18 – Fight for your freedom

Mateus walked towards the green robed man at the other side of the clearing. Behind him, the gate of Pyee stood closed, embedded in tall stone walls. Just beneath the ground, the river flowed fast and loud, but the sound of rushing water was drowned by the sound of the torrential rain. The air was thick, and heavy, and the relentless rain made it difficult to make out the face of the man who was walking towards him with a steady pace. He was alone, and looked calm and confident. A single lightning strike illuminated his face briefly, and cast a long shadow behind him that seemed to cut through the curtain of rain.

Seeing this, Mateus too felt a bit calmer at the encounter that was about to happen. If the inquisitor was alone, then it meant that he was not on the war path just yet. He mentally rehearsed what he wanted to say, and prepared himself. He couldn’t shake off a certain ominous feeling in the air, something vaguely shaped in his mind in the form of doubt, and fear. He shut his mind off from the nagging sensations that threatened to distract him from the task at hand. The inquisitor was getting closer now, and a long white beard could be made out through the rain. He seemed unbothered by the water, the droplets sliding away from him but leaving him completely dry.

With a wave of his hand, the inquisitor cleared a large space of all the rain. Looking up, Mateus saw the rain part in the middle, changing trajectory as not to touch the land under the man’s spell. The roaring of the water was silenced, and only a muffled sound came from the outside, as if through walls of glass. The water sloshed down those walls, and hid the rest of the world from view. Little pools became little rivers and creeks where the wall of water hit the ground, digging into the wet mud of the natural bridge.

He refocused on the man in the middle of the spell. He was waiting, carefully studying his appearance, without as much as a wrinkle in his face. Mateus opened his mouth to speak, but it seemed as if all the words he had prepared beforehand had disappeared from his mind. He coughed softly, as to buy himself time, and felt that the words were struggling to form. This was a pivotal moment, he knew.

“Greetings, inquisitor. I am Mateus Melgoth, one of the five heroes. I have returned from near death, and—”

“No, you have not.” The green robed man spoke, his words flowing like calm and shallow waters. “Do not waste time with that disguise, abomination, for I know all too well what you are.”

“You’re wrong!” Cried the hero. “I really am me! So much happened, and this body may look like the abomination, but I swear! I am Mateus, the hero.”

The inquisitor did not change expression. His face was fixed on a look of determination and hatred. Thunder roared from above, but the words that the man said came loud and true.

“Useless words.” He spat. “Something happened, yes. Once again you try this cowardly method of infiltration with us, and this time it appears you learned how to bypass our towers. But it made you weak. And we will not fall for your tricks a second time. We will never let your kind roam this earth again! Now I shall end you once and for all!”

“Wait! Please, hear me out!”

The inquisitor did not move. Mateus took this as a sign to proceed, and tried to tell his story as best he could, leaving out the most troublesome details. He did not mention the hunger, or the consumption of living beings to increase his mass of nanites, nor did he mention the merchant and the fight that ensued there. He also left out the existence of the kid.

The inquisitor listened to it all, but once again he did not display any outward signs of emotion on his face, other than hatred. For how hateful he looked, he was being almost too patient. The more Mateus talked, the more he realized that no matter what he said, nothing was going to change. The man had already made up his mind long before getting here.

“Well, well, well.” The inquisitor said in the end. “Maybe you really believe the tales you tell. Maybe you really think you are him, the fallen hero. Alright then, show us. Show us all that you indeed are who you say you are.”

In that moment, a circle of eight knights on their horses appeared from the wall of flowing water at the edge of the rain-free zone. They entered in speed, and the clanging of their metal armor and the stomping of hooves filled the area. As soon as it came, however, all sound ceased. The eight encircled him, tall and menacing on top of their armored steeds, and the green robed man seemed to grow big and his presence engulfed all the land. His body was small, among the mounted knights, and yet his presence appeared so big as to drown everything and everyone else.

A horse huffed and stretched his hind legs in unrest. They landed in the dirt, powerful and heavy, and splashed some mud against Mateus’ drenched clothes. All the knights had drawn their weapons and were pointing their swords at him, a small man amidst a jungle of steel. He felt his breath quicken, the air grow heavy and unbearable. He didn’t need to even breathe to live, and yet it felt as if he was suffocating.

“Show us your magic crest, and we will believe you.” The inquisitor commanded, and all the knights seemed to creep closer, encircling him, suffocating him even more.

He looked around. There were a million things in his head, a million excuses and a sense of dread. He said nothing, and only stared. The seconds ticked away. The only sound he could hear was the almost deafening noise of the water flowing down the forcefield that kept it at bay. A small waterfall all around, the surrounded him in a cage he could not escape from.

The inquisitor shook his head. “As I thought.” He said.

Right at that moment, the sense of foreboding and dread grew within the former hero, and he felt the signature sensation that meant he was in danger. His whole body, every single one of his nanites, reacted in horror, terror, and then in rage at what was happening around him.

Without him even noticing, he had jerked backwards and sideways, plunging his shoulder deep into one of the swords that were pointed at him. Right where his face was, barely a moment before, a dense beam of energy passed through the air.

