25. Romance of the Tower Pt 5

  I stepped out onto the ruined ninety-ninth floor at the same time that Kuto stepped out of the elevator down from the one hundredth. I cocked my head to the side, wondering why I had never realized it earlier.

  He wasn’t the guardian of the ninety-ninth floor. He was the occupant of the one hundredth.

  The ninety-ninth floor was empty.

  “You’re back sooner than I was expecting,” Kuto said.

  “Your grace, you do me honor by facing me yourself, through this avatar,” I said, bowing politely.

  “Ah, figured it out, did you?” he said, scratching his nose. “Yes, that’s right. Kutodoe is my birth name. Believe it or not, I grew up on a world like this, in a tower like this, with a past like every other child in this tower.”

  “And you rose. And you rose and you rose until you could rise no higher,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “And I found the heights dizzying, but empty.”

  “So you create worlds like this to create more like you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Coward.”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Huh. That’s not an accusation that I receive very often. Care to explain?”

  “If you wanted a real challenge,” I said, “You should have brought me to your home world. The one where your true body rests.”

  “Ah, but then how would I give you the Xian bond to even the distance between—”

  I flexed upon my power, upon Majeesha’s power. My power, her power, our power.

  And I formed a dao avatar.

  It shined brightly, with a purifying white light that cast out benevolence to all who bathed in it. It was male, cherubic, slightly fat. It sat with a beatific smile and clasped hands, a rosary in its hands. It began to pray.

  Kuto cocked his head to the side. “What kind of avatar is that?”

  “It is my weakness,” I explained. “Everything that was holding me back before, I have invested in that avatar. I fight you now without the restraints I placed upon myself.”

  “Oh? I’ve never thought of that before.”

  “You should be thankful. I shall demonstrate the reason why.”

  I dashed forward with the speed of a cultivator and the weight of a world in every step. Each step was the path that I had chosen, and every choice had brought me to this moment. From the choice to sneak out of my home and stare at the heavens while immortals did battle there, to the choice to kiss Mai Mai back, this was the path that my fate had taken me.

  I would become a weapon. A naked blade of celestial steel. Not a dagger, for a dagger has a blade, and I would cut both ways.

  I did something blasphemous.

  As I fought, the eyes of my dao avatar turned black.

  The eyes of the naked blade turned white.

  Kuto casually threw his hand towards me, and the Dao avatar of the ape from the eighty-fifth floor appeared. It roared in outrage, recognizing me as the one who had vanquished it and returned it to its true master. It swung it’s pole at me, moving so swift that the sound of thunder crackled from it.

  I caught it with one hand, though it weight a thousand tons.

  “Not good enough,” I said, and I spun, ripping the staff from the ape’s hands. It fought me for it, but pulling on the strength of Majeesha, I was stronger. I spun and brained it with its own staff, and it vanished into a puff of mist.

  Kuto cast out his hand and a griffon appeared. The griffon reared back and shot lightning at me from its mouth

  With an effort of will, I made the staff that I had stolen mine in a fundamental way, changing its shape from a simple staff into a spear. Though I was forced to dodge, I followed the dodge with a lunge. The griffon snapped at me, and I speared it through its jaws.

  A blast of energy hit me, knocking me through the wall. I fell thirty floors as another Dao avatar chased me before I recovered. I grabbed onto the roc’s feathers and began strangling it.

  All of this within seconds.

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  With each new dao avatar he sent after me, he grew slightly weaker. It was either a mistake, or he believed he was playing with me, but as I faced his Dao I ground it under my heel, proving my superiority step by step.

  He weakened as I grew stronger, and he finally realized that I was feasting on him in a fundamental way when I reconjured the Ape’s staff to battle an elephant headed warrior the size of a colossus.

  “Enough,” he said. “I will face you directly.”

  I dismissed the staff, unwilling to give him the chance to claim it back. I saw the strands of fate tugging at Kuto as we sparred, and I tugged them out of place.

  Titanic amounts of energies collided as my fist met his. Both of us gave ground as the bones of our wrists shattered and the impact threw us backward. He was laughing, I was silent.

  He floated into the air, and began to speak--

  The lightning coursed around me as I zipped forward, tugging at the string of fate that would cause him to dodge left.

  He dodged left.

  Into a void blade that sliced him in half.

  He reassembled himself on the other side, but the lightning struck him in the chest. He frowned, wondering how that had happened when he had dodged it.

  The answer was simple. The answer was impossible

  He had dodged it in another timeline. One that didn’t exist, because this one had happened instead.

  I was destined to lose this fight. The odds were overwhelmingly against me. I could see the fates that brought me back to this floor time and time again until finally, after ten, after twenty, after thirty duels, finally I had succeeded.

  I pulled those futures into the now.

  I became the man that I would be then,

  Today.

  Kuto frowned as he tried to clamp down the energies that were ramping up around the room. The fire, the vortex of plasma that was hotter than some stars, the rippling lightning struck him from every angle while he struck back at me, but I had fought him a thousand times in the possible futures that extended out from today.

  I knew his tricks.

  He had never seen mine.

  “Enough!” he declared, and the shield that he extended blasted my energies back. I broke through the shield with my broken fist and slammed a haymaker into his jaw, pulling on the weight of Majeesha herself, on her dao, on the strength of a world that thought of nothing else.

  He gasped and was spun about. He landed on the dirt and spat blood.

  “Where were you hiding this man?” he asked.

  “As deep in the sea of forgetfulness as I could sink him,” I answered.

  He began to get up, thinking I would give him the time.

  The earth beneath him formed spikes that pierced his chest. I slammed a kick into his head. I tore the space apart around his very being, and his body exploded into a puff of mist.

  But that wasn’t enough.

  I roared and flexed through Majeesha, and the earth beneath the tower quaked, shaking its very foundations. I pulled and I pulled through the Xian bond, and when I could contain no more, I unleashed it all in a raw, unfiltered ray of Qi that destroyed what was left of the ninety ninth floor.

  And the floor above it.

  And five floors below it.

  I’m not certain how many people I killed in my rage.

  At the moment, I didn’t care.

  The cherubic figure appeared behind me, putting a hand on my shoulder. I rejected it, I was better off without it. I would--

  Its eyes glowed golden, and I was whole once more.

  I exhaled.

  I looked down at the terrified survivors of my rage, for the blast had not been directed downwards at full strength and most of the denizens of the upper floors had survived, though they were bloodied, broken, and injured.

  “I am done here,” I said. “Kuto, I have no interest in being part of your court. You may keep Majeesha, she is shallow and weak.”

  And with perfect ruthlessness,

  I severed the Xian bond that had given me the strength to overcome a titan, ripping the link out of me like a parasite that had infested my soul.

  I stood in the aftermath, screaming in agony and rage, until suddenly Kuto was there, holding me in his arms.

  “I know,” he said. “Whatever you’re feeling, it’s okay. You did something unbelievable right now. Something I – respect. But you are very young for a Xian Lord, and we must discuss what your time in the tower will mean for the other you, should you choose to rejoin him.”

  “So I am to be your prisoner?”

  “Nobody forced you to challenge the tower, Little Bug,” he pointed out. “You were invited as an honored guest. Come with me, and let us retire to another world. One which is not so barbaric as Majeesha. She was my first, and I made many mistakes, but I learned from her. You will make mistakes with Atla too, and perhaps if you listen to your elders, you will avoid following in my footsteps.”

  I couldn’t help it.

  I began to laugh.

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