I’m the Slayer

“I ended the threat to my world,” I went on, piling lies atop of lies. “I saved the future. I brought about a new beginning.”

The Maned Wolf stared at my manufactured body.

“Yessss,” Sage whispered encouragingly into my human ear a hundred miles away from the pub, “Tell her that you’re the Slaya!”

“I am the Slayer,” I concluded dramatically.

Comet made a sound of a dying fox. Wattica barked a laugh.

“That’s… no,” Comet squeaked. “That is blasphemy! You can’t just call yourself that! The Slayer is a cosmic entity… the strongest warrior who can survive the absolute entropic breath of the Leviathan!”

“Big dead ship? Check. New era? Check. Terrifying eldritch power that makes your knees weak?” I pointed my finger at Sage who was hugging my real body from behind. “Do you see the eyes, Herald?”

Comet looked past the Emperor-gun unit, staring at Sage who wasn’t really there.

“Dass right. Witness me n’ shake in your striped panties, wolf,” Sage laughed, the sound of her seductive foxy voice making my insides melt. Her chest rubbed distractingly against my back.

The Skinwalker was once again amplifying my signal with her unholy powers, using her Tower room in Cascade to cast an Astral echo of fourteen thousand fox souls between my human body and the Emperor gun unit. The sneaky fox was a master of Astral illusions and made my Emperor-self seem far more magically potent than I truly was.

“You… can’t be him! You can’t!” Comet insisted, trembling.

“Keep at it,” Sage added, “She’s just a lost, broken soul. I very muchly doubt that anyone outright claimed to be the Slaya in front of her face. It’ll throw her mental defenses off, confuse her pact, allow us to bend her even more.”

“I am the Slayer’s Avatar in this dimension,” I lied, hoping that this wouldn’t upset my newly minted Frontenachii minions while derailing the Maned Wolf from her mission. “And I am very disappointed in my Heralds. You were supposed to spread joy and love. Instead, you are trying to turn my planet into a garden center without permission. That’s kind of Naughty.”

I extended my hand out, offering her an empty palm.

“So, Herald Comet. Where is my tribute? If you serve the Slayer, and I am the Slayer… then you work for me now. Hand over the Seeds. Hand over the List. And tell Saint Nikky she owes me a lot of back-pay.”

Comet glanced at Sergey. The astrophysicist shrugged helplessly.

“How can a mere human be the Slayer?” the tiger prad whispered to her Wendigo Master.

“A mere human wouldn’t be able to take the Slayer’s Sword from Admiral Evelithria,” Wattica replied with a contemplative look. “It was… a Leviathan-sized vessel with thousands of Corpse Seekers, Legates, Commanders and our best legionnaires. It established Forty Seven long-term planet-wide colonies… Thousands of worlds, dungeons, nations and citadels fell to its might. Yet here, a world without magic somehow overcame us? That’s simply not logistically possible. When I reach out towards him, I feel nothing there, just liminality. You taste it, yes, Carrla? The sense of being observed by something vast?”

The tiger nodded.

“Some of us believe that the Slayer doesn’t simply manifest from the abyss, that he is born and lives among the people of a doomed Earth. That the Slayer reincarnates too… That on every doomed world there’s a Slayer simply waiting for the right time,” Wattica added, helpfully cementing my mad declarations. “A knight of great renown, a swordsman, a craftsman, etc. Those eyes in the abyss… they remind me of a dream I had long ago of the Leviathan, a vision I received during incarnation… a man standing against the endless nothing and the dragon made of endless eyes peering down at him… Perhaps he’s not The Slayer, but a potential body for one, a fitting vessel waiting to be filled when the Wormwood Star awakens on this world and devours all life.”

Comet looked at the guns pointed at her, the gray rays removing color from her fur. She looked at me. She looked at the nachos.

“Insist it harder,” Sage hugged me tighter. “I’ll press down on her in the Astral, push her just enough for her to tumble. Teya, keep feeding me yo dragon-mana, s’ very yum.”

“Yes. I am the body of the Slayer,” I stated, adding more bass to the Emperor’s voice and letting sub-bass rumble the silverware on the table, affirming the Wendigo’s speculations. “I simply wait for his Holy Spirit to fill me when the time is right!”

