Collide Gamer

The spiral of flesh and stone accelerated. Even with her clawed gauntlet, Metra struggled to hold on. Astrotium dragged marks over the surface of the material. Her grip was just about to slip when another armoured hand gripped her by the wrist.

Ehtra dragged her sister up to the surface of the spiral. “Thank you,” the First of Wrath said.

The First of Hatred kept her hand in place. “I need you.” The three words were spoken in a tone few ever heard from a Metracana, especially Lady Vengeance.

Metra returned the grip on her sister’s arm. It was a hold reserved for those sworn to carry their arms together. They had always been that. They were closer now. What they meant to each other had taken on an entirely new dimension under their current and final King.

The First of Wrath stared into the green glow within her sister’s helmet. Neither of them could see each other’s expression. They did not need to. Understanding and a love that went deeper than their removed sisterhood connected them. “Together.” The one word was spoken with certainty.

The spiral moved at incredible speeds, the momentum almost enough to make even them buckle.

Rising and rising, through tunnels that opened in the rock. Always upwards, through air as thin as gold foil that turned as thick as water. Ehtra’s blade-feathers whistled in the wind.

Suddenly, the entropic grinding against their armour ceased. Metra’s corded muscles of magic and metal relaxed. The spiral continued on its way upwards, rising through an open space of carefully arranged pillars. Esoteric energies twirled in the air. They were remnants of a great ritual that had occurred there some time ago, completed, leaving the true functioning of the space, the rune-carved pillars, and the corpses, frozen like hardened wax, that lined the floor unknown.

The cover of clouds approached. Source of snow and dimmed light, the thick grey layer separated all that there was from the sky above. The sound of the spirals rising bounced off the walls of the final shaft that they entered. It finally slowed near the top of the crevice and delivered them to the very tip of Tiamat’s tower.

Blinding was the light of the sun. Joyous was the chirping of the birds. A gentle breeze swayed the branches of trees, filling the air with the harmonious rustling of the leaves.

Ehtra and Metra stood beneath the dome roof of a pavilion. It was of a sandstone colour, decorated with black granite in a few places. The angles and shapes gave Metra a sense of nostalgia that had been faint below, yet undeniable up here.

Beyond the open walls was a dreamlike landscape. Gorgeous flowers surrounded the walkways of grass. Stone bridges crossed narrow rivers that serenely drifted along. Above was only the cloudless sky, so pure in its colour it was like an ocean above. Aesthetic structures filled the land, each a stepped garden from which colourful vines hung.

“Her mockery knows no bounds,” Ehtra hissed.

“It is no mockery – it is our birthright.”

Metra’s rage spiked instantly at the sound of that voice.

Seminaris stepped out from behind a nearby pillar. She was still in the form she had assumed for her contract with Sigmund. Straight, black hair flowed to her waist. Dark brown eyes gazed outwards from a face of noble beauty. She was of a willowy build, slender and graceful.

“A pleasure to see you again, Ehtra.”

“Pleasure?” the First of Hatred hissed. “You are a traitor to your kin, Seminaris. What pleasure is there in seeing you, who was once the noblest of us, dedicate yourself to this utter horror?”

Metra swallowed her rage and stepped out of the pavilion, quietly stepping out into the sun. Butterflies flapped by, their wings beating desperately to continue in the thin air. A dragonfly liberated one of them of that fate, plucking it out of midair.

“You’re not attacking me immediately, at least,” Seminaris remarked. “More than what I expected, especially from you, Metra.”

“I despise you,” the First of Wrath responded. “You and your conniving bullshit… but you are my sister. I am giving you a chance to prove yourself to me.”

“Prove myself to you?” Seminaris asked, her even voice tilting towards annoyance. “You call me a traitor, but you’re the wayward children. Mother Chaos has returned, she beckons you to join us. This is your final invitation to join willingly.” The First of Patience gestured behind her, at the great garden of Babel. “In the garden of Tiamat, all will be one.” Official source ıs 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙡•𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚•𝙣𝙚𝙩

Metra continued to walk, eyes drifting over the land. A shallow stream nearby teemed with fish. They circled one of their own, taking chunks out of it with bites of sharp teeth. A surreal, casual display of death in a land of serenity. “It won’t last. You know it won’t.”

