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1146 Words
Well, perhaps she had the right idea. It had been a stressful few months—or even years if the third floor challenge room counted. Perhaps a vacation of sorts was just what he needed as well.
Knowing and trusting his bond to pull herself out of the dream, Matt willed himself into his own test.
Matt wasn’t the emperor. He was beyond him, and every other Tier 50 in the realm. He had somehow ascended to Tier 51 but was still present in their plane of existence. Stronger than everyone else.
Finally free.
He wasn’t just at the peak of power.
He was beyond it, and beyond risk.
No one could challenge him.
No one could shove him in a box.
Matt was finally free.
As the strongest existence in the realm, no one could dream of challenging him, and he had people to turn his simplest desire into a command that could shake the realm. He wasn’t alone, of course. That would be dull, monotonous.
But nor did he have peers, for that implied equality.
He was above all.
He was the lifeblood of the entire realm, giving life with his every whim as his supplicants extolled the virtues of their causes, pleading with him to aid them. They knew he was the Superior One, and others threw grand treasures at him in the hopes he would hear their cause and act to solve it.
Occasionally, he would even listen. He ended wars, terraformed entire planets, funded great libraries, and ushered in a new wave of truly unbound, truly free research for all. It was a paradise, a utopia for those who pleased him. Those who disrespected him or his values, those who sought to prey upon those weaker than themselves, or those who sought to exploit, even in the abundance of all, were harshly dealt with. Erased from existence and history.
None were his equal. Every man, woman, and child, every beast and human, and every mortal and immortal all looked to him for guidance and protection.
He was above all.
He had conquered every foe.
Righted every wrong.
Everything was perfect.
There was nothing for him to do.
No challenge to overcome.
No one stronger than him who posed a threat to either his freedom or his life.
He couldn’t even enchant anything over Tier 50 because the instant he made the object, it ascended, unlike him. None dared question him, no one opposed him.
There was nothing new for him to do.
Absolute safety was boring.
It made life…dull.
And the illusion broke around him.
Liz walked down the street in perfect anonymity. With the power to change her face and her spirit as she pleased, it was impossible for anyone to recognize her. She had complete and total freedom. No fans staring in shock at Torch, the future Ascender. No sycophants crowding around Elizabeth, the Princess of Fire. No whispers about a quenched phoenix…nothing. Not even stares due to her red hair and sculpted figure, for even those were gone.
Someone crashed into her, a random drunk who wasn’t watching his path, and she shoved him off her. That would show him, all right. No perfect princess here, and no more thousands of reporters waiting to pounce on the slightest misstep.
He crashed to the ground, and Liz smirked in satisfaction as she stepped over him and carried on her way. She reached home not long after, and Matt greeted her from the kitchen as he whipped up another wonderful meal. He alone knew her, and she loved him all the more for it. He’d even received the same blessing as her, allowing them both to vanish into the distance without a single care, without a single worry of anyone tracking them here, so far from her home. Nobody would know his secret; she was all his and he was all hers.
With a shiver of delight, she cast aside her last face and returned to a much more familiar one, specifically, Matt’s favorite. His little gasp of appreciation always brought a smile to her, and she winked at him, beckoning him to her.
A whispered question and an eager response were all it took for Liz to wake up the next morning arm-in-arm with Matt, surrounded by the evidence of their escapades of the previous night. It would be the scandal of the year—to say nothing of how her mother would preen and make such a tremendous fuss about it all—if Princess Elizabeth were found in such a compromising position, yet she hadn’t been and wouldn’t be.
She got drunk in bars, walked arm-in-arm with Matt down the street totally naked, joined an underground fighting ring as a pyromancer known for blood-red flames, and did everything else that came to her fancy. And best of all, Matt was side by side with her for it all, his participation and unconditional approval of her every last whim making it all meaningful, in this world of fleeting faces and no consequences.
Anonymity came with its downsides, of course. If she wanted to receive preferential treatment in restaurants, she needed to spend time establishing a persona deserving of the treatment beforehand. People didn’t defer to her in the street, and if she wanted that annoying guy in the bar to stop pawing her, she needed to burn him alive.
Wait, what?
Liz came back to herself and looked in horror at the spectacle in front of her. The man, previously a bastion of bravado and charm, was a charred mess. His hair was gone and his skin was black, burning coals where his eyes once had been. Flames licked across what was left of his skin, though it was more charcoal than living flesh. He would be whimpering in pain if his throat would work, but he was kept alive by the nurturing fires running through his veins. This isn’t who I am, Liz thought, her mind wavering. This isn’t me.
She let her victim drop as the illusion broke around her.
She appeared back in the waiting area and started to shiver.
Liz hadn’t expected the test to be nice, but she hadn’t expected it to show her as some unbridled sociopath either.
She got angry at people, yes. But she didn’t think it was any more than the next person.
She was a nice person. She helped people. She was kind. She was polite, even to the rudest strangers. She never got mad at them, she never would hurt them…unless they outright attacked her.
But do I want to?
That thought frightened her.
Was she only this way because she wanted the approval of others? Was she a monster, deep down, hidden beneath the oceans of blood she had shed, held in check only by the expectations of people around her?
It was a terrifying thought.
- Writer