Inside my head, my real human head, currently resting comfortably against Sage’s body in her fox-den attic, I was mentally giggling with wild abandon.

I was… a dirty, shameless liar.An electrical engineer with little job prospects, one who had watched too many anime series and played too many RPGs, was successfully gaslighting an interdimensional invasion force and a crazy Maned Wolf dungeon Herald into believing… That I was their prophesied cosmic reset button.

If I rolled a one on this Deception check, the pub would erupt in railgun fire.

Thankfully, the beautiful thing about piloting a remote-controlled meat-puppet from a hundred miles away was that I wasn’t afraid of Comet or Wattica and her many guns.

Fear is a biological response to immediate physical danger.

If Comet pulled a hidden candy-cane machinegun or whatever she had in her pocket and blew my head off right now, I’d lose a very expensive, Kawathra-printed gun unit and create another handsome corpse. The real me would simply turn off the neural interface headband, and go to bed in the embrace of my fox and dragon girlfriends.

The extra-muscular, distant body gave me a swagger I didn’t truly possess. It allowed me to spout absolute bullshit with utter conviction. Wendigo hooks couldn’t read the extra-Syntropic network-style thoughts of remotely-piloted gun units.

“Well? I’m waiting for my tribute, Herald,” I added.

Comet looked like a deer in headlights. Or rather, a pretend-reindeer wolf in the path of a semi-truck. Her hazel eyes darted from me to Wattica, then to the spectral fox-eyes Sage was Astral-projecting behind me through hundreds of friendship bracelets she put on the Emperor’s armor.

“This… this doesn’t make sense,” Comet uttered. “The Slayer… he doesn’t eat nachos. He doesn’t sit in dive bars! He is the End of a narrative! The Silence! The END and beginning of everything!”

“The Silence is boring,” I countered. “I prefer salsa. Also, I’m his body, not his spirit. The rest of me will awaken when the Leviathan requires a chopping, perhaps… fifty thousand years from now.”

Wattica barked another laugh, silver eyes filled with mirth.

She was drinking in the Herald’s fear of my words. The Wendigo Commander was doing the heavy lifting for me, her desperate need for a new master who’d give her delicious all-you-can-eat fear buffet filling in the plot holes of my improvised theology.

“He broke the Sword!” Wattica stated. “He silenced the Admiral. He’s done the impossible, what no world dared to do against our grand armada. He fits the prophecy better than your absent Saint, Comet! A truly worthy husband for our highborn Princess, the Prima of the Frontenachii Dominion!”

“Hear, hear!” her soldiers affirmed.

“She is nearly cooked,” Sage whispered. “Like a turkey. Stick a fork in her, A-man.”

“Working on it,” I agreed, disabling the voice transfer for a moment. “If she panics, she might start shooting civilians.”

“Then we take away her toys,” Sage purred. “Ashy, tell her to strip.”

“Eh?” Galateya voiced beside us.

“Get her naked,” Sage insisted. “Buck naked. Birthday suit. The full monty!”

“Why?” Galateya asked, sounding mildly scandalized. “Sage, we are trying to neutralize a threat, not… fulfill another one of your fantasies. Is this really the time for horny foxnanigans?”

“It ain’t horny, T-bun! Well, not just horny,” Sage corrected. “Comet ain’t an experienced mage like me. She ain’t even an Omnid with a Fractal Engine heart like you. She, like Laika, is a prad that’s basically one paw in the abyss. Half of her belongs to entropy, the other is being held together by Saint Nikky’s dungeon ship.”

“Meaning what?” Galateya asked.

“Comet operates on the power of belief and all those See-Mass trinkets,” Sage explained, “She is basically… a funnel, an antenna. You heard the Scrut, T-bun! Tha’ sweater? The bells? The headband? Those ain’t bad fashion choices. They are potent-as-fuck, entwined artifacts. Anchors! She channels the Festivus dungeon through them. She holds no real power of her own. She’s a battery-operated toy!”

“Right,” I said. “Like a cleric drawing power from a holy symbol. If we remove the symbols…”

“She becomes a mere average prad, a tall foxy-doggo in a bar,” Sage finished. “So, Emperor… tell her to take it off. Tactical undressery!”

