the voice in her head.
"Come pick me up...I'm sending you the coordinates now. I assume you were paying attention when I used those teleportation spells." said an exhausted sounding Desmond.
"Yes, sir. Of course, sir." said Monday. Openly admitting that a not at all small part of why she'd been willing to follow the man( or how she was able rationalize the decision to herself) was because she'd known that there were quite a few pieces of magic know-how, that she'd wanted to learn from him.
Everyone knew that the marchens and sovereigns knew secrets that even the gods didn't know. Secrets that people had spent thousands of years trying to figure out. In comparison following one and learning a number of those secrets in a mere 500+ years could be considered a bargain.
"Good...Don't bother using the city's teleportation gate, I'm afraid with the noise I made during the fight with the sea-devil, the way to dust city will be closed for at least a few days. We'll have to risk a direct teleport, since I'm actually in a bit of trouble here. Hopefully no one will notice." said Desmond.
"No problem, sir. I will be right there…." said Monday.
There was no answer from Desmond, and then silence was heavy enough that Monday had to check the connection that lay between them, just to make sure that her employer was okay.
A few minutes later, Monday left the city warping out of the core world into the distorted realm on her own power. She took with her all the supplies that she could think to take, and it wasn't till much later that she was able to realize what she'd done and take pride in knowing that she could now do something that many archmages throughout Nishant were incapable of doing.
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