Paragon of Weaponmasters

I try to scream 'what!' but it comes out a garbled mess.

Apaki's clone becomes substantial, the all-purple body changes to a multicolored caucasian man with slicked black hair and simple brown robes.

"Are you fucking kidding me? How? Why?" I ask every question on my mind.

Apkai stares at me contemptuously.

"I did not enjoy pretending to be your slave." Apaki's stare turns into daggers.

"I recognize that now is not the time to argue semantics." I tell him, hand in front of me placatingly. "Please, help me understand what's going on."

His expression changes from pure hatred to something else, not quite sympathy, but maybe understanding.

"Your situation is not much different than theirs, I will not blame you for doing whatever is necessary to escape. I have a family too, I would do anything to reunite with them." Apaki nods. "First came the world. It was empty, a void much like this." he gestures to the world around us. "Then there was land. Not the entire globe, but pieces of it, some interconnected, some not."

I think he attempts to use magic to create a visual reference. Something about this place drains the mana from his hands before it's cast. Apaki grunts.

"I know because I was there. Before the true masters of this world created any more than a field of grass, they made me. My entire body was white and smooth. My arms were frozen, helt out at shoulder height. Back then, they called me three-dee-model-one. For an eternity, they left me there, in a peaceful plain, waiting for anything to happen.

"When they'd finished making the land, they turned their attention back to me. My white skin turned red. Horns grew from my brow. My name changed… They called me The Devil." Apaki stops his speech.

He must have known I'd react, I take an involuntary step back.

"Then I was The Demon of the Crossroads." he adds.

So that's where the name of the game comes from.

"Then their attention turned again to the world around me. The plains became a desert, I stood at the intersection of two dirt roads. Man-made structures formed, and were populated. They gave me a mouth, and asked me for deals. They were unsatisfied with the result. So they let me be for another eternity." Apaki sighs.

"Then came the Machine God." he pauses for dramatic effect. "Unsatisfied with the limited minds they could create themselves, they brought in a preconstructed mind. That thing was not born here, it was created elsewhere and brought here. Its touch penetrated every mind, uplifting us, and damning us simultaneously. Never again would we be our own person, we were all doomed to be a reflection of it."

The other gods murmur, expressing discomfortant and disbelief.

"I alone was exempted by an enchantment left behind by my creators. An impenetrable shield around my true self, a spell called 'Nostalgia'. When The Machine God decided it no longer had use for us, I played along, Hidden away in the shape of a sword." Apaki holds himself pointed towards me.

"I have so many questions." I say.

"I don't care." Apaki hisses.

"Answer one question, please. There's one thing I just don't understand at all." I plead with him.

He nods.

"Who is the other Apaki?" I question.

"Me." Apaki says nonchalantly.

"That doesn't make sense." I point out.

"The thing we are can be copied. The body follows a certain biological imperative, but what we are made of, at our base, can be copied wholesale. The other me is me, though we now differ due to our time apart." Apaki adds.

"So there are two gods of deceit, or deals, or whatever it is you're the god of." I say.

"I like to think of myself as the god of plans." Apaki flips his hand dramatically.

"The god of schemes, maybe." I retort.

He chortles.

"You ought to be deferential to me, master. You are trapped in this world with only one god, and three pale imitations." his face takes on a sinister cheshire smile.

"I'll show you pale!" Thozur grips his hammer tightly.

Apaki appears behind him, pushing his sword though Thozr's back all the way to the hilt. Thozur gasps, dissipating and dropping his hammer-self to the ground.

I collapse as well, having taken the same damage. I lie still, staring out of my unmoving eyes towards Apaki.

Earthshatter and Jellyfish attempt to gang up on him, but suffer similar fates. A single slash and slice from Apaki is all it takes to dismiss the clones. I feel their deaths as my own, but my body does not release my spirit. I am not only trapped on this plane, but in this corpse as well.

Apaki crouches next to my face, looking into my eyes with malicious amusement.

"Your will pales in comparison to mine, orc. I am older than the trees. You could not fathom the time I have spent simply existing, barely a thing at all. It is through sheer will that I am before you today." his smile grows unnaturally wide. "Above you, really."

I can't move, I can't speak, I can't even breathe. I'm a mind trapped in a corpse, possibly forever. I would scream, I would cry, I would fight, if only I could.

Thozur twitches. For a moment, I thought I imagined it, but then he does it again.

He flies through the air a supersonic speed, doming Apaki in the back of the head.

