Chương 26: 25: Offline

The chamber became a kaleidoscope of motion. Katherine could no longer track Butter as a body, only as punctuation in empty space. A period of impact. A comma of a dodge. An exclamation of a kick followed by the ellipsis of where she had been. Moth Through the Lantern's Flame. The technique lived deep in her marrow, desperate muscle memory forged through suffering. In her suppressed state, every use had been agony, each burst of speed tearing through her body like a shredded hamstring forced to sprint.

Now the Gloom sang through her veins. The three-colored aura fed her. Red fueled explosive output. Blue held her together. Yellow repaired the damage almost as quickly as she caused it. She was burning magic as stamina. Butter had already done the calculations. The cost of Yellow's healing was insignificant compared to what she'd spend using Gloom to match Korhess physically. There was no point. Korhess possessed enough Apis to move like a dream. At her level, numbers stopped meaning anything. Apis was dream-stuff.

A child could pick up a toy and declare it a gazillion times faster than light, stronger than galaxies, immune to everything, and within the dream those statements would coexist without contradiction. That was the nature of Apis. It granted the sort of power reality normally rejected as nonsense. So Butter conserved her Gloom and let technique bridge the gap instead. In front. Behind. Left. Above. All in the same instant. All with lethal intent. A storm of positions without the journey between them....

Korhess understood exactly what Butter was attempting. Melody could strike concepts. Butter lacked the raw power to break through Korhess's layered durability with a single blow, but that was never the plan. Crescendo rewarded accumulation. Through fractured glimpses of the future, Korhess had already seen the pattern unfold: fists blurring into a continuous barrage, each strike feeding the next, momentum compounding upon momentum. A hundred clean hits. Each one moving at light speed.

That was what Butter needed before the scales tipped. Before Crescendo stacked high enough to crack Korhess's defenses and force the fight onto equal footing. Korhess had no intention of granting her the opportunity. Anything less and the number climbed rapidly. One hundred and twenty. One hundred and fifty. More. Korhess wasn't there to be hit. She employed Asherah's Waltz. The Dance of the Already-Gone. A martial art built on preemptive absence rather than reaction.

Butter never struck where Korhess was, only where she had been. A tilt of her head turned a punch into empty air. A subtle shift of her hips reduced a kidney shot to a brush against cargo trousers. Her hooves clicked softly across the floor. As though the battlefield followed a rhythm only she could hear. Watching her, Butter felt a cold realization settle in. If Korhess had always been this invulnerable, she would never have needed skill this refined. This was not the style of a born god.

It was the hard-earned craft of someone who had once been breakable, and learned that even a single mistake could be fatal. Butter understood that, which was why she didn't reach for Gloom. If she bent circumstance in her favor, Korhess would answer with Apis. The battle would devolve into a clash of metaphysics, causality grinding against possibility until reality itself became the battlefield. Butter intended to win with technique alone. She surged forward. Bowl Technique.

Her hands shot out in a familiar pattern. Butter knew the truth of Syndicate experiments. They didn't possess true souls, herself included. The Bowl Technique had been designed for that absence. If it failed to locate a soul, it seized whatever internal structure it could find and attempted to tear it loose. Korhess had already experienced the outcome. The future unfolded before her. It wouldn't kill her, but it would hurt. The sensation was comparable to a human being struck head-on by a speeding vehicle.

Korhess simply stepped away from that future. A hoof snapped out. Butter slipped through like mist and reappeared within striking distance. A palm shot toward Korhess's face. Korhess looked ahead again. The strike wasn't aimed at her. It was aimed at the air. Nunit's technique. A disruptive jargon pattern intended to scramble Apis structures through sympathetic interference. It wouldn't penetrate her defenses, but it would leave her reeling with nausea and disorientation akin to severe alcohol poisoning.

