Heretical Fishing

Book 3: Chapter 71: Smoke and Mirrors

With each person that praised Barry’s actions, his soul vibrated. If he were the older version of himself, the one without an enhanced awareness of his own being, he’d have preened like a proud rooster. Now though, he was all too aware of his ego and its inflation. It wasn’t a problem in and of itself—an ego was only natural. He was human, after all.

The discordance came when that ego clashed with the version of himself that he wanted to be.

Barry was the stand-in leader of the Church of Fischer. As such, he should be the person that Fischer’s followers could look to for guidance. A paragon of virtue. Yet here he was, reveling in the praise. It was... fickle. For him to derive his self-worth from others’ perception of him was to put his happiness in their hands. He tried to deny it. Tried to push it down and pretend it didn’t exist. But it wasn’t working anymore.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a new development. He hadn’t consciously admitted it before, but this shameful inclination of his was why he’d been pushing Fischer to take control of the church. Barry gritted his teeth, tuning out the outside voices heaping more accolades on him.

I don’t feel worthy of my position…

His core hummed, something deep within him resonating with that acknowledgement.

I don’t feel worthy of being a leader…

Something sloughed away as he admitted that truth, a weight he hadn’t known was there. The world’s chi felt alive around him, gathering and dancing as Peter and the tree spirits sent ever more flowing over the battlefield. Voices called out to him, trying to get his attention and reef him back to the present. Barry ignored them. He had to get to the bottom of this cognitive dissonance.

Was he truly unworthy of being a leader? If he was a little too proud—a little too vain—what did that matter? Even if failing those present would bring him discomfort, it would be temporary. He would never give up. He would strive nonstop, fighting to get back to a position where people were proud of his actions.

If his pride was a motivator, though, did that mean he would betray his comrades? If there was a choice to make, one that would hurt those he cared about in order to boost people’s perception of him, would he take the self-serving option…?

His answer was as immediate as it was true. No, he wouldn’t. His ego might chafe, but he’d still choose the wellbeing of others every time. His core shook, as did the surrounding clouds of chi, urging him on.

Oh... Barry realized, possessing unwavering clarity. I am a good leader...

It wasn’t his vanity talking, either—it was fact. In spite of his pride, Barry would readily sacrifice his happiness if it meant improving the wellbeing of others.

The world agreed.

All at once, the surrounding essence slammed into him, filling his core to the brim. His body seemed to soak up all it could, his muscles swelling and skeleton changing. The next moment, excess power exploded out of his core as its bounds increased.

***

Even though I wasn’t physically there, I recoiled from the explosion, instinctively backing away. The blast was different to the blade-like chi of Roger’s ascension, yet it was just as deadly for anyone caught in the detonation.

Luckily for the surrounding defenders, everyone now knew what a breakthrough looked like. Danny had tried to get Barry’s attention at first, even giving him a little shake for good measure. But the moment the world’s chi started gathering, he ordered everyone to back up. Just in time, too, because it had slammed into Barry a moment later.

I’d been keenly aware of Barry’s thought process, the network I was connected to relaying his deepest thoughts in real time. I had no idea that Barry was dealing with such doubt, and now that he’d overcome it, I was beyond happy for him. The explosion that resulted from his breakthrough had thrown up a cloud of dust, and as it settled, I raised a mental eyebrow at Barry’s body. The homie was absolutely jacked. Like ten years of weight training and a healthy dose of anabolics jacked.

“Frack me,” Danny said, shaking his head in disbelief as Barry sat up. “What has Helen been feeding you, buddy?”

Barry blinked down at his glistening arms, which had literally torn their way out of his shirt. He opened and closed his fists, testing his new strength. The surrounding defenders gaped at his new form, their faces ranging from stunned, awed, and everything in between. Which wasn’t really surprising considering he looked like a Greek God. Though all of their reactions were positive, another person on the battlefield was far from happy about the event.

An inhuman scream came from the flames, leaving no doubt as to who the sound came from. The king’s hatred was reaching new heights. Most of the flying wedge had been taken out by now, only three of them still standing. As the scream slowly tapered off, the inferno raging atop the field ebbed. Thick strands of corruption flowed from around the defenders still standing. When their protective flames were gone, the streams continued.

