Chapter 16: 15-Flesh and Iron

Having been around the corner for as long as I had, I -naively- thought that, at least as far as bodily experiences were concerned, there was hardly anything new left for me to discover. Whether we spoke of debauched excess, tantric rituals, torture, or months-long ascetic fasting, et caetera. I was familiar with all of it, one way or another, as well as with pretty much everything in between, too.

And yet, the hubristic part of me that held that belief to be true, pretty much unconsciously, had forgotten to factor in just a tiny little detail. Namely, that the metaphorical party we had spent several millennia getting used to had been brutally crashed by the knife-wielding, high-as-fuck, mutant monkey that was magic.

As misfortune would have it, said ‘magic’ was currently showing that dastardly arrogant part of me the error of its ways, via empirical demonstration. Needless to say, the rest of me -that had absolutely nothing to do with any of it- was regrettably caught in the aftermath too.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I could appreciate the System’s generous initiative! I could only speculate why it was being done, but knitting my flesh closed, melding my bones, and regrowing my one missing limb was certainly a regal gift! ...What was much less welcome, though, was being kept fully cognizant, and tortuously aware of the protests of every single one of my nerves as an unseen hand forced them to wiggle, twist, stretch, separate, and rejoin... For whatever reason, the experience was perhaps about ten times more painful than it sounds.

The torture was mercifully short-lived, though. Still, I’ll admit that, when my muscles finally stopped convulsing, I couldn’t help letting out a relieved grunt. Also, my cheeks might have been a little wet. All four of them.

Fuck my life!

I remained on the ground, for a moment, doing nothing but focusing on taking heaving, ravenous breaths. To be completely honest, if I’d previously been tired then, currently, I was positively exhausted. So much so, in fact, that I didn’t even want to think about finding out what my new -and only actual- Skill could do. Even if I had spent the better part of three years actively seeking to acquire any magic I could call my own. The small part of me that still remained capable of cogent thought figured that the Skill wouldn’t be going anywhere, anyway. It could well wait until I no longer felt like my flesh had just gone through the mechanical tenderizer.

Sadly, it seemed like the System itself begged to disagree.

Congratulations! By fully connecting with Node:Zekhron, the Threatening Depth, you have successfully Ratified your chosen Allegiance and Alignment.

Warning! Please patiently wait while Complete Stasis is brought to Terminus.

Oh. Right. I almost forgot that that was a thing...

Shortly after the prompt appeared, something clicked into place. Almost as if I had been unwittingly looking at the world through a distorted lens, only to have it suddenly removed. Just like that, I could intuitively tell the world around me was back to normal.

All of the hurt and tiredness I’d been feeling vanished into thin air too, as if any trace of the experience had just been a delusion of mine. Instead of feeling relieved in any way though, I was deeply disturbed. I’d actively been avoiding to think too much about it, but the casual display of power over reality itself sent a chill down my spine. The idea that there was some sort of will or overseer -because there was no way my messages came from an insentient law- that could do that, was absolutely terrifying.

Just a snap of their fingers, and poof! Never mind leaving a corpse behind, your existence itself gets excised from the rest of the world! And who’s to say they can’t eternally imprison a soul too...

I shuddered, pausing for a moment as the very concept of existential anxiety suddenly seemed to take on a whole new meaning.

Eventually, though, I snapped out of it, forcibly taking a deep breath.

Alright, enough! Let’s just make a mental note about never actively trying to anger the System, also...

Gently tapping my forehead a couple of times, right between my eyebrows, I deliberately pushed a smirk to my lips.

Lads, this is your captain here! Add ‘the System, its reach, and its nature’ to the ‘list of crap we won’t ever be thinking of again, for our own sake’!

Yes, that’s right, right above the thingy in Wallachia’s and below the Corridor’s entries will do, and-

No!

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No, you stupid fuck! There’s no need to read the Corridor’s entry to check if it’s the right one! Just shove it in there, turn around, and run for your life, for fuck’s sake!

Needless to say, self-conditioning -though we used to have a slightly more mystical name for it, back in the day- had saved my life and sanity more than once. Even before my wilder days in Tanis... Anyway, the least said about the latter, the better! Seeing how my new reality seemed to be even crazier than the previous one, though, I had no doubt that the need for it would be arising again, several times in the future...

