Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2468 Chain

Cassarae was calmer than she thought she should have been, especially with Tomoe's sword already close enough that its grey-black light reflected across her eyes.

One hand had found its way to her belly without conscious thought, resting over the child growing there while the other remained wrapped around the Executioner's Blade, but there was no panic in her chest and no desperate search for some last-second escape.

Instead, of all things, Cassarae found herself thinking about swords.

Before the Executioner's Blade ever appeared, she had already used one, and back then she had thought she was pretty damn good considering she had no guidance.

There had been something freeing about it, a faint rhythm and song that settled into her head whenever the steel moved through her hands, and while she wouldn't have called it Sword Will back then, she knew now that something had been there.

That had been around the same time she met Olivia, back when this world was so new to them that everyday was just another brush with death. Cassarae had gone out carrying an ordinary sword and returned with Olivia beside her, and sometime during that trip, when she and Olivia had been on the brink of death once again, the Executioner's Blade had simply appeared before her at a critical moment.

At the time, Cassarae had considered that incredible Luck.

She had never stopped to ask why the sword had chosen her, and there hadn't been much time to wonder about it anyway when Casstle Main barely survived one disaster before another arrived.

She had people depending on her, enemies circling her territory, and eventually an entire Earth that seemed determined to collapse faster than anyone could repair it, so when a weapon appeared that made her stronger immediately, Cassarae did the obvious thing and used it.

The strange part was that the song in her head began fading almost from the moment she did.

Her old sword had never given her anywhere near the same power, but holding it had felt lighter in a way she could no longer properly remember. The Executioner's Blade gave her Strength, let her convert Will into stamina and Constitution, grew alongside her, and seemed to provide exactly what she needed whenever she reached another wall, so questioning why the sword itself felt worse in her hands seemed ridiculous when everything else about it was better.

Then Sylas started pulling away from her.

Not emotionally, annoyingly enough. That probably would have been easier to deal with. But, instead, in strength.

Every time Cassarae improved enough to feel proud of herself, Sylas seemed to take another absurd leap forward, and with Earth constantly under threat she had no interest in throwing away the easiest path available to her just because some faint feeling from years ago told her she had once enjoyed swinging a worse sword more.

So she relied on the Executioner's Blade more, and the song became quieter until she eventually stopped listening for it at all. By then, turning around would have meant admitting that years of progress had carried her farther away from whatever she had originally touched, and Cassarae had far too much pride for that when continuing forward still made her stronger.

Yet here she was. Still behind.

Defeating one of Xarvenya's clones had felt damn good, and Cassarae had enjoyed every second of proving that she wasn't just Sylas Grimblade's wife trailing along behind him.

But she knew perfectly well that clone hadn't represented Xarvenya's true strength even then, and whatever gap existed back then had probably widened into something stupid by now.

Sylas was even worse. That asshole could make enough progress in a day to invalidate half the things Cassarae had been proud of the month before, but unlike almost everyone else, she had never confused that ability with perfection.

Sylas was human, with desires he pretended were calculations, hopes he buried beneath plans, mistakes he corrected so quickly people forgot he had made them, and more faults than he would ever willingly admit.

Maybe that was why Cassarae had always understood something about him that others didn't, and maybe it was why she had never felt particularly threatened by the women who somehow kept appearing around him.

Sylas probably hadn't consciously realized it himself, but Cassarae was fairly certain he loved her more than anyone else because she was one of the few people who never needed him to be the version of himself everyone else saw.

Maybe this was simply another mistake.

He had trusted Earth's modified protections because every calculation said Tomoe shouldn't have been capable of stepping onto the planet in the first place, yet here she was with a sword coming down toward Cassarae's skull.

Cassarae couldn't even bring herself to blame him for it. If Sylas had one truly irritating flaw, it was that he was too competent, enough to make the rare occasions he was wrong feel impossible.

Maybe she would close her eyes now and open them a second later with Sylas standing over her, looking irritated because death had managed to inconvenience him. He would find some ridiculous loophole involving Karma, Fate, Spacetime, or whatever other bullshit he had learned while she wasn't looking, drag both her and their child back, then speak like the solution had been obvious from the beginning.

Cassarae almost smiled.

She only wished she could watch him do it. But more than that, she wished she had been better.

"Do you want to be?"

The amused voice came from everywhere at once as the final instant before Tomoe's sword landed stretched until the courtyard seemed trapped inside a single frozen heartbeat. Cassarae didn't recognize the speaker and probably should have cared much more than she did, but right now she couldn't bring herself to care.

She didn't answer, and the voice chuckled at her indifference before continuing. "When I sensed someone here shatter The Wall, I thought I'd come and take a look, but it couldn't have been you and I can't seem to find them at all. What I didn't expect was to find something else so interesting."

Cassarae continued watching the sword.

"Tell me, little girl. Why is it that you're wearing a shackle around your neck?"

Her pupils trembled because she didn't understand the words, yet some part of her understood them so intimately that her attention moved before thought could follow. There was only one thing around her neck that had followed her from almost the very beginning, something so familiar that she had stopped feeling its presence years ago.

The necklace that had granted her Luck.

Cassarae became aware of its weight all at once, every link suddenly pressing against her skin until a crack echoed through the stretched world. The necklace shattered and fell away in glittering fragments, while her Sword Will flowed outward with it, not stronger than before but freer in a way that made Cassarae realize she had forgotten what freedom felt like.

Then she finally heard the sword in her hand.

There was no song waiting for her inside the Executioner's Blade, only snarling and barking beneath the surface while a bottomless greed gnawed at everything Cassarae had poured into it over the years.

It had taken her Will, her strength, her growth, and every step she gave it, yet even now she could feel it demanding more as though nothing she had ever offered had been enough.

Revulsion rolled through Cassarae so suddenly that her grip loosened on instinct.

For years she had thought the silence belonged to her, that she had simply lost whatever talent or feeling she once possessed because she wasn't good enough to keep hold of it. Only now, with the necklace gone and her Sword Will moving freely again, did she understand that she had been feeding something else the entire time.

The Executioner's Blade slipped from her fingers as time resumed, and Tomoe's sword completed the final fraction of its descent without slowing.

The grey-black edge entered through the crown of Cassarae's head and split her body from top to bottom, sending blood, flesh, and organs across the courtyard in a grotesque rain.

"CASSARAE!"

A silence fell over the world, a faint smile of relief that hung over Cassarae's lips in the final moments splitting in two along with it. At least in her finals moments, she had heard the song that carried her through the first days of the tutorial once again.

She hadn't realized... just now much she missed it.