“What the...?” Roger said, his eyes wide as he gaped at the downed enemies. Despite none of the king’s protective chi surrounding them, torrents of power still flowed from their cores. Their patriarch wasn’t just retrieving his own power. He was also stealing theirs.

It poured into his outstretched hands, flowing through his body and down into his core. There, his nexus of power expanded, the walls stretching to accommodate the vast swaths of essence coming in. Though his eyes still held indescribable madness, there was a hint of bluster there too.

He planned this, I realized.

I’d assumed he’d gone completely insane, spewing so much power that the lining of his core stretched to such a degree that it ripped. But it had been intentional. He had damaged himself so that his core could hold more power. As I sent my awareness closer, inspecting the king’s nexus, new tears appeared along its surface. Just as quick as they came, the wounds were cauterized, his sickly chi sealing them shut. It was an unending process, yet his core remained stable.

A silence settled over the defenders as the flames continued shrinking. It was late now, the sun having almost fully set over the western mountains. The burning fires had made the scene bright, but now that they were disappearing, darkness crept in. As the last of the streams left the attackers, they collapsed, their leader having sucked them dry.

In that gloom, all eyes turned to the king.

Barry stepped forward, his new muscles bulging enough to give even the most confident of men a little body dysmorphia. “Wave-break formation!” he bellowed, his voice possessing a rich timbre.

I had no idea what that meant, but as the defenders shifted, I swiftly understood. Only a select few stepped forward, the rest falling back into a defensive position. Roger, Trent, the twins, and Barry were the first to the front, followed by Snips, Borks, and finally Claws, who zapped there from the rock outcropping in what may as well have been called an instant. Peter was the only one absent, still helping the tree spirits radiate clean chi over the battlefield. It was all those that had experienced a breakthrough—the strongest of our forces.

They were to be the shoreline, the immovable force that broke any foe foolish enough to crash into it.

Barry turned to Borks and Claws, using one hand to point at the unconscious attackers. “Please retrieve them.”

My two furry pals were a blur of enthusiasm as they darted forward and collected everyone, temporarily storing them in Borks’s dimensional space, then removed them at the rear of the field. Only a handful of seconds had passed before they returned to the front-lines. Those few seconds were all it took for the king to finish absorbing his flames. Fire danced across his skin, weaving unnatural lines that flared and sputtered each time a new tear appeared on the surface of his core.

Without warning, the king attacked. He was a living flame, and a blazing trail marked his passage. Deklan and Dom flew forward, manifesting a shield that covered the air. The former was still wielding his fish clubs, using them as an extension of himself. Roger stood just behind them, his sword drawn back and waiting. Barry crouched and spread his arms, chi gathering in his core. I focused on him, the network I was connected to urging me to watch.

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The king released a spinning kick against the shield that would make Cinnamon proud. It sounded like ten concurrent lightning strikes, the force of it pushing the brothers back a meter. Roger, faster even than most cultivators could see, slashed upward. Deklan and Dom opened up a gap in the shield, instinctively knowing just how much room the strike would need. It slammed into the king's chest, cutting him from left hip to opposite shoulder. Despite breaking skin, no blood flowed from the wound, his fire burning to heal the damage in an instant.

The king reeled back only long enough for him to bend his legs and spring forward again, this time delivering a right hook to Deklan’s side of the shield. Before it connected, Barry’s chi burst from him. I expected him to have some flashy specialty, a finishing-move worthy of his ego. I was wrong. Barry’s essence joined the twins’, reinforcing the shield and giving it a reflective surface that reminded me of a mirror. When the king’s punch connected, his own power was turned against him, his feet leaving the ground.

And it wasn’t just the twins that’d had their chi reinforced. Roger’s sword, also possessing a mirror-like quality, whistled through the air. A wall of invisible blades slipped through a gap in the shield, and with Barry’s power enhancing them, they cut into the king and sent him flying backward across the battlefield. His body skipped over the ground like a stone on water, divots getting cut from the blackened earth each time he made contact.