Whatever the case, and putting all the pesky little details aside, the most pressing concern seemed to be ensuring my safety. Now that I could once again freely move and think, and was no longer desperately fighting a physical or mental battle, it became glaringly obvious that there was something really suspicious going on around me!

And I’m not talking about the fact that my latest prey had suddenly gone from quite-dead antlered-bunny to hellish killing machine. Nor am I referring to the fact that my chaperone, whose one and only job had been to deal with any hypothetical such killing machines showing up during my journey, was still nowhere to be found.

Nowadays, you can’t trust anyone to do a proper, honest job!

But no, what I meant by ‘suspicious’ was the two weirdos that had just then appeared, out of thin air, standing on either side of me. Of course, I’d never seen either of them before, so I didn’t know who they were, or what they wanted. That being said, the combination of their fixed, predatory stares and emaciated faces wasn’t exactly giving me the best of vibes. Their bodies’ constant, nervous shaking, which even the sheer-black loose tunics they were wearing couldn’t quite dissimulate, didn’t help their cause either.

Yeah, probably not here from the magical missing children service...

Now, normally, I’m a pretty reasonable man, and not all that prejudiced either. At least I’d like to think so. But, as soon as they started chanting in some weird, demonic-sounding tongue, I thought it fair to assume there would be no talking with them. Which is why I started moving, even before the intricate, gleaming red net their voices had somehow been weaving in thin air, came hurtling my way.

Suffice it to say, I was no longer quite as vulnerable as I had been up to just a few minutes prior.

“In the blink of an eye, gone! Nothing beside remains!”

I instinctively knew how to make use of Sacrament of Mortality. There was no need for the deliberate weaving of Pneuma that Grisella had vaguely described, nor any further preparations on my end. I spoke and, no sooner had the incantation left my lips, my perspective shifted.

I felt my body shaking. Then, for the briefest of moments, my stomach sank as I started falling. Only, instead of going down, I found myself heading up.

Then, the moment was over, along with any discomfort. And I was no longer Abramel. Instead of my childish form, I was now occupying a body that I was intimately familiar with. Or rather, had been, back in the day. The puny twigs I’d been stuck with for the last few years had been replaced by limbs thick as logs. As I took a single step forwards, I felt the steel chords in my core shifting powerfully, tempered by decades of calisthenics and spartan training.

I wasn’t donning the panoply of a Hoplite, though. No. Rather than bronze, my torso was protected by bands of solid iron, fastened by leather. The smell of the grease that kept it from rusting almost made me smile. The lorica was, after all, a kind of armor I had spent more than one lifetime in, after Crassus ate shit in Carrhae.

I didn’t even need to look down to become aware of the presence of a sword, dagger, spear, and shield. Feeling the weight of the gladius, pugio, pilum, and scutum was like suddenly being visited by a long-lost childhood friend. Only, even better; the weapons were far less likely to bring up shameful memories.

My body looked vaporous, though. That was pretty unsettling. Doubly so, when I realized that whatever it was made of was translucent enough that, that I could see inside of me. There was a childish form in there, floating. It had a face I had been starting to grow used to, having worn it for over three years.

So I guess, in a way, I’m now some sort of weird ghost mecha, piloted by myself? Not gonna lie, it’s a bit weird, but pretty neat!

...Although doesn’t that mean that, while Grisella and the likes can bring fire and brimstone upon their enemies, I’m stuck running around with the skirt-wearing, scruffy boys?

Indeed, I wasn’t the only one around that looked like a revenant. There were dozens of similarly-clad individuals standing around, between the startled mages and myself. Eighty-four of them, to be precise.

Their forms were too indistinct for me to identify their faces, but I swear I could almost have put a name on each and every one of them... It was hardly the time to reminisce, though, for there were some sorts of dark magics coming our way. But, unlike that one time we’d been ambushed in Dacia, the legionnaires were ready. The entire centuria moved at once, almost like a single body. Eighty-four shields rose along with mine, forming an impregnable wall.

A ruthless grin split my lips. Readily, the soldiers -my soldiers- roared, even as I yelled a single word.

“Testudo!”

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