Chapter 3: 1.2

Once not so long ago, just a few minutes, in fact, Jade dreamt of riches, glory, and prestige. What a fool she had been.

She tried to remember what exactly was happening, but the white in her vision, the lack of air, and the tightness in her chest reminded her of a time she climbed and fell from a tree in a dare. Only much worse. There was this sense of weightlessness, like she was floating in the void, but the pain on her face spoke to something different.

The roar all around, which she had taken for some sort of waterfall, she now remembered was the crowds’. They seemed whipped up in a frenzy. Something good must have happened.

Blinking her bleary eyes, she noticed a white shape, with dashes of golden and red, hovering above her. Jade watched, in excruciating slowness, as some part of the big white moved away from the whole, closing the distance. She also noticed now, that some red splotches were marring this new thing. The closer it got, the better view she had.

The thing looked a lot like a fist smeared in blood.

Oh… my fucking blood-

Still stunned by what now Jade remembered was a fist to the face, she tried to move her head, but it was too little too late.

Her vision exploded and white and stars again, her body colliding with the arena floor below in a loud crash. Her bodysuit finally activated part of its passive functions, fully covering her face and visibly bulking, creating some sort of latticework designed to absorb impact.

Some would yell foul play since she was now depending on technocrat's work without being one, but there was no time for such considerations. Wonder Light once again was upon her, pinning her down by sitting on her midriff while raining punches at her head.

Amidst the haze of pain, even with the suit protection, she felt something give and break. The pain intensified and Jade realized that if she didn't do something, she might very much die here.

Jade raised her arms to cover her head, and trashed and bucked her hips, trying to dislocate the giantess pinning her down. A short-lived attempt. Wonder Light took hold of both her wrists with a single hand and with contemptuous ease dragged her arms away, exposing her face. Trying to dislodge the other woman was also futile, she might as well try to kick a mountain out of its place.

She felt more than saw the next punch coming, and in one last act of desperation, opened a small portal to the void, the ingress just in front of her face, the egress behind Wonder Light’s head.

It was an old trick, one she had used in her first fight against Wonder Light. Had the heroine been thinking clearly, this probably would never have worked again, but against all expectations, with a dull thud, Wonder Light punched her own head into the arena’s floor. Immediately, tentacles and eyes and teeth sprang from both portals, biting, grasping, and pulling. Trying to drag the heroine across a space that barely fit her arm.

More portals appeared all around the downed heroine, small leech-like creatures falling from it onto her arm and back. Their mucus dissolved and weakened the costume, while tentacles pulled and ripped fabric and skin.

With a supreme force of will, Jade moved again, disentangling herself. Wobbly, she tried to stand, a red haze covering most of her vision. She blinked a few times, but the world seemed to spin all around. She tried to focus, but the ringing in her ears only made things worse. Giving up on dignity, the sorceress crawled on all fours away from Wonder Light.

A bright flash of light from behind made Jade look back. White flames surrounded the heroine. The patches of shredded skin and costume on her back and arms were on fire, but the brighter the flames burned, the faster the wounds closed. The creatures from the void grasping at the heroine were in flames, and a screech of pain sounded in the sorceress’s mind. Like someone driving a spike into her head, a thousand nails on chalkboards.

‘How is that even fair?’

When she next regained consciousness, she was face-first into the ground. The portals had collapsed, and the roar of the crowd was drowning.

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A white and pristine boot, with golden details surrounded by white flames, nudged her face. Jade was afraid it would also burn her, as it had done with the creatures crossing the portals, but the flames were lukewarm.

A rush of silence accompanied Wonder Light's movement as the heroine lowered her hands and grabbed Jade by the hair, effortlessly raising her from the ground. The taller woman lifted Jade, the sorceress face towards the audience. A humiliating display.

“Kill her!!!” A lone shout of rage and disdain broke the silence. The crowd picked up on that one word, repeating it over and over with increasing fervor. “Kill, kill, kill!”

‘Age of Enlightenment my ass.’ Jade thought. She knew those matches could be to the death. There was an unspoken rule, however, that participants would not kill others. Bad sportsmanship, she had been told again and again.

Jade clawed at the hand holding her hair to no avail. She tried to open portals and summon creatures to help, but whenever she tried, the flames would burst, burning her magic but leaving her physically intact, the pain was worse than anything she’d suffered before. In desperation, she tried to poke at her utility belt, even if nothing there could help with the current situation. Her attempts stopped as the heroine dragged her around by the hair, displaying the prize to the onlookers.

What felt like an eternity later, she was face to face with the heroine's green eyes. The maniacal glint in them sent a shiver down her spine. Wonder Light dragged her face ever closer, the heroine’s mouth slowly opening. In her muddleheaded state, Jade thought the other woman was out of her mind and going to bite down on her face. That her face was behind the costume helmet, she had forgotten. But the mouth moved past her face towards her ear, and the other woman whispered in a hoarse voice. “Thank you, and goodbye.”

Jade knew then her time was up. With deliberated slowness, Wonder Light raised her free hand and grabbed Jade by the neck. The second hand joined soon after and then the heroine squeezed. The costume prevented the worst, but could not prevent Jade from suffocating. They had always praised Wonder Light for her freakish strength.

The sorceress clawed and tried to pry the hands away from her neck, her movements jerkier by the minute and darkness encroaching her vision. Worst of all, the feeling that had been building in her chest from before the fight reached a crescendo, drowning everything else.

Jade blinked and focused ahead, but the only thing she could see was the hateful green eyes and disgusting smirk. The appealing heart-shaped face transformed into a jovial masculine face with angular features, piercing green eyes, and black luxurious hair. Something in her head snapped at the same time the energy building in her chest exploded.

In the sky above the arena, a giant portal manifested. A kilometer wide in radius, it was barely enough for the massive eye swiveling around. Suddently, the eye snapped to the arena, looking at the two women. One, tall and muscular, with golden locks and dressed in white, holding a smaller one by the neck, covered in all black by some sort of bodysuit. With a screech of rage, a giant tentacle, ending in a lamprey mouth and teeth, crashed into the city shield with explosive force.

Emergency sirens blasted all around, and the spectators' enraged yells transformed into shouts of panic and fear.

The shield groaned and bent but held, and the tentacle exploded in countless chunks of meat, that cascaded along the shield, sizzling and distorting wherever they fell. The pieces of flesh vibrated and jiggled, new eyes and tentacles and mouths appearing. In the arena below, with a sound more akin to fabric being torn, a gash in reality formed, the rupture in the world's fabric displaying a kaleidoscope of colors and non-euclidian angles.

Jade felt the pain and rage from the entity above, having part of itself torn asunder by the shield. She also felt the threads in her mind snapping one by one, except for the one that still connected her to the thing holding her by the neck. She also felt the inevitable pull toward the tear in the world's fabric. In one last spiteful act, she abandoned every attempt to free herself, taking hold of the thread between her and the heroine and pulling with all her might.

With a deranged laugh, she pulled and pulled until a fundamental part of herself gave in, entangling with the thread that connected her to the Heroine. Still laughing, she now saw the other woman, and yes, it was still another woman, eyes wide with confusion.

“Goodbye to you as well, harlot.” She tried to say, but with no air in her lungs, only her mouth moved, sending spikes of pain as broken bones ground against one another.

The sorceress held with all her might to the thread connecting both, and to the other woman’s arms, as the pull from the rend in reality dragged both into the fissure.

Blessed silence, and the peace she’d always longed for. No more things tugging at her mind, making her some unwilling puppet. No more loss of agency. She needed only to break her mind and possibly doom a whole megacity. All things considered, Jade was not sure if it was a fair price.

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