The king whirled and skidded to a stop on all fours, his entire torso ablaze as his wounds sealed themselves. A snarl split his face, but it was almost-immediately hidden when a meter-wide portal opened right before him. Forked lightning, a pillar of flame, and countless energy blades—all empowered by Barry and possessing a reflective sheen—slammed into the king, forcing him to the ground. Roger drew his arm back, the tip of his sword held forward. When he jabbed toward the king, his movement was a blur, holding every ounce of chi he could muster.

The strike was so potent that it manifested as a spearpoint, and it drove right for the enemy cultivator’s abdomen. I believed cores to be a metaphysical structure, something that couldn’t be hurt by physical blows, but that didn’t stop Roger's strike from piercing the king’s. Given how thin he’d stretched his nexus of power, the reflective spearpoint shot right through it, impaling him to the ground.

Sections of scar-tissue riddled his core in each place he’d cauterized, and they all ruptured at once. As sure as I was that the sun would rise each morning, I could tell that the king’s core was damaged beyond repair. There was no coming back from this.

To call the resulting blast an explosion was to rob it of its magnitude. The king was consumed from within as each stream of corrupted chi he’d retrieved was expelled, creating a fireball taller than the surrounding mountains. The frontline of defenders was cast away, the twins’ shield holding and forcing everyone back. They skidded into the other defenders. Barry put a hand to Deklan and Dom’s shoulders, pouring his power into them. Their shield became a great metallic sphere, covering everyone present.

When the inferno started shrinking, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was finally over.

No, the echoes from the network urged.

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean, no? There’s no way he could survive—” I cut off when I felt it.

Deep below me, running adjacent to the thick mesh that was now filled with the chi of my friends and me, something burrowed. It was the sickly chi that the king used, the same corrupting force that fueled his flames, and it was barrelling toward him.

It emerged from the ground beneath his feet, immediately shooting up to refill his core. As it flowed into him, the king seemed to return to himself, his will oozing out over the battlefield. There was a distorted noise, like the static from a thousand TVs at full-volume. The air warped as the flames shrunk, condensing until they were the shape of a man.

The king, now tapped directly into the power that had corrupted him, flicked a single finger.

A train-sized cylinder of flame spewed from him, hammering into the defenders. Deklan and Dom restored the shield just in time. The entire defensive force, sequestered beneath the semicircular barrier, was thrown backward. The king extended his arm again, ready to flick another pillar of corrupted chi their way.

My stomach sank as a possibility, that I’d made the wrong choice by remaining here, reared its ugly head. Instead of pushing it away, railing against it, I took a deep breath and let the thought pass by like a cloud high above. I’d already decided to trust in my friends, and there was no point in doubting them now.

I focused on the defenders, channeling my worry into curiosity about how they would overcome the obstacle. And within the shield, a series of breakthroughs took place, each of them contained by individual bubbles of the twins’ power.

Anna, the former slave of Gormona that had shown her loyalty time and time again, exploded with dangerous chi. It was like Roger’s in that it felt like a threat, and despite the lack of a cutting edge, it felt just as deadly. She focused her blunt-force power on the king, stumbling but somehow remaining conscious.

Danny, who’d spent most of his life as a quartermaster in the capital, collapsed. He shook his head and came to a moment later, an odd essence radiating from his core. It felt almost like Peter’s and Barry’s—a supportive power.

Keith, in a move that I didn’t find surprising, caught fire. Thankfully, it was nothing like the corrosive flames that the king was releasing, and extinguished the moment he passed out.

They were all potent, but nowhere near as powerful as the last.

Teddy’s entire body glowed red, his face contorting in anger. Unlike Anna, his legs never wavered, a palpable torrent of injustice coming from every one of his pores as he stared at the king. His was the rage of a sleeping bear, awoken too soon by some foolish invader. Like a den mother that saw every defender as one of her cubs, Teddy was furious at the king’s actions.

Barry absorbed each of their transformations in an instant. “Drop the shield long enough for us to exit.”

“No need.” Deklan shrugged nonchalantly, as if they were discussing what to eat for dinner. “You guys can pass through it.”

“Good,” he replied, the timbre still in his voice but his tone cold. “Tsunami formation.”

