Chương 28: 27: Knocked Right Awake

The Aria cracked open. Only a sliver. Black mist spilled from the gap as something small poked its head through. A squat, smoky badger with half-lidded eyes and fur that seemed woven from drifting fog. Slumber. It looked at Korhess. Yawned. A cloud of silver-gray mist rolled from its mouth. Korhess inhaled before she could stop herself. The effect was immediate. The chamber tilted. Left became right. Distance lost meaning. Her stomach lurched violently.

For a single horrifying moment, she understood that if she attempted those impossible speeds again in this state, she would miss reality entirely. One careless step and she might sprint out of the universe again and arrive somewhere else entirely. The Aria snapped shut. The badger vanished. Only the dizziness remained. Korhess blinked. Immediately abandoning the impossible speed, she returned to merely faster-than-light movement. The previous acceleration had left her nauseous.

Harmony snapped from the floor into into Butter's grip as she flickered from sight. Korhess reacted instantly. She borrowed an attack from the future and inserted it into the past, expecting Butter to rematerialize broken. Without the prosthetic, Butter had no defense against causal manipulation. The strike should have landed before she even existed in that moment. Instead, Butter vibrated. Her body oscillated at such a precise frequency that her timeline destabilized. The attack slipped. Fell into the present.

Butter healed through it immediately. Harmony snapped outward. SHKRAK! The chain wrapped around Korhess before she could fully recover. Still fighting through Slumber's lingering haze, she staggered sideways and attempted to teleport. A mistake. She emerged directly in the path of Butter's waiting fist. Korhess reacted at the last possible instant. FWOOOSH! Green-gold flames erupted from her mouth. Butter abandoned the punch and slipped backward as fire consumed the space between them.

The flames still lacked their true conceptual weight. The octopus had buried that essence deep within Korhess, leaving only the outward manifestation behind. It felt like firing blanks instead of live rounds. Butter didn't know that. She treated them as though they still carried their full authority. Korhess recognized the advantage immediately. Korhess hit one knee, grimacing. The chamber still swayed around her. Distances stretched and folded in ways that made no sense.

Closing her eyes, she forced Apis through her body in carefully measured currents, aligning the energy pathways one by one. Slowly, the dizziness began to fade. Reality settled back into place. Korhess teleported overhead, both hooves descending toward Butter's crown. Butter slipped beneath the strike, seized both of Korhess's legs, and swung. WHAM! Korhess crashed into the floor hard enough to crater the stone.

A grunt escaped her lips as Butter whipped her back up and slammed her down again, the chamber shuddering beneath the impact. Butter leapt backward, her fingers stabbing pressure points along her own left arm. Locks. Stasis. The limb froze in a temporarily unchanged state, becoming effectively invulnerable. Korhess teleported free of the crater. A fist greeted her. Only one. Relief flickered across her face. Then she looked down. Butter's arm protruded from her abdomen. Straight through. Out the other side.

Korhess stared at the wound, the blood, the impossible violation of her defenses.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" From the safety of her hiding place, Katherine recoiled so violently she nearly lost her footing. Her stomach lurched. Her eyes widened until they hurt, fixed on the arm jutting clean through Korhess's torso. Every instinct told her such a thing simply wasn't possible. Her pulse hammered against her ribs as she stumbled backward into the wall, one trembling hand clamped over her mouth, unable to look away. Korhess's fingers lashed toward Butter's face. Butter barely escaped.

Korhess staggered back. Then her legs gave out. She hit the ground hard, eyes locked on Butter's arm as a blood-slick fragment of her shattered spine slipped from the girl's hand and clattered across the floor.... The wound closed. Flesh knitted together. Bone reformed. Muscle wove itself back into place as Apis flooded the injury, sealing the impossible hole through her abdomen until only blood remained to prove it had ever existed. Korhess pushed herself back to her feet, clutching her stomach.

She didn't know how Butter had bypassed her protections. She didn't care. Rage drowned analysis. Apis detonated through her body. She teleported. Harmony blurred. Korhess attacked from every direction at once, above, behind, beneath, beside, each teleport collapsing space into another killing angle, yet Harmony was already there, whacking every hoof, elbow, and palm aside before they could land. The nunchaku became a dark ring around Butter, intercepting attacks from all sides with impossible precision.

Katherine's eyes darted wildly through the chamber. She couldn't keep up. Only the violent rhythm of impacts told her where either fighter had been. Then Korhess screamed. The sound ripped through the chamber with enough force to rattle Katherine's bones. Just as suddenly, it stopped. Silence. Korhess stood at the opposite end of the room and began walking toward Butter, slowly. Each hoofstep echoed through the chamber. Katherine felt the hairs on her arms rise. The scream had been frightening.