Korhess reacted immediately. Her hands shot forward, catching Butter's wrist as she drove her forehead toward the girl's face. Butter slipped at the last instant. THUNK. Her head slammed into Korhess's throat instead. It dealt no meaningful damage, but the impact forced Korhess back a step. That had been the real attack. Moth-Step. Butter disappeared. Korhess found her instantly. High above, spinning in a descending kick. The future opened once more. This attack would actually hurt. Korhess frowned.

The prosthetic carried an astronomical quantity of Gloom, far beyond what Butter's body should have been capable of containing. Enough conceptual weight to threaten her defenses. More concerning was the physical force. Even before Apis, Korhess possessed durability sufficient to survive nuclear detonations at point-blank range, yet this kick threatened that as well. The prosthetic wasn't metal, nor any material she recognized. It belonged to something outside reality.

Its stop-motion mechanics were even more absurd. Infinite momentum. Butter wasn't even using that function. She intended an ordinary kick, yet Korhess still saw the outcome: a bruise spreading across her skull. Had the stop-motion effect fully engaged, it would have cracked it. Korhess moved. She sprang backward into a half-flip and lashed out with both hooves. They met the descending prosthetic. CLANG! The bell-strike of two absolutes colliding. The shockwave erupted outward. The chamber shuddered.

Butter was blasted away, spinning through the air before landing in a graceful twirl. Korhess settled lightly onto her hooves. Her expression remained composed, but a realization had already formed. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Her hooves could match the prosthetic. Butter adjusted instantly. The omnidirectional Melody blitz ceased. She solidified five meters away, pink eyes dissecting the new variable. The air learned new ways to scream.

She abandoned flickerwork for pure, overwhelming kinetics. Her body became a vortex of acrobatic fury, drawing from Taekwondo's explosive lines and Shaolin Kung Fu's animal flexibility. She spun into a hook kick, prosthetic leg a violet-black blur. Korhess answered in kind. Her hooves carved arcs through the air. CLANG. Butter landed, pivoted, became a wheel of destruction. Flying side kick. Tornado kick. Sweeping hook for the hooves. Each strike carried the careless brutality of her prosthetic. Korhess pivoted.

Each swing sent visible ripples racing across the chamber. The floor convulsed beneath her steps. Pillars cracked. Walls groaned. The pressure alone threatened to tear apart anything caught too close. Butter never let them touch her. The violence reached her before the attacks did. Warnings arrived through rhythm still waiting to happen. Every devastating impact announced itself as music. She flowed through it. Backflipping over one strike. Corkscrewing beneath another.

Folding around a hoof that shattered the space she'd occupied an instant earlier. Korhess pressed forward relentlessly. Asherah's Waltz transformed defense into offense, each parry feeding seamlessly into a counterattack. Her movements remained serene, almost graceful, yet every gesture carried enough force to make the surroundings shudder. Butter met that elegance with chaos. One moved like a prophecy already fulfilled. The other like a song improvising itself as it played. CRACK - BOOM.

Two blacksmiths hammering their finest blades upon the anvil of reality, asking one violent question. Which unbreakable thing breaks first? A flicker crossed Korhess's perfect features. Annoyance. Or respect. This dance of preemption and postemption could not last forever against an opponent who cheated location. She needed parity. Her hand snapped out, grasping empty air. Possibility crystallized with a soft chime, and she drew a spear from the glittering mote.

Sleek and dark as polished nightwood, its shaft wrapped in emerald leather, its blade forged from solidified absence. It hummed with the same conceptual invulnerability that suffused her being. The dynamic shattered and reformed. The spear met Butter's kick at an angle so perfect it seemed preordained. CLANG - SHOOOOOM! It never stopped moving. The shaft flowed around Korhess like water, deflecting, redirecting, bleeding impact harmlessly into the gloom. Even so, her hooves skidded with each world-ending collision.