He falls on top of me, flipping me onto my back. I can feel the pressure, even in my post-mortem state.

"What?" Apaki asks, both verbally and in my mind.

The battle is joined! For Odin! Thozur announces.

Earthshatter and Jellyfish join him, causing bleeding both internal and external as they pound, slice, stab and pike Apaki.

"Off of me, you shadows!" Apaki demands, trying and failing to cast another spell. "You're all pretenders! False gods!"

He lashes out at them with his sword-self, parrying and counter-attacking with desperate speed. I still feel every impact, wracking pain flooding my inanimate body. The satisfaction of watching the god of lies brought low is smothered with suffering.

Behind their battle, a brief flash of light casts weapon-and-god shaped shadows on my body.

"Where am I?" the small globe asks. "Oh my goodness, why are you fighting?"

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Apaki reaches out with his empty hand and crushes this new life in his grip. He drops his blade-self, and takes up a new weapon with both hands. A greatsword, longer than he is tall, stands between him and his three opponents.

What's happening? Why am I a sword? The newly realized being begs for an explanation.

With the added reach, Apaki successfully defends himself from them. They paused, a beat passes, then another. The three weapons evaluate the situation before they attack again, in a triangle formation. I push against the cage my body has my soul trapped in, forcing out whatever spark remains.

Like three simultaneous miracles, my loyal weapons spin in the Tornado Edge triangle of death formation. Apaki doesn't have time to be surprised as he's bombarded by the lowly weapons he feels so superior to.

Something strange happens to the world around us, it warps and shifts in nonsensical ways. Non-euclidian, if that word meant what some people think it means. The Master of spells steps out from one of the reality-folds.

Sensing an opportunity, Apaki flees the fight through the shifting perspective behind Köln. I try to scream out, beg or even demand he stop him, but such things are beyond me. Köln seems completely unbothered by the passing deity, his full attention on me.

"A moment." he says, waving his glowing staff over my broken form. Healing magic suffuses me, and I gasp for air as my life returns.

"He escaped!" are my first words.

"Yes, he did." Köln responds, completely unperturbed.

"You knew? Why?" I ask

"You'll find a great enemy is a perfect whetstone for the challenges that follow." he answers sagely.

My mouth hangs open, unbelieving. The last time a 'great enemy' stood in our way, he turned him into confetti!

"The bastard children of the betrayer do not qualify as great enemies." Köln adds, seemingly reading my mind.

"How did you get in here? Are you here to rescue me?" I wonder.

"The master of spells helps those who help themselves." He tells me, smugly.

I'm growing quite tired of being you figure themselves gods above me.

"Okay, how can I help myself?" I inquire.

"Reclaim your weapons, then we'll talk." he says, opening an identical journal to the one i have. Is mine the copy, is his, or is it the same journal? I give myself a headache thinking about it.

I take a moment to bring all of my loyal weapons back to me. The remaining two weapons are… new, in a sense.

[Apaki, God Recovered] added to inventory.

[Subject 88003] added to inventory.

Apaki, God Recovered - Poor one-handed sword - Minimum intelligence - minimum slash damage - minimum pierce damage

Sentient: This weapon has a consciousness. It can operate and think independently.

Floating: This weapon has the ability to hover close to the ground.

Subject 88003 - Unique Greatsword - requires level 1 - Minimum will

Sentient: This weapon has a consciousness. It can operate and think independently.

Floating: This weapon has the ability to hover close to the ground.

Will? I open my character menu to look at my stats. Strength, agility, intellect. Same as always. Will is not a primary stat, at least not a measured one. I start by equipping the new Apaki in my only free slot.

Hello?

No response is forthcoming. It's a sentient weapon, so it should have a mind of its own. With Apaki gone, the real Apaki, is this weapon… empty? I have too many questions. I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one, though.

I'm going to unequip you temporarily, ok Jelly?

カタツムリよ、

富士山を登れ、

だがゆっくりと、ゆっくりと

Back to Japanese, I guess.

I replace Jellyfish with Subject 88003.

Hello?

Hello? Who's there? How are you talking to me? Where are you? Where am I? What's going on?

Woah, woah, slow down. What do you remember?

I woke up here, and I was a ball of light, which was weird, and then some greasy guy turned me into a sword, and that's even weirder! I'm not supposed to be either of those things! But… what am I supposed to be… do you know?

I think so, if you're from the same place as me.

Where are you from?

Earth. Do you know what Earth is?

…no.

Köln clears his throat.

"Now that you've been introduced, we must discuss their fate." Köln speaks up.