The silence was worse. Butter surged first, Harmony snapping toward her, but Korhess flowed through every strike with Asherah's Waltz. Her caprine physiology bent through impossible angles, hooves pivoting where human feet never could, joints folding into elegant, unnatural lines that let every attack skim past by fractions of an inch. She seemed less like someone dodging and more like water finding the spaces between stones. Harmony missed. A fist missed. An elbow missed. She slipped through everything.

Then she saw it. Butter's leg flexed. Barely ten degrees. Enough. Korhess stepped onto it as though scaling a mountainside, using the tiny bend as a foothold. Her weight and Apis drove through the joint. CRACK. The leg failed beneath her. Apis exploded around her form. Korhess sprang upward, twisting through the air as her body coiled into a savage roundhouse. The kick swept down with the full weight of her momentum. Butter was already moving.

Harmony flashed up, one stick gripped in each hand, the chain stretched taut between them like a length of silver steel. CLANG! Korhess's hoof crashed into the chain. The block held. Then Korhess reached for something far older than Apis. Sidewind. Back when she'd been nothing more than another failed Syndicate experiment, before dream-energy and before anyone believed she was worth keeping, Sidewind had been the only ability she possessed. A perpendicular shift. An instantaneous slingshot. Five feet.

Perfectly straight. The intervening space simply… didn't matter. By itself, it had been mediocre. Five feet at light speed meant little beside monsters who crossed continents between thoughts. It couldn't escape explosions or threaten anyone truly powerful. Apis rewrote it. Now every use condensed infinite velocity and infinite effective mass into that single five-foot translation, a ruler-straight line where all that momentum existed at once. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve.

Read this novel on Royal Road. Korhess invoked it. She shifted. Five feet sideways. ZWIP. Harmony tore free of Butter's grip, ripped away by the impossible impulse. Every instinct Butter possessed screamed. She twisted. The warning saved her life. Instead of punching through her skull, Korhess's hoof skimmed across the side of her head. KRACK! The impact launched her across the chamber. She struck the far wall hard enough to fracture it, her skull cracking as blood splashed across the stone.

For a horrifying instant, it looked as though the side of Butter's head had opened. Katherine's silent scream echoed through her own mind. Then Gloom surged across the wound, knitting bone, flesh, and skin back together almost as quickly as they had parted, sealing the injury before another drop of blood could fall. Korhess landed lightly. The wound in her abdomen had already closed, but her breathing remained ragged and her mismatched eyes burned. The future unfolded before her again, clear as day.

She didn't look. This young girl had nearly overwhelmed her through skill alone despite the gulf in experience between them. If Korhess needed to peer into the future to defeat someone so much younger, it would be discourteous. A grave shame. Like drawing a weapon against a toddler. She closed that eye of battle. She wouldn't look anymore. Across from her, Butter blinked twice.

"…Huh?" She rubbed the side of her head and winced.

"Ow. My head hurts." Korhess smiled, though there was no warmth in it.

"I welcome thee back to waking, dear saela." She rolled one shoulder, Apis curling around her battered frame.

"Tis well that thou hast opened thine eyes." Her mismatched gaze hardened.

"For thou hast awakened only to die." Butter's gaze settled on Korhess.

"You knocked me out." She pointed accusingly.

"You're way too strong. I can feel it. My Gloom couldn't persuade reality fast enough to dampen those heavy Apis hits." Then she looked down.

"WAIT." Her eyes widened.

"Where the frost is my leg?!" She hopped once in alarm, then began jogging in place. A second passed. Then another. Butter stopped.

"... Oh my." She jogged faster. Then faster still. Her face lit up.

"Oh my, I'm fast as fluff." She turned toward the edge of the chamber.

"Honeycakes!" Korhess visibly recoiled.

"Sugarbear!" One ear twitched. Katherine cupped her hands around her mouth.

"Are you okay?!"

"FOCUS ON THE FIGHT!" Katherine screamed back.

"SHE'S ABSURDLY STRONG!" Butter cracked her neck.

"No worries." Korhess stared between them.

"Honeycakes?"

"Don't ask."

"I had not intended to." Then Butter faced her again.

"I've been fighting people better than you since before I could read." Korhess frowned.

"How boastful." She took another measured step, her mismatched eyes never leaving Butter.

"Thy greatest folly is hubris. Thou hast mistaken us for contemporaries, for equals upon the selfsame rung." A faint smile touched her lips.

"We are not. I have yet to unveil the full breadth of mine arsenal." Butter rolled her aching shoulder.

"Neither have I." Korhess continued as though she hadn't spoken.

"Thou hast forced much from me this day, yet there remain arts thou hast not witnessed, and powers thou canst scarcely comprehe-""Do you know Winter Haze?" Korhess stopped. The irritation disappeared from her face as though it had never existed.