Then she advanced. A thrust became a spin. She dropped low, carving a groove through the floor as the spear orbited her body before lashing outward. SHRRRAAAK! Butter slipped beneath it. Harmony answered instantly. Violet-black arcs snapped from her prosthetic, striking shaft, floor, and air in rapid succession. The spear rolled through Korhess's palms, beneath an arm, around her waist, reversing direction midway through the motion. Recovery became offense. Offense became locomotion. Every movement fed the next.

Butter flickered around her through impossible angles, Harmony lashing out whenever an opening appeared. Korhess answered with geometry. The spear stabbed where Butter was going, swept where she intended to dodge, and descended from behind Korhess's back as though it possessed a will of its own. A pivot became a low spin, then a vault assisted by the spear itself. Harmony cracked against the shaft. KLANG! Butter vaulted over a sweep aimed at her ankles as Korhess rotated beneath her.

The spear completed another orbit, and suddenly the blade was already waiting where Butter intended to land. Butter slipped beneath it, Harmony moving with her. One handle struck downward, the chain snapped taut, and the second whipped around from an impossible angle. Korhess tilted her head, the strike skimming past her cheek. Katherine watched, heart hammering. Between impacts, Butter flipped back, breathing harder now. Respect wormed through the fatigue.

Harmony rolled across her shoulders, slipped beneath an arm, then slingshotted forward again. The handles bounced from forearm to shoulder, shoulder to hip, every dodge becoming a wind-up and every miss another attack. One handle lashed toward Korhess's wrist. The other snapped for her knee. Korhess deflected the first. The second changed direction instantly. SHKRAK! The chain wrapped around the spear's shaft. Butter yanked, altering its path. She vaulted over a thrust.

One handle cracked against the floor, rebounding the other toward Korhess's jaw. CLACK! The spear intercepted it. Korhess spoke, her musical voice edged with metallic wonder.

"Val-tel miran." A bloom in the silent season. Beautiful futility. She spun the spear in a lazy arc, emerald leather scattering the dim light. The blade traced a ghost-circle through the air.

"A truly exotic alloy," she murmured.

"A song of metal I have never heard." Her gaze settled upon Butter as the spear lowered, its point fixed upon her center.

"But, dear Saela, thou dost seek to break a mountain with pebbles. A mountain breaketh not. It merely taketh note of the weather." She drew a quiet breath.

"Thy stress test beareth a fatal flaw. Thou measurest mine endurance, yet forgettest thine own." Her smile softened.

"The mountain breatheth not. The mountain tireth not." The spear steadied.

"Thou dost. And every breath thou takest is another beat upon a clock I am under no obligation to heed." Butter grinned. Her eyes closed as the cacophonous chamber, the humming pods, even Katherine's watchful presence receded into a distant hush. She settled into a deceptively simple stance. Feet shoulder-width apart. Knees soft. One hand before her heart, the other low and palm up. The posture of a sapling in still air. A deep ache bloomed in her chest. Korhess watched, unimpressed.

Leaning on her staff, she produced a piece of gum, flicked it into her mouth, and chewed with deliberate slowness. A pink bubble formed and popped.

"The only reason I endure this theatrical interlude," she said, her Velvethorn voice threaded with boredom, "is out of respect for that curious oracle of alloy thou callest a leg. It whispereth such fascinating heresies unto reality." A faint smile touched her lips.

"A most delightful fiction." She inspected a flawless golden nail before lifting her mismatched eyes to Butter.

"So, prithee, conclude thy silent discourse with the void. Thy meditation upon imminent pain. Shall we return unto our own? The next movement awaiteth its composer." Butter breathed in. Then out. Gods, she talks. She just never stops talking. Poetry and pity and a thesaurus of condescension. First Antler. Final Obstacle. Gallery of Moments. Just hit me, you pretentious lawn ornament. Her body gave a single violent twitch, a misfire of the immense frequency she was trying to contain. Impatience. Focus. Strain.

