Quantum wrath, p.3
Quantum Wrath, page 3
The world reeled around me. Suddenly, my fists felt as heavy as anchors just from the effort of stopping the spinning.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re doing,” I growled. “But cut the shit, do you fucking hear me? You’re going to alert the trackers, if you haven’t already.”
“I know,” she scoffed and let out another breathy giggle. Then she spit some blood into my face. “They’ve been chasing me for days.”
Her voice was unconvincingly casual, but at the same time, the woman was practically preening, like she thought this was the coolest damn thing in the world.
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “I seriously doubt it.”
The woman’s glowing gaze had dimmed a little after I smashed her nose in, but they flashed brighter again as she caught sight of something over my shoulder, and another giggle escaped her.
She wriggled in my grip, but I managed to get her into a chokehold.
“Heath!” Dougy’s voice was hoarse and shaky from down the tunnel.
“A little busy here,” I growled as I tightened my grip.
The woman’s pink eyes were dimming even more as she struggled to breathe. I could feel the sweat that slicked her hair around her neck, and she was wheezing desperately like she was on the verge of giving up.
In the light from the swaying lantern, things seemed to slow for the briefest moment as I really got a good look at her finally. I glimpsed blonde and pink hair splayed around her slim, muscular torso, and a pale, pointed face that twisted into a vindictive smile, even as I strangled her into submission.
“Thaaaat’s riiiight,” I goaded as I let my fingers tighten just a little more on her slender neck. “You just shut the fuck up and go to sleep. Game’s over.”
Then her pink eyes flashed as they locked on mine. I felt the muscles in her throat flex way harder than I thought possible in this position, and she let out a piercing chirrup and twisted like an eel as she leveraged her legs sideways.
“Shit,” I hissed as she squirmed out from under me while she screamed.
This time, the sound was raw and rough, and the walls vibrated all around us as cracks spiderwebbed out from where we were grappling on the ground.
My teeth were rattling in my jaw from the sound as she aimed a fierce kick at my face, but I was out of fucking patience. I snatched her ankle in midair and twisted.
“Bastard!” she said in a giggling shriek, like I had just tickled her instead of giving her limb a savage twist.
Her body twisted along with it, and she leveraged her free leg around to belt me hard in the diaphragm with her foot.
“Christ!” I barked as a spasm shot through my body.
But I didn’t loosen my grip. Instead, I just grabbed hold of her other ankle before it could hit the ground so I had her by both legs. Then I swung her at the nearest wall, harder than before, like a fucking ragdoll.
The sight was almost comical as her arms spasmed outward and her blonde head smashed through a good few inches of solid stone, but at the same time, it was exhilarating to genuinely use my strength against another villain.
Well, a baby villain, let’s be honest. She couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, and she fought like a hyper puppy. But still.
I felt a surge of savage satisfaction as breath wheezed out of her, and I took advantage of the brief, sweet silence by throwing myself at her.
But she jerked to the side as quickly as a cat and danced away, and then she slipped a knife out of her sleeve that immediately caught my attention.
There was a ruby heart on the pommel. Its hilt was wrapped with a pink ribbon, and the whole damn blade was a gleaming, pearly pink color.
I almost snorted with laughter at this absurdly cutesy little weapon.
Definitely a new age baby villain. She probably had matching hearts on all of her weapons.
Although I couldn’t deny this lightning-quick woman did look incredibly dangerous with it in her hands, despite her petite size. It was dim as hell in here and slightly dusty from the gravel hailstorm earlier, but her whole body was slick with sweat now, so I could see the faint lantern light gleaming off the surprising amount of muscles in her compact body.
The light played off her pale blonde-and-pink hair as well as she tossed it out of her face, and her bloodied teeth gleamed like pearls in the darkness as she gave me a feral smile.
“Come on,” she wheedled again in the same voice someone might use to coax a dog over to them. “Show me what you’ve got, big boy. What’s it gonna take?”
My silence made her face turn petulant. She stamped her foot and screeched again, and a deep crack ran through the floor. It split through the wall and all the way up to the ceiling, and a few baseball-sized rock chunks tumbled free as the sound ricocheted around.
I let them bounce off of me without flinching. I wasn’t about to waver over her quirky little temper tantrum. Even though I really, really had to get her to stop it with the damn sonic screaming. Not only was she seriously risking a mine cave-in, but there was no chance she wasn’t sending out more and more pulses of her zenith with every eardrum-shattering sound. But damn it if breaking her face against rocks and strangling her just wasn’t getting the job done.
Then her pink eyes wandered back toward Dougy.
“What if I threaten your little pet?” she purred, and a dangerous smile etched into her face. “Maybe that will bring out a spark of–”
I lunged while she was busy monologuing, but she managed to get another attack in.
Her fresh scream sent another, wider crack lancing through the wall, but the sound cut off as we tumbled across the floor and back toward the main chamber. I landed on top of her back not fifteen feet from the tunnel entrance and locked my arm around her throat from behind.
“Shut the fuck up with those screeches!” I hissed and pinned the side of her face against the drenched stone.
But it was too late.
