The Games We Play - Chapter 236: Hard-Hearted

Chapter 236: Hard-Hearted

DISCLAIMER: This story is NOT MINE IN ANY WAY. That honor has gone to the beautiful bastard Ryuugi. This has been pulled from his Spacebattles publishment at threads/rwby-the-gamer-the-games-we-play-disk-five.341621/. Anyway on with the show…err read.

Hard-Hearted

“This is a new trick,” Malkuth said after a long moment’s silence, looking at me. He didn’t have any eyes, but I could tell his gaze was more curious than afraid—I suppose not being anywhere near the actual damage would do that. “Tell me, what is it, Keter?”

“You losing,” I answered simply, tilting my head slightly. I was slowly trying to orient myself in a way that was hard to describe. I was standing on the ground right now, but I didn’t feel like I was; it was as though I were hovering in a void and could move how I wished. I could feel things around me, too, but I had a hard time placing them as well—senses, but nothing like physical ones. I’d opened more metaphorical eyes than pretty much anyone and this wasn’t like that. I wasn’t seeing anything new, wasn’t feeling it against my body or mind, but…they were there. Malkuth and Raven, along with signs of their power, especially where Raven’s portals were now fading.

“Heh,” Malkuth chuckled, even lifting a clawed hand to his masked face. The sound was amused, but he wasn’t, I was certain of that much. “I’ll admit, it’s something I haven’t seen before—but stuff like that is why this world is fun, isn’t it? People come up with new tricks all the time, struggling to survive and succeed, to beat me…and they fail. Like you failed. You’re a few thousand years too early and late to talk about beating me.”

I shrugged slightly before rolling my shoulders and lifting my hands. Right now, I looked regular, normally—the effects of Sahasrara, Metamorphosis, and everything else receding. Except that wasn’t quite right, because I wasn’t the same as I was before and those things simply weren’t there. I felt at once distant from the world and closer to it than I even was before.

Regardless, I didn’t see much point in answering Malkuth’s questions, so I just watched him calmly for a moment.

“Nothing to say?” Malkuth asked after a moment.

I shrugged again.

“I’m going to kill you,” I stated, not putting any emphasis on the words. “I’ve won, you lost, the end. There’s really not much else to say. I gave you a chance to say your last words and they look like they’ll be rather hilarious in hindsight, so I’m good. You ready to die yet or would you like to continue embarrassing yourself?”

“You—”

Whatever he was about to say was cut off as he staggered several steps back, a hole larger than his head appearing in the center of his chest. The circle was perfectly carved, its edges smooth, and at the exact center of it all was Malkuth’s portal, hanging suspended in the emptiness. Already, matter was flowing from that hole to replace what was lost, but it glimmered around the edges with sparks of white light.

Malkuth looked down at the hole in his chest and then traced a path to the finger I’d pointed at him absently.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I didn’t mean to interrupt; please, continue. I just wanted to check on something.”

It was true, in a way—I’d felt the shift, but I wanted to confirm it. The Arcana had changed the moment I adopted this shape, which was inevitable; I’d reunited my split haves, found what I was looking for, and I’d accomplished one of my major goals. I felt strong now, whole, and at ease in a way that was hard to describe or define.

The Arcana had taken shape accordingly.

Judgement: The Arcana of Judgement—the representation of the self, of what remains and shines through when all else is gone. It is an understanding of past mistakes and an acceptance of them; the ability to learn from them and face the future. At the same time, it is a point of choices and decisions, of loss and rebirth, as one reaches their own Judgement Day and decides the path of their lives. When the user is within this state of being, nothing may stand in their way—all attacks receive 100% defense penetration and ignore inherent immunities. At the same time, the user must be wary, lest they falter in this moment; active defenses may not be used in this state.

I rolled my wrist, closing my hand and then opening it. Three small spheres, each no larger than a marble, rotated in a quick circle above my hand. I looked at them curiously for a moment, trying to determine their nature. The Arcana was a skill I understood only in part and this was the first time I could see with any certainty how it manifested and confirm several of my own theories. It wasn’t something that drew greater power from above like Ohr Ein Sof or the Brahmastra; instead, it drew from something just as important.

Me. It was the point of connection between who I’d been and who I was—not so much as dividing line between Keter and Jaune as a bridge. It was what remained, what my soul had taken with it when it passed on and was reborn. The way it manifested…it wasn’t like my former Semblance, wasn’t as broad or easy to control. I couldn’t just assign myself a role, either, so instead it arose from my role. But the touches, the influences, they were obvious and clear. It wasn’t the same, but it was still mine; the remains of a soul that had gone through life and the cycle of reincarnation. Something that didn’t translate well into thoughts or memories, into something held by a human mind, but which was still there, even after all those things were gone.