It was the opening Korhess needed, or the excuse she wanted. Without shifting her weight, she flicked the spear from her shoulder. It vanished from her hand and reappeared already in flight, its blade an inch from Butter's temple, carrying enough conceptual force to unravel the atomic bonds of a planetary core. A relocation of consequence. Butter was already elsewhere. The spear screamed through empty space. Korhess's eyes narrowed. Butter hadn't dodged the attack. She'd slipped around its conclusion.

Yet instead of pressing forward, she leapt backward. Korhess frowned. Harmony exploded outward. SHKRRRK! The chain wrapped around Korhess's foreleg. Butter yanked as she launched herself forward. Their trajectories crossed. Korhess pulled sideways. Butter accelerated. Then she spun. Moth-Step. The world skipped. Korhess saw Butter approach, circle, strike, miss. A hundred futures unfolded. None matched reality.

Butter folded around the pull of Harmony's chain, rotated through impossible geometry, then unfolded into a knee. KRAAAACK! It struck Korhess squarely across the nose. THOOOOM! The impact detonated the air, snapping her head back and knocking the piece of gum clean out of her mouth as it disappeared into the distance. Korhess crashed into the chamber like a meteor, fractured stone and twisted metal erupting beneath her. Harmony snapped back into Butter's hand.

Butter grinned, wide and feral, the kind of smile predators wore when the hunt became fun. Korhess rose slowly, dust cascading from her clothes as understanding settled in. That hadn't been a single strike. Crescendo. Butter had hit her dozens of times within the space of one impact. The accumulation had become astronomical. Before, her attacks had been nuisances. Now only a handful of clean connections would be enough to genuinely hurt her. Korhess stretched out a hand. SHRRRAAAK!

The spear tore free from the wall and returned to her grasp. She reached backward through causality, sliding an attack into the past. Butter's prosthetic flared yellow. The displacement rebounded harmlessly away. Again. Rejected. The Octopus had buried it too deeply. Most of her authority over flame was gone. Not all of it. Korhess extended both hands. FWOOOM! Ordinary fire erupted where Butter had been standing. Butter flickered away before manifestation completed, music warning her in advance.

Exactly as Korhess had foreseen. Every preferred dodge path unfolded before her eyes, and she filled them all. Green-gold fire bloomed across the chamber, weaving walls, pillars, spirals, entire gardens of flame that occupied every avenue of escape. Then she threw the spear. SHOOOOOM! Butter reacted instantly. Harmony lashed out to redirect it. But Korhess was already moving, not behind the spear but alongside it. Her hooves snapped outward. CLANG! Butter's prosthetic intercepted.

The resulting shockwave obliterated the surrounding flames, clearing the battlefield in an instant. Exactly as Korhess intended. She had already seen Butter exploit the opening, already seen her flicker away, already seen where she would appear. The spinning elbow was waiting. KRAACK! Butter materialized directly into it. Korhess accelerated. Apis flooded her limbs. One Korhess became ten. Ten became a hundred. Hundreds became thousands. Afterimages filled the chamber. Echoes of motion. Butter's music faltered.

Too many attacks. Too many futures. Too many Korhesses. A palm struck her jaw. CRACK! A fist collapsed her collarbone. KRUNCH! Ribs shattered. A spear-shaft pulverized her hand before Harmony could recover. A knuckle folded into her throat. THOOM! Each impact arrived before the last had finished. Butter's body jerked through the barrage like a rag doll caught in a hurricane. Bones splintered. Organs ruptured. Flesh tore.

Without Gloom reinforcing her existence, there would have been nothing left to launch away at the end. The accumulated violence alone would have scattered her across the chamber in pieces. Then gravity remembered her. BOOOOOOM! The accumulated force detonated at once, launching her across the chamber. She bounced once, twice, then rolled to a stop. Silence followed. Katherine raised a trembling hand to her mouth.

"Holy Mother of Christ," she breathed. Butter wasn't moving. The lights running along her prosthetic dimmed - yellow, violet, blue. One by one they faded until only white remained. The glow flickered, then stabilized. Offline.