A chunk of rock the size of an old Volkswagen Bug from my time broke loose from the ceiling. It was close enough that I could see it reflected in the puddles around us, and the woman’s pink eyes jerked toward it with a sudden panic.
The slab landed with a shuddering boom that shook the whole mine, and it was followed by an avalanche of smaller stones from the ceiling around us. Clouds of choking dust puffed down from the ceiling, and still more shot up from the ground as a huge crack split through it not three feet away from us.
“Heath!” Dougy’s frantic voice pleaded again, and it had reached a whole new register in his absolute panic. “We gotta get the hell out of here! She’s gonna bring this shit down on us!”
Still, this woman would not give up. She was fighting me like a tiny little berserker as I focused all my attention on not letting the slippery bitch get out of my grip again. She writhed madly against the stonework and managed to sink her teeth into my arm like a rabid monkey.
I snarled in pain and kneed her in the ass while bringing my free fist down on her head at the same time.
Another shrill scream leaked out of her mouth, and I slammed my elbow into her jaw, hard.
“Ass…” she snarled and bucked her hips furiously. “… hole!”
Then I heard the sound of shouting voices, squealing tires, and a few radio emissions crackling from outside the mineshaft.
The trackers had finally zeroed in on the frequencies.
I let out a sigh.
Alright.
It was officially time to get the fuck out of here.
I gripped the woman tightly, yanked her up, and then hurled her across the room with all my strength, right toward the rainy entrance that the voices were coming from. This bitch had drawn the trackers here, after all. It only seemed right to put her in their path.
Then I pivoted and dived for Dougy.
“Hold on tight to that bag,” I said as I closed my hand around his arm. “We’re warping.”
I had a brief glimpse of the whites of Dougy’s eyes widening in terror, but there was no more time.
I reached for the power that was quivering within me.
I had to be emitting like crazy at the moment. My zenith was crawling under my skin like a thousand radioactive bugs burrowing through me.
I seized hold of it, and the raw radiance rushed through me like lightning. It was all-consuming, almost like my whole body was being split open. But somehow, at this point, it was gratifying as fuck. I had never felt more powerful than I did at that moment. My teeth bared in a silent scream as every tiny fiber in my body flexed and rippled, and my vision went completely white.
I squeezed my grip around Dougy and threw myself forward into the empty air.
The darkness opened up to swallow me, and I hurtled into it willingly.
Then, at the last second, a small, cold hand snatched onto my ankle.
But the feeling of warping had engulfed me like a white-hot flame, and I couldn’t focus on the sensation of the hand at all. The typical but still gut-wrenching feeling gripped me: The contradicting sensations of spinning through space while being pinned to one spot. The feeling that I was being flayed alive by tiny, white-hot whips. The piercing rattle of my bones, and the clenching spasms that shot through my muscles from head to toe.
And through the buzzing rush that filled my ears, I thought I heard the sound of a high-pitched scream.
Chapter 3
I landed flat on my back, spread-eagled and dazed.
The world around me swept into my senses in hazy rushes, like waves crashing onto a beach. Sight came first. Vibrant purple tree trunks surrounded us, and lavender foliage fluttered overhead. We had landed on a carpet of cushy, deep-violet moss that coated the ground around us.
The sight was followed by the mild, sweet scent of the white and gold flowers that hung from the swaying vines of the forest.
A breath of cool breeze played across my skin, and it was like a soothing balm after the sensation of being flayed alive.
My tongue was still assaulted by the metallic taste that always came with warping, for whatever the hell reason. I snatched up a handful of purple clovers by habit and stuffed a few of them into my mouth. A cool, sweet taste flooded it, and I exhaled slowly through my nose.
My sense of hearing swept in last.
The noise of two people gagging and vomiting was enough to propel me up to my knees.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Dougy was doubled over on the ground puking his brains out into a deep, bowl-like depression in the nearest tree roots. I snorted briefly at the sight of him managing to be as unobtrusive as possible, even under these circumstances.
But I knew what type of pain the dude was in. How his whole world had just been ripped apart, starting with his insides– or that was what it felt like, anyway. Especially for the first time.
“Here.” I lifted his hand, tugged his fingers apart, and shoved some purple clovers into his palm. “Eat this. It’ll help with the nausea.”
Dougy had slipped into dry-heaves now that his stomach seemed to have emptied itself. He stuffed the clovers frantically into his mouth in the beat between gags and chewed hastily. As soon as he swallowed, an expression of blissful relief crossed his face, and he slumped back toward the tree.
I snatched his shoulder and redirected him onto the moss as I took in the sight of our unwanted companion: puker number two.
She was on the far side of the clearing, and she was lying there in a quivering heap in between retching her guts out.
In the purply light filtering down through the trees, I could see that the woman was both as petite and as well-honed as she had appeared in the lantern light of the tunnel. Her pale face had a pointed jaw and full lips that were smudged with pink lipstick. Her waist-length hair was so blonde it was almost white, and its pink tips were a perfect match to the pink of her eyes as she turned to me.
Her eyes were now a non-glowing shade of pink, and they were filled with a pleading yet pissed-off expression.
