"A strong accusation, Queen," I replied, scrambling for footing even as my mind raced.
I forced my expression to be smooth. Why here, why now, of all goddamn times? Was this some Cauldron setup?
"You would dare deny it? You hold no court, neither from the Father nor the Broken. I should strike thee faithless down for such presumption. Speak your answer."
Could I take her with Frenzied Flame? Versatility-wise, the Faerie Queen was arguably near the top. God knew how many powers she carried. All it would take was one good hit from Siberian or Greyboy. She might've also had some other esoteric bullshit. I didn't have the Golden Apple either.
"You are right. I claim no heritage from the twin courts." I hurried the words as I saw her hand begin to lift. "But who are you to deny my heritage? You must know, my Queen, one court is mad while the other sleeps. The great Abaddon who once conferred with the courts has long since departed for Arcadia."
There was a pause. As if even Glastig Uaine's delusions took a half step back at the sheer audacity of the claim.
"You claim… to be from another court?"
"Yes." I flipped the switch to maximum bullshittery. "Sent here by a great power beyond this world. I was molded and gifted with strength. Abaddon and his court have long since left, but I will put the fairies to order. These rebels would corrupt the Father. This is but the first step in restoring balance. A rebel who would mar the Father with cursed words must be corrected."
Everything I said was technically the truth.
The implications were another matter entirely.
A frown creased her face. One of the phantoms behind her faded, replaced by another robed in the semblance of a judge. It bent close, whispering into her ear.
"You… speak truth."
I swallowed the sigh threatening to escape and kept my face regal, composed.
"If your duty is to slay the dreamers, then my role has claim to their souls."
"Of course, then—"
[Congratulations!]
You motherfucker—
[You have been gifted a Penalty Modifier to improve your Gacha Experience!]
[You have received 1x Platinum Ticket]
Queen's Wrath
Glastig Uaine has been granted a distorted vision of the truth of who you are and your plans. She now views you as an utter abomination. Glastig Uaine will utilize any means to kill you, even those she would have never stooped to before.
I saw the judge phantom twitch.
The Faerie Queen's face shifted, placid serenity twisting into something venomous.
"Burn!"
I had no time to hesitate. Frenzied Flame slotted in.
Golden fire roared from my palm, devouring the street. Everything in front of me turned to ash.
But I was a fraction too slow.
The street lay empty, blackened and smoking.
Damn it.
My eyes snapped upward. No sign of her anywhere.
I pulled more of the Frenzied Flame to the surface, the heat glorious and whispering—
I bit my tongue hard enough to taste blood.
Focus.
[Rolling Platinum Gacha Ticket]
[Infinity]
|Epic Ability|
Jujutsu Kaisen - Allows you to infinitely divide the space between you and a target, resulting in you manifesting a mathematical impossibility that makes it impossible for them to fully reach you. Places immense strain on the brain and needs manual mental calculation to operate, which can liquify your brain with overuse.
As the ability settled in, I felt a third slot open at the back of my mind. I didn't question the timing. I'd experiment later.
I slotted in Infinity.
The sensation was immediate. An instinctive awareness of space, of distance, of division layered upon division. I could bend the concept of infinity around myself like an invisible barrier. Even with the built-in knowledge, the complexity staggered me.
Still, I kept my finger on the metaphorical trigger, scanning the ruined street.
I needed sensory abilities. My current weakness was glaring now, all I could do was sit and react.
Seconds passed.
No attack came.
"A bargain has been struck. By order of the Queen and High Priest, slay that monster. Your reward shall be a favor, guaranteed by royal self."
The melodious voice echoed through the air.
A blur from the corner of my eye.
Infinity activated on instinct.
A katana hovered inches from my eye, halted mid-swing. An Asian woman in prison slacks staring at me, twitching, her blade frozen against the invisible divide.
I summoned flame, but she flickered away before it could land.
I shot into the sky.
Below, portals snapped open across the street. Dozens of figures in prison slacks stumbled through, looking around.
"Birdcage villains…?" I let out a sharp laugh, feeling heat pool between my eyes.
All the more fuel for the flame.
"Well, this is fun."
Francois felt a delicious, dangerous chill slide down his spine. In the distance, he could sense it—the towering pillar of fire. It reeked of madness, the exquisite kind. It reminded him of his own work, the old experiments, the flirtations with outer gods. Ah. What a delight that was.
His musings were cut short by the sharp smack of a tail.
He glanced back at his wayward dragon companion and laughed softly. How amusing. He'd never expected to ride a dragon in this life.
Truly, this existence was far too interesting to waste. All the more reason to survive.
"Go left, my steed!"
Ridley, his newly acquired and thoroughly perfidious friend, roared in irritation but obeyed, banking low. Two of those strange, naked wraiths streaked through the air where they'd been moments before. The Siberian, as his master called them, tore past, barely missing.