It might even have had something to do with why souls were reincarnated in the first place, but that was nothing more than a guess.

Still, the way it manifested…it was an obvious alteration to who I was, to the nature of my soul. Not on the level of a Semblance but close. Strength and the Chariot, in and of themselves, changed spiritual and mental force into physical ones. The Lovers blurred lines between individuals along paths of connection. The Magician…widening the connection that the Aura drew on for power?

But this…Judgement. At first glance, it seemed similar to Longinus as it accomplished the same ends…but no. It was something else. Longinus pierced defenses by cutting through space—by severing the most basic forms of connection and ignoring anything to do with the material. What a target was made of or blocked with was irrelevant, because those that seemed to be hit by it weren’t actually touched at all, they merely suffered from the fact that the volume space they’d inhabited had been shredded with them inside of it. That was probably why it interfered with portals the way it did, too; if a portal twisted space to connect one point to another and Longinus tore a hole through space as it passed…

Judgement was something else. The power I’d gathered like this, the very Aura I was channeling—its nature had changed. It seemed both less physical and more certain, as if the power I was channeling was built from simple fact. The attacks created did not hit hard enough to do, say, a hundred damage to the target. They simply imposed a hundred damage on the target, as if it were a natural law. Reducing the effect or defending against them did nothing, because however one tried to block, that damage could not be reduced.

The strike that had hit Malkuth hadn’t damaged him directly, hadn’t shorn through his armor. Instead, it had simply touched him and taken effect, with that effect being ‘take this defined amount of damage’, erased parts of him to meet that criteria.

It was interesting, in no small part because it seemed like something that would belong to Malkuth. A limited application of his power, perhaps, an overly specific and defined one that was reached in a different way…but there were traces, similarities.

And it seemed as though I wasn’t the only one to draw that connection.

“Tch,” Malkuth said, touching his chest. “Keter, you bastard. Pulling out your old tricks again—”

The spheres rotating above my hand stopped in place for an instant and flashed forward, hitting and erasing most of his head. Pointless, perhaps, given the obvious lack of anything vital in there—but it was well worth it to shut him up.

Malkuth’s body rocked for a moment and then began to run even without a head—straight towards Raven, who’d slowed after the Lovers had vanished. Even so, I could see a blade humming in her hands, trying to make up the difference with Dust.

I didn’t chase after him. I didn’t bother. Instead, I simply held out a hand to my side—and his fist made contact with it, stopping just short of Raven. On contact with his skin, the flesh of my hand seemed to dissolve, revealing nothing but pure white light in its stead, and flecks of burning flesh began to rise from Malkuth’s hand.

“Don’t,” I said and we were twenty meters away from Raven. “I’m not the same as I was back then—I won’t let you touch the people I care about again.”

“Bastard,” Malkuth said again, a note of muted effort in his voice as he tried to push me back or pull away.

Instead, I let him go, moving my hand to his chest. As it did, it seemed to leave wavering after images behind—but they weren’t of my arm. One was made of fire, another of air. Earth, water, steel, lightning, ice, distorted space, and countless others, each a different shape and size.

Each still a part of me.

What came forth from my hands was less a focused assault or barrage and more a breaking of reality. Gravity went haywire, points in space rippling and then being sucked towards the center. Space itself followed suit, parts of the area warping and lengthening whilst others shrunk or even disappeared, shunted or drawn oddly into empty places. What could only be described as sparks of time fluttered out from my skin, expanding into roughly spherical bursts wherever they touched Malkuth, and those parts that were encompassed by the sphere were abruptly covered in horrific wounds, the evidence of injuries that had yet to happen imposed upon the present. Light flooded over and through all of it, making and unmaking what it touched in a way that was both interconnected and distinct.

And all of it was followed by everything I could throw at him. One arm shattered and spun into a growing whirlwind of glass, with individual shards sticking and seeming to melt into the surrounding landscape, transforming what it touched into glass and adding it to the cyclone. Fire burst from everything around me and then sank, the heat drawing into the affected surfaces to burn hotter, charring things without any sign of the source even as the damage crept deeper. Beside the living heat were growing patches of ice, left behind in the defiance of Thermodynamics and then given life in its own right. Shapes began to rise from it, as well as the earth and water nearby, the more physical elements struggling to take shape. The ground fractured violently, massive fissures opening up from which poured all manner of things, and the ground continued to shake in a steadily growing earthquake even as the wind began to whip into a storm and lava began to flood up from the ground.