“That is the beauty of it. Nothing is forever, Mother Chaos knows that,” Seminaris proselytized. “War, unification, tranquillity, fracture, war, the cycle of history. We are overdue for some tranquillity. Let the age of man and Gaia end. Enough wars for one species. All flesh, all thought, melted into one network. This garden, this tower, is just the first of so many great works that we can accomplish.”

“Spare yourself your honeyed lies,” Ehtra growled.

“No, let her speak.”

“…Metra?” the First of Hatred sounded confused.

The first Metracana squatted down. Her hand caressed the grass. “All empires rise. All empires fall. It is true, undeniable, she can talk about that all she likes.” Her eyes scanned once more about the architecture. “You called this our birthright.”

“Tiamat requires our aid to anchor her new might to this world. The world could be like this. A serene garden, one day to fracture, one day to reunite.”

“This is no garden.” Metra’s fingers curled into the soil. The roots of the grass resisted her claws, stretching and flowing. The membrane broke, oozing black, thick ichor from the flesh soil beneath. “It is a lie not even skin deep. It’s Tiamat’s delusion of what she thought she could be. It’s what all of us once believed in.” The First of Wrath stood up, her helmet opened up, retreating to the level of her collar. She wanted to behold Seminaris with proper eyes one last time. “You always had the most of Mother Chaos of all of us. This is your final chance to save yourself.”

“To save myself?” Seminaris scoffed at the notion.

“You have forsaken our mission to find Sargon’s successor. You have forsaken even the man that you are currently contracted to.”

“Sigmund, in the end, is just a bargaining chip to keep Izha happy.”

“That was always your problem.” Metra shook her head. “You have no honour. All of your ideas exist in the realm of wants. You create gardens in the sky, perfectly ordered as you want them to be. Yet, no matter how gorgeous a veneer you place on top, a lie will remain a lie.” The tip of Rex Magnar came to point at Seminaris in one slow motion. “You are a traitor to Akkad.”

Seminaris narrowed her eyes. “Tiamat is Akkad!”

“Tiamat is the chaos from which Akkad sprung and the chaos that ground it to dust.” Metra kept her gaze firm and steady, while long contemplated emotions poured from her lips. “I hated Tiamat from the day she began to build the Tower of Babel. I hated her for breaking Marduk’s will. I followed her as a daughter, I trusted my mother, I was honour bound and silently sharpened my weapons. My loyalty was misplaced. In the honour of my first king’s memories, I should have acted then to stop all of this… perhaps there was something I could have done to keep Tiamat’s ambitions curtailed. Maybe it was my duty to direct her anger, like it was yours to advise her on the long game. Dereliction of that duty will forever be with me.”

“No, you were a pawn then and you ought to be a pawn now.”

“I am no pawn. If I ever was, I am no more.” Metra crouched down. “We are queens to John Newman, rightful heir to Akkad.”

“…Well spoken, sister,” Ehtra agreed and raised her gun.

A strong gust went through the garden, fluttering the skirt of Seminaris’ Astrotium dress. “A disappointment to the very end.”

Metra sliced through the arcane projectile with a singular swing. Her helmet rose over her head again, the plates of Astrotium interlocking while she crossed the divide. Hand still raised from her opening spell, Seminaris barely managed to turn her head before Metra’s fist crashed into it.

The First of Wrath felt remarkably calm. Oh, she hated Seminaris for numerous treacheries over the years. Blessed were those who knew only siblings they got along with. This, however, was not a cathartic release of all of that anger, it was just the inevitable conclusion of it all.

The land shifted to catch Seminaris in the soft embrace of trees. Where the force snapped or cracked branches, ichor and molten faces poured out. The four-parted maw of Tiamat sprouted like flowers from the pools that formed.