Francois flicked his wrist and conjured a simple illusion, sending it in the opposite direction. Unlike before, the striped spirit did not immediately cut through it.
Interesting.
It seemed the creature could no longer see through his illusions. A flaw in the replication process? Or perhaps an issue with whatever was puppeteering them.
Still, even diminished, quantity had a quality of its own.
Nearly a dozen of the black-and-white striped women prowled the rooftops for their quarry. Annoyingly, his chance to truly flex his mastery of madness had been interrupted before he could properly savor it.
Another flick of the dragon's tail thumped against him.
"No, we cannot simply fly higher," Francois chided lightly. "My magecraft will unravel if I stray too far, and our wonderful master requires at least the man to die. I believe you understand why we cannot close the distance either."
Ridley growled, adjusting his flight, the arm missing a hand flexing irritably.
"Yes, yes. I find it vexing as well." Francois smiled thinly. "So it is time we gamble, hm?"
Fire continued to spread in the distance. He did not know the exact shape of the situation, but urgency pressed in all the same.
"Well then, I shall leave the rest to you." He patted the dragon's back fondly. "And I will indulge in my favorite pastime. Torture."
Below, he could still sense the trio of his targets trapped beneath the aegis of his illusion, writhing in carefully curated nightmares. He had hoped to slay them outright, but even his finest Mysteries would struggle to pierce this strange defense.
That was, of course, assuming he wished to kill them directly.
There were other ways to break a man; it should suffice as a substitute.
"Jack, was it?" Francois giggled, eyes bright with anticipation. "Let us go mad together."
His very soul, the foundation of his existence, his spirit origin itself, began to burn.
Sacrifice.
One of the oldest, most fundamental forms of black magic there ever was.
He could not pierce the Siberians' defense.
Then he would go around it instead.
"I pay tribute to the world with this madness." Francois raised both hands. "Grand Illusion."
The shape of him unraveled.
He was no longer Francois Prelati.
He stood taller now, leaner, dressed in a simple shirt, knives hanging from him like natural extensions of his body. For one fragile instant, the world accepted a contradiction.
There were two Jack Slashes.
Then his hand rose to his own head and pulled.
The magic was crude. Primal. A primordial curse that fed on the self, demanding a life as payment to enact something greater. Normally, it would beg for one life.
Now there were two.
The cost split. The fuel doubled.
Prelati's eyes rolled back as laughter spilled from his throat, sharp and delighted, while the greater ritual locked into place.
"What…" Jack Slash slowly stirred.
Prelati adored working with madmen. There was a certainty to them, a delicious simplicity that common minds never offered.
The dream settled easily under his hands.
Brick by brick. Memory by memory.
A bunker with bare walls.
Nothing but a narrow bed and a battered radio for company. A single, crusted yellow bulb cast weak light over the underground room. Nicks and gouges scarred the stone where time had worn at it. The door was chained shut.
The stage was plucked straight from Jack's own mind, each detail polished and set with care.
Jack's eyes opened fully.
Confusion came first. Then calculation flickered beneath the surface before hardening into that familiar mask of arrogance.
Oh, how wonderful it would be to break this one.
Prelati rested his chin in his hands and watched Jack take it in.
"You know," Jack drawled, "if you're going to torture someone, at least commit to the aesthetic. This feels a bit cheap compared to what you were doing earlier."
Prelati smiled.
"You're home," he said gently.
Jack scanned the room again, slower now.
Recognition flickered—hatred first, then fear, both buried almost instantly. "Oh. A nostalgia tour. How quaint. Should I clap?"
Prelati said nothing.
The man seemed to hate the silence. His voice rose, sharper, louder, filling the space as if noise itself could anchor him. Prelati remained still, listening as the man talked himself in circles.
"You were very small here," Prelati said at last.
Jack snorted. "I've always been larger than the room."
"Oh, really?" Prelati asked sweetly.
Jack's fingers twitched.
A knife appeared in Jack's hand, placed with perfect timing. Prelati ensured the weight was familiar, the balance flawless, crafted to feel like a natural extension of him. A tool to boost his confidence.
Jack slashed across the air.
Nothing happened.
No extension. No impossible blade cutting. Just a clumsy swing, blade rattling uselessly.
Jack stared down at his hand.
The proportions were wrong.
Arms too small, too thin, the awkward length of a child's limbs.
"A bold artistic choice," Jack said quickly. "Regression to childhood. Very Freud of you."
Prelati stood and began to circle the room, slow and deliberate, his footsteps echoing loudly in the confined space.
"You were just a boy," he murmured near Jack's ear. "A terrified little boy."
"I was enlightened," Jack snapped back, too fast.
Prelati circled him slowly, studying him as though he were a painting.
"Suped up," he corrected gently. "Given a power and mistaking it for depth. A shallow little boy."
Jack's eyes flashed with rage.
"I shaped the most dangerous people in the country," he shot back. "I have unmade cities. I am a villain that will be remembered for centuries."