The sound of it all was distorted oddly, carrying in strange ways and intermingling into a rising cacophony that altered itself every few seconds. Stone, glass, and crystal began to shatter, inevitably exploding into clouds of wicked shrapnel. The pressure in the area skyrocketed, the very air seeming unspeakably heavy, and the effects of inertia followed, causing things to move oddly—things that should have shaken or scattered remained stock still, things that should have remained immobile as steady as a mountain. Friction shifted with it, things stopping in midair, flying strangely, or even growing faster with no source. At the same time, I saw things melt, some of them simply coming apart while others were covered in growing pools of strange acids.

There were other things, as well—every element I could access, which was all of them, showing up in force. They turned upon Malkuth, upon the world around him, and blasted it with everything. Every vector of assault was followed through with, each attack piercing his defenses as if they didn’t exist. Malkuth’s existence, his very being, was stripped away, sometimes in chunks while other times in pieces, until nothing remained but the tiny insignificant portal that allowed him to exist here and now.

I lifted a hand, pointing at it—and space rippled outwards from it as if something had crashed into it with unspeakable force. That done, I clinched my hand into a fist and everything around us, the chaos I’d made of our surroundings, leapt from the ground around us and flooded into that opening, drawn to and gathering around a narrow orb of light.

Malkuth screamed in a way that didn’t translate very well into sound—it was a noise like a rise in frequency, a slowing of natural processes, and overlay over the background of the world spinning. Even so, the ‘sound’ was loud and it carried, echoing until I dropped my hand.

The hole in space bled black, a small stream of fluid stripping down from it in a strange way, as if dripping down an invisible surface rather than empty space. More of it flowed upwards and then to the sides, stretching into the shape of something like a stick figure as he healed.

I didn’t move, but figures stepped out of me. Suryasta, Xihai, Levant, Ereb, Vulturnus—even Crocea Mors, now physical instead of a reflection. They were followed, impossibly, by figures that were mutually exclusive in existence; my Ice Elemental, Steam, Pressure, Inertia, Plasma, Gravity, Glass, Vibration, my Dimensional, and more. Everything I could create, that could spring forth from my existence, was present.

Malkuth stopped for a moment, not healing or moving. I waited.

“You and your fucking Elementals,” Malkuth swore at last. “You always did try to keep up with me.”

It kind of looked like I was doing more than keeping up, from where I was standing—but the situation was special in various ways and there was no point in letting myself be dragged into his flow.

“Leave, Malkuth,” I said. “You’ve already lost and you shouldn’t be able to cling to that body much longer, anyway. You should know by now that you aren’t going to get what you want—after all this time fighting me, you should be used to being disappointed.”

“Oh, I am,” He replied. “But probably not for the reasons you think I should be. Look at you, Keter—all this time and you’re still the same. So…unimaginative. All that power and you don’t even want to play with it?”

“How?” I asked. “By torturing you? Believe me, the idea’s crossed my mind—but I can’t imagine it’d be all that fun when you’re running around in a meat-puppet. And personally, even if it were, I’d rather just be rid of you.”

“Bah,” He said. “That’s no way to talk. But fine, I know when I’m not wanted—and I know how to lose with grace. Catch you later, Keter.”

Despite the words, he immediately tried to screw me over.

Needless to say, I was shaken to the core by a complete and utter lack of surprise.

His response occurred on several levels simultaneously. The first was the simplest—he attacked me. Even if I said it was simple, however, it was still something major and noteworthy, because this time he wasn’t holding back.

That was the downside of putting myself of this level. Every time I fought him or his minions, they’d been playing nice, soft-balling me. I knew full well that there were a lot of fights I’d only survived because I’d been allowed to, fights I’d only won because my enemies had the kid gloves on. If every Grimm I’d ever fought had gone all out from the very start and aimed for the throat, I probably wouldn’t be here by now. All this time, I’d had a massive advantage because my enemies couldn’t afford to kill me.

I figured that was probably intentional. Whatever I’d done in my past life, I’d known what would happen, at least well enough to make some guesses. Whatever was in that computer, the password on it wasn’t just to keep Malkuth and his lackies out, it was to make sure I survived long enough to make it in. If not for what they needed me to accomplish, Malkuth probably would have made sure I died in some horrific manner the moment he learned of my existence. I’d obviously failed to kill Malkuth, but I’d managed to give myself a chance to come back and finish the job.

