Rot and Gold 3 – His Weapon [Fianna POV]

There was this… annoying scratching under her fingernails.

Fianna did not even have fingernails anymore. There were little protrusions at the tips of her metal hands that served effectively the same purpose. They were every bit as artificial as the rest of her arms from the shoulder sockets onwards. After the Digestive Plague had eaten her original limbs, these replacements had served her well.

Except for this discomfort.

It was new, very new. It had started within the last five minutes and was too persistent for the usual phantom itches. It was similar to that sensation of absence, yet altogether different in its focus. It also reminded her of the sensation she got when using metal magic. She had been practicing daily for a month in the ways of the Tibetans and had taken a liking to it.

The way of the White Clan ranked metal mages according to the Path of the Ten Claws. Unlike most mages, who layered the reach of their magic into zones of influence (absolute, partial, and absence), the White Clans concentrated their efforts into minimal areas. This had the advantage of incredible control at a notable range, on par with that of a higher-powered user of the same magic, with the drawback of being limited to very few objects and a lack of snap relocation of attention. A metal mage with a zone could simply shift which of the pieces of metal in their orbit they commanded. The White Clan had a singular piece of metal and they needed to recall that piece.

It was a distinction of schooling alone. The underlying magic was the same and traditional and specialized could learn the other’s way of doing things just fine.

Each of the focused pieces of the White Clan’s teaching was a ‘Claw’ of the White Tiger. The more Claws a metal mage had, the more powerful they were. The grand masters were those that exceeded the Claws and even acquired two Fangs. Fianna had made it to 3 Claws so far. Her teacher assured her that was incredibly impressive for someone who had started to learn their way so late.

Fianna considered it subpar.

The headspace required for the White Clan’s techniques was one of tight discipline. It was a meditation, a constant challenge to keep the will narrowed. It was a state of mind that Fianna was more than familiar with, one that she was in at that very moment.

Motionless, she lay inside a chamber located right beneath the roof of the Palace. Effectively, she was hidden away at the upper edge of the socket of the Statue of Liberty. It was the highest vantage point around and thus perfect for her and her fellow snipers.

As John Newman’s personal scout, she should not have participated in shared operations like this. That was in a world where they had that kind of luxury. In reality, there were very few who were effective at a kilometres range. Among them, she was the only one that used a gun to that end. Even with that factor, her ammunition was limited.

Hailey had constructed the sniper rifle in her hand. It was a single action model. It only held one bullet at a time, shells that packed such power that the casing evaporated when they were fired. To withstand such forces, the gun itself had been forged from Mithril. Runes were carved on practically every surface, some of them in such tiny script that Fianna had to use her Innate Ability, Zoom, to see them.

The weapon was as still as she was. The shelter did not allow her to stand. The slit that opened to the outside was just big enough to allow her to aim with muzzle and lens. When it came to her position, Fianna considered this to be one of her more pleasant deployments. A naked stone chamber was infinitely more pleasant than days spent half-submerged in bog water. A sniper’s life was lived in wait of that one perfect shot.

The scenery was worse than usual though.

Fianna followed clouds of spores invading the lungs of civilians. She watched as men, women and children were turned into shambling mounds of mutations and mycelium. Soldiers were harshly punished for their mistakes or simply overwhelmed by more powerful creatures.

Fianna did not allow herself to feel for any of it.

She had been granted a weapon. She had made herself part of that weapon. She had a purpose and that purpose was not to protect the innocent. Others could go for that lofty goal. The luxury of helping was not hers. She was a killing machine.

Mercenary or soldier, she acted on the behalf of another. The only difference was whether she did it for hope or gold. Even if she had chosen the moral path, she was not a moral actor. She was an operator in the war plans. Nothing more and nothing less.

The layered zoom of her Innate Ability coupled with the scope made kilometres of distance a non-factor. She could make out every pore in the hideous face of the mutating civilian. The lower jaw cracked open, the skull split down the middle, and the entirety of the bone structure was reshaped into a four-directional mouth of sorts.

Witnessing this likeness to Tiamat, Fianna moved her trigger finger in position. She observed that entity in particular for five seconds, until it was clear that the similarity was purely arbitrary. ‘The goddess of chaos only binds to females anyhow,’ she chastised herself for the mistake. The long barrel of the rifle clattered softly as she shifted.

“Fianna.”

“Yes, Sir?” she responded instinctively and immediately. The voice of the President… the King was in her ear. Whatever word she used for him, it capitalized in her mind. Fluttering feelings died before they could do more than spark. Fianna killed her emotional impulses with professional precision.

“1X7Y11, 2X3Y3.”