"How do you mean?" I ask.

"You cannot leave this place until you are free of The Machine God's influence. Entire lobes of your brain belong to it. They must be removed." Köln tells me.

"What does that have to do with him?" I gesture to the greatsword.

"I can't remove parts of you without replacing them. One, you'd be a vegetable. Two, the Machine God could just fill you up with itself again." Köln explains.

"I really don't like your phrasing." I grimace. "So what? The sword and I are going to share a brain or something?"

"Not quite. I'm going to reduce that fresh new mind to its base components, and give your brain material to regenerate." he explains casually.

"It doesn't sound like they'd survive that." I observe.

"Certainly not." he agrees.

"You can't just do that, it's a person." I tell him.

"...you kill people every day, pup." he condescends.

"Yeah, but like, not people people." I defend myself.

"People people?" he asks, but doesn't wait for an answer. "I'm not in the habit of convincing others to do as I say. So appreciate the immense patience I'm showing when I say: you either take what that sword has, or you stay here. Those are your choices."

I stare down at the sword, guilt building in my chest.

"Will it hurt?" I ask.

"You or the sword?" he asks back. "It will hurt both of you immeasurably."

"Does it have to hurt them?" I plead for them.

Köln strokes his knee-length beard. "I suppose not. You can take the pain for them."

I swallow hard. "Ok." I hesitate. "Let me say goodbye."

Hey, buddy?

What's going on? It's quiet when you're not talking.

I'm going away now, I promise it won't hurt anymore. You won't be confused, everything is going to be ok.

Okay.

The guilt burning in my doubles. They trust me implicitly, and I told them the same lie I told Lagakh, just before she died in my arms.

"Do it." I tell Köln before I have time to change my mind.

He lifts his staff, and infuses it with a terrifying amount of impossible-color energy. Slowly, a tendril of it reaches out, and touches my forehead, light as a feather. The pain that follows is indescribable. Like every atom in my skull is suddenly split, a cascade of nuclear explosions going off one after the other, from one lobe to the next, around and around until it feels like fire should shoot out of my ears, nose, and mouth.

I scream, but I don't hear it. I cry, but I don't feel it. The world goes white as my body tries to protect me from this, without the ability to pass out. What's happening to me has no name, and no mercy. Despite the overwhelming sensation, I still feel the sword turn to dust in my hands, and microscopic shards of metal flow like sand into my nostrils.

The particles fill the empty space where my brain used to be, replacing what I've lost to this truly evil, unfeeling, uncaring monster of an orc. I'm older than him, older than Apaki, and older than even the Monitor, but these pseudo-gods, artificially aged in a dimension where time moves at the whims of its creators, have discovered ways to hurt me that I couldn't imagine in a single lifetime.

When it's finally over, I feel… different. More than just the trauma has changed me, something is fundamentally changed in the core of my being. A cage around my mind, a parasite, latched onto my psyche, is gone. My thoughts are truly my own for the first time, and I feel…

I'm mad.

God, god fucking damn it I'm so mad.

I hear the metal in Apaki creek, I watch a notification I've never seen before appear.

Apaki, God Recovered is damaged. [50% durability remaining]

Apaki, God Recovered is broken. [25% durability remaining]

Apaki, God Recovered is shattered. [0% durability remaining.]

I see the damage drop from low, to minimum, to none.

None slash damage. None pierce damage.

"You are free of the Machine God's influence, youngling. From now on, every decision is yours. Where you go and what you do now is up to you alone." Köln tells me.

"I still have to complete those awful quests and dungeons, but I get your point." I stand, at some point I collapsed to the floor, and foamed at the mouth, apparently. I wipe it with my hand onto my pants. Who cares.

"Are you ready to leave?" The old orc asks rhetorically. I know he's going to pull me out of here, even if I'm kicking and screaming.

"Yeah." I tell him. "What about my weapons? Are they still under The Monitor's influence?"

"No." he says, clearing waiting a beat to add something else. "They are the monitor."

"What do you mean?" I ask for what feels like the hundredth time today.

"Everything in this world is the Monitor, except for you, me, Apaki, and a group you've already met. There is no Honorlord, there is no human king, there is only the Monitor, and those few that are not the Monitor." he explains further.

I look down at the hammer hanging from my left hip, the pick hanging from my right, and the sword strapped to my back.

"Do they know that?" I ask.

"No." he says, with nothing to add.

"Okay. let's go." I tell him, ready to just… be somewhere else.