The response was immediate.

All those that had experienced a breakthrough, other than the two brothers, strode forward and left the shield. Teddy took up the vanguard position next to Roger and Trent, everyone gathering their chi. The king, seeing their approach, paused. He looked like an elemental spirit, only his shape now reminiscent of the human he had once been. Orbs of bright-white flame watched everyone, his sickening chi oozing out to feel their power.

He laughed, then. At least I thought it was a laugh. His head rocked back and a sound like a house-fire came from his throat, casting heat into the night sky that distorted the air. He cocked his arm back, holding it there as he gathered an unbelievable amount of power.

Before another cloud of doubt could cross my mind, the voices of the network below shifted to an elated chorus. They directed my sight toward the east, and though it made the impending clash leave my mind’s eye, I let my vision shift. I needed to know why the remnant copies of my pals felt victorious.

When I found the being flying over the sand, my jaw dropped open. Though he was already moving at an incredible clip, the little deviant unleashed a blast from one claw, rocketing even faster. His core was almost empty, but the power he possessed... it had changed. He was strong.

“What the frack is he carrying?” Maria asked, her attention on the woven basket nestled against his darkened carapace. “And where did he get it?”

“No idea what it is,” I replied, daring to hope that he could turn the tides of battle. “And if I had to guess where he got it, I’d say it’s stolen. Probably from a small child. Or a puppy.”

Unaware of the incoming reinforcement, the king unleashed his blast. If the earlier attack was train-sized, this one was the size of an aircraft carrier. Wider than the battlefield, his flames roared forward like a vengeful spirit, seeking to consume everything in their path. Though his human features were hidden by flame, I could sense the arrogance radiating from him. He believed that his attack would tear right through the party of defenders charging his way.

Busy unleashing hellfire as he was, the king didn’t notice the sapient creature sailing in from the east. The defenders were similarly occupied, gathering their chi and preparing to unleash it against the king’s inferno.

Only one being noticed. Perhaps it was their connection that made her look back and search the sky. Maybe it was her longing for him, her desire to see him once more. Or, possibly, it was just chance that made Sergeant Snips turn and look up, scanning the sky with a lingering gaze. Whatever caused it, the result was the same. Her visible eye went wide, her mouth-parts undulating in disbelief as she spotted the Xianxia-land equivalent of a stealth-bomber.

Rocky, playing it way cooler than I knew he could, simply shot her a wink and tipped an imaginary hat as he sailed over the defenders.

He landed before the incoming death-sentence, set his woven basket down, and reached in to retrieve something. He withdrew a slender item just as the wall of corrupted chi slammed into him. Though his chi now felt like an active volcano, I still held my breath as Rocky’s core absorbed the king’s flames. He would be fine against fire, I was sure of it, but what about the corruption...?

It was over in seconds, Rocky’s body parched of power and all too happy to soak up the ship-sized conflagration. I hadn’t noticed before, but he was covered in red lines that seemed to glow from within, standing in stark contrast to his now-black carapace. Was it reflective of how much chi he held...? Before I could consider it further, he shook violently.

I honed in on him, sending my awareness down toward his core. Just as I’d suspected, it was the corrupting chi. It was seeking to infect him. Seeking to change him. Snips flew forward, tears streaming as she scuttled to his side. Rocky’s eyes were closed, his entire awareness focused on fighting back against the corruption. What was he...?

With what felt like practiced ease, he cast the corruption out. Just like that, he simply... released it. A cloud of dark green vapor flowed from his mouth. Waving a claw through it, he dispersed the sickly smell, making a displeased face.

In his other claw, he held the slender thing that he’d removed from the woven basket. One end was glowing, the king’s flames having caused it to catch fire.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me...” I said, not believing my eyes.

Rocky held the stick to his mouth, giving Snips a reassuring pat with his other claw as she burst into tears.

“What is that?” Maria asked, her attention also on Rocky. “And what is he doing with it?”

I shook my head, struggling to find the right words. I’d seen inside the basket—it was filled to the brim with the same objects. The little prick had hundreds of them.

“Where the fuck did Rocky find cigarettes?”