Grid coordinates. The map of the Guild Hall was etched into her memory and with it northwestern position. The first set of numbers specified a 1x1 kilometre area in the Production area. The second set reduced that to a 100x100 metres square within that: the middle of the Fibre Fields.

“I have eyes on fifteen moving soldiers. A caterpillar-esque creature is following them.”

“Eliminate it.”

Fianna’s finger curled. Her metal magic was entirely focused on the bullet. It was a split second between the ignition of the powder and the supersonic projectile leaving the range of her control. In that tiny moment, she added to the spin of metal, adding just a little bit more to its destructive capability and accuracy.

The bullet met centre mass. 99% of Lorylim were not killed by a headshot. Torso and similar centres of the body were preferred. A sniper’s dream, as long as that sniper was not particularly driven to making ambitious shots. Fianna found that to be a conundrum in other situations. Against a foe like this, she was pleased to see the explosive round turn the entire chest of the creature into a hole. Dozens of limbs were sent flying. The soldiers that had been running turned around to deliver the finishing blows.

“1X7Y12, 2X2Y7.”

Fianna directed her gaze north. “Eyes on a group of soldiers. They are about to meet a group of regular Lorylim in battle.”

“Eliminate them.”

“Affirmative, Sir,” she responded. Her hands had already worked on cranking open the bullet chamber. A harsh pull and sideways twist were both necessary to keep it open. A second projectile was loaded. The casing was as long as her hand and as thick as two fingers. It slotted in smoothly. She closed the chamber, pulled back the hammer, and fired.

There was no surprise on the impact. The crowd of Lorylim exploded into a shower of gore. Why he had wanted her to spend one of her precious bullets on so easily discarded a target, she did not care to ask. She was a weapon. A weapon did not ask what direction it was pointed. Indeed, she was happy to have chosen the hands that wielded her. King, President, Sir, whatever title he went by, she chose to follow him.

Results and the method to achieve those results, both were satisfying when following him.

Fianna withstood the urge to scratch her metal fingertips. The itch had never left her.

There were no further orders. John must have put his attention elsewhere. Fianna returned to scanning the area. Her orders were clean and simple: eliminate Synapse creatures. Without orders, she would not spend these precious bullets on anything less.

She scanned her assigned perimeter. Time passed. She was both able to tell the seconds as they drifted by and aloof from the concept. The battle went on and on. Celestial Devourer versus Tiamat, elites versus Synapses, soldier versus drone, civilian versus corruption. The tide of the battle was impossible to make out for certain from her position. The Lorylim appeared to make gains.

The waves caused by the combat of Tiamat and Stirwin broke against the side of the Guild Hall. Fianna did not understand quite what was happening at first. Only when she saw the edge in the water, did she get the idea: the Guild Hall had risen about a dozen metres from sea level. It put them in the beneficial position of breaking the charge of the pieces of the goddess of chaos that slouched off the concrete bones.

How? Fianna did not know. She just saw the Gamer’s plan in it. They were allowing the Lorylim to attack. Every bit of biomass depleted was their benefit.

“RETREAT FROM THE ROOF!”

Fianna’s body started to move the moment the order reached the insides of her ears. She wiggled backwards, out of the small chamber.

Too slow.

An impact shook the Palace. The roof above Fianna cracked. Magic and metal worked together to let her artificial left arm redirect the block of stone that would have otherwise squashed her chest. A rain of dirt followed, the lawn that covered the roof of the Palace crumbling down into the hole made.

Fianna had no other choice. She made her way out through it. Pulling the long rifle after her, she climbed out onto the roof, to then find the nearest staircase or, if there was no other choice, scale down the side of the building.

She emerged near the edge of the roof. Other snipers of every stripe had made a similar decision as her, although most had apparently been crushed or gotten out the regular way. The reason for the interruption in their duty was readily apparent.

It was a gargantuan knot of hair and teeth. It reminded Fianna of the horrid things one pulled out when giving a shower pipe an overdue cleaning. That clump of things was merely disgusting. This clump was ten metres tall and had fallen from the sky.

A myriad of fine tendrils spread out over the roof quicker than Fianna could run. By the time she had hastened to the edge of the building, the mess of hair, nerves and sludge had already begun to spread down the sides of the Palace. To try and make her way down that way was tantamount to suicide.

‘It’s the way through then.’ Fianna scanned for the staircase. She had one more bullet in the chamber. The rifle was not the kind of weapon she could reload in the field, so she only got this one shot. For a brief moment, she considered breaking through the roof instead. Ultimately, she considered a wall of flesh the more likely target to give.