"You never left," Prelati whispered from the stairwell, letting his voice coil along the brick walls.
Jack turned in a slow circle, gaze snapping from shadow to shadow. His foot began to tap incessantly.
"You're trying very hard," he said lightly. "Is this the part where you whisper about my inner child and hope I cry?"
Prelati appeared at the top of the stairs.
"I don't need you to cry," he said. "I only need you to remember."
Jack glanced down at himself again.
The oversized clothes swallowed his thin frame. Sleeves draped past his wrists. The knife was too large for his hands.
"You think shrinking me makes a point?" he sneered, though his fingers twitched.
"No," Prelati agreed softly. "It isn't."
He stepped down one stair.
"It's in the narrative," he continued. "And yours is very simple."
Jack's jaw tightened.
"You were a child. Trapped. Alone," Prelati said. "And instead of growing, you froze. Deluded yourself."
"I transcended!" Jack screamed. "I refined myself into a predator. I killed King!"
"Was that the lie you told yourself, Jacob?"
The name rippled through the dreamscape like a stone thrown into still water. The bunker trembled as Jack's mind resisted. He lunged up the stairs, knife raised, small feet thudding against wood too wide for his stride.
He stabbed at Prelati with all his force.
The blade connected.
For half a second, Jack's eyes widened before the grin snapped back into place, too wide for his smaller face.
Prelati reached out and brushed his fingers lightly against Jack's temple.
The room shifted.
The light began to flicker. The air thickened with muffled echoes—raised voices, the crack of something breaking, the suffocating pressure of isolation closing in.
Jack began to tremble, even with that oversized smile carved across his face.
"It was all so small," Prelati whispered. "Your world. Your pain. Your rebellion."
"It was pure," Jack hissed.
The walls pressed inward, narrowing the staircase until it felt claustrophobic.
"You think you remade yourself," Prelati continued. "But you only wrapped this house around the world. Everywhere you went, you dragged it with you."
Jack's breathing quickened. He tried to step back, but there were no more stairs behind him.
"You're projecting," he snapped, forcing a smirk. "Classic villain move. Reduce the hero to a child and call it insight."
"Hero?" Prelati's smile sharpened. "You never committed to being a villain. You're a sad little boy desperate for daddy to tell you it's alright."
Prelati ascended the stairs.
Jack followed without meaning to. His shoulders shook. His face twisted into something brittle and distorted.
"You never truly left," Prelati said. "You just kept telling yourself a story where you mattered."
Jack screamed in rage—a high, raw, unpolished sound. A tantrum. The voice of a child, not the measured cadence of the mastermind he pretended to be.
Prelati extended a hand down toward him.
"Come," he said softly. "Let's see the truth."
Jack froze, color draining from his face.
The staircase creaked as the space shrank further. He stood only a step away from the small bunker door at the end of the stairs, fighting with everything he had not to move closer.
"Open the door, Jacob."
"I'm… I'm…" The boy's face paled as the handle seemed to press itself into his palm. "I'm JACK SLASH!"
"Really?"
Prelati cackled as the bunker door creaked open.
There was nothing beyond it.
Only a black abyss.
"Or are you just a scared little boy?"
The screams were exquisite as denial tore from his throat. But Prelati's work was already done.
The abyss of Jack's own mind swallowed him whole.
The rush of wind against his face was the first sign of returning to reality.
Francois coughed, blood staining his lips as the ache of a scorched spirit origin flared through him. Sacrificing that much of himself always left a mark. Still, the result had been worth it.
He leaned forward slightly on Ridley's back and peered down at his quarry.
Physically, Jack seemed unchanged. No wounds. No visible damage.
But the eyes—
Francois could see it as clearly as daylight.
Shattered.
Ahh. How satisfying.
In the distance, pillars of golden fire still clawed at the sky, warping the air with their heat.
"We should return to our master quickly—"
The dragon's tail smacked him again. A third time.
Francois frowned and looked down once more.
The broken man's body twitched.
Then writhed.
Crystalline growths pushed through skin, jagged and translucent, spreading like frost over flesh. The air around him warped as reality itself began to crack, thin fractures spidering across space.
The Siberians abruptly distanced themselves, retreating while dragging the two children away from the epicenter.
Jack Slash's body convulsed, expanding grotesquely. Blades of crystal erupted outward from his skin. A massive, distorted face formed within the swelling titan of crystal flesh, mouth open in a silent, weeping scream.
The ground groaned under the weight of it.
Francois stared.
"Uh oh."
***
If the Penalty Modifier feels abrupt, yeah, it kinda is. In retrospect, I should've built up Contractor as more of an antagonist, so the execution was a bit of a muck on my part. There will be no Penalty Modifiers after this, going forward. Live and Learn, I guess.
Sidenote I enjoyed torturing Jack so much I went overboard lol
Comments and Thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Likes are like a drug to me and boost my creative juices.
I have advanced chapters if you wanna read ahead.