A disintegration beam. Much more powerful than the merchant’s as well.

He realized, there and then, that the time for talking was over. They were trying to kill him, and no matter what he said, they would never believe him. The knights had reacted as well, and they were commanding their horses to get closer, to cut off his escape, while cutting him down with their weapons.

He thrust himself forward, letting the steel sword slide off of him with little to no resistance. The hole left behind by the weapon in his shoulder leaked a few broken nanites, but then closed almost instantly. The damage was minimal, he noticed, and it seemed for a moment that he might survive this battle after all. As the knights reacted, with renewed spirits he poured a good portion of his body mass into a multilayered shield in front of him, protruding from his right arm.

When the second beam came, it hit the shield. It started eating at its compressed nanites, faster than he could replenish them, but this gave him time to react. Layer after layer they were being peeled away, even as he interposed dense materials of transmuted tiny robots between the layers. The beam just didn’t care what it was hitting, and it destroyed everything in its path.

But, while the inquisitor was busy with the magical beam, Mateus was not idle. He jumped high in the air, over one of the knights, keeping the shield oriented towards the source of the beam he transformed his other arm into that of the bear he slew. With a swipe, he sent two of the soldiers tumbling to the ground before he landed in the space left behind in the middle of the encirclement.

The others crept closer. Their weapons were shining in a pale blue light, and he felt aversion and danger coming from himself at the thought of touching them. No longer were the swords simple weapons of steel, mostly harmless. Now, they were deadly instruments of death to him. He danced between the incoming knights, but in many places, he was hit and a great many dead specks of silver flew away from his body like ashes from a fire, blown by the wind. Where he was hit, his metallic flesh didn’t mend, and instead leaked broken nanites in a stream like silvery blood that turned to ash as quickly as it flew out of the wound.

He jumped in the air again, but this time he felt that the beam from the inquisitor had lessened, and then soon after it vanished. He turned to see what was happening, but as soon as his head was facing towards the green robes, he realized that something was wrong. He was still suspended in the air, mid-jump, frozen in place and unable to move. His eyes widened in horror.

With a motion of his hand, the inquisitor then slammed him into the ground with a force so great that a little crater appeared where he sunk a few millimeters into the wet dirt. There, face held against the mud by an unseen hand, he felt all the knights approach on their mighty horses, swords at the ready.

He tried to stand up, to oppose this force with the strength of his own body, but it was useless. The weight pressing down on him was like an unmovable mountain, like a giant crushing an ant. He could not get away, nor could he struggle against the incoming blades. The many hooves stomped on his body, breaking him down and battering him. The knights struck with their swords, chipping away at pieces of him.

He refused to die, here, like this. With an effort of will, he changed his shape into the large and looming bear he fought in the forest. Mimicking it to the last detail, he grew on powerful hind legs and broke free of the magical bindings that were holding him in place. With a roar, he sent two of the knights tumbling away from him, and thrust a third against the other with so much force that they were all sent backwards and to the ground by the powerful hit.

But once again he felt the magic of the inquisitor try to bind him, like cold ropes made of intangible ice, but which burned his skin and metallic flesh like an acid. His fake fur burned and melted, the silver fluid now pooling on the ground before evaporating into white wind. He thrashed and struggled to free himself, but a searing pain coming from his back made all the world appear as if on fire. He watched his point of view change, become a bit lower to the ground, and he saw his own head tumble to the ground before evaporating into grey ash.

WARNING: 23% MASS LOST

The bindings tightened. Another slash was coming.

WARNING: MASS DOWN TO 50%

They continued; relentlessly and mercilessly pummeling him with magical strikes while the man in green looked from far away.

WARNING: MASS DOWN TO 10%

SYSTEMS CRITICAL

Then, he felt the air get charged with magical power as the inquisitor prepared for a last, final strike. He closed his eyes, and prepared for his death. This time, it was all over. This time, there was no coming back.

The beam struck. In a last attempt at defending himself, he layered his skin with compressed and hardened material, putting everything he had to spare between him and the destructive magic that was bathing him in a light hostile and painful. His body was nothing more than a lump of misshapen metal now, impossible to even recognize from its exterior as anything different than an abominable machine that had to be destroyed.

He felt his nanites lose cohesion, and sink as a pool of liquid in the small depression in the ground, below the thin film of muddy water that filled the crater. That’s when the idea struck him. Redoubling his efforts, he kept defending against the barrage of magic, while at the same time pushing a tendril of nanites like a drill deep into the mud, into the earth beneath the ground, where he could dig a tunnel to safety while leaving the rest of his body behind.

A small lump of silver fell into the river, and started to navigate its way back towards the inn. The nanites jutted from the small tendril like crystal growths, attaching themselves to whatever surface they found by sheer force, digging little holes in the stones and the ground. The tendril grew in the front, extending like crystals and like a lattice of interconnecting fibers, while in the back it retracted into itself. No thicker than a few inches, it slithered unseen all the way to the cube that was resting on top of the wooden wagon in the barn. There, it merged, and the whole cube melted into living metal.