Fianna stayed very still. The Lorylim did not perceive her as a threat. The main mass stretched up the Statue of Liberty. A patriotic core inside the sniper felt deeply displeased at the sight of this filth crawling all over the gleaming flutters of Lady Liberty’s metal skirt. Not a feeling she could act on. The monster was clearly aiming for the torch and the superweapon built on it.

A streak of blue leapt off the torch. A hammer of ice struck the creature in whatever constituted its face. The shockwave of Hailey’s attack was Fianna’s signal to run for it. She trained her gun on a knotted bundle of fibres and corruption before her and pulled the trigger.

The kickback was more than she had anticipated. If she still had a shoulder, it would have dislocated. Even the artificial limb broke internally. Her right arm was suddenly numb, the weapon dragged down the lax limb and her stride broke as she dropped it. Stoicism swallowed the curse when the Mithril slammed against her leg mid step.

A second’s delay was devastating and she was at least three short because of that blunder. The hole she had blown into the cover of tendrils was rapidly closing again. Hair-thin tendrils squirmed like the fine extensions of some sea creature in tidal motions. They reached for each other, aiming to connect and hide the entrance into the building from view again.

Fianna ran. She leapt. She felt a sting on her leg. She crashed into the ground. She tumbled, uncontrolled. Her balance was off. Her right arm was a metal weight, dragging her along. She crashed down a flight of stairs. She came to a stop.

Drums.

Despite the daze and the confusion, she ripped her head up. The bodysuit covering her was torn, as was her calf. A disgusting blob had attached itself to her, a net of hairs whose teeth was scratching and injecting her flesh.

Fianna felt panic. True, undiluted panic, that made its way out of her vocal cords in a high-pitched scream. ‘I can die, I can be tortured, but do not make me one of those things!’ she pleaded to whatever would listen. She kicked the disgusting bundle, but the tight grip of the infectious form remained. What she scraped off with her reinforced heel was nothing compared to the mass that entered her body.

Drums. Drums in her skull. The laughter of a species once dead and a species to die.

Fianna clenched her teeth so hard she tasted blood. She could feel the corruption course through her bloodstream. Everything inside her itched. It was like maggots were crawling over her bones. Her memories began to feel distant, as if she was looking at a movie that she was vaguely invested in. She tried to cling to it, to remember who she was.

A childhood as a single kid of a leader of a mercenary band. Her father was a scumbag, but he was all she had. He had tried his best to keep her alive. His best had been brutal. He had revelled in the chaos of the Abyss and embraced working for the victors for cash. Morality was beyond his considerations. It was beyond his reach as well.

He had trained her. Sometimes, he talked about her mother. He was tight-lipped about how she died. One drunken night when she was thirteen, he had confessed that she had died in their line of work. He hated his work. He continued it the next day and the years thereafter.

He had decided to join the side of the First of Wrath, when she came knocking. No one sane wanted to stand against her. Ironically, that was the engagement where he caught an electric arc. It fried his insides, killing him before the barrier was opened up. Fianna had held his hand. She knew her father had been a bad man. She still missed him.

He had raised her to be a fighter. She had become a killer by necessity. He had tried to make her popular with the other mercenaries. She could never quite swallow her instinctive disgust of men and women that lived only for themselves. They knew how she felt. The band was fated to break apart after she took it over.

Her life was so easily summarized. No… no, it was not! There were a thousand details in her heart. That time her father had put a flower crown on her head. Her first, innocent crush on a boy. Her discovery of stoicism and how it had shaped her life. The first time she pulled the trigger. The first use of her Innate Ability. They were not just scenes in a film, not just pieces of memories that could be allowed to be buried under the cacophonic beat of otherworldly drums!

Fianna calmed. The **** of the mind that was coming scared her. It scared her like nothing else ever had. That made it the test of all tests. Even if she was not the wielder of great power, her mind was her own.

“No, no, it is not.”

Fianna stared in the face of something else. She was aware that she was not really looking at anything. Her eyes were itching. It was deeply unpleasant, even more so than that pressing sensation in her nailbeds. Through eyes that were no longer hers, she beheld the anarchy of wills that was the hivemind.

“You struggle, but that means very little,” so said Izha. “You are not-“

“I will never choose to be your weapon.”

“Then rub up against the endless maelstrom of thoughts. Share this pain with me, double it and double it again, until the whole world is deaf.”

Fianna clenched her jaw and braced for the inevitable **** of her mind.

Something growled behind her.

The hivemind recoiled in surprise.

Streaks clawed through the darkness, until the black was diminished to a streak in a gentle white. Serenity overcame Fianna, like a perfect landscape of drifting snow. Calm, collected, and deeper than the eye could see. The taste of iron filled her mouth. Her blood, tasted by her tongue in her mouth, all inside a head that was still hers. The crawling was gone.

In that white, she lost consciousness.