Seminaris raised her arm. The gesture created a portal. Before she could move through it, one of Ehtra’s rounds struck the First of Patience in the side. The explosive project ripped a hole into the Astrotium dress. By the time their enemy had regained concentration, Metra had taken the edge of the portal and shredded the dimensional magic with her claws.

First of Wrath and Hatred flanked the second Metracana. Halberd and sword crossed beneath the neck of the woman. Her face was gradually knitting back together. A prominent, vertical slit only grew as everything around healed, cleaving her jaw into four segments. “Nothing can stop Mother Chaos,” Seminaris said.

“Maybe not,” Metra said, “but I will die trying.”

“I will seek vengeance with every last spark of my soul,” Ehtra spoke calmly. “Honour demands retribution.”

They looked at each other and nodded. To each other more than Seminaris, the two ancient weapons swore, “”We will guide Tiamat to the afterlife.””

Mother Chaos giggled at her children’s proclamation. “Such certainty, I applaud, your will is truly of my own. Seminaris, your last effort has failed.”

“They remain obstinate to the end,” the First of Patience sighed and closed her eyes.

The ground beneath them bulged. The new king’s spouses leapt backwards. Whatever came next, they were under no illusions that they could stop it. They landed several metres away and waited for the true enemy to show herself.

The bulge grew into a black boil on the false garden, Seminaris seated on its crest. The expected rupture of the membrane never occurred. Instead a scaled hand rose from the liquid, gently wrapped around Seminaris, and dragged her into the blackness.

Only seconds passed before the boil deflated and the ground parted. Tiamat rose from the ground, a gorgeous creature surrounded by the anguished cries of the Lorylim and its victims. The shape she had assumed in the previous fight with Romulus had been perfected.

“This was Mother in her prime?” Ehtra mumbled, awed despite her hatred.

Metra glanced at her sister, decades her senior. “She once was truly beautiful,” she answered.

Mother Chaos was the human understanding of that which was untraceable. She was the embodiment of that which crushed hopes from a source unseen, yet she was also the source of that hope, the potential yet untapped. Tiamat was she who embodied the conceptual nature of the word, the half of everything that was fluid in its shape and flexible in its outcomes.

She was a dragon made of flesh, scale and starlight. Her chosen form was large, fifty metres from her twice-divided jaw to the metal-tipped tail. She was a dragon as black as the darkness that hid the horrors of deep night and yet she shone with the brilliance of knowledge yet to be discovered. Stars drifted over her smooth scales, celestial formations that were created and swallowed by the might of her distorting presence.

Bereft of any gaps or wounds, the eternal stream of saltwater within found its proper course, forming the ridge along her spine that her endless wings drifted upon. As they followed the tidal movement, her brilliant wings grew and shrunk in size, spawning at the base of her tail and disappeared at the base of her neck.

Tiamats legs were long and feminine, her claws elegantly curved instruments of Astrotium. Where the metal of her skeleton, forged from the remnants of Enki and the melded Metracanas she had found, showed from her scales, it was a harmonious presence of lead grey. Her eyes were swirling galaxies, in their centres deep ponds black that beckoned the asking of all questions and offered answers to none. The horns that crowned her slender head were jagged and asymmetrical, crystals and bones of different colours that changed with every waking moment.

Metra beheld her mother with a profound sense of loss. This was all that chaos could have been. A gorgeous dragon of opportunity, of mystery, a parent that did not coddle, only taught. This was the appearance of the goddess that had spurred the first emperor to unite the realm. This was who Sargon of Akkad had met, who had carved into her own flesh to create the future for her children.

That mother had died, been replaced by a creature that devoured her children to satisfy her own madness.

“I will grieve for you, Tiamat.” Metra dreaded that she would receive an answer that she would understand.

Tiamat was too far gone for that.

“You will not need to. Before long, you will beg me to be one.”

The true Dragon of Chaos surged forwards.