“What the hell did you do to me?” she groaned. “Where… Help–”
She cut off as another gag racked her body.
“I’m not going to help you,” I said shortly. “You’re lucky to even be alive. You almost fucking killed us. I’m not going to sit here and hold back your hair while you–”
She groaned wordlessly and doubled over again.
I shrugged irritably and turned away.
“How you doing, Dougy?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” my wiry friend said in a shaky voice. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked around, and awe overtook his features. “Holy shit. Purple trees. Are we in…?”
“The Laylix Dimension,” I confirmed, and I felt a weird sensation at the corners of my lips that was kind of like a friendly smile. I reined it in, of course, but I almost couldn’t help it.
It was no secret to me that Dougy’s favorite stories of my travels centered around this very place. And it was no accident that I’d chosen it as our destination.
Despite his miserable state, Dougy perked up a little as he looked around, like he was already hoping to spot a glittery-skinned woman striding through the trees.
“We’re out in the woods,” I pointed out, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. “There aren’t many people out here.”
“Is it s-safe?” Dougy asked weakly. “Is there anything d-dangerous out here?”
I glanced at the peaceful landscape around us. A pale pink butterfly landed on my arm at that moment. I sighed, shook my head, and flicked the bug off of me.
“Nope,” I said. Then I shrugged and gestured at the still-vomiting woman on the ground. “Well, unless you count…”
Dougy flinched at the sight of the woman, but I laid a hand on his arm, and he smiled weakly.
“She doesn’t look too dangerous at the moment, I guess,” he chuckled.
The woman finally stopped dry-heaving, and now she rested her forehead against the pillowy moss. But her hands were still clenched into fists, and they tightened a little every time a muscle spasm racked her body.
Dougy was still twitching regularly with the same type of spasms, but now he was able to catch his breath, and my presence seemed to calm him.
I stared down at the woman without pity as I got to my feet. She had brought this on herself.
“C’mon,” I muttered to Dougy.
The woman’s head snapped up. “Wait!”
I didn’t break stride. I just sped up and yanked Dougy along with me.
Fast, angry footsteps followed after me.
“You can’t just leave me here!” the woman said shrilly. “You took me here. You can’t just walk away.”
I wheeled around and glared at her.
“I didn’t ‘take you here,’” I snarled. “You almost killed us, and then you grabbed onto me when I was leaving, so I’m not holding your hand through this. This shit is all one hundred percent your fault. Maybe you shouldn’t fuck around with villains you find in abandoned mineshafts. Ever think of that?”
Her pink eyes widened with rage at first, but then intrigue flashed in her gaze.
“So you are a villain, then?” she probed.
“No,” I said irritably. “I’m not much of anything. I just want to be left the fuck alone, and you refused to do that. What you do next is your problem, not mine.”
“At least tell me what happened!” she hissed. Her jaw worked for a few moments, and it seemed like it took her a fucking Herculean effort to get out her next word. “Please.”
“We warped into another dimension,” I said calmly. “Now we’re on the same page. Cool. See ya never.”
Dougy wheezed slightly as I propelled him into motion again.
He glanced back over his shoulder as we wove our way through the trees. “She’s s-still following us, Heath.”
“I don’t fucking care,” I muttered. “She won’t be able to for long.”
“Why not?” A hint of curiosity crept into Dougy’s voice.
“There’s a toll to get into the city,” I said. I shifted my rucksack onto one shoulder while I rummaged through it, and then I pulled out a small tin full of dollar bill-sized rhodium sheets. “She doesn’t have any money.”
“Will she s-starve out here?”
“Hopefully.” I shrugged. “But probably not. Most of the plants out here are edible, and there are no major predators that I’m aware of.”
Although judging by the stupidity she had shown in almost collapsing the mine on our heads, this woman might not be wise enough to even try eating any of the plants.
I shook my head and turned my attention to my purpose.
The Laylix dimension was the most peaceful place I knew. Personally, it held little appeal for me. I wasn’t a people-person regardless of what dimension I was in, but the people here especially grated on me in an odd way. No one was out for murder or glory the way people were back home, of course. Instead they were a type of flavorless and insipid that could only exist under such peaceful circumstances. These people had never known true ruin. But then again, they had never known much of anything. Their peaceful way of life made them as steady and predictable as the tides on a calm night.
It sort of made me sick.
But that was me. I was a twisted, fucked-up individual.
A place like this was just about perfect for a pure-hearted and ordinary, if down-trodden, guy like Dougy.
We were now approaching the nearest city, Pheretri.
It didn’t look like much of a city at first glance. More like a peaceful village that had sprawled out to an absurd size and sprouted mushroom-shaped skyscrapers. It was encircled by a wall of towering trees with pale bark and slender, interlocking trunks. There were regular archways to allow people inside. Each one had an elaborately-carved gate and a booth with a cheerful, doughy vendor occupying it.
The nearest one smiled cheerily at us as we approached, although the look he shot me was a tad apprehensive.
“Beautiful sunset, eh?” he said in a jolly voice. “You’re just in time for supper, my friends.”
In Laylix, dinner was like a fucking celebration every night. It almost made me grind my teeth the way these people were just so damn happy.