I suppressed a smirk.

“Comet,” I reactivated the mental voicecast. “You doubt me. You cling to your old master because you fear the cold. You clutch your colorful trinkets like a child holding a security blanket.”

Comet flinched. Her hand tightened on the fabric of her festive sweater. She must have sensed where I was going with this.

“A true Herald of the Slayer requires no fakery,” I said, tapping my chest. “Belief comes from the Heart. If you truly believe that you’re a Good girl serving the Slayer’s divine mission, take all of those festive trinkets off!”

Comet blinked, clutching her collar. “My… my artifacts?”

“The sweater,” I listed. “The skirt. The bells. The headband. Remove them.”

“You want me… naked?” she squeaked.

“I want you pure,” I corrected, channeling every cult leader documentary I’d ever watched. “I want to see the warrior beneath the wrapping paper. Your Krampus master claims to own you. She brands you with her props. I offer you true freedom, acceptance and understanding. All you have to do is cast aside her chains!”

“Yes! Take that shit off,” Wattica ordered. The Wendigo seemed to catch on immediately, or she simply enjoyed seeing a prad scared and humiliated. “Show the Emperor of Earth some respect, you festive nuisance! Open your mind to me so that I can confirm that you’re not a threat to the domain of our Princess!”

“I… I can’t,” Comet stammered. “The sweater… it protects me from the linear friction. The bells… they help me hear the Astral…”

“They are crutches,” I said. “And you are supposed to be a wolf, aren’t you? Wolves don’t need sweaters. Wolves don’t need bells.”

Comet swallowed.

“Unless,” I whispered, “you are just a pet? A dressed-up doll for Saint Nikky to play with? Is that all you are, Comet? A toy? One that she’ll discard once your usefulness runs out?”

The insult landed. I saw it in the way her ears flattened, the way her lip curled.

“I am not a toy,” she hissed. “I am a… a Herald of See-Mass! A prad predator!”

“Prove it,” I challenged. “Take off those fake antlers!”

“Uh, guys? Is this… is this standard diplomatic protocol?” Sergey suddenly found his courage.

“Yes, Copernicus,” I said. “If she doesn’t take those artifacts off, the Frontenachii will do it for her. The Wendigos don’t like when someone’s keeping secrets, thinking naughty thoughts, planning to murder everyone on our planet.”

Comet squeaked, clutching the neckline of her fuzzy red sweater. “This is… this is harassment! Extreme misconduct! I am a charity worker!”

“You’re a walking arsenal of magical artifacts disguised as an ugly Christmas sweater party,” I corrected.

The Maned Wolf twitched, gritting her teeth and glaring at me.

“She’s fighting it… but it’s not enough,” Sage sighed. “We’ll have to undress her manually. The blood pact isn’t allowing her to pull the antlers off.”

“Wattica. De-festive the wolf please, since she won’t do it herself,” I ordered.

The Wendigo’s glowing eyes flashed to her kobold.

“On it,” Carrla growled.

The tiger prad flashed from where she stood. Carrla’s massive, hexasuit-covered dark hand clamped onto Comet’s shoulder.

“Down, Rudolph,” the tiger growled.

“I am a Maned Wolf!” Comet protested as she was slammed face-first into the table. The tiger grabbed the sweater, pulling it off.

Suddenly, Carrla shrieked. She recoiled violently, releasing Comet as if she were made of molten iron.

“My hands!” Carrla wailed, staring at her palms in horror. “Ahhh!”

Brown roots and green pine needles erupted from the tiger’s hands. They grew all over, shearing right through her hexasuit armor gloves and skin like splinters, curling and branching. Frost bloomed around the wounds, turning her orange fur white with ice. A festive, eerie melody jingled through the air.

“Fuuuuuck! It burns! It’s so cold!” The tiger screamed, leaping back and shaking her hands, trying to dislodge the magical infection. “Get it off! Get it off!”

Wattica’s symbiote gun rearranged itself into a black, elongated sword. She spun through the air and sliced off the tiger’s hands. Carrla stared at her bleeding stumps, whimpering softly.

Her infected hands landed on the ground, blooming into small, festive x-mas trees covered in colorful ornaments.

The other prads retreated away from the little pines with horrified expressions.