It was risky, however—because Malkuth was watching me and he was my archenemy. While playing around with me was probably all well and good as far as his sadistic mindset went, he knew me, knew who and what I was. Giving me time to plan and prepare was a dangerous idea at the best of times; giving me an endless amount of it was a recipe for disaster for anyone who wasn’t on my side. Malkuth wanted me alive, but he didn’t want me alive and in any position to put up a serious fight, and I was entirely certain that if I ran the clock down enough he’d do something to force my hand before I was ready to face him.

That was another part of why I’d come here when I did—because it had been on my terms, on my conditions. Things had gone according to my plans instead of his, because I hadn’t been marching to his tune and hadn’t waited until he was making sure I didn’t try anything funny.

Malkuth was my greatest foe, but I was his biggest threat, even if I might have also been his only hope. If I were in his position and my reincarnated enemy had started looking like a serious threat, I’d probably start thinking about killing him and trying again with number three. The measures I’d taken had given me time, but Malkuth would do everything in his power to make sure it wasn’t enough time.

That was why Metatron was my trump card; it was something he hadn’t seen coming, a change of the game he hadn’t been able to predict. It had been a risk—a terrible risk, given what was on the line—but it had been the only way to close the gap fast enough to take him off-guard.

And it had worked. Something I’m sure he didn’t like one goddamn bit—and he showed it by holding nothing back. All the things he’d kept up his sleeve for fear that I wouldn’t be strong enough to survive it came abruptly to the forefront. Here, more of those attacks that caused matter to fall apart. Rays that interfered and interrupted brain activity. Forms of transmutation that paid no mind to the subject’s ability to survive. Forms of dimension shifting that were meant to remove chunks or bisect, a blast that cut a hole in the world, a red spark that caused matter to implode—

Well. The point was that Malkuth had a whole pot full of his most lethal hits and he was now willing to hit me with them—and while I was unable to bring many of my defenses to bear, no less. Malkuth had no way to know about the limitation the Arcana imposed upon me or he might have hesitated before unleashing hell.

Oh well. I hadn’t come this far and risked so much to be unable to face Malkuth head-on. Even if it was still only a shadow of him, this was still the fight I’d been both dreading and anticipating for so long and I wasn’t going to be defeated. Even if my active defenses were gone, my passive methods were still working fine—and more than that, there was a loophole of sorts to Judgement.

Except, it might well have been fully intentional, considering the nature of the effect; the ‘roles’ of the Arcana seemed designed to incentivize what I considered ‘types of play.’ In the case of Judgement, this was especially clear, because while it forbid defenses, it said nothing of attacks.

And sometimes, the best defense really was a good offense.

Malkuth threw everything at me and I threw everything right back. Waves of light with bursts of strange energy, consuming and pacifying them. Oddly colored sparks dancing with searing lightning across the surface of empty space and ionized air. Spikes and storms of violent matter took hits and bore through them, piercing blasts of power flashing through whatever was in their way, and everything between Malkuth and I began to fall apart.

At the same time, my Elementals—the parts of me I had encompassed and now manifested in their familiar shapes—marched forward through it all like a small army. They were different now, the change a spiritual one instead of anything physical, because they were perfected in unity with both me and each other. Though the battlefield was rendered into chaos, they pushed forward.

The moment they were close enough to touch him, however, Malkuth exploded into a mass of what I could only describe as probability clones—the odds of him trying to escape in a given direction granted not-quite physical form. They’d shatter, I could tell, falling to zero the moment they were caught, but if even one escaped, they’d turn out to be the real Malkuth. My Elementals immediately leapt into action, shifting and dividing as needed to reach their targets, but I stayed back, expecting a trick.

Because of that, I noticed the subtle movement of space as one of the probability clones took a less conventional path, slipping through something I would have thought a portal had it not clung to his skin. I followed suit all the same, willing myself to be more of a constant than any of the principles that governed space, tying myself to Malkuth and remaining equidistant from him even as he moved. I recognized his target before he even appeared and reacted as he materialized above Autumn, pulling instead of allowing myself to be pulled.

He swept a hand through her, but we were already in the wrong state, a shifted area of space that was disconnected from hers. His claws didn’t reach her, even as they swept cleanly through her body, and I reached out to grab him.

We came apart, vanishing and reversing as I returned us to a previous position in space, drawing us back to the battlefield in an instant.

Malkuth released a growl of frustration that rose into a scream as he unfolded, mass shifting away to reveal more mass, covering an impossible volume. I felt something activate, something shift, and figured it was probably a bomb.

“Fine then,” He said, the words not of sound. “Be that way. I’ll settle for just the one, then.”

I didn’t have to glace behind me to know he was focusing on Raven, looking for some way to deny me victory or at least lessen its worth.

“No,” I said. “You won’t.”

Lifting a hand, I activated Ohr Ein Sof once more.