"…W-9?" Genuine surprise crossed Korhess's face. Butter nodded.

"She trained me." Korhess didn't answer. Instead, her eyes slowly traveled over Butter from head to toe, studying her all over again. The reckless footwork. The impossible transitions. Shaolin flowing into Wing Chun. Grappling into pressure points. Battlefield improvisation that bordered on madness. No rigid school or single doctrine. Every movement stolen and refined. She'd spent the entire battle wondering why Butter fought like someone who had learned martial arts from a dozen masters who all hated one another.

Now she knew.

"…That explains everything." Her voice had grown quieter.

"Thee fighteth as though every law of combat were merely… a suggestion." A beat passed. Butter scratched the back of her head.

"I was also raised by Lucien." Korhess blinked, then blinked again. The color drained from her face.

"…Lucien… Sinclair?" The name barely escaped her lips.

"The one and only." Korhess simply stared. There was unmistakable fear in her eyes. She had read the classified reports. Heard the whispered accounts. Entire factions erased. Abominations annihilated. Operations abandoned the moment his name entered the briefing. He carried a retreat-on-sight warning. Yet he had become less a man than a story. An impossible figure people whispered about but could neither prove nor dismiss, like a god of retribution hanging over the minds of everyone beneath the Syndicate's banner.

"He… is a myth."

"Yeah." Butter shrugged.

"I didn't think he was real either. Even after meeting him." Korhess looked back at Butter as though seeing an entirely different opponent.

"W-9 trained thee." Butter nodded.

"Lucien Sinclair raised thee." Another nod. Korhess closed her eyes for a long moment before rubbing the bridge of her nose.

"…Of course."

"What?"

"That thy techniques are an unholy patchwork. No school would ever teach them. Only monsters." She exhaled slowly.

"And thou wert raised by two." Butter smiled sheepishly.

"…Yeah." Korhess looked at her with fresh caution.

"That explains thy movements… and why I find them so utterly abhorrent." Off to the side, Katherine watched the exchange in bewildered silence. The moment Butter had spoken Lucien's name, Korhess had changed. A genuine, instinctive fear Katherine hadn't thought the woman capable of. Her gaze drifted between them. Who… was Lucien? — Butter settled into a stance and casually tapped her fingers together. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The rhythm accelerated until it became a blur, more than a hundred contacts occurring in the span of a moment. Korhess's eyes widened. Crescendo. Stacking without a target. Without movement. Without effort. The realization struck her immediately. Butter could have done that all along, which meant she hadn't truly been trying to kill her before.

"You weren't-" Butter disappeared. Korhess reacted instantly. A fist shot left. A hoof snapped right. Her eyes remained fixed upward. Butter was there. No. Kinetic silhouettes. Every one of them. The real attack came from below. THOOM. Butter's palms slammed into the floor, her body folding as one leg whipped upward in a brutal rising kick. The strike drove from the ground like an uppercut, every ounce of her bodyweight and momentum channeled through her heel into Korhess's jaw.

The impact should have launched her into orbit. Sidewind. Instead of yielding to the blow, Korhess translated herself five feet straight downward. Infinite velocity and infinite effective mass collapsed into that ruler-straight shift, driving her body through Butter's kick rather than away from it. KRAAAACK! Butter's right leg shattered. Bone exploded apart. Muscle tore. Blood sprayed across the battlefield. Butter screamed. The force still rattled through Korhess's skull. Her vision flashed white.

Blood sprayed from her nose as her brain slammed against the inside of her head. A sound tore free from her throat. A furious, wounded bleat. Raw rage given voice. Korhess immediately hated that it had escaped her. Both women staggered. Apis surged through Korhess's body. Her hands tore through empty air, fingers closing around something invisible. Continuity. She seized it. Ripped it free from the space surrounding Butter. The effect was immediate. Butter froze mid-lunge. The vacuum left behind collapsed inward.

Korhess straightened slowly. Then her hand plunged deeper. Past motion. Past momentum. Into the Gloom itself. Yellow stubbornness. Blue structure. Crimson fury. She tore them out. Butter remained suspended exactly where she was, pinned to a single instant of space-time, unable to move even a fraction further. Korhess straightened slowly. Understanding struck her. Crook. For years she had watched the woman perform absurdities and never truly grasped the mechanics behind them. Now she did.

A smile spread across her face. Joy. The pure exhilaration of finally comprehending something that had stood beyond her reach for decades. She dusted off her clothes, adjusted her scarf, and settled into a stance she had only witnessed once before. Crook's stance. The chamber fell silent. A single step. Korhess aligned herself along a path reality considered impossible. She shifted into deliberate discord with existence itself while Apis anchored every piece of her in place.

Maintaining both states simultaneously should have been impossible. One demanded separation. The other demanded stability. Korhess forced them to coexist. Anything struck in that state would inherit the same contradiction. The difference was that she possessed the anchors necessary to survive it. Her target would not. One inch. THUNK. Her fist touched Butter's chest. Nothing happened. Then everything did. The contradiction spread. Butter disappeared. Simply gone. Erased.

Air rushed violently into the stolen absence with a thunderous WHOOOMPH, the chamber shuddering as reality hurried to fill the impossible gap. And suddenly Korhess understood another thing. Why Crook always used the smallest possible movements. A step. A touch. A tap of the finger. Anything more would have been catastrophic. Had Korhess thrown a full punch in that state, the resulting shockwave would not have struck the chamber. It would have erased it. Every reverberation had to be accounted for.

Every displaced current of air. Every ripple of consequence. Fate. Destiny. Luck. The technique forced all of them into the same discordant relationship with reality. And reality erased the contradiction without mercy. Crook had never been showing restraint for her opponents. She had been showing restraint for existence itself. Korhess remained motionless, searching every future she could reach. Nothing. No hidden trajectory. No delayed consequence. No miraculous recovery waiting beyond her perception. She had won.

A laugh escaped her. Then another. Soon she was genuinely laughing, shoulders shaking, breath coming hard despite possessing enough Apis that exhaustion should have been impossible. At last. After all these years, at last she had understood Crook. She had replicated the technique. She had won. Then she noticed something strange. Katherine wasn't looking at her. She was staring at something behind her. Korhess's laughter slowly faded. The smile left her face. Very carefully, she turned around.

Butter had been standing behind Korhess the entire time. — What Korhess erased was a game-copy, a temporary illusion Tentacles had slipped into her perception the moment Butter regained consciousness. Against someone as powerful as Korhess, the deception wouldn't last long. Butter knew she couldn't beat her fairly. Korhess surpassed her in every measurable category. So she focused. The Vibrating Palm. A ghost buried in muscle memory. A frequency her conscious mind could hear but rarely reproduce.

Body, mind, and soul forced into the same impossible vibration. She had succeeded only three times. Each attempt had nearly killed her. This wasn't a technique you used freely. It was a gun with one bullet that kicked like a dying star. Butter didn't open her eyes. She leaned. Her eyes snapped open. Korhess was already there. The open-palmed strike was already a memory waiting in Butter's future. Moth-Step. Butter reapplied herself six inches to the right, inside Korhess's guard.

Her bloody hand moved and settled over the center of Korhess's chest. PAT. A gentle touch. A resonant command spread through Korhess, harmless at first, amplifying with every millimeter, every cell. It searched for discord and found her invulnerability. A perfect wall. The Vibrating Palm shook the foundation. For a single moment, the certainty beneath that invulnerability faltered. It made the mortar unsure of itself. Apis was harvested potential drawn from body, mind, and soul.

The Vibrating Palm aligned that same trinity. Cousins in essence. For one fleeting instant, Korhess became mortal. Butter's eyes met hers. A second stretched, expanded, and became something vast. Korhess stood inside it. She saw Butter, and the thing beneath. Her perception drilled downward through layers of flesh, memory, identity, and circumstance. She dug through Butter's existence the way roots split stone. And what it found made Korhess recoil. The hair. The smile. Crook. Inheritance. Origin.

The realization struck with such force that it eclipsed everything else. Then she saw the Gloom. She was born from it. Korhess's breath caught. The pieces aligned. The impossible speed. The impossible adaptability. The way Gloom answered her without resistance. The way reality itself seemed willing to negotiate whenever Butter made a demand. Understanding arrived all at once. The Gloom Dweller. Crook. The impossible union. For decades Korhess had studied experiments. She knew how they were made. Children taken.

Children altered. Spliced. Incubated. Grown in tanks. Constructed from stolen pieces and artificial miracles. Every experiment followed rules. Cruel rules. But rules nonetheless. Butter did not. Because Butter had never truly been born. The thing before her wasn't a child modified into something greater. She was something greater pretending to be a child. Korhess suddenly understood why records didn't exist. Why nobody understood what Butter truly was. There had never been a category for her.

Experiments were people altered into monsters. Butter was a monster that had somehow become a person. The greatest abomination the Syndicate had ever produced. She violated the architecture of creation itself. An error reality had somehow failed to correct. Korhess stared. Fear touched her heart. The stretched second trembled. Korhess heard her own voice emerge as little more than a whisper.

"You're an... anomaly." The word felt inadequate. Butter's eyes drilled into her soul.

"Fortissimo." A compulsory memory. And the universe dissolved.